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Welcome to Daily Drive Time Devotions and to Day 4 of our look through James
Chapter 4. We're going to look at verses 8 to 10 today. We're taking this week
to look at how God lifts us up.

First He has to lift us out, and then He lifts us up, and yesterday we began to
look at what it means for Him to lift us up. We humble ourselves. We submit to
Him, and we began to look at five practical commands for submitting to God.

The first, you remember, was we resist the devil. There are four more practical
commands in verses 8 to 10. Let me read those verses for you.

Come near to God, and He will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners,
and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail.

Change your laughter to mourning, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves
before the Lord, and He will lift you up. Come near to God, wash your hands,
purify your hearts, grieve, mourn, and wail.

When I want God to lift me up, first I resist the devil, and then I come near to
God. Near means relationship. I draw near to Him.

Draw me closer. What do you do when you feel far from God? Do you begin to blame
Him?

Do you wonder where He is? Do you wonder why He isn't close to you? Let me tell
you this.

When you feel far from God, when I feel far from God, He hasn't moved. God's
presence is everywhere. God is always as close to you as any other moment of
your life.

So when I feel far from God, when I begin to blame God, that's a ridiculous
blame. Because the truth is, God hasn't moved, I have. So what do I need to do?

I need to come near to Him. Satan's temptation is, oh, God's not there. You feel
far from God because He doesn't care about you.

So don't come near to Him. Of course Satan doesn't want you to come near to Him
because he knows what will happen. Come near to Him, and here's the promise.

He will come near to you. He always has been near. But you're not going to see
it until you make a faith decision to come near to Him.

Maybe you've been feeling far from God lately. You can make that faith decision
right now. God, I come near to you.

I realize you're here. You see every moment of my life. You never let me down.

You never will let me down. You will always be with me. You come near to God.

That's how God lifts you up. You stay near to Him in relationship to Him
throughout the day, talking to Him throughout the day, realizing that He's with
you throughout the day. God's not with you once a week at a worship service or
once a day in a daily devotional time.

He's with you all throughout every day. Come near to God. Draw near.

The third of these five things that James encourages us to do to draw near to
God, to be lifted up, is to wash your hands. What does that mean, wash your
hands, you sinners? The Old Testament priests had to wash their hands and their
feet before entering the church.

It was a sign of purity in their outward life. Your hands point to your entire
outward life. The idea here is to do the right things in your life, to live a
life that's filled with godly actions.

Wash your hands, you sinners. We've all sinned. We've all fallen short of God's
glory.

In that honest admission of who we are, we recognize even because of God's
grace, only because of God's grace, I can live out the kind of life that God
wants me to live out. I can do the things that he wants me to do in life. So I
choose to do those things.

We need to wash our hands because we're sinners. We need to live out a life of
doing the good things that God's called us to do. But because we're sinners, we
don't do them on our own power.

We do them based on his forgiveness, his power, his spirit within us. You wash
your hands, but then he says also, number four, purify your hearts. Purify your
hearts.

Washing your hands, that points to the entire outward life. Purifying your
hearts, that points to the inner life. Gene Getz says, "This is not about just
turning over a new leaf, but a change at the root level of life.

" God's made you a new person in Jesus Christ. So he says, "Purify your hearts.
You double-minded.

" You remember in James chapter one, we talked about being double-minded. Life
that's filled with doubt, trusting in myself, trusting in God. What should I do?

Purify your hearts. Decide, I'm going to trust in God. Then there's a fifth
decision that James encourages us to make.

He encourages us, if we want God to lift us up, to grieve and mourn and wail. In
fact, he says, "I want you to turn your laughter to mourning and your joy to
gloom. " Now what is that about?

I mean, we look at this and we think, doesn't God want my life to be filled with
joy? Doesn't he want his people to be filled with happiness and laughter? Why
would he say that part of being lifted up by God is to turn my joy to gloom?

Well, James knew who he was talking to. He knew that there are people, and these
were people in that day, that were putting on a joyful act, but their lives were
filled with sin. You see, there are a lot of people today like that.

Well, there's a lot of joy on the outside, but it's just an act. When you think,
aren't Christians supposed to be joyful? How could he say, "Change your joy to
gloom"?

He's talking about a false joy. He's saying that if it's going to become real
joy, it's going to begin with sorrow for living your life at this shallow level
of pretending I have joy instead of enjoying God's genuine joy in my life. Now I
want you to catch this, because it's key to understanding the book of James.

James talks about joy here. He's not using the word in a way that you would
usually expect. In fact, he's using the word somewhat sarcastically.

