Draw Near to God James 4:8

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.



You lust and you have not. You kill and desire to have but you do not attain what you want. You ask and receive not because you ask amiss, that you may consume what you ask for upon your lusts. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever is a friend of the world is the enemy to God. Do you think the scriptures say in vain, “The spirit that dwells in us lusts to envy?”

Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.

James is speaking some very direct words to us today. The majority of our problems from divorce to war can be found right here. You lust and you have not. When we let our desires run our lives, we lose the foundation that we need to make the right decision and when we fail to make the right decisions, the direction that our lives take is altered and the quality of our lives is affected.

When we let our desires run our lives, the things we desire to have do not deliver. The reason they do not deliver, is they cannot deliver. As we attain the things that we think we want, what we want changes and when what we have becomes more and more important, what we have will never be enough! The more we get, the more we want.

James makes a very good point in this passage. The Bible does say, we have not because we ask not. However, James tells us here, the problem is not in the asking, but in what we ask for. Some people do not have because they fail to look to God for what they really need, in other words, they have not because they ask not. However closely akin to that problem is the second problem, of asking but asking amiss. “You ask amiss so that you can get what you ask for to satisfy your lusts.”

God is not going to give us the desires of our heart when our focus is on our own lusts, not if we are His children and in a relationship with Him. “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” Our focus is not to be on the world and the things of the world. Our focus is to be on God and the things that He has planned for us. Our thoughts are to be His thoughts so that His ways can be our ways and His blessings can be our blessings! You cannot seek to find happiness chasing the things of this world and expect the things of God to chase you down! God is not going to shower us with His blessings when we are looking to the things of the world and the desires of the flesh to satisfy our lives.

We need to submit ourselves to God and resist the devil and he will flee from us. We need to draw near to God and when we do, He will draw near to us. Remember a very important truth. When God’s presence comes into our lives, so do His power and His provisions and that is what we really want and need in our hearts and in our lives and in the lives of our families and our churches and in our communities! That is what really makes a difference that others can see and will respond to.
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you and you will be so glad that you did!