FINDING PEACE BY SURRENDERING TO GOD

Reference

James 4:7-10

The War Within

FINDING PEACE BY SURRENDERING TO GOD

James 4:7-10

Intro: Have you ever felt like life is one long tug-of-war? On one side, God is pulling you toward peace. On the other, your fears, desires, pride, and distractions are pulling just as hard in the opposite direction. No wonder we feel stretched thin. Guilty. Restless. Exhausted. For many of us, that war looks like: guilt about parenting, tension in marriage, anxiety about money, pressure at work, the nagging fear that life is slipping out of control. James doesn’t give us a complicated religious system. He gives us four clear commands that unlock peace: submit, draw near, mourn, humble yourself. “The same sun that melts the wax hardens the clay.” The difference isn’t the heat. It’s the heart. So, let’s hold up a mirror today.

AM I SUBMITED…OR JUST RELIGIOUS?

James 4:7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

James begins with a command: Submit. Not attend. Not agree. Not admire. Submit.

“To submit to God is to be absolutely obedient to His will.”

James is telling us to stop fighting God and start trusting Him.

Did you notice the order? First submit — then resist.

Some of us are trying to resist the devil while we are still resisting God. That’s self-defeating.

Submission is not waving a white flag in defeat — it’s choosing the winning side.

When temptation rises, here’s a simple prayer: “In Jesus’ name, I resist this. Father, I choose Your way.”

The order matters: attempting to resist the devil without submitting to God is futile and frustrating. We are no match for Satan in our own strength.

Submitting to God reduces the mental load. You don’t have to fight on every front. The more you trust Him, the less the enemy has room to work.

James does not say that we might win. If we submit and resist, Satan retreats.

Charles Spurgeon – We are never more safe than when we lie passive in His hands and know no will but His.

Exodus 14:14 The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.

Religious people talk about God. Submitted people talk to Him and obey Him.

AM I DRAWING NEAR…OR JUST SHOWING UP?

James 4:8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

This isn’t a guilt trip. It’s an invitation. James is telling us to come close — God is waiting.

Nearness is intentional. You don’t drift toward God. You drift away from Him.

And here’s the promise: “He will draw near to you.” God isn’t backing away. He’s leaning forward.

But James presses deeper:

“Cleanse your hands” — your deeds.
“Purify your hearts” — your motives.

God doesn’t want cosmetic Christianity. He wants holy actions and genuine motives – clean hands and pure hearts.

We can turn ordinary moments into holy ones.

Simple challenge: Next time you wash your hands, whisper, “Create in me a clean heart, O God.”

A.W. Tozer asked: “When God seems distant, guess who moved?”

Double-minded means divided loyalty — one foot toward God and one foot toward self.

If your heart hasn’t moved toward God this week, you’re not drawing near — you’re maintaining distance.

Because you can attend church and never approach God. Draw near.

AM I MOURNING SIN…OR MANAGING IT?

James 4:9 Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.

James isn’t calling us to misery. He’s calling us to honesty. He is telling us to get real about sin.

How can we be healed of what we won’t admit?

Some of us don’t mourn sin. We manage it. We rename it. We joke about it. We excuse it. I’ll give you a sobering example…

illus: Ravi Zacharias was one of the most respected Christian apologists in the world. He spoke at universities. He defended the faith globally. Millions admired him. In 2017, allegations of misconduct surfaced. He denied them publicly. After his death in 2020, an independent investigation was commissioned. The findings were devastating. Multiple women reported long-term sexual misconduct. Evidence showed patterns of manipulation and hidden immorality that had gone on for years. Here’s what makes it tragic: He kept preaching. Kept traveling. Kept up appearances as a celebrity speaker. But privately, instead of mourning his sin, he was managing it to keep his reputation and income intact. It was cowardly hypocrisy. Untold numbers of people once touched by the Lord through his ministry became disillusioned. Undoubtedly, some were so wounded, they abandoned their faith.

James says: life is not all laughter and good times.

Joel 2:21 Return to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.

Charles Spurgeon preached: “You will never see the value of the Savior until you feel the weight of your sin.”

C.S. Lewis – Mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of sin.

