WHEN YOUR CHILD WALKS AWAY
CHAPTER FOUR
The Discontentment Cycle — Theirs and Yours James 4 gives us the anatomy of a restless, unsubmitted heart. Read it slowly. “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 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. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” — James 4:1–3 Notice that passions opens verse 1 and closes verse 3. This is a cycle. Let me walk you through the vocabulary. Passions The word gives us our English word hedonism. It means the pursuit of pleasure at all costs. Desire The Greek word is neutral in itself; its moral weight is determined by its object. A husband who desires to spend quality time with his wife is a man with a good desire. A husband who desires to spend quality time with another man’s wife is a man with a bad desire. The posture looks the same. The object changes everything. Coveting Coveting is wanting to keep warm by what belongs to someone else — seeing what another person has and wishing you had it. Psalm 73 is the believer’s honest wrestling with this. The psalmist sees the ungodly prosper and has to fight to stop wanting what they have. Fighting and quarreling The passions finally leak out into the relationships. Arguments, broken friendships, fractured homes. The cycle feeds itself. The cycle in your child This is the cycle your son or daughter is caught in. They have redefined pleasure away from how God defines it. That awakens a desire. The desire looks at someone else and imagines a better life.
Word of Life Fellowship • 10
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