Daily Reading for Personal Growth, 40 Days with God

He exhorts to rejoice in trouble, to be fervent in prayer with steadfast belief, to look for all good things from above, to forsake all vice, and thankfully to receive the word of God, not only hearing it and speaking of it, but to do thereafter in deed. True religion or devotion: what it is.

1 James, the servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, sends greeting to the twelve tribes which are scattered here and there. 

² My brethren, count it exceeding joy when you fall into various trials, ³ seeing as you know that the trying of your faith brings patience. ⁴ And let patience have her perfect work, so that you may be perfect and sound, lacking nothing.

⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all impartially, and casts no man in the teeth, and it shall be given him. ⁶ But let him ask in faith, and waver not. For he who doubts is like the waves of the sea, tossed with the wind and carried about. ⁷ Neither let that person think that he will receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ A wavering-minded man is unstable in all his ways.

⁹ Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted, ¹⁰ and the rich in that he is made low. For like the flower of the grass, he will vanish away. ¹¹ The sun rises with heat, and the grass withers, and its flower falls away, and the beauty of the appearance of it perishes; even so shall the rich man perish with his abundance.

¹² Happy is the man who endures in temptation, for when he is proved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love him.