Submitting to God: A Review

James 4:7-8 (NIV) -

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.

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Recap:

- Submitting to God, like submitting a test, means completely giving ourselves to Him to be judged, without taking anything back.

- The Bible is our textbook, which we can study to learn how God wants us to live.

- Jesus, the perfect student, sacrificed Himself to give His friends an answer key so we can properly interpret the Bible.

- Obedience to God's Word is the proof that we are actually one of Jesus' friends.

- Repentance, a complete change of our actions and direction, is absolutely necessary to become Jesus' friends.

- The Holy Spirit acts as our tutor, teaching us what's right and wrong, then helping us live it out so we can be more like Jesus.

- Prayer is a conversation with God. We can talk about Him, us, or others, but we also need to spend time listening to Him.

- Sanctification is the process of learning to change our wrong answers into the right ones, under the teaching of the Holy Spirit.

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And with that, we come back to the beginning. With all that we've discussed over the last week and a half, what can we now understand from the verses that started this chain? Let's break it down one line at a time:

"Submit yourselves, then, to God." James calls us to give ourselves over to God completely and irrevocably - to stop holding on and to stop taking back parts of ourselves, because when we do that we are saying that we want to be in control, not God. As long as we are saying that, God can't do as much with us and for us as He wants to. However, the Bible promises us that God is, "able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think." (Ephesians 3:20 NLT) If you will just allow yourself to let go and trust God, you will be amazed at what God does in, through, and for you.

"Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." This speaks to obedience. So many of us have a picture of 'resisting' that looks like struggling red-faced, like trying to push a boulder up a hill. An unstoppable force meets an immovable object, right? But if we've submitted ourselves to God, are listening to His voice, and doing what He says, then resisting becomes nothing more than walking in obedience. At times, that will still be difficult, but God will give us His empowering grace to get us through those times, as long as we keep following Him.

"Come near to God..." How do we get close to someone? By getting to know them better! This is where prayer and reading the Bible are so important - prayer lets us talk with God about what's going on in our lives and learn to hear His voice more clearly, and the Bible helps us see God more clearly because He has revealed Himself to us in it. The more time we spend studying the Word (with the help of our tutor) and intentionally spending time with God in prayer, the better we will come to know God.

"...and he will come near to you." As we get to know God better, we take our place as one of Jesus' close, personal friends. He gives us His perfect test as the answer key - our salvation - and even gives a tutor to help us learn it - the Holy Spirit! When we show we are really Jesus' friends through our obedience, He goes the extra mile to help us live the best life we can by His grace.

"Wash your hands, you sinners..." If you get anything on your hands, they are dirty. Doesn't matter how much, how little, or what you've gotten on there, they are no longer clean. In order to get your hands back to being clean, you need to wash them. You'll have to put it more work if they're really dirty or it's a particularly tough substance, while it's a fair bit easier to wash your hands when there's just a bit of dirt on them. But either way, the result is the same - your hands were dirty, now they are clean. This is what repentance is about. All of us are dirty, sinful. We can only become clean by being washed in the blood of Christ and asking for His forgiveness. Some of us have more things to repent for, or more serious things, but the need for repentance is the same for each of us, because we are all sinful in our own ways, whether outwardly or inwardly.

"...and purify your hearts, you double-minded." We discussed what it means to be a fake friend of Jesus - saying we're close to Him with our words, but acting as though we aren't. This is where sanctification comes in. As we get closer to God, He gives us the Holy Spirit to purify our hearts - teach us what the right answers are on the test and help us to choose them, rather than stubbornly continuing to put in the wrong answers. The more we don't, the easier it becomes, and the more we will live in the fullness and freedom that God originally intended for us, living in accordance with His will and purpose for our lives.

And with that, it's time to bring this thread to a close. I hope some of you have been able to learn some things, maybe understand what genuine Christian living looks like in a new and (perhaps) more significant way. I know I've been learning a lot as I've been writing these.

The Thoughts of the Day will still continue. As God puts words on my heart, I'll keep sharing them with you guys! But until the next one, I'll see you guys around.