Bible Passage: “What is the source of wars and fights among you?” (James 4:1 CSB)
Scripture Reading: James 4:1-10
If you are like most people, when a relationship breaks down, you tend to make accusations rather than ask questions.
There is something inside of us that is so disappointed, frustrated, angry, or (insert whatever other emotion you have here). If we do have questions, they are framed like this:
“How could they do this to me?”
While a broken relationship might leave some men devastated, for others, it feels like a blessed subtraction from their lives. Who needs the headaches this person brings?
Everything I’ve just described is all surface-level responses.
Jesus specializes in getting to the heart of the problem.
The best question we can ask when a relationship is broken is “Where did this go wrong?”
James 4 tells us that the conflict in our relationships comes from the “passions that wage war within you.”
It makes sense for the Bible to use the image of war to describe conflict in relationships. But the war isn’t what you are experiencing on the surface; the war is inside of you.
The source of conflict in relationships is my own unmet desires, coupled with my willingness to do whatever it takes to satisfy them.
Bible scholar J. Alec Motyer said it this way: “All our desires and passions are like an armed camp within us, ready at a moment’s notice to declare war against anyone who stands in the way of some personal gratification on which we have set our hearts.”
Yes, there are times a relationship falls apart because someone has sinned against you, and it is not your fault. Abuse victims face this reality.
But in general, the unmet desire to get what you want, how you want, when you want it, is usually why a relationship falls apart.
Before you get too upset with those words, James also says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
If you are facing a broken relationship, your best starting point is to humble yourself before God and be ready to surrender to how He wants to speak into it.
Prayer: God, help me to humble myself before You long enough to hear what You want to tell me about my broken relationships. Amen.
Reflection: Think about a recent relationship breakdown in your life. What were some of the passions and desires in your own heart that were unmet in that relationship? How did they affect what happened?
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