Getting It Right With Others

Scriptures: Hebrews 12:15, Colossians 4:6, Ecclesiastes 7:9

What is conflict?

Have you ever noticed that your greatest pain and disappointments came as a result of a broken relationship? 

When something isn’t right between you and someone else, we call that conflict. 

You know how it goes. It’s like that time you had a horrible fight with your parents, or when your friend spread rumors about you at school. Or maybe, for you, it was when your girlfriend or boyfriend dumped you over Snapchat.

It’s not hard to figure out what conflict is because we experience it every day. Sorry to break it to you, but it’s also unavoidable. Why? Because we’re human, and humans mess up! None of us are perfect, and when imperfect people try to do things, conflict can easily come up. 

But conflict isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, healthy conflict can lead to healthy relationships. But, when we don’t deal with conflict in a healthy way, it’s like a poison. It’ll slowly seep into our relationships, infecting everything and everyone we interact with. In the Bible, the writer of Hebrews knew this well. That’s why Hebrews 12:15 NLT says this:  … Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you, corrupting many.

It’s important for us to work through conflict, because the quality of our lives is only as good as the quality of our relationships. 

So, how do we work through conflict in a way that honors God? Over the next four days, we’ll learn why we fear conflict, how conflict affects our relationship with God, and how to deal with conflict in a healthy way. Our prayer is that you’ll stop fearing conflict and start dealing with it so that you can build better, stronger relationships.  

Scriptures: Philippians 2:4, James 1:19-21, 2 Timothy 1:7, James 1:5

Why do we fear conflict? 

As we learned yesterday, conflict is unavoidable. So, why are we so afraid of it? Here are a few reasons we tend to fear conflict:

1. It makes us uncomfortable. Ultimately, conflict just isn’t fun. When we sense that something isn’t right, we know we need to do something about it, but sometimes we try to hide our feelings to avoid conflict. 

2. It makes us feel out of control. When we experience conflict, we feel like we’re no longer in control of our lives. It’s the same reason we prefer to send a text instead of talking on the phone—we like to be in control of the conversation and the situation. 

3. We’re not obeying God. Sometimes we fear conflict because we’re not doing what God wants us to do. When we trust God, we know that He wants our relationships to be in the right place. When we choose to avoid conflict and allow it to poison us, we’re hurting relationships that God wants us to make right. 

Now that we know why we fear conflict, we can start to overcome it. God is bigger than your fears, and fear is not from God. So, when you’re worried about conflict, pray about it. Ask God to give you wisdom and to give you the right words to heal that broken relationship. Tomorrow, we’ll find out how conflict can affect our relationship with God. 

Scriptures: Matthew 5:23-24, Colossians 3:13, Matthew 5:9

How does conflict affect our relationship with God?

When someone messes with your best friend, it’s hard for you to like that person, isn’t it? That’s the way God is with us—His kids. You can’t be right with God if you’re hurting one of His kids.

Your relationships with people and your relationship with God are directly connected. Basically, before making things right with God, we need to make things right with others.

In the Old Testament, people connected with God by offering gifts at the altar. People would travel for days to present their offering. By time they got there, they were likely exhausted.

With that context in mind, Jesus said in Matthew 5 that if you’re offering a gift at the altar and remember someone has something against you, you should go and fix that relationship first. 

Did you catch that? Even if they had been traveling for days, they still had to go back and resolve conflict with the person that had something against them, which would have made their entire journey a waste of time. 

That might seem a bit extreme, but Jesus wasn’t playing around. He knew something that we often forget: You can’t be right with God if you’re wrong with others. 

Now we know what a big deal conflict is to God. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about what healthy, God-honoring conflict looks like. 

Scriptures: Matthew 18:15, Ephesians 4:25-32, Proverbs 11:13, Proverbs 15:1

What does healthy conflict look like?

An oxymoron is when seemingly contradictory words appear together. Like jumbo shrimp. Pretty ugly. Virtual reality. Random order.

Get the idea?

At first glance, healthy conflict might seem like an oxymoron too. However, when we look at what the Bible says, healthy conflict is exactly what God had in mind. 

In Matthew 18:15, Jesus said that if a brother or sister sins against you, you should go directly to that person and point at their fault—just the two of you. 

Woah. Okay, Jesus.

This is the completely opposite of what we want to do when someone offends us.

And you know what we want to do? We either want to run or rant. When someone makes us mad, we either want to run away and avoid the problem, or we want to rant about that person to everyone but that person.

Jesus proposed a different way—a better way—which involves us confronting the situation at the root of the problem. 

So, how do you confront conflict? Here are three ways:

1.) Go immediately. Ephesians 4:26 says to not let the sun go down while we’re angry. Confront the conflict as soon as possible.

2.) Go directly. When you and a friend have conflict, it’s tempting to go to everyone but that friend! But Proverbs 11:13 says that a gossip betrays a confidence. God dislikes gossip and spreading rumors. 

3.) Go humbly. It may not have occurred to you, but you might not be in the clear. Be willing to admit that you were wrong, and be humble. Humility looks good on everyone. Proverbs 15:1 says that a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

So, how do we deal with conflict in a healthy way? We go. We resolve the conflict immediately, directly, and humbly. And when we do that, it honors God and starts healing our hearts. 

Scriptures: 2 Corinthians 5:21, Ephesians 4:31-32, 1 Peter 3:18, Colossians 3:13, Romans 5:8

Conflict resolution

The best example we have of conflict resolution is God Himself. Time after time, we turned away from Him. We sinned against Him. And we did things we knew weren’t good for us.

So, God decided to have some conflict resolution—with us. How did He do it? Humbly and directly. 

God sent His Son, Jesus, to earth to be born in a lowly, dirty animal stable. He came as one of us—a person. He lived life just as any human would. But unlike us, Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life. Then, He died on the cross to pay for our sin in the ultimate conflict resolution. 

He didn’t have to, but He chose to. He took what we deserved and put it on Himself. He died to confront the conflict and forgive us of our sins so that we could be with Him.

If we call ourselves followers of Jesus, we’re supposed to follow His lead. And that means things might get a little messy. He asks us to confront conflict head on instead of running from it, by going immediately, directly, and humbly—just like He did.

The thing to remember is that dealing with conflict in a healthy way won’t always fix our relationships. Sometimes, people may not accept your apology. And sometimes, the conflict may not go away overnight. But, learning to handle conflict in a healthy way heals your heart, even if it doesn’t heal your relationship. Why? Because when we deal with conflict the right way, we become more like Jesus. 

So, let’s embrace conflict. Let’s be like Jesus—humble and forgiving. Remember: He saved us when we didn’t deserve it. So, let’s extend that same grace to others, even when we think they don’t deserve it either. 

Pray this: God, help me deal with conflict in a way that honors You. Give me wisdom to help me get my relationships right. Help me forgive others the way You’ve forgiven me. In Jesus’ name, amen.