HOW TO RECONCILE A RELATIONSHIP
The Healing Power of Reconciliation
Part 1
11-17-13 Sermon
“Those
who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of goodness.” James 3:18 (NLT)
THE CAUSE OF CONFLICT: _________________________________
“What leads to strife, discord and feud, and
how do conflicts, quarrels and fighting originate among you? They arise from your own selfish and
sinful desires that are always at war inside you. You are jealous and covet what others have... You burn with envy and anger and aren’t
able to obtain the gratification you seek, so you fight and war. You don’t have because you don’t ask
God.” James 4:1-2 (Amp)
“For the sinful nature is always hostile
to God. It never did obey
God’s laws, and it never will.” Romans
8:7 (NLT)
THE CURE: ______________________
1. Make
Peace_______________________________________________
“At one time you were far away from God and
were His enemies because of the evil things you did and thought. But now, by means of the death of His
Son, God has made you His friends, in order to bring you, holy, pure,
and faultless, into His presence.”
Col. 1:21-22
(GN)
“Everyone
who believes in Jesus is freed from all guilt and declared right with
God —something the Law of Moses could never do.” Acts 13:39 (NLT)
2. Ask
God for Help________________________________________________
“If you want to know what God wants you to
do, ask Him, and He will gladly tell you.” James 1:5 (LB)
3. Convene
a________________________________________________
“If
you’re standing before the altar in the Temple, giving an offering to God, and
you suddenly remember someone has something against you leave your offering
there beside the altar. Go
first and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your gift to God.”
Matt.
5:23-24 (NLT)
4. Confess
my part_______________________________________________
“Why
do you notice the little piece of dust in your friend’s eye, but you don’t
notice the big piece of wood in your own eye? First, take the wood out of your own eye. Then you will see clearly to take the
dust out of your friend’s eye.” Matt.
7:3,5 (NCV)
5. Listen
for_______________________________________________
“Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.” James 1:19 (NLT)
“...we must bear the ‘burden’ of being considerate of the doubts and
fears of others...” Rom.
15:2 (LB)
6.
Be
willing to_______________________________________________
“When
we were unable to help ourselves, at the moment of our need, Christ died for
us, although we were living against God.” Rom. 5:6 (NCV)
“We
were God’s enemies, but we were reconciled to Him through the death of
His Son.” Rom.
5:10 (NIV)
7.
Emphasize_______________________________________________
Reconciliation =
_____________________________________
Resolution =
________________________________________
God’S
GOAL FOR HIS CHURCH
“God
has restored our relationship with Him through Christ, and has given us the
ministry of restoring relationships.
He did not hold people’s faults against them, and He has given us this
message of restored relationships to tell others. We are Christ’s representatives...We beg you on behalf of
Christ to become reunited with God.”
2 Cor. 5:18-20 (GW)
“God
blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the
children of God.” Matt.
5:9 (NLT)
WHO DO I NEED TO
RECONCILE WITH?
HOW TO RECONCILE A RELATIONSHIP
The Healing Power of Reconciliation
Part 1
11-17-13 Sermon
The Bible says in James 3:18 “Those who are peacemakers will plant seeds
of peace. They will reap a harvest
of goodness.” That’s what I
want to happen in your life. As
your pastor, I want your life to harvest a harvest of goodness. But in order to harvest something
you’ve got to plant it first. The
Bible says peacemakers plant seeds of peace.
This week we’re starting a
new series I’m calling “The Healing Power of Reconciliation.” We’re specifically going to look at
today “How do you reconcile a broken relationship?”
“Reconciliation” is just a
long word for “making peace.” When
I reconcile to God I make peace with God.
When I reconcile with you I make peace with you. When nations reconcile with each other
they make peace with each other.
That’s all it means. Making
peace.
This week in the news you
could have read about conflicts all around the world. And, you could have also read about conflicts here in
America.