What does James think about joy when he writes that we turn our “joy to gloom?” He’s saying that we need moments of serious reflection. We need heart sobriety.

Eccl 3:4 “A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”

Psalm 51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart—these, O God, You will not despise.

Managed sin grows. Mourned sin dies.

AM I HUMBLE BEFORE GOD…OR QUIETLY INDIFFERENT TO HIM?

James 4:10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

Here is the summary: The way up is down. James is telling us to bow low so God can lift us out of the pit.

Psalm 40:1-2 …I waited patiently for the LORD; And He inclined to me, and heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps.

C.S. Lewis – Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.

But here is the danger. You can be present in church and still be indifferent in heart.

Indifference is subtle. Let me show you how subtle.

illus: I was in 5^th grade on Jan 28, 1986, the day the Space Shuttle Challenger launched. Just over one minute later, it exploded. Seven astronauts died. The night before launch, engineers had warned that the cold temperature could cause the O-ring seals to fail. They recommended delaying. But pressure to stay on schedule mounted. Concerns were discussed — then dismissed. Seventy-three seconds into flight, the O-ring failed in the freezing air. The investigation later concluded something chilling: It wasn’t ignorance. It was normalization. Warning signs had appeared before. Small risks had been tolerated before. And over time, people became comfortable. Calm. Quiet. Indifferent to the danger. Everything looked stable — until catastrophe.

Spiritual indifference works the same way. You can look calm. You can appear faithful. You can show up.

But if you ignore conviction…if you normalize distance…if you grow comfortable with drift…quiet indifference becomes disaster.

James says: “Humble yourselves…” Humility listens to warning. Indifference ignores it.

You can bow your head and still resist His authority. You can pray softly and still live independently.

Did you catch the promise? “He will lift you up.”

Not when you promote yourself. Not when you defend yourself. Not when you seek to prove yourself. But when you humble yourself.

So, the question is: Am I humble before God… or quietly indifferent to Him?

Conclusion: The Flow of Humility

Step back and look at the structure of this passage.

James frames everything with two commands:

Submit yourselves to God (v.7)
Humble yourselves before the Lord (v.10)

Everything in between flows from Proverbs 3:34: “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

God is actively working against the proud and preventing their plans from succeeding.

Every command in this passage is simply humility applied.

Resisting the devil is humility in battle.
Drawing near to God is humility in worship.
Cleansing your hands is humility in behavior.
Purifying your heart is humility in motive.
Mourning over sin is humility in repentance.
Being lifted by God is humility rewarded.

God’s sustaining grace can only be received by those willing to admit their need and bow low before Him.

The proud meet resistance. The humble receive grace.

Peace is not found in overpowering your mortal enemies. Peace is found in overpowering your most sinister enemy: pride.

