Resolving Conflict

I'm doing a little different sermon and Bible study today simply because I've been one of the classes that I'm working on, a two-hour class for the ministry is on conflict resolution, and then I've got this whole morning that I'm teaching counseling. And there's a couple things that cross over in those two subjects, and I thought, well, you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to cover some of that little bits of pieces of it here as a sermon, and then have some, I think, interesting discussion for the Bible study after we have the potluck. So the first part of this sermon is going to be a little strange because I'm not going to be turning to a lot of scriptures until I get halfway through it. But there's some premises that are biblically based, and I can't go through all of it because it takes three hours.

So I'm going to give some biblically based concepts that I think are pretty apparent about conflict. When we talk about conflict in the church, now I'm talking about conflict in the church here, not so much conflict with somebody at work, and this would apply even a little bit to conflict in marriage.

But conflict in the church, what do we do? We go to Matthew 18, right? Go to your brother and talk to your brother, and so you stomp into your brother and tell them how wrong they are and how arrogant they are, and now the person hates your guts. The problem we forget about in Matthew 18 is the offended person has to do something before they go. They actually have to do something before they go.

Then the person who was the offender actually has to take the same steps to process what's happening to them. So this is a very complicated process. You know, if it's a minor thing, you probably don't even go to your brother because it's not important. But if it's very important, they've committed a sin against you. They've done something terrible, treated you in a certain way, maybe spread a rumor or gossiped about you, whatever, and you have to decide, okay, I need to go talk to them.

But the moment you make that decision, there is, or there are, problems you face as the offended person. Because many times the person who offended you doesn't even know they offended you yet. Well, I'm just a blunt person. You know, I just say what's on my mind. Well, sometimes you're an idiot, but okay, but you say what's on your mind. But the offended person saying, yeah, you shouldn't have done that to me, right? So what, how does the offended person prepare to do Matthew 18? And that's sort of one of the classes I'm doing.

Okay, what's the offended and then the person who did the offender, what does that person have to do? And it's actually the same sort of process. So when there is conflict, we have five major causes of that conflict and responses that we have to struggle with in then dealing with it. The first one is, is that if someone has hurt you, you automatically, or most people, automatically have a need to be emotionally healed, right?

You're damaged, you're hurt, and what you want is emotional healing. I remember years and years ago, I was at a church event and there was a man sitting there and he just went in and talked to anybody. He just looked devastated and I went down, I said, I said down beside him and I said, are you okay? And he talked to me how a man that he really respected had really treated him terrible. And the man was wrong. I mean, this man had done a wrong towards this man.

And he said he never dealt with it, he didn't know how to deal with it, and the man suddenly died. And he says, now I can't be healed. He says, if, and I'll never forget, he says, if that man is reaching up out of the grave and grabbing hold of me, like he was dragging this man around. He couldn't get rid of the fact he had done so much damage. And he had. He had done terrible damage to that man's life by what he had done to him.

He needed emotional healing and he couldn't be emotionally healed. And part of this issue that we have when talking to someone else is the realization that there are times when the other person cannot heal you. Because if we really believe they must heal us, I mean, it's what you want, if there's reconciliation, you become emotionally healed over it. But what if the person won't admit they're wrong and won't do anything about it? What if the person dies? I mean, there's a lot of reasons why that person may not respond. What if they treated you terribly and they get away with it?

There's no justice? You see, we're not healed from them because they won't repent. And there's no justice. Where's God in all this? And that need to be emotionally healed drives us. It drives us. It's sort of normal. They can drive us in some very bad ways.

Because we now are driven by that, which leads us to our second point. So first of all, we have a problem. We're the injured person. We have a problem because we have a need to be emotionally healed. Everybody's felt that. I just wish that person wouldn't say they're sorry.

Then every time you see them, you almost can't stand to be around them. I just want to talk to that person. Because they did this to me. I mean, I've talked to people and said, yeah, I just didn't talk to that person at church. You know, they they gossip about me. They did this. They did this. They did this. I said, wow. When did I? I mean, this has happened. But when did they do this? All about 20 years ago.

