What causes quarrels, and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? 6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves, therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
James 4:1-10
God’s original design for every human being was to live in freedom. In the garden of Eden, there was only one stated prohibition; don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is the longing of the heart of every person to be free, to live without bondage of any kind. But, since the day Adam and Eve partook of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they have known bondage, the bondage of sin. And we, the descendants of Adam, all know the bondage of sin.
This short passage in James chapter four finds the root of much of our trouble with other people. The source is our passion for pleasure that wars within us. Bondage comes from within us. Even when we have the insight to pray for things, we don’t get them because our motives are out of whack. We want to spend those requests on our passion for pleasure.
James identifies us as adulterous people when we are caught in this bondage. This is, of course, a metaphor for our unfaithfulness to God and our passion for pleasure instead of God. James identifies our passion as friendship with the world, which is enmity or positive, active hatred toward God. Choosing to love the world equals being an enemy of God. That’s not a good thing. Now maybe we can better see that friendship with the world equals bondage.
Bondage can take many forms. It can manifest as mental illness, physical illness, and various kinds of control by demonic spirits. I don’t have space here to go into the role of demons in various human afflictions. For our purposes now, one primary tactic of our enemy is using mental suggestion. A while back, a friend of mine whom I had been discipling had a meeting with his church leadership about some ministry opportunities he wanted to pursue. We talked after the meeting, and he was somewhat distressed, disappointed, and discouraged. He left the meeting with the idea that he had been turned down on every idea he had. We discussed it and prayed about it. Later he called me to tell me that as he drove home and continued talking to the Lord about his disappointing experience, he clarified what had happened. He hadn’t been turned down at all. The elders had told him they liked what he wanted to do, but the timing was off. They would like to pursue his ideas at a later time. My friend told me that he then realized those thoughts were not his thoughts but those planted by the enemy, and he accepted them as truth instead of lies. We discussed how to win these spiritual battles, and he recognized that he believed lies. So, he took the directive of James. He submitted to God. He resisted the devil by condemning the lies aloud and commanded the lying spirit to leave. Suddenly his mind and heart were totally free, and he found himself renewed in Christ.
So, let’s look at the simple steps to this kind of freedom.
- Recognize the lie(s) the devil is telling you. Things like, They don’t trust you, You’re not good enough, etc. Take your pick of lies the devil can tell you to stop you in your tracks.
- Identify specific Bible passages that refute the lies and support God’s truth concerning you.
- Renounce the lie(s) expressly.
- Declare as true the things that God’s word says about you and your situation.
Let me give my personal example of employing this application of James 4:7-10. A few years ago, I went through a challenging time in which I felt physically inadequate to fulfill the ministry work God had called me to do and I wanted to do. I was told I was too old and weak to fulfill the ministry God had called me to do. So, here is the stronghold-buster1 I wrote for my use against the enemy.
The enemies lie: You are too old and too weak to fulfill the ministry God has called you to do.
My renunciation: I renounce the lie that I am too weak and too old to fulfill the ministry that God has ordained for me.
My declaration: I declare that I am strong in the Lord, and the power of his might for the Lord God is my strength and my song and has become my salvation. (This declaration is the distillation of sixteen passages of Scripture regarding God as my strength)
Submit yourself to God (agree with his word), resist the devil (calling him out on his lies), and he will flee from you; that is, you will be free.
