It’s tough behaving like a Christian in our daily walk. Left to ourselves we can’t make it, but enlightened by God’s Word and enabled by His Spirit, we can be Christian in our daily walk. We’ve been doing a chapter study of James 4. Now let’s put what we’ve found into an outline so we can better remember it and share it with others. I came up with 4 points:
1. Being Christian when we don’t get our desires met, verses 1-3.
2. Being Christian in the world when we feel like compromising, verses 4-6.
3. Being Christian in spiritual warfare when we feel either indifferent or
oppressed, verses 7-12.
4. Being Christian in our work when we feel we’ve got life by the tail,
verses 13-17.
Now let’s amplify each of these points. In the first 3 verses James is talking about prayer. The key in these verses is recognizing how strongly our desires influence our behavior. If we don’t get our way we often attack others whom we expected will meet our desires. Desires in themselves are not wrong necessarily.
The Psalmist says in 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” These desires are ok because they spring from a heart delighting in the Lord. But if they’re self centered and self-gratifying they become wrong. Even if you ask for them to be met, your motive will be wrong and God will not answer you.
In addition, we often don’t go to God in prayer. We try getting what we want by demanding it from others and fighting for it. It would be better to start the day delighting in the Lord and trusting Him to meet our needs and satisfy our desires..
