A Daily Walk

Guest (Male): Hey, glad to have you on board as we proceed a daily walk with Pastor John Randall. We'll open our Bibles today to James chapter 4. If you recall, last time we were talking about a war that is within. Well, today we're going to learn what it takes to win. It starts with submission and then resistance. Here's Pastor John to explain in part one of his message, "Submit to God."

John Randall: It was at the beginning of the fourth chapter that James began to address some of the problems that had developed within the church and their root causes. It had come to his attention that there was contention within the congregation, and these conflicts, we came to discover, grew out of the soil of pride. The war within was based on selfish desires of individuals, and the results were tragic.

Rather than a culture of love and godliness, there was a manifestation of bitter worldliness. This in turn led to a prayerlessness among the members. No longer were they bringing their requests to God in prayer, and even if they did, it was only to fulfill their own selfish and impure motives. As the church became more and more like the world, it led to greater unfaithfulness.

James knew that if these matters remained unresolved, the damage could potentially become irreparable. Therefore, in verse seven, James writes straightforwardly with a tone of military abruptness that called for an immediate response. There are some ten verbs in the following verses where James in an urgent call for a specific and decisive decision to be made on the part of his readers.

Now, some commentators suggest that the following verses only apply to non-believers. However, in the context, I believe that this applies to believers and non-believers. If you were to put what James was writing about in the form of a question, it would be something like this: Did these believers want to see the conflicts resolved between them and the Lord and between them and their brothers and sisters in Christ?

Did they want the work of God to continue in their midst? And if they were to answer in the affirmative, then they had to respond to what James was exhorting them to do. Because these are the same questions that were being asked even here tonight. If you came here this evening and you've been resisting God's calling on your life, or you've been at war with God, or maybe you're ignoring his grace, and you're not saved, and you're not on your way to heaven, or you're at war with other people, or you're at war with your spouse, or your kids, or you're growing bitter as the days progress, this is what you have to realize.

That war comes from within your own heart. And the fact that you're fighting everybody else may be an indication you're actually fighting against God. And the question that we would have to answer if we're in that place is: Do we want God's work to continue in our life? Do we desire to have renewed fellowship with the Lord and other people? If that's the case, then it's important to listen to what James is saying here this evening. Because whether you're dealing with the work of God through salvation or the work of reconciliation with others, it begins—here's where it begins—with submission to God. That's where it starts.

It says in verse seven: "Therefore," or in light of everything that I've said to you previously, in light of all of this, this war going on within you, this battle between the spirit and the flesh, therefore, you want to overcome, you want to have the victory? Here's where it starts: submit to God. Submit to God. Now, the very mention of the word "submit" causes some to become uncomfortable.

The reason there is such a negative connotation attached to the word "submit" is we don't really understand what it means in a truest biblical sense. What do you mean submit to God? Submission to God, folks, it's not restriction. It's actually protection. It's not a burden. It's actually a real blessing. The word "submit" actually comes from two words. They're put together, and it literally means to place under in an orderly fashion.

The words that James uses here are what are called enlistment words. It implies taking up allegiance to a great superior in order to engage in the battle under his banner. James is encouraging us: Hey, listen, submit to the Lord. Turn your life over to the Lord. Submit to the Commander-in-Chief, the Lord Jesus Christ of your life. Give your soul allegiance and loyalty to him. Submit to God.

You may remember back in the first verse of the fourth chapter that James implied there's a war going on. And in this battle, I'm to submit to Jesus and to his will. Submission to the Lord is a matter of choice. It's a choice that I make. I can submit to God or I can say I'm not going to submit to God. I don't want to submit to God. I'm going to do my own thing. And for many of us, that's how we lived our lives.

I can choose to submit to God's will for my life or I can choose to resist it. I can choose to submit and receive God's salvation that he's offered through Christ, or I can choose to reject it as well. Why is it that some do not submit to God's will for their life? I believe that for some, they do not submit to God because they feel that they know what's best for them. Most of us before coming to Christ felt we knew what was best for us until we realized we didn't.

Or some are fearful that God's going to take your freedom away. God's going to make you miserable. God's going to make you hate your life. That's what he does up there; he's just waiting for you to submit to him so he could wreck you. That's not the God of the Bible. A person who believes that doesn't know how much God loves them. Maybe you're sitting here tonight thinking I'm not going to submit my life to the Lord, he'll just send me to Africa.

