Bible Study: Choices and Character in James, Part 2

Knight & Rose Show — Wintery Knight and Desert Rose

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Bible Study: Choices and Character in James, Part 2

July 12, 2025

Knight & Rose ShowWintery Knight and Desert Rose

Wintery Knight and Desert Rose study James chapters 3-5, emphasizing taming the tongue and pursuing godly wisdom. They discuss humility, patience, and responsible stewardship, critiquing worldly desires and reckless spending. Encouraging Christians to avoid slander and seek reconciliation, they offer practical guidance for living an authentic faith, blessing others through words and actions in a Christ-centered life.

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Show notes and transcript: https://winteryknight.com/2025/07/12/knight-and-rose-show-66-choices-and-character-in-james-part-2

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Transcript

Welcome to the Knight and Rose Show, where we discuss practical ways of living out an authentic Christian worldview. I'm Wintery Knight. And I'm Desert Rose.

Welcome, Rose. So today, we're going to be doing part two of our study on the book of James from the New Testament. Let's just quickly review what we talked about last time.

So, last time we mentioned that we had a previous episode where we looked at another book in the Bible, Philippians. So, check out episode number 18 if you want to hear a Bible study on Philippians. And we also talked about an introduction to the book of James.

Specifically, we talked about the author of the book and his life circumstances that make him a really good, compelling character to present to your non-Christian friends. He has a really good story that's echoed outside the Bible, and he is just a very interesting person. And if you know who it is, then the text of the letter takes on a different life of its own.

So, last time in part one, we covered chapters one and two. And so, today we thought we would try to cover all the rest in part two in this series. That sounds great.

Why don't we get started, and I will read James chapter three, verses one through twelve. Okay. It says, not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

For we all stumble in many ways, and if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. Look at the ships also.

Though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire.

And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed, and has been tamed, by mankind.

But no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.

From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening, both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.

Wow. Really strong words. Yes, indeed.

If you are in a relationship, or even if you're in a collaboration, you know, with with someone of the opposite sex, where you're doing boss work, kingdom work, just don't. Talk, don't use your tongue to talk badly about the people that you're collaborating with. Just look at what James says about it, and just try to control what you're saying.

He wants you to give blessings, you know, to these people with your words. And I would say that the measure of how you're doing here is in the results. So if you are able to say positive things about people and praise them, then you might get better results.

And getting results for your kingdom work is really, you think, what Christians should be doing. How about you? Do you have any thoughts about this passage? Yeah, I think James really has it right here to make a big deal out of our use of the tongue. We can so easily discourage people, tear them down, push them away, make them fearful, make them insecure, cause them not to want to be around us, not to trust us.

So much damage can be done with the tongue. And I think we are very wise to be slow to speak and quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, right, as we read also from James, I believe. So this is the taming of the tongue, I think is something.

I mean, it says here, you know, if you can manage to tame the tongue, you can be perfect. You can do anything. You're perfect then.

This is one of the hardest things to do, and yet it has such immense, such serious and heavy consequences when we get it wrong. I feel like this is really important. If you are raising kids, you definitely don't want the household to be a place of comparing to other people and putting other people down.

And that's one of the reasons why I recommend military history, you know, so much, you know, reading Medal of Honor citations. So just try to have heroes in the house. And I actually managed to get this out of my house.

So I everybody knows I'm not from, you know, here, I migrated here. I'm an immigrant, a legal immigrant. But when I go home, you know, sometimes we like to watch sports.

And there's a particular sport that is played in my home country that I really, really like. And I noticed that a lot of the cursing that happens is happening with my dad and brother making fun of the people who are playing the sports. So I started to get really mad about this.

I couldn't take it anymore. And I was telling I told them repeatedly, like, if you can't stop making fun of the players, you know, you can't play as well as these people. So, you know, if you can't stop making fun of the players on the field, then I'm not gonna be able to sit here and watch this with you because I can't stand it.

So I don't know if you feel that's too extreme. But I would say things to my dad, like you have to praise one player before you can criticize another, or you have to criticize them, you know, constructively or something, you know, but but it ended up working really well. And that house stopped being, you know, a house of negativity to being much more positive.