You might think of it as having quotes around it. If you're going to understand
the book of James, you have to understand he tends to use words that way. He
talks about joy, but he means with quotes around it, what you're calling joy.

Take what you're calling joy. You need to turn that to gloom and be sad about
the fact that you called this false joy genuine joy. He does the same thing when
he talks about faith.

When James says, "Faith without works is dead," you can put a quotes around
those words, that word faith. He's talking about so-called faith, what you call
faith. If it's not causing any difference in your life, any different way of
acting, it's dead.

He does the same thing with wisdom. He talks about our so-called wisdom, but
then he talks about here's God's genuine wisdom. Once you understand that James
sometimes uses words sarcastically, I know you think how could the Bible speak
in that kind of way?

Well, James certainly does. He takes words that people were thinking they were
living up to, and he says that's not what God intended. He didn't intend this
false joy, this false faith, this false wisdom, so he puts quotes around those
words and he says, "Take what you call joy, what you call faith, what you call
wisdom.

Trade them in and begin to live out the genuine joy, the real life of faith, the
true wisdom that God wants in your life. " It's one of the major messages of the
book of James. James here, when he talks about joy and gloom, he's saying it's
healthy to be sorry when we sin.

In fact, he's saying unless you express that sorrow, depression is on the way.
If you pretend you've never sinned, if you never sit for a moment with God and
say, "God, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry that I've sinned. I'm sorry for what that sin has done to your heart,
and I'm sorry for what that sin has done to men in my life, and how it's hurt
other people's lives," if you've never done that, you pretend that that sorrow
isn't there, then you're living a false life. You don't live in that sorrow.

You don't stay in that sorrow. The Bible tells us that while weeping may last
for the night, joy comes in the morning. Many times it's through grief, through
weeping that we arrive at joy because we let go of The false peace, the false
joy, the false hope, and in letting go of that false thing, we find what's real,
what's genuine.

James here is talking to people whose lives have been caught up in living in
selfish sin. Christians who are living life the way that they wanted, not the
way that God wanted. They were believers, but they were living their kind of
life based on their riches, their ideas, their plans, their definitions of faith
and joy, and James is saying here, if that's going to change, you need to
grieve.

You need to grieve what you've lost by living your way, and even more, you need
to grieve the hurt that you've brought to the heart of God. You don't grieve as
someone who is not forgiven. You grieve in light of the cross, but you grieve so
that you can let it go.

Grief is part of letting something go. You grieve so that you can let that false
way of life go and live the kind of life that God has for you. So he ends this
passage by saying, "You humble yourself before the Lord, and He will lift you
up.

" Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up. Now, how do you do
this? What does it mean to humble yourself before the Lord?

Does that mean I have to get on my knees daily for a certain number of hours
each day? What does this mean? Humility is recognizing the truth about who God
is and the truth about who you are.

And to humble yourself before the Lord. Notice here it says, "Humble yourself. "
It doesn't say, "Let God humble you or humiliate you.

" This isn't something you wait on God to do in your life. No, you humble
yourself. You intentionally choose to think in a different way, to think about
who God is and to think about who you are.

To think about the fact that God is creator and you are creation. To think about
the fact that God is savior and you are sinner in need of a savior. To think
about the fact that God is father and you are his child once you come to accept
Jesus.

To think about the fact that God is the gardener, Jesus is the vine, you are the
branch. Jesus is the Lord, you are the servant. You're the one in need of love.

God is the one who loves. You humble yourself before the Lord. You recognize who
he is, who you are, and he will lift you up.

Now as you pray today, I want to together in prayer talk to the Lord about the
five things we've looked at the last two days. Five ways to submit to God. And
prayerfully just consider which of these you might need to do.

Resist the devil. Is there some place where you need to begin to say no to a
temptation and say yes to God? Draw near to God.

Have you been so focused on your life and your things and your to-do list lately
that God's been left off the list? Draw near to him in your heart right now.
Recognize how near he is to you.

Wash your hands. Is there a place where you need to begin to do the things that
God has called you to do? To use your hands to serve him.

Purify your hearts. Is there a place where you need to begin to think in new
ways, in godly ways? Grieve and mourn and wail.

Do you need to take some false image of joy or peace or faith that you've built
up in your life and realize, God, I've been settling for my image of peace,
faith, joy, hope, love, and I'm not going to settle for that anymore. I grieve
the past. I grieve that I held on to that for so long, but I grieve it so that I
can begin to live out the life that you have for me.

I want your joy. I want your love. I want your peace.

I want your hope in my life. God, teach me what that is. I need you to teach me.

Teach me what that is. I ask this in Jesus' name, amen.