Enemies Within The Walls: Failing To Reconcile (part 2)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Our Father in heaven, Lord, what a blessing it is to be here this morning, to just be surrounded by your people, to be here to worship you, to learn more about you, to look at your word, see how we ought to interact with one another, love one another, resolve our differences with one another, and Father, in the process, glorify you.

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We pray that you would bless this time, in Jesus' name, amen. Well, I was thinking about the history of conflict this week.

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The history of conflict. It also could be the history of sin.

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What was the first sin? Ever. Gary.

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Eve ate the fruit. That is so close. The angels falling from heaven.

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That's pretty good. Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. The devil lied.

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That's sort of closer. Satan's rebellion. Somebody said without raising their hand.

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Yes. He's the father of all lies.

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In other words, the progenitor. He's the one. So that was the first one that we have recorded.

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And obviously, some angels sinned and fell with him, right? What would be the next sin?

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And by the way, I'm going to give you a hint. It's not Eve taking the apple. What is it?

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Doubting God's word. Really distorting God's word, yeah, but all very true.

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And then the first sin not committed by Satan, Eve, or Adam that we see recorded in scripture is?

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I'm sorry. Cain. Now, each of these really have it as their roots, some kind of conflict.

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I mean, we could argue, you know, with Satan, it was just pride. But what did he do? Scripture says he rebelled.

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He wanted to overthrow God. So if that's not conflict, I don't know what is. You say, well, how did

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Eve have conflict? Well, she distorted God's word. She listened to Satan.

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Then Adam compliantly followed his wife. You know what

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I really like about Adam, though? And you've probably heard me say this a million times. But what I really love about Adam is he is not the father of sin.

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He is the father of blame shifting. I love

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Adam. I mean, he is like one of the classic sinners in all of the

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Bible because you'll hear your kids do this all the time. And you'll think, where did you learn that? You know,

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I'm just a child of my father, Adam. He taught me how to do this. It's the woman you gave me.

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It's not my fault. And actually, what's he saying? It's not even really her fault.

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It's your fault, God, because you gave me this wife. That's amazing when you think about it.

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Now, getting back to where we were, I was just, you know, just throw that out there.

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But it does drive this question I wanted to kind of cover. Why do we have conflict? Why is it that two people who believe the same thing can disagree?

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Okay, because they think higher of themselves than they ought to? Pride, which when we go back to, as we were saying earlier, you know, the original sin, the original sin, by the way, is not the original sin.

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I guess we'd have to have a pre -original sin, which is Satan following. But, yeah, pride is a big problem because we think more of ourselves than we should.

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Yeah, anything else? The desire to have things we don't want.

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I'm going to tell you, greed is probably at the heart, pride and greed are probably the heart of almost every sin you can name.

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And when it comes to crime, I've said this on many occasions, you talk to any criminal, and if you can get past the veneer of, you know,

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I'm innocent, whatever, if you ultimately get down to it, why did you steal thus and such?

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Why did you hit so and so? It's always because I thought I was better than they were, or they had it,

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I wanted it, I deserve it, I took it. That's the nature of most sin.

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So we have conflict for, any other thoughts? I mean, greed, pride, and really,

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I mean, if we want to say, we could say pride nicer, we could say a lack of humility.

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In other words, we didn't consider someone else more important than ourselves, but what is that ultimately?

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It just comes back to pride. I thought more of myself than I should. Russ? Vengeance is mine, saith the

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Steve. Yeah, revenge, anger. But again, you know, what is that?

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It is kind of pride. Why would I say that? Because if I'm seeking vengeance,

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I'm not trusting God, who says he will avenge things.

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I'm like, no, I got this one. This is on me. Okay? What's the best way to resolve conflict?

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The best way. What's that? If you get into a conflict with Becky, get yourself dueling pistols, because that's where you're going.

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Ten steps. Here, Becky's on this side. You go one, two, three, and you've got lead in your back.

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She goes, I said ten, but I meant three. Arm wrestling is the best way to resolve conflict.

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It may not be, but it works with unbelievers. I'll tell you that. Sometimes. It might not work, you know, for girls.

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I don't know. Okay, you know what?

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That is a great answer. Focus on the cross. Why is that a great answer? The things of earth, all the things that just seem so important.

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And, you know, let's just focus on that for a minute, because when you think about it, all the things that we do,

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I mean, all the things we've been talking about for all these weeks, why do we have arguments? Well, if a third party stepped into most arguments, and by the way, that's what a police officer does, right?

