What if I said “both”?
One of the helpful exercises I do with people in conflict involves walking through James 4:1-4 which explains “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it.”
As we follow the scripture together, I am writing on the paper or white board “Desire” and draw an arrow down to the word below it “Demand”. You see, when we really, really, really desire something, it can easily become a “DEMAND” which then turns into an expectation. And then when our expectations are not met, Ka-Pow! We explode – sometimes just on the inside but it also can show up on the outside. And sometimes it slowly builds and simmers and becomes a rolling boil!
The James passage continues at this point after saying we don’t get what we want by describing what happens next. “You kill (hate) and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight.” Pretty serious stuff! When our expectations are not met, we are upset and lash out (some do this passively, but it still happens). At this point, I draw another arrow down and write “Punish”.
If I ask people what their “desires” are up front as we talk about the conflict, they hem and haw and just have a hard time figuring it out. So I start at the bottom of what the passage in scripture describes — the “punish” stage. I ask them — when they are in a conflict with each other, how do they treat each other? Trust me – they have no trouble describing this part.
After spending time between the two of them describing how the punishment stage goes, and they are pretty talkative about things in this category, we have a lot written on our white board. Then I ask them how they are thinking about the other person who did not meet their demands or expectations — again, not a pretty picture being painted here.
But at that point I can turn to each of them and ask “what did you really want from the other person”? And usually the responses are immediate and easily recognized and they fall into two main categories — “respect” and “being cared about“. It can be many different words used here, but these are the main points.
When we get to those places, the two realize how they have been missing the main point of the controversy and we can go to the true “heart” of the situation and do our work there.
But here’s the real “key” — it is the last part of verse 2 which says “You do not have, because you do not ask God.” And verse 3 fleshes this out more saying “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives….”
Sounds simple, right? Just ask God! While the rest of the James passage is a great study and has more depth on this….I want to jump to the “joy” side to illustrate what I believe is where the Lord wants to lead us as we walk through our “stuck in conflict” situations.
As Henry Blackaby has shared in his devotional book, “Your relationship with God ought to bring you more joy, satisfaction and pleasure than any other relationship, activity, or material possession you have.” I have so often totally missed the huge importance of this statement — but especially when conflict or a relationship struggle is part of the situation.
Ever since our flat-land West Texas family spent all our vacations in Colorado heading to the gorgeous mountains, I have loved viewing the mountains. Though I have lived in Colorado now for many years, I still thrill at great vistas of the mountain ranges and my “heart’s desire” was to have a home where I could “see” the mountains.
And finally, a few years ago, as we downsized and found a home with a deck view of Pikes Peak and a whole line of mountain range, I was ecstatic. But one day as I was on the deck, it hit me — I mean the really “hit home” overwhelm type of hit.
Since I grew up on a farm in West Texas, we sat on the front porch most of our lives watching the weather, scanning the sky for clouds, rain and hail as that made or broke our crops and our livelihood. It was the “sky” that I loved viewing! And now, from my deck, I had a 180 degree fully unimpeded view of it — able to watch weather develop, dance across the field of blue and dissipate as fluffy white clouds or become powerful dark storms. And the sky represented the magnificence and power of God — a “daily” reminder I so needed in my life.
That was the view my heart longed for — the one the Lord painted beautifully, dramatically, and totally new every day — his power as Creator on display just for me! That was the true DESIRE of my heart — and the Lord knew it much better than I. Realizing all this brought me to tears that day.
The best scripture to describe this? Blackaby leads us to Psalm 37:4 – “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
And that explains the connection between the James 4 passage and the Psalm 37 scripture. As Blackaby probes us — have we been asking God to give us the desires of our heart without first seeking to understand what is on His heart? The James 4 passage show us what happens when our desires are aimed inward toward what “we want” without asking or seeking God in the midst of it. Our motives get skewed toward selfishness.
It is about finding what is truly important — Blackaby entices us with the end result: as we find our joy in the Lord, we will see what is truly important and we will long for these things as the Father does. And we will be able to live at peace with the Lord and with each other.
