One day, a father heard a ruckus in the backyard. His kids and their friends were playing, but they seemed angry, like they were in a fight. When he tried to intervene, his son said, "It's okay, Dad. We're just playing church."

In his epistle, James shared some hard-hitting words about conflict—specifically conflict among believers.

"Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures" (James 4: 1-3).

James said the real problem is not on the outside; it’s on the inside. Conflict is a result of our sin nature. And we all have it.

In the phrase "desires for pleasure" (v. 1), the Greek word for pleasure is hedone, from which we get the word hedonism: the belief that pleasure is the chief goal of life. Pleasure is not sinful, per se; God made all things for us to richly enjoy. But pleasure becomes problematic when it becomes the driving force of one's life—and this is a mark of unbelievers, not believers.

So James saw war as simply the extension of man's struggle with sin in a fallen world. And when there's war on the inside, it's going to spill over to war on the outside.

I think we can agree that many conflicts are a result of selfishness, and the root problem comes down to this: "You didn't please me. You didn't fulfill my expectation of you."

Not only does internal conflict spill out into relationships with other people, but also into our relationship with God. "You fight and war" (v. 2); that's with other people. "Yet you do not have, because you do not ask," which in some translations is: "You do not ask God."

He wasn't saying, "If you would only pray about it, God would give you all your selfish desires." No, what he was saying is that you ought to have left it with God by prayer and walked away. Leave it with Him. Trust Him with it.

"Asking amiss" (v. 3) is asking with the wrong motive, "that you may spend it on your pleasures."

In Psalm 37, David said, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart" (v. 4, ESV). That’s often misinterpreted as, "Just get into God, and He'll give you every one of your little heart's desires."

But what it means is this: When you put Him first and seek His glory and delight yourself in the Lord, God will give you His desires—He will implant the right desires in your heart. You will desire what God desires for you.

Not all praying honors God. Not all prayers are pleasing to God. In Jesus’ story about the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18, only the tax collector had the right attitude of heart. The Pharisee was praying "with himself" (v. 11).

Our prayers should be, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done" (Matthew 6:10, KJV). But often, they are, "My kingdom come, my will be done."

When you pray and the request is not right, God says, "No." When the timing is not right, God says, "Slow." When you're not right, God says, "Grow."

But when the request is right, and the timing is right, and you are right, God says, "Go."