March 23rd, 2026
by Rachel Mahoney
by Rachel Mahoney
Some passages of Scripture don’t let you stay comfortable. James 5 is one of them. It’s blunt, it’s prophetic, and it has a way of landing exactly where we don’t want it to.
I want to tell you a story before we get to the text, because I think it matters that we come to James honestly, not academically.
The Car I Should Not Have Bought
This goes back to the early years of our marriage. Vic and I walked into a dealership and walked out with a brand new car. The salesman was good at his job. There was pressure. There was urgency. “This deal won’t last. Someone else is looking at this one right now.” We felt it, and we moved quickly.
Not long after, we had a baby -- unplanned, wonderful, and completely life-rearranging. Suddenly we were trying to live on one income, and that car payment that had felt manageable before now felt like a stone around our neck. The urgency that had felt so real in that showroom? It wasn’t real at all. We had been moved by manufactured pressure into a decision our souls weren’t ready to make.
We held on for a while. We floated. Eventually, we made the hard call -- sold the car, took the hit from our savings, and absorbed the loss. It stung.
And then something unexpected happened. A friend gave us a car. Our church community stepped in and met needs we hadn’t even voiced. We were held by exactly the kind of generosity James 5 is calling us toward.
I have thought about that season a lot in the nearly twenty-four years since. I wasn’t a villain in that story. I wasn’t hoarding or exploiting anyone. But I had made a spiritually unformed decision, driven by urgency instead of discernment, by consumer pressure instead of prayerful wisdom. And James, I think, would recognize that impulse immediately.
What James is Actually Saying
James is writing in a world of brutal economic inequality -- landowners withholding wages, workers going hungry, the powerful living in luxury while the vulnerable suffered. His tone is almost apocalyptic. This isn’t a gentle nudge. This is a prophet standing up and naming injustice out loud.
It’s tempting to read this and think: well, I’m not that bad. And maybe that’s true. But the question James presses us toward isn’t only “are you exploiting someone?” It’s also: “what is your heart’s actual posture towards what you own?”
Formation, not just Information
My car story wasn’t really about greed. It was about formation -- or the lack of it. I hadn’t developed the inner stillness to pause under pressure, to ask what faithful stewardship looks like before signing on the dotted line.
This is something the Christian tradition has always understood: the goal isn’t just to know the right things about money. It’s to become the kind of person whose instincts, when the pressure is on, bend toward generosity rather than grasping. That kind of formation doesn’t happen overnight. It happens through prayer, through community, through honest moments like the one James is inviting us into right now.
The warning in James 5 isn’t primarily about guilt. It’s about alignment -- a call to examine whether the way we hold what we have actually reflects the generous heart of the God we say we follow.
What it Looks Like when a Community gets it Right
Here is what I love about Black Hills Cowboy Church: when a need is named, people move. Electric bills get paid. Meals show up. Someone with a ranch donates meat. A person without transportation suddenly has a ride. It happens quietly, quickly, and without fanfare -- and it is one of the most beautiful things I get to witness as part of this community.
Every Christmas, our Cowboy Angel Tree program takes that same spirit outward into the county. We contact the Department of Family Services in Sundance, they share the wishlists of five or six local families who need a hand, and our congregation fulfills them. Completely. It never ceases to move me.
That is not a small thing. That is the body of Christ functioning exactly as James envisioned -- wealth and resource flowing toward those who need it, not collecting in corners.
But here is the honest question James still puts to each of us individually, even inside a generous community: what is the posture of your own heart? A congregation can be collectively generous while individual members quietly hold on too tight. The communal culture doesn’t let any of us off the personal hook.
What the Other Side Looks Like
I told you we sold the car and absorbed the loss. I want to be honest: that hurt. There was real grief in it. But there was also something else -- a lightness that came from releasing what we had been white-knuckling. And then the provision came, not because we earned it, but because we were part of a community that took seriously the call to bear one another’s burdens.
That is not a prosperity gospel story. It is a story about what happens when we stop trusting in our own ability to secure ourselves, and start trusting the God who provides, often through the hands of the people sitting right next to us on a Sunday morning.
James 5 isn’t written to make you feel guilty. It’s written to wake you up -- to the condition of your heart, to the needs around you, and to the possibility that God wants to use your open hands to meet them.
Reflection Question
A Prayer
I want to tell you a story before we get to the text, because I think it matters that we come to James honestly, not academically.
The Car I Should Not Have Bought
This goes back to the early years of our marriage. Vic and I walked into a dealership and walked out with a brand new car. The salesman was good at his job. There was pressure. There was urgency. “This deal won’t last. Someone else is looking at this one right now.” We felt it, and we moved quickly.
Not long after, we had a baby -- unplanned, wonderful, and completely life-rearranging. Suddenly we were trying to live on one income, and that car payment that had felt manageable before now felt like a stone around our neck. The urgency that had felt so real in that showroom? It wasn’t real at all. We had been moved by manufactured pressure into a decision our souls weren’t ready to make.