But the root problem so often is we don't really understand how much God loves us. We don't understand how gracious he is. Someone put it this way: "The heart of pride is self-sufficiency. A phenomenal pride thinks that we can get along without God. But humility, on the other hand, recognizes the need to depend on God. Humility empties self of self-sufficient independence from God, and humility places us under and submission to God so that he can use our lives as he pleases."

The blessing of submitting to God is that a personal revival begins to take place in your life. I begin to discover the plans and the purposes that God has for me. The things that God wanted to do in my life that were hindered because I was blinded by my own pride and unwilling to submit to what he wanted to do. And for those who would rebel against the will of God for their lives, they end up wasting time, missing out on what God would do and wants to do.

You know, I have yet to meet a person—yet, hasn't happened; I don't think it will—who comes to Christ who has ever said to me: "You know what? I wish I would have waited a little longer. It would have been so much better just to live out in the world a little bit longer, wreck a few more people, hurt a few more people." I've never heard that. No one ever says that. Everybody says: "I wish I would have come earlier. Why did I wait? What was I thinking?"

That's what most people say. There was a man by the name of Roy Hession who wrote a book—a number of books, actually—but one book that he wrote that was one of my favorites, was one of my father's favorites as well, was called *Calvary Road*. You might want to look it up if you've never read it. It is powerful. But I'll tell you this: you read it, be prepared to be convicted.

And one of the points that he made concerning submission to God and the blessings that follow: if we're going to come into the right relationship with God, the first thing that we have to learn is that our will must be broken to his in the beginning of revival. And here's what he said—I love this, I never forgot it. He says it can be painful, it can be humiliating, but it's the only way. It's not I, but Christ.

He said actually the letter "I" has to be bent so that it stands for Christ. Some of us, we don't bend very easily. But if we want to see God work in our life, the "I" has to bend so it's Christ. Many people have an "I" problem, and I'm not talking about your glasses. I'm talking about the internal battle with God. He went on to say the Lord Jesus Christ cannot live in us fully and reveal himself through us until the proud self within us is broken.

And this simply means that the hard, unyielding self, which justifies itself, wants its own way, stands for its own rights, seeks its own glory, at last bows its head to God's will, admits its wrong, gives up its own way to Jesus, surrenders its rights, and discards its own glory that the Lord Jesus might have all and be all. Close quote. And for some of you, maybe today you've been in that battle with God for a long time. You've been fighting, unwilling to yield.

Have you submitted to God? Have you turned your life over to him? I love what D.L. Moody said. He said: "Let God have your life. He can do more with it than you can." And I also love what one other man said. He said: "When all that you are is available to all that God is, then all that God is is available to all that you are." Submission to the will of God, that is where it begins.

And once I've submitted to God's will for my life, I've humbled myself before him, the next step, here it says, James says: "Resist the devil." Because the moment you say: "Lord, I want to surrender my life to you. I'm submitting to you." Guess what? Devil's like: "Oh no. No, no. That's not how we're going to do this. I don't let go of my property that easily. In fact, I'm going to make it really difficult for you. And everything you couldn't get before, I'm going to put it right in front of your face."

"Now what do you think? Remember that girl that would never talk to you, ever, that you were chasing for—guess what? She got your number." Suddenly it's like: "Oh, but I've got to submit to God." Oh no. I mean, you name it, he puts it in front of you to try to pull you away. So what happens? Resist the devil. When I submit my life to God, humble myself before him, I'm going to get spiritually attacked by the enemy of my soul.

But submitting to the will of God, it's the antithesis of what the devil encourages people to do. The devil is constantly encouraging people to reject the will of God. He did that with Adam and Eve in the very beginning in the book of Genesis chapter three. What did he say? "Did God say you shouldn't eat that? Is that his will? You know what? He doesn't want you to become like him, so you should probably eat it. You should make that fruit salad. Just eat it. It's okay. You're going to be fine."

And she blew it, and so did Adam. But that's what his goal is, to incite people to resist the will of God in salvation. And yet as a believer, I'm to resist the devil. To resist literally means to stand or to set yourself against the devil. It's actually referred in army, arranging itself in battle formation against enemy forces. That's what I'm talking about. That's what this is: it's a fight.

