Episode 30: Are You Trying to Control Your Own Life?

James 4 is one of the most intense chapters in the entire book and underneath all of its sharp language is one central issue: divided allegiance. In this episode, we explore the internal war James describes, what “friendship with the world” actually means, why pride and control run deeper than we think, and the invitation God gives to draw near to Him in humility. We also unpack the covenant language behind “adulterous people,” what it means to be double-minded, and why James reminds us that tomorrow is never promised.

Transcript

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Welcome to Rooted with Emily Talento, where we explore who Jesus is through context, culture, and covenant. Today we are going to be looking at James 4. Our study on James has been, I mean, really amazing for me personally, getting to dive deeper into the original context and what James, Jesus' brother, was trying to communicate to the early Jewish believers. Now, while I was looking at it, what I think it all could be boiled down to is this idea of steadfast faith. Chapter one makes it abundantly clear what that looks like in the midst of all circumstances, even in the midst of trials. And so it's been cool to get to go through all the chapters and looking at different facets of that steadfastness. What does that look like in real time? What does that practically look like in our lives? So chapter four is probably my favorite, I hesitate to say favorite in the whole book. But I do think, I think chapter four is my favorite chapter in the whole book just because it's so practical and it is so the implications are so great. It really does touch on everything. And so jumping in in chapter four, we can see this concept play out that a divided heart cannot produce wholehearted devotion to God. It's kind of a call back to chapter one. And so we can see this play out. I'm tempted to do a recap through everything we've done just to kind of get us all up to speed. However, I think that will take too much time. So go back and listen to everything or read the rest of James to kind of get up to speed. What I will say was we just finished talking about the tongue. And remember, these books, any book in the Bible, right? Especially a lot of the New Testament, they're letters. So these are written to real people. The authors are addressing real life issues. And so the chapter and verse marks were added in after. I think oftentimes we view the chapters as inspired, but they're just organizing the ideas that are found in scripture. And so it's important that we are reading and looking at it in its entire context. So to get, you know, its full understanding. So we just talked about taming the tongue and the importance of that and how our tongue is the most dangerous weapon there is. So we talked about that. Then we go into the difference between the wisdom of above versus the wisdom of earth. And now we are going into warning against worldliness. So that is where we're going to start off today. Then we're going to read the whole text in its entirety and observing different things that stand out to us. From there, we'll look at what the text actually teaches us about our God. And then we will end with looking at based on what we can observe and what we can see about our God, how should we respond? And so that is a system for studying the Bible that I recommend. I think it's not the only way, but I do think it is a helpful way to getting your foot in the door, especially if reading the Bible is new for you. So that's what we're going to do. And it's always helpful if you have your Bible. So pull out your Bible. We will read chapter four together. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your own passions. You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enemy with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us? But he gives more grace. Therefore, it says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, 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 wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter turn to mourning, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is only one law giver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor? Come now, you who say, Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit. Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. Okay, so many great stuff here. So like beyond. It was almost hard to decide what things to highlight, but after spending quite a bit of time looking at the text and unpacking and praying, I came to the conclusions of the important things that we need to highlight for this such time that we are living in. And so I broke it into three sections, right? There's three different movements that we're gonna be looking at. We're gonna look at the divided heart, we're gonna look at the pathway back to God, and then we're gonna look at our false authority. And we can see this kind of transition naturally throughout the chapter. So, section one, the divided heart. It's gonna be James verses one through six of chapter four. So we're gonna look at our first observation. Our first observation is your passions are at war within you. We can see this very