when I was in college freshman year, I played basketball at Cedarville University and I remember specifically um a time there as a freshman on the JV squad, we had a really intense game and um and it was we were down by two only a few seconds left and it was really this intense battle back and forth and I drove down the lane and I got fouled and so we're down to, I need to make both free throws to send the game into overtime and as we're lining up, I'm kind of shaking a little bit, the nerves kind of settle in and right in that moment um are one of our coaches um well intentioned, uh maybe not the right moment, but he starts yelling from the bench. Kriegel. Kregel. Kregel and like, like I look over at him, he goes, relax Kregel. And like, I'm like, he's like relax. And I'm like, I'm like, I don't know if your tone is matching what you want me to do, it actually made me a little bit more nervous. And so um and so I kinda was like, okay. And so then I ended up um ended up making both free throws and we went over time when we won the game and I was super excited, our team won and we came in and but I always remember that moment because in the moment of stress in the moment of tension um I just heard this voice that was just screaming at me and it wasn't really helping in the moment. Um and I think sometimes if we're honest with ourselves that we have that voice inside of us, don't we? We have that voice that maybe you're going through a stressful situation, maybe you're going through a difficult circumstance where you're you're battling and it's tough and it's and it's very tense and it's like an end of game situation, you're nervous for whatever the relationship or maybe it's at work or at home, whatever it is, and you have this voice and it's almost like screaming at you, but it almost makes it worse, right? And so when this voice, I know, how do we handle pressure? How do we handle conflict in our lives when we have this internal voice that maybe it's not shouting relaxed, Maybe it's shouting, you're not good enough, you're not worthy or maybe it's it's that voice of revenge. Like stick it to them, get them and you have whatever this internal voice, I believe that we all have one. And if we're being honest with ourselves a lot of times, it's negative, right? You're you're praying through a situation, you're praying through a decision that needs to be made and you find yourself having conversations with yourself, anybody else do this? And so, and you have to figure out how do you respond and go through now in the game, what helped me in that moment was it was not the voice screaming at me, but it was the fact that before that season I spent hours upon hours in the gymnasium shooting thousands of free throws. And so before the fourth quarter came, before the pressure moment came, I prepared myself through repetition so that when the moment came I was ready to make the move or take the shot that I needed to. And so I want to attempt to do that this morning and that in the comfort here of our church and in the context of our relationships, um, you know, we're not gonna call anybody out to hash out their conflicts. But what we wanna do is we want to give you the repetitions or we want to give you the tools or the practices that you can actually take into your life. So that when you come to the moment of conflict, when you come to the moment of stress that you actually feel comfortable to battle whatever that internal voices and to actually make the right decision and to improve your relationships. You see, there are 1,189 chapters in the Bible. Um, I counted them all. Uh, no, I I did a Google search like anybody else does. But um, but there's 1,189 chapters in the Bible. And do you know how many of of this book are without conflict? Only four, Really, there's only four chapters in the entire Bible that are without conflict. You see, God creates the world as we know it in Genesis one and 2. And by Genesis three, we've messed it up for all humanity, right? And then the rest of the bible is spent with people dealing with difficult circumstances and dealing with sin and dealing with Brokenness. And the old testament is really summed up with man's attempt to get to God. But then in the new testament, we have God coming down to man. Word becoming flesh in Jesus, and Jesus himself, who lived a perfect life. Every single chapter recorded in the gospels of the life of Jesus is actually centered around conflict that he experiences. So if jesus, who is perfect and did everything correct, also experienced conflict all the way, culminating at the cross, then we should expect it as well. And then the rest of the new testament is about the Church trying to figure it out and over and over again, messing up and falling short. And then they got these letters about how it's about love, it's about grace, it's about forgiveness, it's about obedience and all these things. And those letters were written because the early Church was not perfect, but because they were struggling just like we are today. And it's not until you get to the final two chapter of the Book of Revelation where God creates a new heaven and new earth, that we are no longer without conflict. So if .3 of 1% of the Bible is without conflict Meaning that 99.7% of the Bible deals with difficult circumstances, then it makes sense that we should talk about how to handle conflict as a church. Now, we've been walking through verse by verse here through the book of James. Last time we talked about how to change our, how we speak