What causes fights and quarrels?
Lessons from the book of James (#12)
Whenever we are involved in a quarrel or fight, most of us are quick to blame someone else for causing the fight or quarrel. In our minds, it is always the other person’s fault. We often believe that we are right and the other person is wrong. We fight to protect our “rights”.
In the end, fights and quarrels seldom resolve differences or disagreements, and frequently they put a real strain on relationships.
Fights and quarrels are clearly inappropriate behaviors for believers. Discord is not God’s will for our lives.
James gives us some profound insights relating to fights and quarrels.
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? (James 4:1 ESV)
Fights and quarrels come from desires that battle within us. James is telling us that the root of the problem is in us, not the other person.
For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” (Mark 7:21-23 ESV)
You desire and do not have, so you murder. ( James 4:2 ESV)
We want to get our own way or we want things that we don’t have so we get upset and choose to hurt others to get what we want. Most of us wouldn’t actually kill another person, but we allow hate, anger, and bitterness build up inside of us.
You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. ( James 4:2 ESV)
We covet, we want something that belongs to someone else, and we can’t get what we want, so we 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. (James 4:2 -3 ESV)
Instead of fighting or quarreling over things that we want, we should ask God for these things.
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. Matthew 7:7
If it is God’s will for us to have these things, He will give them to us. If it is not His will for us to have what we are asking for, we are better off without them.
And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. (1 John 5:14-15 ESV)
The next time you “feel a quarrel coming on” examine your own heart and motives rather than focusing on the faults of the other person. You will be amazed what God will reveal to you.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. (Psalm 51:10 ESV)
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