James 4
Rebecca Lightfoot
When we step outside God’s paradigm for living we step away from His Umbrella of Mercy & Grace. This is some of what James 4:4 is warning us about when it says, ”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.” Just before this verse when he says in James 4:1-3, ”What causes quarrels & what causes fights among you? Is it not this,that your passions (worldly pleasures) are at war within you. You desire and do not have, so you murder (in our hearts even). You covet & cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel...you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions (worldly pleasures).” James is telling me that when I allow this war to go on in my life that this war within me causes “enmity” (the state or feeling of being actively opposed or hostile to someone or something ) ”with God”. And yet because of His great love for us, God “yearns jealously over the spirit that he (Jesus) has made to dwell in us.”! HE yearns for us to allow HIS Spirit to draw our mind/heart/life back to the protection of His Umbrella of Mercy &Grace...that is only found when we allow His Spirit to true up our lives to Eternal Truths and Purposes that HE has planned for our best (Romans8:28 “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose”). When we are “at enmity” with God, the problem is within us! When we realize this, & then resist what our “passions/pleasures” would draw us to and turn to God...,HE will lift us up out of the temporal with it’s “quarrels & fights” that are at enmity with God, and lead us to lives with Eternal Significance that are in right relationship WITH God->James4:7-10”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.....Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.” Dear Jesus ,much of the time I have a double-minded heart that has a war within me, battling between Your Ways and the ways of the world with it’s desires, pleasures and passions.I pray for Your Spirit to light a fire in me that has a red hot desire to turn from the worlds pleasures, desires, and passions...,and seek to know the Right & True Relationship with You that You are so jealous for in my life.