What Fills Your Heart?

¹ Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? ² You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. ³ You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. ⁴ Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. – James 4:1-4

Everyone seems to want to know why they have conflict in their life, but very few really want to really know why.  What they want to know is that they are right and the people that they disagree with, or are in conflict with, are wrong. 

The error is in the heart of all people.  We lust for something for our self, but we can’t get it, so we murder.  Some people actually murder.  Some people just murder others in their heart.  In Matthew 5:27-28 Jesus is recorded as saying, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’  But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”  If we at any time lust or covet for something we don’t have or worse, wish someone wasn’t with us anymore seeing them as an obstacle, then we are in great error and create wars and fights with others and inside our own hearts.

Desiring to make our own way because it’s what we want, because it’s what we believe will make us happy, purposely taking actions that oppose the clear written Word of God is sin with a whole lot of “I” in it.  Selfish sin always comes at the expense of others.  It will create wars and fights with others. 

James quotes Jesus here saying, “You do not have because you do not ask.”  He then quickly says that when you do ask you ask for your own benefit, not the glory of God.  You are asking because you are an idol to yourself, your self-image most important to you, you have statues of yourself in a hundred selfies on Instagram or Snapchat or Twitter or Facebook. 

Child of God!  Do you not know that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God?  Think about that seriously!  Your desire to do what you want to do in order to make yourself better, according to your logic and understanding alone, along with the people of the world and as a part of the world make you an enemy of God. 

You cannot be a follower of Christ and demand to do it your way.  You cannot be a follower of Christ and put your idea and conception of what makes you happy, even at the expense of others, as the goals for your life.

Either you are the god of your life or Jesus is.  If you want peace, tear down your own self-idol, become broken and sit at the foot of the cross, so you can find the purpose of God in you again.  “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 5:3)  Let God make your heart pure so your request become pure and centered on His purposes and His Word.