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Paul is saying it is not about the jar or the container that the treasure is in, but it is about the treasure. The jar being us and the treasure being Jesus Christ and His power dwelling in us enabling us to do the things that He wants us to do.; to preach His Gospel to the world. The paradox is that we ourselves are weak, but strong when we have Christ dwelling in us.

Yes there is hope for the blinded. With God all things are possible and it is the work of the Holy Spirit to draw a person to God though we can pray for our unsaved mankind.

The more time you spend in the presence of God, prayer, studying of the Word, meditation, Church services the more you will be drinking in of God and His Character becoming more like His Son, Jesus. The theological word for the process of maturing in Christ is sanctification. I have definitely seen a change in the degree of glory that I am experiencing now compared to as little as two years ago, because that is when I was finally broken and turn completely to God.

We must pray, study, meditate on God's Spiritual Law in order to have a similar glow of the Spirit that Moses had. Meditating on Scripture helps us to write the Scripture and meaning of it in our hearts and minds because Scripture is God, the central theme of the Bible is Jesus and the Gospel. The less time we spend in communion with God the less we will become the image of Jesus. God is giving me more love for His Word and for giving and serving.

We are living letters in the way that we live our lives for Christ. When people see us they should see Christ in us, hear things the way that Christ says them, treat people the way that Christ treats people. People do sometime read others by what they see on the outside. When you do this there is a good chance you may be wrong on occasions. But people also read other by how they act and what they say. Sometimes we can spot phonies and sometimes we cannot. We must take care that we ourselves are genuinely sincere in our efforts to show others that we have Christ in our hearts, not for our gain or glory but for the glory of God. When some one compliments us we should thank them and let it be known that it is the Jesus in us and that to Him the glory belongs for any good they may see in us. We must stamp down any vanity or pride on our part and be humble.

When we fail to forgive, we hold a grudge against the person and that causes us to not be in fellowship with God whether we realize it or not especially at first. Satan uses this time when we are not in fellowship with God to keep it going, keep the spirit of unforgiveness festering in our heart and when we allow him to keep doing so, other bad ways begin to manifest themselves in us such as bitterness, gossip, vindictiveness all of which are sin and unpleasing to God. Not forgiving someone does not necessarily hurt the person unless the person asks for forgiveness and you do not give it to him, but it certainly does hurt you by making you miserable Not forgiving others keeps God from forgiving us when we sin and until we do forgive others, straighten out our part in disagreements with others God will not forgive any sin we have committed. He tells us not to approach Him until we have become reconciled with our brother and until we do we our relationship with God will be strained and the closeness and even our faith will be weakened at the time, because we will have the feeling of that if we are not pleasing God He will forsake us even though He has promised us He will never leave or forsake us. Giving the problem over to God, humbling ourselves is the way to let go of your resentment, we have to pray and just commit it to God; when we do this then God gives us a peace that passes all understanding

Being obedient to the authority in the church brings about unity and harmony among the members and helps the church grow spiritually. Obedience to self-serving leaders hurts the church because you are helping a leader who has an agenda of his own and has nothing to do with glorifying God. This person is leading you away from what God has for you. I am obedient to those whom are over me spiritually because for one I look on them as representatives of God, not as God and I do what they say as long as I feel that it is truth from God. I obey them because God tells me to and it helps to have peace, harmony and unity among the church members.

To lord it over someone is to have dominion over a person, telling that person what to do without any input from him. Good strong leadership is learning and knowing what is needed and using wisdom in your positon of authority; you do need a degree of micromanaging but not excessive control to the point where you are a dictatorship except in situations where you have to make a judgment and have that judgment carried out as the final decision rests with you. The meaning of laissez-faire is i think in this instance is to interfere as little as possible in the affairs of another which I could go along with as long as no direction is needed. If direction is needed there may be an instance when interference may have to happen. I will say this is a tough question for me and I am not sure if I am answering what is being asked. The dangers of an authoritative leadership style is that it is your way or the highway. You are not seeking advice from others and without a multitude of counselors people fall.Those under you will hesitate to approach you about matters concerning them. Prov. 11:14 Weak leadership is that those under you could pretty much do anything they want to. It could be like in the days when Israel was without a king and the people did what was right in their own eyes. You would not have the power that you do need to run things.

