Friendship with God | James 4:1-12 | Jarryd Cole

Pastor Jarryd continues in the book of James, teaching about how a strong friendship with God guides and helps us today. 

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Transcript

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Welcome to the Ambassador Church Podcast, a church in the city for the city, on Milwaukee's east side. We pray this message meets you where you are, challenges your faith, and draws you closer to Jesus.

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All right, you guys can go ahead and find your seats if you have not found your seats yet. I love it. Lively room. Good to see you guys. Well, hey, welcome again to Ambassador Church. If you have your Bibles, you can go ahead and get those out. You can meet me in the book of James. Um, we're kicking the tires on a new chapter this morning in James, James chapter four. I can't wait to jump into that, but you can meet me there. But as you're getting there, hey, I wanted to remind you that what we're getting in James is what we're calling practical Christianity. Okay, it's wisdom on living the Christian life. And we've said this a lot of times in this series, but it feels like James is kind of throwing us into a ring and he's operating like one of the most challenging sparring partners we can ever have. Okay, if you know boxing. It often feels like you're in a boxing ring going rounds, like you're taking some bumps and bruises. Um, he really doesn't hold anything back if you've been keeping up with this series. But ultimately, what James is doing is he's showing us what it looks like to not just be saved, but to act like it. And as he's speaking, his audience is the Christian, I think we have to notice it's really important. He's speaking to people who already believe in Jesus. He's not speaking to non-believers, like it's not people who are just like rolling up and they want to know about Jesus. No, no, no. These are people who already love and trust Jesus. And what he's saying is that if you claim to believe in Jesus, your life should actually look like it. Your life should look like you believe in Jesus. You see, over the last couple of weeks, a few guys in our church uh they decided, hey, we want to jump into the Bible a little bit more. We want to spend some time in our week reading through the Bible. And so, um, of course, they picked the book of James, right? Because why not? It's it's fitting. And they started a group chat. We jump in this group chat and we're reading, you know, uh a couple verses at a time. And uh guys are writing in the group chat about what they read, confirming they read it, and then they might even add a little bit of commentary. And guys, if you're in the room, like what do you know what's true that you've been reading this book of James? That, like, man, it feels like you've been getting punched in the mouth a little bit. Like, more often than not, that's been the response in the group. It's like, yo, like this was a difficult thing to read. Like, I need to hear this. Like, thank you, James, for like elbowing me on my side a little bit. Okay, this is what we're getting in the book of James. You can feel like that sometime, maybe not even in a group chat, but maybe you're experiencing this as you come here on Sunday mornings and you're just like, man, I feel like I'm being challenged by James. So I've got good news and bad news for you. The good news is this there's only four more weeks left of this series, okay? Amen. The bad news is there's still four more weeks left of this series. And so if you're exhausted, you're getting a little beat up about this, hey, don't worry, but also buckle up, okay? Four more weeks and we'll be out of here. But no, I've not only been challenged by the book of James, but how many of you have also been encouraged by the book of James, too? Like I love the way James just attacks these really practical things. And I'm hoping that you're getting stuff out of it, like I'm getting stuff out of it, and we're growing together in Christ's likeness. And so today we're gonna keep going and we're talking about uh fights and arguments, which I know a room like this, none of y'all ever get in fights and arguments, right? Not the lovely people from Ambassador Church. No, no, no, never. But don't we all tend to get ourselves in fights and arguments? Like, I'm just gonna put this on a limb, and I'm gonna say if you're living and breathing in this room, you could literally raise your hand. And if I went around and gave every single one of you a mic, you could probably tell me a story of this happening in your life, and maybe even one from this week, or maybe even this morning on your ride in. Okay, the minivan ride wasn't that fun this morning for some of us. But you get the point. Like we can sometimes find ourselves in situations where emotions are high, words start flying, and we do and say the things that we shouldn't do. And what ends up happening is feelings start to get hurt. And what's true this morning is James wants to speak into that. And we're gonna attack this passage this morning in four waves. James is gonna show us the source of this fighting, like where this comes from and why we even do it. And the reason, and he's gonna show us the reason for our fighting as well, right? Not just the source of it, where it comes from, but the reason for it, why we do it. And then thirdly, he's gonna show us the diagnosis for our fighting. Like what's wrong, like the getting to the core of it. What's wrong and what's at the core of why we do these kind of things? And then he's gonna prescribe something for our fighting. What can make it right? Okay, so