In this week’s episode, we dig into the real reason you aren’t able to get the thing you’ve been begging God for, how the direction we look dictates the way our prayers go, and what it all has to do with archery. We also make one more return to celebrity culture (and how I inadvertently became caught up in it).

The Technicalities

In order to get the proper footing for James 4, we have to step one foot back onto the rock of where we ended James 3 with the sowing in peace of the ones who make (and do) peace (which, the Greek definition describes as exemption from the rage and havoc of war).

With that peaceful, war-exempted fruit of righteousness in mind, James asks the question, “Where do your wars and fights come from?” In other words, what is their source? (I’ll tell you what, it’s not a by-product of the Holy Spirit living inside of you. There is no fighting fruit hanging on the Spirit tree.) And then, he answers his own question – that outward wars and fights (as well as the havoc and rage that comes along with them) are rooted in the inward desires for pleasure that war inside of you.

If you’re looking at the linguistics, you’ll notice that James uses two different Greek words for “war” here – the first is a noun, the general “thing” of wars. And the second? It’s a verb describing the actions of war executed by an army of soldiers who have positioned themselves so firmly against their enemy that they have set up camp and don’t plan on leaving any time soon. And that, James argues, is precisely how Satan takes up his stance against you – through the desires, passions, and wants of your flesh. They are the things inside of our imaginations that we daydream about, every bit of pride that sneaks into our thoughts and settles in (adding up to a whole lot of pride if we aren’t carefully plucking them out as they come).

Now, I want to pause our digging into these first couple of verses and jump ahead to verse six, where James references Proverbs 3:34 and says that “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Understanding the word that he uses there for “proud” provides a huge amount of insight into James 4:2. The Greek word is ooper-ay-funahs, which describes a person’s excessively arrogant estimation of their own merits, which causes them to despise other people for theirs. But the power of this word lies in the two root words that create it: hyper (meaning above, beyond, and excessive) and phaino (which describes bringing something into the light, causing it to shine). If you are the proud person James describes, then you look at someone who is obviously successful or gifted in a specific area, and you think, “They don’t deserve that! I deserve that!” You see their spotlight and wholly believe it should shine on you instead.

That said, hop back up to James 4:2. “You lust and crave and desire so much that you kill to get it, taking it from the one who does have it,” James writes (which sounds a whole lot like David and Bathsheba’s story from 2 Samuel 11, doesn’t it?). But, even then, James says, you still cannot obtain it. So you fight (or, what the Greek literally describes as hand-to-hand combat, literally trying to take something out of their hands), and you war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask.

Pause again, but this time, we’ll look at that obtaining because it is the key to understanding the proper asking of God that’s waiting for us in verse three. The obtaining that James talks about here is rooted in a word picture that describes an archer hitting a target right on the bullseye with their arrow. When James says you do not have it and you cannot obtain it no matter how hard you try, he is saying that you can’t hit the target for the life of you. You keep missing the mark. And do you know what else that missing-the-mark word picture is used to describe? Sin. You can see it in Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The Greek word for “sin” is different from the one that James uses for “obtain,” but both definitions describe missing the mark.

But this is where it gets really wild. Guess what sin does? It deafens God’s ears to your prayers. You can see that plainly in Psalm 66:18, where the psalmist says, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear.” And that Hebrew word for “regard?” It describes seeing, looking at, or gazing at something. The direction an archer is looking is the same direction her arrow will fly. So, if you are in sin, walking in the envy and jealousy of your flesh, wanting to yank that spotlight off of that other person and put it squarely on yourself, not only are you entirely missing the mark, but God can’t even hear you if you ask Him for whatever it is you are jealous of.

“You ask, and you do not receive because you ask amiss,” James says in verse three, and the Greek language says even more vividly that you are asking badly, or, more literally, your asking is sickly. It’s unhealthy. And consuming it will only make you more sick with more asking.

Friendship with and fondness of the world (and its affections) is enmity with God. The world loves the things that He detests. It’s fond of the things He calls foolish. You flirt with it, make eyes at it, and fan the flame of your crush on it. You might not have even taken a step toward the action of an illicit relationship, but still, James says, whoever even wants to flirt with the world makes himself an enemy of God.

Do you remember back in James 1:18, where James wrote, “Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures”? His prized possession,” as one version translates. “The first place among all His creatures,” says another –  the most important of what He created to be set apart to Himself. The phrase “of His own will” is the same Greek word that James uses here for the James 4:4 “want” of friendship with the world. He placed you first, chose to give you life out of His will, placed His Spirit inside of you, and, in response, you put the world first. And, I’ll tell you what, it’s not His Spirit that pulls you toward envy. His Spirit produces very different fruit. But still, 2 Corinthians 11:2 says, He is a jealous God. He is head over heels for you and wants you to love Him. And so, James 4:5 says, He gives more grace. But not just “more” grace. The linguistics describe greater grace. Larger grace. Stronger grace. Abundant grace. The greatest grace you could possibly imagine, exceeding every intensity or degree. He gives grace that has been prepared on the grandest scale – the kind that brings a level of exceeding joy and gladness that the worldly thing you’re drooling over can never begin to reach.

“He resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble,” James wrote in verse six, using language that ties it all right back to the wars and fighting that we started with. Because the Greek word that he uses for “resists” means to oppose a person or to range in battle against them.

The proud? They have an excessively arrogant estimation of themselves. They see the light shining on another person, and they don’t just want it for themselves. They think they deserve it more. Those are the ones God resists, lining up His army, refusing to let you take the light from the one He has chosen to place it upon.