Another example is it was something that I think is a huge temptation when spouses get divorced, and they freely talk to their children about how bad and awful their ex-spouses. This can do tremendous damage to the child if they hear constant slander of their parents. A child, even an adult child, is harmed when there is ongoing slander of their mom or their dad.

That makes sense. Well, why don't we go on to the next section? You want to read that? Yeah, I get one now. It's my turn.

So I chose chapter three, verses 13 to 16, which is about wisdom. So let me read that. Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom.

But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.

Wow. So James didn't pull punches, eh? No, he's I guess if I want some people to get something out of this, it's like James is really concerned about this. He is dedicating multiple chapters and he's very passionate.

So you're here to follow the boss, right? So you pay attention and you make this your priority in your interactions. You be thinking about how you can reflect this, you know, in how you treat people. So he's talking there about how wisdom manifests itself.

And what I wanted to say, the first thing I thought of is I'm thinking about how Christian scholars who are trying to do research, you know, like I was talking about before, find evidence, give lectures, do debates, they often face persecution for their stances on controversial issues. And I'm thinking particularly about things like intelligent design. That's a career ender right there.

And other people who talk about things like homosexuality. I just reblogged a post from Frank Turek where he gives a lecture and he got in trouble with his employers at private sector companies like Cisco for talking about that in his books. So that's a really good way of manifesting wisdom.

Yeah, definitely. So this passage also talks about jealousy and that really stands out to me because that was because it has repeatedly stood out to me as a Christian in contrast to my pre-Christian life. Before I was a Christian, I never wanted anyone to know if I had done something well, if I had gotten an A on a test or if I had won a tennis match or anything else, because jealousy was just so rampant.

And especially girls in school, you know, if they saw that I was getting along well with someone or that I was, you know, being celebrated for something, you know, there was just so much jealousy. And when I became a Christian, I noticed immediately that Christian women I was friends with were not only not jealous, but they were celebrating my kingdom wins. They were right.

They were treating one another as if we're all on the same team, which we are. Right. So there's just no room for jealousy in the kingdom.

We need to be celebrating every kingdom when not worrying about who gets the credit or who did what better than somebody else. Right. God's the one who gets the glory anyway.

He's the sovereign one. So I think that's an important point to take there about how we are to act as Christians and how freeing and fun it is. You know, so much more fun to celebrate another Christian and to genuinely be happy for them than it is to feel all jealous and angry and backbiting and nonsense.

But another thing that's mentioned here is selfish ambition. Which is generally considered a really good high value in our culture. It's something I didn't even, I was really taken aback when I first read in the Bible that selfish ambition was problematic.

I was like, what? Why would that be a problem? What's wrong with that? That was so antithetical to the culture I was raised in. But I mean, look at the words that James uses that it leads to boasting and lies and disorder and every vile practice. It's demonic, right? I mean, wow.

Yeah. And now I understand a lot better than I did that, you know, that the younger generation is so often harmed by parents, selfish ambition. Shall I read chapter four versus one through 10? Yes.

All right. James chapter four. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you, you desire and do not have.

So you murder, you covet and cannot obtain. So you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask.

You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says, he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us, but he gives more grace. Therefore, it says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you, draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.

Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. So again, I think there are quite a few leaders, Christian leaders in America who, if they heard one of their congregants say that to someone, they would be called into the pastor's office for a talk about tone. I don't think they would.

I don't think that James's tone would go over too well in today's evangelical circles, but that's another point. So yeah, I'm just, I'm thinking about times when I've been upset with people and every example I can think of, it's because I didn't get what I wanted. I mean, of course I always think that what I want is reasonable.

I want to be respected by friends and family and coworkers. I want to be cherished in marriage. I want to be appreciated for my efforts, right? I want good things.

It's not like I'm asking people to go out and rob banks for me. But when I insist on receiving even good things perfectly all the time from imperfect human beings, I'm going to end up disappointed and either hurt or sad, upset, or angry, kind of whatever your inclination is. I tend to get sad more than angry, but it's along the same lines, not getting what we want.

