“Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 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 lift you up” (James 4:7-10).
Spiritual victory is never accidental. To successfully fight the good fight of faith, strategic battle plans must be made and carefully followed.
After describing the horrors of worldliness in 4:4-6, James writes ten action-packed commands. These terse imperatives are essential to defeating worldliness and need immediate—if not sooner—action.
The first eight steps of God’s ten step plan for escaping worldliness and remaining free from it are: Submit to God. Resist the devil. Draw near to God. Cleanse your hands. Purify your heart. Lament. Mourn. Weep. (See the last three posts.) The final two are:
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Turn your laughter to mourning. Repentance necessitates a complete overhaul of your value system. Worldliness declares that the here and now, earthly treasures, getting your reward in full in this life are to be highly esteemed. God says otherwise. Jesus declared that what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in God’s sight (Luke 16:15).
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Humble yourself. Worldliness promotes pride. Righteousness only thrives in the soil of humility. Trusting God and His providence is the wisest and best way to live (Matthew 6:33). God vigorously opposes the proud and worldly; He gladly gives grace to the humble and spiritual minded. The choice is yours.
