TLP 539: Biblical Conflict Resolution, Part 5 | make time for potential conflict

If there's a relationship that needs reconciling, there's nothing more important we could be doing than taking the necessary steps to reconcile it. Parenting isn't about us. In fact, parenting isn't even about our kids.

Parenting is just one way Christian dads and moms are to worship God. So welcome to the Truth, Love, Parent podcast, where we train dads and moms to give God the preeminence in their parenting. I'm your host, AM Brewster, and today we're taking the next step in the biblical conflict resolution process.

We've prepared ourselves by prepping our worldview, our reaction, our focus, and the target of our retaliation. Now we should finally be in the right frame of mind to actively pursue reconciliation. But as they say, timing is everything.

Or at least it can be. We're going to spread this information over three shorter episodes because there are three unique facets involved in making the time for conflict. We need to make time for conflict, make time for resolution, and we also have to make time for time.

I'll explain what I mean by that in a few episodes. For now, let me remind you that nearly every episode of Truth, Love, Parent comes with free episode notes, transcripts, and related resources. So always make it a point to click on the links that are available to you.

Now let's begin. Time is a concept over which many have studied and conjectured and argued and even experimented. It is not my intention to start this episode by putting to rest the nature of time and our relationship to it, but I do want to make some biblical observations about it.

Biblical Observations Concerning Time

1. Biblical Observations Concerning Time. First, God exists outside of time. Time didn't exist until God created it, so it didn't exist before He created it. Also, God's omnipresence extends not just to space but also to time.

That means that He exists outside of time as well as at all points in time simultaneously. At least, you know, from our perspective. It's actually my personal opinion that a major factor of God's otherness is His omnipresence.

Bording and believers will one day be sinless just as God is sinless. We will be in perfected bodies. We will be holy, but we will not be God or gods. We will still be strapped to time in a way that God is not.

Again, this is a huge conversation, but I thought it'd be fun to share those opinions with you. 2. God, in His perfect knowledge and wisdom, ordained that humans would exist in time. This is actually really important.

You see, we take so many things for granted. As an example, we take human language for granted. Have you ever stopped to consider that God did not have to create us to communicate via language? We could have read minds.

Our feelings could have manifested in the color of our skin like the adorable creatures in the movie Home. Or we could have functioned off of a hive mind principle. We could have felt our way through life instead of using words.

But God decided that verbal, written, and signed language would be required for us to share ideas with each other. In the same way, we too often take time for granted. We don't stop to consider that it was absolutely best for us to exist in time and experience time as we do.

No other state of being we could imagine would have been a better choice for us. This means that God ordained the experience of time, which includes waiting, urgency, the need for patience, the feeling of a lack of time, and the requirement that some things simply demand more time than others.

And third, God expects us to redeem the time we have. In the same way that someone who was born anywhere from the late 1800s to the early 2000s could have used a coupon for a discount on a product, God wants us to use our time in the way He intended us to use it.

And how does He want us to use our time? He wants us to glorify Him on this earth by worshiping Him as we act as His ambassadors to all men. So, God created time and exists outside of time, in part, because He knew that that would be best for us.

Therefore, He definitely has expectations for how we use our time. And since we live in a fallen world, much of that time is going to be used resolving conflict. But before we talk about making time for conflict, I would like to take a moment to remind you that I am available to travel and speak for your events and occasions.

It may be a conference like the one Andrew Rappaport and I just did in upstate New York called the Our Responsibility in This World Conference. By the way, you can watch that conference in the Evermind app for free.

Just click on the AM Brewster Ministries tab, select the conference, and enjoy. But I also do breakout sessions and workshops. I speak at camps and schools, and I love doing retreats. I speak often to young people, parents, couples, and whole families.

I love training school teachers, biblical counselors, and pastors. And I spend a lot of time speaking in churches, on podcasts, radio shows, and the like. If you would like to request that I speak at your next event, you can visit ambrewster .com or you can use the Evermind app.

Just open the app, select the Evermind app overview in the Learn section, click on AM Brewster Ministries, and select Preaching and Speaking. In fact, just to make it easy, I'll put links in the description of today's episode so you can easily access the speaker request form at ambrewster .com or in the Evermind app.

I'm looking forward to speaking at the Christian Responsibility in an Un-Christian World conference in Vail, Arizona from August 8th to the 10th. I'll be there with Andrew Rappaport from Striving for Eternity, Kevin Hay, John Sampson, Dan Kraft, Dominic Grimaldi, and Jay Miller.

