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James 4:1-12
Submit Yourselves to God
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble.”
Submit yourselves, then to God. Resist the devil, he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgement on it. 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?
As my husband and I have watched the political strife unfold in our world, we have had the incredible opportunity to open up the hard topics to discussion. We’ve had the opportunity to educate ourselves and try to understand what is driving the many strong opinions, actions and words circulating through our world.
During the peak of media coverage in the Black Lives Matter movement we saw two different groups of people unfolding. One group, the one backed by BLM was engaging in peaceful protests. They were taking the time and energy to open up their broken hearts in public and share generations worth of suppression and pain. They were given a moment to express a lifetime of hurt.
And the other group? While fighting to be heard like the peaceful group, they chose to express their frustrations and heartbreak loudly; through destruction of property and other actions termed “violent” by the media.
It’s so easy, as a non-colored person to sit back on a couch and shrug off the louder actions. To claim that we would never resort to violence and destruction to make sure our voices were heard.
BLM as a whole was encouraging people to not express themselves in violence. But, if you were the person watching your children die? If you had been silenced for your entire life, can you say 100% that you wouldn’t do anything possible to be heard?
We have laws, we have unspoken codes of conduct, we have opinions on what is appropriate and what is too far. What we saw happening during this intense period of media coverage though, was various people, taking different approaches, for a shared desire: justice and the fundamental dignity of a human life.
As a whole, we are a people who desire justice. There are endless passages in the Bible speaking to allowing God to seek justice for us because we are inherently a people who want justice when we see something wrong. It’s a beautiful, albeit tricky, part of our human nature to desire justice for harm committed.
BLM isn’t the only matter we have seen different people take various approaches to reach a similar goal. We quite literally just watched our entire country be split in half over who was the best presidential candidate to lead us. For months we have watched and engaged in learning how to navigate a “normal life” while living in a global pandemic.
I recently learned, while homeschooling my little sister, that King Hammurabi (1792 BC to 1750 BC) had laws called “The Code of Hammurabi”. All of his “codes” were incredibly unfair and diversified his people based on their class. One such code said that if a low class man struck a higher class man, he would receive 60 blows from an ox whip in public. However, if a higher ranked man hit a lower ranked man, there was no punishment.
We have inherently grown up and learned from a world that has centuries worth of diversifying people in it’s blood. The difference now is that our eyes have been opened to how diversity can be a matter of life or death for some people.
Without a doubt 2020 has exacerbated the conditions of the world we live in. It is a year that has brought so many hard issues to the table and has encouraged us to see society for what it is. It is a year that has triggered trauma for so many people. However, history itself can tell us that living in a broken world is not new. We have always been surrounded by hard subjects, we have always been surrounded by many people with different opinions that desire a similar outlook.
James 4:1-2
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight.
There is no doubt that we can, and sometimes often, have quarrels within ourselves but in this context, James is addressing what happens when God’s people are fighting amongst each other. James is asking us to consider what is at the root of our heart that is pushing us to cause strife within our own communities rather than fighting to work in unison.
In the case of Christianity it is undoubtedly true that we are all working towards the same goal. Our ultimate goal as Christians is to make disciples, to proclaim the Gospel, to pursue the Kingdom and gain the resurrection. The problem is that even though we are striving towards the same thing, we have very different ideas and methodologies on what the specifics look like and how we should go about achieving it.
We take into account our personal desires and feelings and let that drive us forward rather than looking to the Gospel to see how we can most effectively fight. We put ourselves and the matters of this world on a pedestal, where they don’t belong, and hold them higher than God’s word and law.
James 4:4
You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
We cannot live mutually for this world and for the Kingdom of Heaven. That’s what makes Christianity so uniquely beautiful. We are called to stand apart from the world. To turn away from the desires we are told are okay and to look towards the law of our God.
We are called to stand out amongst others and be uniquely, individually His. Because of this, we cannot desire the things of the world while whole-heartedly pursuing the Gospel. Our souls and desires become full of sorrow and disappointment when we become misaligned from desiring the resurrection to desiring the tangible successes or items we can gain in this world.
If we choose friendship with the world, we are choosing the place we live in over the one we belong in. The metaphor of Christ’s people being the bride and God being the groom is an old and well known one. If God is our husband, and we, his people, are his wife then we are committing both idolatry and adultery against our God when we choose the world over him. Just like how we would be broken-hearted if our partner chose to give affections to another being, wouldn’t our God be jealous if we are choosing something before and above him?
