Real Love in Real Life - Why We Fight with Those We Love, Part 1

Do you ever wonder why some of the worst fights ever have with people that you love the most.

Seems weird doesn't it is the question why do we fight with those that we love and maybe the better question is how we stop today stay with welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with your finger tip survival teacher for this daily discipleship program rating Christians to live like Christian were nearing the end of our series. Real love in real life. For these last two programs just dives into the complex subject of resolving conflict with just a minute he'll share the main trip trips why we so often woo people we love most such a relatable topic so let me encourage you after today's message. Share it with someone in your life you can easily do that to the trip and remap by downloading and sharing the free MP3s LivingontheEdge.org that hears trip with his message why we fight with those we love James chapter 4. Once you allow your mind to go to a park is a beautiful sunny day in your minds eye. Big fluffy white clouds the skies very blue. It's a beautiful park with a lot of greenery and is the camera of your mind's eye zooms and there's a bench in the background there's children running and playing and doing what children do, but it's kind of white noise and as yuzu man. You see, there is a little girl who is about maybe eight or nine years old.

She has little pigtails is really cute to get a few freckles across her nose and you see a man sitting on the bench. That's obviously her father and he looks very uncomfortable. As you watch from a distance, he kinda moves here moves there and you can tell, even from a distance.

It's just chit chatting has his keys and he keeps flipping his keys from one direction to the other because that's what dads do when they have to say something very hard to very young child, and they don't know exactly how to say it, or exactly what to say as he prepares this speech that he's rehearsed in his mind over and over and over, and this is the moment of truth. He picked her up from their home. It's about a mile away. He thought the park would be the best place to break the news and as he fidgets and tries to figure out as a grown man how to break the news to this little eight or nine-year-old who is daddy's girl.

The silence was broken by this little innocent comment and she looks up at him and she says daddy is Jan he said you come home soon you come back to live with me and mommy I really miss you and he realizes that all the rehearsing of his speech in his mind is been preparing for this and everything in him wants to start crying but he holds back the tears says will, honey, that's why we came to the park today. I need to tell you something see dad is not can be coming home and what I want you to know sweetheart it's not you I love you.

I want to be with you II wish so much that I can be with you, but it's me in your mommy. We just can't get along. We tried we've really tried sweetheart and you've heard us late at night. We yell at each other. We scream at each other.

Next we tried everything but we fight fight fight and so were going to get what big people call a divorce and I'll still see you honey get on the make sure that I get to come by and he will be here on birthdays and we've have it worked out where you get to spend a couple months with me in the summertime. But no, honey, I'm I can't come home and she gives him that look that only an eight-year-old can give it says I don't understand this you love mommy and you love me and I love you and I love mommy.

How could two people that love each other this much not be able to work out whatever you need to work out and he says to her I know you can't understand maybe some day you will. I just want you to know, and now those little pigtails are kinda down on her shoulder and now the tears she's not even crying they're just flowing and streaming down her face and until she is 80 years old. That picture and that park will be etched in her memory forever and ever and ever, and it will impact regardless of what mom your dad says how she views herself and it will impact how she relates to the opposite sex, and it will impact how she views God and it will change everything about her life to some degree, and she didn't understand it when she was eight, she won't fully understand it when she's 18 and she may never fully understand it till she's 80.

Why do we fight with those that we love. Why is it the two people that honestly sincerely deeply love one another can get at levels of conflict, but they have to give up or choose to give up. As I tell that story for some of you have all kind of different ages.

