Do you get a little panicky when your phone hits 5% battery? Suddenly you’re scanning the room for an outlet like it’s buried treasure. Hold that feeling, because James 4:7-10 has something to say about running low in four short verses:
“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.”
It sounds like an exhaustive to-do list, but these aren’t ten unrelated chores. They’re one picture of repentance, a heart turning back toward God.
And relax, James isn’t banning laughter or telling you to skip the fun at the next choir Christmas party. Scripture is full of joy:
Psalm 126:2
“Then our mouths were filled with laughter,
and our tongues with shouts of joy;
then they said among the nations,
’The Lord has done great things for them.’”Ecclesiastes 9:7
“Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.”
God is simply calling us to stop treating sin casually. Think of the difference between “oops, my bad” after bumping someone’s cart at the grocery store, and a real “I was wrong” to a friend you hurt. Verse 9 is in the second category of repentance.
Notice how the commands wrap together. Submitting means handing God the steering wheel: the plans, the budget, even the grudge we’re nursing.
Resisting the devil means saying “no thanks” to the same old temptation, whether it’s gossip in the group text or a little compromise at work.
Cleansing hands and purifying hearts covers both what we do and why we do it. It’s like cleaning out a junk drawer—you don’t just toss the obvious trash. You ask why you kept it all.
Feeling wretched and mourning and weeping aren’t about wallowing. They’re about honesty. We should feel so wretched over sin that we can’t help but mourn and weep. In Matthew 5:4, Jesus promised, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
And finally, the tenth command: humble yourself to the Lord. Humbling ourselves is the bow on the package. 1 Peter 5:6 says, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time.”
Now let’s dive a little deeper into verse 8: “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” It’s both a command and a wonderful promise.
We tend to make drawing near sound complicated, like we need a seminary degree and a silent retreat in the mountains. But it often starts small: an honest prayer in the car line, a few verses with your coffee, singing along in worship, confessing something out loud, obeying the nudge you’ve been ignoring, and simply making room for Him. Even five quiet minutes counts.
Back to that phone. Picture a charging cord connected to all the power you could ever need. If you hold your phone near the cord, or toss it in your purse next to it, nothing happens. The power was never the problem. The connection was. Plug it in, and the power flows. That’s verse 8.
God is always available, but when we run low, we try to run on our own strength. Jesus said, “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5), and Paul learned that God’s power shows up in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).
God’s power never changes—our connection does. So we plug in again and again, through prayer, Scripture, worship, confession, and obedience.
Think of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-24). He walked away and things fell apart fast. But when he turned toward home, his father was already running to meet him, and the father didn’t make the son earn his way back first. That’s the heart of James 4:8. We take a step, and God meets us with open arms.
One honest reminder: drawing near doesn’t promise a trouble-free life. It promises something better—His gracious presence. Sometimes that closeness feels strongest in the hardest seasons.
So here’s the question to carry out the door: what do we need to do today to draw closer to God? Maybe we just need to repair the connection and draw on His unlimited and unfailing power!
Prayer:
Father, thank You that You give grace to the humble and promise to come near when we come near to You. Today we submit, asking You to cleanse our hands and purify our hearts, so plug us back into Your power and make our hunger for You the deepest one we have. Amen.
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