James isn’t calling us adulterous because we are acting as over sexualized creatures. But rather, uses that terminology to show us that when we choose the world over our God, we are fracturing a precious relationship.
James 4:6
But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble.”
We know that our God gives us a bounty of grace but that doesn’t excuse when we actively chose to fracture our relationship with him by choosing to walk hand in hand with the world.
Being humble means that we are able to set aside our strong opinions, our pride and feelings and reach out to God for his grace in recognition of where we are failing. It is when we are able to set aside ourselves and ask for God to shed his mercy and grace on us that we receive it.
I do truly believe that even in our pride, our God, out of his love for us would still be willing to hand us His grace. However, just because our God would likely be willing to do that, doesn’t mean we would be willing to receive. God is only able to give us his grace when we are humble because that is the attitude of heart and mind we must be in in order to accept and receive His goodness.
James 4:2-3
You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
If we pray, with pure and genuine intentions, we will receive. The problem is not with prayer itself, but rather the heart that we approach prayer with. It is easy to come into prayer with selfish motives. We have on horse blinders to see what we want to achieve, what is good for us and what moves us forward in this world. When our heart and our words are misaligned, we will not receive the answer to a prayer.
We receive from God when our prayers are pure in heart and intention. When we can pray a prayer that is not selfish centric, but one based on drawing closer to Him and pursuing the Kingdom, then our prayers are answered. What a beautiful thing it is for our hearts and desires to finally align with what Scripture tells us our hearts should desire.
Does this mean though, that we should not pray, that we should not converse with our Father unless we are 100% sure of our intentions? Of course not.
Our God invites us to talk to Him. We are meant to commune with Him, to spend time with Him and share what is on our hearts and minds. It just means that we will not always receive what we ask for; and sometimes this is an incredible blessing.
Could you imagine if we received everything we asked for? Think about the worst thing you have ever prayed for.
I’ll be frankly and painfully honest and share, by far, the worst thing I have prayed for.
I have prayed, in my darkest nights, that God would be kind enough to let me come home. I was never suicidal but the life I was living and the pain I was in seemed so incredibly cruel compared to being by His side. I wanted the relief, the joy, the breath of life in being in His kingdom not our world.
Now, is it necessarily a bad desire to want to be with our God? Of course not. However, if Christ had answered those pain driven prayers, I would have never had the opportunity to start Perennial Devotionals. I would have never seen how those massive amounts of pain could actually become a beautiful tool to connect with and love on others.
See, even though I thought I was asking for a simple thing, something God sent his son here for, my prayer was misaligned. It was driven by a selfish desire to be free of the afflictions He saw fit for me. By ignoring my prayer, Christ used the opportunity to show me how great He can be and how incredible of a blessing my affiliations can be in carrying out ministry.
I will always desire to be by His side, we’re Christian, we’re supposed to want to be with our God. But, that reality? It’s on His time, not ours.
I knew it when I prayed that terrible prayer, and I still know it now, my work is not done and my tired and selfish soul doesn’t get to change that.
James has set out hard and extensive work for us to take into consideration. How are we supposed to become humble? How do we pray with pure intentions? How do we align our desires, mutually, towards Christ so we can stop our bickering and start working? How do we pursue God and His law’s when we are so blatantly surrounded by a broken world?
James 4:7-8
Submit yourselves, then to God. Resist the devil, he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
&
James 4:10
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
We submit ourselves to God. It’s as easy as that. If we turn our heads, plug our ears and deflect our eyes from the temptations the devil has laid out for us, he will leave. Jesus resisted satan’s temptation. He descended to hell and rose again. If we turn our sight away from satan and towards Christ, our God will win time and time again. Satan only has a hold on us if we let him.
Just as Christ washed his disciples' feet, we wash our hands of our faults, we clear miss intentions from our hearts and give ourselves to God. In inviting Him in through prayer, we are inviting God to wipe our slate clean so we can move forward with our sight aligned on Him. We invite God in to clear out the haze of aligning with the world so we can embrace Scripture and choose Him.
If we can set aside our anxieties and choose God, everything else will follow. We just have to be willing to take the first step. We have to be willing to embrace a heart of humility and let go so we can let God.
If aligning ourselves with God is such a wonderful thing though, then why has James almost immediately after telling us to choose God, tell us that we should trade our joy for grief?
James 4:9
Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.
