Mims Turley

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. James 4:1-3

Quarrels are common among people and often leads to terrible suffering. Quarrels among Christians are unfortunately also something that occurs frequently. The newspapers, especially the Sunday newspapers, often report gleefully about Christians in the church quarrelling among themselves. We all know how church politics can get so out of hand that some members sometimes leave the church to join another church. But it is not only in church where Christians argue. Sometimes a Christian couple will fight and divorce, or a family that knows the Lord will arguing about the estate of a late loved one and become alienated from each other. It does not matter what it is about, quarrels between Christians always do damage.

James asks where these quarrels among Christians come from. He answers with a counter question - "Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” He makes it clear that our selfish desires are the cause of quarrels and fights. James makes no bones about the motivation for our everlasting quarrels and he go so far as to compare it with murder. We are jealous and want something from someone else and because we cannot get it, it turns into fights and quarrels.

So the origin of all these quarrels and fights is our selfish desires. James motivates this by saying we want always something from someone else and if we cannot get our way, we fight. People often justify their actions by emphasising the so-called necessity of them. One often hears someone say, 'I simply had to do it because otherwise such-and-such would have happened!" James teaches us there is a completely different action that we can take in lieu of a fight, and that is prayer.

In verse 2 James says, "You do not have because you do not ask God.” In James 1:5 we read:" ... ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. "James warns that if we pray with the wrong motives, we will not receive. James makes it clear that God is holy and pure, and that he does not want nothing to do with evil. "When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone.” James 1:13

James makes it very clear that when Christians quarrel among themselves there is something wrong with our relationship with God and that it manifests in our prayer life. Either we do not pray because we do not trust in the grace of God, or we pray with the wrong motives because we do not remember that the God to whom we pray, is holy and pure.

Prayer: Lord, thank you that through your Word we can learn every day. Help me to reach out in love to my fellow Christians today. Teach me how to pray through your Holy Spirit each day. Amen