James 4:1-10 Submit Yourselves to God

1What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? 2You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

4You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? 6But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:
"God opposes the proud
but gives grace to the humble."

7Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

The main focus of my witnessing is to find out where a person thinks they are in relation to a holy God. Whether they say they are an atheist, a Christian, a Jew, a Catholic, or whatever, 99% of people tend to lift themselves up. Everybody thinks that God just owes them an answer to their prayers, and by God not answering them, they feel that God is evil. Unwashed sinners have no right to come into the throne room of Almighty God. It's the ultimate paradox that you can never get there if you think you deserve it, but when you really humble yourself, and hand ALL the glory to God, He will grant you direct access.

I am getting really good at this, at getting people to see their true condition by using the Law in evangelizing. But, therein lies the paradox for me. The second I think that it is ME doing anything good, I am putting myself up as some sort of good person. I have to ask, am I witnessing for some sort of glory for myself? Please, Lord, let me continue to die to myself and stay faithful to the great commission only because YOU are such a great and merciful and holy and just Creator. Lord, please don't let me get so proud that you resist me, and let me always have a humble heart.