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All right, Find James chapter four in your Bibles or on your tablet or your phone or however you get God's word to your eyes today. I'm Trevor Davis. I'm GCC's pastor. I'm also a very pleased sponsor of a church that supports Life Choices of Memphis. And first time I ever heard the phrase the Life Choices banquet, 36 years ago.
Angie and I's close friend at the time, Melissa Long, she's now Melissa Mathis. She works alongside Rachel at LifeChoices. And they kept telling us, hey, we're going to get the CEO, the new CEO of Life Choices to come do our Life Choices report. But we could never get the dates to work. But we love our Rachel anyway.
And so was that not an amazing, amazing report. And that story about grace, she was up here singing that song with you guys a while ago. And so it's amazing how God puts all these stories together. Now, look, before we get into the message today, I want to remind everybody that kind of our mission is to make more and better disciples. And so we want more people to become believers.
And then we want to be better at helping people walk with God and know the scriptures and know the truth. And before the first service day, a lady ran in here and she found me and she said, pastor, Pastor, my one is on the way here for the first service to sit by me today. Now, if you're new, our ones are. Jesus would leave the 99 in the fold and go after that one wandering sheep. So we pray for our ones and we pray for them in small group ministry.
And we long to see our ones come to Christ. And so I got to meet her one and his girlfriend and his girlfriend's two daughters in the lobby after the first service today, watching God hear our prayers. Now, do you believe that God is hearing prayers like that? So make sure you write down names of your ones on your ministry card today so that we can pray for them in our staff meeting and have our elders pray for them. This week.
If you're new, I'm typically either preaching verse by verse through a book of the Bible or doing a topical series. And we tend to alternate those. We are right in the middle of verse by verse, teaching through James chapter four. In 2025, we did James one, two and three. 2026, we're gonna do four.
In the end of this year, we'll do five. And so the series for James chapter four is called the War Within. And today's message I called finding peace by surrendering to God. So if you're ready for the next four verses in James 4. Say yes.
You guys fired up? Have you ever felt like life's one big tug of war, though?
On one side you have God pulling you toward peace that you know you need. On the other hand, your fears and your desires and your pride and distractions in your daily life are pulling just as hard in the opposite direction. And so it's kind of no wonder we all feel stretched so thin. All of us feel this guilt sometimes, and there's a restlessness, and we may even feel exhausted. I think everybody's tired.
For many of us, this war within looks like guilt about parenting. You look up, you've had your children for a few years, and you go, is this what I'm producing in them? Is this what's being formed in them? They look a whole lot more like me than they do Jesus. Maybe you felt like that.
The war within also looks like tension in marriage. I was meeting with one of my best buddies. We have a discipling relationship. On Thursday mornings, we were trying to go through next chapter in Norm Wakefield's book, and we got to talking about marriage, and we landed on this one verse in one of Peter's letters that says, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way. And so we spent the next 20 minutes going, what in the world does it mean to understand a woman?
Right? It was like, who wrote that book? And then we read the end of the verse. The end of the verse says, so that your prayers won't be hindered. So the idea is that if you never learn to be a skillful, godly husband, you may not even realize that God stopped hearing your prayers because of that.
You know, I've observed that men that won't leave their family to worship the Lord in a local church on Sundays typically don't leave their families in any other way either. Living with your wives in an un. In an understanding way, there's tension in marriage. It's that war within. Anxiety about money is another part of the war within.
You run out of it before you run out of the months. If I just had a little bit more, I could fix these issues and these challenges that I have, and I wouldn't have all this worry in my life. Anxiety about money. Another part of the war within is pressure at work. Countless ministry cards every week come in.
Say, would you pray about my job? Would you pray that God gives me a job? Would you pray that God gives me a different boss? We're at odds with another. I hate my income, my work right now.
Would you pray with me about that pressure at work? And then there's also this nagging fear that life's just about to spin out of control. Well, here's what I'm excited about and happy about today in James chapter four. James doesn't give us a complicated religious system to solve all the problems we just talked about. About.
I don't need one of those. That's too high for me. He gives us, though, in these four verses I'm about to read four clear commands that unlock peace. Here are the four commands that he's going to give us. Submit, draw near, mourn and humble yourself.
We'll come to those. If I said them too quickly, you'll be able to write them down later. Somebody said that the same sun that melts the wax, hardens the clay. And this same sermon that I'm getting ready to preach from this pulpit by the grace and the favor of God is going to be superintended by his spirit. And some of you is going to melt your heart with it because you're ready to hear from him and receive kind of the ordinary means of grace.