and taming the tongue. Now, if for time's sake, we're gonna go into chapter four. But let me just kind of give you a quick summary of James chapter three verses 13 to 18, talking about wisdom that actually gives us the context for today. And so in those 56 verses there, we want to read that another time. God actually says there's a difference between earthly wisdom and Godly wisdom and and summarize those scriptures, basically say this. They say that Godly Wisdom has three components to it, that it originates from Godly principles. It then acts on godly motives and it serves Godly purposes. So it originates from really Godly principles that acts on godly motives and it serves Godly purposes and the and the wisdom of God, when we imply that into our lives. And then it sets us up for what we're gonna jump into today, which is James chapter four versus one through 12. And we're gonna handle the topic of conflict. So, my prayer for you today is that you will be able to walk out with something that you can actually apply this week in your relationships, maybe it's at work, maybe it is um, in your marriage, maybe it's with your kids, Maybe it's with a friend, whatever it is. The idea is that when we apply the word of God into our lives, that it transforms our relationships as we know it. So if you're taking notes, I want you to write this down. This is the basic premise we're gonna break down today. Is this right here? That conflict can harden your heart or grow your faith, but it's your choice conflict can harden your heart or grow your faith, but it's your choice, you know the same sun that beats down, softens or melts the wax, but also hardens the clay if you're boiling water somehow it softens potatoes, but then it hardens eggs, right? It's the same thing. I don't understand that, but it happens right? The same is true in life and difficult circumstances. When a conflict or difficult situation enters your life, you can either turn your back on God or turn to God. So you can harden your heart or you can actually grow your faith. It's an opportunity to get stronger people that are in athletics professionally, they don't just wake up and just are just like crazy strong. Like some people have naturally um stronger, like really bodies there and for the most part, but in order to get to that elite level, it's about training and discipline in the same way that when they train or they're pushing weights or they're getting stronger. There's resistance there in the same way for us. Conflict serves as the resistance in our lives so that we can get stronger in our relationships and in our faith and so you can get bitter or you can get better. But you have to understand that it's your choice. You might not be able to control the circumstance that's happened to you, but you can always control your response. And so if conflict is inevitable, we have to choose to grow, conflict is gonna come whether you believe it or not. But your growth, your opportunity to grow in your faith, to grow in your relationships. That is your choice. And that's what we're gonna break down. If you everybody, let's go ahead and open up there to James Chapter four. And these verses will also be on the screen. Let's read together here. James writes starting in verse one, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? Your desire, your desire and do not have. So you murder you covet and cannot obtain. So you fight and quarrel, you do not have because you do not ask and you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God, or do you suppose that it is no purpose? That the scripture says, he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us? But he gives us more grace? Therefore, it says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble, submit yourselves, therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you, cleanse your hands, you sinners and purify your hearts. You double minded be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy turned to gloom. You wanna pause there. What he's talking about is understanding and recognizing the Brokenness of our world. Because if you just read that verse out of context, be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy turned to gloom. That's you don't see that on coffee mugs, right? You don't really see that's not really happy. Um although if you wanna have some fun and you know, someone doesn't read their bible and they really get on your nerves and be like, hey, you know, I read James 48 today and thought of you, you're like, oh thanks and I'm praying that verse for you? No, I'm just kidding. Um and so, but the idea here is that are you broken? Does your heartbreak for the things that breaks the heart of God. Do you understand that it's your own Brokenness? Our own Brokenness that leads to the conflicts in the first place? and so he keeps on writing here in verse 10, therefore humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt You do not speak evil against one another. Brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges. His brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law. But in fact the judge, there is only one lawgiver and judge and he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you? To judge your neighbor? So what he's saying here is that now we're talking about conflict. But what, what I want you to do church, What I want you to do is I want you to reflect on it for you personally. You are not taking notes for the person you're mad at. Have you ever done that before? You've heard a message? And