Our faith in Jesus should lead us to live lives like Jesus. “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?” - James 4:1 hēdonḗ (“satisfaction of physical appetite”) generally referring to pleasure that is made an end in itself; the satiation of bodily desires (lusts) at the expense of other things. Hedonism is the ethical system or world view that operates as if human pleasure is the highest good and proper aim of human life. 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. - James 4:2-4 “But you have lived as a prostitute with many lovers— would you now return to me?” declares the Lord. “Look up to the barren heights and see. Is there any place where you have not been ravished? By the roadside you sat waiting for lovers, sat like a nomad in the desert. - Jeremiah 3:1-2 *“for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”— - Revelation 19:7-8 “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.” - James 4:4 * Do we find ourselves obeying the pull toward power more than we obey the direction of the one we call Lord and savior? “our modern society has come to embrace “self-sufficient humanism.” “I mean by this a humanism accepting no final goals beyond human flourishing, nor any allegiance to anything else beyond this flourishing. Of no previous society was this true” - Charles Taylor, A Secular Age Essentially, Taylor is saying that our culture finds itself largely hopeless, depressed, and anxious because it has bought the lie that all there is to this life is personal achievement that begins and ends with this life. Have we believed the lie that we’ll find ultimate satisfaction in pleasure? 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.” - James 4:5-6 “ 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 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. - James 4:7-10 In all of this, James ultimately encourages us toward a rejection of self-sufficiency and an acceptance of God dependency.