clearly spelled out in verse one. What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? Okay, so all of this, I just want to give a little bit of context. I've already said that word like 18 times since we've started. I don't even know how long this has been yet, but we've used the word context a ton. And again, at the end of the day, that is what it all comes back to because we jump into the middle of the story and expect to understand it everything. And the reality is we cannot. There is so much that comes before that help us to truly recognize the moment that we're living in. And so here in chapter four, there's a sense of a callback to chapter one, and we're gonna see this play out throughout the chapter. This idea of being double-minded. There is a war within us. Our passions are fighting against each other. The issue is in here. It's not circumstances, it's not difficult people, it's not culture. The issue starts inside, especially if we remember, this is written to believers. So we're speaking to believers. It's very easy to blame outside things when the reality is it is inside of us. What does that look like? That looks like this double-mindedness, this we're living for God, but we also are still living in our flesh. And again, that's going to be unpacked further in a second. But what does that create? The text tells us it creates envy, it creates selfish ambition, it creates craving and dissatisfaction and internal division. And it all is because we as ourselves are not aligned with where we need to be aligned. Our passions are divided, they're shared. We love to externalize our problems and blame everyone else, but the reality is the fiercest battles are often fought in our own hearts. Quick little rooted moment. If you don't know a rooted moment, is when we look at the original context and culture that the Bible is written in, to be able to fully understand all of what the original readers would have understood. So, again, baby rooted moment. This language, this idea of division of the heart, all of that, that is very covenantal language. This idea that again, these Jewish believers who were receiving the book of James would have understood. And I think it's very common for us to look at Israel, like the nation of Israel, the Israelite people, and say, oh my gosh, you guys, like, can you get it right? Can you mess up more times? Like, how often you're serving God one minute, and then the next minute you are serving other gods. And the reality is, and James is telling us, it really is all of us. We are no better because just because we're not worshiping a statue, our hearts are still divided. So we're gonna go again, we're gonna go into all that more in a second because James really calls us out. But before we get there, there's this really interesting point about prayer. Now, we all pray for things, we all want things, right? And so the text is telling us you have not because you ask not. What? Like, is there a wrong way to ask? And then it goes on to say you you ask wrongly. Okay, so what does that mean? This reminds me of the verse that says that God will give you the desires of your heart. It's a beautiful verse. Who doesn't want the desires of your heart? But what James is calling out is selfish prayer, selfish desires. God isn't gonna give us things that are promoting a kingdom that's contrary to the kingdom that he has come to build. So if we're asking for things that are in alignment with his kingdom, that's a totally different story. What James is really getting at is for our prayers to be a reflection of surrender to God. And those prayers, he's very quick to answer. Observation number three. We're in the middle of this section. And chapter four, verse four, he goes, James goes, You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? That ends up becoming a very loaded statement. We end up reading a lot into that that isn't originally there. Let me explain. We're actually gonna jump into our big-rooted moment. This is covenantal language. What's covenantal language specifically? You adulterous people. He's speaking like one of the prophets would have. Have you read Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, any of those? This that is the language that James is using. He's saying, you adulterous people throughout the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible, whatever you want to say, they're the same thing. You can see that idolatry is often described as adultery. Now, why? It's because I truly believe we don't have a concept for idolatry as human beings, right? Like it is a hard concept for us to grasp. However, we understand adultery. We understand how much that would hurt and how how genuinely not okay it is. And so oftentimes these prophets, these Old Testament writers will use that term to help us to really grasp the significance and a weight and just how horrible idolatry is. And it's not even scratching the surface. Idolatry is so much worse than adultery. And so we could see this through examples of Hosea and Jeremiah and Ezekiel. And I want it to be very clearly noted that it's not because God is insecure, it's not because God needs our affection or affirmation because He's He's weak. It's because this