in your head, your first thought is oh, I wish so and so heard that. Oh yeah, get him, get him pastor. Get him they need to hear that. Right? You get the little elbows going. The nudges there. You're like circling things or like, well, don't make it obvious if they're still in this room. But um right, we do that. But what what he's saying is that it's like, look, don't judge like this is for you before you start projecting this passage on somebody else take this in and say, okay, what is it that I need to grow in? Because when you judge somebody else, what you're saying is that you are in fact God. And so you are the one you are the keeper of who's good and who's bad Instead of the one who created us. And so this passage is one of the strongest in all of the bible when it comes to handling conflict. Because it talks about things of um comes back to how we speak to to not speak from arrogance or jealousy or self centered desires or from pride. And it says things that you you have not because you ask not. Um it's it's not it's not saying, well, you don't have things because you ask for things, but rather you have not because you're not connecting to the heart of God. And so prayer is about aligning your will to God. Prayer is not about hoping man's will gets done in heaven, but instead prayer is hoping God's will gets done on earth. And so we're not praying to change God's mind. What we're praying is for God to change your heart and to come into our lives. And so this difficult topic of conflict. But I know it can be tough to read through a passage, you're like, wow, that's really intense. I'm not quite sure what that means. Well, let's break it down and discuss it a little bit. And so first I want to offer four sources of conflict. four sources of conflict and you and it comes right out of the passage here. So you can take these notes that the four sources of conflict are. Number one, you have conflict with yourself, you have a number to conflict with others. Number three, conflict with God and the number four conflict with satan or the devil and know that we're not talking about the person in your conflict. So again, this is don't nudge the person like, see here is the devil. No, it doesn't. Okay, that's what we're talking about here. It's more intense than that. So, notice in verse one, it says in there that it's your own desires. It's your own self centeredness that causes the quarrels quarrels and fighting within you. Um and and then it leads to There in verse three. It says in there that it leads to fighting amongst each other. So when you have selfish desires then it leads ultimately into fighting with others. Um if you're taking notes within self and you have an argument with somebody, you want to consider two things and these are assumptions that people bring into the argument. It is um really there are two ways that cause people to send one, there's their sinful desire, but then two, there's what um what some commentators and others would say is it comes from what's known as the generational passed. What I mean, is that past, pain leads to present fear. So how that plays out is that if you have been betrayed in your past or if you have failed in your past or you've been mistreated in your past, then that's gonna end up leading to present fear or mistrust in the current relationship. So if you're arguing with someone, especially a loved one, you want to understand, okay, is this a sinful desire or could this be stemming from something that they experienced when they were younger? Maybe as a child, maybe a previous workplace, maybe a distrustful conversation or things there. So, because if you do you see what that plays out that if you've been betrayed in the past, then maybe some of your conflicts in the present or because you can't trust because you've been hurt? Well, I'm not doing that again, but if you've ever had that thought, well, I'm not letting that that happen again, that's called generational passed and it helps to identify that. But then when it comes to conflict with others to considerations you want to have our what is your desires? And then what are your expectations? What are your desires? And then what are your expectations? And what is the other person's desires and expectations? In other words, if you're fighting with someone, what actually are you hoping is the solution? What is the quote unquote wind, they say frustration is the gap between expectation and experience. If you're expecting somebody to do this and they come and do this, that gap in between, that's where you get frustrated, right? Or maybe they're doing exactly what you expect, but it wasn't your desired outcome. And so you bring that into your relationships. But then when you're talking about conflict with God, you want to understand that your vertical relationship with God is always directly connected to your horizontal relationship with people. And in most cases, if there is a horizontal issue with people, you can connect it directly back to your own personal walk with God. That's why the great commandment is love the Lord, your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love one another as you would love yourself. We said this all the way back actually, it's crazy to think that february at the end of this month was our vision night, our first dinner interest meeting. Actually my in laws house back in february, but there on that night, a year ago, uh this coming week, we met in the house and we dreamed about what a church could be. And we actually shared about