Therefore, submit to God. But resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands sinners, and purify your hearts, double-minded people! Be miserable and mourn and weep. Your laughter must change to mourning and your joy to sorrow. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.
James 4:7-10 HCSB
After going through a huge storm like Hurricane Ida, one of the worst things is the cleanup. I’m not complaining, mind you. I am blessed that my house and other structures around sustained no damage. But there is a huge tree that we will have to pay to be removed. It’s way bigger than what we can handle. We need trained professionals. And there is also a massive amount of debris in our front yard, driveway and on our porches. Unfortunately, that is for us to do.
Many people question why death and disaster occurs. They wonder about how a loving God could cause death and destruction in the world. But, we must realize that it is sin that causes death and destruction. It is sin that brings on the disasters that we go through.
The problems with the storms and other disasters is that they are caused by sin. Adam and Eve’s sin brought these things into the world. Our sin keeps them going strong and we must deal with them until Jesus comes back.
My own personal self-inflicted storm brought me to Jesus. It wasn’t a natural disaster, it was just another Val disaster. I had created many through my lifetime. But something happened when I gave it all over to the Lord. It was like He blew this big storm through almost immediately and removed my sin. He removed the excuses I had for staying in my sin. He even removed my desire to sin. But, it took a storm to blow it out. Now once that storm blew my desire for sin out, I had some cleanup to do. I had to change the way I talked. I had to change the way I treated people. I had to change the way I felt about some people. I had some forgiving to do. I had a lot of clean up to do.
Our scripture passage today tells us that we must start by submitting to God. We surrender ourselves to God and He helps us with the cleanup. Then once we have surrendered to God, we must resist the devil. God will help us with that, once we have surrendered ourselves to Him. Then James tells us to draw near to God. You can’t have a long distance relationship with Him, it must be up close and personal. Once we take the first step, God will meet us. As we draw near to God, He draws near to us. And then comes the cleanup.
I think the cleanup is what makes so many of us procrastinate surrendering to God. We know what’s coming. But, I can tell you from personal experience that once you surrender to God, He makes the cleanup easy. It may be a little painful, but He will walk through it with you.
We have been dirty, rotten sinners. We need to be cleansed from that. We need to cleanse our hands that have sinned. Our sin starts in our heart, so we must purify our hearts. We must not be double-minded. Some of us try to surrender to God and hold on to our sin, but it doesn’t work that way.
In verse 9, James tells us to be miserable and mourn and weep. He tells us that our laughter must change to mourning and our joy to sorrow. We must humble ourselves. You see, once we submit to Christ, we are heartbroken when we realize how we have been breaking His heart. But once we confess our sins to Him, earnestly repent ,and trust in Him as our Savior, He saves us. He forgives us and removes our sin from us. Once we humble ourselves before Him, He exalts us and gives us righteousness. 1 John 1:9 tells us that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If the storms of your life have wreaked havoc and left a mess in their wake, you can rest assured that God wants to help you clean it up. All you have to do is ask. Surrender yourself to Him, resist the devil, watch him flea from you and draw near to God. He will help you with the clean up.
Have a great day!