2. What causes fights and quarrels among you
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God.
James 4:1–2

3. Prayer that is consistent with true faith will not make selfish requests. Desire-filled, envious believers do not make requests of God but instead are driven by their self-sufficiency in that they do not really trust in God for his provision and shame in that they do not correct themselves once they become aware of how bad their attitudes really are. Only God can bestow the good gifts they need and should truly desire; but they will not ask him. In this refusal to humble themselves in prayer, they only show how lacking they are in the most basic traits of Christian wisdom and how driven they are by worldly wisdom.

4. Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another
Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?
James 4:11–12

5. Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you.
Hebrews 13:17

6. but shows favor to the humble.”
James 4:6

7. Submit yourselves, then, to God
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
James 4:7–10

8. I will look up for there is none above You
I will bow down and tell You that I need You
I will look back and see that You are faithful
I look ahead believing You are able

9. I Will Look Up

10. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
James 4:4

11. In his church, leaders had advocated that the sin of favouritism was not, in fact, sin, but that certain cultural norms were fully commensurate with the gospel. This position James attacked.

12. The bane and blindness of liberal Christianity includes the assumption that there should be a warm joining of hands between culture and Christianity. But the Bible often compels us to stand for values radically at odds with those of our culture. To suppose otherwise is to misunderstand Scripture at the most basic level. As James says, “friendship with the world is hatred towards God”.

13. Evangelicals are also guilty of a blanket excoriation of the world
Evangelicals are also guilty of a blanket excoriation of the world. “Friendship with the world” refers to embracing the standards of the world. But there are not infrequent points of correspondence. Christians should affirm what is true and worthwhile in our culture instead of offering churlish blanket condemnations.

14. I Will Bow Down

15. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
James 4:3

16. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
Matthew 7:7

17. I Will Look Back

18. One belonging to me and one to my Lord.

19. there was only one set of footprints.

20. I don't understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me

21. It was then that I carried you."

22. I Look Ahead

23. Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”
James 4:13–15

24. This entire passage is one of the most important biblical sources for a Christian ethic of business. There is nothing evil or wrong per se about anything God has made and put at our disposal. But God is not at our disposal. Neither are his standards for faith. Nothing in a person’s life lies outside of faith and the good deeds that must flow from faith. Life is lived, but only if God wills, just as assuredly as deeds are done only if God wills. Their actions had been based on the earlier stated problem: “You do not have, because you do not ask God” (v. 2).

25. What kind of faith was theirs
What kind of faith was theirs? They did not make their plans in a devout way, acknowledging God in all their plans and expectations. The question of an active versus a permissive will of God is not at issue here. No believer should test God by acting apart from the norm of faith. Indeed, if believers will say, “God willing,” their prayers will result in their receiving from God.

26. I will look up for there is none above You
I will bow down and tell You that I need You
I will look back and see that You are faithful
I look ahead believing You are able

27. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
James 4:17