43. What you say

Meditations in James: 43 : Beware what you say about others

Jas 4:11,12     Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you–who are you to judge your neighbor?

A passage like today’s two verses is simple and straight forward, but we might wonder, why is James going off on another tangent?  Well he isn’t, but again we have to look at what has gone before in this chapter to catch the flow. Remember at the beginning of the chapter James was facing us with the inner turmoil that goes on within us because of not having surrendered everything to God (v.1-3). Then he implied that all these desires that had not been submitted to God were the same sort of thing that the rest of the world wrestled with in their unregenerate state, and he called us to side with God against the ungodliness and unrighteous attitudes of the world (v.4).  He then pointed out that God is jealous for a relationship with us (v.5) and longs to give us the grace we need for living, but can only give it to those who humbly seek him (v.6). Out of that came a call to come to God in submission, resisting the tactics of the enemy who would seek to draw us away (v.7), come with a right perspective (v.8-10) and God will lift us up. This has all been a natural progressive flow in his appeal and it is important that we see how one thing flows on from another.

So he has come to a point of appealing that we submit to God, and so what follows? It is important to see this! When our relationship with the Lord is established or re-established, it always has practical outworkings in respect of how we relate to other people. The vertical relationship with God ALWAYS results in changes to the horizontal relationships with people. You cannot have a real relationship with the Lord and it not have impact on the way you relate to people.  In passing we might consider how we relate to other people because, as the other side of the same coin so to speak, it is an indicator of the level of relationship we have with the Lord!

James, as a good pastor, knows this, that the Lord wants the expression of our relationship with Him to have an impact on the way we relate to people, and James has it in the back of his mind that he has already written to us about the use of the tongue as being the first outward indicator of how we are on the inside. Right, he says now, if you have submitted yourself to God, check now what is coming out of your mouth in respect of people, because your words now need to reflect your newly re-established relationship with the Lord.

This is a terribly important issue in Christian circles. See what he says: Brothers, do not slander one another. Brothers indicates that he is speaking to Christians, and his simple injunction is don’t say wrong things about other Christians. Now I’ve just suggested that this is a terribly important issue in Christian circles.  Listen to the chatter that goes on in church. Listen to the chatter that goes on between little groups of Christians. Here is the challenge from James. If you refer to your minister or leaders, or to anyone else in the church for that matter, are you careful not to offend on this point? ‘Gossip’ in the church is wrong chattering that pulls down people. Gossip does not look for the well-being and uplifting of people. Gossip is so often slanderous; it does not wholly speak the truth. Slander is speaking wrongly about others. If we give an opinion about our leaders or about others with whom we perhaps disagree, is it an opinion that puts down or does it uplift? What you speak is a reflection of what goes on inside you, and if you speak untruth, it is an indication of a weak relationship with the Lord, and you need to go back over the previous verses in this chapter because they obviously apply to you. But see what else James says about this.

He says, “Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it.” What does he mean? Well today, as Christians, we are under one Law, the Law of love: “Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: `Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Mt 22:37-40). If we slander other people, we are rejecting that Law, and putting ourselves above it. It’s like we make a judgment, “I don’t need to be bound by that,” and we put ourselves on the level of the Lawmaker, God! You’re not keeping the royal law of love, says James, if you speak badly of other people, you are judging it. God is the only one who can put aside the Law. An expression of our real relationship with the Lord is that we keep this law and love others, and if we love them we will not speak badly of them. It is that simple!

After all that we have said about the previous verses and how James calls us into relationship with the Lord, the way we speak about others will be the measuring stick for how real our responses to all of that have been. If we find ourselves speaking wrongly of others, we need to pull ourselves up, go back to God, submit ourselves humbly to Him and ask for His forgiveness. A relationship with God is a very practical thing in the Bible. Ensure it is also in your life.

42. Approaching God

Meditations in James: 42 : Approaching God Wisely

Jas 4:8-10    Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

Some Christian leader once said that if they really wanted their church to take in something important, they would need to communicate it six times to their people. It seems it is a bit like that with James. He is so intent on focusing his scattered people on God that he comes again and again in different ways, saying the same thing. There was an Argentinean pastor who used to say that he would preach the same message to his church every Sunday for a year until they understood it and did it. James would have appreciated him. Let’s follow our usual pattern and see what these verses say and then see them in the overall context.

He starts with a call to “Come near to God”. Now what does that mean, because God is everywhere, so in one sense He is everywhere and always near us? Well, when we speak about the presence of the Lord we speak about His general presence which is with us everywhere, and we also speak of His ‘manifest presence’, His presence that becomes real as He manifests or makes known His presence in a very real way. The call to “Come near” is a call to set your heart and mind on God, probably ‘seeking Him’ in prayer. David told Solomon, “If you seek him, he will be found by you.” (1 Chron 28:9). God makes His presence known to those who seek Him with all their heart (Deut 4:29). This is a call to stir the heart to seek after God.