They're stuck in that stage. They have to heal me because I've been hurt. And until something happens between me and them, I can't be healed. So that leads us to a second point is that we have expectations that the other person must meet.

Now, this is a cause, too, of a lot of conflict. We all have expectations of each other, don't we? How many marriages are in constant conflict because one of them or both of them feel like, well, my emotional needs are never met. I expect you to do this and it doesn't happen. I expected when I married you, this would happen. And you don't do that. You don't help me. You don't do things the way I like. You used to treat me really nice, and then we got married, and you don't treat me that way anymore. So we have these expectations. Now, it's not wrong to have expectations, but they have to be real expectations, and they have to be modified in the reality of life, right? You know, when you marry the guy and you realize, you know, you get married and you go out on your honeymoon, you wake up the next day, and he looks terrible. He had no idea his beard could go that much in one night. His hair's all messed up. He's grumpy. It's like, what have I gotten myself into? See, we have these expectations, right? So expectations of what the other person is supposed to do causes conflict, and then we have expectations of how they're supposed to handle it. I've used this example before a couple years ago. I was talking about marriage because it's just a perfect example. We've been married about 10 years, and you know, I thought we had the perfect marriage. And one day, Kim said, you know what? I've been hurt, sort of hurt by you recently. And I'm like, well, what did I do? She said, well, no. She says, I figured it out. I thought you were doing something on purpose. I don't even remember what it was. I hope she doesn't either. It was an expectation, and I wasn't doing it at all. And she said, I thought, why is he being so mean to me? And now I get it. You have no idea what I'm talking about. I don't. You have no idea how this is making me feel. No, I don't. She explained it, and it was so simple to change. Oh, I can do that. I mean, it really was very simple to change. But of course, her expectation, and then she said something so profound. She says, if you were a woman, you would understand. And I said, yes, and I am not. And she was right. Another thing a woman probably would have understood. I did not. She explained it. I said, man, I hope everything in life is okay. I can do this. This is something I can do. But it was hurting her terribly. Her expectations weren't wrong, but I didn't understand them. Right? And then sometimes we have these expectations that aren't even possible. And so we have these expectations of how this person is going to respond. I'm going to go talk to them. I'm going to tell them how much they hurt me, and they're going to fall under knees crying and beg for forgiveness.

And you go to the person, and you say, you really hurt me, and you did this, this, and this, and they say, you know what? You need to grow up. And you're like, well, that's not what I expected. So sometimes what we do, we have such expectations that we set ourselves up for a second hurt. Right? Oh, I tried to have you talk to the person? I tried. They just looked at me and said, I don't understand anything you're saying. That just shows they're a non-loving. They're probably not even converted. Now they just maybe don't understand. And maybe they're being a bit harsh, and they need to learn some things. But you set yourself up for a second fall, because you expect them to react the way you want them to. And I've seen people, you know, have a confrontation with people, and a year later, the person comes back and says, you know what? I didn't get it at first, but I was wrong, and I'm sorry. And that person says, you know, I just spent a year in turmoil all the time, and all I had to do was wait for them to catch up.

I just had to wait for them to catch up. Now I'm not saying, by the way, you can solve all conflict. You can't. I don't believe... it's not... sometimes there's conflict resolution. A lot of times life is conflict management. You're managing the conflict. It's nice when there is resolution, but there's lots of times in life where you don't have total resolution. And sometimes it's because we have expectations as the offended person that can never be met.

A third is a need to control. The need to control is rooted in a couple of things. It can be rooted in pride. A person just thinks they're better than everybody else, so they've got to control everything. Or a lot of times it's actually rooted in insecurity. So you've got to control everything. You've got to have control of everything. Life is chaos. It's absolute chaos. We have no control who our parents are. We have no control of our abilities. We can only determine how we can control our lives. We can only determine how we develop our abilities, right? But all of us have different mental abilities, different physical abilities, we're not the same. You can't control a lot of times—you can't control where you're born.

