Spring City Fellowship
261011Sunday
Sunday October 11, 2026 10:15AM Service

      • Psalm 150:3NIV2011

  • Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing (w/Chorus)
  • Almighty
  • Always Only Jesus
  • Lord I Need You
  • He Is Here
  • Echo Holy

      • Philippians 4:6–7NIV2011

  • Our theme for 2026 is “Embrace Transformation”
    We are in a series on the Book of James called “Faith that works.”
    Faith has to work.
    It’s not enough to believe it, you have to do it.
    It has to change you in fundamental ways so that you embrace transformation.
    First, we talked about how faith is a process.
    We know it is a positive spiral of turning our tests into endurance.
    We then had a report from the team that went to Honduras about their experiences of putting faith into action.
    We talked about how the church has been divided into those who prioritize right belief and those who prioritize right practice.
    Real Christianity is not faith versus works - it’s faith and works.
    James takes time to focus on words.
    Words lead to actions, and actions validate words.
    Last week we talked about wisdom from above.
    What is wisdom?
    Wisdom is not just knowing things - it is knowing what to do with what you know.
    Wisdom teaches us the best way to live - and then trains us with the disciplines to actually do it.
    You don’t just suddenly become wise - you first do the right thing.
    And then you learn to do it consistently.
    And then you learn to do it with humility.
    And eventually you look back and realize that you were wise.
    And that wisdom came from above.
    Last week we said that we all have two natures at war within us.
    There is the old nature - the flesh- the sinful human nature.
    And there is the new nature - the spirit created in God’s image and the mind that is being renewed in Christ.
    And they don’t usually get along - they often want opposite things.
    The conflicting natures operate in the realm of our thoughts and our feelings.
    There is a war going on within us - and we each get to choose who will win.
    Think of a tug-of-war match where your heart is the rope. On one side, you have desires pulling you towards conflict and dissatisfaction, and on the other, God’s will beckoning you to peace and humility. The team that wins depends on which side you choose to support. Just like in our minds, where we battle between selfishness and submission, our decisions shape the outcomes.
    So what is the process? How do we decide who will win?
    First we each need to take a deep look inside.
    We examine or desires - understanding what we really want and why.
    We can’t assume that everything we think or feel is from God or that it is from our own flesh - there are other powers at work as well.
    Then you make a decisive choice.
    You can’t do it on your own - you need God’s empowering grace.
    You already have God’s grace if you can just get out of your own way.
    The key is to turn towards God.
    Be honest about what is going on inside.
    And be intentional about turning it around.
    And that is a summary of our outline for today - if you are following along on your bulletin insert we have some blanks that you can fill-in as we go along.
    And if you are watching online, click the link to our e-bulletin. there are blanks that you can click on there that fill in themselves - or you can just follow along with the slides.

    Examining our desires.

    James 4:1–4 ESV
    1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
    Last week I shared that the place to begin changing a bad habit is self-awareness.
    Ask yourself, “what do I really want?”
    “Am I trying to fill a need or a legitimate longing with a poor temporary substitute?”
    James essentially says the same thing here, but applies it to conflict in relationships.
    You don’t get what you want in relationships because you demand what you want instead of asking for it.
    Karie and I use a resource for marriage counseling called “Prepare / Enrich” it comes with a workbook that includes exercises that we asks the couples to do to strengthen their relationship in areas where they are weak.
    One of the first exercises is called a “Wish List.” Couples learn to practice a healthy assertiveness in relationship by asking for something that they either want more of or less of in their relationship. And they learn to combine this skill while making “I” statements, expressing both thoughts and feelings and reflectively listening.
    Then they take turns asking for items on their wish list and validating each others requests by repeating them back until they are received and understood.
    I’ll bet you are all sitting there starting to construct your own “wish list.”
    Just remember that how you say it is just as important as what you say.
    However, while James alludes to the “how” he seems even more concerned with the “why” of our wish list.

    We tend to want what we can’t have.

