Daily Scripture
“What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”
James 4:1-17
daily Devotion
In this passage, James focuses on what it looks like to be a maturing believer. A matured believer is one who walks with God. They look to God’s wisdom when encountering trials, they are a doer and not just a hearer of the Word, they have true faith with works, and they are able to control their tongue. All of the issues that James talks about in this passage are sins that come from self-centeredness.
Self-satisfaction should never be the goal of our lives. The Bible teaches how beautiful the unity of God’s people is. When there is fighting and quarreling in the church, where does this come from? It originates from our desire to satisfy our own self above all. We battle with others because there is an internal battle within us. We fight with what God wants for us and what we want for ourselves. With this mindset, we are at war with things that are holy and cause division where there was once harmony. If we don’t quit justifying the god of “me,” we will continue to destroy people in our path.
A person with self-centered desires does not consider or care what God is trying to do in their life. In this passage, James tells us to “submit yourselves.” This means to set ourselves under God and bring our desires and will in submission to His will for us. When we are in submission with God’s will, we must also resist the devil. Our fleshly desires are demonic and cannot exist when we are walking with the Lord.
So what if we are still guilty of being self-seeking? How do we get right with God? James says to “Purify your hearts.” We need an outwardly and inwardly cleansing. We must repent and turn away from our own desires, and completely surrender it to God. A self-satisfied person has to come to terms with how their sin affects their relationship with God and their relationship with others.
God, please rid of us our selfishness and sin. We want to honor you. Let us be submitted to your will, living and loving like your son in order to bring more people to the Kingdom. Amen.
Elise Williams