James 4

May 25, 2022

Please use the comment section on this page to share insights from today’s reading OR your own personal Bible reading.

Reading along with us in James? Here’s today’s reading:

James 4 (NIV)

Submit Yourselves to God
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..........Continue Reading

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This Post Has 9 Comments

  1. Humble…so important to be humble.
    We are a jealous people. We desire to have more than we need but rather everything we want and the world will tell us to go for it! “Take what you want because you deserve it”…that is the way Satan can get to us, tempt us to put our priorities out of order.
    This leads us to fight with each other and resent one another based on things that aren’t important in the big picture.
    When we humble ourselves before God and remember how much we need HIM and not the things of this world it becomes easier to be humble in front of others and put people before our selves.
    When we remind ourselves each day how undeserving we are of His love, mercy, and forgiveness it becomes easier to stop judging others and to remember that we are ALL broken and we ALL need God and only He can judge and only He knows a person’s heart.

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  2. The middle verses of Chapter 4 suggest that many people of that day did not submit themselves to God or “resist the devil”. James calls them “double-minded” and then suggests they have things backwards. “Grieve, mourn and wail. Change you laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.” In other words, reverse course. “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up”

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  4. God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble. Sounds like that’s what this chapter is speaking about. People taking credit for what they have and who they are instead of thanking the almighty sovereign God for his blessings in their lives. I did it my way. Yikes. Like to think I’m doing it Gods way but only with the teaching of the Holy Spirit Will I mature and not have a worldly attitude

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    1. When we ask for things if it’s selfish this is not something God will even think about granting us because he knows will be used for pleasures and not what is good and pure.
      We should not act as if we are all that! This does not please God. We are not to enjoy the world which is outside of God’s. It says we become an enemy to God. He wants to communicate through the Holy Spirit in us.
      We are not to judge others as only God can do that.
      We should not boast of our plans. Says this is evil. If we know what we should be doing and do not do it becomes a sin. He makes us realize we are here for just a short while. A mist is pretty short. And eternity forever. Our existence on earth is only to do good and follow God’s path he has for us!

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  5. James begins the chapter looking at the mindsets that lead to the wrong speech that he addressed in chapter 3. So often it is the stuff going on behind the scenes in our hearts that causes so much of bad communication. It is our selfish desire and the need to be right or justified. And there is something even more basic than that…are we living for the world or are we living for God? Isn’t it so true that when we grow in our friendship with the world that God becomes more of an enemy? So the best thing we can do to be a better person and communicator is submit ourselves to God and resist the devil….(and don’t miss the promise when we do so…he will flee from us). If we are getting laughter from the world and sin, it is better that we mourn over it. It is far better to be humble and obedient, denying ourselves and allow God to be the one who lifts us up. And this humility is found not only in how we regard God, sin and ourselves, but also how we treat others and how we make plans. It is a bit of hubris to say for sure this or that is going to happen….far better to operate under God’s hand and let His will be done rather than going overboard trying to determine outcomes and establish a security that is only about self effort. God IS in control…the sooner we submit ourselves to that, the better off we will be…..

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  8. “Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”?”

    I hadn’t really seen this before. I thought that James was addressing those who committed adultery in their marriages. We are the adulterers when we are friends with the world! We are committing adultery with the world and the Spirit inside us is jealous. The solution is submitting to God, resisting the devil, and drawing near to God.

    “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; 14 whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” 16 But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.”

    Every time something unfortunate happens with my farm animals, I say, “man makes his plans, but the Lord determines His steps.” This verse is even more appropriate. Today I will say, “if God wills it, my chickens will not be killed by the mink I saw under my shed this morning. If God wills it, my other goat will kid successfully, be healthy and have healthy kids in August.” It is a humbling experience when things don’t go your way.

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