    Have you ever notice that?
    If you want to make someone jealous, just tell them what they can’t have.
    Advertising tactics are designed to take advantage of our human nature to coerce us into making a decision based on fear, pride or greed.
    Experts today are calling it FOMO - Fear of missing out.
    FOMO was first identified in the early 2000’s as an observable phycological pattern and phenomenon.
    A whole generation has literally developed anxiety from having too many choices.
    The information age allows us to see the lives of millions of people from all over the world and suddenly we realize that there is so much more to want than we ever thought was possible.
    People used to talk about “keeping up with the Jones” - now the Jones have a live webcam, an unboxing of their new purchases and a dozen TikTok videos of their best vacation moments.
    Oh, and make sure you hit “like” and “subscribe” because those numbers are how they get paid.
    I wonder sometimes if they are really having fun or if they are just smiling for the camera?
    James is being intentionally provocative here to hopefully make us take a hard look at our own desires?
    1 Peter 2:11 ESV
    11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.
    We have natural human desires that are contrary to God's design.
    Remember, the world is fallen under sin.
    It is disordered, chaotic - most thoughts and feelings represent our immediate impulse to please ourselves or to control what we can’t control.
    Remember, until we invite God into the chaos to separate the components - it all looks good to us.
    You don’t have to be a bad person to have disordered desires - you just have to be a person - any person.
    Don’t pretend you’re perfect when you’re not - I’m not either.
    We all have a sinful nature - no exceptions.
    But we all have a loving and merciful Heavenly Father who makes His grace available to all.

    Our desires are divided by our loyalty.

    Last week, in talking about wisdom, we went back to chapter 1 where James talks about God’s wisdom being available simply for the asking.
    James 1:5 NLT
    5 If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.
    And then he talks about asking in faith, not doubting because that just leads to confusion and chaos.
    James 1:6 NLT
    6 But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind.
    Divided loyally causes chaos and disorder.
    The imagery is like that of the world before creation.
    Genesis 1:2 NLT
    2 The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
    And what does God do? He speaks and separates the elements, creating order and beauty.
    Genesis 1:3–4 NLT
    3 Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. Then he separated the light from the darkness.
    God speaks light into the darkness and then separates the two - ending the confusion.
    And that is also what he does with our disordered desires.
    When we invite God into the picture - He brings His desires with Him and that reorders our desires.
    Psalm 37:4 ESV
    4 Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
    God gives us our desires when His desires become our desires.
    That is the “delight yourself in the Lord” part - it is first and foremost desiring Him.
    Just as we said with the positive spiral and he negative spiral - when we put God at the center of our spiral - it can turn a negative spiral into a positive one.
    But we need to make that choice.

    Making a decisive choice.

    James 4:5–7 ESV
    5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? 6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
    So in a twist of irony, James goes on to describe what God is passionate about.
    He even uses the word “jealousy” - saying that God is jealous.
    He’s not the first one to say that.
    Exodus 20:5 ESV
    5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,
    God gets really upset when people worship and bow down to idols.
    Have you ever wondered why?
    If an idol is really nothing, then what is the big deal?
    When I was in my MDiv program, my class took a field trip to the Met Museum in NYC. We had some extra seats on the train so a couple of us took our teenage kids along. My son Martin was one of them.
    This museum had a very large ANE exhibit with Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures well represented by art carvings, manuscripts and statues. I tried to warn him but. Martin observed that many of these artifacts depicted sexual scenes and there was a lot of partying in ancient times. Pretty wild parties!
    It suddenly occured to him, that maybe God’s prohibition of idols wasn’t just about pictures and statues but the whole party culture surrounding them. God was trying to keep his people free from spiritual bondage and addiction. We think God is just jealous about people worshipping other gods’ - but His jealousy is for us.
    He really wants what is best for us.

    God’s desire is towards the people He made.