He then calls his readers to Wash your hands and to purify your hearts which is the language used of the priests in the Old Testament as they approached God in the Tabernacle or the Temple. It was a call to ensure purity before God. But James addresses specific people: you sinners and you double-minded. Now whether he knows of specific people who fit this category, or whether he is reminding us of our tendency, is unclear. We will assume the latter because this side of heaven we are (redeemed) sinners and we do have a tendency to be double-minded.  This is James humbling us. In a previous meditation series on “Why the Cross” we spent the first twelve meditations focusing on our sin, because unless we recognize our state we cannot see the full wonder of our salvation or, as in this present context, we cannot realize the attitude we need to approach God. James is well and truly putting us in our place. Why? Possibly because, like today, there is often a tendency to approach God casually, like a buddy. He is Almighty God who is Holy!

So if we do treat God like that, James gives us our marching orders. “Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord.” This really all says the same thing: change your attitude! Grieve and mourn and wail?  Realise your wrong attitude and come in repentance with a penitent heart. Humble yourself, put yourself down, realize His greatness and your smallness, His Holiness and your lack of holiness. Get a right perspective and then come to God in the right way. These are strong words.

To see why they are strong we need to remind ourselves of the context, of what has gone before. We’ve noted that James is writing to the church living in the midst of the world where faith is so easily dissipated. In the materialistic world in which we live today, these appeals of James are of particular significance. Have we taken note of the things in the recent meditations, the call to side with God against the world, the acknowledgement that God is jealous for a relationship with us, the recognition that it is to the humble that he gives grace, so we need to submit ourselves to Him, resisting the enemy’s strategies to draw us away. Where we have done any of the things James is warning about, then today’s verses apply to us.

1. If we have allowed our thinking and our attitudes to blend in with the world’s ungodliness and unrighteousness, we need to take action.

2. If we have ignored God’s overtures to draw us to Himself, we need to take action.

3. If we have allowed pride to rise up in us, we need to take action.

4. If we have allowed the enemy to entice us away from God, we need to take action.

Please be careful, these are all very real dangers, which is why we have marked them out like this above.  They are each common dangers when we live in the world and things we need to be aware of. If we can be honest with ourselves and recognize that some or all of these things apply to us, then we need to seek the Lord whole-heartedly in repentance and humility. It means we have drifted and we need to take the Biblical steps to return to the place where God wants us.

41. Spiritual Warfare

Meditations in James: 41 : Strategy for Spiritual Warfare

Jas 4:7    Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

It has been said that Christians, in respect of Satan, tend to veer towards one or other extremes of belief. The one extreme is to see demons in every situation, and the other extreme is to ignore Satan and even deny his existence. Jesus put it in perspective in the so-called ‘Lord’s Prayer’ when he instructed us to pray, “deliver us from the evil one” (Mt 6:13), but that came late in the prayer and was only one small part of it. A balanced perspective is to acknowledge the existence of Satan but to keep him in his right place. Let’s examine this verse as it stands.

“Submit yourselves to God”. Isn’t this the primary call of the whole content of the Bible?  Isn’t this the call to a right perspective, which sees and recognises God as The Lord, the One who is over and above everything?  If, as we read the Bible, we start to catch a picture of who God is, then our only response is to bow before Him and submit to Him. Paul declared that God’s ultimate purpose was that, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” (Phil 2:10,11). Awareness of greatness, ultimate greatness, causes a response of submission and worship. That is our starting place.

“Resist the devil”. There is first an implicit recognition of Satan’s existence here. He’s given no great fanfare; we’re just told to resist him. There is also an implicit recognition that he requires resisting, which means he comes to us to do wrong. Now that wrong, the Bible tells us elsewhere, may be to tempt us into doing wrong, or it may be to sow doubts in us, or deceive us with lies, or even to come against us with physical hindrances. So, says James, don’t let him tempt you to do wrong, don’t let him sow doubts in you or deceive you to believe lies, and don’t let him bring illness or infirmity upon you. We have repeated that list of things that he does to ensure you take note of his strategies which we are told to resist. Why are we to resist them? Because God is jealous for us and is zealous to help us overcome anything which would draw us away from Him.

“And he will flee from you.” Have you seen the certainty of that? He will flee! It’s not he might flee, but he will flee.  Now in saying that, we have to point out the order of things here to ensure that. There is no question of you going against Satan on your own, because on your own you are not big enough or strong enough to deal with him. No, the order is submit yourself to God then resist the devil. You need to go to God and re-establish contact with Him, to put yourself in His hands, and to know His grace and strength before you stand against Satan. It is God’s presence and God’s grace that will enable to you resist him. It is when he sees God’s presence in you that he will flee for he knows there is no point coming against you now.