We can't control the weather. I mean, there's just things we can't control. You can't control why your neighbor likes to have a car without a muffler. Right? You can't control that. It makes no sense. He likes a hot rod. Well, it's not without a muffler, but you know what I mean with it. So there's just this noise. It's like, who does this? And there isn't much you can do about it. Please say he's not breaking a law. You can go ask him and he's not going to take it off. So what do you do? What happens is we have, physically, they talk about a fight-and-flight reaction to physical aggression. We either fight or run away. Because, you know, there's times, you know, when you're in your—oh, man, I shouldn't even tell you this. I was in a fight with a goat this week. I know. I live a weird life, okay? Our neighbor has goats and they get into our yard every once in a while. And Kim said the other day she was with the grandkids and there was a knock at the door and she looked at it and it was a glass panes and there's a goat knocking at the door. It wanted to come in and play with the kids, you know. So when the goats get out, they come into our yard and there was this little, little male goat that came into our yard. And I had to pay attention and I walked out and scratched him on the head and he looked at me and started eating all my clover in my yard. I said, okay, eat the clover. I don't care. Then he got in the front yard and I thought, man, I got to get him out of the front yard. So I went over and tried to shoot him out of the front yard and we went in a bush. I mean, just disappeared. His little head came out, looked around him. Hey, I'm still here. I mean, my neighbors think I'm nuts because I'm always talking to these animals, right? And I'm still here and he gets back. So finally he comes out and I grab him by the horse and drag him into the backyard, you know. And then he's out there crying and crying because he can't figure out how to get out of the backyard and back to us. So I go out and say, come with me. So then I'm, and this is the second time this has happened because the other goat did the same thing. It's now following me across this field, running behind me as I'm taking it to where it lives. I become the goat whisperer, okay?

I'm sorry. That's stupid. It has nothing to do with my sermon, but I had a fight with a goat. Fight or flight, right? The goat tried to run and then it tried to butt me. Okay, that's what goats do. But what we do is people. We fight or flight. That's how we handle situations. Physical situation. You know what we do? Emotionally, when we feel emotionally attacked, we do the same thing. We fight or run away. We fight to try to control it, or we run away to try to get away from it. The problem is the more we try to control everything as part of a process, the more we're establishing ourselves sort of as God. The more we try to control everything, if we're not careful, we're sort of making ourselves in our own image instead of relying on God to help us solve things and work through things. The fourth thing is pride, which obviously is so obvious. I mean, we have an exaggerated view of our own person. And what happens with pride is we always focus on how other people treat us. If we're humble, we're focused on how we treat other people. Now, that doesn't mean a humble person is offended. We get offended. We get hurt when people do mean things to us. And everybody does mean people to somebody at some time. And sometimes we don't even know we're doing it. We can have a bad day and do something that really hurts somebody, and it's a real thing to them. But pride is constantly concerned. You know, sometimes you've heard a man say, well, you know, I had to stand up for my honor. I have found out in life 90% of the time when a man says I was standing for my honor, he was standing for his pride. Men of honor, yes, they make stands, but they're very careful about their stands. Their stands are on moral issues. So we all sometimes, you know, have this fight-and-flight response, and then we end up with pride. That's our real motivation. And in pride, you have to win over the other person. But here's the real reason, okay? Then we'll get into a few Bible verses, and then we're really going to talk about some things that the Bible study. The real reason for all conflict, the real reason for all conflict The real reason for all conflict, that whether you're the offended person or the offender, we must deal with. Because every one of us is on both end of that, you know, all right? You're the offended sometimes, and you're the offender sometimes. The reason for conflict, dysfunctional conflict. There's actually conflict that can be good. It's a group of people working at a problem together, having different ideas and stuff. That's not, I'm not talking about that kind of conflict. I'm talking about dysfunctional conflict.

