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March 10 Daily Devotional

Are You For Real? (James 4:1–6)

the Rev. Larry Wilson

Scripture for Day 69—James 4:1–6

1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 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. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 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. 5 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"? 6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

Devotional:

Worldliness involves putting self at the center of all things. Thus, it gets in the way of all your relationships. Worldliness does not just wreck your fellowship with each other. It also wrecks your fellowship with God! It hinders your prayers. "You do not have, because you do not ask" (vv. 2b).

Prayer is such an amazing privilege. The infinite, eternal, and sovereign God gives his redeemed children amazing access into his very presence. God freely answers their prayers—he does not withhold one good thing from those who walk uprightly (Ps. 84:11); but rather, with his only Son, freely gives them all things (Rom. 8:32). Our Lord Jesus promises, "Ask, and you will receive." (John 16:24).

But verse 3 flies like a monkey wrench right into the middle of this amazing privilege—"You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions." The same bent to self-centeredness that breaks Christian fellowship even inserts itself into our prayers, breaking our fellowship with God. Why is that? What happens when worldliness—giving in to the desire to gratify and satisfy self, to put self at the center of all things—gets in the way of your walk with God?

For one thing, you break your marriage vow to Jesus Christ. Verse 4a—"You adulterous people!"—literally says, "You adulteresses!" It slays me when Bible translators shrink from saying what God himself clearly says. More than anything else, the picture of marriage brings out the intimate and personal oneness with God to which he graciously brings us. It is not only the church that is the bride of Christ, but also as a Christian you are personally espoused to Jesus Christ (Rom. 7:4; 2 Cor. 11:1–3). 

But if you rush off in love with the world—if you put self at the center of all things—then you break your marriage vow to the Lord. You become guilty of spiritual adultery. Confess this grave sin for what it really is. Look to Jesus for full and free forgiveness, and rededicate yourself to walking with him and living for him in love.

See "Adultery and Apostasy" by Francis A. Schaeffer


Click here for background on the author of Are You For Real?: Meditations in the Epistle of James for Secret or Family Worship.

 

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