You were that little boy you that little girl and for you. Maybe it wasn't you were eight. You could've been five or maybe you were 12 or 13, and you remember being on the receiving and of one of your parents, your mom or your dad telling you that it's just not gonna work. And maybe it happened in the bedroom. Or maybe it happened in the mall or maybe it happened in the park but it's etched in your mind, and it's shaped a lot of you and for others it's you want the little boy little girl you remember when you were the mom or you were the dad giving the speech to your kids. It seems like a long time ago and because your mind is made by God and you have an amazing amazing ability to repress. Sometimes you can push it way down deep and you know maybe that was then and you're in a second marriage now and things are better, but as I told that story. Some things got really deeply uncomfortable inside of you that you haven't thought about and it keeps bringing back the question I'm talking about Christians. Why do we fight with those we love spouses fight against spouses. Why is it in some of our homes, our children fight against each other. Why is it when kids get to be teenagers that they tend to fight against their parents. Why is it when you get to be an adult and you have grown parents but sometimes you fight with your grandparents. Why is it that people can seem to get along and then someone dies and families that look intact when I start talking about where the money is going to go and who gets the estate. Some of the most ugly things can ever come out of believers mouse. Why is it that people in the same churches that love the same God that he paid by the blood of Christ can just rip churches apart when someone thinks someone said something about them or someone's doing something with the building or one of the buses or we disagree about what should happen to a staff member. Why is it that their families may be some in this room who live within 3 to 5 miles a one another and you don't even speak during speak to one another. Why we fight with those we love, because the fact is that we do and what the Holy Spirit is going to say through Jesus brother who wrote the very first book of the New Testament James he's going to explain to us not only the cause of fighting among us as God's children he's gonna talk about the consequences of what happens when we fight with one another and here's the good news. He's going to give us the cure he's gonna give us very direct, clear instruction about how we can stop the conflict about how weak we can stop it.

In those things don't have to go on and restoration can occur. So with that open your Bibles if you're not already there, to James chapter 4, let's dig in together and you'll notice what James begins, he raises the very issue he says what is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you rhetorical question and by the whites in the tense of the verb it says these things are presently occurring in this church. I mean this is written to the church and he says will, what is the source of quarrels and conflicts among youth. In other words it's happening right now and then he can answer the question is, it is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members. We circle the word pleasures and encircle the word war. Literally, he says, is that your passions that wage war in your members are literally among you. You lost and you do not have.

So you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

You do not have because you do not ask and then someone's thinking to themselves know what a second. James you not. I pray I says yeah you're right there is a second category there.

Some of you that ask you do it with the wrong motives, and you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives why so that you can suspend spend it on yourself. The summary of that is the root cause of interpersonal conflicts. According to James's are consuming passion for self gratification.

Jot those two words and where you self gratification uses this word. What is the cause of wars.

It means a protracted award for wars. Here is a protracted state hostility.

Why is it in the church there's there's literal wars going on among the members. What causes the findings. These are pictures of little outbursts of anger that breakout and it's in the plural here it's happening within and among them, he says, is it not your your pleasure your passions and as you circle that because we get our word hedonism from it. The Greek word is he, today, hedonism is one who lives for pleasure. The passion for lust to fulfill one's desires. The cravings of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.

It's an addictive self-love.

He says the source of your quarrels is your own selfish gratification.

It's the me first mindset you fight because you want this and someone else. Once this is your lust that your passions.

He says you envy or literally you covet, you want what someone else has and then you don't get it. So you commit murder with in that strongest strong words for churches and it and whether that literally was happening in this context whether he speaking of murdering people as Jesus said if you say Rocco to your brother. If you have hatred in your heart toward them, you're committing murder but but but whether it's a metaphorical murdering with your tongue that is slander or murder in your heart out of hatred or whether it got to be literal. I've seen it become literal.

How many of us heard of a story in a local church were someone gets back bent out of shape in a church conflict right and I coming on a Sunday morning.

I've heard of this lease for five times last 10 years that come in on a Sunday morning with a gun and either shoot the preacher or shoot one of the elders are leaders or deacons or whatever they call the special churches and yet this is a church and I bet if you do the research.

Everybody in the room is born again. It's hard to imagine his but we don't have to imagine this is reality and he says the cause is that you want. You got this pulsating desire. I have this pulsating desire even as a believer to satisfy or gratify my own way.

We covet in this.

This is a strong word or it's it's I did not.

The whole some kind of God-given pleasure, but the sinful self-indulgent pleasure the hot desire to possess something for your own ego and self gratification and you can obtain another word you get blocked and so you wage war and you don't have things and he says you know why because you try to get it from other places instead of from God and some of you, you know you try to get from God, but you do with the wrong motives, so says the source of interpersonal conflict, the self gratification and if you wanted to summarize it. I put some notes down our problem just right to words selfishness, selfish pride, that's her problem is the inner passion within each of us that craves our own way and behind that craving is the belief that pleasure and fun and sensual fulfillment must be achieved at all costs. The symptoms are conflict conflict in the conflict as evidenced and broken relationships. We want something.

