Category: Marianne’s Notes

I’m fighting to stay in the presence of God…I’m willfully choosing to push ever farther into what’s uncomfortable, unchartered, and beyond me right now.  Why?  Because it’s not uncomfortable, uncharted, or beyond God.  So my growth is deemed necessary by Him and I want to grow deeper.  Last year God began a work in my heart; He started planting the seeds for growth that I’m now beginning to see the scale of.  (Although I’m CONFIDENT His scale is far greater than I am imagining!)  The seeds He began sowing were for the “marginalized”.  Ben and I have been discussing that theme over the past year…how to stand up for, provide for, listen to, speak over…the marginalized.  These are all just thoughts, tips of the icebergs, but they are there…little seedlings starting to sprout.  BLM, COVID, and our current status.  I share this only because it continues to play into all my quiet times…including today: James 4: 8-10, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.  Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you doubleminded. Lament and mourn and weep!  Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.  Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will life you up.”  There is a flow here, a few verses back remind us to: 1. Submit to God. 2. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 3. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.  4. Cleanse your hands. 5. Purify your hearts.  6. Lament, mourn, and weep.  7. Humble yourselves.  8. God will lift you up.

Nothing of value can happen in my heart until and unless I submit to God; completely.  Where what He calls sin, I call sin…where what He esteems, I esteem…where His justice, is my justice…where His form of service, is my form of service.  Then I am to resist, fight, and claw myself away from the devil understanding that he has power but not ultimate power.  I cannot allow myself to be enticed, impressed, or delusional about him or his offers because I have ONE goal and that is to trust and obey God.  I am to run, instead to God…dive deep into His word, chase after Him as I would gold.  I must carve out time, ample time, to sit before Him and His throne: to read, listen, pray, and lament.  Why?  Because from the OT to the NT, God ALWAYS draws near when we draw near; always.  Once I’m there I need to cleanse my hands and purify my heart…confess, ask for forgiveness, call out my sin, by name and repent.  The natural next best step is to lament, mourn, and weep…for myself, for our world, for restoration, and for the destruction of sin.  As a result God is lift up to His rightful place and I am put low into mine and my heart is humbled.  This process is what is required of me as a Christ follower…to continually repeat this process in order to align my heart to His.  He will go before me-that, I can trust. 

James 4:6, “But He gives more grace.  Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”  Therefore submit to God.  Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”  Seemingly right after James discusses our adulterous hearts who long for satisfaction and pleasure from this world he says that God gives more grace.  This small statement is mind-blowing!!  God gives grace upon grace continually HOWEVER He resists the proud.  God’s word is consistent in it’s message regarding how God feels and His displeasure of the “the proud”.  The book of Proverbs alone has plenty to say about God’s feelings of a prideful spirit.  Why?  Because a prideful heart can’t openly confess sin or bow in humility and admit they need a Savior.  The humble one receives God’s honor, His grace, and will have God as their protector.  THEREFORE, (because of this truth), we should:

1. Submit to God (which only a humble hearted person can do.)  Lay aside the rule of our own hearts and adopt God’s rule as authority.
2. Resist the devil.  This is a fight; God’s word is clear that this is a spiritual fight that we are engaged in every day.  Eph 6:11 states our job-to put on the WHOLE armor of God…to send a warrior out to battle without full equipment would be criminal yet we do it all the time.  It’s our job to put it on, all of it, daily.  End of story.  If we choose not to do that our behavior says a lot about our understanding of God’s word, the devil, and our weakness.  Do not ENTERTAIN any portion of his temptations, ever.  Those begin in the mind but Jesus said that we will always be given a way out of temptation AND we have the POWER of the Holy Spirit living inside us!!  But we have to employ that option.
3. And he WILL flee from you.  This is a statement.  Do A and B will happen.  If we are submitting to God and putting on that armor and resisting in a fight like fashion then the devil WILL flee.  Our battle has been won.  If I look back at all the times I’ve given into sin and temptation it’s because I’ve failed to do one of the above.

BUT, the key is to focus on the humble heart and all that’s provided me if I just step off the first place riser and take my place at the foot of Jesus. 

James 4:1-4, “Where do wars and fights come from among you?  Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?  You lust and do not have.  You murder and covet and cannot obtain.  You fight and war.  Yet you do not have because you do not ask.  You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss, that you many spend it on your pleasures.  Adulterers and adulteresses!  Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?  Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

This is a good, harsh, cutting word!! Who is James talking to?  He’s talking to BELIEVERS!  He’s talking to me.  I will rage war and fight with other believers because of my desire for pleasure.  Pleasure.  Sin is pleasure…until it destroys you yet we keep on doing it.  Pleasure of food, drink, praise.  Pleasure in travel, clothes, houses, and acclaim…pleasure in knowledge, power, and productivity.  This world is FULL of pleasure and pleasure isn’t the enemy.  The enemy is loving those things more than God.  It’s desiring those pleasures more than Him.  It’s actually rejoicing and loving and being fulfilled by those pleasures in ways God doesn’t seem to satisfy us.  This causes war in ourselves and with others.  James reminds me that this cycle is endless…it will just go around and around and around.  Lusting and not having, murder and coveting yet not obtaining…to me this is hell.  Getting everything we “want” or desire and yet feeling nothing.  This is a perfect picture of my efforts…I will go through an enormous amount of work, sacrifice, schooling, lying, social acrobatics, whatever I need to in order to receive what I want.  There is one thing I won’t do easily…find ultimate pleasure and fulfillment in Jesus.  Flipping that switch to where I believe that He holds everything precious, everything of worth, and everything that fulfills requires me to esteem Him, not me.  Everyone wants God’s blessing without giving Him their heart…they are part-time Christians who want full-time blessings, protection, and provision…to service ourselves.  James clearly shows us that this is wrong “asking”…feel free to ask God but He knows your heart so don’t be surprised when you don’t receive it.  We ask for things that make this world our home, a better job, a spouse, children, a career, money, etc…my requests have far more to do with my comfort here on earth, or my position here on earth, or pleasures here on earth.  This is called friendship with the world and if I am friends with the world than I am, by default, at enmity with God.  That’s right.  If I desire to be friends with the world then naturally I will be at odds…no, not just at odds, but I will be an enemy of God.  I will be against the plans and purposes of God.  I will in truthfulness, hate God AND He is against ME!  Just to be clear, the God who always has been, all powerful, the One who literally holds this world together, will be fighting against me…because I forsook Him and all His glory for the plastic things of this world. 

How does this happen?  Simple, we esteem and place desired value on the things of this world.  We are born worshippers and we will worship what esteem. 

How do we fix it? See God for who & whom He is.  The logic is straightforward, when I spend time recognizing the glory, the majesty, the power, the love of God and elevate and magnify Him then my heart will follow.  We worship other things because we spend so much of our time focused on them and place an incredible amount of value there.  That behavior should be reserved for God.  Contentment is seeing the greatest value is in what you already have.