SUBMIT YOURSELVES TO GOD JAMES 4:1-12

SUBMIT YOURSELVES TO GOD

   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.  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.

   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.  Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the Spirit He caused to live in us envies intensely?  But He gives us more grace.

   That is why Scripture says:

           God opposes the proud

                     but gives grace to the humble.

   Submit yourselves, then, to God,  resist the Devil, and he will flee from you.  Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify hour 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.

   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?   James 4: 1-12  (NIV)

COMMENTARY FROM LIFE APPLICATION STUDY BIBLE NIV:

   Conflicts and disputes among Believers are always harmful.  James explains that these quarrels result from evil desires battling within us--we want more possessions, more money, higher status, more recognition.  When we want badly enough to fulfill these desires, we fight in order to do so.  Instead of aggressively grabbing what we want, we should submit ourselves to God, ask God to help us get rid of our selfish desires, and trust Him to give us what we really need.

   James mentions the most common problems in prayer:  not asking, asking for the wrong things, asking for the wrong reasons.  Do you talk to God at all?  When you do, what do you talk about?  Do you ask only to satisfy your desires?  Do you seek God's approval for what you already plan to do?  Your prayers will become powerful when you allow God to change your desires so that they perfectly correspond to His will for you.

SUMMING IT UP

   It sounds to me like this is describing the difference between asking God for a Mercedes Benz versus asking Him to take away lustful desires for someone who is not your spouse.  It sounds like we are to focus on what is important to God and advancing His Kingdom rather than on what is favored in this world.  After all, we are just passing through.