    When God created mankind - it was a special act of creation.
    God showed a lot of creativity and imagination in all of the animals, birds, fish and plants.
    It’s amazing to study the extent of God’s imagination.
    Making birds that don’t fly - but swim like fish.
    Making fish with wings that fly like birds.
    Making insects that look like sticks and leaves.
    Making a giraffe with a body like a horse down here and a head way up there.
    But the crowning glory of God’s creation was making a creature to resemble Himself - both male and female versions resembling Him.
    Genesis 1:27 NLT
    27 So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
    And then he but his own life essence into them.
    Genesis 2:7 NLT
    7 Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.
    In both Hebrew and Greek the words for breath, wind and spirit are all the same word.
    They represent the essence of life.
    As long as we have breath, we have life and our spirit is housed in our bodies, created by God.
    That is what God is passionate about - He is passionate for the purpose for which He created us.
    He created us to be like Him.
    He created us to rule and to manage the earthly realm.
    He created us for relationship with each other and with Him.
    Imagine how it must make Him feel when we don’t get along with each other and we totally ignore Him?
    I wonder how God feels when we choose things that are harmful to ourselves and detrimental to our relationships?
    I wonder what he thinks when he sees us playing into the plans and strategies of rebellious spiritual beings who have plotted to usurp human authority and enslave mankind in power schemes?
    I wonder what it must do to the heart of God when people blame Him for all the evil in the world.
    When the blame God’s people for the corruption of power and influence.
    And faith or religion is nothing but an obstacle between them and their disordered desires.
    And meanwhile, God still loves us because He remembers who He made us to be...
    That’s called grace … grace means favor.
    God doesn’t just love us - He likes us.
    He likes us because only He knows who we really are and who He created us to be.
    Being created in His image means there is something good in each of us -even if we refuse to see it.
    It’s like your kid’s - you’ll always love them, even if you don’t like what they do. Some times they will choose things just to be different from you. They want to express their own creativity. But usually, eventually they come around to realizing that, while you may not have been right about everything, you had your reasons. And it was mostly because you just wanted what you thought was best for them because you love them.
    God loves you and He just wants you to come back to Him....

    Turning your back on pride increases favor.

    James 4:6 NLT
    6 And he gives grace generously. As the Scriptures say, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
    You may not realize it - but the human tendency toward pride and self-will is because of the fall.
    The story about Adam and Eve eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is also a sort of parable.
    They wanted to know good and evil - but they wanted to do it on their own terms.
    They wanted to be able to do the ordering of desire for themselves.
    There’s only one problem - when they disobeyed the Creator it led to de-creation (also known as destruction).
    When people reject God’s design it leads to disorder.
    You cannot order your desires while rebelling against God.
    You cannot live the life that God created you to live while disobeying God.
    Grace and pride cannot coexist - because pride rejects the very source of grace.
    James gives a concise solution:
    James 4:7 CEV
    7 Surrender to God! Resist the devil, and he will run from you.
    That’s it - it sounds simple, but like anything else, it’s a process.
    It’s a process that begins with a choice.
    It’s either you will or God’s will?
    It’s either your desires or His desire for you?
    It’s either follow Jesus Christ of follow the devil?
    There is no in-between because, whether you know it or not, you are in the middle of a war.
    You must choose a side!
    Doing what you want apart from God is playing right into the hands of the enemy.
    Ok, you say, so how do I get back on track?

    Turning towards God.

    James 4:8–10 ESV
    8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be wretched 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.
    I have to admit - that sounds a bit grim- but I think James is trying to get his readers to realize the gravity of the situation.
    You thought you were just doing your own thing - you didn't see it as rebellion against God - but that is exactly what it is!
    You thought those idols were just objects - you didn’t know that demons were using them as bait to get you hooked.
    Much of what passes for entertainment these days is idolatry - anything to get you to question God, desensitized to evil and passively following your own fleshly desires.
    I know that many people will think I'm being mean when I say that - but you have to know that it comes from a heart of love and an urgent desire to have people see the truth before it is too late!

    Dare to face the truth.

