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Humble Ourselves …In His Word 6-23-2025
Chapter 4 of James teaches us about humbling ourselves
before God. This is what we commonly refer to drawing near to Him, but it
is something we cannot do with pride!
We first have to accept that He is Lord God Almighty! He is
more powerful, more wise, more loving, more kind, more anything that we can
think of!
If that does not humble us what will?
It also talks about the root or heart of the matter when it
comes to strife and quarrels. God wants us to figure out why we fight with one
another and then remove that situation. In many cases the reason is weakness in
the fight against good and evil in our own lives, but other times pride is
involved.
What is causing the
quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war
within you? You want what you don’t
have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have,
but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet
you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it
because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure. James
4:1-3
Too often we get caught up the cares of the world, how we
think we should look, or behave as those around us in the world. We worry if
they worry, we forget who is in charge and try to be ‘Christlike-sorta’.
Instead, we need to be all in! To be all in we need to look at the Word of God
and start living the way He wants us to live. James puts it this way, below. We
cannot be a friend to the world and God both. We become an enemy to God, or
against the world. But so may things make us think we should do what the world
says. Even in our churches today we lean towards the world in the thought that
if we do this we will attract new believers. If we look fun, if we look fancy,
if we look good…
As if ‘we’ attract the ones who become believers, we need to
realize it is the Holy Spirit, not our great writing or preaching that brings
the people in. It is the Holy Spirit speaking to our hearts and minds that
draws us nearer to God. The obedience that comes after that nudge of the Lord
speaking to our heart through His Word is what crushes our human pride and
helps us humble befor His Word, His way, His direction and His desire for our
lives.
You adulterers! Don’t you realize that friendship with the
world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of
the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. Do you think the Scriptures have
no meaning? They say that God is passionate that the spirit he has placed
within us should be faithful to him. And he gives grace generously. As the
Scriptures say,
“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
So, humble yourselves
before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come close to God, and
God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts,
for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. Let there be tears for what you have done. Let
there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter and
gloom instead of joy. Humble yourselves
before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor. James 4:4-10
God opposes the proud, those who count themselves as the
ones who are in charge of their lives, but when we realize He is the One who
guides us, then we can truly come humbly before Him, resisting the devil and
watching him flee from us. We need to wash our spiritual hands, get ride of the
dirt that draws us into the world.
What is that dirt? It could be unconfessed sin, it could be the
inappropriate words that come out of our mouths, or it could be a lifestyle we
know we should not be in, as believers. Whatever it is we need to wash it away.
Think for of it like this a moment, to wash your hands you
use soap- the Word is our soap. We use water- the Holy Spirit is the water that
washes away our sins by the blood of Jesus! He cleanses our hearts and minds,
and we keep it that way by reading the Word daily. That refreshes the cleaning,
the washing away and bringing us sparkling new again each morning is the
greatest way to start the day! When we slather on the Word of God our minds get
so clean and that sweet smelling savor will easily drift up to the Lord.
Still what about the rest of the day? What do we do when the
people push all our buttons? First, heed the warning below from James!
Don’t speak evil
against each other, dear brothers and sisters. If you criticize and judge each
other, then you are criticizing and judging God’s law. But your job is to obey
the law, not to judge whether it applies to you. God alone, who gave the law, is the Judge. He
alone has the power to save or to destroy. So, what right do you have to judge
your neighbor? James 4:9-12
Speak the truth in love, when possible. When its not
possible then stay quiet when you can. If the button gets pushed, apologize and
get back in the Word to regain direction from the Lord, and pray for God to
help us out! It’s not about us! It’s
about living right before Him. Then as
you get in the swing of doing this, you may feel pretty proud of yourself and
think you can handle it. Maybe you don’t really need to pray, and read the Bible
every day, or in the heat of the battle?
You’ve got this right?
Nope! That is when we have a new battle. A battle against
flesh in ourselves. When we think we have got it all by ourselves, that’s when
we need the Lord all the more!
Look here, you who
say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a
year. We will do business there and make a profit.” How do you know what your life will be like
tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s
gone. What you ought to say is, “If the
Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.” Otherwise, you are boasting about your own
pretentious plans, and all such boasting is evil. Remember, it is sin to know
what you ought to do and then not do it. James 4:13-17v
We’ve got this, only because He’s got us! When we are in His
plan, His Word, prayer with Him and worship Him throughout our days, then we
can truly say that
“I’ve got this, I can do all things through Christ who
strengthens me!” is a great quote to use when you start to falter. We all
falter, none of us is perfect. When I was a young Christian a wise man once told
me in regard to the Word of God and His life for us, “The more you know the
more you know that you do not know.”
Still as long as we are walking in the Word, we will walk in
prayer and thus the Holy Spirit will be our guide. So get in the Word! Read it,
apply it, live it!
Read James 4 again and think on these things, just because
it is what I got from it does not mean
its exactly everything God wants you to get from it! Read the Chapter! Write it
down if it helps, or write what you see that you can apply to your life, and
then go live it! Ask Him to help you! For you can do all things through Christ!
In His Word,
Teresa Wilson