Did God Set Me Up? | James 1:12-18

When something hard happens, your instinct says: I'm being set up. In James 1:12-18, Jesus' own brother, the one who once thought Jesus had lost his mind, takes that suspicion head-on. In this sermon, we walk through what to do when life presses on you, where the pull toward our worst choices actually comes from, and what God has to do with any of it. Along the way, there's a pear tree that the teenage Augustine never stopped thinking about, a fishing rod, why you can crave what you don't even enjoy, and Jesus alone in the wilderness, facing the same question underneath all of it. You'll wrestle with whether God is behind your hardest seasons and what you really believe about His face. You'll also meet a surprising claim at the center of the text: your wanting doesn't get the last word. His choosing does. Download this week's group discussion guide here.