Our goals are block our our our desires are frustrated and so it leads to violence competing desires is it's the classic picture of one cookie into two-year-olds and what James says is that one cookie and 22-year-olds mentality and it might be a position in the church. It might be about money. It might be about sex. It might be about a number of different things but that same passionate desire to possess and get your way in me wanting to get my way is at the core of interpersonal conflict third.

He says what's the strategy.

Our strategies are twofold. First, we attempt to fulfill our desires apart from God. We want something badly. Maybe we want something our marriage, maybe we want from our boss. Maybe one in the church. Maybe one from one of our kids, maybe we want something badly as a single person and he says the wrong strategy as you try and get it apart from God. Notice the line that he sent. He said you don't have because you don't ask. There's some ways through either manipulation or intimidation or image management that we try and get what we want instead of going to God's. I got this is my hearts desire. The second way in terms of strategy is not just attempts to fill desires apart from God, but we try to use God to fulfill our selfish desires. We try to make got her self-help genie God.

I'm praying that you will give this to me and the goal is of the glory of God. The goals of the agenda of God and by the way, I've never seen this more popular than it is in our day and I may not tell you what it sells. Jesus can make you happy.

Jesus can help you lose weight.

Jesus can make you rich. Jesus can make you healthy, wealthy and wise. Jesus can eliminate all your problems. You know what God is not the center of the core or the infinite one who is holy in the universe.

You are the center of the universe, and he's your errand boy and will give you a little formula and take what you do you get him to run your errands for you and I mean it is being preached and is being taught and is being gobbled up because I Tay what the something all this right and maybe Jesus is that ticket I'll be happy if you know Jesus is the ticket to if I love him and follow this formula have this big house on the hill and I'll have another house over here. I'll draw this kind of color and of this, watching these kinda closing the beautiful Limited and a jump in my car handsome hunks or can serve me better that we can't believe it's butter and I mean Jesus is my ticket to self-fulfillment and it's a perversion of the gospel is a perversion of the truth and and it's not new. I mean this is the first book written in the New Testament and what he saying here is your wrong strategies are one you trying get your stuff apart from God or you try and actually use God you're asking God to do things that is not for him. It's with perverted wrong motives, and finally the results are our passions and our drives and the blocks of people's goals result in frustration within and fights without he saying to this local church must remember this is a local church. You have fights without and you have frustration within because the root cause of interpersonal conflict in marriage with children in the church at work.

He says that the core is self gratification or literally hedonism. This commitment that I gotta have my way. I need to fulfill my sensual lusts and in our honest moments we all have to admit this is true of all this I mean we can make it very sophisticated and we can put some verses around and we can act little more pious but you have conflict in your home. I have conflict in my home. If you're married, you have some conflict in your marriage some conflict in my marriage and for years and years, not really. Years and years. But as I tell the story, making it bigger and bigger to make it better better for years and years. I said the whole key to our marriage is is is if Tresa just wasn't so selfish and she's just so lovely and pretty and nice and kind and sweet and that's what everyone thinks but down behind that beautiful blonde hair and sweet countenance and wonderful mother and now grandmother. There is a very strong woman who wants her way and in private moments with probably a few ladies of trusted confidence that she really prays with there's probably been at least a moment or two that despite her husband's role in job of teaching God's word and you know working hard at being a good dad.

Some of the conflict. I think she would say you know the problem is chip is down behind all that is this really selfish guy that wants his way and when I want my way and she wants her way. Guess what, that's called conflict. Now as you mature in Christ you handling a lot better ways right, but a people.

Let's not act like this passage is for someone else.

I and a lot of times what happens is we hit those conflicts. And the reason you don't argue about them is they produce such conflict during talk about anymore and I watch marriages that are on parallel tracks with very little intimacy or I watch families on parallel tracks were.

Oh yeah, we don't argue with our kids. That's because we decided anything that causes conflict were not gonna talk about so the kids are gradually going off there when you're going off their way and when they land over here in the ditch because you and what the conflict unity plot your Bible, Proverbs 22 train a child up in ways you go any multipart.I don't get this, he departed all really, because at the heart of every little boy foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child right and so you have to confront issues. You have to realize I have to realize I got confront issues and me and you and you and all of our relationships that we are people of the flesh.

Despite this wonderful thing that God is given us this new birth with the Spirit of God lives in us in the spirit is sealed us and he's given us gifts and we have power but we live in a fallen world and there's a tempter out there and we will do things and we will struggle in areas that will calls interpersonal conflict and at the heart of it is not the devil made me do it. What's James one say you send when you're carried away by your own lusts.