The devil uses the world system, my own flesh, to fight against me daily. Someone once said that there's a battle between heaven and hell and we're caught in the middle of it. We really are. We know that the Scripture says that we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and forces of darkness and wickedness in heavenly places. The devil is like a roaring lion; he's seeking whom he may devour. He can pose as an angel of light, deceiving many.

I can't defeat the devil in my own strength. But Jesus has defeated the devil at the cross. And now I stand under the banner of Christ's victory. I submit to him, and I then find power to resist the enemy, where before I didn't have it. Oh, there's no greater example of this in Scripture than Jesus himself. Jesus submitted to the will of the Father. "Not my will, but yours be done."

And he also resisted the devil that sought to get him to act apart from the will of God. Hey, if you're really hungry, since you are the Son of God, turn these stones to bread. No, not going to do it. Wanted him to resist, or wanted him actually to resist God's will, and instead take matters into his own hands. And Jesus wouldn't do it. He fought against the devil, and he was victorious.

But notice the promise, and this is great—this is a great promise. Notice what it says: if you resist the devil, what happens? "He'll flee from you. He'll flee from you." When he comes, I'm going to run to Jesus. And then it's like: "Oh, game over." Like, no one's going to mess with Jesus because you're already defeated. So we resist, we run from the devil.

We don't run after the things of the devil; we run away from it. And if we do, if we resist the enemy in the power of God, then the devil has to flee. And that's what we're called to do. We submit to God, but we also need to resist the devil. And I would encourage you to let Jesus fight that battle with the devil. Sometimes you come across people, and God bless them: "Devil, we come against—devil, we—" And I feel like: why you keep saying his name?

Like, why don't you say Jesus' name? Jesus, you deal with the devil. Some people like to—I'm squaring off with the devil. Let's go, devil. We come against you, and devil, devil, devil, devil. Why not just say: "Jesus rebuke you." That's the name. So just a side note: if you're into calling out the enemy's name, call out the name of Jesus and he's going to flee. That's what the Bible says.

Now it says thirdly: "Draw near to God," verse eight, "and he will draw near to you." Here before us another powerful exhortation and even more amazing promise. We are encouraged to draw near to God, and the promise is that when we do, he will in turn draw near to us. It means to draw close. That God's not distant, he's not just somewhere out there and you can't get near him. Listen, he has made himself accessible and available, and he's saying: "Come on. Draw near to me. I want to be with you. I want to spend time with you."

The Bible tells us in Psalm 145, verse 18, that the Lord is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth. The Bible also tells us in the book of Isaiah in chapter 58, in verse 9, that you will call and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: "Here I am." Call upon him. Draw near to him. And when you do, he draws near to you.

Guys, did you know that God doesn't desire to have a secondhand relationship with you? He wants a personal relationship with you. By that, I mean God wants our relationship with him not to be based upon a secondhand experience of others. And sometimes we struggle to take time to meet with the Lord. Daily devotions is something that perhaps we haven't made a priority, or we're too busy, or we're easily distracted.

Yet all the while, God is available, just longing to be with us. And sometimes what happens instead is that we may listen to what others are saying about their times in meeting with the Lord and what they're learning as opposed to what God wants to speak to us personally. The Lord Jesus loves us so much, and loves you personally and individually, that there are certain things that he only wants to speak to you because it's a personal relationship.

There are certain things that I only say to my wife because of my love for her and our relationship. I don't say it to anybody else because it's personal. And the Lord says: "You're the bride of Christ. We're the bride of Christ." And there are certain things that he wants to speak to you personally, specifically as you draw near to him. The promise is: "I'm going to draw near to you."

I'm so thankful for that. I draw near to the Lord through the reading of his word, through conversing with him in prayer, through listening and being quiet and allowing him to speak to me. He goes on to say fourthly here: "Now cleanse your hands, you sinners." Ouch, James. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. James calls the readers to be cleansed from their worldliness and sin.

Sin is always a hindrance to the work of God, by the way. There has to be a cleansing. Thankfully there is one provided. It was David who said in Psalm 24, he asked the question: "Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Who can stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood and has not sworn deceitfully. He shall receive a blessing from the Lord and the righteousness from the God of his salvation."

