James 4:1-3 Having Godly motives are right motives
Fussing, feuding and fighting; it seems to be part of the human condition. It is today and always has been! Why is this conflict so pervasive among we humans? It does seem to be part of our human experience, but why?
Let’s take a look at James 4:1-3 and look for answers; (1) What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? (2) You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you can’t have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You don’t have because you don’t ask God. (3) when you ask, you don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” (NIV)
James begins with our question, “what causes fights and quarrels among you?” (V1a) He gives the Cliff Notes answer by posing another question to form an answer, “don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” (V1b)
We always seem to have competing desires within us. You might be inclined to give your employee the time off he’s requesting, but you may be thinking about a project that you want him to take on and your desires are conflicted! If you tell him he can’t have the time off because you need him for the project you could start conflict. If on the other hand you thought you might be able to rearrange your time and take that project on yourself, you might be able to accommodate him for the time off.
Your desires may both be legitimate, but one has the potential to cause some of that fussing, feuding and fighting while the other might avoid the conflict. What’s the right course of action?
What you want may be to not be involved in the project you want your employee to take on. Your employee, on the other hand wants time off to go to the beach. One of you isn’t going to get what he wants! Most everything that brings conflict has to do with someone not getting what he wants and someone else getting what he wants!
Conflict almost always comes down to someone being selfish as opposed to selfless! Verse 2 says that we will kill and covet and still not get what we want! James says that we quarrel and fight to get what we want!
Notice what James says in the last part of verse 2, “you do not have because you do not ask God.” In the first part of verse 3 he says that you ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives. You are asking for things so that you can spend them on your own pleasure. (V.3)
It all comes down to our motives! What motivates us to ask for something, fight to get something, or even kill and covet to get something? It usually has to do with us wanting things to spend on our own pleasure! Our largest pleasure is to get the attention and control we desire, even get the power we covet!
Most of our fighting comes down to someone wanting power over someone else! This is true for people and even true for the organizations and nations that are made up of people. The origin of the war in the Pacific in World War II had to do with Japan wanting control of natural resources that China and other parts of the world had control over. They wanted the natural resources that were available in the United States. Instead of working out treaties to buy what they needed they started wars to take over China and tried to get to the United States. Twenty million people died in those conflicts between 1937 and 1945! Humankind will kill to get what they want! That has been the nature of humanity from the beginning.
Remember that the first death in history was Cain killing his brother Abel because he was jealous, as God liked Abel’s offering better than Cain’s. Cain wanted God’s acceptance the way Abel had it, so he killed to get it and still didn’t get it! Japan didn’t get the natural resources China and the U.S. had either!
People fight motivated by selfish motives. Usually they want control over someone else! People will kill another person to gain control. What happens when they do kill that person? They lose control because the person they killed is dead. People rape other people and molest children to gain control. It lasts for just a moment and is gone.
The solution for all this is to surrender to Jesus who did the exact opposite of what the world does. The world takes from others for personal pleasure! Jesus gave his life to pay for your sin and mine so we could be free from sin, not controlled by sin!
The world’s motive is to take and gain power! Jesus motive is to give so we can have freedom! Our motive must be to imitate Jesus and give freedom to others as opposed to trying to gain control of them! Then the fussing, feuding and fighting will subside!