And then it turns into a bigger thing than it needs to be. And then I'm looking at like verses three and four. So we need to ask God, even though he knows what we need, we need to ask him.

He likes when we ask and our motives in our prayer requests matter to God. And they don't just matter a little bit, right? Asking for things from God in order to spend on our own pleasures to make us happy apart from God, James says, is adultery, right? It's the equivalent of using God's money to buy ourselves a prostitute, asking God for something and saying, great, thanks God. I'm going to go use it to become independently happy apart from you.

It's a big, big deal to God here. And then verse four, of course, friendship with the world is enmity against God. Wow.

How many of us avoid having conversations about hard topics because we want to be liked? How many of us prioritize the world's approval over the approval of God? This is one of those so-called acceptable sins of the Western Church, and not even just acceptable, but celebrated. You're celebrated if everybody approves of you. There must be something wrong with you if people don't like what you said, if they feel like you're not affirming them for everything.

And yet God says this is adultery. I mean, that's a big, big deal. Yeah.

From a strategic point of view, from a long-term strategy point of view, I think when you're having interactions with people, your ambition should be, you should be thinking, how can I equip and deploy this person to serve God? And if you have that focus on strengthening your relationship with God by focusing on the things he cares about in your relationships, that's going to last longer than your reputation with people on earth. Like, think about when you pass away, those people will forget you very easily. So your ambition should be in a relationship.

How can I get this person oriented toward serving God and equip them and kind of steer them with your tongue like the rudder they were talking about rather than beat them up, you know? So I think that should be our ambition. Yeah. You know, several of these verses are reminding me of Romans 12, 1 and 2, which, you know, are, you know, two of my favorite verses in Bible.

It says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. So we can avoid caring too much, caring too much what the world thinks and acting too much like the world, being double-minded and failing to resist the devil by what we put into our minds. That's where our responsibility comes into play.

We choose what we put into our minds by what we read, what we watch for entertainment, what kind of conversations or lectures or sermons we listen to, right? And through those things, the Holy Spirit works to conform us to the image of Christ. Mm-hmm. Okay, let's go on to mine for chapter 4, verses 11 and 12.

Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.

There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? So I listened to an entire R.C. Sproul sermon on this and I almost always agree with R.C. Sproul. And he was talking about the difference between judging as like a critical analysis, you know, like, well, that doesn't look like that thing on the ground doesn't look like it's gonna support my weight.

I think I'm just gonna go around it. That's judging, right? And judging as condemning, which is like, hey, I'm gonna ruin you. I'm gonna throw bricks through your window and set your house on fire.

You know, that's kind of like, you know, your sentence to five years in prison for forgetting my birthday. So I think he's more focused. Well, I mean, R.C. Sproul says this is more focused on and condemning and particularly condemning brothers like your other Christians, your brothers and sisters, you know, so you want to try to avoid that.

And I think if you're in a situation where you're not able to be reconciled with your brother in Christ, I would say the best thing to do is try to treat them as well as you can for the kingdom. So if they do something good for the kingdom, tweet that, you know, share that, appraise that. And that will be a good way of kind of making God first in your interaction with this difficult person.

You don't have to be nice to them, maybe, if it's really hard for you. But I think if they do something good for the kingdom, you shouldn't you should let kingdom business rule over your personal grievance. Does that make sense? Absolutely.

Yeah. Well said. Yeah.

And I'll just point out the obvious here with the don't speak evil against a brother. You know, that, of course, includes personal mocking and harsh criticism, biting sarcasm, controlling words. These things can do irreparable damage to image bearers, to family, to friends, to the body of Christ.

It dishonors God and it disrespects and dishonors God's image bearers. And, you know, the more we engage in these things, I think it leads to kind of a downward spiral a lot of time. We start with, you know, sinful heart, and we make gossip or slander a little bit.