covenant relationship that exists is exclusive. We can read passages like James 4 and walk away being like, wow, God is jealous and needy, he's insecure. And the reality is, is it's not based in insecurity, it's based in his nature of holiness. The covenant relationship that we have is exclusive in nature, and God knows that every shared allegiance is ultimately just pulling us away from the wholeness that we have in him. We can't do both, and God knows that. But what does that actually mean? The way I think we often understand that in 2026 is I'm not gonna listen to secular music. I'm not gonna follow whatever the trends are of the day. But I think it's so much deeper than that. Secular music, whatever the trends are, that's all an outpouring. What James is referring to is competing loves, competing alliances, adopting systems opposed to God. It's it's more of a heart condition. And the actions of, for example, listening to secular music or watching TV shows that are what that's all the after. That's all the result. So a divided heart cannot remain wholehearted toward God. That's what it really comes back to. That's what it really boils down to at the end of it. What's really cool is how James ends this first section. In observation four, we are looking at, but he, God, gives more grace. So James is calling us out on a lot, but he doesn't leave us there. He's diagnosing these hard truths, but it doesn't end in condemnation. It ends with God exposing our divided hearts in order to restore and to bring us back to him. How crazy! He's not leaving us in our sin, in our destruction that we're creating. God's grace is greater than our pride, instability, dividedness, our failure. And this is where we're bridging to the next section. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. It always comes back to it being a heart condition. Because at the end of the day, our actions do matter. And we know that from James 2. Faith without works is dead. However, you can't fool God. We can do all of the actions, but if our heart isn't in the right place when we're doing it, then it's all in vain. And so at the end of the day, humility is paramount. And we could see this obviously as Jesus is bringing his kingdom, Jesus is coming with a stance of humility, not of pride. And Jesus has more right to be proud than anyone else. Jumping to section two, the pathway back. This is James 4, verses 7 through 10. And the first observation we're going to look at, I guess observation five, would be submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Now, we have nothing without surrender. Surrender is where anything in the Christian walk starts. And so obviously, this is no different. A lot of times we say surrender, but what does that actually mean? It's not image management, it's not self-improvement. Sometimes it can feel like self-improvement, but that's not true surrender. It's not trying harder externally. Submission actually is relinquishing control, laying down self-rule and acknowledging that God is Lord. We see all the time, Christ is King. What's even better and more challenging is Christ is Lord or Jesus is Lord. Because in a statement like that, as we're calling Him Lord, we are surrendering our lives. We are submitting to His will and not our own. It is this acknowledgement that we are solely His vessels. Jumping to observation number six. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. How cool is the word will? It's not if, it's not maybe, it's will. You can be confident of that. I think oftentimes we either give too much power to spiritual warfare where we make it the entire thing. Oh my gosh, every little thing is the enemy attacking. Or we just completely ignore it. And both are wrong. I truly believe scripture warns us about both. We have to be aware that the supernatural is there. And oftentimes what we're not seeing, what's happening in the spiritual realm, is even more real than what we're seeing in front of us. However, not everything is my again. I said this a couple episodes ago, but it's true. My pastor said, if the enemy took off the next 10 years, we probably wouldn't even know because our own sin nature is more than capable of destruction. I mean, we can see this even in the first verse of the chapter. Um, it's not is it the passions that are inside of you? It's our sin nature that is also, and so when you mix everything together, the enemy, our sin nature, I mean, you have a real mess here. And so thank God that he does not leave us in that mess. Again, the enemy will flee. It's not an if, it's not a maybe, it's something that we can have confidence in because resistance is hard. Oftentimes we're in the middle of a difficult situation, we are being tempted, whatever that may look like. And in the moment it feels hopeless, but we can remember the fact that no, we have full confidence in this. He will have to flee. On a very similar note, observation seven: draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Again, we could have full confidence. It's not something that's an if, or maybe if we draw near to our God, he will draw near to us. And I do think that it's an important thing to note that it's not that he's not near, he's always near. It's more