Resolving quarrels and conflicts God’s way
Rev. Joey Crisostomo
Director for Central Operations
July 11, 2010
Key Scripture
James 4:1-11
1What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?
EXEGETICAL IDEA: To expose the root of those conflicts and find a solution to them.
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION
* Scripture makes it plain that God places tremendous value on love and unity. – John 13:35
* The ability to get along with others involves a great deal of effort and humility. – Romans12:8
* The willingness and ability to resolve conflict is a sure sign of a spiritually mature church, family, marriage, or friendship.
INITIAL FACTS
* Quarrels and Conflicts … The picture drawn here is one of a battlefield. The plurals used indicate that this is not an isolated event.
* Among you – This strife and conflict is taking place among believers. Something is seriously wrong.
* Disagreements, conflicts and quarrels happen. But the manner in which we are to resolve our conflicts is extremely important.
* Wrong ways to Respond
o First, some try to suppress the conflict—they recognize a problem but decide to do nothing about it.
o Secondly, people may repress it. In other words, they deny that the conflict even exists.
Conflict and Its Causes
1What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?
First Cause: Dominated by selfish desire… from your desires that battle within you?
* You will not resolve conflict until you correctly identify the source of it.
* Inner Improper desires: self is at the heart of all relational conflicts.
* The enemy dwells within your heart. James takes it back to the root cause: selfishness!
* Think for a moment of any unhealthy and inappropriate desires that are battling within you.
Second Cause: Driven by dissatisfaction … but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want
* How many of us are angry because we didn’t get what we wanted for.
* When we are denied, we find ourselves conflicted and tensed.
* Dissatisfaction with what one has promotes a covetous mentality
Third Cause: Wrong relationship with God … 4You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
* which is manifested in our prayer lives
… You do not have, because you do not ask God.
* which is manifested in our motives
… because you ask with wrong motive
* which is manifested in our attitude
… that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
* which is manifested in our words
…11Brothers, do not slander one another
COMMON EFFECTS OF CONFLICT
* Unresolved disagreement divides our minds.
* Contributes to health problems
* Affects our emotions.
* It causes unnecessary pain and disappointment.
* Unresolved conflict also blocks our fellowship with God and delays our personal growth.
Conflict and Its Cure (4:6-10)
Attitude of Humility. 6b “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. 10Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up.
* Pride is at the heart of all disobedience to God and of almost all relational conflicts.
* The first step to unity and reconciliation is humility.
* Humility is always the right approach to disagreements
* The unity of the church depends upon one thing: its members walking in humility
Attitude of Submission. 7Submit yourselves, then, to God
* Humility expresses itself in submission
* Submission does no occur without deliberate and conscious effort on our part.
* Here are three ways that we tend to resist God:
o We tend to resist God’s way and will
o We tend to resist God’s word
o We tend to resist God’s providential dealing
Resist the devil … Resist the devil, and he will flee from you
* Resist …means to take a stand… to oppose
* There are times when demons are directly involved in disrupting our relationships.
* It is also out of line and naïve to think that demons are never involved.
Repentance… Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.
* All relational conflicts are rooted in a spiritual problem
* Take sin seriously.
* God requires repentance from both the external behavior (signified by the”hands”) that has resulted in quarrels and fights and the internal attitude (signified by the “heart”) that has produced it
Take prayer seriously…8Come near to God and he will come near to you
* Clearly what God wants us to do with our desires is to take them to Him in prayer instead of getting so frustrated that we get angry and start fighting.