The reason for dysfunctional conflict is because every one of us is in a dysfunctional conflict with God, and that's at the core of all of it. So if you're the offended person, you have to deal with your dysfunctional conflict with God first, before you go to the other person. If you're the offender, if you're going to actually deal with this properly, you have to deal with your dysfunctional conflict with God, because you will have to deal with it in a way that doesn't seem natural to you, maybe. You know, sometimes a person can be offended, and you really didn't mean it, and they're taking it way out of proportion, and you can tell them that, right? And it seems like you have the right to do so. That is the offender. You may look at them, and if you go through the process, you will say, you're more important to me than me doing this to you, than defending myself. And you know what? I am sorry. You know, you don't say, I'm sorry, you're so wrong, and took it that way. I'm sorry this has happened. I'm sorry. We can work this out. Now, there's times you don't do that, right? We're not saying if you're being falsely accused, but you know what I'm talking about. There's a time when the conflict isn't worth the frag—the person's fragile. It doesn't do them any good, except I'm sorry. If I would have known this was going to hurt you this much, I'd have never done that. That's just an honesty that says, you're making something out of nothing, but okay.

So we start with this dysfunction with God.

Actually, nothing can be solved in life. I don't care what it is, until we're working on our dysfunction with God. And what we're dealing with, we have a conflict with God. I was writing something recently for a paper I'm writing for some research that's being done by the Council, and I want to send it to them. I wrote this paragraph down, and I wanted to read it. At the heart of the refusal to acknowledge our intense need for God is either we don't trust Him to actually be good, or we resent the idea that God has a claim over our lives to determine right and wrong. The basis for this lack of trust and resentment is an attitude of fear or rebellion stemming from selfishness and pride. We fear that God is mean-spirited because He won't let us have what we want in life, or that He really doesn't love us. We rebel because we don't want to surrender our lives to Him and desire to get everything we want in life without His interference.

That's the conflict. We have this conflict with God because we either don't trust Him or we don't really want Him that involved. We want Him only involved when He needs to fix something in our lives. And so we go back and forth between trust and, yeah, let me do it my way.

That conflict, the more we are having that conflict resolved, the less conflict we have with others. Now that doesn't mean we don't have conflict. There's always going to be conflict. Somebody's always going to be doing something stupid, right? And some people are just mean. Some people are going to offend people because it's their problem. They are mean-spirited.

But if we're the offended person, we have to do our homework first. That's why we go to Romans 5. I've been in Romans a lot since I've been going through the series of Bible studies on Romans. And so I've turned them into a couple of sermons, and I've been quoting for Romans a little bit here lately, simply because of that. Romans 5 or 6, and you all know this sort of a memory set of verses here. For when we were without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. Here's the point. He died for the ungodly. Jesus didn't die for the good people. Of course, there aren't any good people, so He died for everybody. He died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die. Yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, and that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. So we're justified by that sacrifice, and we're able to come into a relationship with God. We are saved by Him in us. You know, you can go to God and say, please forgive me for my sins and help me. I want to have a relationship with you. And He can justify you by letting you have a relationship. It doesn't mean you're sanctified. It doesn't mean that God has come into you with His Spirit and you're actually being changed. You have to be justified and then you're sanctified. He says, much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. Verse 10. Here's the thing here that we've got to remember. For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. Reconciliation. We're saved by His life. It's not enough to accept Him. He must live in us through God's Spirit. To be reconciled. Important words here. You know, we were enemies.

