James 4:7-8 “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” This episode is about how we can submit more to God and how we can try and resist the devil. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Submit Yourselves to God
James 4:7-8 “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”
This is another one of those things that sounds much easier to do than it actually is. Submit ourselves to God. That doesn’t sound too hard, right? It doesn’t sound hard, but have you tried it? It is not easy to submit to God. What does it even mean to submit ourselves to God? Google's dictionary defines submission as "the action or fact of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person.” I think there are two parts to this. First, the action of accepting or yielding to a superior force. This means that we would accept that God is in control. We would do as He tells us to do because He is our superior force. He created all things and He gives us a set of rules to live by and so we must live by them.
The second part of this definition is accepting or yielding to the will or authority of another person. Submitting to God would be accepting His will as our will. It would me that we accept His will for our lives. There are times when this is very easy. When we get the job we really want, it is easy to accept it as God’s will. When we meet the love of our life we can accept that it is God’s will for us to be with this person. However, what about when things aren’t going our way. What about when God’s will differs from our will. What about if we don’t get a job because He has something better in mind for us. Can you think of a time when you really wanted something to happen and it didn’t? What about when you didn’t want something to happen and it did? How easy was it for you to submit to the Lord’s will?
This verse tells us to submit ourselves to God. If we want to do this we need to figure out where we are struggling and then ask God for help. We can ask Him to help us submit. He will always help when we ask. If we are struggling to see how God wants us to submit to Him, then we can always just ask Him. My spiritual director told me one time to model St. Teresa of Lisieux and explain to God that I am just a little child and I need Him to show me the way. I need Him to show me or tell me what He wants me to do. I want to follow His will, I just need directions, just as a child would This really spoke to me. I sometimes, oftentimes if I am being honest, I think I need to know what God wants from me. I think I am just supposed to know. It seems like everyone else knows, why don’t I know. So, I try to guess, I try to listen and I try to do all the things just in case that is what He was wanting.
However, what I try to do now is to ask the Lord to help me understand. I ask Him to explain it to me as though I was a child. I ask Him to make it clear to me and to give me the courage and strength for whatever He wants me to do. We are all just little children in the eyes of the Lord. In Matthew 18:3 Jesus said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” God wants us to become like children. I think he wants us to be like children because there is something so pure about a child’s faith. Children don’t get caught up in understanding every little detail. They don’t ask all the questions. Miracles are miracles because there is no explanation. If there was an explanation as to exactly how it happened, it wouldn’t be a miracle. Adults don’t really like to believe in things that they can’t see. Children on the other hand, they love to play make believe. They have no problem believing in things they can’t see. If you are struggling to submit to God ask Him to show you how. He has assured us that if we ask He will answer, so let’s ask.
The next part of this verse says to resist the devil and he will flee from you. Again, something that sounds so easy and yet is so difficult. I would love to say I resist the devil. The problem is, the devil is always disguised as something else. For instance, he will be disguised as temptation. You know that you should spend time in prayer or in silence and suddenly your favorite tv show is having a marathon and showing episodes all day. You decide to give up sweets for lent and someone drops cookies off at your house. You decide you are going to start running and it rains for a week straight. Do you see how it is hard to resist the devil in these circumstances because you don’t know it is the enemy attacking you.
Another way the enemy might show up is through distractions. You decide you want to spend more time with your children and suddenly everyone in the family has something else to do, or your work suddenly gets really busy. You may want to spend more time with your parents and then something comes up to prevent you from spending more time with them. We find it hard to resist the other things that are getting in our way and so family time gets put off or pushed aside. The enemy might also show up as anger. We want to be peaceful and to not get upset over little things. Then the enemy comes along and presents one little thing after another until you can’t take it anymore and get angry and you lose it.
The enemy doesn’t want us to grow in holiness. He will do whatever it takes to prevent this from happening. He certainly does not want to flee. If we want the devil to flee we have to figure out a way to resist him, all his temptations and lies. How do we resist something that we don’t know is there? One way we can resist the devil is to keep turning our eyes to the Lord. We can keep asking Him what He wants us to do and asking Him to help us do it. We can ask the Lord to open our eyes to see the devil and all his tricks. We can try to be on the lookout for different ways the enemy may be interfering in our lives. If things are not going well and you are not acting like you want to, the devil is probably involved. If you feel you are growing further from the Lord, the devil is probably involved.
Another way to resist the devil is to do what the verse above says, “Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” In my prayer group every week the Lord calls us closer to Him. He is calling all of us closer to Him. If we come closer to God He will come closer to you. Then the verse says, wash your hands, you sinners and purify your hearts, you double minded. I wasn’t sure what double minded in this verse meant. When I looked it up it meant that our heart is split between God and the things of this world. This is the devil’s way in. This is his back door. If we love the things of this world as much or even more than we love God, then that is all the devil needs to attack us. The more we release our attachment to the things of this world, the less of a hold the devil has over us. If we want to resist the devil we can ask God to help us, we can turn to Him and grow closer to Him, and we try to release our attachment to the things of this world.
Releasing our attachment to things of this world is not easy. We all have our favorite TV shows or our favorite foods we like to eat, and that is ok. I am not saying that you can’t like anything that is of this world. I am saying that our priorities should be God first and then everything else. If anything is getting in the way of us doing the things we know we need to do, then that is the devil at work and we need to resist. I have been being attacked by the spirit of distraction lately. I will have time to write this book I am writing, or work on my podcast and the spirit of distraction will come and show me all these other more fun things to do. I must resist.
Did you know, in a weird way, when the devil attacks you, it is sort of a compliment. It is confirmation that you are walking on the right path. The reason I say this is because the devil doesn’t mess around with the Luke warm, he doesn’t mess around with those that are already headed to see him. He only concerns himself with those that are headed to see the Lord, those that are favored and are trying to walk the right path. If you are feeling like the devil is attacking you, take comfort in the fact that you are doing something right, or he wouldn’t bother with you. Then turn to the Lord and keep trying to do the next right thing. God is on your side and He will be your refuge and your shield if you ask Him to. Come in close to the Lord and He will come in close to you. He will put his arm around you and protect you from all harm.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want to resist the devil and we want him to flee, please help us. Please protect us Lord and shield us from all harm. Help open our eyes to see the devil and all of his tricks in our lives. Lord, we want to put you first, help us to see what is getting in our way. Open our eyes to anything that is preventing us from growing closer to you. Help us to know what you want us to do and help us to become like children. Lord you are amazing and we love you so very much. We are grateful that you are our God and that you take such good care of us. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day!