Secrets To Victorious Living
SECRETS TO VICTORIOUS LIVING
James 4:1-10
4 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 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. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
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. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
“God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
There are no victories at discount prices - General Dwight Eisenhower.
In order to have victory in our lives we have to do what it takes to obtain them.
If we want to live a victorious Christian life we must submit to God.
James gives us three secrets to victorious living. First...
I. Pray According to God’s Will (1-3)
A. Because You Ask Amiss
1. James asks "From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?"
a. The word wars refers to fighting without weapons, as in personal conflicts. These conflicts have nothing to do with quarrels with the pagan world; these are quarrels within the church, among believers.
b. The word fights refers to battles with weapons, an armed conflict. It was used figuratively to indicate the struggle between powers, both earthly and spiritual.
2. Obviously, disagreements will occur in every church. But when they happen, are we wise enough to understand why? Do we know their source?
3. Fights and quarrels are being caused, not by some external source, but by the people’s evil desires.
a. When everyone seeks his or her own pleasure, only strife, hatred, and division can result.
b. At war in your members suggests a raging battle fought between the desire to do good and the desire to do evil.
4. In verse 2, James gets to the real heart of the matter. He says "Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not."
a. The craving described here becomes so strong that the people scheme and kill to get it.
b. The word kill can be taken as a figure of speech for bitter hatred.
c. Instead of rethinking their desires, the people being described by James resort to jealousy, fights, quarrels, and worse.
5. In summary, James’s message is: The reason you don’t have what you want is that you don’t ask God for it. In other words, "You don’t have what you desire because you don’t desire God."
6. James says that even when you do ask, you do not receive because "you ask amiss."
a. Our prayers may not get answered because what we are seeking is our will and not God’s will.
b. 1 Jn. 5:14 Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.
B. God’s will must Always Come First
1. We always get ourselves into trouble when we seek our own will over God’s.
3. Seeking our own will leads to: Quarrels, Strife, Heartache, financial trouble
4. When God bolts the door, don’t try to get in through the window. The will of God never will lead you where the grace of God cannot keep you.
If we look after God’s will it always leads us in the right direction.
II. Love God More Than the World (4-5)
A. Friendship with the World
1. James wants to shock these people into reality when he says, "Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God."
a. The shocking words adulterers and adulteresses graphically describe the spiritual unfaithfulness of the people and intend to jar them into facing their true spiritual condition.
b. These believers were trying to love God and have an affair with the world.
2. Some people try to live in two worlds. They want to be a Christian and live according to the ways of the world too.
a. But it won’t work, because friendship with this world makes a person an enemy of God.
b. For believers, the world and God are two distinct objects of affection, but they are direct opposites.
c. The world is the system of evil under Satan’s control, all that is opposed to God. To be friendly with the world, then, is to adopt its values and desires.
3. You cannot live in two worlds. You can’t have one foot in the kingdom and one in the world.
a. 1 Jn. 2:15-17 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world--the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life--is not of the Father but is of the world. 17 And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.
b. 2 Cor. 6:17 Therefore "Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you."
B. Love God Above All Else
1. Col. 1:18 He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first-born from the dead; so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything (NASB).
2. Jesus has got to have first place in our lives.
III. Humble Yourself Before God (6-10)
A. He Gives Grace to the Humble
1. In verse 6, James says "But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble."
2. God sets himself against the proud because pride makes us self- centered and leads us to conclude that we deserve all we can see, touch, or imagine.
3. But humility opens the way for God’s grace to flow into our lives; thus, God shows favor to the humble.
4. A part of humbling ourselves before God is to rely on his strength and not our own. In verse 7, James says "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."
a. “Submit” is a military term “to be subordinated” or “to render obedience.”
b. “Resist” (antistçte) means “take a stand against.” Take a stand against the devil, and he will flee.—Bible Knowledge Commentary
5. But how do we submit to God? James tells us in verse 8: "Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded."
a. We can draw close to God, and God will draw close to us.
b. The command to wash your hands means to purify our actions and change our external behavior.
c. Washing our hands pictures the removal of these things from the way we live.
B. Submit to God
1. The closer we draw to God and humbly submit to his authority in our lives, the closer he comes to us.
2. The closer he comes to us, the more abundant His power is in our lives.
Conclusion
If we want to live a victorious Christian life we must submit to God. We submit to God by:
1. Praying according to His will
2. Loving Him above all else
3. Humbling ourselves before Him