"What is the cause of your conflicts and quarrels with each other? Doesn't the battle begin inside of you as you fight to have your own way and fulfill your own desires? You jealously want what others have so you begin to see yourself as better than others. You scheme with envy and harm others to selfishly obtain what you crave—that's why you quarrel and fight. And all the time you don't obtain what you want because you won't ask God for it! And if you ask, you won't receive it for you're asking with corrupt motives, seeking only to fulfill your own selfish desires." James 4: 1-3 TPT
Conflict is an opportunity to glorify God. He uses the pressures of conflict to help us grow and cooperate with him. The opportunity is to be faithful to God, merciful to others, and act justly. In doing these things, we will develop a close relationship with God, strengthen our relationships with others, and live a more fruitful life as Christians.
The sin in our hearts that creates conflict in our lives is rooted in the unmet desires in our hearts. As Christians, when we do not deal with conflict (unmet desires) in our hearts, we create an opportunity for an idol to take the place of Jesus. When we have an unmet desire in our hearts, we can choose to trust God with it and seek fulfillment in Jesus, or we can fight to fulfill the desire on our own. If we choose the second option, we can easily begin to demand that our desire is met. If the desire, even if it is not inherently wrong, becomes too strong and it starts to control our thoughts and behaviors, we know the desire has become an idol.
An idol is "anything apart from God that we depend on to be happy, fulfilled, or secure...it is something other than God that we set our hearts on, that motivates us, that masters and rules us, or that we trust, fear, or serve...it is something we love and pursue more than God."
Idols can arise from good desires as well as bad desires. It's not always what we want but how much we want it. We want something too much, and we will not be satisfied until the desire is fulfilled. Idolatrous demands usually lead us to judge other people. This involves questioning others' motives. We often judge those closest to us the most harshly and impose our expectations on them. We expect others to give allegiance to our idols and condemn them in our hearts if they do not.
When someone fails to satisfy our demands and meet our expectations, our idols demand a sacrifice that they should suffer. Deliberately or unconsciously, we find ways to hurt or punish people so that they will give in to our desires.
When you recognize an idol in your heart, you must replace it with the worship of the true God. To do that, you must learn to love, fear, and trust God more than anything in this world. God is jealous of your heart. God calls us to identify and confess our idols one by one and cooperate with him as he removes them piece by piece from our hearts. Pray for the Spirit to guide you, meditate on His word, and allow God to search you and be on the throne of your heart.
THE “X-ray” questions (help you recognize idols in your heart)
What am I preoccupied with? What’s the first thing on my mind in the morning and the last thing at night?
If only _____, then I would be happy.
What do I want to preserve or avoid at all costs?
Where do I put my trust?
What do I fear?
When a certain desire is not met do I feel frustration, anxiety, resentment, bitterness, anger, or depression?
Is there something I desire so much that I’m willing to disappoint or hurt others in order to have it?