I also have the privilege of doing a breakout session at the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors this October. I'll be discussing Counseling Sorrowing Children. I hope to engage with you and your community soon, and if you're in the area for any of those conferences, please connect with me.

Don't Run from Reconciliation

All right, now let's get into our topic of the day as we strive to make the time. Number two, don't run from resolution. Some people avoid relationships because they're a ripe opportunity for conflict and they avoid trying to resolve conflict because it's so often just another opportunity for more conflict.

But Christians should pursue relationships regardless of the potential for conflict, and they should never run from trying to resolve it. Let's start with the personal side of this equation. Letter A, when conflict is your fault.

Let's say that you were the one who introduced sin into the disagreement, thereby creating conflict. Matthew 5, 23 -24 commands, Therefore, if you are presenting your offering at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go.

First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering. Now this is very straightforward, but there are multiple concepts in this command. First, it's more important to God that you resolve conflict than it is that you go through important religious observances.

God wants us to reconcile with the person against whom we've sinned before reconciling with him. Why do you think that is? Well, if there's unconfessed sin in our lives, God cannot be pleased with us.

We're not giving him the worship he deserves when we knowingly refuse to confess and forsake that sin in our lives. Second, the phrase, your brother has something against you, is really interesting. It doesn't specifically say that you've sinned against them.

There's room in this phrase for simple disagreement. But the key focus is that whatever the disagreement is, the relationship is in need of reconciling. It's that fact that reveals that most likely sin probably was involved as you disagreed.

Here's a revealing question for you. Do you avoid confessing and asking for forgiveness when you're wrong? Let's be honest. We all do. And there are two main reasons for this. Ignorant people don't know they're wrong.

This may sometimes be the case, but I don't believe ignorance is really the main problem in most of our lives. I believe many Christians deep down inside recognize when they've sinned. And if we don't, shame on us.

That pretty much means we aren't daily reading, studying, and meditating on the Bible. Because if we were, we would see our sin better. For most of us, our issue is that prideful people can't believe they're wrong.

Everyone always does what they believe is best. Therefore, it's quite easy to assume that what we believe and say and do is clearly the right thing. Of course, both sides believe themselves to be right, even though it's impossible for them both to have been right.

This is why I believe God didn't say, Now, obviously, in situations where we are convicted of our sin by the Holy Spirit, we clearly need to reconcile. And praise God when those situations happen. But most of the time, we don't just conclude out of the blue that we must have been doing wrong in that disagreement.

That's because we're naturally going to assume we're right and they're wrong. So God said, if you remember that your brother has something against you, go and be reconciled. In the majority of conflict, we're going to have a pretty good idea if our brother has something against us.

It was likely very evident from the conversation or from how they're responding to us afterward. And that's the impetus into which God says we need to lean. We need to be humble enough to recognize that we far too often don't know when we're wrong, but also that we could very likely be wrong.

And if there's a relationship that needs reconciling, there's nothing more important we could be doing than taking the necessary steps to reconcile it. And this is helpful for the arrogant person as well.

The prideful person doesn't believe they could have sinned in the situation, but the arrogant person won't admit it, even if they recognize they did wrong. Either way, humility is the answer. We must put what we think and believe and feel aside in order to pursue biblical reconciliation with our brothers and sisters.

And this is so important that God wants us to prioritize it over our relationship with.

Him.

Now, I know how strange that sounds, and that's probably because it's only half the truth. We prioritize God when we prioritize our horizontal reconciliation and obedience to Him. It's easy for us to pray and ask God to forgive us, quote unquote, but it too often is so much harder to humble ourselves and ask the other humans to forgive us.

There are many reasons for this. Too bad we can't go into all of them today. The point is, when you have sinned against someone, God says it's your responsibility to pursue reconciliation in a timely manner.

When I say timely manner, I'm basing that off of the events of the verse and how they're to transpire. The individual who remembered their brother had something against him was taking his sacrifice to the priest.

It was a planned and scheduled event, but God said, stop what you're doing, go be reconciled, and then finish your sacrifice. There's an immediacy to this command. It doesn't even leave room for finishing our current task.

It requires action. But before we impact that anymore, there's another side to conflict we need to discuss. Letter B, when conflict is not your fault. Let's read Luke 17 3, be on your guard. If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him.

In this situation, it was the other person who sinned. Now, I don't think I really have to expand this too much. We're generally pretty good when confronting people who've sinned against us. And by good, I mean, like, we do it.

We don't necessarily do it well. And you know, at least we're sometimes even good at giving them consequences. We may blow up at them or we may pull away from them, but either way, we're giving them the consequences we think they deserve.

