Lesson 15: Faith of true peace
James 4:1-10 
1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?
2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.
3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that He has made to dwell in us”?
6 But He gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves 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 wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.

Our verses today give us the reason for most of our prayers that are not answered by God. They also give us the reason for most of the discontent in Christians’ lives today. We want, and we do not receive what we want. We get upset at others around us because we are upset with God. We are upset with God because He did not meet OUR expectations.

 What are some wrong expectations we have of God? One is that He will give us everything we want if we ask Him. Another is that He wants us to have a good life here on earth. The two are basically the same desire – we want what WE want.


But God’s purpose for us here on earth never was to give us a good life as we want to define it: money, health, satisfaction from what we do, fulfillment of our dreams. We want to take only part of verses such as Psalm 37:4 – we want just the “desires of our heart” but forget the first part about “delight yourself in the Lord.” Many religions today teach that heaven is getting everything we want. This is truly a lie from hell. In fact, this is as perfect a description of hell as any we can imagine. If we get everything we want, we will be in a very lonely place; because no one else will ever want only to give us what WE want, they will want what THEY want. We will be alone!

God’s heaven is union with Him forever, and we begin that today by drawing near to Him and submitting ourselves to Him. Someone wrote it well, saying we are strongest when we are on our knees. From submission to Him alone comes contentment and peace.

Memorize: James 4:6-8 (above).