But there is one little important word that we have left out so far: then.  Did you see it?  Submit yourselves, then, to God. This means that this verse is a direct follow on to what has gone before. The full meaning of it, the full significance of it, can only be seen when we see what has gone before.  Remember what we have recently considered in this chapter. A call to take sides, to side with God against the ‘world’, because God is jealous for us, and is zealous for a relationship with us, and so He looks for us to crucify pride and come in humility to Him to receive His grace. How do we do all this? Submit yourselves, then, to God. This verse sums up all that has gone before it. We come to God, we side with Him, we reject the ‘world’, and we kill off pride and come humbly to God in submission, for he is our Lord. As we’ve said numerous times, it is the natural response to all this, and as we do it, we resist Satan and his works, for he only seeks to bring things that will pull us down, that will pull us away from God.

God’s objective is to bring us into relationship with Him, and when that happens and we ‘see’ Him, then our natural response is going to be to submit to Him. Part of submitting is to be open to the Lord for whatever He wants. A beautiful expression of this was seen in the case of Isaiah. He recorded, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted.” (Isa 6:1). He had an awesome sense of the Lord’s presence and holiness and was ministered to by the heavenly creatures (v.5-7), but then, “I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” (v.8). He didn’t need to think about the response; it was automatic. In the presence of the Almighty, Holy God, there was only one response possible: “I said, “Here am I. Send me!” (v.8) In God’s presence there can only be that one response that basically says, “Lord, whatever you want I will do it.” That is submitting to God. In doing that we reject all the ways of the ‘world’ and we reject Satan’s overtures. In doing this we put ourselves in the most secure place possible – right in the centre of the Lord’s will.  May it be so for each of us!

40. Pride & Humility

Meditations in James: 40 : Pride & Humility

Jas 4:6     But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

The danger or difficulty of meditating on just one verse, especially when we don’t have a Bible open in front of us,  is that we don’t see the context and the context is so often all-important. Yes, we can get a general meaning from thinking about the verse on its own, but it is much more useful to study it in context so that we see why the writer was saying it and what it relates to that has gone before.

So let’s take the verse as if it were on its own and then later let’s put it in context to illustrate what we’ve just said above. First, he gives us more grace. God is in the business of giving us grace, and grace in this sort of context simply means the divine ability that he imparts to us to enable us to cope. Many of us struggle with this. We just can’t believe that God is standing in the wings, so to speak, just waiting to provide us with all that we need to cope with life today – wisdom, strength, health etc. That is grace, His divine ability imparted to us, but we have to receive it, and more often than not, we have to first ask for it.

But then the verse continues, That is why Scripture says…. It is referring back to the Old Testament, to Proverbs 3:34. We need to realize that the New Testament is built upon the Old. Jesus quoted from virtually all of the books of the Old Testament, and the epistle writers do the same. God’s will was declared in the Old and fulfilled or applied in the New.

The verse continues: God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. This is the Old Testament quote, the teaching that came through Solomon.  Those who are proud rise up and reject or ignore God and basically seek to oppose Him, so He opposes them, for He is God and He is exercising His will for the good of mankind. When we oppose Him we oppose this activity of His. As soon as God sees us coming to the end of ourselves, giving up all of our own self-endeavours, and turning to Him, He is instantly there as a loving Father, ready to pour out all of His wonderful goodness, the resources we need for life, His grace. Yes, when we are humble and acknowledge our need, He is there for us, but He can’t provide for us until we turn to Him and become desirous of His help. That’s what Solomon was saying, and is now quoted in this verse.

Now let’s see what has gone before so we can put it in context to see the wider picture. Having spoken about the tongue in the middle of chapter 3 and then gone on at the end of it to talk about the life style that is a reflection of the wisdom received from God, James has gone on to face us up with what goes on inside us and while doing that we realized that without God we were a mess. The key or turning point is when we come to the end of ourselves and we seek God. Before we do that we have wrong attitudes and motivations which are those of ‘the world’, godless humanity, but God is jealous for us and yearns to draw us more and more into a deeper relationship with Him.  However for that to happen we have to crucify our pride and come acknowledging our state and our need. When we come like that God’s grace is freely available to us. While we are holding on to those old worldly attitudes where self is paramount, we are likely to be in opposition to God (which is a frightening thought when you realize how great and powerful He is!) and we are doomed to failure.  It’s all about what we let Him do on the inside of us, as He brings His wisdom to bear on our lives and we are allowed to see ourselves as we really are, with all those self-centred desires in conflict.

This is what this is all about; facing up to ourselves so that we can come in humility to God, acknowledging our need of His help, and then receiving His grace which transforms our life. What is His grace but His own presence, His own Holy Spirit, dwelling within us.  It is He Himself empowering us, but as we’ve commented so many times in the past, He will not force Himself upon us, and so He waits until He sees we have a genuine, penitent attitude, which really does see that He alone is our answer. When we come to this place He releases His power in us – and that is the grace we need to cope. It is that which changes us, which transforms us, and gives us the ability to live the lives He’s designed for us.