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Third party shows up at your door. Now, you have to have been arguing for a while for the cops to actually show up at your house, because somebody had to have taken the time to call, then they had to dispatch a unit, and, you know, who knows.

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I mean, the station where I worked at, you know, and basically our response time was two to five minutes. That is world record, earth -shattering response time.

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Typically, you know, it's 15, 20 minutes. I'll just tell you a little story. One time my grandmother, she lived right on the

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Inglewood, L .A. border, and she called up and she said, this is before 9 -1 -1.

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I mean, this is like, you know, a long, long time ago. She called up and she said, you know, I hear somebody outside the window.

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I'm afraid, you know, I'm here alone, da -da -da -da, please send a unit. Well, the police called her back an hour later, and they said, do you still hear him?

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Now, think about that. That's pretty dopey, right? She says, my grandmother,

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I don't know where the sarcasm comes from, but it might be from my grandmother. She says, oh, don't worry about it,

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I shot him. They were there in two minutes.

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She was a pretty funny lady, I'll tell you that. Now, where was

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I? I forgot. You know, I was going to say, maybe the best way to resolve things, think of the cross, think of things in light.

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Oh, yeah, I was talking about third party. Third party walks in on almost any argument that you have in your home. I don't care whether it's with your kids, whether it's you and your spouse, whatever it is.

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A third party walks into the room, and what are they going to say? I think nine times out of ten, they're going to go, what in the world are you people arguing about?

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He didn't put the dish soap away? You know, she didn't get the tires checked?

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Whatever the situation is, really? This is what you guys have been hollering about for 15 minutes?

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20 minutes, however long it took the cops to get there? Really? Really? Most of the arguments that we have,

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I'm going to tell you folks, most of them are not really, you know, she used the wrong credit card?

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Really? There's no other way to resolve this other than to exchange insults, yell at each other, stomp around the house.

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I think there might be. I'm going to get back to where we were, but I just want to say a couple things.

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You know, again, I want to stress this. I think the best way to resolve arguments is to not get in them, and that goes with thinking about the cross, also thinking about how we communicate.

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I've said it before, I'll say it again. There's rarely such thing as a one -person argument. It's rough.

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Try it sometime. Argue by yourself. It gets really, it's tiring. If one person's arguing and the other person says, you know what,

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I just don't want to argue. I just don't want to go there. You know, it's, can we talk about this later?

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And the other person keeps yelling and yelling and yelling. Eventually, the person who's not yelling can say, I'm not really sure why you're arguing or why you're yelling, but I really don't want to.

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A lot of the air goes out of the balloon. If we learn to communicate calmly, to think about what we're going to say ahead of time, the impact it's going to have on the other person.

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Now, here's a real stunner. If we think how we might communicate biblically, in a

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God -honoring, glorifying way. I don't know too many arguments that start with, you know what, honey,

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I've been thinking about it in light of the cross, in light of the love I need to have for you and show to you, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

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Then, you know, maybe you could consider this. Not too many arguments start like that.

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How do arguments typically start? Something like, what were you thinking? How could you, that's how arguments start.

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And you know, I think some of us are kind of surprised. I'll be the officer,

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I'll show up at your house, you can be the person telling me what happened. Okay, ma 'am, why don't you explain to me what happened?

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Well, I just asked him a simple question. What made him think that this was a good idea and he got upset?

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Or I told her, you know, I didn't ever want to hear her talk again and she got mad at me.

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I don't understand it. We act like, you know, to use a military metaphor, we act like we're surprised when we pull the pin, throw the grenade in the room, and then an explosion goes off.

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I got news for you, folks, that's what happens. There are consequences to the things that we do and we say.

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Best way to resolve conflict is to not have it in the first place. Okay, so somebody asked me a question.

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Any thoughts or questions about that? Anybody want to confess? No, please don't. Any thoughts or comments about that before I move on?

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Okay, somebody asked a question at the end of time last week and I thought at the end of time, you know, when the

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Lord returned last week. By the way, somebody I know, you know, you have to watch your

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Facebook friends. You know, sometimes I'm just like, no, a guy I went to school with, I didn't really go to school with,

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I knew him back in L .A., he went to school, seminary and all that, and he posted something about, this was in the last 10 days or so, about when

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Ariel Sharon dies, that means the Lord's returning like, and I just thought, uh -oh, you know, that happened

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Friday, and then we were reading here this morning in Revelation about the two witnesses, and I go, you know, what if he's one of the witnesses, and on the third day, you know, wow, we could be in for a surprise.