We may complain a little bit. And then as we speak negatively, we feel negative. And then we speak negative some more and that which results in more anger, more bitterness, more slander, more complaints, more of a bad attitude, more ungratefulness, which kind of pushes people away, which leads to more loneliness and more anger and more bitterness, right? So we really need to, again, this is kind of going back to taming the tongue, right? And being careful about what we allow to come out of our mouths at something that I've been focusing on a lot lately is gratefulness and allowing gratefulness to drown out any temptation toward self-pity or things like that.

Definitely. Look, I got a couple of practical tips. So for gratefulness, I always recommend to people, read lots of military history.

Once you realize how difficult life can be, has been for other people who are, you know, fighting for your constitutional rights if you live in America and just peace in the world in general, you'll be very thankful that terrible war is very difficult. And you should be thankful that other people have fought in those wars so that you have all these blessings today. And the second thing is this is really critical.

I talked about this before. When I was a young man, I grew up in an environment where there was a lot of comparing to other people, putting other people down. It was everywhere.

It was the ocean I was swimming in. And it caused enormous trouble for me. This is when I was in, like, elementary school.

And I think in middle school, I discovered C.S. Lewis, and he started talking about pride, okay, which is comparing yourself to other people, usually unfavorably. They're unfavorable compared to you. So if you have a problem with this, you've got this, you know, record playing in your head about other people's shortcomings, go and read the C.S. Lewis, mere Christianity, problem of pain, abolition of man.

I can't remember which one it is. I think it's more Christianity. So that's my recommendation.

Yeah, you know, you mentioned comparing yourself to others. There's no possible way for that to come out well for you. If we compare ourselves to others, and we think that we are better than others, then that leads to boasting and pride.

If we compare ourselves to others, and we think we conclude that they're better than us, that can lead to self-pity, insecurity, jealousy, etc. So that's just a bad idea all around. Yeah, definitely.

And I want people to be practical about this. You convince yourself by what you read. Your beliefs are the rails that you run your life on.

And how do you change your beliefs? You don't change them by just having a will. I'm going to believe that, you know, that two plus two equals five today. You have to convince yourself, and you convince yourself by reading and by, I think, structured activity, you know, like a structured relationship where you are confronting someone who disagrees with you, and you work, and then you present, and they criticize, and then you run that cycle, and then you win.

And you go, okay, this is solid ground, and now that I really believe this is true, it's going to be easy for me to run my life choices, decisions, and priorities off of what I now believe is true. So studying, like you were saying with Romans 12, 1, and 2, renew your mind, you know, change your beliefs by studying and debating, and then you'll find your actions follow what you believe to be true. So I'm going to read from chapter 5 verses 1-6.

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire.

You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you. And the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts.

You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person.

He does not resist you. So let me say something about that. I think in general the theme of the passages is that your riches should be a blessing to others and not the cause of other people suffering, or more importantly, I think, turning away from God.

Yeah, when there are all sorts of things we could say about this, right? All day long. But just in the context of the current day, I'm thinking of the tens of thousands of dollars per person, the billions of dollars spent throughout our country on surrogacy and IVF industries that are involved in creating human beings, oftentimes creating designer babies for the purpose of taking them away from their biological parents, creating human lives, storing them in freezers, discarding embryos, commodifying human life for personal convenience or for profit, or even just to meet the desires of adults without considering the repercussions for the children who are being created for the purpose, again, of taking them away from their biological parents, who studies show they need, they desperately need. And so we're spending so much money on this, again, usually for personal convenience, for profit, so we can devote ourselves to our careers when we're young, so that we can party when we're young, or so that we can have one more child than God has given us, just such a dangerous destructive use of God's money.

And I say God's money because it's all His. We are stewards of His money. We'll have to answer enter to Him for how we stewarded His money.

You sound like Katie Faust, like everybody Katie Faust on Twitter. She's amazing. Read her book then before us.

But yeah, so talking about spending, like one of the biggest spenders is the government, right? They spend a ton of money and it ends up causing problems through higher inflation. So I think that the younger people are the ones who are struggling right now to buy homes, whereas the older people, usually their homes are already bought, paid for, and the prices are going up. So I would say just be careful how you vote.

