A Jealous God
11/3/25 Bible Thought (James 4)
In a world filled with stuff, with advertisements, with temptations, it is easy to believe that the next thing will make us happy. This one more thing will make me happy. Whatever that “this” is.
In fact, a desire for things is at the root of much fighting and quarreling (Jas. 4:1) and can even result in murder (Jas. 4:2). Unfulfilled desire is a powerful force and a hard temptation to fight.
To this, the apostle James offers some counsel:
“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” (Jas. 4:2b-3).
Sometimes the problem is simply that we have become so consumed with the gift that we have forgotten the Giver. We do not have, because we do not ask. All creation rightfully belongs to Him—surely, He is able to provide.
Other times, people do ask, and the answer comes, “No.” There are wrong motives at play, and its solely desire and personal pleasure running the show. Being consumed by desire in this way, according to the apostle James, is spiritual adultery (Jas. 4:4a).
He warns:
“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?” (Jas. 4:4-5).
Like a husband who has no desire to share his wife with other lovers, God desires the hearts of His people and has no intention to share them with idols.
It does not mean we cannot have stuff or even want stuff. We just have to fight the tendency for stuff to have us. We have to be diligent to fight the world’s temptations, namely the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (see 1 Jn. 2:15-17).
If we find ourselves tempted into thinking that these things will make us happy and we go to them for the peace that our souls need, then we are committing spiritual adultery against the God who ransomed us from our sinful ways.
There is nothing earthly that will satisfy like a relationship with the Creator by whom and for whom we were created. We were made in His image, in a way that can relate to Him. No other created being on earth can connect with God like we can.
I was recently watching a video from an avid ultramarathoner as he did a race that I believe went through the Swiss Alps. Regardless of the exact location, it was spectacular. Truly, it is one of the most beautiful places on earth you could run, and I would love to visit there someday.
In that same place, he ran by some cows. I remember him filming them and saying something like, “Imagine being a cow and this is your view.”
The cow is there simply content with its grass, not knowing that it was placed in one of the most beautiful places on earth that would draw human beings to awe. For the believer, it would draw us to worship. We see these incredible mountains that God commanded to rise, and we worship while the cow eats its grass.
We were made for more than stuff, more than grass. We were made for God.
If this is what we were made for, why would we believe that the world and its promises could fulfill us?
So then let us then strive to draw near to God, knowing that in turn He will draw near to us (Jas. 4:8). Let us focus our lives on the eternal, setting our gaze on that which is above (see Col. 3:1-2) and finding the satisfaction our souls long for in Him and Him alone.