Devotional

Admit, Submit and Resist – James 4:7

As Christians, we have been struggling living our lives worthy of our calling. We can never deny the fact that we are still sinning even if we already know the truth. It is in our nature to sin and everything our hearts desire are pure evil. 

It is very painful for us to accept the fact that we are born again and that we are a new creation but we cannot stop sinning. The devil is always trying to snatch us away from it by giving us a glimpse of our past and trying to lure us out again. 

However, maybe we are thinking and understanding it in the wrong way. We can never stop sinning at our own volition because in the first place, we are sinful by nature. We can never suppress that powerful nature inside through our own efforts. We try and try to stop sinning and to live our lives holy but we can never do that because we are all relying on our own strength. 

We are understanding it wrong because we are trying to live the life out of our own strength and will— indeed we will fail. We must understand and accept the fact that we are not capable of changing ourselves, much more we are not capable of being a changed person overnight. We must understand that relying on our own strength will never change us. 

So how do we stop sinning and start living a life in Christ likeness? — this is through admitting to God that we can never change using our own effort and that we need His help to change. We are a new creation and that wasn’t given to us through our own efforts but through Jesus Christ sacrificed. So in order to completely change, we must submit ourselves to God. 

We must acknowledge that we are sinful by nature and we can never change but through the help of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, we can finally walk our talk and live a Christ-like life. Submitting is a very painful and hard task because it takes everything inside us and it means turning our life 180 degrees without going back but it will be worthwhile. 

God promised in James that if we will submit to Him, and resist the devil, he will flee from us. Take note, it says RESIST! Acknowledging and submitting everything to God will clearly help us fight the enemy and also, we need to resist. We need to resist the devil and always say ‘no’, but again, we can never do that at our own strength but it is also again through the strength God will grant us the moment we submit everything to Him. 

Therefore, when we still see ourselves sinning even if we already know that truth, we must go back to the Word and talk to God. Again, our salvation and the eternal life we will be enjoying was not bought free, but it was bought with a price and that is the blood of Jesus Christ. Our willingness to change will be perfectly manifest when we submit ourselves to God. 

Let us not continue living our old life but instead, we must be submissive to God and be transformed through the Word. Through this, we will be able to live the life Jesus has set an example for us.

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