Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up. James 4:10.
After I graduated from Olds College, a buddy of mine named Blair went on a trip to Maui, and we did things that two young fellows do on a trip like that. We sat in the sun, we saw some of the sights. We ate out, mostly at McDonald’s, and we golfed.
When we went golfing, what we would do is get a bucket of balls, and we’d hit the driving range and practice our drives. Then we’d play a round of golf. One day, as we are about to start a round of golf, a fellow came up to us and asked if he could join us. I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun golfing in my life. This guy was a real character, very gregarious, outgoing, and he had these incredible sayings. So when one of us would tee off and hit the ball a long way down the fairway, he’d go, “Mama, he’s a gorilla.”
And we learned some things from him as well. He would say things like, It’s not how you drive, it’s how you arrive.
On the greens, Blair and I would be three- and four-putting as we tried to get the ball in the hole. He would step onto the green, tap his ball in for par, and say, “You drive for show, and you putt for dough.”
I later realized that this is something that happens in other areas of life, that public success is often rooted in a love for ordinary, hidden disciplines that no one sees—like spending hours on a putting green practicing your putts. This is also true for musicians who spend hours practicing scales, or a doctor who stays up late at night reading medical journals so they can be updated and give the best care to their patients.
And this is also true for life in a general sense as well. For we live our lives on a public stage, and the people around may boo or they may applaud. Is that what we’re living for?
At the very same time, we have an interior world, a hidden life that no one sees. And for many of us, there are things in our hidden life that we don’t want anyone to see, and so we try to pretend that we’re something we are not. We present a happy, shiny face to the world around us, but on the inside, there’s darkness.
This pretending causes us inner stress and turmoil, because we are, in a sense, at war with ourselves. We’re one person to the outside world and another person on the inside. And in our exterior world, we can never feel like the people around us will accept us—because we don’t actually accept ourselves.
So the question that I’m asking you to consider, is: how can our lives be turned around so that we can live life with peace and contentment and joy? To help us as we think about this question, we’re going to be looking at James 4:1-12.
The Inner Battle
This is a letter written by a man named James, and most scholars agree that he was the brother of Jesus. And at first, he did not believe in Jesus, his older brother, but later he came to believe in Him as the Messiah, and also became the leader of the church in Jerusalem.
During James’ leadership, church in Jerusalem experienced some hard times. The Jewish Christians there experienced extreme persecution ever since the martyrdom of Stephen, and many of them fled the city for their own safety. James then wrote this letter to his flock, many of whom are dispersed to other parts of the Roman Empire, to encourage them.
As he writes, he espouses a very rigorous form of Christianity, because anything less can lead to people abandoning their faith when their experience doesn’t match their expectations. We need the truth, even though it may be deeper, harder, and more sacrificial than anything we have ever done before, because only the truth will set us free.
As G.K. Chesterton has said, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and not tried.”
And the reason why Christianity is so hard is because we are constantly battling against our old sinful nature. Even Paul had this battle. He writes in a letter to the Romans, I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do. (Romans 7:15)
Please keep in mind we are talking about sanctification here, not salvation. Salvation is easy because Jesus has won our salvation for us through His life, death, and resurrection, and given it to us as a free gift through faith in Him. Our only part is to receive that gift of salvation from Jesus.
But sanctification, which is growing in holiness and becoming more like Jesus—that’s hard. Because even though God is doing most of the work, we play a part, and our part is difficult because it means going against the flaws in our own internal wiring, the corrupt pressures in the world around us, and an enemy who is actively striving to separate us from God.
But it’s a battle that we do not face on our own. God is with us in this. But we need to be brutally honest about what is going on inside and around us so that we can grab hold of the help that God gives us for this battle.
James’ focus is on the inner battle because that’s where our battle with the world and the devil begins. When we are aligned with God in our inner battle, then we are also aligned with him in our exterior battles and we fight in his power and strength. When our primary focus in on our inner battle, then we are able to better understand James’ words when he writes at the beginning of his letter:
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (James 1:2-4)
The Mirror of Humility
As he opens chapter four, James paints a very unflattering picture of the Christian church. He writes, What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but cannot get what you want, so 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 wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. (James 4:1-3)
Now these are hard words for us to hear, but it’s important for us to hear them, because what God is doing is He’s holding up a mirror before us, and He’s telling us, This is what you look like to Me when you go your own way. And we need to pay attention to what God is saying, because He’s trying to help us grow in becoming more like Jesus. And that will never happen unless we begin by facing up to our own flaws and failures.
