James 4:4-5: Adulteresses! Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the world’s friend becomes God’s enemy. 5 Or do you think it’s without reason the Scripture says that the Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously?
If you have accepted Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, you have the Holy Spirit living inside you. I found verse 5 to be both intimidating and convicting. After looking at Verse 4 a few days ago, “Making a choice to follow God”, verse 5 reiterates our choices. Why would the Holy Spirit yearn jealously? And what does that mean? One of my commentaries put it this way: “The Spirit jealously desires us for His own.” The Holy Spirit wants all of us: our thoughts, our actions, our attitudes, to be completely, passionately sold out to Him for God’s glory and His Kingdom.
How can we sell out to the Holy Spirit?
I am a practical kinda gal, so when I study scripture, I tend to look at the application. How can we sell out to the Holy Spirit? YEARN!
- Y – Yield our will to Him.
- E – Examine our life, what are we holding on to?
- A – Allow the Holy Spirit to change us.
- R – Renew our commitment to God
- N – Nightly – Thank the Lord for the things he has done!
None of us are perfect and have it together every day all the time. Jesus was the only perfect man that walked this earth. We have to be diligent in growing our relationship with Christ, and that means yielding our desires to Him. We want to work toward that goal and allow the Holy Spirit to have more and more of us every day.
The Holy Bible: Holman Christian standard version. (2009). (Jas 4:4–6). Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers.
Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R., & Brown, D. (1997). Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (Vol. 2, p. 491). Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
Love the acronym. I won’t forget it now.