But others, he's going to harden your heart with it because of indifference. And you're like, this is just not the season for me to get right with God. Either way, the difference isn't the heat from the sun that melts the wax and hardens the clay. The difference is the heart. So let's hold up the mirror of the Scriptures today and look at ourselves and see what Jesus wants us to see.
James, chapter 4, verses 7 through 10. 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 hearts, you sinners.
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. That's four verses with rapid fire imperatives and commands.
Brothers and sisters, the word of the Lord. Let's pray together. Father, we come before your throne and we present ourselves to you in the gathered church on the Lord's day with the Bible on the screen in our laps and on our phones. Lord, we're looking at the truth and we open up ourselves to you right now. Say, God, give us ears to hear and say to us whatever you wish to say.
This is our prayer in Jesus name. And everybody said amen. Four verses, four questions of the readers. Here's question number one. Am I submitted or Just religious.
This is the question James 4, 7 addresses. Am I submitted or just religious? Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil. He will flee from you.
By the way, you don't get to believe in God. And not the devil.
Not the guy in the red suit and the pitchfork. That's too laughable. There's a real God and there's a real devil. By the way, the devil's God's devil. He's not God's rival, he's not God's opponent.
And God's moving him around on his sovereign chessboard. But James begins with a command, Submit. A word no one likes. And look, if I said, for the next six weeks I'm going to preach on wives submitting to your husbands, the crowds would thin every week. This is not a popular subject, but the Bible doesn't just stop with wives and husbands and so forth.
It really starts with submitting to God. Submitting to God is not the same thing as attending church. Neither is it the same thing as agreeing with truth or admiring spiritual things.
Not attend, not agree, not admire, submit. One theologian wrote, to submit to God is to be absolutely obedient to his will.
If that's the biblical definition, then all of us fall short. Excuse me. James is telling us with verse seven, stop fighting God. Start trusting him. And did you notice the order?
It's first submit and then resist. The order matters. Some of us are trying to resist the devil while we're still in the process of resisting God. May I say to us, that is self defeating.
Submission, by the way, is not waving the white flag in defeat, tucking our tails and running. Submission is choosing the winning side. So when James says, submit to God, he's saying, here's how you win. Well, Pastor, how do I resist the devil? What can I do when I'm tempted to sin?
Well, here's a simple prayer. In Jesus name, I resist this. Father, I choose your way. Say that with me. In Jesus name, I resist this.
Father, I choose your way.
Okay, stop repeating now. In Jesus name, I resist this desire to lust. Father, show me. I choose your way. In Jesus name, I resist this temptation to be angry and unforgiving.
Father, I choose your way. You see it? Give yourself this small template. Start using it in your life. Be a resister of the enemy.
The order matters. Attempting to resist the devil without submitting to God is both futile and frustrating. Do we agree now? Let me say something to you. I know we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.
The most important part of that verse is the through Christ, Part. But on the other hand, we are no match for Satan in our own strength. I don't care if you've been born again. Even the Archangel Michael, the captain of the heavenly host, other than the triune God himself, the most powerful being you'll ever encounter. Even the Archangel Michael didn't dare to oppose Satan to his face.
But he said, you know what, big boy? The Lord rebuke you. If the Archangel won't engage Satan the enemy one on one, what in the world would make us think we're able to. No, we are able to do all things in Christ without submitting to God. You're no match for the enemy.
There are so many strongholds in this room that still need to be broken, still needs to be deliverance from. Because we got this out of order.
Submitting to God, by the way, reduces your mental load. How many of you would like to have some of that? You don't have to fight on every front when you're submitted to God. The more you trust him, the less room the enemy has to work. And let me say to us, James, in this text doesn't say that we might win.
If we submit first and resist second, Satan retreats. Brother Spurgeon. I quote him so much, Charles Spurgeon, that Pastor Randy Rucker said after the first service, you should start calling him Chuck. We are getting very familiar with him. Chucky Spurgeon.
That sounds sacrilegious. Almost. He wrote, we are never more safe than when we lie passive in his hands and know no will but his. I am gladly and completely in Christ and at the mercy of the Lord Jesus. You too?
There's a promise for us. Exodus 14:14. Here's the promise to submitters. The Lord will fight for you and you shall hold your peace. Look, if God's fighting, I want to be behind him and him fighting for me, not on the other side of him fighting against me.
Did you know that religious people talk about God and submitted people talk to Him? There's a difference. Submitted people obey Him. Am I submitted or just religious? What a crying shame to go to hell from Great Commission Church sitting in these pews.
Question number two. Am I drawing near or just showing up? That's what James 4. 8 addresses.
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double minded. In James 4. 8, God is saying, I have given you responsibility and I am waiting for you to activate your faith and take one step toward me.
If there's a distance between Us, if you are not living your most spirit empowered life right now, you take a step. Show me you mean it, show me you care, show me this is important. Draw near to me and I'll draw near to you. God says, by the way, James 4, 8 is not a guilt trip verse and I'm grateful for that. It is an invitation verse.