Do you see now the importance of the ‘But’ at the beginning of the verse? He’s spoken about His Spirit, who He has given us, as yearning for us or being jealous for us when He sees we have a tendency to drift away, and so now he reminds us that God’s grace is there to stop us drifting and to help us back into a good place. That’s what the ‘But’ is about. It’s about the provision He has made to draw us back when we are drifting. Isn’t that wonderful!  He sees us drifting but He doesn’t scold or chastise us, because He is yearning to just get us back. It’s like when a teenage child runs away. What they have done is foolish, but you are more concerned to have them back than to remonstrate with them! And this is true of God as well. He is there, zealous to bring you back, and for you to be able to do that, you need His grace – and here it is!  Receive it today if you have been drifting. It’s there for the asking.

39. God’s Jealousy

Meditations in James: 39 : God’s Jealousy

Jas 4:5    Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely?

Our verse today has a footnote that gives as alternative renderings of it: “Or that God jealously longs for the spirit that he made to live in  us; or that the Spirit he caused to live in us longs  jealously. My attention was first drawn to this verse many years ago when I was a young Christian and was involved in helping someone who was a brand new Christian but who regularly took drugs. On this occasion I had picked up this person from a pub where I knew they would be, and they were stoned out of their mind with drugs. (Put aside all of your “Christians shouldn’t….” attitudes; this is just how it was with this person!) With difficulty I got them out of the pub into my car and took them back to my flat where I just dumped them in a chair. They were completely unconscious. Not knowing quite what to do about this, I was talking about loud to them, even though they were unconscious, and without thinking picked up my Bible and started flipping through it until I came to this verse which seemed to stand out, read it an commented, “Wow, do you realise God is jealous for you?” Standing about six feet away from them it looked like an invisible hand had slapped their face, they instantly came to and said, “Oh, what happened?” and were stone cold sober. That’s how it happened; think about it what you will, but it drew my attention to this verse which, at that time, I had never seen before. Why might God have acted dramatically like that?

Now James doesn’t tell us what Scripture he has in mind but we know the Ten Commandments start with, “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God” (Ex 20:3-5). Mostly when we come across jealousy, it is a wrong thing that causes upset, but where there is a legitimate relationship and that is being threatened it is legitimate to feel ‘jealous’ for the other person in your relationship.  One definition is my dictionary for jealousy is ‘brooking no unfaithfulness’.  That’s how it is with God and His people. God is jealous for us; He wants nothing to come between Him and us.  That’s why the first two Commandments are as they are, because He knew that idols could become false substitutes for Him.  A Biblical dictionary suggests that the root of jealousy is “to be zealous for”.  If God is jealous it is that He is zealous for the relationship that He works to achieve with us.

So what is the context with James’ writing, what is he really saying? In the preceding verse he said, “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.” which we looked at yesterday.  It is a direct challenge to take sides and to side with God against the world.  If God sees us drifting away from Him towards the world and world attitudes and actions, He is jealous for us, He is zealous to draw us back; He wants to challenge any potential unfaithfulness.

Remember the starting point of this letter, where James indicates that he is writing to the scattered church, the church that is living all over the place, away from it’s original strong starting place, Jerusalem, living away from such secondary strong places of the church, such as Antioch, and living in outlying places where there are no great support structures, and it is just a small number of Christians in any particular locality.  It is in those situations that the pressures of living in the world press in, where the temptation is to take the easy path and blend in with all those around you.  These words in James that we are currently considering have a very real urgency behind them.

In the day in which we live there is an equal urgency.  In Britain we now have a culture that accepts ‘flexible working’ which simply means that people work night shifts or irregular patterns of work, and for some, often on a Sunday. The difficulties that work against gathering with the church on a Sunday have multiplied and I frequently come across situations where, say in a marriage, one member of the couple has to work on a Sunday, and so the other doesn’t feel motivated to get along to the church gathering.  That means that if spiritual life is not to be dissipated, then the couple need to find alternative times to meet with other Christians, to fellowship and be encouraged and built up.  These are very real challenges in the beginning of the twenty-first century with the evolving culture that works against traditional church structures.

The heart behind all of this is a pastoral cry that is concerned for the Christians who could be getting weaned away from the Lord, by the ways of the world. There are increasing numbers of Christians who work increasingly long and stressful hours and who, at the end of the day, are so tired that they succumb to the temptation that says, “I’m too tired. I can’t be bothered to go to church (to the Bible Study or to the Prayer Meeting, or whatever).  These aren’t the be-all and end-all, but they are resource places where the Christian can be revitalised, encouraged and built up. If we go, tired as we may be, to a meeting with other Christians, in the anticipation that we will meet with God, then I firmly believe we will return home later in a far better state, physically, mentally and spiritually, because when we meet God in others, we are blessed and He imparts life. That is what is behind all that James is saying here. Is God having to feel jealous over you?

