Peacemaker Chapter 5 – Conflict Starts in the Heart

by Cesar Vigil-Ruiz

Editor’s Note: You can listen to the class and download the handout.

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” (James 4:1) (NIV)

Dealing with conflict biblically will never happen apart from heart-talk. What Jesus speaks about in Matthew 15:19 should give us pause as to where our evil desires and actions come from: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” What Ken Sande argues for and demonstrates in this chapter is that our hearts are the source and root cause of our conflicts (p.102). Because of this, there is a progression that can lead to an idolatrous life, not made out of wood, but out of our unmet desires.

The Progression of an Idol

I Desire

Every conflict has some kind of desire involved, whether good or bad. When one person does not meet your desires, there’s two roads you can take: trust God and ask for help in growing to be mature regardless of how the other person gets (James 1:2-4), as well as loving them and continue to pray for further opportunities to progress in your conflict resolution, or you can try and have your desire met, knowing that if it isn’t, you will start to become bitter towards that person which affects your relationship with them and dishonors God. The second option spirals down into what follows next.

I Demand

“Unmet desires have the potential of working themselves deeper and deeper into our hearts. This is especially true when we come to see a desire as something we need or deserve and therefore must have in order to be happy or fulfilled” (p.103). Easily, having an unmet desire (“I wish I had this”) could lead to an attitude of demand (“I must have this!”), which is the sign of idolatry.

The typical notion of an idol is a figure made out of wood that people sacrifice and bow down and worship, which most Americans do not see on a normal basis, hence thinking they do not have idols. However, the Bible has a different take on what an idol is:

An idol is anything apart from God that we depend on to be happy, fulfilled, or secure. In biblical terms, it is something other than God that we set our heart on (Luke 12:29; 1 Cor. 10:19), that motivates us (1 Cor. 4:5), that masters and rules us (Ps. 119:133; Eph. 5:5), or that we trust, fear, or serve (Isa. 42:17; Matt. 6:24; Luke 12:4-5). In short, it is something we love and pursue more than God (see Phil. 3:19). (p.104)

Every follower of Christ still has their sinful nature within them, and so will continue to battle within themselves for their desires to be met, and once it moves to becoming a demand, we have created an idol. What this should not lead to is a mindset of succumbing to our demands simply for the fact that we do so on a regular basis. It does not please God, and leads further downwards.

I Judge

If we are not careful, our demands for what we want from others, if left unfulfilled, can draw us to become critical and condemning of others, with our words but primarily in our hearts. A biblical character that sounds like that is Satan (James 3:15; 4:7), who in his own mind considered himself greater than God, and seeing himself as a god of his own. This is the same attitude one possesses when he begins to judge others in this way: with a superiority complex, with indignation, bitterness or resentment. What is woefully lacking is having genuine love for the other and real concern for them throughout a conflict.

“The closer we are to others, the more we expect of them, and the more likely we are to judge them when they fail to meet our expectations” (p.107). That is a scary thing to see about our human nature.

I Punish

Idols always demand sacrifices. When someone fails to satisfy our demands and expectations, our idol demands that he should suffer. Whether deliberately or unconsciously, we will find ways to hurt or punish people so that they will give in to our desires. (p.108)

We either express it outwardly in our verbal attacks on others, or we do it more subtly, in order to get others to do what we want them to, regardless of their interests. When we act in this way, this is a clear sign that we are not living under the lordship of Christ; an idol has become our lord.

The Cure for an Idolatrous Heart

Any idol we have, we love, fear and trust—which are words that are used for worship. We worship our idols, instead of the true and living God (Matt. 22:37; Luke 12:4-5; John 14:1). We are not commanded by God to obey them at any time. How do we escape this?

Deliverance from Judgment

We must look to God alone, who has delivered his people in the past: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me” (Exod. 20:2-3, NIV). Our freedom is found in Jesus Christ, God’s only provision for our sinful state. We need to look to Christ and put our complete trust in Him. When that happens, God not only delivers us, but He makes us His children, joint heirs of the grace of life, and makes us able to live a godly life this side of heaven (Gal. 4:4-7). We need to believe in the Gospel and repent.

Deliverance from Specific Idols

God knows our hearts, and knows we will still be marred with sin, and knows our struggles and battles with certain sins individually, and so wants to also deliver us from the idols that control us on a day-to-day basis. We need to identify them and confess them as sin, trusting in His provisions (His Word, His Spirit, and His church) to root it out of our lives. These three are God’s means of grace in a believers’ life, and His way of removing our idols to worship and live for Him.

Replace Idol Worship with Worship of the True God

“If we are not fulfilled and secure in God, we will inevitably seek other sources of happiness and security” (p.112). If you truly want to have the idols that control your heart completely removed, you need to pursue God more than anything else this world or your own heart may have to offer. To do that, we must:

  1. Repent before God
  2. Fear God
  3. Love God
  4. Trust God
  5. Delight in God

“God has designed a wonderful cycle for those who want to worship him above all things. As you love, praise, give thanks, and delight yourself in God, he will fulfill your desires with the best gift: more of himself. And as you learn to delight more and more in him, you will feel less need to find happiness, fulfillment, and security in things of this world” (p.114).

If your response to God’s best gift is, “That’s all?” the one you worship is not God, but yourself, and you are in dangerous territory. Your heart is bowing down before a lesser god, which is no god, but an idol, and the life you live will be one of utter sin and condemnation before a holy God. You will never find true peace in any of your conflicts until you have found the Prince of Peace. Look to Him today to deliver you and draw you to Himself.