SOAP Devotional 2014-03-10
Scripture – Observation – Application – Prayer
Scripture:
You adulterers! Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. (James 4:4 NLT)
Observation:
When he calls them adulterers he is referring to the fact that they had in effect broken their marriage covenant with God by loving the things of the world more than him. If you love the things of this world more than the things of God than you become an enemy of God. You cannot straddle the fence on this.
Application:
This passage is misapplied in so many ways. Some would say that you cannot make friends or spend time with un-saved people, but how could that be true when Jesus spent so much time with notorious sinners that the church world accused him of being one of them? How can we reach them if we do not build relationships or expose them to us? The application here is that we cannot desire worldly things and activities in preference to the things of God. All kinds of things can do this. It is not just the obvious things of drinking, partying, etc. It could be fishing, or biking, or soccer, or baseball, or football, (speaking from a man's perspective, I am sure women would add things that I would not think about). It could even be putting family time above God. If any of these things are more desirable to a person than the things of God than you have a problem. God has to be first and the things of this world have to either be totally avoided or in the case of these other things, they must take a back seat to the things of God.
Prayer:
Father, help me to never put anything in this world into a level that would hinder my relationship with you, let me never love the things of this world, even those things that seem benign. Help me to always realize that even good things can be taken to a place where they can get between me and you. And help me to remove those if they do get in the way.