When You’ve Been Fighting About the Same Thing for Years

You know when it's starting and how it ends, and nothing changes. Learn what James refuses to do when a church brings him their fights, and the one question to ask yourself instead. Some couples and some friends have the same argument every few months. The topic changes and the pattern holds. You know when it's starting, and you know what each of you is about to say. Then the fight ends the way it always ends, either resolved or shelved, and nothing is different. Here's why resolving the topic never fixes it. Both of you are arguing about the surface, and the surface is almost never what the fight is about. This episode opens with Stephanie and Duane, who had the same fight over and over in the first two years of their marriage. They'd blended two families and argued about the kids and money, and about whether it was her job to put away a basket of laundry she had already washed and folded. Every few weeks it came back. Different topic, same fight. James 4:1 asks, "What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don't they come from the evil desires at war within you?" Look at what James refuses to do. He never asks what they're fighting about, and he takes no sides on any of the topics. He asks where the fighting comes from, then answers his own question by pointing inside the people doing it. Then look at the phrase at war within you. The Greek is a military word for running a campaign, the kind with supply lines and winter quarters. It points past any skirmish between a husband and a wife to an operation already underway inside one person, before anybody raises a voice. Verse 2 tells you what the campaign is over. You want what you don't have, James says, and then comes the line that does more for a recurring fight than any communication tip: yet you don't have what you want because you don't ask God for it. The want is legitimate, and he tells them they've been going after it down a road that can't deliver it. In your case that road is a person at your kitchen table who was never built to supply the thing. Stephanie wanted to be heard, which is a good want. She went after it by handing Duane every bit of stress she had, which got her a fixer when she needed a listener. So when you feel it starting, ask yourself a different question. What do I want right now that I'm not getting. Then take that to God before you take your complaint to the person. Here's the mechanical part. A loop needs two people running their parts, so when one person stops reacting from the same place, the loop has nothing to run on. Bart shares his own version of this, years across the table from couples in this loop and the admission that hearing the pattern from a chair across the room is a different skill than hearing it when you're in it. BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: What James refuses to do when a church brings him their fights The military word behind "at war within you" and what it says about timing One question to ask yourself the next time you feel the fight starting The surface topic is almost never what the fight is about underneath. Ask God to show you the real source of your anger, and bring it to Him before you bring it to the other person. Story source. Stephanie Boose's account of her marriage to Duane, published by FamilyLife as "We Couldn't Stop Arguing." The Weekend to Remember conference they attended was in September 2006. **Share This Episode:** https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/352 **Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:** https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemail **Want to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.** https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/ **Rate and Review** https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/ **Connect with Bart** Facebook Page:https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusyliveshttps://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylives Website:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com Feeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook *Making Time for Jesus*https://daily-devotions-for-busy-lives.kit.com/b33aa395d1here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.