Real Love in Real Life - Why We Fight with Those We Love, Part 1

Do you ever wonder why some of the worst fights that you ever have are with people that you love the most? This seems weird, doesn't it? Here's the question, why do we fight with those that we love?

And maybe the better question is how do we stop it? That's today. Stay with me. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Chip's our Bible teacher for this daily discipleship program, Motivating Christians to Live Like Christians.

I'm Dave Drewy and we're nearing the end of our series, Real Love in Real Life. And for these last two programs, Chip dives into the complex subject of resolving conflict. Well, in just a minute, he'll share the main trigger that fuels quarrels in our relationships and why we so often wound the people we love most. Well, this is such a relatable topic, so let me encourage you after today's message to share it with someone in your life.

You can easily do that through the Chip Ingram app or by downloading and sharing the free MP3s at livingontheedge.org. Well, with that, here's Chip with his message, Why We Fight With Those We Love from James Chapter 4. I want you to allow your mind to go to a park. It's a beautiful sunny day in your mind's eye. Big fluffy white clouds, the sky's very blue.

It's a beautiful park with a lot of scenery. And as the camera of your mind's eye zooms in, there's a bench. And in the background, there's children running and playing and doing what children do, but it's kind of white noise. And as you zoom in, you see there's a little girl who's about maybe eight or nine years old. She has little pigtails. She's really cute.

She's got a few freckles across her nose. And you see a man sitting on the bench that's obviously her father, and he looks very uncomfortable. As you watch from a distance, he kind of moves here, moves there, and you can tell, even from a distance, it's just chit-chat, and he has his keys and he keeps flipping his keys from one direction to the other because that's what dads do when they have to say something very hard to a very young child, and they don't know exactly how to say it or exactly what to say.

As he prepares this speech that he's rehearsed in his mind over and over and over, and this is the moment of truth. He picked her up from their home that's about a mile away. He thought the park would be kind of the best place to break the news. And as he fidgets and tries to figure out as a grown man how to break the news to this little eight or nine year old who is daddy's girl, the silence is broken by this little innocent comment. And she looks up at him, and she says, daddy? He goes, yeah, hun? He said, are you going to come home soon? Are you going to come back to live with me and mommy? I really miss you.

And he realizes that all the rehearsing of his speech in his mind didn't prepare him for this, and everything in him wants to start crying, but he holds back the tears. He says, well, honey, that's why we came to the park today. I need to tell you something. See, daddy's not going to be coming home. And what I want you to know, sweetheart, it's not you.

I love you. I want to be with you. I wish so much that I could be with you, but it's me and your mommy. We just can't get along. We've tried. We've really tried, sweetheart. And you've heard us late at night, and we yell at each other, and we scream at each other.

We've tried everything, but we fight, fight, fight. And so we're going to get what big people call a divorce. And I'll still see you, honey.

I'm going to make sure that I get to come by and be here on birthdays, and we even have it worked out where you get to spend a couple months with me in the summertime. But no, honey, I can't come home. And she gives him that look that only an eight-year-old can give that says, I don't understand this. You love mommy, and you love me, and I love you, and I love mommy.

How could two people that love each other this much not be able to work out whatever you need to work out? And he says to her, I know you can't understand, but maybe someday you will. And I just want you to know, and now those little pigtails are kind of down on her shoulder, and now the tears, she's not even crying.

They're just flowing and streaming down her face. And until she is 80 years old, that picture in that park will be etched in her memory forever and ever and ever. And it will impact, regardless of what mommy or dad says, how she views herself. And it will impact how she relates to the opposite sex. And it will impact how she views God. And it will change everything about her life to some degree. And she didn't understand it when she was eight. She won't fully understand it when she's 18. And she may never fully understand it until she's 80. Why do we fight with those that we love?