    The truth is that God loves you - He always has.
    The truth is that God is for you - He created the world good and He wants you to be everything that He created you to be.
    The truth is that there is a spiritual rebellion against God that has been going on since long before you and I arrived on the scene.
    There is a tug of war happening for control of the earth and we all need to decide which side we are on.
    The enemy’s strategy is to make you think this is all about you.
    Like God and the devil are fighting for control of you and that you decide based on which one you think is going to be best for you.
    Wrong! It’s a lie. God shouldn’t have to fight for what is already his.
    He is the one who made you in His image.
    He is the one who gives you life and breath.
    And if that wasn’t enough, He sacrificed His own Son to redeem you from sin.
    But even after all that, He still gives you the freedom to choose.
    Because love can never be demanded, it must be given freely.
    It shouldn’t be a difficult choice, but it is.
    Because we are born into a sinful world, our nature already has a tendency to be contrary.
    Life is hard and the people who love us often let us down.
    And the enemy uses that to convince us that God is the source of our pain and that He will also let us down.
    And we don’t want to admit that we too have contributed to the pain and shame of others.
    And so we embrace a kind of faith that is more about us than it is about God.
    We worship God as long as it feels good.
    We study the Bible so we can win arguments.
    We go to church to “get something out of it”.
    We do good deeds to feel better about ourselves.
    We pray only to get our needs met.
    I know, many people are like, so… what’s wrong with that?
    This is normal Christianity in America today - does anyone else see how this is a problem?
    The problem is it’s about us and what we want - it’s centered on the desires of the flesh and it has very little to do with God.

    Learn to embrace repentance.

    James, the writer of the book we are studying is traditionally identifies as the brother of Jesus who led the church in Jerusalem.
    James pastored he very first mega-church and he saw the tendency for faith to become something other than truly following Jesus.
    He wrote this book as a corrective measure to get the churches scattered around he Roman world back on track.
    Keep God at the center - it all revolves around Him!
    Move towards God.
    It’s easy to get off track, but turn around when you do.
    It’s called repentance, it literally means to turn around.
    And its not something we only do once - we do it as often as needed.
    Reorient yourself, and move toward God.
    I’m sorry God - I thought I was following you, but I see I have made it more about me.
    I thought I was being spiritual - but I see I was being prideful and judgmental.
    I thought I was being really clever - but I see that I have not been obedient or discerning.
    I thought I was being helpful - but I see that I have been codependent, caring too much about what other people think.
    I thought I was doing everything right - but I see that I have been self-righteous and ignorant of what you really want.
    What does God want? - He wants you.
    When you move toward Him - He moves toward you.
    When you invite Him into the chaos - He brings order.
    When you put Him at the center of your spiral - He turns it around.
    When you surrender your will, humbling yourself before Him and putting God in His rightful place - He lifts you up.

    Questions for reflection:

    Do you ever feel like you are in a tug-of-war? Can you relate to the idea of conflicting desires? Do you feel like you are in the middle of a spiritual battle? What would happen if you put God in the middle and get on his side?
    What does idolatry look like for us today? Do you have anything that God might be jealous about? If there is anything in your life that makes God jealous, what is it that He really wants? What would make you want God like He wants you?
    Is repentance a positive word to you? Is it something you did once? Or is it something you do often? Are you moving towards God? How would you even know of God’s grace if He were not also moving towards you?

      • James 4:1–4ESV

      • 1 Peter 2:11ESV

      • James 1:5ESV

      • James 1:6ESV

      • Genesis 1:2ESV

      • Genesis 1:3–4ESV

      • Psalm 37:4ESV

      • James 4:5–7ESV

      • Exodus 20:5ESV

      • Genesis 1:27ESV

      • Genesis 2:7ESV

      • James 4:6ESV

      • James 4:7ESV

      • James 4:8–10ESV

  • Made For More
Spring City Fellowship
office@springcityfellowship.com
(610) 948-5250
https://springcityfellowship.com
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