As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these
verses:
4Adulteresses!
Do you not know the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Therefore,
whoever chooses to be a friend of the world has become an enemy of God. 5Or
do you suppose that the Scripture says emptily the spirit dwelling in us lusts
toward envy? 6But He gives more grace, therefore it says, “God
opposes proud ones but gives grace to humble ones.” 7Therefore,
submit yourselves to God and resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8Draw
near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse [your] hands, sinners, and
purify [your] hearts, double-minded. 9Be miserable and be sad and
cry tears. Let the laughter of yours be turned into sadness and the joy into
dejection. 10Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will lift you
up.
While I’m thinking about it all, there is one more thought
I’d like to record on the subject of v7 – “Submit yourselves therefore to God…”
I still feel I barely understand what it really means to
submit to God. However, I liked something John Gill said: “It is right and best
for the people of God to leave themselves with Him, … since by all their
anxious cares, their striving and struggling, their impatient desires, wars and
fightings, … they cannot add one cubit to their stature, … and it becomes them
to submit to God … and be still and know that He is God.”
What Gill is addressing is our submission to the Lord’s providence. It doesn’t take much Bible
reading to realize that the Lord completely orders our human existence. “In Him
we live and move and have our being.” “He works all things together for our
good.” “All of my days were written in Your book before one of them came to
be.”
But while it doesn’t take much to realize that, it has seemed
to me to be a life-long endeavor to learn to embrace it.
But is that not, in a very immediate sense, one of the ways
we all must submit to God?
The Israelites in the desert pretty much illustrated us all.
They were very openly and obviously dependent on the Lord’s providence. He
provided their food as manna from heaven, provided them water even if it had to
come from a rock, shaded them with His cloud in the day and warmed them with
His fire by night. He gave them one of the greatest leaders in human history,
delivered them from slavery and gave them a beautiful land to call their own.
And yet what was their response? “How often they rebelled against Him in the
desert and grieved Him in the wasteland. Again and again they vexed the Holy
One of Israel …” (Ps 78:40,41). The two words “grumbling” and “Israelites” are
almost synonymous!
But are we really any better? I am quite a well-practiced
grumbler. I could peel off right now a seemingly endless list of things I “don’t
like.” In every case, you would probably say, “I see what you mean. Can’t blame
you for that!” But I have said I believe the Lord orders the very minutes of my
days. So who am I grumbling against?
So this is a very real issue and one of all-day-every-day importance
– to submit myself to God in the sense of accepting His providence for me, no
matter what.
As Gill said, “It becomes [us] to submit to God … and be
still and know that He is God.”
What probably catches my heart is the “Be still and know
that He is God.” Be still. Settle down. Chill.
My natural bent seems to be to live my life in a nervous,
frantic stew. “So much needs to get done!” “So much could go wrong!” “I don’t
know if we’ll make it!” I can literally live my life in a terrored frenzy.
Be still.
And know that I am God.
This is an issue of submission to God – to learn to “be
still.”
I hate winter. No, not hate – I loathe winter. Miserable. Evil. Unfit for human habitation. I
absolutely loathe the feeling of cold air on my skin.
The problem with all of this, first of all, is that it means
I am pretty much guaranteed to be a grumbling, grousing, unhappy camper six
months out of every year! And ultimately, am I not grumbling against the Lord’s
providence? Who made winter? And Who ordained that I should live in it? “He
appoints the times of our lives and the bounds of our habitation” (Acts 17:26).
I don’t doubt at all that winter is part of the Curse, but, on the other hand, I
can see clearly that “even in judgment He has remembered mercy” – that if there
has to be snow, He made it a beautiful white; that if there has to be bitter
cold, He made it sparkle like millions and millions of diamonds. He’s given me
a warm house to live in, a nice warm coat, a warm car to drive in. And He put
me here. In winter. Somehow I need to submit to Him in it. I need to be still
and know that He is God.
Interesting.
Another huge one for me is my job. I love my job, but it is
very, very hard. The pace is a mad frenzy and much of the time I feel totally
overwhelmed. I often have to pray even to go to work. I have to remind myself
the Lord knows the workload I’ve been given – and in reality He’s the One whose
given it to me (… for I serve the Lord Christ” Col 3:23). I have to remind myself
that He will help me, He always has helped me, His strength is made perfect in
my weakness (of which I have plenty to offer!). But I really believe this is
all an issue of submission to God. “Be still, Don, and know that I am God. Fear
not, for I am with thee. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold
you with the right hand of My righteousness. For I know the plans I have for
you, plans to do you good and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and a
hope.” I really believe this is a submission issue in my life. “Be still – even
at work.”
And then there is this body I live in. It hurts. All over.
All the time. I’m still trying to exercise and keep moving, but my legs are
pretty much shot and even my shoulders have gone weird on me. Nothing works. I
can’t hear, can’t see, can’t remember. I don’t like it. At all. But I have
prayed the Lord would take it away and up to this point at least, He has
allowed it all to go on. In fact it only gets worse. So what should I do? “Be still and know that I am God.”
Another submission issue.
Are these not all submission issues? I think so. I’m sure they
probably all sound petty and mundane – but, even as I type, I wonder if that
isn’t why I have a hard time grasping what James really means by “Submit
yourselves therefore to God.” Maybe it’s hard to see because I’m wanting to
make it into something big and “out there” instead of seeing that it’s really
all about the simple fabric of my everyday life, embracing His providence in
the seemingly unimportant details of my everyday life? “He that is faithful in
that which is least, is faithful also in much.” “Despise not the day of small
beginnings.”
Isn’t this exactly where Jesus meets us? Think about it –
when He wants to teach eternal truth, how does He begin? “A man went out to sow
his seed …” Pretty mundane, no? But isn’t that where we all live? Isn’t that
where our faith had better show up – in the seemingly mundane of our everyday
lives? And doesn’t it make sense that, if we’re going to truly submit to God,
it needs to happen in the minutes and seconds of our everyday lives?
I think so. Even in the evil cold winter, even overwhelmed at
work, even in this hurting body – submit yourself to God. Submit to His wise providence.
Somewhere in my life I heard the little poem Madame Jeanne
Guyon wrote from prison:
“A little bird I am,
Shut from the fields of air,
And in my cage I sit and sing
To Him who placed me there.”
I think that’s a lot of what it really means to “Submit
yourselves, therefore, to God …”
… a little bird.
“It is right and best for the people of God to leave
themselves with Him, … since by all their anxious cares, their striving and
struggling, their impatient desires, wars and fightings, … they cannot add one
cubit to their stature, … and it becomes them to submit to God … and be still and know that He is God.”
No comments:
Post a Comment