Courageous People Resolve Conflict

“God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but a spirit of power, love, and self discipline.” (2 Timothy 1:7 NLT)

Why does God want us to live at peace with everyone? Because unresolved conflict has three devastating effects in your life.

First, it blocks your fellowship with God. When you’re out of whack with others, you can’t be in harmony with God. When you’re distracted, when you’re in conflict with other people, you cannot have a clear connection with God. 1 John 4:20 says, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is a liar” (NLT).

Second, unresolved conflict hinders your prayers. Over and over again the Bible says that where there is conflict and sin and disharmony in your life, your prayers are blocked.

Third, unsolved conflict hinders your happiness. You cannot be happy and in conflict at the same time. When conflict comes in the front door, happiness goes out the back.

So, don’t you want to get rid of the conflict in your life? The starting point of resolving any conflict is to take the initiative. Don’t wait for them to come to you; go to them. You be the peacemaker.

Don’t ignore the conflict. Don’t deny the conflict. Don’t push the conflict under the carpet.

Have you heard the expression, “Time heals everything?” That’s a bunch of bologna. Time heals nothing! If time heals everything, you wouldn’t ever need to see the doctor.

Actually, time makes things worse. When you’ve got an open wound and you don’t deal with it, it festers. Anger turns to resentment, and resentment turns to bitterness.

The conflict is not going to resolve itself. You’ve got to intentionally deal with it.

Only courageous people resolve conflict. Maybe the most courageous thing you can do is face an issue that you’ve been ignoring for a long time in your marriage, or with your kids, or with your employees, or your boss, or whoever.

Where do you find the courage to face it? You get it from God.

The Bible says in 2 Timothy 1:7, “God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but a spirit of power, love, and self discipline.” That means if you let God’s Spirit fill your life, you're going to be filled with power, love, and self-discipline. And God’s love overcomes fear.

When your love is greater than your fear, you’ll do things you’re afraid to do. That’s called courage. When you’re filled with God’s love, you’ll also be filled with love for that person who is irritating you or that person you’re in conflict with.

Talk About It

• What are you pretending is not a problem in your relationships? Money? Trust? In-laws? Family? Children? Communication? Values? Work schedule?
   
• What will you do today to take the initiative to resolve those conflicts?

Anger Yields Anger, Wisdom Yields Patience

“A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense.” (Proverbs 19:11 NIV)

Hurt people hurt people. When someone hurts you, it’s because they’ve been hurt. Unkind people have never felt kindness. Unloving people feel unloved. When someone is rude, bitter, unkind, sarcastic, mean spirited, or arrogant, they are shouting with all of their behaviors, “I am in pain! I need massive doses of love! I do not feel secure!” Because secure, loved people don’t act that way. The person who feels deeply loved and deeply secure is generous and gracious to other people.

If you want to just get even with people, fine. You’re no better than they are. When you get even, you are no better than the person who has attacked you. To be better than that person, you overcome evil with good. You respond with love. You look past their words to their pain.

Edwin Markum wrote a short poem that goes like this: “They drew a circle to shut me out, heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win. We drew a circle that took them in.”

Here’s a myth that everybody’s been sold by modern psychology but that is flat out wrong: You have only a set amount of anger in your life, and it’s like you’ve got a bucket of anger. When that bucket gets full, modern psychologists say you need to express it. You need to just pour it out. Then, when the bucket is empty, it will be cathartic.

If you believe this myth, you’re going to struggle with anger your entire life, because you don’t have a bucket of anger in your life. You have a factory! That factory can keep on producing and producing and producing. When you get rid of that, you’ll get more. In fact, the more anger you throw out, the more it produces.

Study after study has shown that aggression only creates more aggression. Angry outbursts lead to more anger, more often, until it becomes a habitual pattern in your life.

The answer is not just to throw it out. It’s just going to refill! The answer is to let it go. “A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense” (Proverbs 19:11 NIV).

Talk About It

• Why do you think it is so hard for us to let things go, even and sometimes especially between the people we love most?
   
• What can you fill your life with so that you overflow with goodness and not anger?

Christmas Note: Stop Trying to Win Arguments

"I beg you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to stop arguing among yourselves. Let there be real harmony so that there won’t be splits in the church. I plead with you to be of one mind, united in thought and purpose." (1 Corinthians 1:10 LB)

This Christmas — Stop trying to win arguments.

Instead, make it your goal to love those who disagree with you or seem disagreeable to you. Go for the love, not the win. In fact, Jesus tells us love will always win; he guaranteed that when he walked out of the tomb.

When you find yourself heading toward an argument with someone this season, use these biblical guidelines for getting along:

Let mercy guide your response (Proverbs 3:3–6). In a conflict, most of us say we only want what’s fair, but God’s approach isn’t about being fair. It’s about grace and mercy (Romans 5:8), the kind of grace and mercy God revealed through Christmas.

Let God determine the truth (2 Corinthians 13:8). The truth is not determined by your thoughts, feelings (1 John 4:1) or the opinions of others this Christmas. Truth is what God says it is, and he is the sole authority for interpreting any situation (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Look for God’s presence (Matthew 28:20). Satan wants us to believe we’re alone in any conflict. God wants us to follow the example of the young shepherd boy, David, when he faced Goliath. David believed God was in the fight and that the battle belonged to the Lord (1 Samuel 17:47).

Look for the conflict’s true source (Ephesians 6:12). According to God’s Word, we’re really not fighting other people; our real enemy is Satan and his “unseen spiritual forces of wickedness.”

Keep that in mind and see how it changes your view of Christmas disagreements.

(Written by Jon Walker)