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"The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypisalanti, Michigan at 7:50am, flashed a gun and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn’t open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren’t available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away." "Karen Lee Joachimmi, 20, was arrested in Lake City, Florida for robbery of a Howard Johnson’s motel. She was armed with only an electric chain saw, which was not plugged in." "Three guys decided, late one night, to rob a gas station. Taking in baseball bats and knives they entered and demanded money from the station clerk. But they weren’t aware of a couple of rather important things: The clerk was an ex-Israeli. That is: The clerk was an ex-Israeli Army officer. And not only that, but an ex-Israeli unarmed-combat instructor. Â Needless to say they ended up in hospital…For a long time. (No charges were pressed by the gas station owner, and the police decided that there wasn’t much point following through.)" Â I get a laugh out of stories like this (although if I were the one being held up, I’m sure I wouldn’t be laughing); but we tend to focus on the details of what these would be robbers did and how they got caught rather than what is much more important to consider. Why would people put their own freedom and possibly their own lives at risk? Many of these, in stories like this, are not experienced criminals. They don’t seem to know what they are doing or even if they are sure they wanted to do it. But, they did do it, and they risk going to prison for the rest of their lives. We don’t know all the details of their motivation, but we can safely summarize it this way: These would be robbers wanted something they did not have. They desired more money, for whatever purpose, and in order to get that money, they were desperate enough to take someone else’s money, illegally; and to put other’s safety at risk in the process. Â When we don’t have what we want, our hearts are revealed in what we are willing to do to get it. James deals with that problem here in the first several verses of chapter 4, including what is really the central issue: whether or not you are friend or an enemy of God? Let’s see how James uses this idea to challenge us today. He just ended a section, which we know as James 3:13-18, which is a discussion of what true wisdom is. James gave us the difference between true and false wisdom, concluding with the idea of being a peacemaker. So, the very next thing James wrote, in his letter looks into the heart motivation for why those he was writing to were struggling in their relationships, even within the church: Â James 4:1 – “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?”
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