The Rocky Relationship Between You, The Lord, & The World

Our Spiritual Formation Director, Blake Zimmerman, continues week ten of our teaching series, Hearers & Doers: A Study in the Book of James. 

When we chase what the world promises, we aren’t just distracted—we’re unfaithful to the One who loves us most. Pastor Blake reminded us that God calls this spiritual adultery–when we claim to belong to Him but still live by the world’s ways. The call is simple but costly:
• Submit to God 

• Resist the devil 

• Draw near to God 

• Cleanse your hands 

• Purify your heart 

• Mourn over sin 

• Humble yourself 

When we return to Him in humility, God doesn’t shame us, He lifts our heads. 

In this message, Pastor Blake explores the following Scriptures: 

James 4:1-10 CSB 1 What is the source of wars and fights among you? Don’t they come from your passions that wage war within you? 2 You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. 4 You adulterous people! Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the friend of the world becomes the enemy of God. 5 Or do you think it’s without reason that the Scripture says: The spirit he made to dwell in us envies intensely?6 But he gives greater 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, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. 

Isaiah 54:5 CSB 5 Indeed, your husband is your Maker—his name is the Lord of Armies—and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of the whole earth. Song of 

Solomon 6:3 NIV 3 I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine; 

Ezekiel 16:8 CSB 8 “‘Then I passed by you and saw you, and you were indeed at the age for love. So I spread the edge of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I pledged myself to you, entered into a covenant with you—this is the declaration of the Lord God—and you became mine. 

Jeremiah 3:20 CSB 20 However, as a woman may betray her lover, so you have betrayed me, house of Israel. This is the Lord’s declaration. 

2 Corinthians 7:8-10 CSB 8 For even if I grieved you with my letter, I don’t regret it. And if I regretted it—since I saw that the letter grieved you, yet only for a while— 9 I now rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because your grief led to repentance. For you were grieved as God willed, so that you didn’t experience any loss from us. 10 For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, but worldly grief produces death.