THE SOURCE OF STRIFE IN US!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

FRIDAY JUNE 17, 2022.

SUBJECT : THE SOURCE OF STRIFE IN US!

Memory verse: "Where do wars and fights come among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?  (James 4 vs 1.) 

READ: James 4 vs 1 - 3:

4:1: Where do wars and fights come among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?

4:2: You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask.

4:3: You ask and you do not receive,,because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.

4:4: Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend to the world makes himself an enemy of God.

4:5: Or do you not think that the Scripture says in vain, "The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously"?

4:6: But He gives more grace. Therefore He says "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

INTIMATION:

Christians or Believers ought to be members of the Body of Christ - one body. But quarrels, strife, fights, competition, and so on, is found amongst Christians. Instead of members of one body of Christ existing and working together: "For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of the one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ" (First Corinthians 12 vs 12).

The Body of Christ (The Body of Believers)—the Church, is composed of many types of people from a variety of backgrounds with a multitude of gifts and abilities. It is easy for these differences to divide people, as is the case amongst believers today. But despite the differences, all believers have one thing in common; faith in Christ. On this essential truth the church finds unity.

Quarrels and fights among believers are always harmful, and results from evil desires battling within us. We want more possessions, more members of our church, more money, higher status, more recognition. Such competitions drive us into fights, and quarrels in order to have it. How does all this disturbance get started within us? We know that it is not God's will for us because His thoughts for us is for good and not of evil (Jeremiah 29 vs 11). The Lord does not want His children to live in the midst of a constant interior war zone. 

That is the nature of this world in which we live, but it is not supposed to be the nature of the Kingdom of God. Jesus has told us that the Kingdom of God is within us. (Luke 17 vs 21.) The Kingdom of God is not like an earthly kingdom with geographical boundaries. Instead, it begins with the work of God's Spirit in our lives and in our relationships. 

One reason you and I came to Christ in the first place is because we want to escape all that kind of endless strife and conflict. That is why we became citizens of the Kingdom of God. The Bible tells us that the Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost (Romans 14 vs 17). As followers of Jesus Christ, that is our heritage and our inheritance. 

Why is it, then, that so many of us who truly love God, who are going to heaven, who are called according to His divine purpose, still spend our earthly existence in the midst of what we are trying so desperately to escape from? What is the source of this strife? Where does it originate?

But notice the second part of the verse. James tells us that all these negative things arise from the sensual desires that are ever warring in our members. Do you know that you and I can get into conflict by wanting something that is clearly God's will for us? If we go about trying to get it in the wrong way, we will only produce strife and war and conflict.

The apostle James portrays divisive attitudes that centered around selfish ambition and materialism. As James turns to portray the carnal hearts of the materialists, he is stern by using words that clearly identify the selfish hearts of those who manifest wisdom that is earthly, sensual, and demonic. He reveals the struggles that go on among those who harbor attitudes that are earthly, sensual, and demonic. 

Strife and conflict arise within us because our desires, even our righteous desires, are warring in our bodily members because we want to achieve them by our own efforts outside the grace of God, and this is impossible. Consequently, we do not ask, and even when we ask, we ask for wrong reasons.

The Scripture observes that it is pride that causes our not asking from the Maker and Owner of those things we desire. Instead we strive to do it our own way. And even when we ask, pride makes us ask for wrong reasons; to spend in our pleasures. "God resist the proud," therefore, the grace to obtain that which you desire, and is known to God as your need, is not given to you.

The cure for the evil desires is humility. Pride makes us self-centered and leads us to conflicts with others. We can be released from our self-centered desires by humbling ourselves before God, realizing that all we really need is His approval. 

Prayer: Abba Father, Your thought for us is of good, and it is Your will we live in peace with one another. Give me the grace to eschew strifes and quarrels with other people, but rather live in peace with one another, and helping one another, in Jesus' Name I have prayed, Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!