38. Enemies of God

Meditations in James: 38 : Enemies of God?

Jas 4:4     You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

Observing people taking sides is not a pleasant thing  because it is divisive, yet we accept division in society at the many different levels. At its basic level, politics is all about how is the best way to run a country, what sort of rules, what sort of laws, how to look after people. The problem is there are so many different ways, and so different ideas have, in the past century or so, created different political parties and we are encouraged every few years to vote in favour of one party and against the others. There is this natural taking of sides that takes place. In the whole realm of football, people take sides, and support one team as against all the others. It is a taking sides that demands fierce loyalty so often. Wherever there are options and alternatives and competition for one or the other, there is taking sides.

The tone of James’ letter sometimes suggests that he has heard things about the church scattered far and wide, and some of the things he has heard upset him.  The whole issue of favouritism in church was obviously one such thing. Now he speaks with a passion about the church that he has been hearing about, that sides with the world.  Now we have commented previously that when the Bible uses the world ‘world’ it can mean the physical planet on which we live, the people who live on it, or the attitudes of godless and unrighteous mankind. It is the latter meaning that he uses here.

Probably the classic passage about ‘the world’ comes in 1 John 2: “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world–the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does–comes not from the Father but from the world.” (1 Jn 2:15,16). There the world’s ‘life approach’ is defined.  First, cravings of sinful man.  It is a world that is motivated and driven by sensual desires, living according to self-centred desires, regardless of what they are. Second, lust of his eyes desire stirred on by visual impact. This is what the whole advertising industry is about. Make you ‘see’ something and then want it, because of those unrestrained desires already there that just need stirring on. Third, boasting of what he has and does, pride that exalts self. To summarise: the world means self-centred living according to desires, that are inflamed by what you can see and which go to building up the ego to exalt the individual.

How is this hatred toward God? First it is self-centred and godless.  Second it is purely materialistic – and thus godless. Third it exalts self to the exclusion of God  – and is therefore godless. In every way the ‘way of the world’ is a godless mentality, and by godless we mean it excludes or ignores or rejects God.  No wonder James says that Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. This is another case of taking sides, because there are opposites to choose and if you choose one you will be hostile to the other. If you accept a mentality that is, in reality, self-centred, materialistic and self-exalting, you cannot call yourself a child of God, because all of these expressions are in opposition to God.

Perhaps the classic instance in the Scripture of this choice came through Joshua to the people of Israel near the end of his life: “if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” (Josh 24:15)  Look, he was saying, if you want you can go and serve the idols that our primitive forefathers served, but me and my family will serve the Lord.  There was a clear choice you did one or the other.  The choice is exactly the same today.  You either serve the idols of materialism, or of self-centred human endeavour, or of scientific endeavour or whatever other godless expression of modern life that you can find, or you will trust and serve the Lord.  The reality of that choice comes when you see who or what it is that you rely upon. That is why James finds it so important to think about talking to God.  Talking to God is perhaps the clearest sign of relying upon Him.

A New Testament parallel is, perhaps when Jesus had been saying difficult things: “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” (Jn 6:66-69) Some of those who had been with Jesus now drifted away. They couldn’t cope with or understand some of the things he was saying. For Peter, there was no question. Jesus was the Messiah and was the one bringing answers and eternal life. There was no competition as far as he was concerned. That conclusion meant he gave up all rights to his life and went and followed Jesus wherever he led. I once asked a group what they would like their epitaph on their gravestone to be. One answered, “She followed the Lord wherever he said to go.” May that be true of each one of us who call ourselves Christians!

37. Right Asking

Meditations in James: 37 : Right Asking

Jas 4:2,3    You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

Something goes wrong. What do you do? Do you struggle to cope with it, or do you go down under it, or do you turn to the Lord to ask for His help. A measure of spiritual maturity, I believe, is how fast we turn to the Lord for help. The spiritually wise and mature will place their day into the Lord’s hands at the beginning of every day, I believe. There are some people who say, “Oh, I’m an evening person so I have my quiet time in the evening.” It’s not a case of whether you are a morning or an evening person. It is a case of whether you think you can get through the day without the Lord, and coming to Him in prayer, as brief as that may be, is a sign of your acknowledgement  that you need His help, you need His blessing in the hours ahead of you. Wise people don’t wait for a crisis before they talk to the Lord.

Now our verses today need to be seen in context: “You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God.” Do you see the connection between the beginning and end of this quote from verse 2? “You want something but don’t get it…… You do not have, because you do not ask God.” Do you remember yesterday, as we examined the process that James was speaking about? It starts with insecurity and insecure people struggle to achieve, struggle to get, struggle to make themselves feel they are somebody. They want things but don’t get them, so they get frustrated and more stressed. Their overall problem is that they are being godless. The have not sought the Lord and they have not come into a position of Sonship where they can come and ask their heavenly Father for all their needs.

