Humility in the Bible: Drawing Near to God Through James 4

From the sermon preached on June 28, 2026

Biblical humility is not politeness or self-deprecation. It is the act of being brought so low by life that the only direction left is toward God. James 4 draws a direct line between the selfish desires that fuel our conflict and our distance from God, and it offers something specific in return: draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. This post follows that line.

James 4 opens with a question that sounds almost rude in its directness: what causes fights and quarrels among you? The answer James gives is not circumstances, not other people's failures, and not bad luck. The answer is selfish desires. Specifically, the desires that battle inside us, the wanting we can't satisfy, the coveting that curdles into resentment when we still don't get what we're after.

Rob, one of the elders at Terraforma Church, opened the message with a story from when he was six years old. He refused to finish his dinner and then demanded dessert anyway. His parents brought him a bowl of ice cream, and he took his first bite to find oysters mixed in. The lesson was immediate: sometimes you don't get what you desire, but you get what you deserve. James is working in that same territory. He tells his readers plainly that selfish desires are the root of the conflict in their communities.

The version of the Bible known as The Message, translated by Eugene Peterson, puts it this way: you want what you don't have, and you are willing to go to dangerous lengths to get it. Even your prayers, James says, come from the wrong place. You ask God to give you things so you can spend them on yourself. The selfish desires underneath the request are the problem, not the request itself.

This is not abstract theology. Think about the last real argument you had. Somewhere in it, at least one person wanted something the other person wasn't giving. Selfish desires show up in marriages, in workplaces, in families, in the quiet cold wars people wage across dinner tables. James is not diagnosing ancient communities. He is diagnosing us.

One honest step for this week: before you make a request of someone close to you, pause and ask yourself what is actually driving it. Not to talk yourself out of having needs, but to get honest about whether the desire is about connection or control.

The word humility gets softened in contemporary use. Rob pointed out during the message that for most Americans, humility means something like being willing to open a door for someone or letting a colleague go first. But the Greek word James uses, tapenos, means something closer to not rising far from the ground. And the Hebrew word behind Psalm 34:18, daka, means to pulverize, to grind all the way down to dust. Humility in the Bible is not a personality trait. It is what happens when life has taken everything and you have nothing left to hold.

Rob shared what his family experienced while adopting two children from Russia. After the court proceedings were finished and they were ready to fly home from Efsk to Moscow, their driver did not show up. One day late. That one day turned into a crisis: their daughter Veriah was running a fever of 103 degrees, and at the U.S. Embassy, Rob's wife Becky was told she could not return to the States because her fingerprints had expired, by exactly one day, and had been taken on the wrong form. The FBI processing time was five to ten business days. Standing in that embassy, holding a sick child, with no idea when his family would get home, Rob said the world felt like it was collapsing.

That is what James means by humility in the Bible. Not a posture you choose on a good day. It is what you find yourself in when everything you tried to manage has come apart. Psalm 34:18 says the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Rob called these moments DACA moments, from the Hebrew root: crushed to dust. And the striking thing he said was this: when that Hebrew word was translated into Greek, daka became humble. Biblical humility and being crushed in spirit are, in the original language, the same word.

One honest step: think of a time you were genuinely crushed. Not disappointed; crushed. Who showed up? That person is worth a call this week.

After the Last Supper, when Jesus had just broken bread and passed the cup in one of the most significant moments in human history, his disciples got into an argument about which of them was the greatest. Rob paused on that detail in a way that earns the pause. Jesus knows what is coming: betrayal, arrest, crucifixion. He has just done everything he can do to prepare them. And they are debating rank.

What Jesus does next is the clearest picture of servant leadership in the Gospels. He takes off his outer robe, wraps himself in a towel, and washes his disciples' feet. These are not ceremonially dirty feet. The roads are dirt. People wear sandals. This is real. And Jesus, the one who had every reason to sit at the head of the table, chooses the lowest position and works his way around the room.

Servant leadership modeled after Jesus Christ is not a leadership style. It is a posture that costs something. Rob illustrated this with a story from his own career. When he took over leadership of a large government organization, he spent the first day serving lunch in the cafeteria wearing a chef's hat, having arranged it all quietly in advance. He wanted the workforce to see that he was there to serve them. The decision came directly from Ephesians 4:1-2: be completely humble and gentle, bearing with one another in love.

James builds from this toward a six-step path for drawing near to God: submit to God, resist whatever pulls you away from him, come near to him, wash your hands and purify your heart, grieve and confess honestly, and humble yourself before the Lord. Each step is a small movement away from self-sufficiency. None of them is comfortable. All of them are available to anyone willing to start.

One honest step: this week, do one thing for someone that costs you something. Not a donation. Something that requires your actual time, presence, or inconvenience.

James 4:8 is the pivot point of the entire chapter: "Come near to God and he will come near to you." Rob was careful to note that there is no precondition in that verse. No required confession before you can start. No clean record required. You take one step; God moves toward you. The Greek root behind the word God uses for his longing is zealos or zeo, meaning to boil over. It is the same root as zeolite, the mineral in certain dishwashers that generates intense heat when exposed to moisture. God's desire for relationship with you is that active, that hot, that urgent.

James also addresses something that most people do not categorize as sin at all: the sin of omission. Not doing what you know you should. Rob pointed to the race illustration used by youth group leader Adam Doy, where teenagers with more advantages in life had stepped far ahead of peers who had none. Looking back at who has been left behind is not a guilt exercise. It is the beginning of servant leadership. If you know the good you ought to do and you don't do it, James says plainly, that is sin. Romans 8:28 holds the other side of that: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

There is a tiredness that has nothing to do with sleep. It is the kind that comes from wanting more than you have, managing more than you can hold, and feeling further from God the harder you work to get life right. That experience is not location-specific. But if you are in it and you are looking for somewhere to sit with it honestly, Terraforma Church gathers each Sunday at Brambleton Middle School in Ashburn, serving families across Loudoun County from Brambleton and Stone Ridge to Aldie, South Riding, and Willowsford, and reaching neighbors throughout Herndon, Sterling, Leesburg, and the Dulles corridor. No dress code. No performance required. One hour that starts at 10:00 AM and tries, in Rob's words, to make room for everyone at the table.

James closes with one of the more unsettling questions in the entire letter: what is your life? His answer is that it is a mist, something that appears briefly and then is gone. That is not a threat. It is an invitation to treat the time you have as something real. Rob ended the message with a challenge: think of the person who showed up in your own DACA moment, when you were crushed to dust and had nothing left. Call them. Thank them. And then ask God to show you who is in that place right now, so you can be the one who shows up and says, I'm on my way.

To take a next step toward a community that is genuinely trying to live that out, plan your visit below.

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