Why is it that two people that honestly, sincerely, deeply love one another can get at levels of conflict that they have to give up or choose to give up? And as I tell that story for some of you, we have all kind of different ages, you were that little boy or you were that little girl. And for you, maybe it wasn't you were eight, you could have been five, or maybe you were 12 or 13. And you remember being on the receiving end of one of your parents, your mom or your dad, telling you that it's just not going to work. And maybe it happened in the bedroom, or maybe it happened in the mall, or maybe it happened in a park. But it's etched in your mind.

And it's shaped a lot of you. And for others, it's you weren't the little boy or little girl. You remember when you were the mom, or you were the dad, giving the speech to one of your kids. And it seems like a long time ago and because your mind is made by God and you have an amazing, amazing ability to repress, sometimes you can push it way down deep and maybe that was then and you're in a second marriage now and things are better. But as I told that story, some things got really deeply uncomfortable inside of you that you haven't thought about in a while.

And it keeps bringing back the question. And I'm talking about Christians. Why do we fight with those that we love? Spouses fight against spouses. Why is it in some of our homes our children fight against each other? Why is it when kids get to be teenagers that they tend to fight against their parents? Why is it when you get to be an adult and you have grown parents that sometimes you fight with your grown parents? Why is it that people can seem to get along and then someone dies and families that look intact when they start talking about where the money's going to go and who gets the estate, some of the most ugly things can ever come out of believers' mouths? Why is it that people in the same churches that love the same God that have paid by the blood of Christ can just rip churches apart when someone thinks someone said something about them or someone's doing something with the building or one of the buses or we disagree about what should happen to a staff member? Why is it that their families, maybe some in this room who live within three to five miles of one another and you don't even speak? You don't even speak to one another. Why do we fight with those that we love?

Because the fact is that we do. And what the Holy Spirit is going to say through Jesus' brother who wrote the very first book of the New Testament, James, he's going to explain to us not only the cause of fighting among us as God's children, he's going to talk about the consequences of what happens when we fight with one another. And then here's the good news. He's going to give us the cure. He's going to give us very direct, clear instruction about how we can stop the conflict, about how we can stop it and those things don't have to go on and restoration can occur. So with that, open your Bibles if you're not already there to James chapter four and let's dig in together.

And you'll notice what James begins. He raises the very issue. He says, what is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Rhetorical question. And by the way, it's in the tense of the verb that says these things are presently occurring in this church.

I mean, this is written to a church. And he says, what is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? In other words, it's happening right now.

And then he's going to answer the question. Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? Will you circle the word pleasures and then circle the word war? Literally he says, isn't it your passions that wage war in your members are literally among you? You lust and you do not have, so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

You do not have because you do not ask. And then someone's thinking to themselves, no, wait a second James, you know what? I pray.

And he says, yeah, you're right. There is a second category. There's some of you that ask, but you do it with the wrong motives. And you do not receive because you ask with the wrong motives. Why?

So that you can suspend it on yourself. The summary of that is the root cause of interpersonal conflicts, according to James, is our consuming passion for self-gratification. Jot those two words in, will you? Self-gratification. He says this word, what is the cause of wars? It means a protracted, the word for wars here is a protracted state of hostility. Why is it in the church there's literal wars going on among the members? What causes the fighting?

These are pictures of little outbursts of anger that break out. And it's in the plural here, it's happening within and among them. He says, is it not your pleasure or your passions? And I had you circle that because we get our word hedonism from it.

The Greek word is hedonai. Hedonism is one who lives for pleasure, the passion for lust to fulfill one's desires, the cravings of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. It's an addictive self-love. He says the source of your quarrels is your own selfish gratification.

It's the me first mindset. You fight because you want this and someone else wants this. It's your lust, it's your passions. He says you envy or literally you covet. You want what someone else has and then you don't get it so you commit murder.

Isn't that strong? Those are strong words for a church, isn't it? And whether that literally was happening in this context or whether he's speaking of murdering people, as Jesus said, if you say raka to your brother, if you have hatred in your heart toward him, you're committing murder.

