James | April 27, 2026

Start your day with a short, Scripture-centered devotional from Paul Michael. In about seven minutes, you will hear the Word, reflect on its truth, and be encouraged to live it out in everyday life.

James 4:1-10

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Transcript

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Welcome to Your Daily Devotional with Me, PMB. Today we're going to be in James chapter 4, verses 1 through 10. James 4, 1 through 10. Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? What James is saying is a lot of the problems in our lives and the wars and the fights that we have come from our own evil desires. He's saying, you lust and do not have, you murder and covet and cannot obtain, you fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask, and you do not receive because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. This is a picture of somebody just fighting and striving, and yet they can't get their end goal that they have in mind. They can't obtain what they want, but what they're reaching for and what they're striving for is really something that is not good for them. It is born out of selfish desires. There's things that would really bring about destruction in their lives. Many of the problems that we have in our lives come out of these selfish, self-centered desires that are not of God, but are what we think will satisfy and fulfill us if we can just get them. And we often create all kinds of problems around us and are striving to achieve these things. Then in verse 4, James gets really direct. Verse 4, he says, adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. I mean, James is coming in hot here. He's saying, look, if you want to keep pursuing the things of this world, you are making yourself an enemy of God. In the Old Testament, this term adulterers and adulteresses, this phrase, it became an idiom for the people's spiritual immorality, for their waywardness, that they were supposed to be faithful to God, but they turned aside, they served the gods of the other nations around them. They left the one true living God and they gave their hearts to others. And so God called them adulterers and adulteresses because they were unfaithful to him. This is the history, this is the context that James is drawing upon. And again, he's writing to believers who are being persecuted for their faith. They've been scattered abroad, if you remember, from James chapter 1, but he's not giving them an inch. He's saying, look, just because you've been persecuted, just because you're going through hard times for your Christian faith, it doesn't give you a license to sin. You still need to pursue the Lord, to follow him, to dedicate yourself to him, to give him your heart. God wants you. Then he continues on, he says in verse 5, or do you think the scripture says in vain, the spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously, but he gives more grace. Therefore, he says, God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. What he's saying here is that God is yearning for us to know him, to be with him. It's not that God is jealous like some teenager sitting there pining away, looking, scrolling at Instagram for someone who's rejected them and saying, I wish they would just accept me. Let me see who they're hanging out with now. Now, no, God doesn't need us. He doesn't need anyone, he doesn't need anything. God wants us, he chooses us. And God knows that when we go after these lesser things, we are choosing what is not good for us. So God, in loving us and knowing what is best for us, knows He is best for us, and He desires for us to have Him. He desires for us to have what is best, and God does not like it when we settle for lesser things. But it also says that God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. Our pride is what keeps us often from recognizing that God is the best, that He is actually all that we need, from going to Him first, from pursuing Him with all that we are. But God gives grace to the humble. If we will turn and repent and humble ourselves before God, He is there to restore. And then verse 7 says, Therefore submit to God, resist the devil, and He'll flee from you. To submit, to surrender ourselves to God is where we find the victory. It's as we give ourselves over to Him that He fights the battle for us. But we're told to resist the devil. It's not complete inaction on our part. We're still told to resist, but we resist His temptation, we resist His whisperings in our ear. We resist that desire to go it alone, to have these other gods. And as by the power of the Holy Spirit we resist, God fights our battles for us. He defeats Satan on our behalf. Therefore, submit to God, resist the devil, he'll flee from you, draw near to God, he'll draw near to you. That's what God is wanting. He's wanting you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, purify your hearts, you double-minded. This is the imagery of repentance, turning from what you once followed and the sin that had you entangled and following God, giving yourself over to Him. Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. In other words, genuinely repent over your sin. God, it's not just that I'm sorry, it's that God, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to be different. That's true repentance. Help me, Lord Jesus, by the power of your spirit in me, to be different. I am grieved by my sin. I want the course of my life to be changed. Then he says, humble yourself in the sight of the Lord and He will lift you up. That's our last verse. Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord and He will lift you up. The battle's not yours, it belongs to the Lord. And what God has called you to do is to humble yourself before him, confessing your sin, acknowledging your sin, not hiding it, not making excuses for it, saying, God, this is what I did. Help me to be different. I don't want to do this anymore. Help me to change. But the way that we change is not by trying harder, it is by really giving ourselves over to the Lord. Our hearts, drawing near to him, is the language that James uses. We draw near, we press into him, we love him, we give ourselves over to him. And it's in resisting the things of the world, but drawing near to the Lord, surrendering to him, that we find our greatest victory. And it's because God is gracious. He's not just standing there waiting to punish you, he's waiting to receive you to himself and bring victory to your life. If you will but resist Satan, the flesh, the evils of this world, and you will draw near. You have a heavenly Father who loves you, who is waiting to welcome you home, who is waiting to bring victory to your life today. And thank God for it. As always, thank you for joining me today. I hope this has been a blessing to you. For more information, go to pnbministries.org, and I hope you have a great day.