of our recognition, our um awareness of him being there. We often forget, we're dumb, and so he's always standing right there, but he'll draw near to us, he will allow us to feel his presence if we just have the acknowledgement that he's there. Does that make sense? And so it's also so important to note that he's not reluctantly like, ugh, okay, fine, like I'll be near to you, even though you messed up so massively. Can time and time again, you're an idolater, you are adulteress, you literally are worshiping all these other things that are not me. No, he he still chooses, even after our worldliness, even after our pride, even after our divided hearts, to show up with open arms, being like, No, I'm I'm I'm here with you. Like, not that what you're doing is okay, it's definitely not okay, but I'm here to work through it with you. Like, who is our God that he's willing to do that? We don't deserve that. James isn't presenting our God as distant and unwilling, he's presenting him as ready to receive humble people. That's again the key. He's willing to work with us, but we have to be willing to receive it. What good is it if our arms aren't open? If we're so confident that we have it all together, then there's nothing that he can do. Which brings us to observation eight. This is kind of a callback to chapter one. We also touched on it in verse one, but double-minded is a term that we can see repeated throughout the book of James. It's referring to divided allegiance, it's referring to two identities, two loyalties, two kingdoms. We can't serve two masters. Spiritual instability often comes from trying to belong fully to two different worlds. And I think that's the line that we often try to walk. We try to do both, and we can't. And so that's where you have James calling us out for adulterous ways. It just doesn't work. And we want to have steadfast faith. James 1 tells us that the testing of our faith produces steadfastness. And when steadfastness comes to completion, we are perfect, complete, lacking in nothing. Who doesn't want that? We can't do that if we're double-minded. It doesn't work. Observation nine. This is where things get massively confusing, I think, for people. Okay. So it says be wretched and mourn and weep. This is a massive shift. We are everything's making sense. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. What is he talking about? This is like a massive shift. He's not promoting self-hatred or permanent misery. He's talking about repentance. We, as a culter in 2026, I don't think we always really fully understand the concept of repentance. There are moments in our lives where repentance should actually grieve us. This is again prophetic language. He's he's lots of callbacks to the Hebrew Bible to all of the prophets. What James is doing here is confronting our casualness with sin. And how often, and I know it's been in my own life, when I repent more times than not, I'm knew I did something wrong. And so I'm like, okay, God, I'm sorry. I'm doing a 180, I'm turning the other way, I'm coming back to you, and I could go on with my life without really acknowledging and allowing my sin to grieve me, to recognize that that sin that I committed, whatever that may look like, put Jesus on the cross. If that was the only sin ever committed, Jesus would have died for it. And I don't know if we often take the next step to fully recognize and feel that. That sin, whatever that may have been, put a divide between us and God. And so that's what this is talking about. In the Old Testament, this is another rooted moment. A lot of times, this type of thing that James is referring to can be seen throughout the prophets. It was connected to sackcloth and ashes. There was an outward display of the inward grief. We don't have anything like that in our culture. There is this sense of prophetic mourning. Again, it's totally lost in us. Like we don't, we don't have anything like it. And many times throughout the Old Testament, there is this sense of grief that precedes restoration. You can't have restoration without grief. Remember, James is writing to Jewish believers. And so he's calling them back to concepts that they're very familiar with. They know. Grief precedes restoration. We hit grief and we think it's over. But that's not the pattern that God shows us throughout the Bible. Humility is not humiliation, it's honest dependence. We need to be constantly continuing to grow in humility before God. Which brings us to observation 10. