Silent Killer
James 4
4 You adulteresses [disloyal sinners—flirting with the world and breaking your vow to God]! Do you not know that being the world’s friend [that is, loving the things of the world] is being God’s enemy? So whoever chooses to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
Throughout our daily lives we are engrossed with the things of this world. We chase them and lust after them. We tell ourselves that we need them in order to survive. We tell ourselves that it’s just harmless entertainment and it hurts no one. We use the world for superficial self gratification. It’s not the same as marveling at that natural beauty of this world created by God which leads to His worship and glorifying His creation. It’s not looking on in awe at how He has brought together a group of individuals to form a family or community of believers. It’s not giving God thanksgivings and praise for the fellowship of others, filled with laughter and joy. This type of love of the world points to the creator and is a wonderful form of godly worship.
The type of love and friendship with the world that God speaks of in James 4:4 really does start out as a forbidden relationship. You know that you are married to a wonderful person. But there is something that your sometimes unassuming flesh craves for. Your sinful flesh nags you for it. A few particular friends in your life, who you already know that you should have limited contact with decades ago, they nudge you. These so called friends slowly let you live vicariously through their exploits and explorations. They appeal to your fleshy desires and begin to compare who you are married to, to all they have shallowly experienced. They paint the picture of predictable faithfulness to be a serious case of boredom. Your spouse’s dependability is now seen by you as weakness.
You now want fun and excitement! So you first just start flirting, while explaining it all away as just this and just that. We continue the flirting and step it up all because they know we’re married. Soon flirting turns into friendship and that friendship leads us away from our true love. We try to keep one foot in the marriage but our friendship with the world has made us disrespectful and discontentment fillings us with covetousness. We become consumed with our selfishness. But because we remember our true love’s name, we claim to know God. We haven’t really been with God lately, we hear about how he’s doing from other people. Sometimes we catch a glimpse of him across a crowded room. His spirit sends a text or two to see how we are. He still loves us but knows it won’t work if we’re not 100% in it. He knows if we will always be looking to greener pastures then it’s no use. He could force us but our hearts have chosen another. It started with a lie, a lie about God keeping something good from us. It’s the oldest trick in the book and it works great as if it has never been done. The god of this world has sold us a bad bill of goods. We now believe in our hearts that true freedom is freedom from the laws of God, we just don’t speak those things. This is the unspoken rule of the flesh. We hold on to a false sense of security in having rights to the privileges of an marriage with God that we ended due to adultery. The enemy granted the divorce and made us believe that he could force God to pay alimony. So we live disobedient to God and live contrary to the Spirit of God; as we with a straight face expect a mighty move of God to bless us.
Anointed Place Ministries 