Eps. 186: What's Causing Your Spiritual Disconnection? A Christian Faith Lesson from James 4

Have you ever wondered if pride—not your busy schedule—is what's quietly keeping you from drawing near to God?

If you've been longing for a deeper relationship with Jesus but feel spiritually disconnected, James 4 offers a powerful diagnosis. This passage reveals how pride, selfish ambition, and divided loyalties create distance between us and God—and how humility opens the door to renewed intimacy with Him. Whether you're wrestling with difficult relationships, unanswered prayers, or simply feeling spiritually dry, this episode will help you recognize what's happening beneath the surface and point you toward God's generous grace.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• How pride subtly shapes your prayers, relationships, and spiritual life—and why humility changes everything. 
• What James really means by "friendship with the world" and how to recognize worldly thinking in everyday life. 
• Five practical steps from James 4 to draw near to God and experience the promise that He will draw near to you. 

If you're ready to stop striving and experience a closer walk with God through humility and His abundant grace, press play and discover the pathway James lays out for drawing near to Him.

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A Christian podcast centered on Jesus, the Bible, and God explores faith through the Old Testament and New Testament, sharing Bible stories and Bible explained insights to help women of faith and Jesus followers grow in faith, strengthen their relationship with God, and know God more deeply through Bible study, women Bible study, and practical Christianity, all while encouraging spiritual growth, understanding identity in Christ, and learning to understand Bible teachings to become closer to God.