We all of us lack. That’s what Sin does for us. We have great big needs which are only satisfied in God. He alone can bring the sense of fulfilment to us that we so long for. He alone can enable us to achieve in such a manner that we are feeling satisfied with who we are. You could say that the main lesson in living in this Fallen World is learning to turn to God. Many don’t and so struggle on and get deeper and deeper into the mire of unfulfillment and frustration.  It’s a hard world without God.  But He’s there and He longs for us to come to Him like little children; He longs to bless us, if only we will come. So here is James’ starting point in these verses: You do not have, because you do not ask God. But note that it is only the starting point.

When we start coming to God and asking Him for help, we are embarking on a major learning exercise, because as we ask we often find that either we’re not happy asking for some things, or we simply don’t seem to get answers for some of the things we do ask for.  James uses a very basic idea to explain why this so often is: “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” Yes, when we come to God, we learn that motivation is a key issue in God’s mind. Suddenly we realise that God is concerned with WHY we are asking.  Much of the time we ask simply for our own comfort or well-being.  In other words we ask selfishly. Now Jesus addressed this in the Sermon on the Mount: “So do not worry, saying, `What shall we eat?’ or `What shall we drink?’ or `What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Mt 6:31-33). What he is saying is, don’t worry about the mundane things of provision of daily life, for God will look after them for you and will provide them. Instead be more concerned with what His will is. Yes, it is right to ask for daily provisions: “Give us today our daily bread.” (Mt 6:11) but pray that as a sign of your reliance upon the Lord. Don’t let worry overwhelm you for that is a sign of lack of trust.

No, the key thing about asking God is this: “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Mt 6:10). The key question is, what does God want for my life? When you have found that answer, then ask for it. Read the prophets in the Old Testament and you will see they declared God’s will – and then prayed for it! But of course, that will is not something objective, it is what affects us. So yes, we will find ourselves praying for our needs, but it will now be so that we can fulfil God’s will. So it may be quite legitimate to pray for the provision of a car, say, if a car is needful for you to work out God’s declared will for your life. But if it’s just a case of, “I’d like this…. or that,” then that’s simply selfish asking and, as James says, you won’t get it.

Spiritual maturity learns what to ask for. It learns what God’s will is for my life and then prays it out, and if that will includes material things, then ask for material things, but that is very different from self-centred, godless desires. Think on these things, and then get praying!

36. Battling Desires

Meditations in James: 36 : Battling Desires

Jas 4:1,2     What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight.

Honesty about oneself is quite difficult. The trouble is that it’s us living this life and we find it difficult to be objective about ourselves. To know yourself is difficult, but of great value when you do. If you know yourself you know how far you can be pushed and you step back before your grace runs out. If you know yourself you know the gifts and talents you have and rejoice over them and give thanks to God for His provision of them. Yes, if you know yourself, you know that any goodness you have is from God. If you know yourself you know that deep down there are harbouring things that belong to darkness which should never see the light of day and which only God can deal with. Being honest with yourself, we have already said, brings humility. Being honest with yourself brings a greater reliance upon the Lord. Being honest with yourself is about knowing what you are like on the inside, for it is what goes on in the mind, in the heart, in the soul, that makes us what we are, and it is sometimes  very difficult to be honest with what we are really like.

Our problem is that we like others to think that we’re nice and we like to think ourselves that we are nice. This is a problem because when something comes to the surface which runs contrary to that belief, we panic or make excuses and justify ourselves instead of facing it and dealing with it. In other words we allow it to continue instead of putting it to death with God’s help.

Every time you struggle to cope with some other person, it is because something in you is not right. If you get angry, hostile, resentful, envious or generally upset over some other person, it is because something is not right in you. This is what James is referring to when he says, What causes fights and quarrels among you? A fight or quarrel is something that starts inside you. We’ve already talked at length about the tongue which expresses that hostility and brings it into the open and establishes it, but the hostility itself is within you. Whenever we feel resentful about another person, it is because we have something wrong on the inside. James goes on to give us an answer why this happens: Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? Everything, he says, in this context happens because you have desires that are struggling within you. Now this isn’t the sort of desire that wants a new car, this is desire that simply wants or needs things for self. This is about desires to be accepted, desires to feel good about yourself, desires to feel in control. Consider each of those.

We have a desire to be accepted. If we have poor understanding of God’s love we will not realize that we are utterly accepted by Him, and therefore our life is based on gaining acceptance. We want to feel good about ourselves, but that good feeling will only come when we feel that others take us as we are or, even more, look up to us. If we really don’t know who we are in Christ, we will struggle and struggle to become someone, and that includes being in control. When you are insecure about yourself you try to feel in control because then you can feel safe. If we have never some to the place where we know that God is in total control and that He is for us and with us, then we will feel insecure and will be constantly battling to create a sense of control to create this feeling of security.

