Our impact on the next generation will live beyond us. Whether your own kids or those that you teach, coach, influence. We are all leaving a legacy.

Leaving a lasting legacy: Trust the Lord to build your home. Saturate it with a love for God & with his word. Unless the Lord build the house, those who build it labor in vain. (Ps 127:1) Trust the Lord to re-make your heart. Your kids will inherit your heart. The Lord looks on the heart. (1 Sam 16:7) Use your strength to serve others. Who can I help? What can I do? Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. (Eph 5:21)

Every group of people struggle with conflict, whether family, work, church, or community. Conflicts arise over differences about what to do or how something should be done. Why? The Scriptures help us understand conflicts and where they come from.

James 4:1-3 Quarrels and Fights

Why? “Your passions are at war within you.” “Passions” in Gk is hedone – hād-don-ā’. Where our word ‘hedonism’ comes from. Here it means a selfish sinful desire or lust. Your lusts are at war within you. The quarrels and fights we have with other people outside are the result of wars within us.

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. - 1 Peter 2:11

v. 2. James goes on to describe how the war within result in quarrels without. “You desire for what you do not have.” “You covet and cannot obtain.” James warns: envy for what we don’t have leads us to quarrels and fighting. Arguments, violence, conflict in families, churches, communities are from a war within us.

“You do not have because you do not ask.” God answers prayer. He gives abundantly. v. 3. Either you do not have because you do not ask. Or you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives – to spend our passions - lusts. God gives us what is good for us, what will give us real joy.

How does this play out? Lust for what you don’t have can ruin friendships. These can be lusts for a better job, a better marriage, a better house. These lust tear families and communities apart.

These lusts ruin legacy. They poison relationships. They are a cancer in communities. Two examples:

Lust for recognition. James may be writing about a power struggle in a church. (Wanted to be teachers 3:1) Some people wanted prominence and leadership but lacked the right kind of wisdom (3:13) The lust for recognition within causes strife, disunity and arguments in the church.

Lust for control. In marriage, a husband and wife argue over control of money or how to handle the kids. They argue or sulk or scream. Instead of loving submission and sacrifice, they become competitors, fighting for control. They cause each other to suffer because they aren’t getting their way. They begin blaming each other for their unhappiness. But their problem is not external, it’s internal. They have a greater desire to be in control than to be one. They cause each other to suffer because they aren’t getting their way.

Who is suffering because you aren’t getting your way? What do you want from them?

Acknowledge it: Are you envious of someone else’s gifts or position in life? Celebrate their success. Tell them that you are glad for their gifts, happy for their marriage.

Are you fighting for control in your marriage or work? Stop battling each other. Start battling for each other. Tell your spouse, “I don’t want to fight against you. I want to win with you.” Get to work on how you and your spouse can be one. The goal of marriage is not winning; it’s oneness.