In the last 3500 years on
planet earth there have been only 286 years of peace between nations. Out of thirty five hundred years of
recorded history, two hundred eighty-six years of peace between nations! We live in a broken, divided,
fragmented world that desperately needs to learn the skills of reconciliation,
the skills of making peace.
This morning as we begin this
series, I want to look at what causes conflict and what is the cure?
When we look at the cause of conflict you don’t have to
go very far in the Bible and it tells us that there are two causes of all
conflicts. Between you and your spouse,
between you and your kids or your parents or your coworkers, between other
people. All conflict boils down to
two words – selfishness and sinfulness.
The Bible says we live on a
broken planet because of sin. The
Bible tells us “All have sinned.” That means me and it means you, it
means the pope, it means everybody.
Nobody bats a thousand.
Nobody’s perfect. The Bible
says, “All fall short.” We all fall short of that level of
perfection. All have sinned.
In the Amplified version of James
4:1-2 tells us real clearly: “What leads
to strife and discord and feuds?
How do conflicts and quarrels and fighting originate among you? They arise from your own selfish and
sinful desires [circle that] that
have always been at war inside of you. [In other words there’s a war in you before there’s a war
in the world.] You’re jealous and you
covet what others have. You burn
with envy and anger and you aren’t able to obtain the gratification you
seek. So you fight and you war and
you do not have because you don’t ask God.”
If you don’t get anything
else I say today I want you to get this first point clearly. It’s this: conflict often occurs between you and somebody else because you expect
them to meet a need in your life that only God can meet. When you expect other people to meet
needs in your life, you expect your husband to meet certain needs in your life
or your wife to meet certain needs or your girlfriend or boyfriend or your mom
or dad or somebody – a client – to meet needs in your life that only God can
meet, you’re going to get disappointed.
You’re going to get discouraged.
You’re going to get bitter.
The Bible says it is when we have unmet needs in our heart it is our own
selfishness and sinfulness that causes us to get angry about it.
Really all of the problems
that are out there in the world start on the inside of us. It’s because there’s chaos in our own
hearts, there’s chaos in the world.
It’s because there’s conflict in our own heart between good and evil,
right and wrong, who’s going to be God, me or God? Because there’s conflict in our hearts, there’s conflict in
relationships. Because there’s
division in my heart, there’s going to be division in the world. God says you’ve got to start on the
inside before you can work on the outside. Until people’s hearts are changed we’re never going to have
peace on earth.
So the cause of conflict is
selfishness and sinfulness. The cure for conflict is reconciliation. As I said, “reconciliation” is just a
big word that means, “making peace.”
It’s taking former enemies and turning them into friends.
How do you do that? There are seven important steps. Notice I didn’t say “easy steps,”
because they are not easy. This may
be a very tough message for you to hear today. Reconciliation – restoring a relationship – is never
easy. Why do it?
Let me give you a statement: it is always more rewarding to restore a
relationship than it is to resent it the rest of your life. It is always more rewarding to restore
a relationship. That doesn’t mean
you’re getting back together with somebody you divorced ten years ago. I’m not saying that. But I am saying restoring a
relationship is better than to resent it the rest of your life. If you don’t have reconciliation, every
time you think of that relationship, it’s going to poke you with pain the rest
of your life. That’d dumb. You can go through life having people
who will poke you with pain every time you just think about them. Stuff that happened ten twenty, longer
years ago. Every time you think
about them it pokes you with pain.
You’ve got to learn how to let it go. So you can get on with your life. You let it go through the steps of reconciliation.
There are seven skills you’re
going to have to learn.
Unfortunately nobody teaches us this growing up. Nobody teaches us how to restore
relationships. But God’s word is
real clear about it.
1. Make peace with God.
First, You need to end your
war with God over who’s going to be in charge of your life. You need to surrender to Him before
you’re able to do any relationship restoring with other people. You make your peace with God.
The only way you’re going to
make peace with God is surrender.
