Here we read about the cause of quarrels and fights. This is not the cause of quarrels and fights in other people. So often, when God speaks of sin and difficulty, we assume he is talking about someone else. But if we are to be open to the Holy Spirit, we have to realize that God is speaking to us. It is like that old camp meeting song; Not my brother, not my sister, but it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something, but you don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. We hear these words and we must say, "Lord, what is in me that needs removed? What am I lusting for that I am willing to fight and quarrel over?" Note that it does not say among you or between you, but within you. The battle does not start with someone else who opposes us. It starts within us. It comes from our own desires which God calls lusts. The solution is not to defeat our enemy, but to defeat the enemy inside our own hearts. We will not solve the problem of quarrels and fights until we address the sin in our own hearts.

But that is not what we do, is it? You want something and you don’t get it. You kill and you covet but you do dot have what you want. If at first you don’t succeed, use a bigger hammer. Fight harder. Defeat the enemy in order to gain what you desire. But it does not work. The harder we fight the others, the more entrenched our own sin becomes. And as the Word says, we do not get what we want. You kill and covet, but you don’t have what you want. We may get what we thought we wanted only to fail at getting what we really need.

How can we get what we need? How do we tame our own desires, which are so often outside of the desire of God? You do not have, because you do not ask God. When we pray, we lay our desires before God. God answers prayer. He does not always answer in the way we expect. He has a different timing than we do. Sometimes, he does not give what we ask. But our heavenly Father answers prayer.

Real prayer changes us. When we take our desires and lay them before the Lord, we see out hearts in a whole new light. Our desires become purified by God’s presence. He changes our desires that they may be more in line with his heart. We become more aware that all we need comes from our heavenly Father.

But so often, that is not the sort of prayer we experience. Do we not sometimes place our prayer lists before God like a catalogue order? We run through the list and send it on its way with a stamp. Or we pray like we got God’s answering machine. We hear the beep, say our piece and hang up. The problem with that is God does not have an answering machine. He is on the other end of the line listening and he wants us to know his heart just as he wants to know ours.

But we are so concerned with things we ask for. We are so concerned with our own comfort. We are so concerned with our reputation and that folks would think well of us. We are so concerned with fitting in to the world around us. To us, v 4 cuts like a knife: You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred towards God. Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God?

What does this mean, to be a friend of the world? It means that we fail at the first commandment. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not serve other gods. Our mission statement is to be something like this: My chief goal is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. All that you do is to fall in line under that. That sounds simple enough, right? But it is so hard. We are constantly making something besides God the center of our lives. We care less for the Word of God than we do the TV. We spend more time with the TV than the Bible and we know the plot line of the shows better than the plot line of the Bible. So it is with many other things in our lives.

What is the antidote? Humble yourself before the Lord and he will lift you up. When we humble ourselves we say, "Your will be done in my life, your kingdom come in my heart." We quiet our hearts to hear his still small voice.

Where is the fighting coming from in your heart? Is it over things, position, something else? Our struggle comes from our own sin. Seek the Lord in quiet prayer. Giving control of our life to him is not something that we do once for all. We must do it daily.

Are you finding new areas in your life where you have not made Jesus Lord? Now is the time to humble yourself before him. Seek his face and he will give you peace from your fighting heart.