James 4-7 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. --Resist the devil and he will flee- Has that been true in your experience- Do you find that when you resist the devil, he runs for his life- Or do you find that when you resist him, all he does is crank up the pressure even more and come after you again and again- Why doesn't this promise seem to match our experience-

If you're a Christian, you want to be responsive to the impulses of the Holy Spirit. But very often we miss those promptings because we're listening for the wrong thing. We're waiting for the Spirit to give us a completely different kind of guidance than the kind we're listening for.

How often do you find yourself asking God for guidance in making a hard decision- Back in chapter 1, James promised us that if we pray for wisdom, God will give it to us. So why do we so often pray for guidance, do our best in making a hard decision, and end up making a dumb choice that we regret---We know from experience that God's guidance doesn't come in the form of God telling us, -Choose option A.- So what form does it come in- The answer will change the way you think about discovering God's will.

1- Is it wrong to take pride in your work--2- Why do we tend to have the most conflict with the people we love the most-

In yesterday's podcast I went through a whole long list of different ways pride can manifest itself. All those examples I gave had to do with pride toward people. But there's another side of pride-the side that faces toward God.

God opposes-fights against the proud. What could possibly be worse than having almighty God fighting against you- --It's essential that we root out every vestige of pride in our hearts we can find. But it's hard, because pride can wear so many different faces. There are just about as many different forms of pride as there are moments in the day. It's like a game of wack-a-mole. The moment you get a handle on pride in one area, it springs up in a different area in a completely different form.--As you listen today, you'll hear about a whole lot of different forms of pride. Don't try to keep it all in your head. Just ask God, -Show me if there's one or maybe two of those forms of pride in my life that need special attention.-

Imagine two gardens. In one, the gardener planted nothing but seeds of pride. The other has seeds of humility. What kinds of crops would you expect to grow in those two gardens- The Bible tells us, and a lot of the fruit that grows up in that pride garden might surprise you.

Have you ever woken up in the morning and thought, -Man, I really need some grace----You've probably thought that about money at some point--I've got to figure out how to pay the bills.- But people don't usually think that way about grace because grace is kind of an abstraction. Most of us would be hard pressed to even define it.--But if we did have a clear understanding of what it is, we would wake up in the morning longing for more of it.

The last few days we've been talking about worldliness, and any time you focus on a particular sin that long, it can get discouraging. How do you solve the problem of worldliness in your heart- James gives us some great news in James 4-6.