Beneath the Cracks

If you’ve been following me for some time now, you know I live in what I lovingly call our “old and charming” house.

We downsized in 2020 after all of the kids finished college, got married, and moved out, and I could not wait to find an older home with character. I wanted the creaky floors, original trim, built-ins, old doors, uneven quirks, and all the little things newer homes sometimes lack. I love homes that feel lived in. Homes with stories.

What I did not fully appreciate is that old and charming also comes with projects. Endless projects.

As my husband likes to say, “Owning an old house is like pulling a thread on a sweater. One thing always leads to another.”

He is absolutely right.

Every project seems to uncover another hidden issue lurking quietly underneath it. You replace one thing and suddenly realize something else has been neglected for years. I actually love the process. Our bank account not so much.

Last fall, we finally decided it was time to replace our concrete driveway and sidewalk leading to the front door. After nearly sixty years, the driveway was cracked in several places, and the sidewalk had sunk unevenly enough that it had become genuinely dangerous for my aging parents when they visited.

But before we committed to replacing everything, we debated other options because, let’s be honest, replacing concrete is not exactly a thrilling way to spend money.

Could we patch the cracks?

Could we simply repair sections of it?

One company even offered to “raise” the sinking sidewalk by injecting some kind of expanding foam beneath the concrete. Apparently, it does the trick. They assured us the sidewalk would look level again.

But as we talked it through, we realized something important: leveling the sidewalk would not actually solve the deeper problem beneath it. Patching the cracks would only camouflage the damage for a little while longer. The visible issues were symptoms of something much deeper happening beneath the surface after decades of settling, shifting, erosion, and neglect.

And honestly, the more I studied James 4 this week, the more I thought, this is exactly what James is doing.

James is not interested in cosmetic Christianity.

He is not interested in patched-over behavior modification that merely makes us look more stable on the outside while everything underneath remains fractured and unsettled.

Instead, James starts digging beneath the surface of our lives. Beneath the visible cracks of conflict, jealousy, irritation, prayerlessness, ambition, comparison, bitterness, and pride, he exposes the deeper issue hiding underneath it all: disordered desires.

He opens the chapter by asking, “What causes fights and quarrels among you?”

That question alone feels uncomfortably relevant right now. We live in a culture full of outrage, division, anger, and self-promotion, and if we are not careful, we can spend all of our time diagnosing everyone else’s behavior without ever allowing Scripture to diagnose our own hearts.

James refuses to let us live on the surface.

The Greek word he uses for “passions” is hedonon, from which we get our word hedonism. It refers to desires that have grown controlling and consuming. Desires that begin ruling us instead of simply existing within us.

And the difficult reality is that even good desires can quietly become ultimate desires.

A desire for rest can become laziness.
A desire for success can become selfish ambition.
A desire to be loved can become an insatiable need for approval.
A desire for leadership can slowly become control.

Thomas à Kempis once wrote, “A humble man is not disturbed by praise or blame because his trust is not in the world but in God.” James 4 presses directly into that tension because so much of our conflict, striving, frustration, and pride is rooted in misplaced trust and unsurrendered desires.

This chapter is deeply theological, but it is also deeply personal.

James talks about humility, repentance, submission, prayer, pride, envy, worldliness, dependence upon God, and even the illusion that we are somehow in control of tomorrow. He reminds us that pride is not always loud or obvious. Sometimes it sounds incredibly spiritual. Sometimes it disguises itself as self-protection, self-sufficiency, or the constant need to prove ourselves right.

Yet in the middle of one of the strongest chapters in the New Testament comes one of the gentlest invitations in Scripture:

“Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.”

That is the heart of James 4.

This is not condemnation for struggling believers. This is a loving invitation for wandering hearts to come back near.

Tomorrow night we are going to wrestle with questions like:
• Why does James connect outward conflict with inward desire?
• What is the difference between healthy desires and ruling desires?
• Why does pride resist surrender so fiercely?
• What does biblical humility actually look like?
• What does it mean to submit ourselves to God?
• Why do some prayers go unanswered?
• How does worldly wisdom quietly shape us without us realizing it?
• What does true repentance involve?
• Why does James speak so strongly about boasting over tomorrow?
• What would it look like to live with genuine dependence upon God instead of merely saying we trust Him?

There is a lot to cover in James 4 because there is a lot happening underneath the surface of the human heart.

Read the chapter slowly before we meet tomorrow night. Sit with it a bit. Let it examine you before you try to examine everyone else around you.

Tomorrow’s post and Zoom discussion drop at 7:00 PM CST.

As always, this Zoom study is included free for all paid subscribers. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber but would still like to join us for the James study, you can register here.

I look forward to seeing you!

Dawn

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