We held on for a while. We floated. Eventually, we made the hard call -- sold the car, took the hit from our savings, and absorbed the loss. It stung.
And then something unexpected happened. A friend gave us a car. Our church community stepped in and met needs we hadn’t even voiced. We were held by exactly the kind of generosity James 5 is calling us toward.
I have thought about that season a lot in the nearly twenty-four years since. I wasn’t a villain in that story. I wasn’t hoarding or exploiting anyone. But I had made a spiritually unformed decision, driven by urgency instead of discernment, by consumer pressure instead of prayerful wisdom. And James, I think, would recognize that impulse immediately.
What James is Actually Saying
“Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes.” -- James 5:1-2
James is writing in a world of brutal economic inequality -- landowners withholding wages, workers going hungry, the powerful living in luxury while the vulnerable suffered. His tone is almost apocalyptic. This isn’t a gentle nudge. This is a prophet standing up and naming injustice out loud.
It’s tempting to read this and think: well, I’m not that bad. And maybe that’s true. But the question James presses us toward isn’t only “are you exploiting someone?” It’s also: “what is your heart’s actual posture towards what you own?”
Formation, not just Information
My car story wasn’t really about greed. It was about formation -- or the lack of it. I hadn’t developed the inner stillness to pause under pressure, to ask what faithful stewardship looks like before signing on the dotted line.
This is something the Christian tradition has always understood: the goal isn’t just to know the right things about money. It’s to become the kind of person whose instincts, when the pressure is on, bend toward generosity rather than grasping. That kind of formation doesn’t happen overnight. It happens through prayer, through community, through honest moments like the one James is inviting us into right now.
The warning in James 5 isn’t primarily about guilt. It’s about alignment -- a call to examine whether the way we hold what we have actually reflects the generous heart of the God we say we follow.
What it Looks Like when a Community gets it Right
Here is what I love about Black Hills Cowboy Church: when a need is named, people move. Electric bills get paid. Meals show up. Someone with a ranch donates meat. A person without transportation suddenly has a ride. It happens quietly, quickly, and without fanfare -- and it is one of the most beautiful things I get to witness as part of this community.
Every Christmas, our Cowboy Angel Tree program takes that same spirit outward into the county. We contact the Department of Family Services in Sundance, they share the wishlists of five or six local families who need a hand, and our congregation fulfills them. Completely. It never ceases to move me.
That is not a small thing. That is the body of Christ functioning exactly as James envisioned -- wealth and resource flowing toward those who need it, not collecting in corners.
But here is the honest question James still puts to each of us individually, even inside a generous community: what is the posture of your own heart? A congregation can be collectively generous while individual members quietly hold on too tight. The communal culture doesn’t let any of us off the personal hook.
Three questions worth sitting with
1. Where is manufactured urgency shaping your decisions?
Consumer culture is extraordinarily good at creating false pressure. The discipline of pausing, of waiting, of praying before deciding is a spiritual practice, not just good financial advice.
2. What would it look like to hold what you have more loosely?
Not recklessly. Not without planning. But with open hands, aware that what you carry belongs to God, and that He may ask you to release it.
3. Who around you is carrying something alone that the community should be carrying together?m
This is the question that moves us from personal reflection into communal faithfulness. James isn’t just asking us to adjust our budgets. He’s asking us to be the church.
What the Other Side Looks Like
I told you we sold the car and absorbed the loss. I want to be honest: that hurt. There was real grief in it. But there was also something else -- a lightness that came from releasing what we had been white-knuckling. And then the provision came, not because we earned it, but because we were part of a community that took seriously the call to bear one another’s burdens.
That is not a prosperity gospel story. It is a story about what happens when we stop trusting in our own ability to secure ourselves, and start trusting the God who provides, often through the hands of the people sitting right next to us on a Sunday morning.
James 5 isn’t written to make you feel guilty. It’s written to wake you up -- to the condition of your heart, to the needs around you, and to the possibility that God wants to use your open hands to meet them.
Reflection Question
Is there something you have been holding with a clenched fist that God might be inviting you to hold with an open hand? It doesn’t have to be money. It might be control, security, a plan, or a story you’ve been telling yourself about what you need. Name it honestly before God today -- not to shame yourself, but to begin.
A Prayer
Lord, I confess that I am better at holding on than letting go. I confess that urgency -- real or manufactured -- has moved me more than once away from the wisdom You were offering. Forgive me for the times I have trusted my grip more than Your provision. Today I choose, however imperfectly, to open my hands. What I have is Yours. What I need, You know. Make me generous in the quiet moments, not just the big ones. And where I am afraid to let go, meet me there with courage I could not find on my own. Amen.
Rachel Mahoney
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