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Love

Teaching Text: James 4: 1-12

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so 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 means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:

“God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.”

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. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?

Themes

Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:

The Crown of Life: Meditations on the Book of James
Humble Yourself Before God

Formation

Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:

How do you think pride is defined in our culture?
What does it look like in the world you engage with?

James is New Testament Wisdom literature.
- It is direct. At times, it feels abrupt. It is meant to lead to practical action.
James knows it's hard to be a person.
- And maybe for you this week, in particular, it has felt hard to be a person.
  - If you were thrilled with the election results, I want you to know that you are fully welcome at this church. We celebrate your presence.
  - If you were devastated by the election results I want you to know you are fully welcomed at this church. We celebrate your presence.
  - If you’re somewhere in between those two: apathetic, numb, resigned, relieved, looking for explanations, whatever. You are fully welcome here. We celebrate your presence.

We really believe you are made in God's image no matter what.
If you are a follower of Jesus, you have been given the Holy Spirit. Each one of you carries the potential to show us more of God than what we have known before.

James knows it’s hard to be a peacemaker who walks in God's wisdom and controls their speech, puts action to their trust and love and endures challenging times with a vision for what patience and perseverance offers a vision of wholeness
He shows us that he knows being a person is hard. That’s what verse 4 starts with….

When desires that are false advertisers get rooted in our hearts, they then get expressed in our lives, choices, and relationships. They tear at the fabric of our love and connections.

James is saying Pride will kill you and keep you alone and make you think it had to be that way.

James is saying – you're tearing each other apart because some desires that are totally disconnected from God are running rampant in your souls. They cannot actually bring you real satisfaction, but for the sake of them you are breaking apart your lives and loves.
James is saying We have to be so careful because we can want to play the role of God in our lives, sometimes in the world, so much. But it always does damage. There is only one who is loving, wise, and sacrificial enough to be God.

Recognize the source of your conflict and its damage to our soul
- Your desires are like road signs and even if they are lying to you, they show a type of journey you are on.
- They show your allegiance, your friendship, your love.
- As James K. A. Smith restated for us across the ages.. “You are what you love”
  - A desire points to an allegiance, and friendship.
- And what is that allegiance? What is that ethos of life in opposition to or disregarding God?
  - It’s pride.
- You see one of the big western myths is that of autonomous self determination. You are who you decide you be.
- As if it’s that simple and your self-expression as you see it is the paramount thing to you being fully alive and joyful.
- But most older cultures and even most of our social scientists know that your immediate community shares who you are and what you want tremendously.
- Your childhood attachments, your friendships, your community now. Shape you deeply.
- You are way more than just what you decide to be.
- And James says God opposes the proud.
  - It’s another way of saying God cannot cooperate with you trying to take His job.
- 6 Markers of Spiritual Pride - Keller summarizing a Christian Author from the middle of 1800s
  - Pride makes you more aware of others’ faults than you are aware of your own. But humility causes you to be far more aware of your own faults. - "if you spot it you go it"
  - Pride leads you when you speak of others’ faults to have an air of contempt and disdain, but humility leads you to speak of others faults with some understanding, grief, and mercy
  - Pride leads you to quickly separate from those you have criticized or have criticized you, but humility means you stick with people even through difficult relationships
  - Pride makes you dogmatic and sure about every point of belief. Proud people cannot distinguish between minor and major points of belief because everything is major.
  - A Proud person either loves to confront to be proven right or they refuse to confront out of apathy or fear, but a humble person will gently confront when necessary
  - A Proud person is often unhappy and sorry for themselves. They are filled with self-pity.
- When can we start to get a picture of the life of Biblical humility.
- C.S. Lewis - “Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is thinking of yourself less.”
- Entering the bliss of self-forgetfulness out of our worrying self-obsession

Humble yourself
- “God opposes the proud
  but shows favor to the humble.”
- “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.
  – James 4: 6-8
- One of the scariest and most difficult parts of being a person is realizing that your character formation up to this point in your life has not left you with enough maturity to make it through this season of life.

Trust God will be near and God will lift you up.
- Corrie Ten Boom said “When a train goes through a dark tunnel, you don’t tear up your ticket and jump off; you sit still and trust the driver.”
  - More like Corrie Eleven Boom there.