the concept of loving God and loving others. And we compared it to breathing in and breathing out. Everyone just breathe in, breathe out, right, It's connected. So in conflict, you have to understand your relationship with God impacts all of your relationship with others and then your relationships with others also impacts your relationship with God, other places in the bible, it says if there is something between you and your brother, go and make right that relationship before you come to the altar or in other places, it says you must forgive others. As God has forgiven you. You can't expect God to forgive you if you're unwilling to forgive those around you. And so in multiple cases, how you love how you live is directly connected to loving God, breathing in, let me know there's breathing out. So it's important to understand the source of the conflict. Is it with yourself? Is it an internal battle? Is it with others? That comes from different desires or expectations? Is it with God? Are you projecting your distance from God onto your relationships? And then the last one is with Satan himself because in verse seven, James writes that you must resist the devil, you must flee him. It says submit yourselves to God and flee and he will flee from you. So draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Um So little Chloe who are a little little spunky Dennis, the menace. Um So no, she's fun. We she turns three today. So if you see Chloe today, she's dressed in a little princess outfit. Um you know what, you're happy birthday. And but what happens is when she's home, sometimes it's playful, sometimes she gets scared. Um but she comes running into our room and jumps in and goes ah monster and jumps in with us. The idea is that when she is scared, safety comes from drawing near to someone who's going to protect her, right? So running to the parents is actually the solution to being afraid. So this is a complete opposite to every horror movie ever right? Like oh I'm home, the door's propped open, oh I'm gonna go inside, right, I'm gonna go upstairs and the least s capable room possible like oh I wonder what happened, I'm gonna leave my car keys in the car the farthest right? This is every horror movie ever. Right? So like it's a scary situation and they don't actually draw near to anything, they just walk in and go wow, just terrified and they don't go. So in the same way sometimes when we struggle with conflict, when we're battling something we're like man this is bad, resist, satan resist, satan resist satan but we don't actually draw near to who God is. For example, in um Colossians chapter three it says put to death the things of this world and then put on the things that bring life, the aspects of God. Well okay if you're changing clothes and you take one outfit off and you don't put the other one on. Yeah, you're naked, okay. And so you're naked and so some of us here are honestly spiritually naked in the sense that we've tried to resist temptations of the world and we never put on the things of God and we wonder why it's a little bit spiritually drafty. I know that's weird. But anyway, um and so just go with me. And so the concept is that it it's about pursuing God not resisting sin. A relationship with God is not about sin management, but about becoming more like jesus, It says in Galatians 5 16 that if you walk in the spirit, you will not gratify the desires of your flesh. So as you draw near to God, as your that child running to the parent, then your fears get pushed away or get smaller, right? So it's tied to it. So resist the devil and we go forward. So you have the sources of conflict, you have self with others. You have with God with satan. Um now if you're taking notes, you can write this down. There are four possible outcomes in any type of conflict with other people. There is lou there is lose lose. That's if I'm not gonna win, nobody's gonna win. That's like the nuclear option, right? Um that usually involves this a blow up fight or the Stonewall Inn, The complete removal from that, which is sometimes can be just as painful. So it leaves both parties feeling frustrated. That's a lose lose outcome. Second possible outcome is the win lose outcome. This involves one side taking victory and the other side feeling defeat. Now in this case the person when he's like, yeah, I'm glad we talked about it, right? You can win. Understand this, especially if you're dating or close friendship, you can win an argument and lose the relationship. You have to understand that like that if you win so that they have to lose, that's not a win. Okay? That's that's not that's that's arguing at people instead of talking with people and then coming to a conclusion together, but on the same coin, but on the opposite side, you have the lose win option. That is basically I just want to keep the peace instead of making peace. And so they just forfeit their opinion and they forfeit and they just go now and they just back away and they say, look, we're we never fight, we never fight. And and that's really like that is that is fake peacekeeping instead of peace making. Because when you withdraw, when you let yourself kind of get trampled over, that's not making peace, that just leaves you feeling resentful and you're not open about this, we're gonna talk about solutions here in just a minute. But that's not really the best case scenario, which is if possible you want the win win scenario, that's where both parties can agree on what the wind looks like and pursue that compromise