Faith And Your Enemy

Today we take a step further in our faith and hopefully learn how to use our faith when confronted by our enemy. Do you know who or what I am referring to when I say “enemy?” Satan? Yes. Of course and the sin that he entices us into.

You notice each Sunday at the end of the children's sermon that the children are taken into their department for children's church. Our leaders in this department do far more than provide our children a safe place to play while we learn and worship.

They also teach our children that God created the world and is watching over them. They learn that God loves them and the church is a place where they are loved and cared for. They also learn the importance of good relationships.

One minute two children will be sitting next to each another happily playing with their toys. The next minute one of them will try to take the other one's toy away. If they don't get their way, they are fully prepared to turn this tug of war into an all out battle. Our teachers use that moment to teach important lesson about sharing, how to be kind to one another, and proper ways to resolve differences.

The children surely need to learn these lessons, but they're not alone. Adults could use the same lessons that our children's teachers are teaching every week. James shows us that fights and quarrels are deeply rooted in our sinful human nature. We will be using James 4 today for our text. Prayer.

Conflict is everywhere. Just turn on the news. It happens on a global, national, and local scale. We encounter conflict at work, in our communities, in our homes, and even in our churches.

Conflict in the church seems out of place. We expect believers to act in a Christ-like manner, but even those who read the Bible and sing worshipful songs can fall prey to conflict. The reason is because everyone--even every believer--has a sinful nature that he or she must battle every day.

Our sinful nature wants something someone else has that we don't have and it becomes covetousness. That desire to get what others have causes us frustration, dissatisfaction, and disappointment. This eventually turns into a conflict. We want more and when we don't get it, the inner turmoil increases and eventually there is conflict.

James 4:1-3 – “What is the source of wars and fights among you? Don’t they come from your passions that wage war within you? 2 You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.”

Can you see that the ultimate source of many of our struggles is neither our inner turmoil nor our visible conflict with others. The ultimate source of many of our struggles is the conflict we are having with God. If we trusted God, we would ask Him for what we really need and we would be happy to trust Him for what He provides.

But what happens is we don't come to God. And because we don't ask we have inner conflict that becomes conflict with others. So, James is telling us that to break this endless cycle, we must learn to trust God enough to ask Him for what we need. Take your needs and concerns to God in prayer. As Christians, we should have already learned that, right?

So we go to God in prayer, trusting Him to provide for our needs. But what we ask

God for should be based upon pure motives. In other words, God does not give us things simply because we want them. If we ask God for things that come from our self-centered, sinful nature, He says no. God will only answer in a way that honors Him. Jesus said so.

John 14:13 – “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”

We studied this verse in our Wednesday night Bible study and found that Jesus will do whatever we ask AS LONG AS IT HONORS AND GLORIFIES GOD.

James 4:4a – “You adulterous people! Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God. . .?”

James is getting bold with us here and is telling us to check our heart. We need to monitor our heart for unhealthy desires. James didn't mince words . By him using the phrase “adulterous people,” he's showing us how severe this issue of covetousness is and was. We're being told that covetousness doesn't have any place within Godly boundaries. If you think about it, covetousness and adultery share something in common. They both impact the lives of innocent people. The conflicts caused by covetousness destroy others, just like adulterous affairs hurt innocent people.