All of these struggling inner desires are linked as part of our old sinful self which is warring in the world for achievement. What makes it worse, as James says, You want something but don’t get it. There is a sense of frustration that drives us on. We want to achieve, we want to be well thought of, we want to be someone, but it never seems to be happening and so we struggle and battle, struggle and battle and, in the world, that is what we see when people move into criminal activity. It’s as James says, You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. That killing for many is character assassination. We put down others in our desire to climb higher to achieve prominence, to achieve success, to be someone. These things are all part of the same package. For a few who allow Satan to totally dominate them, they literally kill and we hear of such things daily on our TV screens, but it’s all part of the same thing.

This is very real, and is the practical working out of our lives. James will go on to give answers but, again, he first wants us to face the malaise before we see answers. Many Christians shy away from this and pretend everything is all right, but deep down they know it’s not. You know you haven’t come to a place of wholeness in Christ, a place of security, if you feel uncomfortable with other people, if you find them impossible to be nice to, if everything in you goes tense in certain situations involving people. Don’t run away, this is simply an area to expose to the Lord’s love and let Him deal with. If you feel uneasy or worse with certain people, it may possibly be because you don’t know the social etiquette and don’t know how to respond in the circumstances, but mostly it is because you haven’t yet come to peace with God over who you are. Can we face that? Can we be honest about it? Can we bring it out in the open and confess it to the Lord so He can come and fill us with His love and acceptance? Let it be.

35. Heavenly Wisdom

Meditations in James: 35 : Heavenly Wisdom – Godly Guidance Guidelines

Jas 3:17,18   But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.

Yesterday we pondered on the so-called ‘wisdom of the world’ which, in fact, is no wisdom at all.  Wisdom, we have said, is the knowledge of ‘how to do’.  That can range from ‘how to do’ life generally to ‘how to’ specifically bless someone, an individual, or ‘how to’ work out a specific problem.  We know wisdom was lacking when we completely mess up a job or a relationship, because we always assume that wisdom ‘works’.  It is one of the characteristics that we perhaps take for granted that we should maybe add to our definition: wisdom is ‘how to do so that it works out well’.  Yes, please hold onto that because it is important: wisdom implicitly works.  It’s not ‘how to do it badly’; it’s ‘how to do it so it’s a success’.

Now yesterday in the previous verses James spoke about earthly wisdom, but he doesn’t leave us simply with the negative; now he completes the picture with a positive picture of the characteristics of wisdom that comes from God. At the beginning of the letter, James told us, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” (1:5)  As Christians, the source of our wisdom should, therefore, be the Lord.  When we are confronted by a difficult set of circumstances we should turn to Him and ask Him to tell us how to deal with them.  When we do that we suddenly find that ideas start flowing.  Follow them, they are from the Lord.  Is this wisdom from the Lord or is the enemy trying to trip us up?  Well this is where these verses are so important because they describe the nature or characteristics of the outworkings of wisdom that comes from God.  If your guidance seems to produce the opposite of these characteristics, then they are not from the Lord.  If these characteristics appear, you are on safe ground.

He says this wisdom is first of all pure. Pure here means that is morally untainted, so if there is anything morally questionable about it, it’s not God! God will not guide you into anything that is morally questionable, so if your conscience worries you about a particular path, stay away from it.

The second description is peace-loving. God is constantly seeking to lead us into peace so if your guidance seems to lead to upset, think again.  Wisdom coming from God will always seek to bring you into harmony with other people.  It unites, not drives apart.  It heals, not harms.

The third description is considerate.  When we are considerate we think about what is good for other people.  Remember Jesus’ teaching: “do to others what you would have them do to you” (Mt 7:12).  When you are thinking how to deal with other people, let a check be, how would I like them to deal with me in similar circumstances?

The fourth description is submissive.  That seems an odd description for wisdom until we remember Paul’s teaching, “Submit to one another” (Eph 5:21) or as he expounded it to the Philippians, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.” (Phil 2:3) and went on to describe the submissive way Jesus came.  When we come submissively we come in humility counting others better than ourselves. That is a heavenly attitude.

The fifth description is full of mercy. Mercy is that characteristic of God that loves and doesn’t mete out what a person deserves but instead gives them good. Mercy is unwarranted blessing where perhaps circumstances suggest that the opposite was deserved. Wisdom from God means we will always seek to bless others.

The sixth description is full of … and good fruit. You know what the fruit of the Spirit is – love, joy, peace etc. (Gal 5:22,23).  Well let your wisdom be seasoned with these.  Let your wisdom be permeated by goodness, for that is what comes from God.

The seventh description is impartial. Wisdom from God does not take sides. Do you remember Joshua’s question of the man outside Jericho: “Are you for us or for our enemies?” (Josh 5:13) and the man replied, “Neither, but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.” (v.14).  In other words, I’m God’s commander and God doesn’t take sides.  God wants us to bring blessing to all sides, and James has already spoken strongly about not allowing favouritism in the church!