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. Again, not if, not maybe, he will exalt you. Again, this is a pattern that we could see, this kingdom mindset. It's downward before upward. Building what we just said. Grief before restoration, humility before exaltation, surrender before restoration. It's not an end to a means, right? Like it's this isn't like a transactional thing. Okay, God, like I'll do these things, so then you give me these things. Like it's it's not meant to be a transaction like that. However, as we are going through difficulties, because we will go through difficulties, Jesus tells us, it's almost the mindset that we could have to be like, okay, this is taking everything out of me, choosing to die to self, choosing to humble myself in this situation is the hardest thing. I know that I will be closer to God because of it. I know that I will be blessed because of this test, this trial that I'm going through, right? And so it's almost just like a perspective giver. It helps us to fix our heart posture in these challenging situations and circumstances. And so we could see that throughout the whole Bible, that pattern. God honors humility because it tells the truth. He is God, and we are not. Which is our third section, which is our false authority. So this is looking at James 4, verses 11 through 17. And we're not going to go into all of it. That sounds like a huge section. We're almost done, I promise. Observation 11. Who are you to judge your neighbor? That's the question that's asked in verse 11. I think oftentimes we try to sit in God's seat. We think that we should have a say, and the reality is we don't. James is very clear that there is only one lawgiver and judge, and it is not us. God alone sees perfectly, and our role is to submit to him. Which brings us to observation 12. Today or tomorrow, we will go to such and such place. We love making plans, and I don't think making plans is wrong, because I think you have, right, you have this tension between being a good steward of the things that God has given us. We are going to have to make an account one day for everything we were given. However, if we are holding so tightly to the things that we can see, the things that we have, then we are missing it. James is confronting the illusion of control. Again, not making plans themselves that can be important, that could be a part of stewardship. But he is confronting the arrogant independence from God that we can make plans and think we know what's going on or what's going to happen. And I think this is obviously a very big problem in our culture today because our modern life really does idolize certainty and optimization and self-sufficiency and control. And James is interrupting that whole entire illusion. Observation 13. This should sound familiar to you because there's a few different passages throughout the Bible that refer to us as a mist or a vapor, as something that is here a second and gone the next. What James is getting at is human life is fragile, temporary, dependent. He's not saying that it's worthless, but it's brief. We don't know how long we actually have. So we speak about tomorrow with incredible confidence. I could tell you what I'm doing. Tomorrow, next week, next month. I won't go next year. I have no idea what I'm doing next year. But you know what I'm saying. We speak about tomorrow with incredible confidence for people who are entirely dependent on God for our next breath. Observation number 14. Oh my gosh, there are so many observations. I mean, it's all good and it's all important. So I'm not mad about it, but I wow. If the Lord wills, that is the piece that we miss. We can make plans. Plans, again, aren't the enemy. However, if we're holding everything with an open hand, saying, if the Lord wills, then it changes the entire game. Because dependence on God should shape how we view the world and the future. Again, it's not fear of planning. We shouldn't not plan, but it is having a humble acknowledgement that my life is ultimately not self-governed. We may think we might have moments where it may appear that way, but at the end of the day, I mean, we don't own our next breath. I don't, I mean, our blood is pumping through our veins because of God's grace and because of Him sustaining. And observation 15, it is based off of verse 17. It says, So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him, it is sin. Now, if you listen to the last episode we did on Nick Jonas, we talked about some verses that kind of get to the same heart of this. It is better to never know truth, to never know righteousness, than to know it and not live in accordance. Because those who know truth will be held to a higher standard, and that's what this verse is getting out. Because sin isn't only just rebellious actions. I think a lot of times we boil, we make sin very tangible. It's just when we do bad things. But the reality is part of sin is resisted obedience, ignored conviction, the late obedience, knowing and refusing. It's so dangerous because we all find ourselves there. None of us are living perfectly obedient to God. However, that is what we're called to do. And James is calling this out. James is ending this chapter, this hard-hitting chapter, not with who are the prideful people, but rather where am I resisting what God has already made clear? Because at the end of the day, this is something that we all struggle with. We all need to be aware of and fighting against until Jesus returns or we go home to be with him. This is going to be something that we struggle with. Okay, that was a lot to take in, but I think it's really important. All of it's so important in how we live lives that are aligned with God. And so looking at this chapter, chapter four, what does this show us about the character of our God? What can we learn about who he is? I'm gonna read some thoughts. Number one, God cares deeply about wholehearted devotion. God is not indifferent to divided