Bible Study: James 1

Here are the questions from our last Homegroup. I meant to post them before the study but forgot, so thought I'd reproduce it here as we had such a good time - in case you ever want to review what we discussed.


1. How do you usually respond to difficult times in your life or in the lives of people you
know?
2. What difference does prayer make / has prayer made to those difficult times?

The letter of James is written to a group of Jewish Christians scattered across the 1st century AD world, who seem to be struggling in a number of ways.

3. Look up these passages in James and work out what some of the trials James’
readers were facing were.
• 1:9-11
• 2:1-7
• 2:15-16
• 4:1-8
• 5:1-6
• 5:8-11

Read James 1:1-18.
4. According to James, what is the right response to trials? What will be the result of
responding in this way? (see v.2-3, 12)
5. According to James, what is the wrong way to respond to trials? (e.g. 1:13)
6. What does James tell his readers to ask God to give them in v.5? Why do you think
they need God to give them this when they are going through trials?

[Leader’s note: the ‘wisdom’ James urges his readers to pray for is the ability to trust in
God’s good purposes for them, even in the midst of trials. It does not come naturally to us
to ‘consider it pure joy’ when we face ‘trials of many kind’ – so we need both to learn from
God’s word that God is good and loving and to pray that we would trust in him, even when
we don’t know what he is doing in our lives.]

7. In this passage, what is God like? (see vv.5, 13, 17, 18)
8. How does this passage encourage us to pray? What does this passage encourage
us to pray for in our lives?
9. What difficulties have you recently faced or are you facing? How might God be using
them to bring you to a more mature trust in him (v.3-4)?

10. Pray for one another – that God would give you the wisdom to meet trials with joy.

Optional activity:

Review what we’ve learnt about prayer across the past three weeks, and share with one
another which of these three truths you most need to hear / you most want to remember.

We pray
• Because thanks to Jesus, God is now our loving heavenly Father and he loves
to hear our prayers (John 17)
• Because we cannot live as God’s people without his grace and power to help
us (Ephesians 3)
• Because we need God’s wisdom to trust his good purposes for our lives
(James 1)