Having trials and crisis help us to realize, to see that there are things we cannot do, that we have to have more help than we have in ourselves; that we are really nothing and have no power at all within ourselves; in other words it teaches us to rely on the one true God; we have to turn to Him and have faith that He will solve the problem for us and at the same time give us patience, peace to endure while we are waiting on Him. Crisis have helped me to develop a closer relationship with God, a Father-child relationship, to where I look to Him for everything although sometimes He is not sought first all the time when I have crisis. I am still learning to do that. It has strengthened my faith in God to know that He is here for me even when I am out of fellowship with Him because of something that I have done that does not please Him; that He is just waiting on me to confess and He always forgives and welcome me back. Trials have also given me the experience that I need to be able to try to help others when they are having troubles and trials.

The comfort I get from my faith in Christ is assurance that whatever happens in my life now is for my own good, that it is because God is conforming me into the image of Jesus and that one day He will receive me unto Himself, that my salvation is sure and secure. The comfort I receive from God also helps me to endure whatever trials I might be going through. It help me get through ever minute, ever hour, ever day; some days more patiently than others. It gives me a peace that we cannot understand (Phil. 4:7) and this is what I tell family and friends when they need help from suffering.

In trying to restore someone to the fellowship of God, first one must pray for that person, pray with faith. But you cannot just only pray, you must DO whatever you can to help return that person to God. You cannot just sit around and wait on God to miraculously tell the person's brain to return to Him. You need to visit and council with the person and show love toward this person. You need to be doing something, taking some kind of action (keeping and seeking the will of God) while you are being patient and waiting on God to answer this prayer of faith.

The oil represent the presence of the Holy Spirit. Oil can be used in any circumstance where and when the Holy Spirit is used for anointing for whatever purpose, be it for healing or for an office or position. The prayer of faith is that the person who is doing the praying must have bold, believing faith when he or she partitions God. It is this prayer that effects the healing of a person. The role of faith is the faith or belief of the person who is requesting the prayer of faith. There must be some faith from the person who is being prayed over. The role of confession of sins is that and I speak from experience when you confess certain sins openly to another Christian be it a pastor or layperson you seem to have more determination to overcome that sin. You have now confessed to someone else other than God and you become accountable not only to God but to that person also and it make you try harder not to ever committ that sin again.

The one who is sick must initiate prayer for his healing. This is important because it shows that you have atleast some faith in God that He could heal you. This also proves that your mind is open to healing

Complaining and grumbling about someone tells me that I am making a judgement about this person, not being patient and forgivng for some wrong, real or unreal that I feel has been done to me. It tells me that I do not have the faith in God to please Him in that I am not patiently waiting on Him to correct the problem which in most cases is myself.

What might happen is we would not develop the endurance and sticktoitiveness that we need to have while we await His return. We could become weary and fretful; faith could become weak. Patience is vital because it is what gets us through each trial, each crisis we face as we wait for an answer from the Lord and for His return.

The danger is in our pursuit of these comforts and luxuries is that it makes us focus on acquiring these things and take our focus off of what our purpose in life is---- to please God. Therefore we should be seeking God and His kingdom first and then God will or may bless us materially. This demand for low-priced goods and services make owners or employers to require their workers to work hard, long hours for minimum or under minimum pay. And the governments allow it. The poor cannot live off of the wages that so many of these companies pay. The companies have to have a certain amount of profit to be able to live the lifestyle that they want. In relation to patience, a person needs to seek God first and wait on Him to supply them with these other things. Wait on God so that you can acquire them in the right way not cheating and lying to get what you want. Waiting on God teaches you humility and patience.

James is telling us that we do not have final control over what we may plan; when he says that our life is like a fog, here today and gone tomorrow that we can plan all we want but we may not be here to carry out the plan. We are being arrogant, proud and boastful in thinking that we can do something unless God allows it. In planning we must always seek God in the planning. We must not go out on our own without humbling ourselves in our own eyes and realizing that we need help from the Source of all power. If we do this we can know that we have done the right thing and be confident that we have asked in His will and wait patiently for His answer.