allegiance. We could see that throughout the chapter. And covenant, our relationship, matters to him. Number two, God gives more grace. Conviction is not rejection. Conviction is probably one of the biggest gifts that he gives us, that God exposes in order to restore. He doesn't want to leave us where we are. Number three, God welcomes humble people. Draw near, and he also will draw near. God is not reluctant toward repentance. If we're coming with a heart that's humble before him, he is overjoyed and happy to meet us in it. Number four, God alone is the judge. He sees perfectly we do not. And number five, God is sovereign over tomorrow. Our lives are dependent on him and always, every breath is sustained by him. But those are just a few things that we can learn about the character of our God from this passage. After we talk about what we can learn about our God, we always talk about how we can respond. Because at the end of the day, if we're not actually applying these things to our lives, then what's the point? And so, how should we respond? Number one, we need to ask God to expose dividedness in us. It's not always obvious. Sometimes the dividedness could look like good things. In many cases for Christians, it does look like good things. What competes with Him for our loyalty? Number two, stop treating repentance casually. We all do this. Conviction, the conviction we feel is his grace on us, it's not something to be ignored, it's something to be taken very seriously. Because the reality is, is if we keep ignoring conviction, we will stop feeling conviction. Not that he leaves us, but he allows us to make our own choices. And so conviction is the most positive thing that we have. Number three, draw near to God honestly, not in a performative sense, not like we're pretending. He knows our hearts ultimately. We can't fool him. He knows, obviously, when we're not feeling it. And the reality is sometimes we're not going to feel it. Sometimes we're repenting. Sometimes we're drawing near to God because we know it's the right thing to do, but we don't necessarily feel like we want to, or feel the conviction, or feel like we're grieving our sin. And that's okay too. That's where we pray that the Lord meets us in that. That He allows us to feel the conviction, that He allows us to feel the grief for our sin. And so not feeling it shouldn't be a reason that we don't go to God. Even if sometimes we have to do it based on logic rather than feelings. Does that make sense? Okay, number four, walk in humility. We need to release control. We need to stop sitting in God's seat. He is God, we are not. And it's, I don't know why it's so easy for us to forget, but at the end of the day, it is a truth that we have to remind ourselves every single day. And number five, respond to conviction quickly. Don't ignore what God has already made clear. I already brought this up. But conviction is one of the kindest things that God gives us because it allows us to know that we're off track and that we need to realign with Him. If we continue to blow past conviction, He will turn it off. We will stop feeling it. He will let us make our own choices. And when we try to come back and realign with Him, it becomes all the harder. Not only is it physically harder to align at that point, but now we're dealing with the repercussions for our lack of conviction. So let's just bypass it all and respond the first time when God convicts us of something. And our final thoughts. So James Ford, obviously, like I said, can you see why it's my favorite chapter in the book? It's just so pivotal. Like it's it's so important on so many areas of our lives. And I like how you can see James' thought process as it flows through. If we want to be steadfast, it starts in surrender. It's all about recognizing God as everything, the place in our life that he deserves to be, and it not being a shared allegiance between him and all of these other parties, or him and ourselves, or him and our desires. It's not about any of that. It's solely about him. How cool is it that our God decides to give us more grace even in our struggles? I don't know anyone else like that. And for that, I am so incredibly thankful. So my encouragement to you today is wherever you are, whatever that might look like, to draw near to God because I am confident that He will draw near to you. So, next episode is our last look into the book of James. We're gonna be covering chapter five, which is sad. Honestly, each and every episode it gets longer and longer, and I'm like, I this needs to get cut down. But there's just so much important stuff in the book of James, and so that'll be sad to be done. But I do have an idea of what we're gonna be talking about next on Tuesdays, and so hang tight for that. But I hope it's been an encouragement to you. If you did enjoy this episode, if you could like, comment, subscribe, follow, whatever they have you do on the platform that you are either watching or listening to this on. Whatever you would do for any of the podcasts you would like, I would really appreciate it. You could also follow me on Instagram at Emily Talento and at rooted with Emily Talento. I would really appreciate it. And I will see you next time.