James: A Faith That Lives

• does not equal getting old, gaining knowledge or understanding theology.

James 4:1 NIV

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?

James 4:2 NIV

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.

James 4:3 NIV

When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. 

James 4:4 NIV

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.

James 4:5 NIV

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

James 4:6 NIV

But He gives more grace. That is why Scripture says:

“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

James 4:7 NIV

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

James 4:8 NIV

Come near to God and He will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded. 

James 4:9 NIV

Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and you joy to gloom.

James 4:10 NIV

Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will lift you up.

1. The invitation is to come .

• The way forward begins when we stop fighting for control and begin surrendering to the One who loves us perfectly. 

2. Recognize the danger of a heart.

• We can’t move forward in deeper maturity with a divided heart. 

3. Understand that God’s grace is greater than our . 

• The humble heart is not the heart that never struggles. It is the heart willing to come to God in the middle of the struggle. 

4. Submit to God.

• Spiritual submission is the voluntary act and choice to surrender one’s will, rights and all control to God. 

5. Draw near to God with a heart.

• Surrender is not losing your life to God.  It is placing your life in the hands of the One who knows how to lead it best.