Transcript

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Hi friends! Welcome to Everyday Faith for Her, formerly Moments to Ponder. If you're a busy Christian mom that feels spiritually disconnected and a bit overwhelmed, yet you desire a deeper relationship with God, then you're in the right place. This podcast is designed to help you understand the Bible and integrate it into your life so you can experience greater peace, purpose, and connection with Jesus. Have you ever wondered why you feel spiritually disconnected even though you love Jesus? James 4 uncovers the heart issues that quietly pull us away from God: selfishness, pride, and divided loyalty. In this episode, we'll discover what true humility looks like, why prayer changes us before it changes our circumstances, and how God's invitation to draw near is a pathway back to a deeper, everyday faith. I'm your host, Betsy Marvin, and this is episode 186. Have you seen that great video of a little girl saying positive affirmations before she leaves for school? I'm smart, I am brave, I am beautiful, I am loved. I love those. Helping children understand their value is so important. Honestly, helping adults remember their value matters too. But there's an interesting tension, isn't there? How do we know who we are without becoming all self-focused? And then how do we have confidence without becoming all prideful? That's where humility comes in. C.S. Lewis said humility isn't thinking less of yourself. It's thinking of yourself less. Humility isn't pretending you're less than you are. It isn't beating yourself up or false modesty. It's just seeing yourself accurately. You are deeply loved by God, completely dependent on God, and called to love others as yourself. He is greater than me. That's exactly what we see in Jesus, and that's a hard bar. The more we've walked through James together, the more I've realized that almost every issue he addresses traces back to two root problems: selfishness and pride. From our words and favoritism to selfish ambition and conflicts, James keeps leading us back to humility because humility changes everything. It's the pathway that we need to draw nearer to God. We continue today in chapter 4 of verse 1. What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don't they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don't have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You're jealous of what others have, but you can't get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don't have what you want because you don't ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don't get it because your motives are all wrong. You want only what will give you pleasure. You've probably witnessed this at one time. There's two one-year-olds and they're playing on a mat, and one has a pacifier. The other one wants it, so she reaches over and just plucks it out of the other baby's mouth and puts it in her own. As the one starts to cry, the other just looks up innocently like, What? I just wanted it. This is what comes to mind as I read these verses. They fight over what they want. They might throw a tantrum to get it. And I mean, if they're toddlers, they'll fight you over wearing shoes if they don't want to wear them. Toddlers are selfish little buggers, and we laugh because, well, they haven't learned to think beyond themselves. James's point here is that many adults never learn this either. And he isn't just describing bad behavior. He's exposing their heart underneath it. Every fight, quarrel, selfish prayer. It begins with a heart that says, my way matters more. So he connects this to prayer by saying prayer isn't a way to persuade God to do what you want, but it is our way to communicate with him. And it's okay to ask for what we need or what we hope for. He wants to give us the desires of our heart, but he does look at our hearts. It was hard. And I felt like God needed to step in and change the minds of the decision people because they were wrong. And honestly, I had my own toddler temper tantrum. And I'm not real proud of it, but I was so mad. I was asking God to do something for me. I wanted him to change them. But my heart honestly was totally being selfish and prideful. And as I prayed about it, God did a work in me. He reminded me that I don't get to change other people. That's his job with them. And he gave me eyes to see my behavior. And in that, he gave me what I needed instead of what I thought I wanted. One purpose of prayer is to align our will with his and in partnership with him, ask him to accomplish his will on earth. Notice it's accomplishing his will, not mine. And as my heart softened and aligned with his, I could see that I needed some growth. And my prayer changed. Instead of, Lord, will you just do what I want? It became Lord, how do I become more like you in this? I kept waiting for God to change them, but instead, he changed me. I wanted him to fix the situation. And he was focused on working on my heart. And honestly, the circumstances didn't change. But how I walked through them did. He goes on in verse 4 to say, You adulterers, don't you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again. If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. So James is saying some pretty strong things here. First, adultery. He's talking about spiritual adultery, and then friendship with the world. So to understand this, I thought it would be helpful to define what James means when he says the world. Because sometimes in the Bible, we say the world and we mean the physical world, like he's got the whole world in his hands. And sometimes the world is referenced to all humanity, for God so loved the world. But James isn't talking about God's creation, and he isn't talking about all humanity or even withdrawing from culture. He's talking about a value system that leaves God out. When you think about what our world celebrates and what our world teaches us, it's all about protecting our image, win the argument, chase success, put yourself first. And we absorb these messages every day without realizing it. It looks like comparing ourselves on social media or needing to win every argument. It's finding our identity in our career or our kids or our success instead of Jesus. And little by little, we begin to think like the world instead of like Christ. And that's exactly what James is warning us about, that we're basically cheating on Jesus and who he's calling us to be by taking up with his enemy. James continues in verse five. Do you think the scriptures have no meaning? They say that God is passionate, that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to him. And he gives grace generously. As the scriptures say, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. I think we should stop a second and sit with this verse. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. God isn't stingy with grace. He's generous with grace and gratefully that he is because he's passionate that we should be faithful in how often do we fall short. Pride simply keeps our hands closed. Where humility opens our hands to be honest about who we are. It isn't as if our humility earns the grace of God. Humility just puts us in the position that we need to be in to receive the gift he freely gives with gratitude. Which brings us to verse 7. So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter and gloom instead of joy. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up in honor. Whenever I come to these verses, I smile because apparently they have spoken to me over and over again throughout the years. A long time ago, I started a habit in my Bible, and every time I come across a verse that has been put to music, I add little musical notes in the margin. I also put arrows in the margin beside verses that have really connected with me through a sermon or devotional or in my own reading. And these verses have both of those things: arrows and musical notes. It's because they say so much. James is answering a question here. How do I draw closer to God? Which is a question you might have as well. He's saying, in all of these things where we show our selfishness and we choose to want to do things our own way, God is so full of grace that he offers us a way to draw closer to him. And this is what James says. He says, first, we need to humble ourselves. Admit that we can't fix ourselves, that we need him. And then resist the devil. Stop going after every temptation, taking action. Stop believing the promises of the world are true. Go after a life with God, right? That's the third one. Come close to God. Spend time with him before you go to everything else. Pray, worship, praise, and pay attention to where he's at work. And as you do that, your heart will be turned. And then you will want to repent. As James says, let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be grief and sadness instead of laughter and joy. Don't make light of sin. Agree with God about the places where your heart has wandered and ask for his grace and forgiveness. And in that, God will lift you up. Trust him to take care of your future instead of trying to control everything yourself. He wants to honor you. Throughout history, believers have noticed something beautiful. The closer we draw to God, the less attractive sin becomes. That's one of the wonders of his love. When James started this chapter, he asked, Why do you quarrel and fight? And by the end, he isn't talking about arguments anymore. He's talking about our hearts. Maybe as we've talked today, you realize that you've been chasing something more than you've been chasing God. Or you've been praying, but mostly asking God to bless your plans instead of asking him to shape your heart. Or maybe you're realizing that you've slowly adopted the world's way of thinking without even realizing it. And thankfully, James doesn't leave us wondering, what do we do? He tells us, humble yourself before the Lord, resist the devil, draw near to God, and repent. And then one of my favorite promises that it's in a song. And he will lift you up. Notice James doesn't say we have to lift ourselves up. We don't have to promote ourselves or prove ourselves because well, a humble person has already settled where their identity comes from. Jesus. Dear one, remember that little girl at the beginning? I am smart, I am brave, I am loved. These are beautiful truths. And James would remind us that our greatest confidence isn't found in repeating who we are, it's found in remembering whose we are. These beautiful truths are truth because of whose we are. Because when we know we belong to Christ, when we allow Him to rule in our hearts, we no longer have to spend time proving ourselves because we are fully loved as we are. Today, before you move on with your day, would you just spend five minutes with God? Don't start with a list of requests. Ask one simple question. Lord, where is pride keeping me from drawing near to you? Then sit quietly and listen for his answer. For when you draw near to him, he draws near to you. May your heart be open to hear what he has to say. You are loved. And if this podcast helped you bridge the gap between biblical truth and everyday living, be sure to follow the show so you don't miss next week's episode as we continue our study through James. If you have a little bit more time, I would love to hear a review, just so others can know where to find me. Thank you so much for joining me.