God doesn't look on humanity and say, you know, they're pretty good, just a little scrubbing down and they'll be okay. No, just go wash your hands. You know, a little kid comes in, he's gonna wash your hands. Okay, you can eat now. No, no, He looks on us, He looks on humanity as enemies. Our conduct, our mindset, our human nature, we're the enemies of God. We are offensive to Him, but He loves us. Only God can do this, by the way. I mean, we do it in some ways, but I mean, yeah, I find you absolutely offensive to me, but I love you. So therefore, Christ will die for you, and I will reconcile you to me. That's the idea of propitiation. I mentioned that a couple of times recently. Propitiation in the pagan world was what you did to get the gods to accept you. Propitiation, the New Testament, is used in a totally different way. It's what God does to accept us. It's just amazing. It's another one of those words that gets twisted. It's like a goppy. It gets sort of twisted around in a whole new meaning put to it. Propitiation isn't us, you know, okay, we have kept the Sabbath strict enough and come to enough church services and sang enough songs that God says, okay, you get my favor. No, that's not how it works. God does something to give us favor and then brings us here. That's why coming here is so important.

That's why coming here is so important. I can't tell you how much I sweat. I knew I had to cancel services last week. I actually had people thank me because they know how hard it is for me to cancel. I had emails and thank you. I know that was hard for you because I want to be here, but it was dangerous because most people couldn't get here. I don't know how many people I called and said, oh, I can't make it. I can't make it. I can't make it. Besides, the parking lot had six inches of snow and ice on it. I said, I'll go. Of course, my wife says, yeah, who else will be there? She's always catch me in this, because I'm not going with you, so you'll be by yourself. I have to tell you something. She says that, but every once in a while, I'm going, and she comes out and sits in the car next to me and says, I don't think this is a good idea, but she goes with me anyways. She has always done that. I think it's a good idea. If you're going to go, I'm with you, and off we go. And we did it. One time, coming back from the home office, it took, that we hit a snowstorm, and it took us 24 hours to get from Cincinnati to here. What saved us was we stopped at a member's house for about six hours of sleep, because we, there was no way to go. I mean, the road for shutdown, and he got off and was able to do that. Anyways, we're his enemies. See, I'm going off again. I got goats and snow.

That's why I have lots of notes, by the way.

So, we're the enemies of God, and God does his propitiation. Once again, oh, I know, coming here in the snow wouldn't have been, oh, proved to God that we are righteous. It wouldn't have been. Now, if we don't come, because there's a snow flurry, God's saying you're missing the point. But it's his, it's his propitiation that brings us into favor, not ours. But I tell you what, it is a dangerous thing to take God's love, God's favor, which is, that's all grace means, God's grace, God's favor, and take it lightly is a frightening thing. To take his favor lightly, because we were enemies without hope, and he gave it to us. He gave us hope. He gave us a relationship. That tells us something right there about how we have to learn how to deal with conflict, doesn't it? That tells us right there. Even God, though, can't solve all conflict with somebody. You realize that? Because of free will. There will be people thrown in a lake of fire because they will not solve, be willing to be healed of their conflict with God. You can't solve all conflict, but we have to have this attitude. And when we do, certain things happen. Here's the process. First, we're going to go through those five things in reverse order. When you have been offended, you've been mistreated, something bad has happened to you, the first thing you do is go be reconciled to God. Make sure you are not in conflict with God.

You say, okay, yeah, but I need to be reconciled to this person. If you want the ability to reconcile with somebody else, we're talking about spiritual things here. I have a whole shelf of books at home on how to deal with conflict. I have a class at home, a college class on C.D. on how to deal with conflict, conflict management. But we're talking about something way beyond that. We're talking about the spiritual level of conflict management and resolution, which happens inside the people. I mean, there are certain conflicts that are just so easy. You just sit down and talk about it, right? They get fixed. We're talking about the ones that eat away at us, the ones that we obsess, the ones that sometimes determine who we are. Many times, we are as human beings defined by our conflicts. We are defined by the people who hurt us, when we should be defined by our relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

