It's fascinating to me that boiling water affects different things differently. Here's what I mean. If, if you take a pot of boiling water and you drop in an egg. The response to the boiling water is that it hardens the egg. Now you take that same heat, that same boiling water, and you drop in it a carrot or a potato, um, or some lesser vegetable, and, uh, and it softens the vegetable. Now, it's wild to think about, like, OK, the same heat can harden one thing and soften another. But yet, if you put in a pot of boiling water, The sweet grounds of a coffee bean. Out comes this aroma and transforms into a little preview nectar from heaven, uh, that we call coffee. OK, I kid a little bit about that, but I, what I do find fascinating is that the same heat, the same boiling pot of water. Can harden one thing, can soften another. But yet When applied to a third, can be transformed into something greater. John Gordon and Damon West wrote a short little book called The Coffee Bean using this exact illustration, and they said these words, he said, You can't control the events in your life, but you can control how you respond to them. Your environment doesn't determine your impact, but your attitude does. So let me ask you, are you an egg? A carrot or a coffee bean. Because so much of life is dealing with the heat that comes from boiling situations. And so when tough times come, not if, but when, when tough times come, Do you get hardened in your heart? Do you get Bitter and walls up. Right? I've seen this happen before. I've been betrayed. I'm not going to get betrayed again. Do you Respond like the carrot, and that when tough times come and the boiling water heats up in your life, that you start to get softer and weaker. And if you've ever had that mindset or that feeling of, I just can't today. Have you ever just, have you ever just heard the alarm? Hit the snooze and just go, mm, nope, not today. Right. We've been there, haven't we? Sometimes life will. Hard in your heart. Sometimes life will weaken your spirit, but what if? What if the same conflict and issues and troubles and trials that you faced weren't meant to harden you, weren't meant to soften you, but rather they were meant to transform and to grow you. See, our world right now feels like it's boiling. You can't turn on any channel through any stream and not see a world filled with division. And difficulties and distractions. But the reality is conflict is nothing new. And what I love about the Bible is that the Bible doesn't try to hide conflict, but rather highlights it. Meaning that instead of saying that, well, if there's conflicts, you're doing something wrong or, or you're not spiritual enough. Instead of saying that conflict is all bad, what it's gonna tell us is it's gonna actually expose what conflict actually is. Then, then it's gonna explain to us why conflict happens, and then it's even gonna gonna go a step further and actually tell us and equip us. Here's how you handle it, and here's how you can actually be transformed by it, in it, and through it to make you stronger than ever before. See, today's message is entitled Taming the Wild Within, because we all face battles of various kinds, but I think the toughest one, the most consistent one, the conflict that you're gonna face is actually in here, and in here. So how do we tame the wild within? If you're taking notes, I want you to write this down, that conflict can harden your heart or can grow your faith. Conflict can harden your heart or it can grow your faith, but you have to make the choice. You see, last week we talked about taming. Your speech Today we're gonna go deeper and talk about what does it actually mean to tame the heart. So last week we took a look at the fruit of the tongue, about what you say. But today we're gonna take a deeper dive into the roots of conflicts and the things that plague us every single day, because if, if we're not talking about things that we can apply in our lives Monday through Saturday, then what are we doing on Sunday? Right? But that's what I love about scripture, it's, it's real. It's doctrine, it's theology, it's praise, and. It's designed to give guidance to you and me and how we operate in everyday life. Did you know that of the Bible, there are 1,189 chapters? I counted. Or Googled it. What is? Do you know how many of the 1,189 chapters are in the Bible or without conflict? 4. 4. Genesis 1 and 2, God creates the world. It's majestic, it's good. It's very good. And by Genesis 3, we've messed it up. For all of existence, we get 2 chapters where things are good. It's similar to like, if you've ever like storm cleaned your house, how long does that last? Right. It's like 2 seconds. And if somehow, the house becomes dirtier in the process, like you clean one room, and then you go to this room and you come back to grab something and now this is messier than it was before, right? That's, that's, that's human life, isn't it? So every single chapter in the Bible, including the times of Jesus, think about that, by the way, the Jesus, the early church leaders is filled with a conflict entering into in the middle of or or in response to something that happened. Until you get to the last two chapters of the Bible, God says, enough, Satan, you're done. New heaven, new earth, and things are good. That's 0.3%. So why if if 99.7% of the Bible deals with conflict. Why do we think that as believers, the more faith we have, the less conflict we have? But what we're gonna find in James is that James is gonna expose conflict, it's gonna explain it, and then it's gonna equip us how to walk through it. OK, so let's pick up from where we were last week in James chapter 3. James chapter 3 verse 13. He writes this, he says, who is wise and understanding among you? By good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. This is fascinating here because he uses the Greek word for wise, sofas, and instead of intellectually describing what wisdom is, he actually