September 18, 2026
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 Ezra and 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.…..Continue Reading
Well James really lays it out here to show us what is in our hearts and why it is we fight with others. It is usually because we have wrong desires and act selfishly. We need to be careful not to love the world or the things of the world. The best thing for us is to submit to God and be humble before people. We also need to resist the devil and all his deception, and the assurance is he will flee from us. And we should mourn over our sinfulness and allow that mourning to humble us, so God will then be able to lift us up rather than us boasting about who we are, what we have or what we can do. Our wrong motives and desires also cause us to speak poorly against others and judge them by our own standards. Our reference point again is God and what He says about things because all that matters is His standards and His will.
James 4
WOW. This chapter is loaded. Starting with the evil battles within us wanting more stuff, more money, a higher status, more recognition and we will fight to get those things instead of submitting ourselves to God to trust him to give us what we really need. There’s nothing wrong with wanting pleasurable things to enjoy. God gives us things to enjoy. But friendship with the world is seeking these pleasures at other people‘s expenses and pleasures that keep us from pleasing God is sinful. Pleasure from God‘s riches is good. Submit yourselves then to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. That’s self explanatory. Many ways to draw closer to God. Vs 13-14. The older you get especially at 70 you realize how fast from 25 years old to 70 goes like the blink of an eye. So enjoy today cause the unknown, even for the believers is uncertain. Enjoy your loved ones. Live for God today, then no matter when your life ends, you will have filled God’s plan!
When we ask something from God and we ask with the right motives, he will give it to us. We cannot serve two masters, a friend with the world is an enemy of God. Therefore, submit ourselves to God, and he will come near to us. Resist the devil, and he will flee from us. Be humble and do not judge. And know that everything that happens in our lives is contingent upon the Lord’s will. If we know that, we will not be disappointed, for God makes all things work out for our good.
James 4
James 4
Jesus has truly changed the culture, even among the Jews who had the law and the very presence of God but you can see how the selfishness of man has progressed or should I say digressed.
I think we are at this point again.
“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. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”? But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.””
James 4:4-6 NKJV