if you're with me, the source of our fighting, the reason for our fighting, the diagnosis for our fighting, and the prescription for our fighting. This is what we're gonna see in James chapter four, in the first several verses, verses one through twelve. If you're in the book of James, chapter four, here's what it says, reading in verse one. James asks this question. He says, What is the source of wars and fights among you? Don't they come from your passions that wage war within you? Okay, the first thing we have to see here is the source of our fighting. And if you're looking at this text, and maybe like you've experienced this kind of fighting and bickering before in your life, and James is saying something that you don't readily agree with at the moment. Like you ask the question, where does the fighting come from? How does this like elevate itself into my life? And tell the truth, don't we always just want to point outside to other people and other things and say, hey, that's the reason why I'm in this state right now. That's the reason why I'm fighting. It's you, it's you, it's you. But no, what James is saying, like, these are rhetorical questions, y'all. We've talked about these questions before in the book of James, and James is adding more even uh to the plethora of questions he asks in this book. And he's asking, what is the source of these fights among you? And he says, Don't they come from your passions that wage war within? Listen, he's not wanting answers to these, he already has them. And if we're honest in a room, we would say we already know the answer to these questions too. But James makes it clear, okay? He wants us to know that, like, it's not from anything out there, but it's from something in here. Like, I even had a real-time illustration for this just this week. Um, my wife and I were talking, okay. And if you're married in the room, you know this. It's just true. Isn't it difficult and hard to understand that the people closest to you are often the people you hurt the most? And just this week, you know, we're waking up, we're starting our morning, and you know, my wife lets me know. Like she's been working out, she's doing a great job, she's feeling a little bit sore, and she lets me know, and man, my shoulder's still hurting a little bit, you know. And instead of me being the good husband that I could have been and been like, Well, what do you need? What can I get for you? You need any medicine? Can I give you a massage? I said, Oh, still? I said, It's still hurting. And I even said, Is it still hurting? I said, it's always hurting, and what else is hurting, right? Like I even got pressed even deeper, right? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Can you just give it up for Trish really quick? Because she deals with this, okay, on a daily basis. But I want to let you know, because if you had in your mind that I was on some kind of pedestal and that I don't wrestle with these kind of things, okay, just know that's not true at all. So don't do that from your seats, all right? But some of y'all can relate to this because you know that the people closest to you are often the people that get the worst of you. And James wants to inform us that the source of the fighting and the quarrels that happen among us don't come from anything out there, they come from within. And we got to look at the reason for this. Look at verses two through three. The reason for a fighting. James says, here's the reason. You desire and you do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and wage war, you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and you don't receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your own pleasures. See, basically, what James is saying is the reason why we fight is because we have this mindset that everything around me should be how I want it, and it should be how I want it right now. I thought that that morning early, I was getting interrupted in my sleeve, and I didn't want to deal with anything that my wife had to say. The war came within. It wasn't anything that she said, it wasn't anything that she did, but it was the war already within, the interruption that I felt in my life. And James is saying that this is often what it is. Like we tend to want things our way, and we tend to want things our way right now. And here's what's true about the culture we live in right now. We live in a culture that's kind of like a microwave culture. Like we want to have access to everything, and we want access to it right now, and we want it our way right now at this moment. Like you turn on the news, you look at your phones, and everything is curated towards you, for you, right now, in this moment. So anytime you experience any kind of like objection to your life or any obstacle in your life, and that thing wells up hatred and pain, and you start to well up with frustration, and then things come out of your mouth, and you say things, like James is saying that stuff comes from within. That's not directly a result of what's without. He says it comes from the desires that you already have. And I want us to hear this too, a little caveat that all desires are not created equal. Because there are some good desires. You could read this and be like, well, James, like, should I not care about anything? Or should I just go along to be along? Should I desire anything in my life? And I think it's important for us to pull over a little bit and talk about the difference between desires and demands. Okay, because there's some good desires. Like a desire for you as a family, maybe the desire you have is that you would love to eat dinner as a family most days of the week. That's a great