The Peacemaking Church: Conflict starts in the Heart

[James 4:1-10]

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, "He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us"? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." 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.

{Rev. Dwight Yoo}

Starting Principle - Get the log out of YOUR eye. (Matt 7:3-5)

The inclination of our hearts is to look others in a negative light. To see their faults and their failings. But this is a downward spiral. We can keep going and going in pointing out others faults because all of us are sinners. We will start to think others are worse than they are. But this is not what God wants us to do.

We are to look at our own faults and failings FIRST. What does that get us? We get a healthy sense of self-suspicion. When we get into certain situations, we will examine ourselves to see whether it is our sinful hearts leading us astray. James tells us that conflict starts in our hearts. The world tells us that the reason we have conflicts because of things outside... the traffic, our work, or a bad situation. This is why we are having conflict. BUT the Word tells us it comes from our heart. This is not referring to the organ, but when God talks about the heart, He is referring to the central control in our life. Proverbs 4:23; Matthew 15:19-24;
The desires and passions found in our hearts can be good as well as evil. These are the things that control and move us. Whether it is a desire to eat at Tyson's Bees or to have your children behave...

Let's take a peek at our hearts and how this works...
- i desire...
- (becomes) I Demand...
- (changes us) I JUDGE...
- (makes us) I PUNISH !

So desires that may be perfectly good become demands. And these demands become central to our satisfaction and happiness. They are now idols. They have taken God's place in our lives. Given time, when our demands are not met, they start to impact our relationships. We then begin to judge others according to whether they meet our demands or not. "SHE's a horrible friend." "My husband's so USELESS." Whether we say it or it is just in our hearts, we become overly critical of others. This is what James 4:11 says, "Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge." So then, when we become judges, we will then pass judgment and punish others become of their failures. We see others according to our kingdom rules and regulations. When they fail to meet your expectations or they are not meeting your "needs", you will give them the cold shoulder, shame them, or ignore them.

If you are giving people the cold shoulder or slandering others, it is a CLEAR sign that an idol is in control of your heart. When we punish others who are close to us, they do not want to love us more. It makes them hurt. It makes them get defensive, attack us back, or run away.

"double-minded" - James is telling us that we can only have ONE ultimate source of satisfaction and fulfillment. We cannot serve both God and money. We cannot serve both God and ______. (Friends, family, success, career, & spouse.) No matter what else it is, it will NOT satisfy. It will only disappoint. People are fallible, they will fail us.

We cannot simply remove an idol. Just removing an idol simply opens our heart to another idol. We must replace the idol with God. We must replace the idols of our lives with the desire to love & follow Jesus. Then our fears and anxieties will dissipate...