| Verse | KJV | Barlow Paraphrase |
| James 4:1 | From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? | Hey, where are all these fights among you coming from? Remember, if there are outward fights there are inward fights. You are conflicted within yourselves and its leaking out. |
| James 4:2 | Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. | You’ve got strong, even sinful, desires and they are not satisfied. You’d even kill for things and you still can’t get them. Why? Simple! You don’t have because you didn’t ask God! |
| James 4:3 | Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. | Even if you do ask Him, you’re still messing it up. If you ask for the objects of your lust it would be wrong of God to give it to you. He loves you too much for that. |
| James 4:4 | Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. | What you are doing is like adultery. You are married to God yet you are in love with the world. Choose. Who are you going to love? God or the world? You can’t have both. If you choose the world, God will be your enemy. If you choose God, the world will be your enemy. |
| James 4:5 | Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? | Even the scripture lets us know that the Spirit He placed in us is jealous. Jealous for our love and if we love another He feels it and knows it. |
| James 4:6 | But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. | But we have an empowerment from God. His grace is on us. So, standing in that grace, let’s resist pride, when we do He pours out His grace on us. The humble will receive from God; the prideful will not. |
| James 4:7 | Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. | So get control of all your sinful desires, trust God and submit to His way. In doing this you are literally resisting the Devil. You’re not trusting the Devil anymore by following after the desires he’s trying to give you. The Devil flees when no one listens to him. |
| James 4:8 | Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. | So pull your hearts right in with God. Set your desires on Him. Not on far away places. This is like washing your hands and purifying your hearts. Now we are not split in our desires wanting to go to God and the world at the same time. |
| James 4:9 | Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. | God helps us turn away from the world and its desires. Sometimes there’s a sadness with that. A true repentance where your heart is sorry for the things you’ve done. Go ahead and be sorry. Let that work in you for a time. |
| James 4:10 | Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. | Bring yourself to the point where you completely realize that you totally need God. From that position you don’t think you can do anything and you realize you have to totally rely on God. God answers that! He can tell when your heart is pure. |
Tag: temptation
Sin Is The Wrong Answer To Your Problem
Here it comes again. That same old temptation is back to try to take you down, to pull you away from God, to fill you with depression, condemnation and especially a guilty conscience. Remember, as I heard a preacher say years ago, ‘Sin is not the problem. Sin is the answer. But it’s the wrong answer.’ You see you may have an itch and you want to scratch it, but you need to see if your answer to that itch is God’s answer. Or else you may be falling into a trap.
Satan doesn’t parade answers to your itch in front of you to help you. He doesn’t tempt you because he likes you. He’s trying to kill you.
In John 14:30 Jesus said about Satan, ‘he has nothing in Me.’ You could say it another way, ‘He’s got no hooks in me.’ He tries but he is not successful in tempting me. There is nothing left in me to tempt me with.
1Peter 4:1 “Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin”.
Can you imagine being done with temptation? Being in a place where Satan has no hooks in you? Being literally unresponsive to the temptations paraded before you to get you to fall? Can you imagine that? Most likely your flesh can’t imagine that. Your flesh still wants to have its own way. But this verse in 1Peter 4 says that he who has suffered in the flesh is ceased from sin. Does that mean if you’ve been persecuted with bodily harm for the Gospel that you have an immunity to being tempted? It could mean that. (Stick with me, I’ll unpack that.)
So there are two kinds of suffering in the flesh to discuss then: there’s the persecution where someone has received bodily harm and there’s the kind where we cause our own flesh to suffer through fasting, denying the flesh its appetite. Paul talks about putting the flesh under. He talks about beating it and making it his slave.
We can be ruled by the demands of the flesh, the itch that screams at us, the desire that tries to pull us off. Or we can rule over the flesh, put it under, make it obey us. But fleeing something is not as good as pursuing something. Often times when trying to avoid temptation people try to ‘turn off the darkness’ instead of ‘turning on the light’.
What do you desire? If its godly, pursue it. If its not godly, not only should you not pursue it but you should change your desires. Set your heart on something good instead of something negative. Most often you will pursue what you desire. If you pursue godly desires, temptation is nowhere in sight. Instead of turning off the darkness, turn on the light of good, godly desires. Set your affections on things that God wants. Desire them, and desire them strongly. Now pursue them. That’s turning on the light.
Temptation
Matthew 26 (KJV):
40 And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour? 41 Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
A friend of mine writes books about family matters, one of his quotes is ‘peer pressure is only as strong as family identity is weak.’ (Gary Ezzo)
Peer pressure is an external emotional pressure that works to get you to conform to a certain line of thinking or behavior. It’s pack mentality; go with the crowd. The bigger the crowd, the stronger the influence. Gravely, negative behavior has come about in kids from great families because peer pressure won.
A family must create or discern its own identity and develops its own ‘family pressure’. If there is buy-in by most or all of the members then a sufficient offset to peer pressure exists. It’s really a battle between two different mindsets- the family vs. the peer crowd. It’s two different crowds. It’s two different directions. It’s two different sets of values.
If a child spends more time with their friends than with their family the influence of their friends will be strengthened. If they spend more time with their family, then they will find family values and ideas to be more acceptable.
You have to believe in the set of values you follow. It helps if you are around others who also believe in those same values so you can successfully live out those values in your life.
Jesus said to watch and pray so that you won’t fall into temptation. Can you see how you will be stronger against temptation if you spend time with God in prayer? You will be influenced with His values, His desires, His ways. As you get to know Him better the influence and ways of the world become more and more distasteful. Temptation loses its strength. The more time you spend with God in prayer the stronger you will be against temptation. As a matter of fact, temptation becomes a non-issue.
Resisting temptation is easy if you are strongly identified with Jesus. If you identify with being part of God’s family then you know who you are.
Do you know how much I’m tempted to do drugs right now? Zero! Not at all. I’m not around drugs. I don’t hang out with people who are doing drugs, I have no desire for the high that drugs produce. I’m quite happy without them. So there is the freedom from temptation because of the proximity to the temptation.
But when I was in high school, I used to take my guitar and go out behind the school on the other side of a hill and play my guitar for all the kids who were getting high. I never saw them doing the drugs I could just always see that glassy look in their eyes and I noticed their altered state of mind. I was around them a lot. Apparently my guitar playing was quite impressive when they were high. But I can tell you quite honestly that in all that time I was never once tempted to partake in their drugs. I knew who I was, I was regularly reading my Bible, I was constantly praying. I was aware of God’s presence. I also knew who my family was and what they stood for. Actually in my family we used to make fun of people who had to use alcohol or drugs to have a good time. To be quite honest in my young mind, an image had formed through family conversations to the effect that joy was for higher life forms and lower life forms had to use drugs and alcohol to partake of joy. Because of this mindset, right or wrong, I never envied the people who were getting high. I just enjoyed playing guitar for them, because they seemed to enjoy it as well.
So, I want to encourage you that temptation may be quite helpful to you in that it exposes where you may have a weak philosophy about something. Maybe you don’t believe something as deeply as you should. The Devil looks for open doors not solid walls. So go revisit what you believe in the area you are being tempted in. Go find out why you believe what you believe. You might need to fortify something. You might need to strengthen your beliefs so that you’ll be stronger.
Joseph Barlow 