At War With Each Other (James 4:1a; 11-12)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR10-15-03

 

My Worship Time                                                      Focus:  AT War with each other

 

Bible Reading & Meditation             Reference:  James 4:1a & 11-12

 

            Message of the verse:  “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it.  There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbour?”  (NIV)  “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you?  Do not speak against one another, brethren. He who speaks against a brother, or judges his brother, speaks against the law, and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge of it.  There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy; but who are you who judge your neighbor?”  (NASB)

            As I begin this new chapter, “How to End Wars,” from the “Be Mature” book there are three wars going on in the world to be discussed. 

I.  At War with Each Other (4:1a, 11-12)

            As believers in Jesus Christ we are to get along with each other, however this is not always the case as can be seen from the NT letters to the different churches, they all seemed to be having problems in this area of not getting along, or warring with each other.  James mentioned four different kinds of disagreements among the believers.

A.     Class wars (2:1-9).  This problem described here is one of rich against poor.  When the rich man comes into the church he gets more attention than the poor man.

B.  Employment wars (5:1-6) In this section we can see the problem of the rich man who is making war with the poor man in order to pay him less and to get more work from him.  As a little side note on this in our society we can see that when the shoe is on the other foot there can be trouble too.

 

C.     Church Fights    The problem that James describes in this section is that of selfishness, and not giving in to the needs of other believers, for these early believers all seemed to want to be teachers and to teach exactly what they wanted to teach and not listen to others.  The result of this was troubles, and wars between each other.

D.    Personal wars (4:11-12).  These kinds of wars happened when believers were speaking evil against each other.  We can see the tongue coming into practice in this kind of a war, as we have seen throughout this letter.  I cannot describe this any better than Dr. Wiersbe has done so in his book, so the best thing to do is to look at this section and read over it.

 

      Spiritual meaning for my life today:  The Lord has laid a heavy burden upon my life today after reading this section today.  I had to read it to Clair Shaw, because it had to do so much with what is going on in our Church today.  My heart does ache for the problems that are going on in our church, and through all of this the Lord is dealing with me too in all of this.  He is dealing with my tongue, and He is dealing with pride in my life, along with selfishness too.

 

The Word of God was convicting to my heart today as I read it this morning.

 

My Steps of Faith Today:  I believe that the Lord is convicting me to speak to Pastor Dunn and tell him that I have spoken to others concerning the meeting that we had after the vote.