May 11, 2023 | Be On Mission
True Submission to God
Scripture: James 4 (NIV)
1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
11 Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. 12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?
13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
Devotional
When I was a kid, I loved watching the Flintstones. Quite often when Fred had a moral decision to make, there was a mini-Fred with a halo pleading in one ear and a mini-Fred with a pitchfork tempting in another ear. My childhood theology was shaped by a prehistoric cartoon.
This epic battle between good and evil is as old as… good and evil. James wrote this letter only twenty years after Jesus ascended to heaven, leaving humans to launch the Christian church. Yes, those humans were filled with the Holy Spirit, but they were also surrounded by the ways of the world. The tension between living for God and living for self didn’t go away when people accepted Jesus as their Savior and Lord. If it had, James would not have needed to write this.
Put plainly, there is a war for your soul. James says that fights and arguments are caused by desires that battle within you. He claims that your prayers go unanswered because you ask with selfish motives. He posits that embracing the world will turn you against God. All these come from Satan, the enemy of your soul.
The answer? Check out verse 7 that says, “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” He follows that with some descriptive ways to do that very thing: come near to a waiting God, wash your sinful hands, purify your double-minded hearts, grieve for the sin within you, and humble yourselves before the Lord.
How is the Holy Spirit challenging you to root out all sin in your life? One answer is through confession and repentance. In James 5:16 he goes on to say, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” Who is a spiritual mentor or partner that you can meet with for accountability, confession and forgiveness? How can you do this in your time alone as well?
In the end, it is good to humbly put ourselves in perspective. Measured against timeless eternity, our lives are like a fading fog. Ephesians 5:15-16 says it well: “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.”
Poem
The Root Of It All
Below the surface, hidden there
Within your heart, its core
The DNA of bitterness
The tare, the wheat abhors
It wraps around the tender shoot
All parasitically
It chokes the life of kindness out
Leads to idolatry
The worship of a Babel god
The ego on the throne
Destroying unity and love
All joy turned into mourn