desire. Or maybe you have a birthday coming up, you're a birthday celebration person, and you would love to just celebrate your birthday on your actual birthday. That's a good desire, okay? Like desire is something that you want to happen. That is okay. But we start to err when the desires seep into demands. And the demand is this it's something you expect to happen, and when it doesn't, your whole world gets thrown off. Y'all, we need to know that demands are the place that that relationships go to die. Relationships can't stand in demands. Like, especially when the people around us don't even know. Like they don't even know, they're not aware of the things that we're even wanting. Like sometimes fights happen in our lives because we're expecting the world to go the way that we want it to go. But not only that, we're expecting the people in our lives to be like mind readers. We want them to just know and be like, hey, you, I want to appease you and I'm gonna read your mind, I'm gonna give you what you want right here and right now. Like appeasing other people's desires, like if you're married in a relationship, you have kids, like that stuff is really, really good. But we start to err when we make those things demands and we say this or else. And maybe it doesn't come out of our mouth, but the way that we act and respond to the people around us, maybe that's communicating the same thing. Married people in the room, people dating, can I help you just for a moment? Communicated expectations will sometimes get met, but uncommunicated expectations will never get met. Like you have desires. I love what James says. He says, like, you don't have because you don't ask. And you don't have because you ask with the wrong motive. Like these are the kind of things that are true. I think we can take these to heart. This is wisdom for when it comes to our own desires and things that we have, that desires aren't bad in and of themselves, but when desires creep into demands, man, those are relationship killers. And here's the problem. Like, we think in 2026 America that we are much more deserving of things than we really are. Because what's true, y'all, if I had it my way, it would be 70 degrees and sunny every single day, all year round. The Chiefs would win the Super Bowl, they would have three-peeded, right? And then four-peeded and five-peated, like that would have been the thing that they would do. My wife would laugh at all of my jokes, you know, and she would agree with all of my ideas. Um if I had it my way, this is how it would be. But can I tell y'all what this is? This is pride that wells up in our hearts. So the Greek word that's translated as pride in the New Testament appears exclusively in an unfavorable sense. And here's what it means: it means being a haughty or being arrogant, and it's always in relation to people. And the thing about it is that God unanimously hates pride. Like pride in all of its forms is a stench to God. And the thing about pride is that every single one of us in the room, we struggle with this. If you're wondering if I'm talking about you right now, I'm definitely talking about you. Okay. And you might be like looking at me and you're like, I'm mad, you just called me prideful. If you're the one mad I just called prideful, then you're probably more prideful than most, honestly. See, the question isn't if you're prideful, the question is what triggers the pride that's in you? What is the thing that you guard so closely that no one can speak into? What is the idea that you never bring up in conversation because you're afraid to hear no? Or what is the thing that when you bring it up and it gets challenged, it makes you feel ready to run? Or maybe even ball up your fists. Like that thing, like what you experience when that happens, that's likely pride in you. If you remember from last week, we talked about worldly wisdom versus godly wisdom. And what James is doing is he's basically coming back to that right now and saying the source of our fights among us comes from our own desires as we reach for and search for worldly wisdom over godly wisdom. Remember, worldly wisdom is defined by bitter envy and selfish ambition. And so when we operate in a way where we are at the center of our own lives, which is so easy for us to do in today, the inevitable result is what James was saying last week in James 3, verse 16 that the result will inevitably be disorder in every evil practice. And y'all, that evil practice, that disorder is all birthed out of pride. Looks like raging wars within that results in fighting and petty disagreement because you didn't get what you want. That's what James is saying. But there's something even deeper at the root of this. Like James doesn't just tell us what's at the source of our fighting or what the reason is for our fighting, but he even diagnoses it. Look at verse four. He continues, James says, You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hostility towards God? And so whoever wants to be the friend of the world becomes the enemy of God. Like, hear what James is saying. He's saying, Oh, here's how you kind of diagnose this. He's saying the reason why you're doing this isn't just because of something theoretically. He says, No, no, no, you're doing this because you're friends with the world. Your highest allegiance isn't with me, it's to the world. This is why you're doing this. He says, You're more a friend of the world than you are of God. And I want to talk about this idea of friendship with the world for a moment, because I don't mean like not having non-Christian friends. Okay, like I think as believers, we need non-Christian friends. If you're in here and you're like, man, I