Friday, December 13, 2013

What Interpersonal Conflict Is Really About

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.
James 4:1-4
Follow the logic.

The things I don't have (v.2), which cause me to fight with others (v.1), are often what God refuses to give me because it's for my own sake, not His (v.3).  In other words, He refuses to finance my spiritual adultery (v.4a).

Which means that, at the end of the day, my fighting and quarreling with people is ultimately about my enmity with God (v.4b). 

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