But whether it's a metaphorical murdering with your tongue that is slander or murdering your heart out of hatred or whether it got to be literal, I've seen it become literal. I mean, how many of us heard of a story in a local church where someone gets bent out of shape in a church conflict, right, and they come in on a Sunday morning? I've heard of this at least four or five times in the last 10 years. They come in on a Sunday morning with a gun and either shoot the preacher or shoot one of the elders or leaders or deacons or whatever they call them in the special churches.

And you know, this is a church and I bet if you do the research, everybody in the room is born again. That's hard to imagine, isn't it? But we don't have to imagine it. This is reality. And he says the cause is that you want. You've got this pulsating desire. I have this pulsating desire, even as a believer, to satisfy or gratify my own way. We covet. And this is a strong word. It's the idea of not the wholesome kind of God-given pleasure, but the sinful self-indulgent pleasure, the hot desire to possess something for your own ego and self-gratification. And you can't obtain it.

In other words, you get blocked and so you wage war. And then you don't have things. And he says, you know why? Because you're trying to get it from other places instead of from God. And some of you, you know, you try to get it from God, but you do it with the wrong motives. And so he says the source of interpersonal conflict is self-gratification. And if you wanted to summarize it, I've put some notes down. Our problem?

Just write two words. Selfishness. Selfish pride.

That's our problem. It's the inner passion within each of us that craves our own way. And behind that craving is the belief that pleasure and fun and sensual fulfillment must be achieved at all costs. The symptoms are conflict. Conflict. And the conflict is evidenced in broken relationships. We want something. Our goals are blocked. Our desires are frustrated.

And so it leads to violence. Competing desires. It's the classic picture of one cookie and two two-year-olds.

And what James says is, is that one cookie and two two-year-olds mentality. And it might be a position in the church. It might be about money. It might be about sex.

It might be about a number of different things. But that same passionate desire to possess and get your way and me wanting to get my way is at the core of interpersonal conflict. Third, he says, what's the strategy?

Our strategies are two-fold. First, we attempt to fulfill our desires apart from God. We want something badly. Maybe we want something in our marriage. Maybe we want it from our boss. Maybe we want it in the church. Maybe we want it from one of our kids. Maybe we want something badly as a single person. And he says, the wrong strategy is you try and get it apart from God.

Notice the line that he said? He said, you don't have because you don't ask. There's some ways through either manipulation or intimidation or image management that we try and get what we want instead of going to God and say, God, this is my heart's desire. The second way in terms of strategy is not just attempts to fulfill desires apart from God, but we try to use God to fulfill our selfish desires. We try to make God our self-help genie. God, I'm praying that you will give this to me. And the goal isn't the glory of God. The goal isn't the agenda of God.

And by the way, I've never seen this more popular than it is in our day. And I mean, I'll tell you what, it sells. Jesus can make you happy. Jesus can help you lose weight. Jesus can make you rich. Jesus can make you healthy, wealthy, and wise. Jesus can eliminate all your problems.

You know what? God is not the center or the core or the infinite one who's holy in the universe. You are the center of the universe, and he's your errand boy. And we'll give you a little formula and tell you what you do.

You get him to run your errands for you. And I mean, it is being preached, and it is being taught, and it's being gobbled up. Because I tell you what, there's something in all of us, right? And maybe Jesus is that ticket.

I'll be happy. You know, Jesus is the ticket to, if I love him and follow this formula, I'll have this big house on the hill, and I'll have another house over here, and I'll drive this kind of car, and I'll have this kind of watch, and these kind of clothes, and beautiful women are gonna jump in my car, or handsome hunks are gonna serve me butter that we can't believe it's butter. And I mean, Jesus is my ticket to self-fulfillment. And it's a perversion of the gospel. And it's a perversion of the truth. And it's not new.