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My IBS class might never take place, so we'll see. Anyway, somebody asked this question.

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Does offending someone mean that you've sinned against them? Not always, right?

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Now, it could be that. It could be that you've sinned against them.

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On the other hand, what else could be true? They're having a bad day.

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You could have offended them with the gospel. True. They took it the wrong way. Okay, there's the easiest one.

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They just disagree with your viewpoint. That's an excellent one.

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Or was that just a statement? I need a drink of water after that.

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That's really good. It could be a defense mechanism about something deeper that's going on. Yes, they could be upset, because you might have, as older people like to say, you might have struck a nerve.

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I don't know what they say anymore. I'm not that cool. I'm kind of old. In fact, I think it was my generation that coined the phrase struck a nerve.

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You might have struck a nerve. Why? Why is that? Because sometimes there are sins that we've committed that we've not recognized as sins.

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Somebody says something, and it goes what? It pierces us, as the

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Bible would say, to the heart. And so all of a sudden, we're mad at that other person.

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Why? Because maybe the Lord has used them to rip open an old wound that we were just kind of covering up a sin that we have never properly dealt with, and now we're not very happy.

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I can start a few fights at home too. That's really good.

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That's something we need to be really careful of. Charlie said we may say something about the sovereignty of God, for example, that's true, but not really considering or maybe not even knowing what impact that statement would have on somebody else because of experiences they've had in their own life.

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And so they hear this statement, and it really doesn't matter to them the truth of it.

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Well, I'll give you an example, a really kind of a classic example. I think there are any number of people who want to lower the bar of salvation because they have loved ones, and they don't want to think about them being in hell facing the wrath of God, and so what do they do?

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They lower that bar so that their loved ones, no matter what kind of life they led, are in heaven.

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When you go to funerals today, and this is something else that you see on Facebook, I really don't care what the situation is.

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By the way, on Facebook, you never want to say something like, yeah, I'm really sorry, somebody you knew from high school,

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I'm really sorry that your loved one's now in hell. That would not be a good comment to put on Facebook.

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It might get you unfriended. We need to be sensitive, but we also need to be, when we're listening, we need to think about not necessarily jumping to offense, but this kind of leads into where I wanted to go this morning anyway, talking about how we need to resolve conflict.

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When you go to someone, and I'm going to back up just a second here, if you're going to go to someone to talk to them about an issue, these peacemakers,

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Ken and Sandy, they offer these things, and Carol made a great suggestion, by the way, I'll just confess, I forgot about it until last night, then it was too late to e -mail something out.

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Sorry, sorry, Carol, please forgive me. I said sorry. I'm sorry,

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I'm sorry, I said sorry. Forgive me again. And they recommend these steps, and I think these are really good ones.

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Before you go to talk to somebody about resolving conflict, about something that you feel compelled to talk to them about, they say that you should pray for humility and wisdom.

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And this goes right back to Matthew 7, verses 2 to 5 for me.

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Why? Why would I say that? When you want to pray for humility and wisdom, why would

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I say that? That takes me right back to Matthew 7, verses 2 to 5. Stephen. So you don't have the log in your own eye.

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You want to deal with any kind of fault that you may have in the situation, and also, you know, any similar.

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I mean, imagine, what is the definition of hypocrisy? What is the definition?

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I mean, we all should know that since we all do it. Charlie. Standing in judgment of the same thing that you yourself do.

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I do it, but boy, when I see it in others, I can't stand it.

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So we want to make sure that we're not being hypocritical. You know, if you want to talk to somebody, if you're a lady and you want to talk to another lady about how they dress, if you're a guy, you want to talk to them about, you know, you've noticed that they watch every woman as they walk down the aisle, whatever, you know, whatever you think it is, whatever you feel compelled that you need to talk to somebody else about, if you do it, if it's your language, whatever it is, and you're doing it too, well, you need to just confess, and then, well, we'll get on to that.

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But that's number one. Pray for humility and wisdom. Why wisdom? Because you want to make sure that you approach things in the right way, and you'd like to think that the way that you're going to talk to that person will do what?

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Resolve things. Glorify God. Maybe help the other person too.

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That would be great. That's, you know, win, win, win. That's what you want. Which leads into the second one.

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They say, plan your words carefully. Then they say, think of how you would want to be confronted.