James is telling us, come close, God is waiting. And I heard a song this week, I hadn't heard it since like 1988 or 89. There's a Christian artist back then, his name was Larnell Harri. Remember Larnell? He was kind of the Christian Billy Ocean, but probably way more holy, right?
Larnell wrote or sang a song and the song was God speaking to us, speaking to a believer who is drifting away from God. And the song was called I miss my time with you. I wonder if God's singing that to us. I miss my time with you, those moments together. I long to be with you each day but instead you say you're too busy, too busy trying to serve me but how can you serve me when your spirit's empty?
I can't believe those lyrics just came out. Couldn't get them in the first service, forgot about them.
Nearness is intentional. To draw near to God, you do it on purpose. Not only that, you don't drift toward God. The undertow of the world pulls you away from God. You're not going to luck into a strong walk with the Lord.
You drift away from him, that's why he says, you draw near to me, you make this decision. God isn't backing away, he's leaning forward. We're the ones drifting. And James pushes this verse even deeper when he says, cleanse your hands.
That represents what you do. Your actions. Bring your actions before me that you know, don't look like Jesus and come to me and get your hands clean. And he says, purify your hearts. If your hands represent your actions, your heart represents your motives.
And he says, so I need you to bring your actions that don't look like Jesus. I need you to bring your motives that look more like the enemy than me, and let's purify those. Another way to say that God doesn't want cosmetic Christianity. It's not what you look like on the outside, that's what everybody else sees. Man looks at the outward appearance.
God looks at the heart. He wants holy actions and genuine motives, clean hands and pure hearts. As I was thinking about this verse this week, the idea came to me that we can turn ordinary moments into that we have all the time into holy worshipful moments. Okay, this was hilarious in the first service. I was not expecting this.
If you're a germaphobe like me and Pastor Jacob, raise your hand. Gladly. Raise up your clean hands because you just washed them, right? Look at this. It's like 12 of us.
I thought there'd be more. I need to preach just a whole message on let's be clean. Cleanliness is next to godliness. It's not in the Bible, but whatever. Before the hand washers, you're going to be in front of your sink on a random Monday or Tuesday.
Here's how you turn that ordinary moment into a holy one. When you hear that this verse says, clean hands and a pure heart. Next time you wash your hands, you got the water flowing from the faucet. Pray that prayer David prayed in Psalm 51. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Pastor A.W. tozer, the great writer, asked, when God seems distant, guess who moved?
Purify your hearts, you double minded. Double minded means you're torn between two opinions and you struggle making up your mind. Double minded means divided loyalty. It's one foot toward God, the other foot toward self. I wonder if your heart hasn't moved toward God in the last week.
Were you aware that that means you're not drawing near, you're maintaining distance? And even if you haven't said it out loud, you're keeping God at arm's length?
Did you know that you can attend church and never approach God?
Am I drawing near or just showing up? All right, well, that's the first half of the message. Did you survive? Do you want more? Just gets worse.
Am I mourning sin or managing it? This is James 4. 9. Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
Amen.
Does this be a crybaby for Jesus verse? It's a Debbie Downer verse, isn't it? Is James calling us to misery? In James 4. 9, the answer is good night.
No, he's calling us to honesty. He's telling us, hey, at some point, you have to get real about sin. And it has to get into your feels. You have to feel it. I wonder, how can we be healed from what we won't admit to?
And let me be very candid. Some of us don't mourn sin. We're managing it. And here's how we manage it. You ready?
We rename it to take the edge off.
How do we do that, Pastor? Well, the Bible calls it adultery. We call it an affair.
It doesn't sound as bad. The Bible calls it fornication. We call it sleeping together. Everybody sleeps.
The Bible calls it homosexuality. We call it an alternative lifestyle. The Bible calls it immodesty. We call it self expression. Express yourself.
The Bible calls it arrogance. We say it's just my strong personality.
The Bible calls it rebellion. We say I'm just an independent free spirit.
The Bible calls it being stubborn or stiff necked. We say, oh, he's just strong willed. We labeled him that and cursed him with that when he was a toddler.
The Bible calls it refusing correction. We call it living my truth. It's preposterous. The Bible calls it gossip. We call it sharing a concern.
You following this? The Bible calls it harshness. We say I'm just a blunt person. What you see is what you get. The Bible calls it unforgiveness.
We call it setting boundaries. Well, I love you, but I don't like you. None of you want God to say that to you. We call it materialism. Excuse me?
The Bible calls it materialism. We call it providing for my family.
The Bible calls it coveting. We call it my vision board. It's my vision for more. When I get that, I'll be content. The Bible calls it being lukewarm.
We say, oh, I'm just in a busy season. I'll get serious about God when this project at work finishes. The Bible calls it neglecting church. We call it deconstructing my faith. The Bible calls it compromise.
We call it being culturally relevant, whatever that is. The Bible calls it spiritual abuse. All my charismatics and Pentecostals, this is for you. Ready? The Bible calls it spiritual abuse.