So, someone's hurt you. First thing you do is you go to God, and you say, help me. Heal me. Help me to forgive them. Now, forgiving a person does not accept what they've done. It doesn't take away their penalty from God, because let me tell you something. Forgiveness, we do on a certain level, when a person's sin, you and I can't forgive their sin. We can only forgive what they did to us. Their sin must be forgiven by God. We did a BT program where we actually interviewed Annie Deamer, whose daughter was involved in drugs and a very bad lifestyle. She just got caught up in a lot of things, and she got murdered. We told her a whole story. We showed pictures of her, told the trials, showed interviews with people that read the trials, and at the end, when they gave the man, they could have given him a death penalty, and they gave him life in prison. And Andy asked the judge, or they asked, I think, do you want to say anything? Yes, I do. And he stood up, and he told the man, and I don't remember the exact words, but he said, I am glad that God has given you a second chance. Those people don't get second chances. You can repent from what you did to my daughter. He put it between that person and God. And he said, you know, I've talked to him since, he said, yeah, I still mourn over my daughter, but that helped me heal. I'm all right with God. She never knew God. He believes in the second resurrection. She gets her chance then. That man, if he doesn't repent, he'll end up in the lake of fire. He says, I'd like to see him have a chance. Now, that's remarkable. He's angry at the man. He doesn't like the man. But he was glad God gave him maybe a second chance to repent now. And he said, I don't, he never did. He said, but I get my daughter in the second resurrection. And I don't know what God's going to do with him because he has to repent. There's a point where we have to turn things over to God, too.

Now, think about that, because if you're being reconciled to God, are you going to go to God and say, God, I'm so glad you've reconciled me to you and I'm your child. And here's one of your children that's really been mean to me. Please, you know, just bring them down. Be like Job. Just make them sick, wipe out everything. I mean, what are you going to ask for? Would you please put that person in a lake of fire? I mean, think about it. What are you going to ask for? Now, there's okay, there's times to ask for justice. But sometimes when we're right with God, we ask for God help that person to repent, because if they don't, they have to deal with this between them and you.

You put it where the real sin has taken place. They sinned against God. Sometimes when you see it that way, you'll think, ah, what they did to me isn't that important. God, help me to get over this and, you know, just forgive them, please. You find yourself actually asking for their forgiveness because it's like, this isn't that important, because what am I going to ask for? What am I going to ask for when I realize the price paid for me? Now, Andy did not tell that man, you don't deserve to go to jail for the rest of your life. He says he deserved it 100 percent. That was the penalty for the terrible crime he committed. He also said, if my daughter hadn't been involved in those things, she wouldn't have been where she was. She has some culpability in what happened here. But in his remarkable view of it, you know, something he's never gotten over, he understood, I can be healed by God, and you can, if you repent, if not, you stay who you are.

It had been easy to say killing, right? Because I don't know which is worse. Capital punishment or life in prison? I really don't. Life in prison is terrible, right?

I just, I've always admired Andy for his, that, but you know, he's never been the same from it, but from that viewpoint, and we did that BT program on it. Forgiveness means giving up the expectation for that person to meet your needs.

I don't expect you to heal me. I hope we can be reconciled, but I don't expect you to heal me.

I just, I'm, I'm hoping that we can have a reconciliation. It's deciding not to be obsessed, and that's the hardest thing. Andy's talked about how hard it is not to be obsessed by it even now, decades later. You have to give up the obsession. Boy, that's hard. Where's the justice, right? And how come the person can't heal me? Well, they can't if they're not repentant.