And, the humble? They are as low to the ground as they can possibly get. They step into the light when God calls them, hide from it when He doesn’t. Those are the ones to whom He gives His excessive grace, and it’s the same giving as we saw in James 1:5, the same giving He does to those who are asking, the ones who are asking well, the ones who are hitting the target with their humble prayers.

Thank You, Jesus. You give more grace to the ones who ask. To the rest? He’s just standing by, waiting for you to love Him back.

Making it Personal

If you’ve dug with me through Psalm 1, you’re familiar with the progression of sin displayed in its first verse and the person who is blessed and happy when they avoid walking, standing, or sitting among the ungodly, the sinners, and the scornful. (Which, side note, is the word used in the Proverbs 3:34 verse James quotes here in verse six: “Surely, He scorns the scornful, but gives grace to the humble.”) But, the point of mentioning Psalm 1:1 is to say that I see a similar progression through the book of James, though not necessarily doing those same actions. It’s much more subtle than that, and it doesn’t begin with an intermingling of a believer among the world. It starts among believers (remember, James is writing this letter to Jewish Christians) who, ever so slowly, get their eyes off of God and His glory and onto the people He has chosen to display His glory.

Do you know where that gaze-slipping begins? It goes all the way back to James 1:5 and the moments where we find ourselves lacking wisdom. I know we’ve talked at length about this and about asking God for His wisdom. The tricky part is that we think we are asking God by going to the master-teachers first and not directly to Him in prayer. We see the wisdom that God has given to them, and we go to them for it. We dig through their devotionals, read their books, search their websites for the keywords we need. We begin to put them on pedestals. It’s a natural next step to emulate them, be inspired by them, want to write like them, speak like them, teach like them.

I can’t say that I’ve gone as far as a level of envy or jealousy, but I can tell you that I have been guilty of viewing the wildly popular Christian women inside of the “master-teacher” spotlight as kings of the Bible teaching industry. And I didn’t even realize that I was getting it wrong until I was knee-deep in this chapter. For context, back in 2021, I sort of stumbled upon what feels like an obscure verse in Proverbs 18 that God has since returned me to in the most unexpected moments over the last 3-1/2 years.

“A man’s gift makes room for him and brings him before great men,” it reads, and, at some point along the way, the wording developed in its repetition throughout my morning digging as “Your gift will bring you before kings.” I’m embarrassed to admit that I took it to mean that God would bring me into friendship with and proximity to influential women or the giants of the Christian world, that He would use the “important” teachers, the ones with the spotlight,, the audience, the platform, the massive crowds, to usher in this calling He has placed on me to teach. All signs pointed to those kings.

I was folding a pile of laundry large enough to clothe an army in my bedroom the other night, thinking about this chapter and James’ words, when it hit me: I am doing the same thing James is preaching against. I’m doing it. I’m not warring because of my want of it, but I’m absolutely guilty of allowing a person’s spotlight to determine their importance.

Listen, since I began writing biblical commentary, I’ve spent about two hours a day with my nose in my Bible to meet the weekly deadline of publishing this content for you (and to ensure that it’s written well and taught accurately). It has held me accountable in many ways. And it has brought me even deeper into the holy of holies than I could have ever possibly imagined. And that night, as I stood, folding laundry, thinking about this passage and the kings-verse I’d been circling around, I realized that I had gotten it all wrong because, all that time, I’d been waiting to meet a human “king.” And all that time, Jesus was right there, the King of Kings.

What happened next was a natural walking-out of James 4:9-10 because, at the very moment that realization hit me, I hit the floor. That very same moment, I got flat on my face, midriff down, the pile of socks I had just been pairing tossed aside on the carpet beside me. And I turned my face toward the King of Kings, who had been there the whole time, to repent of the sin I didn’t know I was doing. I had been waiting inside a room, staring at its closed door, waiting for it to open. It was expecting green room access to a human king. I didn’t see that, through my daily digging, my relentless seeking inside of God’s Word, I was already standing inside the throne room of the King of Kings.

I had to sit in the pain of that. The sorrow of it. The embarrassment of it. And, as I lamented it all, do you know what I saw in Jesus’ face? Kindness. And softness. And tenderness. And grace upon grace.

I could do a deep dive into the linguistics for disentangling yourself from all of this – the submitting to God and resisting the devil, the cleansing your hands and purifying your heart, but I truly believe that’s the work you need to do yourself. Here’s why: When James says, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you,” he uses similar language to a verse over in 2 Chronicles when the Spirit of God came upon Azariah (a prophet), who then spoke to Asa (the king of Judah).

“The Lord is with you while you are with him,” he said, “if you seek Him, He will be found by you.” Now, remember, this is the Spirit of God speaking through Azariah, so we can change take a little bit of license to change the verbiage from third person to first and say, “If you seek Me, you will find Me.” And the seeking that God means here is through treading. It’s frequenting His presence so much and so often that you trample down the ground around it. It’s following Him and practicing His presence by learning and studying and threshing out His truth from the flesh filler we want it to come with. It’s going to Him with on-target prayer and worshiping Him with both hands. And, listen, it’s important to note the “you” part of it here. If you seek Me, if you study My Word and ask for My wisdom, not “if you let the teachers do the studying for you.”

Repent. Lament. Draw near to His throne of grace because He gives more grace. And, in that posture, ask Him how to disentangle yourself from this cultural mess. He’ll tell you how as He lifts you up. He always does.

Thanks so much for listening!