together. So when you even if you agree to disagree on a particular issue, you show high respect and you and you actually mend the relationship so that you can move forward. You might not build trust right away, but you can at least move forward. That's considered the win win. So you have sources of conflict. You have potential outcomes of conflict. And then lastly, we want to talk about solutions for conflict. If we're arguing with people, if we have difficult conversations at work or at home, how can we actually get better? Well, four things here from our passage is number one, the key is humility and that's developed through prayer. If pride got you into the mess, it's gonna be humility that gets you out. You can't out pride, somebody to heal the relationship that never works what this means on a personal standpoint. If you're looking for a specific application of that is own your percent. Every argument has a percentage. It's not always even but whatever percent you have on the table, you have to own it. If it's not 5050, even if it's like 99 and one When you enter the relationship, you and enter that conversation own that 1%. Even if that 1% is just simply how you reacted to the 99% that hurt you right? You have to own it and that comes through humility and you gain humility through prayer and connection to God, right? Because God says he gives grace to the humble. So by humbling yourself, opening your hands to God, then you can open yourself to a conversation with others. The second thing is actually developing your character. So humility. But secondly, you want to develop your character and that's your developing your purity, the application there is listening to understand and see when I talk about character, it's it's really about this idea of living from your identity right now. Our leadership team at Mission Grove is walking through a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear. It's an excellent book and he talked about here even though it's a secular book, um it's written and ties in even well with a christian perspective is that really people who make changes in their habits actually do so because they first change their identity. So for example, if you're trying to quit, you're not saying don't smoke, don't smoke, don't smoke. It's I'm not a person who smokes see that. So in other words, it's not about being angry, yelling, screaming and I'm not the type of person, I'm not the person that screams, that's not who I am. I want to be the loving father, I want to be the loving this and so you you are now living and acting and responding out of your character, then you are out of an emotional reaction. There's a difference between reacting and responding, right? So, okay, so something really cool or just woke up, welcome back. Um when you hear a noise or a flash or bang, you jump, you react. Some of us do that emotionally, something happens and we go and our emotions flare up and it's like, wow right? Like, but you come out so, but if we can pause, understand, okay, that reaction, that's not who I am, that's not who I want to become, that's not what I want to do, that's not that doesn't define me. And instead of reacting, we respond, we can speak differently and notice here, he says that we all fall short, which is why he ends the passage saying, don't judge okay, because we all need to grow in this area. But imagine how dramatically better your relationships and your conversations will be if instead of reacting you respond and you speak at a character from who you want to become. Maybe it's not a current value, but maybe it's an aspirational value and say, well I want to be the type of person that does this well then start acting that way now, Andy Stanley puts it this way, does this simply ask yourself the question, what would a wise person do? Because I don't know if you feel this way, but um you know, working in youth ministry for years and now parenting three young kids, it's really easy to tell kids what to do. Um but have you ever had your kids come back and pull it back on you and say the same thing back to you and you're like, oh we don't see it in ourselves, do we? Well, they need to do this, they need to do this, they need to do this, you need to do this. But he's like, oh no, we need to reflect on ourselves that comes through character. So bring humility into the conversation, bring your character, act out of identity number three. Um well, real quick before we go to number three, when you have that identity, it's about listening to the other person's identity and listening to understand, not to reply, because I like to argue and speak and persuade sometimes when somebody else has speaking and we're arguing, I'm just formulating my response, Does anybody else do this? Like you're waiting your return? All wait till you hear what argument I'm about to bring up, right? Imagine how much better your relationships would be that instead of trying to make that argument in your head as they shared, you just simply listen to understand not to reply, bob Gough says this um I used to try to change people now, I just want to be with people and that what if love was someone that we were becoming, not a word we just threw around loosely, so it it impacts our character. Um the third thing here for solutions for conflict is trust and that's developed, developed through pursuit, What are you pursuing? Uh I had a seminary class with dr roger ball um here in phoenix and he had to put it this, he put it this way and I love this, is that um in order to