I mean, this is the first book written in the New Testament. And what he's saying here is your wrong strategies are, one, you try and get your stuff apart from God, or you try and actually use God. You're asking God to do things, but it's not for him. It's with perverted wrong motives. And then finally, the results are, our passions and our drives and the blocks of people's goals result in frustration within and fights without. He's saying to this local church, let's remember, this is a local church, you have fights without and you have frustration within because the root cause of interpersonal conflict in marriage with children, in the church, at work, he says at the core is self-gratification, or literally hedonism, this commitment that I gotta have my way.

I need to fulfill my sensual lusts. And in our honest moments, we all have to admit this is true of all of us. I mean, we can make it very sophisticated, and we can put some verses around it, and we can act a little more pious, but you have conflict in your home, I have conflict in my home. If you're married, you have some conflict in your marriage, I have some conflict in my marriage. And for years and years, not really years and years, but as I tell the story making it bigger and bigger to make it better and better, for years and years I said the whole key to our marriage is if Teresa just wasn't so selfish.

I mean, she's just so lovely and pretty and nice and kind and sweet and that's what everyone thinks, but down behind that beautiful blonde hair and sweet countenance and wonderful mother and now grandmother, there is a very strong woman who wants her way. And in private moments with probably a few ladies of trusted confidence that she really prays with, there's probably been at least a moment or two that despite her husband's role and job of teaching God's word and, you know, working hard at being a good dad, some of the conflict I think she would say, you know, the problem is Chip is down behind all that is this really selfish guy that wants his way. And when I want my way and she wants her way, guess what that's called? Conflict. Now as you mature in Christ, you handle it in a lot better ways, right?

But hey people, let's not act like this passage is for someone else, all right? And a lot of times what happens is we hit those conflicts and the reason you don't argue about them is they produce such conflict you don't even talk about them anymore. And I watch marriages that are on parallel tracks with very little intimacy or I watch families on parallel tracks where oh yeah, we don't argue with our kids, that's because we've decided anything that causes conflict, we're not going to talk about. So the kids are gradually going off their way and you're going off their way and then when they land over here in the ditch because you didn't want the conflict, you know, you pull out your Bible in Proverbs 22, train a child up in the ways you go and he won't depart, God I don't get this, he departed.

Oh really? Because at the heart of every little boy, foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, right? And so you have to confront issues. You have to realize, I have to realize I've got to confront issues in me and you and you and in all of our relationships that we are people of the flesh despite this wonderful thing that God has given us, this new birth where the Spirit of God lives in us and the Spirit has sealed us and He's given us gifts and we have power but we live in a fallen world and there's a tempter out there and we will do things and we will struggle in areas that will cause interpersonal conflict and at the heart of it is, not the devil made me do it. What's James 1 say?

You sin when you're carried away by your own lusts. Well let's get on the diagnostic side and then we'll quickly move to the solution side. James is going to say, okay, that's the cause of quarrels. Now he's going to give us God's diagnosis. Our constant quarrels reveal three different things. He's going to say there's some consequences but these quarrels are going to reveal something and they're going to reveal something. All the way over here, he's going to say that you have a belief system and in your belief system, because when you have this frustration within, conflict without, you have a belief system that you have believed a lie and he's going to tell us what that lie is in just a minute and at the core of that lie is that we have believed the lie of hedonism and I'll address it in a second. Then he'll say that after believing the lie, once you believe a lie, there's a series of behaviors that have you beginning to move farther and farther and farther away from God and closer to the world and the world system.

He'll call it the cosmos. It's this world system. The world system is prime time TV, walking out the grocery stand, people, Cosmo, Forbes. There's a world system that says the way to significance, fulfillment and satisfaction is how you look, what you make, who you know, how many people report to you, what you own and it's when you can have the pleasures of the world, then you're a somebody. You're just a house remodeled away from being happy. You're just a better sex life away from being happy. You're just that first child away from being happy. You're just getting married.

You're single now, but man, if I was married, then you'll be happy. You're just something out there and the world paints every evening in prime time and now on 150 cable channels and magazines and romance novels and billboards and songs and they're all telling you a web that the world is saying, this is what will deliver real happiness and fulfillment and God says, when we buy into that, we become spiritual adulteresses. We leave our first love and we embrace and fall in love with the world and we lose our relationship and our heart for God. He says, we believe a lie.