just like my Christian bubbles and my Christian friends and my groups and whatever, like, those are really good to have. But man, some of us, it would do well if we had some people in our lives who actually didn't believe in Jesus. One, so that we can evangelize to them, but two, so that we can learn how to be people of grace and not be so easily angered. He says, When you're a friend in the world, you're saying you love more of the world has to offer than what God has to offer. And what James is doing is drawing this line and saying the way the people of God were accused of going the ways of the world instead of the ways of God back in the day is the same thing that we're doing right now. And what that does is it brings hostility between us and God. And I want to back up for a minute because James uses some strong language as he's bringing this up, doesn't he? He makes this strong accusation. You can read it right there in the text. He says, You adulterous people. And he says this because he's making a direct connection to the people he's talking to, to the people of Israel back in the day. And back in the Old Testament, you can read it in so many of those books. These prophets are talking to the people of God in Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Hosea, and they use this strong language of like, hey, you adulterous people. And so what James is doing as someone who's been endowed to speak the word of God in a prophetic way, he's saying the same things to the people that he's talking to. And I think it'd be wise if we took heed of this with us as well. And y'all, I know it's strong language, but what he's doing is basically telling us that we can't have two lovers when it comes to God. Or maybe to keep it PG for the kids in the room, we can't have two besties, okay, when it comes to God. You see, it's kind of like claiming a friend that you don't really enjoy or even spend time with. Like imagine saying someone is your best friend, but nobody around you would ever know that to be true. Like this person might have been at your wedding, maybe they know your story, maybe they're someone like you call when you need help. Maybe your life is falling apart, your life is a mess. These are the people that you call. Or maybe you reach back out to them when you need a reference letter, you need someone to help you move. Your car is broken down, you need something, and maybe in the middle of the night, maybe you have a ton of kids, you need to take one to the emergency room, you need someone to come and sit with your kids for a minute, maybe these are the people that you call. You call them your best friend, and you know what this person does? They show up every single time. But when it comes to just hanging out or doing the things where you're having an easy time, you're laughing, you're enjoying food, you're kicking it back, you're having a good time, like this person, although you would say is your best friend, ends up becoming the last person that you would ever call. And maybe sometimes you even think about inviting them in, but in the back of your mind, you know that you would never do that. Why? Because your real friends would never approve. And the thing about friends like this is that days and months and years, like all of this can pass by before you even think about reaching out to these people again. And Christian, this is sometimes the way that we can treat God, and we need to know that if this is the way that we treat God, this is how you know your friendship is more with the world than it is with him. If the only time you call on God is when you're in need or when you're scared, but never have any consistent devotion to him, that's not a friend. Like everybody's a Christian when they're desperate. Like James is looking at the people who love Jesus who should be able to identify as friends of God, but he accuses them of something else, of being enemies of God, saying, You're not his friend, you might be an acquaintance at best. James wants to know you can't be at home living life absent from God and claim intimate friendship with him at the same time. God would never co-sign on that. And he even tells us, look at verse 5. He continues, or do you think it's without reason that the scripture says, here it is, the spirit he made to dwell in us, underline this word, envies intensely. He says, God is a jealous God. And I know this might fly in the face of us in the room today because if you were here last week, we talked about envy and jealousy a little bit. But that's bad. But here it says, God, okay, he's envious, he's jealous. Yes, God is envious and jealous. But we have to know his jealousy isn't like human jealousy, his envy and jealousy is not like ours. See, our jealousy is rooted in bitterness, it's rooted in I don't have what you have, and so I want what you have and I want to get it, right? Like, this is how we tend to see envy and jealousy, but God's is different because God's jealousy, we can even call it a righteous jealousy. Why? Because it's not rooted in what he doesn't have, it's not rooted in covetousness, it's rooted in what he already does have. Like he's the God of the universe, he lays claim to everything, he created everything, including you. There's nothing in this world that doesn't belong to him. And so people in the room need to know that you are God. He made you, he loves you, he desires a relationship with you, and he actually has right to have and ask that of you. He's jealous, he's envious, not of things that he doesn't have, but things that are rightfully his. That's the difference between our jealousy and his jealousy. We look at what we don't have and we're like, man, we want