Begin your time with prayer
Scripture
James 4:1-5 Where do the conflicts and where do the quarrels among you come from? Is it not from this, from your passions that battle inside you? You desire and you do not have; you murder and envy and you cannot obtain; you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask; you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, so you can spend it on your passions. Adulterers, do you not know that friendship with the world means hostility toward God? So whoever decides to be the world’s friend makes himself God’s enemy. Or do you think the scripture means nothing when it says, “The spirit that God caused to live within us has an envious yearning”?
Reactions
Think of a recent argument you’ve had or hurt you’ve experienced recently.
What caused it?
Digging below the surface
What does James say causes the conflicts and quarrels among people?
Why does he use the term “adulterers” here?
What do you see about God’s character or what he wants in this passage?
Making it stick
What is it that you want right now that God hasn’t chosen to give you?
What are your motives for wanting some of those things you don’t have?
Notes
What do you want more than anything else in the world? For me, it’s a comfortable, fair, orderly life where I’ve done my best and am duly rewarded. Those desires lie at the root of just about every negative encounter I have.
So for example, I do a good job mothering and expect a well-behaved child in return. He melts down in the checkout aisle of the grocery store. I struggle with him, trying to pay for my groceries, feeling the judging eyes of the clerk on me. Anger boils up inside of me. It isn’t fair that I’m being judged by my child’s conflict. I’m not comfortable. Nothing about that ordeal was orderly or fair. My “reward” for good mothering was the opposite of what I wanted.
So I let those desires dictate how I respond to the people in my life. In the van, I blow up at my son. I think sharp, negative thoughts about the clerk who looked at us so critically and those thoughts shape how I think of her every time I see her.
When I choose my own desires over what God wants, I’m fighting on the enemy’s side. I’m professing to follow Christ but I’m living a double life, like a spouse having an affair. It’s a miserable existence.
The NLT Bible translates verse 5 this way: “Do you think the scriptures have no meaning? They say that God is passionate that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to him.” God is jealous for our hearts. He knows that when my desires are for him and for the best way, then I will have peace with myself and others.
God, I chase after the natural desires in my heart. I want life to go a certain way and am too quick to sacrifice my relationship with you and others to make sure I get what I want. Forgive me for my selfishness, God. Please change my desires. Please show me what you want and give me a hunger for those things. Trusting you is the only way to receive true peace I long for.