We betray a trust and then it gets actually scary. He says, we actually can come to the point where even though we are God's people, we become enemies. God will literally in this passage, you'll see in the next few verses, God will literally put on battle array when his children are being wooed away from him and beginning to live like the world. He will put on battle array and go to war against us. It will be out of a heart of love and he will do what I call the velvet vice.

It'll be a vice and they'll have velvet on the outside of it and he will bring about a velvet vice of pressure in your life to get you to change your mind about what really satisfies and to return to him. It's called the Hebrews 12 experience. All discipline from the moment seems not to be joyful but sorrowful yet those who've been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

Now you say to yourself, where did I get that? That all flows out of the passage here in James 4, 4 through 6. Follow along as I read.

Notice he's just told us the quarrels, the cause, the pride, you asked for the wrong motives. Listen to this judgment, verse 4, you adulteresses. It's what he's calling the church, the people in this church.

This is strong. Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world, notice this, makes himself an enemy of God.

It's in what's called the middle voice and it's something that we do on our own. We willfully and intentionally out of our own choices, we make ourself an enemy with God even though we're believers. Or do you not think that the scripture speaks to no purpose? He jealously desires the spirit which he made to dwell in us. See, you are a child of God. His spirit dwells in you and when you or when I, when we get infatuated, when we start to flirt with the world and the world system and we start to buy the lie and after we buy the lie, we begin to betray the trust and after we betray the trust, we begin to live the antithetical kind of life as a Christian and then God loves me and loves you so much, he will bring the velvet vice of discipline because he's jealous over the spirit that's in you. When you pray to receive Christ, remember, behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone will open the door, right, I will come into him and sup with him and he with me.

Unless a man is born again a second time, you gotta be born of the water, physical birth, you gotta be born of the spirit. The spirit of God comes in, you're sealed with the spirit, you're marked off as God's possession, you're sealed as a part of his. His spirit dwells in you. He jealously guards that. You are his and it's just like a husband when he begins to watch his wife flirt or begins to watch his wife go on a date with another man.

A good husband goes after that wife and says, hey, you know something, this is totally unacceptable. But notice his response is he gives more grace. He gives more grace. Well, how does he give the grace? Therefore it says and he quotes the Old Testament here, God is opposed, literally he's anti, he's against the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.

Literally he goes, adulteresses are unfaithful creatures. Don't you know, circle the word friendship, will you? That's our word phileo. It's the affection with the world system and its sensual pleasures. It means you are in hostility. You become an enemy or you're in hostility with God. You make yourself an enemy. Then he goes on to say, he yearns jealously for the spirit that he puts within us. And this word, if you want to circle to it, God opposes the proud.

It's a picture as you study this phrase of literally God going into battle and putting on holy array in battle to come against that which is opposed to what's good. And there are times in your life and there's times in my life when we do that. You've been listening to part one of Chip's Message, why we fight with those we love. He'll be right back with his application for this teaching from his series, Real Love in Real Life. Have you ever wondered what real, genuine love looks like or what it means to be in love? Well, in this five-part series, Chip tackles these tough questions and helps us understand the depths of God's love for us. Chip also reveals what causes failure and dysfunction in relationships and how we can not only find real love, but grow it, keep it, and make it last a lifetime.

You're not going to want to miss a single part of this series. Learn more about real love in real life and our many resources by going to livingontheedge.org or by calling us at 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003 or livingontheedge.org.

App listeners, tap special offers. Well, before we continue, here's Chip to talk about something that's really close to his heart. You know, if you listen to me very often, you hear me talk a lot about the Bible and being in God's Word every day and studying the scriptures. But you know what I hear from people all the time? I don't know how to study the Bible. I've tried to read it. I just don't get it.