that. God says, looks at what's already his and he says, You better not. You better not serve any other gods. You better not go there. And he doesn't do it holding you up, shaking everything out your pockets, but he does it saying, Hey, they can't love you like I can. They won't give it to you. The thing that I have for you, I'm always here. I've never turned my back on you, I've never looked away from you, I've never turned my ear from you, I've heard everything. Single word that you said, he said, I'm always here. You better not. So, non-believers in the room, the reason why Christians are so passionate about the exclusivity of Jesus and want you to come to know him is because of this right here. And the reason why your Christian friends kind of like drag you to church and they bring you around their weird friends is because they're trying to show you where you rightly belong. You belong in the family of God. And believers in the room, here's what's true: the reason why God takes it so seriously when you sin and when you run after other things is because your actions that go against him are a violation of the covenant that he's made with you. He's committed to you forever and always for the long haul. And when we don't choose that, we choose the world over God, we're spitting in his face. But I love where James goes next. Because if you're in the room right now and you're feeling kind of heavy because you're realizing right now you might be more of a friend of the world than you are a friend of God. You claim Christianity, you say Jesus is your savior, and yet you are more marked by the things of the world than you are by the things of heaven. Look at what James says in verse 6. He says, But he gives greater grace. I love this text. Because James tells you all of these things, he weighs you down with pain, maybe, maybe some of the law. He's like, Hey, this is what's true of you, but then he also rescues you with grace. And this is how you know James loves his brother Jesus. Because he's saying if you're feeling this way, the thing that God has for you is grace. And not just grace, but more and more and more grace. He gives you greater grace. Like if you never heard the gospel before, this is it. That Jesus Christ went to the greatest depth he could ever go to show you sinful humanity who have no business being in relationship with him that hey, I want nothing more but relationship with you. He died. He went to the cross, hung his body high, his body torn, blood poured down, he was buried in the grave, rose again as if to say to you, Hey, um, death couldn't defeat me. And if death can't defeat me, the thing that's formidable and everything else, like there's nothing in your life that can keep me away from you either, and I'm running hard and I'm coming after you, and there's nowhere you can go, there's nowhere you can hide. Grace, grace and grace for this morning, for last night, for this past week, for tomorrow, for five years from now. Grace, grace, and more grace. This is what God has to offer you. Jesus makes a way and gives us the Holy Spirit to make it possible for us to go from being friends with the world and enemies of God to friends with God and enemies with the world. Which leads us to our last point, the prescription. Look at the rest of verse 6. It says that, hey, God gives greater grace. And he also includes Nation James says, he says, therefore he says, God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Here is the prescription. It's humility. Like if you want to do something with a diagnosis to the reasons why we fight and quarrel from the source of the raging desires within us, James says it's to pursue humility. He's even gonna unpack this for us in the rest of our text. You're gonna see it pop up here on the screen. Look at verse 7. James says, Therefore, in light of all he has just said, okay? Here's the source of your fights, here's the reasons for it, here's the here's the diagnosis of it. And now he's prescribing, he's saying, therefore, because of all that I just said, listen, submit yourself to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and war and mourn and weep, and let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. Basically, what James is saying, he's not saying like you have to like become this super completely somber person. But mind shift, mental shift in order to submit yourself to God. The first prescription on how we become humble and our state before God is that we submit ourselves to him. And we don't see ourselves as the primary means to our own lives, and we don't desire for the world to rotate around us, but no, we say, Hey, God, what are you like? What do you want? And how do I submit myself to you and your desires, not my own? How do I exalt you and not myself in my own life? We submit to God. But then he continues, verse 11. He says, Don't criticize one another, brothers and sisters. Anyone who defames or judges a fellow believer defames and judges the law. And if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge. But he says, There is only one lawgiver and only one judge who was able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? If the first prescription to humility is to submit to God, the second one is this is to give God his throne. You are not the judge, jury, and executioner, executioner of this life. That belongs to one person, one person only, and it belongs to God. And we need to know that even if our pride can be the thing that dethrones God, dethroning him in the place of being the judge also takes God off the throne of our lives. So if we want the prescription, it's humility. And the way we pursue humility is two parts. One, we submit to