4 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions[a] are at war within you?[b]2 You 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.3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.4 You adulterous people![c] 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.5 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”?6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
Discipleship Group Questions:
Main Idea: God’s Grace is available and greater than all our conflicts.
1. According to James 4:1-2, what is the cause of our quarrels/conflicts?
2. Consider a conflict you have been involved in.
What did it reveal about your heart?
How did it affect your prayers?
3. How does verse 4 cause you to take your sin more seriously?
4. Meditate on the great truth of verse 6: “He gives us more grace”.
Why is that truth particularly precious to you today?