Submit Yourselves to God

1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

4 You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? 6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: "God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble and oppressed."

7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. --James 4:1-10.

Notice that in the struggle to submit to God and resist Satan, one must repent, even be sorrowful over sin. Without this action, real repentance and resistance against Satan is impossible. This means that one must sometimes be miserable for God. The happy face is out of place. "Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter into mourning and your joy to gloom." This is required, oftentimes, for true humility to be brought forth. But then God lifts us up and we are free from the devil's schemes. You see, the devil often wants us stupefied with worldly happiness, which is not godly joy. Think on these things. I certainly need to. What false happiness is keeping you from godly repentance and real joy in the Lord?