DEALING WITH CONFLICT: Part One


Look at the picture of the old car riddled with holes. Inside the car two men are slumped over dead in the front seat and one in the back seat. The photograph looks like a scene from a gangster movie or from the life of Bonnie and Clyde. Based on this description, what would be your answer to the following questions:

What kind of people are in the car?
What kind of people fired on the car?
How would you describe the relationship between the people in the car and the people who fired on the car?
What was the objective of those who fired the shots?

People are very surprised to learn the true answers to these questions. The picture is from an article in the December 1991 issue of National Geographic about the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The actual caption reads as follows:

Slain by friendly fire, shipyard workers John Adams, his father, and a friend were five miles from Pearl Harbor when their Packard was hit by shrapnel from errant five-inch Navy shells. American anti-aircraft guns rained damage on Honolulu, untouched by Japanese bombardment."

The men in this car were Americans accidentally killed by fellow Americans. They were killed by men from their own team. Now, go back and answer the questions again.

How often has this happened in our relationships with other Christians? Figuratively speaking, this photo could have been taken in some church parking lot. Church members have often done more damage to one another than to the enemy's work. How sad to be “slain by friendly fire.” I think we can safely say that friendly fire is NOT friendly. If not dealt with in the grace and power of God it leaves Christians angry, confused, hurt, disillusioned, and derailed.

Conflict has ripple effects. It has been used as an excuse to reject God. It is no surprise that conflict issues have been the cause of many Christians and non-Christians staying away from church. It has left many Christians spiritually disabled and derailed because it hardens the heart and causes love to grow cold.

God has given us spiritual weapons that will bring us through every distress in good spiritual health and make available His power, wisdom, and grace help us to resist the temptations that come to us during times of conflict and during our times of need.

When not faced redemptively in the grace of God, the fruit of conflict spreads like leaven and militates against unity, love, and the manifested presence of God among His people. The search for relief tempts us to compromise. Anger and the desire for revenge contaminates our spirit and prevent Biblical resolution. Confusion and disillusionment press us to quit. But we can overcome these temptations and snares of the enemy.

It indicates a real love for Jesus when a person is able to emerge from the fires of conflict in spiritual health and continue in his walk with God and with Gods people. Resolving conflict redemptively involves repentance, forgiving, sometimes restitution, and even forgetting. It means being faithful to do the right thing in as much as depends on you. Sometimes it means leaving implacable, intractable, and unrepentant people to the judgment of God. It also means to trust the mysterious, unexplainable, and immoveable into the hands of our Sovereign Almighty God. This requires faith, humility, a heart of obedience, and a true relationship with Jesus Christ. Otherwise, a person will find it impossible to do these things. An unbroken carnal person cannot wield the spiritual weapons necessary to succeed in this arena. Success comes when spiritual people take up spiritual weapons. Spiritual weapons give us the ability to do what God requires of us. They give us the ability to entrust to God those things which are outside of our own power to change.

We should not have a heart of unbelief. We must believe in God's Sovereign ability to redeem the past and to direct the future. Read again Romans 8: 28. If you stand with a heart after God and walk in a Christ-like spirit, God will be with you and bring you through and onward. The key is to walk in a manner pleasing to the Lord.

 

This posting is merely an introduction to the subject. In the future I would like to share some Biblical principles that help us to understand the spiritual weapons that are available to us. We will discuss some practical things and some spiritual things to do during conflict.  I hope you will follow with me in these lessons.  

                                                                             ----Billy Long

 

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