The next few passages from the Book of James give a certain standard to Christian living. As we have said in the beginning of this series on this book, James did not beat around the bush, but he said it as it is and should be.
“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,” (James 4:1-3).
Maybe we think that we do not quarrel and fight, neither do we kill. Don’t we? James wrote to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations and I don’t know what they were like in those days, but I can imagine that people may have become more civilised since then, or so we think. We may not be physically violent anymore, but we certainly still fight and kill very skilfully with our tongue and in our thought life, and we certainly do covet at times. I think this passage is a case of ‘if the cap fits, wear it’.
The message behind this passage is once again the choice between our desires and the Lord’s desires, or the choice between a lifestyle dictated by our sinful nature and Mammon and one dictated by the Holy Spirit. It cannot be stressed enough – we need to understand that in dedicated living for the Lord we need to get rid of everything that is not of God. James said in this passage that the way we try to accomplish what we want is by employing every crafty skill our sinful nature can come up with, whilst the way we should accomplish what we want is by asking the Lord to provide it.
However, this is where the prosperity preachers miss the point. We cannot bargain with God. To Him everything is about His Kingdom and our righteousness with Him. If we want our material needs met for the sake of our own pleasure, we will have to do it the carnal way and miss out on our heavenly treasure (Matthew 6:19-20). But if we ask the Lord for things that will help us in serving His Kingdom, or if we live dedicated to Him and ask for our daily needs to be met, He will do it. “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him,” (1 John 5:14-15).
When you look at all your needs and wants and have to evaluate them, which of them would you say classify as God’s will and which as your selfish desires asked with wrong motives? Maybe we should all do this prayerfully. We should have a check on ourselves and our motives all the time. Remember “the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want,” (Galatians 5:17). By doing what we want we “store up for ourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal” and by asking and doing according to God’s will we “store up for ourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal,” (Matthew 6:19-20).
I realise we seem to play the same tune a lot, but if you read the Bible this is the tune the Bible plays. A preacher once preached the same message every Sunday and after a while the people started questioning him as to why he didn’t change the subject.
‘Have you started to do what is required of you through the message,’ the preacher asked, ‘for if you haven’t I have to continue until you do?’
Lord, help me to focus on you and your Kingdom and do what is required of me.
Thank you Lord that your Word went out from your mouth, via your servant’s pen, and it will not return to you empty, but will accomplish what you desire and achieve the purpose for which you sent it.
Please pass this on if you think others may benefit by it.
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