Part 2
“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.” 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.”-James 4:5-10
God is not interested in divided loyalty. He is filled with jealousy for us. We are not just a good friend, we are in covenant with Him. Being a friend of God was an Old Testament idea, we have moved out of the friend zone and are now espoused to Him. He expects us to see worldliness just as He does; as an enemy of our relationship with Him.
So how do we correct divided loyalty? We need to deal with our pride. Pride is at the heart of every sin. It is a deep satisfaction with ourselves that causes us to choose to make certain that our needs are met before any other needs are considered. It causes us to see lack in a relationship that we are established in and look to another to fill that gap. The answer to pride, however, is humility. It is esteeming others better than ourselves and considering the needs of others along with our own.
We also correct divided loyalty by resisting the devil. We stop flirting with his ideas and notions. We stop entertaining his advances. Too often we wrongly convince ourselves that we are in control and attempt to manage our involvement in the world, believing that we can keep ourselves from crossing the line between sin and holiness, when in reality we have already compromised our faith by believing that Satan can be tamed like a lion in a cage. We don’t resist him and so in kind he does not flee from us, but remains near to us waiting on an opportune time to test us.
To correct divided loyalty we have to come close to God! We must spend time with Him and not with our mistress in worldly pursuits. When we draw near to Him, He promises to draw near to us. We cannot pursue two things at once. We can either pursue Him or we can pursue the things of this world.
We must stop the love affair that we are having with this world both physically and emotionally. James said that we need to wash our hands and purify our hearts. We must wash our hands of the relationship we have nurtured with this world, because each time you participate in worldly things you embolden your mistress. The world will never believe that you are serious about being faithful to God, when you keep showing her attention and spend time pursuing her.
We need to weep and repent over what we have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. We need to be grieved by it or we will never truly be free from it. If we don’t see it the way God sees it, we will entertain it again. If we do not see it as an enemy, we will leave ourselves open for another affair.
We can be a friend of this world, but when we do we position ourselves to be an enemy of God. We need to deal with our divided loyalty. We need to deal with your pride. We need to stop entertaining the devil’s advances. We need to spend more time with God and less time with this world. We need to repent and weep over some things we’ve been doing that have emboldened worldliness!
Pastor Scott Burr
Dayspring Community Church
No comments:
Post a Comment