We were told, touch not the Lord's anointed. Remember that. Let me set you free from that here at Great Commission Church. First of all, I am not the Lord's anointed. And neither has any pastor or shepherd ever been.
That's reserved for like, Jesus, messiahs, kings of Israel and priests. What happened is you came out of a system of abuse that let the guy at the top of the pyramid do whatever he wanted. And you were scared and somebody used a Bible verse incorrectly to you. We don't do that here. Amen.
Spiritual abuse. The Bible calls it drunkenness. Can I do this one? We call it letting off steam and having a good time. The Bible calls it addiction.
We call it a habit. There's a million of these.
We manage our sins by renaming them, trying to take the edge off the wickedness. And joking about it, excusing it, and justifying it. I'll give you a sobering example. There was a preacher. His name was Ravi Zacharias.
He was one of the most respected Christian apologists, defender of the faith in the world. In the 1990s and the early 2000s, Ravi spoke at universities. Ravi wrote books that sold by the millions. He defended the faith on a global scale. Millions admired him.
I was one of them. Read his books, listened to his podcasts, preached some stuff in his pulpit that I heard from him first. In 2017, allegations of misconduct surfaced about Robbie Zacharias. People saying behind the scenes, he's not what he says he is.
Ravi denied those allegations publicly, continued his ministry, died three years later in 2020. After his death in 2020, an independent investigation was assembled and commissioned. And the findings were devastating. Multiple women reported long term sexual misconduct with this man, an older aging man who had a wife of nearly 50 years evident. He used some of the money to buy brothels basically in foreign countries where he traveled many times and called them massage parlors.
Evidence showed patterns of manipulation and hidden immorality that had gone on for years. Here's what makes it even more tragic. The guy just kept on preaching. After the allegations, he kept traveling, he kept appearances as a celebrity speaker. But privately, instead of mourning his sin, he was managing it to keep his reputation and to make sure the income kept coming in.
It was highest level cowardly hypocrisy. And the fallout was terrible. Untold numbers of people who were once touched by the Lord under his preaching and his books, through his ministry, became disillusioned. People came to me privately and said, pastor, I got close to the Lord because of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. Turns out he was living a fraudulent life.
Does that mean that my faith is a fraud? No. Undoubtedly, some were so wounded, they abandoned their faith. Let me tell you, God only has broken vessels he can use. It doesn't excuse that kind of hypocrisy.
But the truth is the truth, and God can use a donkey to speak it if he needs to. Isn't that true? Read your Bible.
Am I mourning sin or am I managing it? Because in our verse James 4, 9, James is saying, life's not all laughter and good times like we gotta get out of Peter Pan. Christianity. Yes. Joel 2, 21.
God says, Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.
C.S. lewis, a great writer, came to Christ later in life, wrote, mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of Sin. I want to say something to you.
There is no statute of limitation on personal sin in the Bible. So if you hurt someone, if you acted evilly, if you showed darkness rather than light, and you go, yeah, but it was a long time ago. Can I tell you, time doesn't forgive sin, friends. Repentance does. Well, it happened before I got saved.
Yeah, but did you hurt someone before you were. Yes. Well, when you got saved, it didn't make restitution or fix that. The Holy Spirit is going to work on your conscience, perhaps right now, and show you that you've been trusting in the passing of time instead of the ministry of the Spirit.
Pastor, what does James think about joy when he writes to us that we turn our joy to gloom?
He's saying that we need moments of serious reflection. It's not always rainbows and unicorns. We need heart sobriety. We need a lament and mourn and weep moment.
It was a song from the 60s or 70s, but they got it from the Bible. Ecclesiastes 3, 4. A Time to weep and a time to laugh. Those are separate times. A time to mourn and a time to dance.
Those are. Those are separate moments. And at some point you got to bring this to God. Psalm 51:17, David's prayer. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart.
These, O God, you will not despise. I'll tell you what my observation has been as a longtime pastor. When people come to Christ weeping and heartbroken, they stay.
When people strut into the kingdom of God thinking that, well, of course he's going to save me, and of course I need this eternal life. And there's no visible, obvious brokenness over sin. Those are the ones that eventually, perhaps disappear. Do you follow what I'm saying?
We ought to preach the verse the way it's supposed to be felt and preached. Managed sin grows, mourned, sin dies. Am I mourning sin or managing it?
Question number four. Am I humble before God or quietly indifferent to him?
This is James 4:10. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he will lift you up. If I was going to summarize that verse, it would be that the way up is down. James is telling us, bow low so that God can lift us out of the pit. When I think about being lifted out of the pit, I think about Psalm 40, verses 1 and 2, where David wrote, I waited patiently for Yahweh, and he inclined to me and heard my cry.
He also brought me up out of the horrible pit. Out of the miry clay and set my feet on a rock and established my steps. I wonder if he feels stuck.
Jesus wants to take you out of the miry clay. Set your feet on a rock and give you a firm place to stand.
My favorite definition for humility is also by CS Lewis and I can't improve upon this. Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is thinking of yourself less.
