Bible Study - Class meets on Thursday from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM CST.

[BoyRescue]

Dear Father God,

Thank you for this time you have set aside for us believers to join in fellowship to hear of your word and your voice.
Father God I pray that your word comes to life within our spirit beings.
May it give us revelation to your thought and not our thought.
I pray that we lean on your understanding and not our understanding of the the word.
For your ways are not our ways and your thoughts are not out thoughts.
Father God send us the word for today's Bible study.
We invite the Holy Spirit to teach us of your word.
We are open to allowing the Holy Spirit to teach us your word by comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

In Jesus name I pray.  Amen!

[LadyLionness]

James 4:1-6 Talks about how pride can promote strife.  What is your thoughts on it?

OK, Guys... I have been asked to take it slower and have people participate in and discuss each passage at a time... so I would need participation to do this.  I can't post and answer my own questions... 

[BoyRescue]

James 4:1-6 Talks about how pride can promote strife.  What is your thoughts on it?

I notice how it says in James 4:1 - "What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?"

Desires that come from within us, not from Satan.  People often blame Satan for their own lusts when the truth is, it's from within themselves.  So people can't blame Satan for their own fleshy temptation when it's them that needs to crucify their flesh.

[LadyLionness]

James 4:1-6 Talks about how pride can promote strife.  What is your thoughts on it?

Very true, BoyRescue...

James remind us that instead of agreessively grabbing what we want, we should ask God to help us get rid of our selfish desires and trus tthim to give us what we really need.

That the biggest obstacles to prayers being answered are that we are: (1) not asking; (2) asking for the wrong things, (3) asking for the worng reasons.

Food for thoughts:  Do you talk to God at all?  When you do, what do you talk about?  do you ask only to satisfy your needs and desire?  Do you seek God's apporval for what you have already plan to do? 

Your prayers will become more powerful when you allow God to change your desires so that they perfectly correspond to his will for you.

[LadyLionness]

James 4:1-6 Talks about how pride can promote strife.  What is your thoughts on it?

Pride mades us self-centered and leads us to conclude we deserve all we can see, touch, or imagine.  It creates greedy appetities for far more than we need.  We can be released from our self-centered desires by humbling ourseslves before God, realizing that we need nothing except his apporval.  Whn his Holy Spirit fills us, we realize that this world's seductive attractions are only cheap subsittutes for what God has to offer.

[LadyLionness]

James 4:7-10 says that the best cure for worldliness is humility... your thoughts?

[LadyLionness]

James 4:7-10 says that the best cure for worldliness is humility... your thoughts?

It's true that God and Satan are currently at war, but we already know that in the end, God will win... and even though Satan is here now and trying to win us over to his evil cause, we need to understand that with the Holy Spirit's power, we can resist Satan and he will flee from us. 

"Resist" literally mean to take a stand against.  All people are either under the lordship of Christ or the lorship of Satan; there is no middle ground.    Those who transfer their allegiance from Satan to God will find that Satan really does "flee from" them; he is a defeated foe.

[LadyLionness]

James 4:7-10 says that the best cure for worldliness is humility... your thoughts?

Drawing near to God is more than just submitting to God and resisting the devil; the redeemed heart longs for communion with God.  James gives us 5 suggestions on how to do that:

1.  Submit to God.
2.  Resist the Devil.
3.  Cleanse your hands... and purify your heart.  (That is... lead with a pure life).  Be cleanse from sin, replacing it with God's purity.

4.  Let there be tears, sorrow, and sincere grief for your sins.  Don't be afraid to express deep heartfelt sorrow for them. 
5.  Humble yourself before God, and he will lift you up.

Purify your hearts have to do with the inner thoughts, motives, and desires of the heart.

[LadyLionness]

James 4:11-12 talks about not judging a brother...  I am going to leave this one up for discussion....

[LadyLionness]

James 4:13 - 17 talks about not being so sure and boasting of your tomorrows... please contribute your thoughts...

[LadyLionness]

Heavenly Father,

Thank you for your presence and your words of wisdom.  We love you and we praise you for all that you have done.  As we leave today and continue to think on your words, may we be filled with your inisghts and those of the Holy Spirit.

All this I pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

[BoyRescue]

I notice how it says in James 4:1 - "What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?"

Desires that come from within us, not from Satan.  People often blame Satan for their own lusts when the truth is, it's from within themselves.  So people can't blame Satan for their own fleshy temptation when it's them that needs to crucify their flesh.

To continue from James 4:1 to James 4:2,3, I want to dig a little deeper.

We know that James 4:1 says that the cause of fights and quarrels are from the desires that battle within us.  

Why was James saying this?  

He was saying this because he saw Christians fighting and quarreling with each other.  Now let me put this more plainly, James was saying there was a divide, a denominator, a denomination amongst Christians!  The cause of denominations is from "desires that battle within you?"  What desire is it?  Pride?  No, James 4:2 says, "You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight."  Covet is envy!  Envy is defined as:  a feeling of discontent or covetousness with regard to another's advantages, success, possessions, etc (dictionary.com).

Now let me rephrase James 4:1,2:

"1What causes [a divide, a denominator, or a denomination] among you? Don’t they come from your [envy] that battle within you? 2You [envy] but you cannot get what you want, so you [divide, denominator, or denomination].

After breakdown of James 4:1,2 it really helps bring clarity as to why James 4:2,3 says what he says when he reveals that:

"You [envy] because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures."

Envy is an instigator of division.

[BoyRescue]

James 4:7-10 says that the best cure for worldliness is humility... your thoughts?

Here are my thoughts:

James 4:4, starts out charging other Christians as "adulterers and adulteresses."  Why is this?

1 Corinthians 3:4 - "You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans?"

Envy and division is a product of worldliness.  When Christians become entrenched in such desires they become a friendship with the world and therefore become an adulterer and adulteress.

James 4:5 continues to say, "Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”?"  Why does the Spirit yearn for us jealously?

2 Corinthians 10:21,22 - "21You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons. 22 Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy?"

When Christians share themselves with God and then with the world the Spirit yearns jealously because they have become an adulterer, mixing themselves both with God and the world.

A food of thought: How many of you mix yourselves with God and the worldly things on PH?

[BoyRescue]

James 4:7-10 says that the best cure for worldliness is humility... your thoughts?

James 4:6 says, But He gives more grace.  Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.”

The cure to overcome worldliness is more grace [power of the Holy Spirit]!!  Humbleness is the ingredient that enables God to give us more grace to overcome worldliness.  How do you get grace?

You get grace by (James 4:7-10):

1. Submit yourselves to God.
2. Resist the devil.
3. You initiate first to draw near to God then He will draw near.
4. Purify your hearts and be of one mind.
5. Lay hearts open before God with grieving, mourning, and wailing.

Then when you humble yourselves before God, He will lift up out of the worldliness by His grace given to you.

[WindComeWindBlow]

Have you guys seen this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vv8pLUMDVRc