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Welcome to Drive Time Devotions and our study of James, chapter 4. This is our
first day in our look at this incredible chapter. We're going to look at verses
1 to 3 today.

As we open up this chapter, let me ask you a question. When was the last time
that you felt down? You just felt like, wow, life is not all that it should be,
and you felt that discouragement that comes upon us.

You might be feeling it right now, it might come upon you from time to time,
whatever. There are days, there are periods of life for all of us when nothing
seems to go right. When you feel like quitting your job or kicking your dog or
ignoring your responsibilities.

And the question that James, chapter 4, answers for us is this. Which way is up
when you feel down? Do you decide to give up?

Or are you determined to get up on your own energy? Or do you look for a lift up
from God? You see, in one sense, I know this might be a crazy way to think about
it.

We all have what I would call hitchhiker hearts. We're all in need of a lift.
And some of us, we try to lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps.

It might work for a time, but in the end, we need something more than that.
We're desperate for something greater than that. When we feel a weight in our
hearts, we need a lift, a lift that only God can give.

Giving up only makes things worse. And determination on our own to get up will
eventually wear thin. You ever watch in the Olympics those weight lifters who
lift literally hundreds and hundreds of pounds?

We look at them and you can see the strain in doing that for just a few moments.
They couldn't live their life doing that. Well, we've got some weights for our
heart that are like that.

And you might be able to lift it yourself seemingly for a few moments, but then
you have to drop it. Who is strong enough to bear the burden of our hearts? God
is.

God is. So you might be thinking, well, then why doesn't he lift the weight
that's on my heart right now that's been on my heart lately? Well, James chapter
four is some simple direction from God about how he lifts the weight that's in
our heart, how he lifts us up as his people.

And before you think, well, God hasn't done it, let's look at the directions,
what he tells us to do in our everyday lives. This week as we look at how God
lifts us up, we're going to first of all talk about how God lifts us out. In
fact, first you ask God to lift you out and then you ask him, look to him to
lift you up.

To be lifted up, you have to first be lifted out of some things in life. There's
something powerful about the atmosphere that we all live in that either brings
us down or lifts us up. And the simple truth is, until you begin to trust God to
lift you out of certain situations, your heart will never be lifted up.

And James chapter four, the first several verses of this chapter talk about the
fact that there are some things in this world that drag us down. In fact, before
that, even more honestly, James causes us to confront this truth. There's
something about us that drags us down.

There's something about this world that drags us down. There's something about
us, something in us that drags us down. And when I understand that, when I admit
that, when I put that honestly in front of me, I'm ready for God to lift me up.

So first we're going to talk about how God lifts us out. And then later this
week, we're going to talk about how God lifts us up. And for God to lift me out,
I got to remember there's something about me, something in me that drags me
down.

James talks about it. Let me read for you James chapter four, verses one to
three. What causes fights and quarrels among you?

Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something,
but you don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want.

You quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask,
you do not receive because you ask with the wrong motives that you may spend
what you get on your pleasures.

These verses are all about living life for what you desire. And these verses
tell us that that's a recipe for warfare, a battle with God, a battle within.
These verses are a description of some of life's greatest downers, the things
that really bring us down.

Did you notice it talks about fights and quarrels among you? It talks about
desires battling within you. The word desires or passions there gives us our
English word hedonism.

It talks about you wanting, but not getting. It even talks about killing and
coveting, going to the point where you take somebody's life or you take
somebody's things just to get what you want or think you want. It talks about
desires going unfulfilled, praying, but no answers.

Being filled with selfish pride. When you live your life chasing after
everything that you want, the strangest things begin to happen. You begin to
feel down and you begin to fight that.

And these verses cause us to confront some truths about ourselves. If I'm honest
with myself, I have to realize there is something in me that brings me down. I
want what I want.

There's no other word for it but this. My selfish desires bring about a lot of
the discouragement that I face in my life. I know there's some discouragement
that you face.

You can look to someone else or something else, some other circumstance that had
nothing to do with you. But if we're just honest with ourselves, much of the
discouragement that we face, much of the time that we feel down, we can look
within and realize it's because we've had these selfish desires in our lives.
We've been focused on ourselves.

And James talks to the people that he was writing to and says, "Look at what's
happening. Look at the fighting and quarreling that's going on. That's an
indication of something.

Look at the fact that you want things and you don't get what you want. That's an
indication of something. Look at the fact that you're praying and you never get
any answers to your prayers.

That's an indication of something. " And all of those are an indication of one
word, selfishness, selfishness. You see, if I want God to lift me up, these
verses tell me I have to admit three things about myself.

I have to admit that I have desires that battle within. I have to admit,
secondly, that I do not ask God. I depend on myself.

And then I have to admit, thirdly, that even when I do ask, I ask selfishly that
I can spend it on my own selfish pleasures. Those three things. I have desires
that battle within.

You see, within every one of us, there's this desire as a believer to follow God
and to worship Him and to live our lives for Him. But there's also this desire
to follow my own wishes, to make myself look great, to get what I want out of
life. And I think somehow that's what's going to please me.

It never does in the end. But we have those desires within us, and I have to
admit that's there. I also have to admit that sometimes I just don't ask God.

I don't know about you, but I'm shocked at how many times I don't pray. I don't
ask God, even for spiritual things that I'm doing, even for teaching things like
a Bible study or doing things like church. I just sort of get on a
merry-go-round of doing it my own way, doing it like I've done it before.

I don't ask God. And we're going to find out later in this chapter the reason we
don't ask God is because we're depending on ourselves. The reason we don't ask
God is our own pride.

We want to say we did it rather than we depended on God to do it through us. I
don't ask God. And he says we also have to admit that when we do ask, we ask
selfishly.

A lot of our prayers are about ourselves. A lot of our prayers are about getting
what we want. Sometimes you think, "Well, just because I prayed about it, that
makes it more spiritual.

" No. Prayer reveals our heart, and sometimes it reveals a heart of selfishness.
In fact, that's what these things add up to.

I have desires that battle within. I don't ask God. I ask selfishly.

These add up to the fact that I am selfish. Selfishness never leads to
godliness. You might get your way.

Sometimes you get your way by being selfish. There's no doubt about that, but
you'll never get to God's will by being selfish. I've met so many people.

They're getting their way in life. They're getting what they think they want in
life, but still somehow deep down inside, they're discouraged and they're down,
and life is not holding what they want. They're getting the things that they
want.

They're getting the plan that they wanted going forward. But there's something
still down in their hearts. Why?

Because they're not fulfilling God's plan for their life. They're not living out
God's will for their life. They're living selfishly.

Your selfishness will never add up to godliness. So as we take some time today
to talk to God about these verses, this is an honest admission of God in prayer.
If you talk to God, just say, "God, I admit it.

I'm selfish. I do. I admit it.

If you cannot admit that, selfishness has more of a hold on you than you might
think. And as you pray, as you talk to God today, you might ask yourself in
prayer this question. Where is your life being overwhelmed or controlled by
selfish desires right now?

You want something. You want it so badly that you're going to get it any way
that you can. Even if God doesn't want it for you, you're going to figure out a
way to get it.

When you see some of these things happening that James talks about, the
quarreling, the selfishness, feeling far from God and full of pride, just ask in
prayer, "God, where is my life being overwhelmed by selfishness? Help me to
admit it. Help me to see it so that I can set it aside to follow you instead.

I ask this, Father, in your name. Amen. " We've talked today about the fact that
there's something in us that can drag us down.

Tomorrow we're going to talk about the fact that there is something in this
world that drags us down.