Fedup

James 4: 1 – 17

FedUp

1 Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. 4 Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”? 6 But He gives more grace. Therefore, He says: “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Therefore submit 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 Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up. 11 Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another? 13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; 14 whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” 16 But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.

I am not talking about overnight delivery. I am talking about overnight irritation. After reading this chapter, I want to say to James (which of course I can’t) ‘Wow James you sound like you are fed up with all the hypocrisy going on in the church. So, go ahead and let it all out!’ Read this chapter again and see if you agree with my observation. James is going to increase his frustration in his observation of the behavior of his Christian brothers and sisters.

When you go over the book of James my heart goes out to him. I mean put yourself in his shoes. Here he was the second boy in Mary and Joseph’s family. Watching his parents deal specially with his older brother was very confusing to him. When Jesus began His ministry, James had a hard time dealing with all the amazing reports he heard.

James would later be greatly convicted in the things he said and the way he acted to the real Son of God who he grew up with. All this frustration and guilt can be seen in his observation of the way followers of the Lord Jesus Christ were behaving. James builds in his audit of the things that believers were saying and doing, and it comes out in fiery truth.

Let me say about some things that are related to our being ‘FedUp’ with.

All of us have off days, and even if we’re the happiest people on the planet we will generally admit to feeling a bit like life is full of frustrations.

Most of us still feel that overall, for the most part, life is a glorious gift and full of surprises. It’s only when this feeling of pointlessness or hopelessness continues, when you feel permanently ‘fed up’ of life, that something is wrong – if you don’t enjoy life itself then you will stand to get little enjoyment out of anything you do. If it all seems ‘pointless’, or all of it is hard/stressful/depressing, then nothing you can do will bring much enjoyment and it will be hard to feel motivated. Not only is this bad for you, but it can also mean that your relationships and your career suffer as a result.

The first thing to ask yourself is why you are fed up with life. There are many possible reasons, and you are certainly not alone in this thought. As mentioned before, many people will have at some point felt fed up with life, and this tends to be for several reasons.