build trust in a relationship, it's like a three legged table and the three legs on this table. The three things you need to pursue our honesty, transparency and grace, honesty, transparency, and Grace because trust is the currency of a relationship. And if trust is broken, I'm guessing that one of those three things is not true, the person wasn't honest with you or maybe they weren't vulnerable and transparent with you of their desires and expectations. And if something went wrong, they're not showing you grace. And if you're honest and you're transparent, but you don't show grace. If it's a three legged table, you remove one of the legs, it falls down same thing here in trust that it's it's it's the currency of relationship. So it takes time to build. It takes time to build. And trust is not the same thing as forgiveness. So forgiveness is the first part to beginning to trust. But trust takes time to build. That's why I called it a pursuit because you're going after it, you're going after to be more honest in a relationship, To be more open in a relationship and to show more grace with when expectations are not met. Because then the last thing here is um obedience. And that's developed through practice specifically, are you obeying the word of God, because if you're gonna say you're gonna change in a relationship. If you say you're going to change, but you're not actually drawing near to God you're not humbling yourself. you're not changing how you speak, you're not changing how you act, that's going to break down the trust, right? You're gonna look like the boy who cried wolf, He was like, no, I'm gonna change, I'm gonna change, I'm gonna change. But you keep coming back. And so at some point we're not perfect. But at some point your actions have to match up with what you say and you have to be that whole person where what you say and how you live match up. So the application there is just if you're arguing with somebody follow up and follow through. If you had a disagreement, follow up on the conversation, hey, how are you doing? I know that was a difficult, the conversation we had last week, I'm gonna check in, how are you doing? Or phrases like, help me understand, hey, you said you were going to do this. How's that going? Right? Following up and following through can drastically improve our relationships, conflict and heart in your heart and it can grow your faith, but it's your choice and I want to end with this. I was reminded of just the brevity of life. Um, I went to a memorial on on uh friday and it's pretty tough to go to emotional, as a guy in his mid thirties, I have the card right here in the ed school field and um two young kids died of cancer and there's just grief in the room, right? But what I realized that if you take God out of the picture, you still have grief in a world filled with war. If you take God out of the picture, there's still war. But with God in the picture, it doesn't remove your grief, but there's actually a piece that comes in and there's joy and that while we watch these people share stories of their loved one and and in connection and to do that, there was still a joy because God enters our conflict and offers peeps and offers hope. And so as the band comes up on stage, I just want to encourage you that there is hope in every situation in every conflict and it might not be immediate If it took you 20 years to get into the mess that you're in, it's not gonna be resolved in 20 seconds. I don't believe you can't you're not just gonna name it and claim it, it doesn't work. There are christians who believe God who love God, who are struggling right now and we have to be honest with that. But that's okay. But before you go to blaming God for the situation you're in, let me just remind us all that it was at the cross that we see the perfect picture of war and peace, guilt and freedom, justice and forgiveness. See jesus offered us the most ridiculous battle strategy. He didn't come down to this earth and overpower us. But he actually came in, took on flesh and actually surrendered his life sacrificed himself so we can have peace if we take that same mentality into our relationships and we enter and we see conflict as an opportunity to grow an opportunity to show our faith, an opportunity to trust God, to know that in the greatest conflict of all eternity, the battle was won when Jesus laid down his life for us. Whatever conflict you're facing, whatever difficulty you're facing, I'm here to tell you there is hope. It's only found in jesus, let's pray heavenly father. We just thank you for your son, We praise you for who you are. Yeah, there's conflict all around us and while we cannot control that God, I pray that we can soften our hearts and look for opportunities to impact others with your life, whether it's conflict with ourselves or with others or with you or resisting temptation level. God I pray that we can approach that and humility. God I pray that we can approach that by developing our identity and our character. I pray that we can approach our relationships and build trust through honesty and transparency and grace and God. I pray that we can respond by obeying your word. May we sink into the love that you have for us and then we pour that out in our conversations and how we treat others. Thank you God for loving us. Thank you for saving us. Thank you for coming down into the conflict of our lives. To provide the way of peace. When we walk out today experiencing hope and your name Amen, please stand and let's respond together.