Big spending gets put onto the debt. The debt causes us huge amounts of interest. That shuts down our ability to spend on things that are constitutional.

So I think you want to be just be careful about that. Helping yourself to government spending can cause problems for younger generations. Absolutely.

Yeah. And all of this debt is being passed on to future generations. It's not like the money is just going to appear.

Somebody at some point in time is going to have to sacrifice big time and have huge losses because of our spending today. Yeah. I mean, you can see that in countries that just went crazy, like Venezuela and Cuba and Zimbabwe.

So the bill eventually comes due. And I always like to point to the amount of interest that we're paying on the debt. Once that hits a certain percentage, you're cutting into real spending, like discretionary spending.

And people often think we can just tax the rich and that will pay for it. I got to tell you, even if we take every penny that people make who are considered the highest producers, we'll get something like 700 billion. So it's not even enough to cover an annual deficit.

So no, it's not going to work like that. Don't imagine that it will. It won't.

Yeah. And while we're on this topic, I'll just mention, you know, prioritizing luxuries and self-indulgence over generosity also does not seem to be in line with what God is instructing us here. Definitely.

All right. Well, we've got chapter five, verses seven through 11. Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord.

See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also be patient. Establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord is at hand.

Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged. Behold, the judge is standing at the door. As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.

Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. So patience, patience can be hard for me.

I mean, oh, really? Uh, especially with myself, I will say, I do think I'm quite patient with others. I think that I'm impatient and harsh on myself. I want results now.

When I decide what I want to do, I want to do it now. I want to get it done. I want to see awesome results.

Um, I like to make things happen. I don't like to wait patiently, but God has clearly put me in situations that require patience. And eventually I do tend to realize that that God is working for my good in the waiting, that the waiting a lot of times was even the main point in my character growth.

Yeah, definitely. I would say if you have this problem of impatience with lack of results, at least in your spiritual activities, you should remember that it's, it's probably, I mean, it's certainly God doesn't really need you to score points for him. Okay.

He, he allows you to do that because it's a, it's good for you actually to be in a relationship with God where you choose to sacrifice your time on priorities that are important to boss. It makes your character better and it makes your relationship with boss have more pages in the book. Okay.

If you, you bump fist with boss and you say, you remember that time that I didn't watch the football game so that I could prepare for a debate that I was doing, you know, with a friend or something, you know, it's like, yeah, you make those sacrifices and then that is following the footsteps of Jesus who also make sacrifices to obey the father you follow. And then that's a story that comes into your relationship together. Remember that time that we did this together.

Yeah, that kind of reminds me of one of my very first mentors after I became a Christian, he started, he had started the ministry that I was a part of for a year right out of university. And he, he would say often the definition of successful evangelism is sharing the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results to God. And I always think of that not only in the context of evangelism, but in the context of ministry more broadly, you know, we, we minister to people, we love people, we share the truth with people, we give the reasons for the hope that we have, we do it in the power of the Holy Spirit, and we leave the results to God.

He's the sovereign one. And so that's such a good reminder. I very much appreciate what you said.

Yeah, definitely, definitely. Okay, chapter five, verses 19 and 20. My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

So just kind of participating in that reconciliation between God and man, humans have the opportunities to keep their eyes open and be alert to chances to participate in this reconciliation goal. So what I wanted to say about this is, do not leave it at making demands with words on someone. If you are concerned that your child's grades are bad, ask questions.

What book are you reading? Who is your teacher? You know, and this is an example. Have you finished your homework? What was in your homework? And do you need, do you have all the tools you need to do this? Well, would you like to go for ice cream if you get an A on your test? You know, so I would say don't make, don't make this as my, my approach to spiritual growth and others, mentoring others and leading, you know, by example, is make sure everybody has adequate books that they're interested in. Buy those books for those people.

Ask them what progress they're making on reading those books, how they're putting it into practice. You know, we are mentioning that lady that we're mentoring. She's already teaching teenagers, you know, about the things that she's learning.

She made an entire outline. She's planning to do the Biola certificate. She, she's just doing this and our job is to kind of engineer her success by being informed about it and energetic about it, supportive of it, encouraging and so on.

