When There?s Strife, There?s Self: In Pursuit of Radical Humility...Continued from page 1

James 4:7-10 functions essentially as a recipe for repentance and victory over sin. James gives numerous direct instructions: submit to God, resist the devil, draw near to God, have clean hands (behavior) and clean hearts (motives), grieve your condition, and humble yourself. And as much as we depend on God to work his will into us, these things are presented as our responsibility. We don't wait for God to humble us; we humble ourselves. We don't wait for a heart that grieves our own fallen nature, we choose to grieve because we already recognize the futility of that nature.

Those are hard and not very encouraging words, but the intent is not to crush us. It's to bring us into alignment with the heart of God and put us in a position from which he can lift us up. This counter-intuitive path that seems so self-defeating is actually the way to great victory. Submitting and drawing near to God is like rolling out a welcome mat for him to intervene in our lives. Resisting the enemy actually causes the enemy to flee. Clean hands and hearts are readily usable by God. Mourning, as a famous beatitude reminds us, allows us to experience God's comfort (Matthew 5:4). And humility results in being lifted up by God, which is much more powerful than trying to lift up ourselves. James' prescription, though apparently gloomy, actually ends in profound joy.

James wrote some harsh words to his readers, but something had to jolt them out of a self-centered way of life. Maybe those words can be just as effective to a church in the midst of a self-centered culture today. When we encounter futility and strife—whether at church, at work, or in any other area of life—the way out is radical humility. And the results of radical humility are the presence of God, the absence of the enemy, and a very high position for those who have made themselves low.

Adapted from A Walk Thru the Book of James: Faith that Endures, a small group study guide from Walk Thru the Bible and Baker Books. This small group study and others can be found at http://www.walkthru.org.