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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and He will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your 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.
James 4:7-10
This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
There are only two spiritual entities at work in your life in any one day and they operate on polar opposites of one another.
One, Satan (also known as the Devil), wants to lead you to destruction and will do so by making you believe you are actually doing something good and pleasurable while largely playing to your selfish desires by offering what the world gives.
On the other side of things is the Lord God Almighty who longs to bring you an abundant life that comes from fully submitting to His desires, chief of which is gaining salvation through simply believing in His Son Jesus as Savior.
Two powerful spiritual powers at work.
One wants to bring you down while the other wants to lift you up.
With these truths as a backdrop, we turn to our passage from our continued look at the fourth chapter of James. In verses 7 through 10, he writes this:
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and He will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your 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.
We know that James, Jesus’ brother, is writing to his fellow Hebrew Christians and his message here has two parts toward a single purpose.
First, he was encouraging his brother and sister Christians to “submit...to God”, to “come near to” Him because when they did, He would “come near to” them.
Note that this submission required a spiritual change. For in order to submit oneself to God, a double-minded sinner must humble themselves before the Lord and repent, grieving and mourning and wailing with regret over their disobedience. This remorsing would cause them to wash their hands, code for cleansing, and purify their hearts before finding themselves receiving and experiencing the amazing, uplifting grace, mercy, forgiveness, and love of the Lord.
The other part of James’ plea, the one that was just as needed as the first, was to conscientiously and willingly resisting Satan for when a Christian takes a stand in the name of Jesus, the devil will always flee.
Every.Single.Time.
Through this passage, we find the Word of God offering us a fundamental primer for spiritual self defense.
Resist the devil and cause him to flee. Then, submit to God, coming before Him in heartfelt sorrow over your sin and a vowed commitment to turn from it. When you do, He will restore you and lift you back up to a place of favor, the place that every person should always want to be.
The plan is clear and set before us. All we need to do is put it into practice.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.
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