Five Lies that Ruin Relationships - Why We Fight with Those We Love, Part 1

Do you ever wonder why some of the worst fights you have are with the people that you love?

I mean, what goes on inside of us that makes us do things like that? Today we'll unpack the reasons why we fight with those we love the most. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. The mission of these daily programs is to intentionally disciple Christians through the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram. I'm Dave Druey, and in just a minute, we'll begin our series, Five Lies That Ruin Relationships. For the next several programs, Chip will identify the most common lies we believe that undermine our most cherished relationships. And if you're looking for more help on this critical topic, join us after each message for some additional thoughts and insights from Chip. You won't want to miss it.

Okay, here's Chip as he kicks off this series with his message, Why We Fight with Those We Love, from James chapter four. 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 greenery. 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, hon? 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, you're 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 gonna 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, you weren't the little boy or little girl. You remember when you were the mom, or you were the dad, giving this 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 4, 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 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 cost. 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.

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. 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. We'll give you a little formula and tell you what you do.

You get him to run your errands for you. 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 and maybe Jesus is that ticket. I'll be happy. 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 going to jump in my car or handsome hunks are going to 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 got to 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 alright? 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 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 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 is 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 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 four four through six follow along as I read notice he's just told us the quarrels the cause the pride you ask for the wrong motives listen to this judgment verse four 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 it's something that we do on our own we willfully and intentionally out of our own choices we make ourselves 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 we 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 betrayed 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 prayed to receive Christ remember behold I stand at the door 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 got to be born of the water physical birth you got to 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 or 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're at 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 Chip will be back in just a minute with his application you've been listening to the first part of his message why we fight with those we love from his series five lies that ruin relationships are you in the middle of a messy family situation or a painful relationship and wonder how did it come to this are you desperate to make it all right well in this series chips in the book of James unpacking for us five false ideas we believe about ourselves and others that can destroy our relationships don't miss what you can do to fix those broken bonds in your family and friendships today to learn more about this series five lies that ruin relationships go to Living on the Edge dot org the chip Ingram app or call triple 8333 6003 well chips with me in studio now and chip thanks for being so direct as we get this series started you know oftentimes when we're faced with the hard truth about the ways we act or talk we try to downplay it or avoid making a change take a few minutes if you would and explain how you're going to try to correct that through this series well day the truth is we we all do this in many areas of our lives you know we know something is true but we ignore it because it's too inconvenient or it might cause conflict or it requires self-discipline I mean I could go on and on and on whether it's you know people who say you know I'm eating too much or I'd like to quit smoking or you know I really need to cut down on how much I drink and then there's a big but you know they intellectually get it like we all do and it's like but I really haven't acted on that and like today's message you know there is a lie that we believe that if other people would shape up then this relationship would work out I mean if my husband would just start if one of my kids would just shape up if my boss would shape up this conflict would go away and the fact is is we all have high levels of denial and and we intellectually all can realize it can't be all my boss's fault or all my kids fault or all my mate's fault we intellectually know that but the lie that we believe is is that when they get their act together then this relationship will be good and so this entire series is about those kind of lies and honestly the reason we're told to do life in community is the only way you come out of denial is being in a group that's safe that's loving that when you start saying these ridiculous things someone looks at you with that look that says now who do you think you're blowing smoke at and it's in that context of community that we get honest and life change occurs. Thanks Chip. Well be sure to join us for every part of this series but if you do happen to miss a program the Chip Ingram Map is a great way to catch up anytime. Well with that Chip let's get to that application we promised.

Thanks Dave. I want to end our program with the question and I want you to really think about this question before you just automatically answer in your mind. Where is there a conflict in your closest relationships and what's stopping you from restoring it? Let me say that again. Where is there a conflict in your closest relationships whether it's marriage roommate one of your kids a mom a dad a really close friend a neighbor someone at church and you can kind of look in the rearview mirror and realize wow it was over politics or over something about the pandemic or your view of you name it right and this passage teaches me and it teaches you that at the core of those kind of conflicts is one word and it's pride. It's pride and the worst conflicts I've had I was absolutely certain I was right they were wrong they need to get with the program they need to see the light and I just want to remind you that right relationships are more important than being right and could I encourage you to to really pause and ask yourself what's really going to matter and do you really represent Jesus is this broken relationship or your attitude or you've just moved on or they just don't get it or all the other excuses that you make and I make it's time for healing it's time for repentance and you know you can apologize you can apologize if it's 80% their problem and 20% the way you responded just initiate and say you know something we may always disagree on this but how I talk to you about that or how I responded God has convicted me that I was wrong will you forgive me be the first to say you're sorry it's not a sign of weakness it's a sign of meekness and power and strength restore that relationship you'll be so glad you did encouraging wordship thanks well let me take just a second and thank the generous people who make monthly donations to support the ministry of Living on the Edge your faithful gifts help us inspire Christians to live like Christians now if you haven't partnered with us yet would you prayerfully consider joining the Living on the Edge team now you can set up a recurring donation by going to Living on the Edge org or texting the word donate to 741 41 it's that easy text the word donate to 741 41 or visit Living on the Edge org app listeners tap donate will join us next time as chip continues his series five lives that ruin relationships until then this is Dave Drewy saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.