God, and two, we give God back his throne. In other words, you go from being a friend of the world and hostile towards God to being a friend with God and hostile towards the world through humility. You submit to God and you give him back his throne. And this is through the Holy Spirit, the power of him within you. Christians in the room, this is the sanctifying work that is before you for the rest of your life. You working in tandem with God to help it be so that you are becoming more aligned with God and his views and less like the world in its views, and even some of your own views in your flesh. Friends of God submit themselves to God and friends of God, let God have his throne. So for the rest of the time, I just want to give us really quickly practically four ways to strengthen our friendship with God. You should be asking this question. Like, if this is true, and this is why we fight and argue, and these are the sources and the reasons and the diagnosis and the prescription, okay. Well, then how do I enter into a way, especially if I'm a Christian, how do I strengthen my friendship with God? The first one's gonna pop up here on the screen, and it's this is to seek God in unhurried prayer. The first thing we need to do is be people of prayer. And I know in a room like this, like there's so many people in here who maybe don't have a habit of prayer. Listen, prayer doesn't have to be this all-encompassing mountain that you have to climb to be like, okay, man, I finally did it. But prayer, if it's diligent, if it's sincere, and if it's unhurried, like God honors that. And sometimes maybe all you have to pray is a one-breath prayer. God help me. God, save, God, I need you. These are prayers of humility, and they're unhurried, and God is desiring to hear those from you, and he will even answer those, he will come alongside you. The primary place that we need to go is to carry our desires before Jesus in prayer. We need to seek him in unhurried prayer. And the challenge for some of you in the room who maybe do pray. What is your rhythm of prayer like? Do you go to God only when life feels hard, only when you feel like you need him, or do you go to him in devotion as well? Do you go to him when you don't even need anything? And I get it because sometimes we go to God and we think, hey, God isn't really listening to me right now. God feels like he's closed his ear to me. It feels like God's turned his back. Let me tell you something. God would never do such a thing. Even whenever you feel like our prayers aren't being answered, trust me, Christian, your prayers are being heard and they are being answered. The problem is it just may not be the answer that you want. God can say yes to your prayers, he can say no to your prayers, he can say not yet to your prayers, or he can say not exactly to your prayers. All of us know this. But yet He is answering. And yet, if you have something on your heart that is causing quarrels and fights to war up in you or discontentment to war up in you, like God actually invites you to continue praying for those things. And even if you're not seeing the results that you want, God even still invites, keep asking, keep asking, keep asking, petition unhurried, keep asking, keep asking. You don't know why your life is the way it is, you don't know why you're experiencing the pain that you're experiencing, and God's like, that's okay. But you can still be prescribed humility, and in that, you can still come to God in prayer, unhurried prayer. You can strengthen your friendship with God that way. The second way you can do it is you consult godly wisdom about your desires. Be ruthless about what and who you allow to form your desires. What media are you listening to and watching? What unchecked ambitions do you have? What unchecked comparison do you have in your life? You can strengthen your friendship with God by consulting godly wisdom around you, godly men and women who you know love God and who also love you, people you can trust and go to. Like sometimes friendship with God, the barrier between that and the world is vulnerability with people who you know love you and desire to love and care for you. You can go to them and ask them and ask for godly wisdom about the things that you're wrestling with, even in your own soul. The third thing is this you can build genuine personal friendships, friendships with people who you know love you. They can correct you and they can even give you advice and you can actually listen. This is different from the second one. Those are more like mentors. These ones are more like associates, these are buddies or people you need to lock arms with, men and women who can walk this life with you, and they can correct you, they can challenge you, they see you in every element of your life. And they can speak to you in ways that most people can't speak to you. You build genuine friendships like that, people who don't collar your sin, but they help you name it, and they help you even grieve it. They call it out maybe your wrongful desires that you haven't really dealt with before, but friends like this can come alongside you and be able to say, Hey, I can name it, I can help you name it. But not only that, I can walk alongside you, we can grieve this together. We need genuine personal friendships. And lastly, we need to make our plans in sand. Sometimes we have wars that rise up because of our desires and fights that rise up because of our desires, because we're just holding our lives a little too tightly. We want this and we want this right now. We've already got it on the calendar. We've already written it down in our journals, we already have it planned out for the next five, ten