Have you ever had conflicting desires?  This time of year it is fairly common.  You make a goal to lose weight but you also really want to sleep a little longer and skip the gym.  You are trying to diet but you also really want that chocolate chip cookie.  This battle also goes on daily in our spiritual lives.  Are we going to live by the desires of our flesh or are we going to have our lives controlled by the Holy Spirit within us?  Let’s look together any James’ words on this in James 4.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 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. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. 4 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. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

James gives us some steps to help in this daily battle.  Resist, Flee, Submit.  Simple but not always easy.  We all tend to know our typical temptations or distractions from God.  We need to resist and flee those and cling to God.  The more we cling to Him the easier it will be to stand up to those things that we sometimes run to instead of God.  James talks about us being truly broken over our sin.  When we have that perspective on our sin it also helps in our battle against it.  If we simply have a whoops I did it again attitude we will struggle over and over.  When we weep mourn and wail over our sin it becomes easier to overcome it more often in our lives.  I pray that God gives us all strength in this battle of competing desires. 

In His Grip,
Pastor Dave