Can't Always Get What You Want

Sermon Notes: October 23, 2022
Under Pressure 8: Can’t Always Get What You Want - Megan Lemmons
James 3:13-18 (NLT)

James 3:13-18 (NLT)
If you are wise and understand God’s ways, prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don’t cover up the truth with boasting and lying. For jealousy and selfishness are not God’s kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and the fruit of good deeds. It shows no favoritism and is always sincere. And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness.

James 4:1-3 (NLT)
What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.

James 4:6-8 & 10 (NLT)
And he gives grace generously. As the Scriptures say,“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world…Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.

Why don’t we get what we want?

“Here James must be expecting his readers to think in ultimate terms. What they want is not status, but rather what they hope status will bring to them: a sense of wholeness, joy, and peace.”

James 3:14-16 (NLT)
But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don’t cover up the truth with boasting and lying. For jealousy and selfishness are not God’s kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic. For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind.

Markers our desires are out of order:

• Bitterness

• Jealousy

• Selfish Ambition

James 4:2 (NLT)
You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them”

James 4:6-8 & 10 (NLT)
And he gives grace generously. As the Scriptures say, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world…Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.

It’s going to be a proper posture before God and others that is going to give us what we truly need.

James 3:16-18 (NLT)
If you are wise and understand God’s ways, prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom. But the wisdom from above is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and the fruit of good deeds. It shows no favoritism and is always sincere. And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness.

Desires Ordered by God:

• Peace loving

• Gentle

• Yielding to others

• Full of Mercy & Good Deeds

• Show No Favoritism

• Sincere

James 3:18 (NLT)
And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness.