This morning I found myself flipping to James 4. Let me be honest by saying this is a passage I have flipped to often in the past two to three years, and sometimes to my own frustration. I would feel convicted, yet frustrated at times as I worked through the passage, knowing I was the one quarrelling and bitter because of the desires that waged war in my soul yet pridefully and stubbornly not wanting to grasp the solution to such a predicament (verse 1-2).
You see, James 4 describes our human nature and how we lust after things... How we grumble and complain because we want something/someone other than God. We don't receive such things because we aren't going to God and asking. And often times when we ask it is with wrong motives... just so we can be satisfied apart from Him (verse 3-5). That's a fleshly desire He is never going to fulfill.
But that is not my only problem... wanting things apart from God. My problem is I want my heart to be pure apart from Him. I want to keep the desires under control on my own terms. I want to perform and perfect my righteousness so that God is pleased with me.
But that isn't the gospel. And that certainly is not the truth of James 4. I can't fix my predicament. On my own I am a hopeless, lusting quarreler, far from God and His heart.
What does James say we should do when these pleasures and desires are ruling our hearts in a way that leaves the Holy Spirit jealous (verse 5)?
We should know in those moments that God gives a greater grace (verse 6). He gives more grace in those moments so that we can learn to desire Him above our own comfort and wants. He gives more grace so that we can rest in Him and wait upon Him to meet all of our needs in His own time and way.
He gives more grace so we can truly submit to His provision and care and not seek to meet our needs in a way that gives into Satan and his schemes (verse 7).
Why does God give such grace? To whom does He give it? He gives it to those who are humble enough to recognize such a condition in their own soul. For He opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble (verse 6).
Man, what a truth. The point is to submit and recognize we need His grace to walk through life with pure, worshipful hearts. To realize we cannot perform or be righteous apart from Him. We cannot form and perfect our own little worlds and hearts.
We must instead come humbly, recognizing all the ways we lust after things and distort desires, and trust Him to make us desire Him first and then meet all of those longings in His time and way.
Friend, you cannot live apart from Him. It's only in confessing your weakness and brokenness, your inability to properly thirst after Him, that He can make you pure and whole and godly.
What do we do with this truth? James tells us:
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. James 4:7-10