Desires of Hearts Sold Out to God

James 4:1-5 

1 Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. 4 Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”?

Our self-serving desires, those of the flesh and eyes and pride (1 John 2:15-17), are waging war inside each of us.  These are the sources of our outward arguments and outright wars, for they direct our desires wrongly away from the things of God by loving ourselves more than Him and our neighbors (Mark 12:30-31).  Thus we crave things we don’t have and want what others possess, in direct defiance against the commandments (Deuteronomy 5:18, 21, Romans 13:9-10) to not covet and lust; some even murder others to get what they believe they need, just because they let covetousness loose with unfettered abandon.  This is lawlessness leading to sin.  Instead of asking God for what we need, we often beg for what we desire to satisfy our own sense of good in self-serving pleasure.  This is why James calls us adulterers before God in a spiritual sense, because we cheat Him out of the pleasure due only to Him, which come from our hearts and their desires above all else.  When we align with the world in putting Him last, we are at evil odds with Christ whom we are betrothed to.  We become God’s enemies by serving ourselves and flagrantly disobeying His commands and design for us who were made in His image of holiness and righteousness.  He is jealous for us in that He made us for Himself and wants us to find the real pleasure in Him above all others, as chaste virgins to Christ our betrothed (2 Corinthians 11:2).  Our desires, therefore, need to be put on our great God and Savior with lovingly obedient hearts sold out to Him, not whatever feels or looks good (Genesis 3:6).