James 4:6-10
6 But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, "GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE."
7 Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.
6 But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, "GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE."
7 Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.
Over the thirty years I've been discipling men, a very common complaint from them I've heard is that, despite intensely earnest prayers for God's help, He doesn't answer. Christian men struggling against addiction, or anxiety, or anger, or bitterness, or a myriad other things go to God for freedom from their struggles, seeking from Him the power to be so, and find....silence. Again and again they plead for God's peace and power, for liberty from temptation, and find themselves wrestling alone until, exhausted, they fail. Is God just an illusion? Does He not care? Is there some arcane, inscrutable purpose God has in their failure? Why won't God "show up"? These are the sorts of things I've heard from many Christian men over the years. In fact, these were my own questions at one time, too.
In my case, the problem was a very simple one: I was asking for the wrong thing under the wrong circumstance. As I've probed into the lives of men from whom I've heard the same Where-is-God? complaint, they, too, have been coming before the "throne of grace" in the same way, with the same result. What do I mean by "asking for the wrong thing"? Well, if a grizzly bear has you by the leg and is dragging you off into the bush to eat you, asking God for His help is entirely appropriate. But asking God for His strength, or patience, or peace, or love when you are angry with your spouse, or tempted by lust, or awaken in the middle of the night plagued by anxiety, is to ask for what you already possess as a born-again child of God.
How can this be? If the born-again person already has from God what they need to be at peace, free from addiction, holy, gentle and patient, full of love and joy, why are they struggling to manifest these things in their living? Why, indeed? In the Person of the Holy Spirit, every born-again person has obtained everything God can give to them of Himself:
Galatians 5:22-25
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
24 Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.
Ephesians 3:16
16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,
2 Corinthians 3:18
18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
1 Corinthians 6:11
11 Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
Romans 5:5
5 ...the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
2 Corinthians 3:17
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
In light of all of these statements from God's word indicating the fullness of their spiritual inheritance in the Person of the Holy Spirit, why are so many born-again believers mired in anxiety, addiction, temper, bitterness or whatever? Well, at bottom, there is really only ever one reason for such a spiritual state-of-affairs: rebellion.
Rebellion? How is the believer who is pleading with God for freedom from sin, for divine aid, in rebellion to Him? The answer is that a Christian walks with God in only one of two ways: In submission to Him or in rebellion to Him. There is no third option. Every time a born-again believer yields to anxiety, or anger, or lust, or frustration, or selfishness of whatever sort, they have thrown off the control of the Holy Spirit and so stand in rebellion to God. But the average Christian is content for this to be so, indulging in Self-will in most areas of their lives, yielding to God only those regions in which s/he wants to affect change, dictating to God what "rooms" of the "house" of their lives they've decided He can "clean up." And so, the porn-addicted, or embittered, or lying Christian lays their sin of, say, anxiety before God, crying out, "Help me!" To which God responds: "I will, just as soon as you cease your rebellion and put yourself completely under my control. Submit yourself to me, yield yourself, give up your Self-rule and become a "living sacrifice" to me and I will fill you with all of who I am."
Romans 6:12-13
12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts,
13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
James 4:6-7
6 But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, "GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE."
7 Submit therefore to God...
1 Peter 5:5-6
5 ...God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
6 Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time,
Romans 12:1
1 Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
Many Christians don't want God in every "room" of the "house" of their lives. He might find in them compromises with the World, the Flesh and the devil that the believer enjoys: sports or hobby obsessions; movie collections that entertain with all manner of displays of sin; libraries full of books occupied with immorality, horror, or worldly philosophies and values; long-held resentments and bitterness; habits of selfishness demonstrated in over-eating, or laziness, or carelessness, investment of money in temporal, worldly things, and so on. These Christians only want a divine "spot clean," not a wholesale giving over of themselves to God's will and way. But God is not into half-measures, content to clean up His children here-and-there. It's all or nothing, as far He's concerned.
I found this out the hard way, pleading with God for help in certain areas of my life that I found troublesome while keeping others entirely out from under His control. I prayed for peace and power but never once yielded myself to God as a living sacrifice to Him. Certainly, the idea of living in submission to God all the time was a completely foreign idea to me; God helped me do what I wanted; He was my co-pilot, my divine Assistant, helping me according to my agenda. Which, of course, met with silence from God.
Psalm 66:18
18 If I regard wickedness in my heart, The Lord will not hear;
Isaiah 59:2
2 But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.
1 Peter 3:10-12
10 For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile:
11 Let him eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it.
12 For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil.
God is not distant; He is not an illusion; He isn't disinterested in us. But He will not move in us powerfully, filling us in abundance with all the Good that He is, so long as we are holding back areas of our lives from Him. Doing so is rebellion and God does not fill rebels with Himself. His peace, His power, His joy and love, wait within every born-again believer in the Person of the Holy Spirit to manifest in overflowing measure - but only in the life constantly submitted to His will and way.
Is God silent in your life? Are you wondering why He doesn't "show up"? Are you living daily before Him in the way He has prescribed in His word, in humility and faith submitting yourself to Him throughout every day? When you are, God will "show up" transforming you into a "living letter of Christ, read of all men," using you to fulfill His eternal purposes.
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