years. We're planning people like that. But if we want to strengthen our friendship with God, sometimes the best thing you can do is make your plans in sand. Hold your life, hold your calendar, hold the things that you dearly want loosely, your goals, all of that. Hold it loosely, humbly before God. Like I guess I might desire this, but I know your desires are better than mine. And if I seek you, I may not get what I want, but I'll get what I need. I'll get what you want for me. This is how we grow in our friendship with God. And as you do these things, listen, I trust that the passions that wage war within you, the things that cause fights with others, the things that help you give over the worldly wisdom instead of godly wisdom that fill you up with bitter envy and selfish ambition, all of these kinds of things, I believe they will start to die. As we move closer towards friendship with God, and this is the key takeaway for the morning: friendship with God is the antidote to your worldly passions and the wars that wage within. So I wonder what our fighting would look like if we took these seriously and we prioritize friendship with God over friendship with the world. Could you imagine the peace that could come over you? Could you imagine the storms that God could cause? If you just drew near to him, if you submitted to him, if you let him rule and not yourself rule, could you imagine the peace that could well up in your soul? Could you imagine the peace that maybe be able to settle over the environment surround you, the atmosphere you naturally carry? Could you imagine the peace that could come over you if you pursued friendship with God over friendship with the world? Fights would cease. I think your soul would finally find risk. I want to speak for the non-believer in the room right now because you're hearing a message on friendship with God and all this kind of stuff. Let me tell you something. I love you too much to hear right now to tell you that if you don't claim Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you don't have friendship with God at all. None of that is for you. So I think the biggest fight that you might be fighting right now, just sitting in these seats, is the fight you are fighting. About not submitting yourself to God for the first time. Of you looking at the cross, of you looking at the empty tomb, of you looking at what he's done for you and the grace that he has for you when you say, I'm good. I reject that. I'd rather run my own life. Listen, if that's you in the room, that is your biggest fight that you're fighting right now, and I want to submit to you that you can lay that down today. You can walk out of here with ultimate peace in you right now. You can give your life to Jesus and know that come what may, at the end of the day, at the end of your life, you will enter into eternal peace. Even if your life on this side of the journey doesn't change one bit, you can know and trust that what God has to offer you is eternal peace with Him forever and always. It's what you have. When you relinquish yourself, you stop fighting and you give yourself to Jesus. For some of us, that's the greatest fight we're fighting right now. And I'm pleading, I'm begging with you, would you drop your arms? Would you put down the weapons? Would you fall on your knees and would you submit to God and worship his son, King Jesus, and say, Hey, I have sinned. I'm a sinner. Jesus, I believe you are Lord, and I believe you can take away my sin. Would you do that? And I vow to follow you for the rest of my life. This is all it takes. You don't have to come up here and have me lay hands on you. You don't have to come up here saying a special prayer, but you can do it right there, even in your seat. Once you submit to God, you make a proclamation with your mouth, you believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead. Salvation is yours. The fight is over. Jesus has won, conquered, it is finished forever and always. Eternal peace for you. This can be yours. So I'm begging, hey, friendship with God is the best thing that we can have. And it starts to lay to rest the wars and the fights that we have that war within. We people who pursue that. Would you pray with me? Father, we love you. And we're grateful for this morning. We're grateful for your son. God, we thank you that you see us, you love us, you pursue us, and you never leave us. You desire nothing but relationship with us. You want intimacy with us, you want proximity to us, and yet the most consistent thing that's true about us is that we run from you and we push you away. And yes, you are still running after us. God, we're grateful. And we meditate on the fact that you give greater grace. So with the Spirit of God, fill this place with greater grace. And with the people in this room, under my voice, feel the greater grace of God. The grace that yes causes us to believe in Jesus Christ, but also the greater grace that causes us to live a life that honors Jesus. People who hear the prescription of humility and actually desire the prescription of humility to submit to God and to give him his throne. Father, we believe you'll honor us and you will help us see the peace that comes from that. So we beg you and plead you. The only way that we don't have a God, would you do it because you can do all things? And we pray this in your mighty Son in Jesus' name. Amen and amen.

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Thanks for listening to the Ambassador Church Podcast. To learn more, visit ambassadormke.org or follow us on Instagram at AmbassadorMKE. If you're in the Milwaukee area, we'd love to see you this Sunday at 9 or 11 a.m. at 2308. Grace in peace.