Because James understands how serious living apart from Christ is. James understands that apart from Christ, we are nothing. Apart from Christ we are dead. Is that not worth mourning over? If you would cry and be filled with anguish at a funeral, should you not be filled with the same, knowing you are already dead apart from Him?
James isn’t being dramatic, he’s asking us to start seriously considering our salvation apart from Christ. James is saying the party is over, it’s time to stop playing games and consider the gravity of the situation. James knows that we are called to make disciples and that means fighting for hearts that want to submit to God. But we can’t fight for God’s people and carry on the mission of the Gospel if we are clouded by our own opinions and stubbornness.
James 4:11-12
Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgement on it. 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?
Just as James was calling into question why we choose to fight with each other, he now reminds us of the similar importance of not slandering each other. James reminds us that if we set our pride and emotion driven instincts aside, we can remember that we were never called to be judges of each other.
While God did create us in inherent goodness, we do have a sinful nature. Every single one of us has made mistakes. We have done things we regret. We have hurt people. Sometimes we don’t even realize that we have caused harm. A sinful nature is not who we are, but it is a factor in how we live our lives.
If we have all made mistakes, if we have all hurt another and done something wrong, then how can we have any right to judge the person next to us? How can we judge someone for not picking up that abandoned mask on the sidewalk when last week we ignored someone in need? How can we judge someone for voting for a specific president when we spoke harshly to our loved ones just minutes before?
We aren’t perfect, but we weren’t made to be perfect. But you know who was? Jesus. But even though Jesus is quite literally the only person to walk on this Earth without fault, how often did he choose love and mercy over judging another? If the one being who had every single right to judge our actions chose to extend grace, should we not do the same?
Friends, I know there is a time and a place to correct actions when we see someone going astray. That’s an action that’s done out of love and concern for someone else. I know there will be so many moments where our lips start to curl and our brow furrows as we decide if we should hold back our comments or let our opinion rip. We’re human. It’s not an excuse; but an acknowledgment to our nature. It is so incredibly easy to judge each other and to think our way is better.
Friends, I understand. I understand we live in a world where judgement is almost encouraged. We are surrounded by a climate where the harsher we can be to one another, the more praise we get. We are offered endless television shows that are set up for us to judge the people on them. I get it. I love the Bachelorette as much as the next person but at the end of the day, we do live in a world that preys off our weaknesses.
James is harsh in his letters because he wants a breakthrough. He knows how great God made us to be and what incredible works He can do through us if we choose humility and His love over the love of this world.
Friends. We live in a world full of turmoil. We are surrounded by opinions. Quarrels. Strife. It can sometimes be unbearable but that doesn’t mean your thoughts and behavior are excused. Instead of fighting the way the world has taught us to fight, take a step back and let God in. You may not see the results you thought you wanted to see, but you will always get exactly what you needed and even if it takes a while for us to understand, that is always more beautiful.
Take a deep breath. Step back. Let God in and choose His law.
He is more for you then you could ever be for yourself.
Thoughts For The Week
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Honestly, this week I just encouraged you to take a step back.
Step back from media and social media.
Step back from the messages our world is bombarding us with.
Step back from distractions and spend time with god. Read over His word and spend time with Him in prayer.
Open your soul to His peace and invite truth in.
Remember who God is and exactly who He has called you to be.
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Prayer
Lord,
As I write this week and investigate your word, my heart is broken. My heart breaks for the turmoil your people are facing. My heart breaks for the pain and affliction so many of your people have been subjected to.
We know Lord that you never intended for us to judge each other. You never intended for us to choose ourselves over our neighbor. But we do. In little ways every single day we go astray.
As hard as it may be, help us to set aside our prejudices and realign our sights on you. Living in a broken world, it makes so much sense that we would want to do anything possible to fight for justice. It hurts to sit back Lord but, justice is not for us to serve.
Help us to understand that we can most effectively fight and make a difference by submitting first to you. This doesn’t mean we have a right to become complacent and ignore the strife of the world. But that we see that ultimately You are so much greater than anything afflicting us. That you will deliver your people as you have from the beginning. That you will fight for us if we fight towards you.
Lord I pray for spirits that are full of trust. That we can open a window in our souls to let you in and trust that You will work. Let us remember now, more than ever, that you are a good and gracious God.
I pray Lord that you have spoken through me in this devotional. I pray that my words will not lead someone astray but help us draw closer to you as we seek your truth and wisdom.
We trust you God. Deliver us.
In your name we pray,
Amen
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