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Plan your words carefully. Now, you know, if you're like me, that means you type out a script.

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They say this. Then you say this. Well, that might not work. It would be good, though, to at least think about some different scenarios.

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I watched a show the other day. I'll confess, I was watching a legal show.

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And, you know, this guy said that he had a flow chart for every potential answer, you know, out to hundreds of answers or whatever.

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And I just thought, okay, that's just silly. You know, you can't really do that. But they said, and I think this is helpful, think of how you would want to be confronted.

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If this was me, if I was on the receiving end of this, how would I want somebody to come to me and talk to me?

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You think that's helpful? I think it is. Because, you know, if you can imagine somebody coming up to you and saying, hey,

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Steve, I'd like to smack you around with a 2x4 for a while. Well, okay, sure.

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But sometimes that's how we handle it because sometimes we don't know how to. So think of how it, there's a, you know, it's a golden rule, right?

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Treat others how you want to be treated. The Lord said that, you know. I think it's a very good way to think of things.

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Okay, the third step that they recommend. Anticipate likely reactions and plan appropriate responses. Then they say rehearsals can be very helpful.

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I don't know about that. You know, get all up in costume, maybe have a, no, let's not be silly.

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But I think it doesn't take much.

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How can you anticipate somebody's response? By knowing their personality, true.

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What's another way you can know or anticipate? Past experience. Third way is how would

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I respond if somebody said this to me? So sometimes, you know,

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I mean, if you confront somebody, they might say something like, or if you just come alongside them, you're trying to resolve this conflict.

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They might say something like, well, that's your opinion. And you have to be sort of ready for that.

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And, of course, there could be some responses that you're not going to be ready for. There just are.

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This next one I think is really important. Choose the right time and place. Let me give you a hint.

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In the middle of the sanctuary with a couple hundred people around right after service might not be the best time to have that kind of chat.

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Might not be the best way to go. I've already talked about email, the dangers of that. Here's a really bad one, you know.

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I'm going to confront you via Facebook. I'm going to challenge your thinking right there.

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Choose the right time and place. What does that mean? If you look at Matthew 18, what does it say?

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Go to them in private. So that would be a good one. Of course, there are potential exceptions.

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If it's not your wife or your husband, person of the opposite sex, then there might be issues with confronting in private.

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That might not be the best. But it says choose the right time and place. You know,

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I mean, there are a lot of things that we would think are common sense, but people don't do them.

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You know, go to a person's workplace, interrupt their work day to confront them or something like that.

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Then they do say this, talk in person whenever possible. Why? Okay, facial expressions, yep, right.

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Email is really rough, you know, and you get kind of the nonverbals, you get the feedback and whatnot.

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Other thoughts? Now, I do have to give a warning, though, about nonverbals.

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I think we have to be really careful. I remember once I had a lieutenant call me in his office, and we talked for 15, 20 minutes.

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I really have no idea what this is about. It was the middle of the night because that's when

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I was working. And he said, well, I can tell that even though you're saying that you agree with me, you don't really agree.

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And I said, how can you tell that? And he goes, because you're sitting there with your arms crossed, and that's a nonverbal.

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You know what I said? I said, well, actually, it's cold in here. And it was cold in there.

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I said, I'm cold. I go, I agree with you 100%. I'm just sitting here going like this, going,

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I'm cold. So nonverbals are not, you know, necessarily the best.

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Sometimes they can be helpful, though. If a person says, you know, I agree, and I really appreciate what you're saying, and there are tears streaming down their face, well, that's a nonverbal that might mean something.

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You know, like there might be more to talk about. This next one

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I think is important. Let's look at Proverbs 1127. Proverbs 1127.

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And when somebody has that, would they read it, please? Okay, I don't really understand that.

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Let me look at it again. I'm just going with their notes, and I thought, well, this has to be a good scripture. Well, not necessarily.

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Oh, I guess it has to do with the diligent part about diligently looking.

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Whoever diligently seeks good seeks favor. The point they make, and I think this is a right one, is that we should assume the best about the other person until you have facts to prove otherwise.

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See, I would have probably gone with, and I should have looked it up. I was just making notes all over the place. Didn't look that one up.

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You know, one person seems right, and then you go and get the other side of the story. That's another proverb.

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But I think it is important for us to assume the best, not jump to the worst possible conclusion.

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Why should we not want to jump to the worst possible conclusion? We wouldn't want them to do it to us.