So I would say it's a process. Don't insist on the results and don't think that you're going to command results, but instead build a little bit day by day, build the person that you want to be, you know, doing these things with. Don't have the goal of just being nice to them, but really kind of push them a little, at least in terms of having a trajectory to the relationship.

So I want to add to that, that even though the results are not guaranteed in this life, we always have reason to hope in Christ, right? God cares so much about people that no one is beyond his grace. It's so it's worth it to seek out and invest in the people that God has put in our lives. It's worth it to continue to pray for them, even though we may not see results right away.

It's worth it to encourage people to speak the truth and love, even when they seem to be hopeless. It's worth it. We both have people in our lives who we're investing in who we have sometimes been tempted to think they're never going to change.

That's never going to change. And then we have seen shock, huge changes and been right and just like fallen on our knees going, thank you, Lord. That's this is amazing.

We know that you years later out of the blue. Yes, this has happened to me a couple of times. I don't want to say names, but yeah, a boy and a girl specifically come out.

It's like you get the call and it's like everything you're right about that. The one guy said to me, you should have pushed me harder to change my education and career and so on than you did because he didn't listen. And then later on comes back and says, yeah, that was right.

Yeah, I have had people in my life who seemed hopelessly addicted to drugs and sex and alcohol and utter selfishness who everyone said, you know, that person is hopeless. And I said, well, God put that person in my life and I know that it's his doing. And so I refuse to be hopeless about this person.

And God has done incredible work in their lives such that they're not even recognizable today. So it's phenomenal. All right.

So I think we got through everything. Hooray. So do you want to do you have any closing thoughts for our listeners before we stop for today? Sure.

I would like to challenge everyone to be in the word daily, read the Bible every day, even if it's just for 15 minutes. I think, you know, we spoke about putting things into our mind and seeing that are that are good and right and true and noble and praiseworthy and excellent. All the things that Philippians talks about, right? And seeing the Holy Spirit conform us to the likeness of Christ without that we will naturally, with unawareness, we will be naturally conformed to the likeness of the world, but we want God to transform us into the likeness of Christ.

Yeah, definitely. And I just want to put in a plug for my favorite three books. I love Philippians and John, but I would say if you're getting started on the Bible with a friend, Philippians, James, and Ephesians are super practical.

Nice. I actually just I just recommended Philippians to a friend the other day who's like, well, where should I start? Another one of the guys that were mentoring. Yeah.

Exactly. So, yeah, ordinarily, I recommend people start with a New Testament, not ever with the Old Testament unless they happen to be Jewish. But the other day, Philippians, yeah, it's so I also encourage people to set up meetings like in person, if possible, or online to discuss what's going on in their lives, like what's going well in your obedience to Christ? What can be improved? What's hard? How can I encourage you? I've seen so much fruit come of that.

I would highly recommend that. This is how software is developed. We have a daily stand up meeting, and everybody's got cards they're working on, and we do what did you do yesterday? What did you do today? And what are your blockers? So if that's going to work to develop the software you use on your phone or your e-commerce website, but by all means, treat Christianity like that, you know, with your team.

Yeah. And then, you know, we we're finishing up James here. And so, in closing, I guess I would encourage people to learn a little more about the significance of the book of James and his life, and its significance for apologetics and for practical Christian living.

It's a very practical, awesome book of the Word of God. Definitely, definitely. Okay, so I think that's a good place for us to stop for today.

So listeners, if you enjoyed the episode, please consider helping us out by sharing this podcast with your friends, writing us a five star review on Apple or Spotify. I think we're up to 57 on Apple, and we would love to get to 60. And we're at 29 on Spotify.

So I kind of do look at this. Jane Warren Wallace is right. I just I just feel like I have to have round numbers.

So if somebody could leave us a Spotify review to get us to 30, and it has to be five stars, you know, just don't if it's not that would be so great. And only one of you if two of you do, we're going to have to ask eight more of you don't get it to 39. Just leave it at 30.

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Transcribed by https://otter.ai