"Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you."
How can I display humility? By submission to God. I don't thinking that resisting the devil is necessarily renouncing him verbally. It seems that we resist him by not following after his way--not following the worldly wisdom that chapter three called "demonic." We resist selfishness and jealousy, by submitting to God and following his wisdom. How is that accomplished? It's primarily a matter or our relationship. We draw near to Him. But in order to draw near to God, we must repent and seek forgiveness, be cleansed in hand and heart. This is not the way of the prideful. Instead of exalting ourselves above each other we make ourselves low. We mourn and weep for our sin. And through humility comes exaltation. What a paradox! The very thing that they selfishly seek but do not attain, we receive when we stop seeking it.
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