September 13 – God vs. the World (James 4:4-6)

“Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?”(James 4:4)

IN WORD:
What does God have against the world He created? Only this: that there are many aspects of this world that He did not directly create. The result is a world that worships self & sin, the created rather than the Creator, the profane rather than the holy. We strive for comfort, prestige, power, security, and love, and then if we have the desire, we may strive for a god of our own imaginations. God hates that. He is the Jealous God (Exodus 34:14, among many other references).
God has often characterized His people in Scripture as faithless harlots. He is not nearly as indifferent about our affections as we are. When we place anything, any person, any ideal or belief above our Creator, we are like a wife who sleeps around. “They made me jealous by what is no god and angered me with their worthless idols,” God says of His own people (Deuteronomy 32:21). He despises the unfaithfulness of His people. And yet we gravitate toward such unfaithfulness regularly. Our God is often a Lover scorned, and we can be quite callous about it.
A sign of our ignorance in our relationship with God is our frequent prayers for Him to bless our other loves. We ask Him to fulfill our desire for our idols of comfort and conquest. He will not answer such prayers any more than a husband would send his wife off to another man’s bed. Friendship with this world — the corrupt world of power, lust, status, and greed — is a “Dear John” letter to God. It is our attempt to seduce and gratify His meanest rival — the spirit of the human rebellion.

IN DEED:
Friendship with the world is perhaps the church’s most subtle yet dangerous enemy. It results in lukewarm hearts and fickle souls. It sends us in hot pursuit of compromise, and it’s nauseating to God (Revelation 3:16).
What can we do? Pray for faithfulness, pursue intimacy, determine to be fulfilled only in the tender love of our Lover. Not to do so is to hate Him. But to be found in that love is pure delight.

“The world has advanced to the very door of the church, and is seeking to draw even the saints of God into its grasp.”
-Watchman Nee-