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What else? I think that's a great point, but what else? We can get in trouble.

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I'll tell you what, we'll make the situation worse. Whatever we thought the problem was, well, we just dug it.

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You know, it's like the old proverb, if you're in a hole, stop digging. Well, you just, you know, you're just busting out that shovel, going overtime at it.

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You want to assume the best. Now, there's some reason that you're wanting to talk to them, and, you know, you may have some concerns.

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It may be sin. It may be some conflict you're having with them, whatever it is. But you want to presume, or you want to hope, let's put it that way, hope the best.

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I don't want to say assume. Let's hope the best. We hope all things, right, because we love other people.

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That's why we're going to them in the first place. Well, let's just back up for a second. What's the easiest thing to do when conflict arises?

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Flo says, deal with it right away. That is wrong. Avoid it.

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I said the easiest, not the best thing. I didn't say biblical. Stop that,

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Flo. What's the easiest thing to do is to just forget about it.

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Bury it. Ignore it. Yes, it can be biblical if love covers a multitude of sin.

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But, you know, typically, almost our reflex is to what? Is to just want to avoid it.

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You show me somebody who likes conflict, and I'll show you a person who really doesn't have a lot of friends at all.

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It's a sad life if you like conflict. But we want to hope for the best in the other person.

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We want to hope for the best possible response. I mean, what are we praying for anyway? I mean, when we pray, we're praying, yes, we want to have our hearts right.

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Yes, we want to make sure that we examine ourselves, ask the Spirit to, you know, convict us of any sin that we need to confess, that we need to deal with before we go and talk to that other person.

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But we also, we don't, I'm talking so long,

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I forgot what I was going to say. We don't want to, we want to hope the best.

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We can't presume the best. But we also don't want to go in assuming the worst or anything like that.

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So let me move on. We want to listen carefully. We want to listen carefully.

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Why? Why do we want to, when we go and we talk to these, to this person, we want to listen to their response carefully.

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Why? We might learn something.

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I mean, there might be some extenuating circumstances. Whatever we think the issue is in their life, there might be something that we're just not aware of.

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Charlie. Okay, there might be some nuance that you didn't consider.

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You might have presumed. In fact, I'll go a step further that whatever you presume the conflict is may not even be a conflict.

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You may say, you know what? And they said, well, yeah, that's right, of course. And you go, but I thought, so you might be wrong about the whole thing.

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The other thing, though, is, and here's what I would say, that when you're talking to this other person about whatever the issue is, they might get political on you.

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They might equivocate. They might use doublespeak. Somebody might say,

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I can't even say that. I was about to quote a former president.

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Somebody might say something in such a way where you go, well, that sounds like a denial, but is it really a denial?

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You know, I didn't really do that. Here we go. Here's a quote

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I can use that's safe. It depends on what the meaning of the word is, is.

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What? People have, you can pick up all kinds of clues just listening to what people say.

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And I'm not talking about secondary gestures or whatever. They suggest also, and we've stressed this many times,

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Ephesians 4 .29 says that we should edify, we should build up with our language.

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Speak only to build others up. And I think this even goes back to the beginning.

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When we're praying for humility, for wisdom, we also want to be asking ourselves a basic question, which is, why do

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I want to do this? Why do I want to do this? Is it so that I can impress somebody else?

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What is my motivation? My motivation should be for what? I should have two motivations, really.

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God's glory and what's the other one? What's that? The unity of the body.

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Not really our good. The other person's good, right? If we're thinking rightly, here's my concern going into this conflict resolution.

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I want to glorify God. My second is I want to edify this other person. I want to build them up.

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I want to help them. Everything else is kind of falls under that.

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But, you know, typically here, what do people typically do just from a worldly model?

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What do they do when they go into conflict resolution mode? Okay, but if they will,

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I'll tell you what they do here in a second. Go ahead. Yeah, it's a pecking order thing.

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And I'll, you know, just put it in the street parlance. Here's how these go. You disrespected me.

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I come up to you and I say, you didn't treat me in a way that I deserve to be treated. That's the worldly way of thinking about it, which is the wrong way because it puts yourself up at the top of the food chain.

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My concern is my own glory, my own edification. You know, that's not the way to resolve conflict.

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They say here, and I think this is good, ask for feedback from the other person, communication.

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In other words, you state the problem. They respond or maybe they don't respond.

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And you just say, and by the way, I don't want to put anybody on the psychiatrist couch here and say, how does that make you feel?