Let's get on the diagnostic side and then will quickly move to the solution side. James is going to say okay that's the cause of quarrels now is going to give us God's diagnosis are constant quarrels reveal three different things he's gonna say there's some consequences that these quarrels are going to reveal something and reveal something all the way over here. He's can I say that you have a belief system and in your belief system because when you have the Scott frustration within conflict without you have a belief system that you have believed a lie and he's going to tell us what that lie is in just a minute and at the core of that lie is that we have believed alive hedonism and all dress in the second.

Then he'll say that after believing the life once you believe a lie. There's a series of behaviors that have you beginning to move farther and farther and farther away from God and closer to the world and the world system the call at the cosmos.

It's this world system. The world system is prime time TV walking out the grocery stand. People Cosmo Forbes there's a world system that says the way to significance, fulfillment and satisfaction is how you look what you make who you know how many people report to you what you own and and it's when you can have the pleasures of the world, then you're somebody you're just a house remodel away from being happy. You just a better sex life away from being happy. You just that first child away from being happy you're just getting married or single map of man if I was married, then you'll be happy you just something out there in the world paints every evening in prime time and now 150 cable channels and magazines and romance novels and billboards and songs and they're all telling you a web that the world is saying this is what will deliver real happiness and fulfillment in God says when we buy into that. We become spiritual. Adulteresses, we leave our first love and we embrace and fall in love with the world and we lose our relationship and our heart for God, he says we believe a lie we betray the trust and then it gets actually scary. He says we actually can come to the point where even though we are God's people, we become enemies.

God will literally in this passage will see in the next few verses God will literally put on battle array when his children are being wooed away from him and being to live like the world, he will put on battle array and go to war against us. It will be out of the heart of love and he will do what I call the velvet vice. It'll be a vice and will have velvet on the outside of it and he will bring about a velvet vice of pressure in your life to get you to change your mind about what really satisfies and return to him.

It's called the Hebrews 12 experience all discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful, yet those who been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness may save yourself. Where did I get that that all flows out of the passage here in James 44 through six.

Follow along as I read. Notice he's just told us the quarrels because the pride you asked for the wrong motives. Listen to this judgment verse for you. Adulteresses, what is calling the church people miss church is a strong, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God. Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world notice. This makes himself an enemy of God. It's in what's called the middle voice and it's it's something that we do on our own. We willfully and intentionally out of our own choices we make ourselves an enemy with God. Even though were believers or do you not think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose. He jealously desires the Spirit which he made to dwell in us. You are a child of God's Spirit dwells in you and when you or when I we going to get infatuated.

We start to flirt with the world and the world system. We start to buy the life and happily by the lie we begin to betray the trust that will betray the trust we begin to live the antithetical kind of life as a Christian and that God loves me and loves you so much.

He will bring the velvet vice of discipline because he's jealous over the spirit that's in you when you prayed to receive Christ member. Behold, I stand at the door knock is anyone will open the door right I will come in to him and sup with him, and he with me. Unless a man is born again a second time to be born of the water physical birth to be born of the spirit, the spirit of God comes in your sealed with the spirit, your marked off as God's possession. You're sealed as a part of his.

His spirit dwells in you, he jealously guards that you are his and is just like a husband when he begins to watch his wife flirt begins to watch his wife go on a date with another man, a good husband goes after that life in Sicilian is this is totally unacceptable.

But notice his responses, he gives more grace he gives more grace will how does he give the grace. Therefore it says," the Old Testament here, God is opposed literally. He's anti-he's against the proud but gives grace to the humble, literally goes, adulteresses, are unfaithful creatures, don't you know circle the word friendship where you that's our word for Leo. It's the affection with the world system and its sensual pleasures. It means you are at and hostility you become an enemy or you're in hostility with God. You make yourself an enemy when he goes on to say he yearns jealously for the spirit that he puts within us and this word if you want to circle though it God opposes the proud, it's a picture as you study this phrase of literally God going into battle and putting on holy array in battle to come against that which is opposed to what's good and there are times in your life and there's times in my life. When we do that listening to part one objects message why we fight with those we love will be right back with his application for this teaching from a series real love in real life. Ever wondered what real genuine love looks like what it means to be in love will in this five-part series chip tackles these tough questions and helps us understand the depths of God's love for us also reveals what causes failure and dysfunction in relationships and how we cannot only find real love but grow it. Keep it and make it last a lifetime. You're not going to miss a single part of the series.