And that’s essentially what humility is. It’s facing up to our own flaws and failures and owning them—not making excuses, not trying to justify ourselves. It’s simply dropping our hands, standing before God, and saying, Yes, all those things are true about me. Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.
It’s like those famous words from the hymn Rock of Ages: Nothing in my hand I bring; simply to Thy cross I cling. Naked, come to Thee for dress; helpless, look to Thee for grace. Foul, I to the fountain fly; wash me, Savior, or I die.
And the moment when we empty ourselves of all our self-centered pride and self-righteous judgments, Jesus rushes in with more of His grace to draw us closer to Him. That’s the meaning behind James 4:10, that verse that reads, Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up.
And I want to assure you, dear friends, that it is totally, 100% safe for us to be absolutely transparent before God, because you are unconditionally loved and accepted by Him, just as you are.
Jesus’ suffering and death prove God’s love for you, and Jesus’ resurrection is God’s guarantee of the new life that you have as God’s beloved, forgiven child. And so, when we realize that God accepts us just as we are, then we can begin to accept ourselves just as we are. And that conflict between our inner and outer world begins to heal.
Changing Our Focus
So what does all of this mean for us in our lives today? Well, if you’re like me, you tend to measure life by visible measurements. How many widgets did I make this week? Or maybe, how much money is in my bank account? Or how many of the things on my to-do list did I get checked off? This kind of measuring can be helpful to us in terms of being faithful in the roles that God has given to us—our vocations. But when we measure the essence of our life by what we taste, touch, and see, we are missing the whole point of human life.
For Jesus said, Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body is more than clothes. Consider the ravens: they do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn, yet God feeds them. (Luke 12:22-24)
You see, each and every human being was created for life with God. And through His life, death, and resurrection, Jesus has opened the door for us—sinful, broken human beings—to be cleansed and brought into a living relationship with our loving God. And now, our relationship with God is the essence of our life. That is our everything.
Now, that requires us to change our main focus from what we see with our eyes to what we see with our faith. And that’s hard for us, because by nature and experience, we are oriented to this world. Therefore, we need to ask God to help us with this as well. Ask Him to help us shift our focus. And it’s an important shift for us to make, because it will help us live our true life as God’s beloved, forgiven child.
And when we fully embrace who God meant us to be on the inside, then all the wonderful things that God wants to accomplish through us will naturally flow out of the abundance of what God is doing in our heart. As Paul writes in Colossians: Since then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. (Colossians 3:1-4)
You see, the thing that we focus on is not what we are doing in the world, but on Jesus Christ—and He does everything else.
Let’s Pretend
One of the profound parts of the book Mere Christianity is the chapter that’s titled Let’s Pretend. And in it, Lewis writes of how our following Jesus is like an imitation of Christ. Others have written on this as well, but Lewis says it’s like we’re pretending to live as Jesus in our everyday life.
But he makes the point that it’s not our pretending that does the transforming work in our life—that reforms us somehow—but it’s actually Jesus Christ. The same Jesus who died on a cross outside of Jerusalem and rose again from the dead is with you in your room when you are praying in the morning or at night. And He’s the one who is removing from your heart all of those bits that are darkness and need to be cleansed. And He’s pouring Himself into your life so that over time—gradually at first, and more so as time goes by—you become more and more like Him.
It’s Jesus that’s doing the transforming in you. And Lewis writes, God sees you as if you were a little Christ, and Christ stands beside you, transforming you into one.[i]
Gardening Our Soul with God
So the challenge that I’m leaving with you today is this: Let us respond to the salvation that God the Father has already given us through His Son, Jesus Christ, and by His Holy Spirit, by shifting our main focus away from all of the worldly measurements we use. And then let us commit ourselves to partner with God in gardening our soul. Our part is to pull the weeds of sin that we find there—sins like pride and self-centeredness—and then confess them to God. And God’s part is to plant and nourish new life in our soul through His Word and His sacraments.
And though the work Jesus does within us may be so hidden that we ourselves may not perceive it, a day will come when we will see with our own eyes that [Jesus] is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us. (Ephesians 3:20)
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up. (James 4:10)
[i] Mere Christianity in Everyday English, C. S. Lewis, revised by David O. Harrison (Acheson AB: Thrive! Books, 2023), 171.
Farewell to Shadowlands 