describes it and uses it morally and ethically. So what he means here is that wisdom is not proven by what you know, but by how you love. Isn't it interesting that when we live in a world that the more intellect or the more power seemingly one person gets, it almost seems like the more jerkified they become. More arrogant they become. Right? That's not wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge plus action. James is writing to a group of people saying that wisdom is not about what you know, it's about how you love. But it sounds a lot like Jesus, doesn't it? Because Jesus actually, after washing the feet of his disciples, turned to him in John 13:34 and 35, he says, a new commandment I give to you. It doesn't seem new in the moment, but he says the new commandment I give to you, love one another. The new part is how I have loved you. And he goes, this is how the world will know that you're my disciples. The best way to show people that you are a believer in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior is not by what you know. It's not by how you sing, it's how you love. And he goes on over the course of a couple more verses to talk about how the harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace, is that we're not called to be bitter, we're not called to be jealous, we're not called to try to fake it. And it talks about heavenly wisdom versus earthly wisdom. But the main principle there is that wisdom is not how much you know, it's how it's how you love. So then we come to James chapter 4. And we picked this up here in verse one. It says, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not that your passions are at war within you? You notice it starts with it. Since you desire and you do not have, so you murder. You covet and you cannot obtain, so you fight and you quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people, don't you feel good coming to church today? He's just going right at it. He, because remember, the church is being persecuted, he could lose his life for writing this very letter. So why, why is he holding punches? He's not gonna wrap you up in a cozy blanket and be like, it's OK. You're special, you're a snowflake. He's like, stop being mean to each other. People are literally dying for their faith, and you're arguing over what? Stop being jealous and bitter and selfish. You're being adulterous. You are, you are cheating on the God who saved you for a world that could care less about you. It says, 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 it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us? You know, God's jealous for you? Right? As parents, you get that with your kids, right? Like you can be really strict and disciplined. But then you're kind of like, do you wanna have dinner? No, I got balloons with friends. Oh, please, you know, like, you know that feeling you have that tension, like you, you, you, you wanna smack him on the top of the head, but then give him a hug at the same time, you know. And so you have this God who created you, and who loves you so much that he sent his son to die for you, to send his spirit to live in you, and then he, he created you on purpose and for a purpose, and he came around and gave you his grace, and his love and his forgiveness, and he looks down and you're like, mm, no. Don't you know that God wants you? That God wants the best for you. But there's good news here. We continue on in verse 6, he says, but he gives more grace. He gives more grace. Therefore, he 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. What we see from these 7 verses here are really 4 sources of conflict. 4 sources of conflict. The first source of conflict comes directly from verse 1, and, and that's conflict with yourself. Again, the biggest battle you're gonna face is in here and in here. How do you speak to yourself? What do you do with those emotions that you feel? It's the war within. From my experience in ministry, what I've seen is that typically the conflict within self really comes from two places. It comes from sinful desires. We learned that in James one says, don't say that you're being tempted by God. God doesn't tempt you. That's coming from your own desire. In the second place, I think we make unhealthy choices comes not just from sinful desires, but actually what I would describe as what is called generational past. So many people. Or carrying around with them secret trauma. Big and small. Things that happened to them. With them in them. That they carry with them Right? They either they tend to repeat or rebel against, right? If you grew up in a home where you experience life in a certain way, that's gonna shape how you view your life moving forward. If you were betrayed in a relationship, that's gonna impact how you view future relationships. Right? And so, so much of our battles come from our own sinful desires, or The generational past and the traumas that we walk through, right? Now this helps us because when you're having a conversation with others, maybe think to yourself, OK, could there be something in their life That shaped Or explain or correlate why they chose this action. Right? Because when it's our own mistakes, we have justification, don't we? But when somebody else makes a mistake, we're like, oh, they're the worst. Right? If you're late to a meeting, it's well, you have a good excuse, of course, there was traffic, there was this, you know what I mean? But if somebody else is late to the same meeting, you're like, oh, they're never on time. Right? But we have to recognize first the battle within. The second source of conflict is with others. Right? How many of you, your jobs would be great if it didn't involve people? Right Right? We have conflict with others. Now, here's what's fascinating about others. There's 3 types of conflict with others. There's moral, right? There's sin and not sinning. Um, like, or there's how to do something that is right, right, there's moral. There's