So then what this means is in the Christian family, desiring to restore the relationship as brothers and sisters, and being working towards reconciliation. Reconciliation, reconciliation can take a long time. It took God a long time to get us to reconcile to Him, didn't it? We're still being reconciled. We're still messing up. He's still sometimes a fender bias, but He's God. So we live, and He still loves us. When you refuse to give up the obsession, two things happen. One is you fall deeper and deeper into despair, and even then when the person does repent, you may not forgive them. You're so deep into your own despair, you can't forgive. That can happen. And so you just refuse to reconcile, even though that person may now repent. That person may come back and say, I'm sorry I did that to you. You know, that was what I cheated you, and it was wrong. And I've asked God to forgive me, and I'm asking you to forgive me. And you say, I can't forgive you. What you did to me, you know, cost me thousands of dollars, and I just can't forgive you. You shouldn't even be in the church. We get so locked into the obsession that we can't forgive. But here's something that's just that's so bad for us. You get locked into the obsession because someone's done some something bad to you. You will get stuck emotionally in that moment, and you'll stay in it. It's like watching a movie over and over. I mean, some of you probably have a movie you watch. You can remember the lines, right? I mean, okay, the women won't know this, but how many guys know you can't handle the truth? No, you don't raise your hand. Right? Yeah. A couple of hands. You can't handle it, right? We've seen the movie, or at least we've seen the movie a couple of times, and every once in a while, when we're surfing YouTube, it's like, oh, the scene! And you click it again. I've done that a couple of times. I've watched that probably three or four times on YouTube over the last 20 years, just because it's a great acting scene. Part of it was improvised. I won't get into that. That gets someplace else. But anyways, we get trapped in that, and we can't get out of it. And then we just become more and more obsessed until we're defined by our hurt. We're defined by what other people have done to us. Are you not glad that Christ isn't defined by what human beings did to Him?

Forgive the Father that they do not know what they do. He knew who He was, and that could not define who He is. What other people did to Him could not define who He is. We're not that way yet, but that's where we're supposed to go.

That means we have to give up the need for the other person to control the other person's response. And that sometimes we don't get justice. Sometimes it just doesn't happen. Not in this life. They never repent. The damage is done, and we live with it. And the damage may be real. The damage may hurt you for the rest of this physical life. And no justice is done yet.

But we have to give up. And I'll just say this because I don't want to get into that too deeply here. We'll talk about that some when we're in the classes. But this is especially true with someone who was abused as a child. Either physically beat up or just verbally just destroyed or sexually abused. They can't get many times the parent to admit the damage they did. Or they justify it. Or try to make them feel like it was their fault. Well, if you've been a good kid, I wouldn't have beat you up all the time. You wouldn't have had a broken nose and black eyes all the time. If you'd have just been a good kid. And that's not justice because nobody should be doing that to a child. Right? So they have to live with the fact that they can't expect that response. And I have talked with many people in just tears because a parent died and never said they were sorry. I mean, and did terrible things to them. Terrible things. Gone to jail for the things they did to their child. And yet, they never said they were sorry. And they're just like, all I wanted was that. Because then I would be healed. And the thing is, no, you wouldn't. You'd be partly healed. The healing from the abuse comes from God. It comes from God. Now, if someone does something and says they're sorry, that helps. And you can then sometimes have a little bit of a relationship. Right? There could be some discussion. There could be a bit of a relationship, even though what was done was terrible, because there's repentance on the part of the other person. But we can't always, by the way, even Paul says, live peaceably with all men as much as you can. There's some people you can't live in peace with. They're going to cause conflict all the time. And some of those people, you just have to step out of their lives. Only interact with them when you absolutely have to. Because what can you do? You're in constant conflict, which isn't what God wants us to be. Conflict is part of this world. But sometimes you have to step out of someone's life because they just... they're in constant conflict. Usually it's because they're so damaged, they're just filled with anger and angst and hatred, you know. And there's no reaching them. Only God can heal them. Ladies, I've seen women marry a man thinking she's going to fix them. Never works. Now, you marry a good man, you will help him be a better man. If you marry a good man, you will help him be a better man. Because that's what one of the abilities God gave you. They help him be a better man. But if... so you think I'm going to fix him, right? Because I've decided to help him be a better man. Yeah, well that doesn't always work. If you have a better man, you have to fix him, right? Because I've decided to help him be a better man. Yeah, well that doesn't always work if you have that attitude. God does things. Pray for your husband, pray for your wife, and then do your part.

Seek God's solution instead of fulfillment of your own expectations. You have to pray for God's solution. Sometimes God's solution isn't what you think it should be, or isn't even what you want.