You know, when you begin to draw near to God, you begin to see yourself in light of who he is and who he reveals himself to be in his word. And it exposes what's in my own heart. As I get close to the light, suddenly I begin to see things that I didn't see when I was dwelling in the shadows. God begins to graciously and lovingly point out things that need to go or need to be repented of, and the exhortation is: "Hey, cleanse your hands. Be cleansed."

Sometimes we're fearful to see that. Now, the interesting thing is he already knows. He already knows about it. And he's inviting us to draw near. So I draw near, and I realize—like Isaiah—I'm undone. I dwell among a people of unclean lips; I myself am unclean. But what happened to Isaiah? The Lord cleansed him and purified him. And the same thing happens—the Lord does that with us.

We draw near because he invited us, and then he's: "Hey, I'm going to cleanse you." And he cleanses us. There's nothing that the blood of Jesus cannot cleanse us from. It was John who wrote in his first epistle, in 1 John chapter 1, he said: "But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. And if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

The cleansing of the hands speaks of the cleansing of external actions in my life, where the purifying of the heart speaks of the motives internally. "Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts. Purify your heart." One is external, the other internal.

Guest (Male): We're developing Pastor John Randall's study in James on *A Daily Walk*. He'll be right back with more. Would you like to hear the message again? Just go to adailywalk.org or look for us wherever you get your podcasts. Another convenient way to listen to Pastor John is through our mobile app. Be among the thousands that are being encouraged in their daily walk by downloading that today. Find our app by searching for Calvary South OC.

Have you ever read through the entire Bible? Why not do that here in 2026? We've got a Bible that can help you. It's the *One Year Chronological Bible*, New King James translation. It's arranged in 365 daily readings, one for each day of the calendar year. So go through the Bible with us and request it today for only $10 when you call 877-242-0828 or order online at adailywalk.org.

As the Lord leads, we would also appreciate your financial support. We're consistently hearing from people that are being helped through the teaching of God's word, and your gifts help to make that possible. So thank you for standing with us in this new year. To make a donation today to help us continue the ministry on your station tomorrow, visit adailywalk.org or call us at 877-242-0828.

We'd also like to encourage you to start watching *A Daily Walk* devotionals. Grab your Bible and join Pastor John for an encouraging daily devotional each day at adailywalk.org. And now let's return to today's study in James chapter 4.

John Randall: Interesting that he then goes on to say in verse eight: "Purify your hearts." Notice this: "you double-minded." And when the Bible speaks of the heart, it doesn't refer to the physical organ pumping the blood in your body. It's used figuratively to describe and refer to the seat and the center of human life and emotion. When we talk about the heart, it's the center of the personality; it controls the intellect, the emotions, the will.

And no outward form of obedience without the change of heart really does you any good. I mean, you can do something, you can force something, but what you really want is a change of heart. There has to be a purifying of the heart internally. The Bible tells us that our hearts can be deceitfully wicked above all else. Not that they could be—they are deceitfully wicked above all else. And who can know it? Our heart can trick us. Our heart can lie to us.

"Follow your heart." I don't think so. No, Hallmark. I'm not going to follow my heart because my heart is deceitful. "Do what your heart tells you to do." Just follow your heart. I know, no, because I know what the Bible says about my heart. It's double-minded. It needs to be purified because it's deceitfully wicked above all else. Remember the Pharisees in the Bible? Big phylacteries on their forehead, nice robes.

Jesus came to them and he rebuked them, and he said: "You guys are like whitewashed tombs." What does that mean? He said: "You appear beautiful on the outside, but inside you're full of dead men's bones." A whitewashed tomb was like they would scrub these tombs, they would make them as white as possible. Wow, that is so white. But if you open it up—it's dead in there.

Jesus said: "That's kind of what your life is like. Outwardly, you look pure, you look clean, but to open that thing up, it's like wow, something died in there." Yeah, yeah, it's death in there. That's what he said concerning the Pharisees. And he said: "Even so, you outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly," he said, "you're full of hypocrisy and lawlessness." Yeah, you look totally clean on the outside, but inside you're not. There's got to be this cleansing on the inside. Only Jesus can do that.

Guest (Male): We'll continue our through-the-Bible journey next time on *A Daily Walk* with Pastor John Randall. Blessings to you.