If you speak evil of a person you are judging that person and also speaking against the law of God. You are saying that you know better than God. It is not our place to judge what God says but to obey what He says. If we judge the law we are placing ourselves above God who made the law. Only God is Lawgiver and Judge. He alone has all power!! It is tempting to bad-mouth others because of our pride and envy. We ourselves may want to be like a person or to have something that person has and because of our jealousy we may bad-mouth that person so that he does not look good in the eyes of others and cause others to not have good thoughts about this person. We want to tear that person down whether we build ourselves up or not.

These are all part of becoming the image of Jesus Christ. These things are what we must do with the grace of God to conform into His Son's image, to be like Jesus. These things are what pleases God because He is all that matters. True repentance is of utmost importance because this is the first step that will enable God to work with our repentant heart. These go against our nature because our nature is geared to sin, anything that is in opposition to God. To me the most difficult one is to resist the devil. That is because I always think that I am fighting against my own nature only while I forget the scripture that says our struggles are not against flesh and blood but against Satan. Eph. 6:12

For a believer being a friend of the world is being an enemy of God. The believer is married to God, He is the Husband. For a child of God to pursue evil pleasure strictly for himself and forget about others is like committing adultery, being unfaithful to God. And God tells us that we cannot be friendly with the world when we are married to Him. We must choose between Him and the pursuit of evil pleasure and happiness for ourselves. We also must remember that in Matt. 6:33 Jesus tells us that when we seek God first what we need will be given to us. And in Psalm 34:7 Delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.

God is not against pleasure. Read Luke 19:9-11 and it tells us that God will answer our prayers of petition as long as we are asking for the right thing and with the right motives. He knows how to give good gifts to us, but we must seek these good gifts and not things for our own pleasures. Seeking ones own pleasure is not obeying the royal law; it is selfish and not looking out with love for others.

You sow peace with peace. "Peacemakers," not merely they who reconcile others, but who work peace. "Cultivate peace" [ESTIUS]. Those truly wise towards God, while peaceable and tolerant towards their neighbors, yet make it their chief concern to sow righteousness, not cloaking men's sins, but reproving them with such peaceable moderation as to be the physicians, rather than the executioners, of sinners [CALVIN]. Righteousness is the result of sowing peace; it is produced because once you sow peace and stop strife, competition you have used wisdom from above and you are right with God and with others.b This grows in the children of God. Those whom put their faith and trust in The Lord Jesus Christ.

Bitter envy and selfish ambition is opposite of humility in that envy and selfish ambition is all about self, what the self wants and being jealous of what someone else has or has accomplished. Humility on the other hand is having a lowliness of mind or meekness, gentleness about the good works that your faith in Jesus produces. Humility does not boast or brag about any good that you do. Humility recognizes that the glory belongs to God. Denying envy and selfish ambition prevents healing in that if you are in denial you don't know that your heart needs changing. And you will continue to have these negative ways in your heart causing you to act on them eventually. Boasting prevents healing in that you you think you have really accomplished something and you begin to rely on yourself and giving yourself the praise and glory never realizing that you yourself are basically nothing and that you are denying that the Word of God says that if you have these things in your heart that you are not wise in the sight of God that you are actually lying against the truth. Denial of problems will produce no change in your heart and life.

The tongue is untamable because we as humans since the fall of man can only go one way and that is the way against God. Because of man's sin we have a heart that is deceitful and wicked and evil and nothing good can come from our heart. The tongue will speak what the mind thinks and the heart feels. In order for us to control our tongues we first must be saved. We have to believe and trust in Jesus as our Savior and our Lord, our Master. We must turn ourselves completely over to Him; put our lives into His hands. Once this is done He will give us Someone who is just like Himself, the Holy Spirit to be our Houseguest. He will dwell in us and it is this power that will enable us to tame our tongues as long as we listen and submit to Him when He tell us how to go and what to do. We must let Him be our Guide. Of course we are going to continue to make mistakes, but it is only by this power that we can tame the tongue.

James is discouraging people from wanting to be teachers because he knows that teachers or preachers will be judged more strictly than the ones to whom they are teaching. To me someone teaching should be doing what they are teaching. We all should aspire to the standards that God has set forth for us, but if you are answering a call from God to be a teacher or leader you have a responsibility to God to teach and to be a good example because you are representing God. We all are as Christians.