Where Fights Come From

James 4:1-3. What causes fights and quarrels among you, James asks, and he answers without waiting. Do they not come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

We usually explain conflict by the other person. They were unreasonable, they started it, they never listen. James goes past all of that to the desire underneath, the thing we wanted and did not get. The fight is what wanting does when it is thwarted.

This is a Wednesday verse, mid-week, when tempers are shortest. Before the next argument, at work or at home, ask what you want that you are not getting. Then ask God for it, or ask him to change the wanting. Either way the fight loses its fuel.