"Are Any Fearing Submission?"

Scripture text: James 4:1-12

Some inspiring bumper stickers that have been spotted by other motorists:
- The gene pool could use a little chlorine.
- Ever stop to think, and forget to start again?
- Women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition.
- It IS as bad as you think, and they ARE out to get you!
- If you don't like the news, go out and make some that’s better!
- We have enough youth, how about a fountain of SMART?

When I was growing up, I don’t remember very many bumper stickers, but we did have an equivalent – Burma Share signs. Some favorites:
- Statistics prove – Near and far – That folks who – Drive like crazy – are!
- Many a forest – Used to stand – Where a – Lighted match – Got out of hand!
- Passing cars – When you can’t see – May get you – A glimpse – Of eternity!
- Twinkle, twinkle – One eyed car – We all wonder – WHERE – You are!

My brothers and I, and even our folks, watched for them whenever we were out for a ride. As do some the bumper stickers of today, the Burma Shave signs had a certain degree of wisdom about them that was offered in a light hearted way.
The problem is, though, that we seldom take the advice seriously! Acceptance of someone else’s wisdom just doesn’t seem to be in some folk’s nature! And the same is true of scripture! How many times have you read a particular passage and thought “I know who THIS was written for!” And it’s never your name that comes to mind!
Let’s see what the Word has to say to us today!

Read James 4:1-3

“When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”
Over and over, the Word tells us that the gifts that the LORD blesses us with are not for our benefit, but rather for us to use in blessing others. During our retreat last week at Sky Lake, we took a long hard look at the gifts that God has given to each of us, and how we are being called to use them. I don’t think anyone discovered that the gifts are to be used for our own benefit.
So what are our motives? Are we willing to give all to God? The Glory? The Honors? The words of adoration? Or do we tend to keep some of it, or even most of it, for ourselves? The truth is that the purest motive is to give the gift away to others, and whatever is returned to us, we give to God. We keep nothing!

But “surrender” – that point of total submission to another authority - is seldom a part of our vocabulary. It’s almost un-American! But we need to understand that when we submerge ourselves in worldly ways, we are doing just that – surrendering – but not to God; we’re surrendering to the world!

Read James 4:4-6

“Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?”
Jesus Himself told us that we can not serve two masters – that we can love only one, and will hate the other! (Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:13).
When we choose to embrace the glories of earth, when we choose to accept the standards that the world creates, when we allow the world to tell us what is right and what is wrong, it is then we have already decided that God’s word is insufficient, is less than perfect, and that it is not for us.

Have you ever thought about personal pride? Will Willimon, in his book “Sinning Like a Christian” writes about the seven deadly sins. And he says that Pride is the worst one of all. He writes that it is usually pride that is the initiator of most of the other sins! It is our smugness, our arrogance, our self importance that leads us away from God.
After all, wasn’t that Lucifer’s problem? Thinking that he is just as good as God is! Submission to the world leads us no where except toward disaster!

“Train approaching – Whistle squealing – Pause! – Avoid that – Rundown feeling!”
Burma Shave sign, circa 1951

More good advice from Burma Shave – to avoid being run over by the world, we need to pause and consider the grace that God has so generously and freely offered to us all! Amen? We want to have a sense of control over our life, even if we have to surrender control to the standards that others have twisted out of shape! So if we are so willing to give up control to the world, why is it so difficult to give that same control over to God? Personally, I think that it’s because of both pride and fear – “pride” in our own ability to make decisions, and “fear” that God won’t do it to our liking!

Dag Hammarskjold, former Secretary General of the UN put it this way:
"Placing ourselves squarely in the hands of God is difficult because it is so hard for us to give up control of our choices. And we know that submitting to God's will can be a hard and perilous thing! But without our willing submission to him and a ready conference with his will through prayer and meditation, all of our choices fall at last to dust."
-Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings (London: Faber and Faber, 1964), 82.

Without complete submission to God, everything that we do will be reduced to little more than the dirt that we walk on today.
- We may think that we can win on our own,
- we may think that the world will be around forever,
- we may think that the world’s ways make a lot more sense than God’s do,
but that kind of thinking can only result in abject failure!

A number of seminary students were serious basketball players, but there was no gymnasium on campus, so they played basketball in a nearby public school. The janitor, an old man with white hair, would wait patiently until the seminarians had finished playing. Invariably, he sat there reading his Bible.
One day, Bernie (one of the students) went up to him and asked, “What are you reading?”
The man did not simply reply, “The Bible.” Instead he answered, “The book of Revelation.”
With some surprise, Bernie said, “The book of Revelation? Do you understand it?”
“Oh, yes,” the man assured him. “I understand it.”
“You understand the book of Revelation! What does it mean?”
“It means,” said the old janitor quietly, “that Jesus is gonna win.”
—Source unknown. Submitted by Wesley Taylor, Tualatin United Methodist Church, Tualatin, Oregon.
And in a nutshell, that’s exactly what Revelation says!

Read James 4:7-10

“Jesus is gonna win!” Do you believe that?
So why not put our hopes, our dreams, our life, our future in the Hands of the winner instead of the loser’s?
Why not give Him the driver’s seat of our life?
Why not trust His instructions and directions?
Do we really believe in God or not? Submit to one master or the other – we can’t have both!