The eighth and final description is sincere.  When we are sincere there is an absence of guile, there is no scheming. We are open and honest.  We will also have to be loving and gracious to temper this, so that it is not a selfish sincerity but a sincerity which is linked to all the other characteristics.

Eight descriptions!  Eight is the number of resurrection in Scripture, the number of God’s resurrection life, which follows death. When we die to self, and seek God for His wisdom then life will flow, which is why James concludes, “Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.” When we come with this sort of wisdom, then we come as God’s ambassador, we come as a bringer of peace, and righteousness will be seen to be the end outworking, or harvest, of all of this.  Righteousness, you may remember we have said, is simply living and acting in God’s prescribed and designed manner, and that is life.  May we be bringers of such life as we turn to Him and seek His wisdom.

34. Earthly Wisdom

Meditations in James: 34 : Earthly Wisdom

Jas 3:14-16     But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.

Deception is a strange thing.  Here, for instance, is a ‘wise’ man.  He is a business man.  He spends all hours at work.  He makes phone calls and he talks with his employees and he plans and schemes and makes profit.  He is an ambitious man and he pushes out the boundaries of his company and takes over some smaller companies.  He builds a new head office and people marvel at his business acumen.  He builds bigger and bigger.  He has a veritable empire. Along the way he sees his competitors and is envious of their activities. He plots and plans and schemes and takes them over, takes what he wants from their businesses (strips their assets) and then casts them aside.  He holds big parties, he meets with the media, and he boasts of his great accomplishments.  He laughs at the thought of God.  He has three houses, a large yacht, a Lear jet, and homes abroad.  He has everything, and then he dies.  In death he finds himself standing before God and realises he is standing in tattered rags and that he has nothing. When asked what right has he to be there, he realises before the openness of God, that he has no answer, he has nothing.  This story is exactly what Jesus described in his parable of the rich fool (Lk 12:15-21).  He starts it with the words, “a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (v.15) and finishes it with, “This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God” (v.21).

We might have thought the man in the story was a wise man, storing up material prosperity, but James thinks otherwise.   Note each of the characteristics of this man as described: if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. These are the characteristics of the world.  These are what the world accepts and even applauds.  These are thing things the world expects from the great and the glorious.  Listen next time when a great entrepreneur, or a pop star, or great politician is on TV.   Listen to their words and observe the characteristics of them.  They think they are wise because, after all, they have arrived haven’t they?  But arrived where?  At a place of spiritual poverty!

Observe James’ description of this sort of ‘wisdom’ that the world applauds: Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. This is not wisdom or the way that comes from God.  This is actually not wisdom at all.  True wisdom only comes from God.  This ‘wisdom’ (which is no wisdom!) is earthly; it has its origins in the selfish, self-centred, godless minds of people who care nothing for God and are only concerned for themselves.  They are unspiritual; there is a complete absence of anything spiritual in their lives.  Their spirit is dead; there is no movement in respect of God.  They are deaf to His words to them and their heart has no concern for Him. They are in fact energized and motivated by the devil.  Now that is strong language you may think, but that is what James says – and so does John: “We know that …. the whole world is under the control of the evil one.” (1 Jn 5:19).  If you do not surrender your life to God, then you are left in the hands of the Lord’s chastising angel, Satan, and he plays on the sinful desires in each unregenerate person, driving them onwards to bigger and better things with their ‘worldly wisdom’, and towards destruction.  The richer they get, the poorer they get, but of course they don’t realize it until they stand before God with nothing.

Note also what James says accompanies this sort of ‘wisdom’: For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. Envy and selfish ambition are the driving forces of this so-called wisdom and wherever it is, when you look into what is going on, you find ‘disorder’.  Disorder is confusion and upset like you have when there is anarchy.  Here is this man working out his schemes and causing upset in other people’s lives and businesses. He is a law unto himself and he ploughs through other people’s lives and activities like a bulldozer, leaving havoc and mayhem in his wake. He causes upheaval on the earth.  Moreover James speaks of every evil practice.  The way this man thinks and works is evil.  Evil just means it is utterly wrong.

Now you may have been reading all these descriptions and my story above, and have thought, “Well I’m glad I’m not like that!”  Well perhaps you aren’t as big a person as the man of my illustration but, in all honesty, is your way of thinking somewhat similar to his?  What genuinely motivates your life?  Is it a genuine desire to please God, and to do things God’s way, or do you struggle and strive, thinking, planning, reasoning and working all hours to achieve material prosperity?  Are you sometimes a little careless about moral integrity when you cut corners or don’t entirely speak the truth in business? You see you may not do it to the extent of the man above, but if you do it even a little bit, there are adjustments to be made according to James.  Check it out.  Be honest.  What is your life like?  Can you honestly stand before God and say you never operate with the ‘worldly wisdom’ we have been considering today?  Ensure that you can!