How to Have a Prayer Life that God Listens To, Pt 1

By Pastor Matt Black

30 October 2007
Midweek Prayer Meeting
James 4:6-10

Scripture and Theme: Open your Bible to the book of James 4:6-10 this evening.  This evening, we are looking into part 1 of our study: “How to Have a Prayer Life that God Listens To”.

You know, God answers prayer

James 4:6-10, “But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. 7  Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8  Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. 9  Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. 10  Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up”.

Introduction:  We must take the Bible in context.  We cannot take a verse out of its context and say whatever we want about it.  And so we come to the book of James, and the heart of the book of James is: be sure your faith is real, examine yourself.  Test your faith.  He’s dividing between the sheep and the goats throughout the entire book.  And here in chapter four, James talks a lot about the prayer life of a genuine Christian being a great test of faith. 

• He says in chapter 1:  A true Christian prays with unwavering faith.  “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways”.  So over chapter 1 I want you to think: FAITH!
• In chapter 2: we learn that a true Christian has a fruitful life.  “Faith without works is dead.”  If you say you are a Christian, then you have a servant’s heart.  You don’t have to be prodded.  You have to prod stubborn goats, but not gentle sheep.  So over chapter 2, I want you to think: FRUIT!
• Chapter 3 tells us that genuine Christians have strict control of their tongues.  They are either guarding their words, or they are begging for forgiveness an awful lot!  So over chapter 3, I want you to write: FILLING!  You are filled with fresh water as the chapter says, not bitter, and it comes out!
• Now here in chapter 4 of James, there is this FAITHFULNESS to God again characterized by prayer—don’t ask amiss that you might consume it upon your lusts.  Don’t be an adulterer with the world.  James is clearly saying—a life of adultery with the world is a life of unbelief, no matter how much you pray. 

So when you come to chapter 4 and verses 6-10, James is saying: This is what you need to do to become a believer!  There are ten imperatives here.  This is James’ invitation to repent. This is what humility and repentance looks like.

Now I want to look at these verses briefly, realizing that James is using them to evangelize his church.  He wants to divide the wheat and the tares.  But I also want to make the point that we as Christians can learn about how to pray and live from these verses, because these verses are not just how a person comes to Christ, but also how a Christian lives.  It gives the Christian worldview.  A Christian life is a humble, prayerful life.  So I want to come to these verses and get an understanding of what believing prayer looks like. 

And over all believing prayer is humble.  Verse 6, ”God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble”.  God resists the proud.  By the way, the word "resist," I mentioned it two weeks ago, antitasso, means to place oneself in battle against an enemy. God places Himself in battle array against the proud.

We must come to God in humility.  God is militantly against a proud spirit.  Jesus said we have to come to God as ‘a little child’—“Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3-4). 

The question is, how do you act humbly?  Verses 7, 8, and 9 tell us what it looks like.  In these verses there are ten commandments.  The Old Testament has the Ten Commandments, and these are the ten commandments of James.

We’ll be looking at two of the ten imperatives of prayer tonight.

1. "Submit yourselves therefore to God" (verse 7).  What does that mean?  It is very simple.  It means to ‘align yourself under the authority of God.’  The word is used of troops under a general.  It means that you have a loyal allegiance to Jesus Christ as sovereign Lord over your life.  Humbling one’s self then, is a willing conscious submission under God’s authority.  It is pledging your allegiance to God above all others.

Your life is not your own.  God owns you, and you live like it.  “You are bought with a price.”  You are not your own.  God is high and lifted up in your life.  What He says goes, no matter how painful.  You take up your cross and follow him to the death.  Christianity is not some fancy religion.  It is a life and death thing.  These things that are in the Bible hold people’s souls in the balance between heaven and hell.  Come under His authority.  If He speaks are you willing to obey?  Are you willing to go where He wants you to go?  Total surrender is what submission is.

With this in mind then, there is an urgency in prayer.  If God is sovereign over all, then I’d better beg that His will be done “on earth as it is in heaven”. 

2. “Resist the devil” (verse 7).  Literally, ‘take your stand against the devil’ and he will flee from you!  Realize that you are either under the lordship of Satan or the Lordship of Christ.  There is no middle ground.  The Christian life is a life of constant battle.  This command demonstrates that prayer and the Christian life is a constant war!   You never get a break from resisting the devil.  Everything you do as a Christian is an affront to the devil.  Humility sees God as GREAT and Satan as a defeated foe.   Listen, Satan  goes about as “a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8), but he’s a toothless lion.  He’s conquered.  “Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4). 

Take your stand against the devil.  The word is diabolos, the slanderer, the accuser, the devil.  Be ready for satanic attack at all times.  It may be a spiritual conversation you are having and the phone rings.  It may be a personal attack on your character.  That’s ok.  Your allegiance is to God.  You stand with God and against the devil.  Don’t give in.  Jesus said in John 17:15, “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil”.  If Jesus prayed that you’d be kept from the forces of darkness, then you ought to be ready for them.  Ephesians 6:10-13, “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. 11  Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12  For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. 13  Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.”

Conclusion:  Next week we’ll look at a few more.  But let’s pledge our allegiance to God.  Let’s align ourselves under His sovereignty no matter what the pain and what the cost.  Let’s do the hard thing because He is worthy.  Let’s resist the devil.  Everything we do as Christians is an act of war against this world!  Eight more to go, but let’s go to prayer.