Pride comes when you have Main Character Syndrome. It's all about you. Here's the danger. You can be present in church but still be indifferent in heart. You can be here and still not care.
And indifference is subtle. Let me show you how subtle. January 28th, 1986. By the way, I love the 80s. Amen.
I miss them every day.
I was in fifth grade that day. Everybody at the Olive Branch Middle School. Here's how I know. My mom was a teacher. She worked there.
Everybody in Olive Branch Middle School was sitting in class watching the TV. Remember the TVs on the carts with the straps and the VHS? Remember those watching somehow we're watching TV. January 28, 1986 was the day of the Challenger space shuttle launch. Every school kid in America probably was watching.
It was a big deal. We had lessons about it leading up to it. There were going to be seven astronauts on board the shuttle. One of them for the very first time was a teacher. Her name was Christa McAuliffe.
Remember, we're all watching. Just over one minute into the flight, the whole thing blew up. I had a substitute teacher that day. She just fell apart and just cried for the next 20 minutes. We 10, 11 year olds didn't know what to do.
It was awful. Seven astronauts died. Here's what you learn about as an adult later. The night before the launch, engineers had warned that the unseasonably cold temperatures on the Cape that day could cause the O ring seals some big part of the solid rocket boosters that you need to get into orbit. That cold weather could make them.
That cold air can make them fail. They recommended delaying the launch. Did you know this?
But pressure mounted to stay on schedule. So they discussed the concerns and. And then all the bosses dismissed them. 73 seconds into the flight. If you watched it, you remember the three breaking off plumes of smoke.
Remember this?
The O ring failed in the freezing air. The investigation later concluded something I think is even more chilling. It wasn't ignorance that brought down that space shuttle. It was normalization. Warning signs had appeared before, but they were used to going, ah, let's explain it.
Small risks had begun to be tolerated. And over time, people just became comfortable with something might go wrong. And they became calm and quiet and indifferent to the danger. And everything looked stable until the catastrophe. Can I tell you, spiritual indifference works the same way?
Because you can be here and look calm, you can appear faithful to God, you can show up all the time. But if you ignore the conviction of the Spirit, if you normalize distance from God, if you grow comfortable with drifting, then quiet indifference in your heart will become disaster. So James says, humble yourselves. Look, none of us want God to have to do it to us. Humility listens to warning, indifference ignores it.
Did you know that you can bow your head and still resist his authority? Were you aware that you can pray softly and still live independently?
But God's commands always come with promises. And did you catch the promise? In verse 10, you humble yourself in the sight of the Lord and he will lift you up.
But he won't lift you up when you promote yourself. And he won't lift you up when you defend yourself. And neither will he lift you up when you seek to defend yourself or prove yourself. He will lift you up when you humble yourself. So the question is, am I humble before God or quietly indifferent to Him?
All right, you made it through the four questions. I want to conclude by a 35,000ft view of the four verses. The text that we just read their book ended verse 7, Submit yourselves to God. Verse 10. Humble yourself before the Lord.
Do you hear God in both of those verses and in the middle, everything flows from that famous proverb quoted multiple times, two or three times in the New Testament Proverbs 3:34. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. That means that God is actively working against the proud and preventing their plans from succeeding.
But check this out. Every Command in James 4, 7, 10, every single one of them is simply humility applied. I'll show you. Resisting the devil. That's humility in battle, drawing near to God.
That's humility in worship, cleansing your hands. That's humility in your actions or your behavior, purifying your heart. That's humility in motive, mourning over sin. That's humility and repentance. And finally being lifted up by God.
That is humility rewarded. Don't you want the reward? Me too. Let's pray together. Prayer Ministry Team if you'll come and get in place.
Father, this sermon today, this text of scripture is an easy one for the enemy to steal. This seed that's been planted.
God, it makes us uncomfortable. So we would almost gladly give this one back. Lord, I pray for the power of God to help us keep this seed planted. God, make it grow and be fruitful. God, would you give our church a gospel humility?
Would you help us not to be too impressed with ourselves or even our machinery here, but God with the overwhelming wonder that you would come and rescue sinners like us?
God, minister to your body today in Jesus name. Amen. On your ministry card, there's lots of next steps to take. Some of you need to join our church. Some of you need to come to Christ and be saved.
Baptize. Get in a small group, put your name and your number. Mark one of those boxes. We'll get with you this week. Let's stand together.
I'm about to dismiss you to the mission field of your life and open these prayer lines. And I want to say that any and everyone should come for prayer today. Even if you don't know what to pray for, that you're in the best spot coming to these trained prayer teams and say, look, I just need guidance from the Lord. Whatever he puts on your mind to pray for me, that's what I need.
Let's be a church that exercises faith in prayer. Hey, you glad that you came? Are you glad that my sermon is over? It's not spiritual to say yes. All right.
Love you guys. Enjoy your small group. We'll see you next Sunday.

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Join us this Sunday at Great Commission Church for a welcoming and uplifting worship experience. If you’ve been searching for a church near you, you’ll discover a warm, authentic church family ready to help you grow in faith.

We are a family-friendly, non-denominational Christian church in Olive Branch, serving individuals and families throughout DeSoto County and the greater Mid-South. People looking for Christian churches in Olive Branch often discover a vibrant community where faith comes alive and lives are transformed through the Gospel.

Whether you’re new to faith or have followed Christ for years, you’ll find welcoming Sunday services, practical Bible teaching, and a place to belong. We are more than a congregation — we are a church family united by a mission to follow Jesus and live out the Great Commission.

A Place for the Whole Family

Families searching for a church with strong children’s programs love our engaging Kids Ministry and safe, caring environments. Students can connect through our Youth Ministry, and adults of every stage can find community through groups, prayer, and discipleship opportunities. As a multi-generational church, we love seeing every age grow in faith together.

Meaningful Worship

Experience contemporary worship with modern Christian music, heartfelt prayer, and Gospel-centered messages designed to help you encounter God personally. If you’re looking for vibrant worship near Memphis, you’ll find a place that feels both authentic and inspiring.

Grow in Your Faith

We offer Bible studies, small groups, and discipleship opportunities that help you understand and apply God’s Word to everyday life. If you’re looking for a place to grow spiritually, you’ll find support and encouragement here.

Connected to Our Community

We are passionate about serving our neighbors through outreach and local partnerships, making a positive impact in Olive Branch and beyond.

Conveniently located in Olive Branch, we serve families from surrounding communities, including Southaven, Germantown, Collierville, Lewisburg, and Byhalia.