I've literally had discussions where the man or woman said, you know what? I was literally going to leave my husband, my wife. You can fill in the blank. I mean, this is numerous conversations. And then I went to God and said, what am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to expect? And the answer was, well, why don't you be a better husband or better wife?

So that's what I did. I dedicated my time to be a better husband or a better wife, and you know, he changed or she changed, or I saw him differently, or I saw her differently. They weren't that bad after all. Their expectations changed because they asked God to give them the proper expectations, and they asked God to give them the solution. But we're back to, if I wait for God to give me the solution, what if it's not what I want?

Well, if it's not what I want, then, well, I've got to find another solution.

I had a conversation with a man who called me this week. He's not in the United Church of God, and he's had much conflict with ministers in the United Church of God because he calls them up and he just berates them over. I don't know what he berates. It just, so he called me up and asked my opinion on something. He said, I want to be baptized. I said, okay, talk to your local pastor. No, I'm going to talk to you. I said, okay, okay, here's what I want you to do. I want you to spend the next month or two studying everything the Bible says about pride and humility.

Needless to say, he didn't want to talk to me.

Just do that. Just, I mean, every day, spend an hour studying about pride and humility, humility before God. Just do that.

He wanted a different solution. He just wanted to be baptized.

So he may never call me again. I don't know.

And then, seek God's healing of your damaged emotions. This is the last one. Psalm 34.

I'm preparing these classes. It made me think about a lot.

I went back. I wrote a book on a spiritual conflict back years ago. And I went back and had to read my book and prepare for the class. And I thought, man, this guy is pretty cutthroat. I can't believe he's interfering in my life so much. It's like being convicted by your own writings, you know. Oh, man. Yeah, this is right.

Psalm 34 verse 17.

The righteous cry out and the Lord hears and delivers them out of their troubles. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart and saves as such who have a contrite heart. In other words, he says it's in these trials, these troubles, this dysfunction of living in Satan's world that God saves us because we turn to him. He's the one who heals us. He's the one who directs us. Now, sometimes we don't want his direction. In all honesty, we have to face that. We don't want to go where he's going to take us.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous, verse 19, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.

Matthew 11. Matthew 11. You know, this has become a cliche. This really has become a cliche. And we don't think about applying it to conflict with another person or conflict with people, at work or conflict with their family. We don't think about this.

Matthew 11. We just want other people to heal us. Sometimes they just do what I want and then I'll feel okay. But you know, if you had everybody in the world doing what you want, you'd be miserable because you'd make everybody else miserable, right? Because you'd be God and none of us are qualified to be God. Matthew 11.28. Christ says, Come to me, all you who are labor and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Now we read this nice cliche. No, it's the reality. God says, Come to me. And remember, you're here because Jesus Christ made it possible. He's a propitiation. He's what we do so that you can come to us. And He says, Give it to me. And then follow the directions. Follow where you're led. Give it to me and follow where you're led.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. Learn from Him.

Follow His life, His example. For I am gentle and lonely in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Souls there, it's just used... I mean, you could put the word life in there. You will find rest for your life.

Because conflict puts us in turmoil all the time. All the time. Only God can completely heal us at the core damage of what we've done to each other. What we've done as human beings to each other, only God can heal.

Only God.

Remember that. Then go deal with the person who sinned against you. Now, if they're going to respond properly, guess what they have to do? That same process that you just went through. They have to be healed by God for the damage to their very core nature. They have to not expect you to respond the way they want you to. Like, you know, well, yeah, that wasn't a big thing. You're just being picky and small to be offended. No, you're not going to do that because you're not reacting to their expectations. You're reacting to what I should do that's best for them.

So then that person has to do the same thing, has to go through the exact same process. Now, after the potluck, we will meet in the fellowship room. And I have a number of proverbs that I would like to read and then have a discussion on how do we apply it to this process. Actually, there are dozens and dozens of proverbs on this very subject. So we'll go through a few of them and have a discussion on it.