Life Is Really Not That Hard

James 4:5-7, “You ask and you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: "He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us"? But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, "GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE." Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you."

I have such a wonderfully fresh perspective of this passage, though perhaps James can be read a little harshly. But what was going on in these followers was life. There were people bitching and complaining. Life was good for some, and for those that life was hard on they were jealous and envious. Truly nothing different from today, and truly nothing different from what has been in my heart in my own struggles.

Why me God?

Have you ever said that?

God I am in need, and look at that person over there… they have so much and don’t deserve it.

But it is God’s grace that He allows life to cause us to submit to Him. It is a miracle that we who want the world instead find turmoil that brings us to the very end of ourselves.

All we want is God’s blessings, and in turn get hardships… This hardship too is God’s blessing. It is compelling us to come face to face with our own inadequacies, and to bring ourselves into the submission of the Omnipotent God. When we allow life’s hardships to humble us we also find the grace of God.

When we find ourselves in these hardships the natural reaction is to try and get out of them as quickly as possible. But the spiritual action should be to submit to God, to get behind Him, to find out what is His next step. God cannot move us to the end or the hardship without us walking each and every step behind Him to the exit. We must complete what He has for us in the moment… we must seek first the kingdom of God in the moment, in the circumstance… then “all these things will be added to you.” (Matt 6:33)