I just don't understand what's going on. Well, I would love to teach you how to learn to study God's Word. And what I can guarantee is this, with a few simple steps, literally a process you can learn to read and understand and apply the Bible to your life like never before. It's really not rocket science, but what I found is most people have never had someone sit down with them one on one and actually learn how to study the Bible. And what I want to do is invite you to do that with me. We're going to study James chapter 1 in our new daily discipleship with Chip. It's called the art of survival. You're not only going to learn how to get through life's toughest times, but more importantly, you're going to learn how to study the Bible for yourself.

Now, here's how it works. Each day, I'm going to meet with you one on one for 10 days, and we're going to discover what James chapter 1 teaches about the art of survival and life's trials. We'll start our time together where I'll literally get a cup of coffee, open my Bible, and I'll talk directly with you one on one, and we'll walk through how to study the Bible.

You'll learn to study the scriptures for yourself in a way where you hear God's voice and have God speak in such a way that gives you the strength to make it through life's hardest and most difficult times. So here's the challenge. Spend 10 days, 10 minutes a day with me, 10 minutes on your own, and then let me encourage you.

Invite 10 people to join you. Let's be difference makers. Let's learn the art of survival in the age of chaos. You know, those early disciples turned the world upside down, and that's God's plan for you and me.

Won't you join me? Thanks, Chip. Well, we're so excited to share with you our new daily discipleship with Chip, The Art of Survival, based in James chapter 1. Through this free video series, we'll discover how to handle circumstances out of our control, guard our attitude against discouragement, and trust God in His provision. If you're ready to learn the art of surviving in these challenging times, then pre-register today to take the Daily Discipleship with Chip Challenge. And when you sign up, we'll send you a new leather-bound prayer journal as our gift to you. To take this free 10-day Daily Discipleship Challenge, go to livingontheedge.org or call 888-333-6003.

That's 888-333-6003 or go to livingontheedge.org. App listeners, tap Discipleship. As we close today's program, I want to give you some hope and I want to give you some perspective. Relationships, by definition, are going to have conflict. But what happens, the reason they don't get fixed, if you will, is that we believe certain lies. We believe certain lies like they ought to be easy. We believe certain lies like the grass is always greener and there's someone out there better than the one that we have. We believe certain lies like if this other person would just change their attitude and get their act together, then this would all work. What I want you to know is that this idea of lies that ruin relationships comes out of a larger series that was really eye-opening to me. One of my favorite books of the Bible is the book of James, and I was teaching through it expositionally.

As I got to chapter four and half of chapter five, I began to do some work. As I did the work, what I realized was every single paragraph would isolate a lie that we believe and why relationships literally just fall apart. What I'd say to you is that we all believe these lies.

They're in the water, they're in the air, they're in the culture, and we want to help you. The truth sets you free, but you have to identify the lies. The lie that we talked about in this particular message has to do with our selfishness, and it's the other person's problem. In our next broadcast, we'll talk more about how to deal with that, but I would encourage you to explore if relationship difficulty is something that you really want to address. I did a series called Five Lies That Ruin Relationships.

It's on our website. You can check it out. There's nothing more painful than relationships that are falling apart when there's anger and hurt and rejection. God has a better plan, and He wants to help you, and we would love to be a part of that plan. So let me encourage you. Take the next step.

Get the notes. Maybe explore this study on five lies that ruin relationships, and as you follow God's design, He'll give you the grace. He wants to heal broken relationships.

In fact, that's why He sent His Son. Just before we close, I want to thank each of you who's making this program possible through your generous giving. 100% of your gifts are going directly to the ministry to help Christians really live like Christians. Now, if you found Chip's teaching helpful, but you're not yet on the team, would you consider doing that today? To donate, just go to livingontheedge.org, tap donate on the app, or give us a call at 888-333-6003, and let me thank you in advance for whatever the Lord leads you to do. Well join us next time as Chip wraps up his series Real Love in Real Life. Until then, this is Dave Drouy saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.