Learn more about real love in real life and are many resources but going to LivingontheEdge.org or by calling us at AAA 333-6003 that's AAA 333-6003, or LivingontheEdge.org app listeners tap special offers before we continue. Here's chip to talk about something that's really close to his heart. You know, if you listen to me very often you hear me talk a lot about the Bible and being in God's word every day in and studying the Scriptures you know what I hear from people all the time. I don't know how to study the Bible. I've tried to read it. I just don't get it. I just don't understand what's going on. While I would love to teach you how to learn to study God's word and what I can guarantee is this with a few simple steps. Literally a process you can learn to read and understand and apply the Bible to your life like never before.

It's really not rocket science, but what I found is most people have never had someone sit down with them one-on-one and actually learn how to study the Bible and what I want to do is invite you to do that with me to study James chapter 1 in our new daily discipleship with chip is called the art of survival.

You not only learn how to get through life's toughest times, but more importantly you can learn how to study the Bible for yourself now.

Here's how it works. Each day I'm going to meet with you one-on-one for 10 days or we can discover what James chapter 1 teaches about the art of survival and life's trials will start her time together where I will literally get a couple coffee open my Bible and I'll talk directly with you one-on-one and will walk through how to study the Bible, you'll learn to study the Scriptures for yourself in a way where you hear God's voice and have God speak in such a way that gives you the strength to make it through life's hardest and most difficult times.

So here's the challenge spend 10 days 10 minutes a day with me 10 minutes on your own and then let me encourage you invite 10 people to join you, let's be difference makers. Let's learn the art of survival in the age of chaos.

You know those early disciples turn the world upside down and that's God's plan for you and me. Won't you join me break strip will were so excited to share with you our new daily discipleship with chip.

The art of survival based in James chapter 1 through this free video series will discover how to handle circumstances out of our control guard our attitude against discouragement and trust God in his provision. If you're ready to learn the art of surviving in these challenging times and preregister today to take the daily discipleship with chip challenge and when you sign up will send you a new leather bound prayer journal is our gift to you to take this free 10 day daily discipleship challenge go to LivingontheEdge.org or call AAA 333-6003 that's AAA 333-6003 or go to LivingontheEdge.org app listeners tap discipleship as we close today's program.

I want to give you some hope and will give you some perspective relationships by definition are going to have conflict about what happens the reason they don't get fixed if you will, is it we believe certain lies we believe certain lies like they ought to be easy. We believe certain lies like the grass is always greener and there's someone out there better than the one that we have, we believe certain lies like this other person would just change their attitude and get their act together, then this would all work and what I want to know is that this idea of lies that ruin relationships comes out of a larger series that was really eye-opening to me.

One of my favorite books of the Bible is the book of James, and I was teaching through an expositional he and as I got to chapter 4 and half of chapter 5. I begin to do some work and as I did the work. What I realize was every single paragraph would isolate Allied that we believe and why relationships literally just fall apart. And so what I'd say to you is that we all believe these lies there in the water than the air there in the culture we want to help you the truth set you free but you have to identify the lies the lie that we talked about in this particular message has to do with our selfishness and it's the other person's problem in our next broadcast will talk more about how to deal with that. But I would encourage you to explore if relationship difficulty is something that you really want to address. I did a series called five lies that ruin relationships heights on our website. You can check it out. There's nothing more painful than relationships that are falling apart when there's anger and hurt rejection. God has a better plan, and he wants to help you and we would love to be a part of that plan. So let me encourage you take the next step get the notes may be explored this study on five lies that ruin relationships as you follow God's design. He'll give you the grace he wants to heal broken relationships.

In fact, that's why he sent his son just before we close.

I want to thank each of you who is making this program possible through your generous giving 100% of your gifts or going directly to the ministry to help Christians really live like Christians. A few phone chips teaching helpful, but you're not yet on the team you consider doing that today to donate.

Just go to LivingontheEdge.org Donate on the app or give us a call at AAA 333-6003, let me thank you in advance for whatever the Lord leads you to do will join us next time. As Jeff wraps up his series real love in real life.

Until then, this is Dave Drewry saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge