How does faith work with people you don't like? Any of you have someone that annoys you,

frustrates you, troubles you, you brought them to church. Good. Well, now you guys can talk about

this on the way home, work this out. If you're married, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

All right. So what happens in life, there's always a person or a group of people or a kind of person that just

drives us crazy, kind of annoys us, and gets under our skin and agitates us. And the question is,

if we are Christians, what do we do in those kinds of relationships? So first, let me ask,

think of a time when you've been the outsider. There was a group of people and they were sort of

a group and you didn't fit in that group you were the outcast from the

outsider of that group this happens let's say for example you transfer into school mid year

and everybody's got their friend group and you don't you join a sports team and these kids all get

along and you're out you join a maybe a band or some sort of extracurricular activity and these kids are a click and you're out

you go to work and these people all get along and you're not really included we all know what it

feels like to be sort of the outsider the dejected the rejected one the one who for some reason is

out and it seems like there's really nothing you can do to get in. Think of it conversely. Who feels

that way about you? Who is the person or what is the group of people that would say, yeah, I just don't

feel like you really understand me, you give me a fair shake, and I'm not sure you even want to get

to know me or have a relationship with me, maybe because you have a prejudice or a partiality or a bias towards me. That's the heart of what James is talking about.

And so what has always happened because of sinful fall and human nature,

we tend to feel more comfortable with people who are more like us.

This can be cultural, racial, gender, generational.

And lately, let me just throw it out there, potentially, politically. You just kind of hang with

your own kind. And so you tend to think, well, I feel comfortable with these people. I feel

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