But please recognize the trajectory of this process. Where to go to the individual who sinned? Rebuke him by using the scriptures to help him see how his actions displease the Lord and call him to repentance with the goal of granting forgiveness and being reconciled.

Matthew 8 15 and following has the same focus. Let's read verse 15. If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private. If he listens to you, you've won your brother. And that is the goal. This is not about punishment.

This isn't about proving to them that we were right. This is about winning your brother or sister. It's about repenting and forgiving and being reconciled. Now, neither of these verses communicate the same type of element that the previous passage did, but I think we can all agree that the command is clear.

If there is sin, we must deal with it as soon as possible. If your brother sins, go and show him his fault. If both parties are pursuing biblical resolution to their conflict, whether they sinned in the disagreement or not, they should be moving toward the other person.

One may have sinned and the other didn't. They both may have sinned. It doesn't matter. There are clear biblical commands that they both need to make time to address the conflict. Our main point today is don't run from the conflict.

And I've talked a lot about resolution. I think I may be stepping on the toes of our next episode. But there are two sides to this. A, don't run away from the conflict without reconciling in a Christ honoring way.

And B, if you did run from conflict without reconciling, don't avoid reconciling simply because you're afraid more conflict may arise. And that really is the main point of today. We'll talk a little bit more about resolution next time.

But if you're in a situation and there's already been conflict, the temptation to not want to go and deal with it because simply more conflict might arise is a huge issue. And I look forward to looking at the small little book of Philemon with you guys later.

It's a beautiful little picture of two men who were in a situation of conflict. And what did Paul do? He encouraged them to come together. Do not be afraid of potential conflict. God's not given us a spirit of fear, but he's given us a sound mind.

He's given us love. He's given us everything we need to glorify him. So do not run from the conflict. Make time for potential conflict. And I say potential, obviously not because you're going to go in there and sin, but because you want to enter into this time of potential conflict because you're hoping that there won't be conflict and that'll be an opportunity for reconciliation instead.

The Matthew 18 passage talks about what we're to do if the person who sinned refuses to acknowledge it. We're just supposed to keep going back. We don't have the right to avoid trying to reconcile simply because we're afraid they're just going to cause more conflict.

We have a point and we need to keep going back to them pursuing resolution and reconciliation. So in that way, make time for conflict. As we close, here are a couple of introspective questions for you.

Number one, is there a particular person or people to whom you avoid confessing and asking forgiveness? Two, if you do avoid confessing and asking for forgiveness from these people, why? Most likely it's an issue of pride and potentially arrogance.

Yes, it may be ignorance. Perhaps your father woefully taught you that a man doesn't owe his family an apology. Maybe you've bought the feminist lie that women can do no wrong. That's possible that you've bought those lies, but most likely you're stubbornly refusing to even consider the fact that you may have done something wrong in the first place, even when the other person is acting like or saying that you did.

Those are the questions you need to consider when you have sinned. But what about when others have sinned against you? Number one, do you avoid confronting people when they sin? It's quite possible that there are some people you have no issue confronting, but there are others you do because you are simply afraid of what's going to happen.

So number two, is there any particular person or category of people you avoid confronting when they sin? Try to figure that out. Why this group and why not that group? What am I really afraid of? And three, if you do avoid confronting people who have sinned against you, why?

It's quite possible you are believing a lie that it's not appropriate for you to confront someone about sin. We fall into this trap when the sinner is an authority of ours. The Bible expects that we confront our authority when they need it, but it also expects us to do it in the right way.

But most likely we don't confront people because of fear. We even do this with our kids. Fearful parenting is a real problem where we don't teach and reprove our kids because we're afraid of the fallout we're going to endure, or at least potentially endure.

But fear is pride. Fear says that my own perceived well-being is more important than obeying God. Now we have to be done, but please don't assume that this episode is giving you permission to immediately lay into the other person in any kind of sinful way you want.

We haven't yet discussed what this confrontation over proof even looks like yet. We're only talking about making the time for it. We need a plan. Pick a day. Schedule a time. Get ready because it needs to happen and it needs to happen soon.

The longer we go on not reconciling, the longer we're sinning against God. That's the when, the how will come in a few episodes. So please share this episode on X or Facebook or Instagram or wherever else you interact with your community.

And if you need some assistance making the time for this conflict, please write us at counselor at truthloveparent .com or call 828 -423 -0894. And then join us next time as we discuss making time for resolution.

Truth Love Parent is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you worship God through your parenting. So join us next time as we study God's Word to learn how to parent our children for life and godliness.

And remember that TLP is a listener supported ministry. You can visit truthloveparent .com forward slash donate to learn more.