What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. (James 4:1-4)
James pulls no punches as he addressed the malaise of the church in his day, which sadly has carried over into the church today. Upon self-examination we all must admit that at some point we all stand guilty of bringing some sort of worldliness into the body of Christ. We cannot embrace the world and what it has to offer and say that we love God and serve Him with all our heart at the same time. Yet many of us do just that forgetting the admonishment of 1 John 2:15-16. Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. God’s way is the best way! As we read His Word we see His plan on how we should live individually and as a body of believers. Yet, the worldly (the flesh) side of us believes we can improve on God’s plans. As we do that we then lack the trust and faith that God’s ways are much better then our own.
James also address the issue of not receiving what one asks for from God because of the wrong motive in asking, mainly self pleasure seeking prayers. As believers our flesh is at war with the Spirit now residing within us. In this process we must understand that God is the author of all pleasure and will not deny that which is properly sought. The Scriptures, especially the Psalms, are loaded with the language of enjoyment—joy—pleasure. Therefore, it is natural that man seeks pleasure, we just need to seek it in the right place; that place is found in God. Instead of bringing our worldly ways into the church, we are to die to ourselves, and then immerse ourselves totally in God. Then the Spirit will find pleasure filling us as God is glorified in and through us. Finding pleasure in God is undeniable more rewarding than any type of worldly pleasure we can ever experience. It is also eternal. John Piper stated it this way as he made a slight alteration of the Westminster Confession’s opening line: The chief end of man is to glorify God BY enjoying Him forever. If we pursue God with all we have, we will find that every genuine pleasure comes from His hand. Then the things of this world and our desires for them will truly grow very dim.
Dale LaFrance (please look up 2 Corinthians 6:14-18)
theweeklyflea 