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But you do want to know, you know, what's their response? What are they going to do with what you just said?

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And by the way, the wrong way to say that is, what are you going to do about it? But you need to know that they received it.

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Maybe they'll say, you know what? I'm going to have to think about that. I'm going to have to pray about it. I understand what you're saying.

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Okay, well then, would you mind, just so that I know that we're communicating here, would you mind telling me what it is that you think

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I said? You know, just so that we're clear.

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We both understand here, and then, you know, I'm willing to give you a reasonable amount of time to think about it.

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Take 15, 20 minutes. You know, it may take a few days.

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Just like it probably took you a day or two or three to kind of prep yourself up to think and to pray and to look at yourself before you did it.

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It might take them a couple of days to come to the realization that either you're right or you're sort of right or whatever.

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And finally, the last one that they list here is recognize your own limitations.

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And they say only God can change people. And if I say, if I give you 2

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Timothy 2, verses 24 to 26, what does it say? The Lord's bondservant must be gentle because it is the

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Lord who grants repentance. And even in our interpersonal situations, it's the

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Lord that has to convict the other person of their sinfulness, of their need to repent.

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Here's what I tell people when they're going to get married. You know, what's a great temptation? Well, let me just back up a minute here.

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Here's the wrong reason to get married. And this isn't about marriage, by the way. But here's the wrong reason to get married.

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And sadly, I think a lot of ladies, my wife did this. They see somebody who really needs help, and they have an overwhelming desire to help them.

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And so that's why my wife married me. She was like, I think I can really change Steve.

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And by the grace of God, you know, she has. But the wrong way to go about it is to think

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I'm going to take on a project. You know, I'm going to change him. But what

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I tell young couples or older couples, if they're going to get married, is I have news for you.

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You're the husband or you're the wife. And guess what? You're not the Holy Spirit.

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I think probably even among Christian couples, maybe one of the bigger arguments they ever have is it's started by one person or the other deciding that they're going to play the

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Holy Spirit in the other person's life. I'm going to be, you know, it's true, God uses you to sanctify your spouse.

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But a lot of times it's through your frailties, your weaknesses, and your sinfulness, you know, not from your prodding and kicking and whatever.

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I am going to play the role of the Holy Spirit. No, you're not. Only God can change someone.

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Only God can change somebody's mind. If somebody's going to hold their breath and clench their fists and stamp their feet, you can't stop that.

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You can pray for them, you know, but to a certain extent, browbeating somebody,

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I don't know how many of you have ever had your opinion changed by browbeating, but I'm going to guess that it's probably not too many.

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Let's just see a show of, no, we're not doing that. Browbeating usually doesn't work. You know, what does a proverb say about a nagging wife?

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It's worse than a dripping faucet. It's worse than, I'd rather live, I just reword it this way,

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I'd rather live on the corner of the roof of my house than, you know, have a nagging wife.

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That's kind of the idea. I'd rather be outside under the stars, risking falling off onto the ground than, you know, live in the house with my nagging wife.

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That would be the picture. We just need to understand that we are limited.

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We don't know everything, and that's an important part. It's so important to have humility, to know that we don't have all the answers.

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We don't know everything. We don't know their motivations. We don't know their background. We don't know what they're thinking, and we cannot change the other person.

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Only God can do that. And sadly, we're out of time, and I can't change that. So we're going to close in prayer, and we'll pick this up and hopefully finish this next week.

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Lord, we just thank you and praise you for your word, for your spirit, for regeneration, for giving us new hearts, new desires.

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Lord, with the goal ultimately of glorifying you, Father, I pray for especially our marriages.

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Father, I think even for those who are married to unbelievers, and I pray that you would work in our homes to bring about harmony, to bring about greater love, that we might glorify you in these areas.

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Father, for those of us who have children in our homes, I pray that we would be mindful of these things, even with them.

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Lord, that we cannot browbeat or scream or use any sort of physical force and get somebody to change their mind, that we need to bring the right principles to bear, that we need to, first of all, make sure that our own hearts are right.

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Lord, for each one here, I just pray that we would be consistent in examining ourselves, our own faults, our own sins, our frailties, our weaknesses.

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Lord, in every way that we might honor you as we seek to resolve conflict, as we seek to live in harmony with one another.

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Lord, we would just pray that you would grow us as a church and as individual members of the body of Christ, that we might come to love one another, to think the best about each other, and to hope the best about each other.