As I prepare my sermon each week, I spend time in prayer and wrestling with what God is saying to me and what I believe He wants me to say to you. Often, this leads to a lot of material. Since I am immersed in the text, the points seem obvious to me. However, I fail to recognize that though I am familiar with the text, this may not be so with everyone else. Hence, yesterday Margie said I flew through the last part of my sermon – which is the most important. Yikes!
So, I want to share with you my thoughts from James 4:7-12:
1) Submit to God. Submitting means that God is in charge and we are not. Our example is Christ, Himself submitting to the Father’s will. Hudson Taylor once said, “God uses men who are weak and feeble enough to lean on Him.”
2) Resist the devil. When we fight the devil, the scripture says that he will flee from us. Paul reminds the Ephesians that when we put on the whole armor of God, we can stand against the devil and his schemes.
3) Draw near to God. Spending time in His word (study and scriptures) and in His presence (prayer) keeps us close to God and God close to us.
4) Cleanse your hands. Just like washing our hands before we eat, it is important to cleanse our bodies from the filth of sin. This begins with repentance, asking God to forgive us of our daily failings.
5) Purify your hearts. The Bible says that the heart is more wicked than anything. King David asks God in Psalm 51 to create in him a clean heart and renew a right spirit within him. We need the help of the Holy Spirit to transform our lives to become more Christ-like.
6) Embrace brokenness. We live in a time and place where we are taught to be self-sufficient and self-reliable. This often leads to pride and arrogance – the idea that we really don’t need God because we control everything. The fact is, we often make more messes than solutions. Embracing brokenness means that we weep for the sins that are currently defining our nation – and our churches.
7) Humble yourself. Being humble is not a weakness. It takes a powerful person to lower themselves to allow others to succeed. We want to be smart, strong, important, but Jesus shows us that when we serve we are strong. Humbling ourselves shows that we are not self-sufficient, but that we rely on the power and provision of God to help us in all of our endeavors.
8) Don’t speak evil against one another. I remember a song we used to sing in elementary school, “If you can’t say something nice, Shh. Say nothing!” The things that frustrate us about some people may be the same things in us that need to die. Jesus said to take the plank out of our eye before we talk about the splinter in someone else’s eye.
9) Refuse to judge others. This follows number eight. Our society is filled with the blame game. He said/She said scenarios take place daily and are destroying any opportunity for unity. What’s even more disturbing with regard to this trend is that it is happening in the church. What Bible you use, how you Baptize, how you treat others, our church is bigger and better because…, all show that even our churches are not immune to the idea of judging others. Instead of fighting our common enemy, we continue to fight one another.
10) Let God be the judge. Do we really know more than God? Sadly, we often act like we do. We don’t know everything that someone is going through and yet we often make quick, snap judgments. There is only one judge and lawgiver and we are not Him.