The Roots Of Conflict James 4:1-6

JAMES 4:1a What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?...

SINFUL DESIRES WITHIN US ROOT #1 SINFUL DESIRES WITHIN US

JAMES 4:1-2a 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.

JAMES 4:1-2a (NLT) – What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don't they come from the evil desires at war within you? (CEV) – Why do you fight and argue with each other? Isn't it because you are full of selfish desires that fight to control your body?

Downward Spiral of Conflict… I DESIRE I DEMAND I JUDGE I PUNISH

Diagnostics… What Do I Want That I’m Not Getting? Why Do I Think I Deserve This? Do I Have any Right to Demand It?

PRIDEFUL SELF-SUFFICIENCY ROOT #2 PRIDEFUL SELF-SUFFICIENCY

JAMES 4:2b-3 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.

Matthew 6:25-26 Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

Matthew 7:7-11 "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?…

Matthew 7:7-11 … If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

John 15:7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

Psalm 37:4 Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act

Duncan American Christians believe that God is the best way to get the good life, rather than the chief goal of the good life. He’s the best means to getting MY ends, rather than, my purpose is His glory AS my end and goal

Reasons We Don’t Pray… We Lack Trust in God We Lack Trust in His Goodness/Ability We Know How Selfish Many of our Desires Are… We are Pridefully Self-Sufficient

ROOT #3 SPIRITUAL ADULTERY

JAMES 4:4-5 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"?

Romans 1:29-32 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless…

Romans 1:29-32 …Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

John 15:18-19 "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you

1 John 2:15-17 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.