immoral. Somebody is blatantly sinning against somebody else, OK? There is a third category of conflict, and that would be immoral, meaning it's not right or wrong. It's method, it's preference, it's a way of doing things, right? And so can you identify when you're having conflict with somebody, OK, is this a moral issue? And what's do what's right. Is it an immoral issue? Is somebody in sin? Right, or is it an moral issue, meaning. This is neutral. This is just a disagreement on preference or on a method. Cause it, it, it changes how you address the issue, right? So we have conflict with self, we have conflict with others. But third, we have conflict with God. We have conflict with God. But can I tell you something? That if you're having conflict with God, can you guess who's in the wrong? God. There were 2 boats on the water. It's a stormy, foggy night, and the lights were shining at each other. And the one boat said to the other, you need to move right now. And they said, no, you move, basically. And then they started going back and forth, no, you need to move. You need to move. And he started going through his specifications of how big his boat was and how many years of service he's been in the water and all these things. He started listing his resume. He said, now you move now, sir. And the callback was, No, you move. I'm a lighthouse. Right The ground, the the shore's not moving, right? And if you're coming in, like you got, you got to make the adjustment. The same thing is with God. I, I remember being in a mall and walking around with my young kids and, and, and one of my kids, I'll let you guess which one it was, um, took off and just took off. And of course, as a parent, you're like, finally freedom and uh. They're on their own now. We did what we could. Um, there's a food court, he'll probably be fine. No, you start searching, right? You and you search and finding, you're like, oh my goodness, where are they? Where are they? And you find them. And, and, and I walked up to our child, and they go, oh, where'd you go? What, what do you mean, where'd you go? I was standing and you took off. Sometimes I wonder if we're like that with God. Right? We go off, do our own thing, live how we want. We don't read, we don't connect, we don't worship, we don't pray, and then we go like, God, where are you? There's conflict with self, there's conflict with others, there's conflict with God. But the last thing, don't miss this, that there's conflict with Satan, the evil one. If Scripture tells us to resist the devil. Resistance means there's persistence. Do you get that? That if you have to resist the devil, what does that mean? That means that he's pursuing you. Other places in the scripture, it describes saying like a a a lion looking to devour someone. And can I tell you something? That if Satan can't destroy you, he's going to try to distract you. Right. And so much of what we face is not flesh and blood, but is in the spiritual realm. And sometimes it's gonna come at you and take situations and influence our interpretations of those situations, right? And we read into it differently and in difficulty. And we describe it and frame it in a way that now we're mad at God and God's like, why are you mad at me? I'm the one that's here for you. So when you're walking through conflict, OK, is it with self? Is it with others? Is it with God? Or is it a spiritual battle with Satan? OK. 4 sources. But what we also see in here is that when you have conflict with others, it's the most common one that we see here, is that there's 4 outcomes. There are 4 outcomes to conflict. Number 1, there's lose-lose. This is when someone or both parties just withdraw and say, hey, no one's gonna get hurt, but we're all gonna walk away frustrated, right? This is when someone says, well, if I can't play, no one's playing. I'm gonna take my ball and go home, right? If you've ever been mad and just been so frustrated, be like, well, if I'm mad, everyone's gonna be mad. OK, well, that's not optimal. Second outcome of conflict could be win-lose. One side wins, one side loses. I'm Now, that seems great, except. Have you ever won an argument and lost the relationship? You ever been so focused on winning? That you missed an opportunity for grace or or connection. Is this guy, I struggle with that. Right? It's the difference of listening to understand versus listening to reply. Right. Idea of where curiosity meets empathy and connection. Are you gonna just keep pounding the table till you are right? And somebody gives in. And you might win. But did you? Third outcome is lose win. Now see, this one's sneaky, because the same thing actually happens, but what one person does. It says, you know what? I'm just gonna give in. I'm gonna be a bigger person. Here you go. But what's actually happening though, is that they are still controlling the situation, saying, you hurt me before, I'm not gonna let you hurt me, so I'm gonna withdraw first. And by putting up the white flag, they actually still have just as much resentment, right? It's the difference between keeping the peace and actually making peace. Sometimes we don't wanna have the hard conversation with someone because we're trying to keep the peace. But that's not love. Clarity is kindness, right? Clarity and, and, and love is, is having hard, honest conversations, right? And so if you say, well, I'll just lose for their sake, you, you might be keeping peace, but you're not making peace. That's not healthy either. So the goal of interpersonal conflict is actually win-win. This would be when you can agree upon some level of success together. And you, and you, now you can start coming to the com the table with conversations about, OK. Where can we compromise? Where can we understand? Where do we, and, and you move forward together. That's the win-win, that's the goal. OK. Now, we described the sources of conflict. We described potential outcomes of conflict, conflict, but how do you actually resolve conflict? Thankfully, James gives us a path to peace. He continue on in verse 8. He says, 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 to gloom. Now, John, I thought you said this was gonna be bad. This seems kind of sad here, OK? Just, just stay with me. This will make sense in a few moments. He says, humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against you, against the brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and the judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge. There's only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy, but who are you to judge your neighbor? Here's the reality. Conflict can harden your heart. Or you can grow your faith And what we have in here in this path to peace, and, and to wrap up here is really within our application, James gives us in this passage really 3 keys. To making peace in our relationships. Three keys To solving and resolving conflict. The first Is to posture with humility. Posture with humility. Notice that with your conflict with other people, it still starts to draw first to to God. If you draw close and near to God, he will draw near to you. And by humbling yourself before God. It's gonna change your perspective. When you tune your life. To the standards and the hope and the love and the light that is the gospel. That gives you the opportunity to be in tune with other believers and beyond. That when you humble yourself, you find a place of gratitude. You find a place. Of thankfulness It allows you to let go of the things that you think you need. And realize that Christ is what and who you need. It's the same as going like this. Whether it's at yourself or at others, to going before your God and kneeling before him and just going here. That weight lifted, that weight taken off. It changes everything that you have to posture yourself with humility, that over and over and over again, when you see people encounter God. The first thing they do is they fall on their face. Moses in the burning bush. Sees the presence of God falls to his face. Peter and the disciples in the boat, after the miracle catch of fish, they recognize that it is their Lord immediately dropped down to their face. John, when he gets a vision of heaven and revelation, the first thing he does, like, oh, what's up my homeboy? What's going on? No, he falls to his face. Why? Because the first step in any conflict, by the way, the first step to any conflict starts with you getting humble. It's not about your position, it's about your disposition. It's about your attitude. Can you humble yourself before God? The second thing we see in here then is to practice personal responsibility. Practice personal responsibility. What do you bring to the table? What did you bring to the table? Can you own your percent? Maybe it is 95% the other person. But that's not your job. That's on the other person. Could you own your 5%? Can you own your 100%? Like, are, are you responsible for your words, your actions? Can you own that? Starts there With self, can you own what choices you've made? Come to grips with that. To humble yourself. You know what? I've made mistakes, I've fallen. God, I need you. God, I've sinned against you. I confess my sins to you. I confess my sins to the people I've hurt. I'm sorry for that. And not one of those, I'm sorry you felt that way. We've heard those or maybe even given those apologies, right? No, I'm sorry I said this. I'm sorry I did that. Stop. Stop adding the but and then continuing on, right? To stop at the apology. You conform. Cause when you posture yourself with humility. You then practice personal responsibility. It gives you to the 3rd place where you can pour out grace generously. Cause when you've let go of what you think you need. You own the mistakes that you've made and confess and repent and turn to him. God's grace will come in and free you, and forgive you and lift you from that, that in turn, you can be a conduit for his grace and transformation and love in your relationships. Think about how powerful a relationship, a marriage, a friendship would be. If both parties were humble, put the needs of the other person first, took responsibility for their own actions, and went above and beyond to try to establish and show grace to other people. Can you think about how that would be? It'd be amazing, wouldn't it? You can have that and you can have that in your relationships, but it starts with Jesus. What is the boiling water in your life? What is, what is causing the heat? But more importantly, what's on the inside of how you're going to respond. Because that same conflict could be used to transform not only your life, but the life of others and the people around you. If You humble yourself before God and allow His grace to transform you and flow through you to the people in your life. It changes everything. Will you pray with me? Dear Heavenly Father, we love you. I pray that you would just. Be present in our lives. God, I know that many in this room are walking through very difficult situations. Whether it's conflict with self and our own choices and shame and guilt, whether it's conflict with others. And bitterness and brokenness and trauma. God, whether it's a struggle and separation from you. Or it's a spiritual battle where we're facing temptations and, and, and attacks from the devil. Wherever we are right now, God, I pray that we would just bring our conflicts before you, that you are present here in the middle of it, that the, the cross is the greatest picture of how you came and dealt with conflict, grace and justice, grace and truth, purpose and life and sacrifice, all in one. So may we put our relationships at your feet. May we humble ourselves and our posture. May we pursue personal responsibility and we confess our sins before you. So that we can in turn pour out grace to the people around us in our lives. I mean we love others the way that you have first loved us. Thank you for saving us. As soon as we pray. Amen.