You were made to live with Him as the manager, as the controller, as the
CEO, as the president, as the chairman of the board of your life. You were made to be in contact with
Him. All that other stress in your
life comes because of the war with God.
Where you keep going, “God, I’m
going to do what I want to do, instead of what You want me to do.”
How do you make peace with
God? The Bible says this,
Colossians 1:21-22 “At one time you were
far away from God and were His enemies because of the evil things you did and
you thought. But now, by means of
the death of His Son, God has made you His friends in order to bring you
holy, pure and faultless into His presence.” He’s talking about taking you into heaven.
The Bible says that whatever
Jesus Christ did on the cross allows God to take me to heaven. How do we get that? It says through faith. Not by doing good. Not by trying to be nice. Not by being perfect but just by trusting
faith in what Jesus Christ has done for us. He made us at peace with God.
How do I make peace with
God? There’s only one way – by
faith. “Everyone who believes in Jesus is freed from all guilt and declared
right with God. Something the law
of Moses could never do.”
He says keeping the Ten
Commandments and obeying rules can’t get you into heaven. Why? In the first place you couldn’t even name all ten of
them. So how can you keep them if
you can’t even name them.
In the second place you
started breaking them a long time ago.
And the Bible says if you’ve done it in your heart it’s just like you’ve
done it. But the bottom line is
this. You couldn’t keep them
perfectly. Nobody bats a
thousand.
The good news is this, in
making peace with God, everything you need to make peace with God has already
been done for you. All you need to
do is surrender and accept it by faith.
That’s it. God You’re it. I trust You. I
trust Your Son. I’m going to
follow You.
First make peace with God
yourself. Second…
2. Ask God for help with
the broken relationship.
You pray about it. You always talk to God before you talk
to the person you’ve got the conflict with. You talk to God first.
That’s usually the last thing we do. What we do is we talk to everybody else and we try to get
everybody on our side about how much that person’s hurt you and how wrong they
are and everything like that. God
says No, that’s gossip. You don’t talk to other people about
the person. You talk to Me about
the person. Then after you talk to
Me about the person, then you go talk to them.
This is so important. There are two kinds of reactions to
conflict. You’re either a skunk or
you’re a turtle. Skunks when they
face conflict, they just stink up the place. They let ‘er rip.
They spew all over.
Everybody knows when a skunk’s upset. On the other hand turtles, when they face conflict, they
pull back into a shell. They
hibernate and they run from the conflict.
The fact is it doesn’t matter
whether you clam up or whether you blow up. You’re both wrong.
Neither of those are the appropriate way to handle conflict or anger.
James 1:5 “If you want to know what God wants you to
do, ask Him, and He will gladly tell you.” There are two questions you want to ask God before you
go to talk to the person you’ve got a conflict with.
One, the first
question you want to ask is how much of
it is my fault? Is there any
of it. Maybe just one
percent. Maybe a half of a percent. God says I want you to own up to your
part. An honest checkup on
my part of the problem, a frank evaluation. Am I seeing this thing correctly? Typically there’s blame on both sides.
The second question
is what do You want me to do about it? You ask God what do You want me to do
about my part in this problem, this conflict.
Once you’ve made peace with
God, and once you’ve asked God for help, now you come to step three…
3. Convene a peace
conference.
You convene a peace
conference. A sit down, face to
face meeting. This often will take
more than one meeting. Why? Because conflict is seldom resolved
accidentally. It just doesn’t
happen to resolve on its own.
Conflict is resolved when you intentionally resolve it. When you intentionally work on it.
People say, “Time heals everything.” No it doesn’t! Time heals nothing. Actually time
makes things worse. If you have
cancer, time makes it worse. If
you have diabetes, time makes it worse.
If you are resentful of somebody, time makes it worse. If you could heal just by time, you’d
never have to see a doctor. You
could just sit in the waiting room.
We could change the name from the waiting room to the healing room and
the doctor would say, “Has she got well
yet? No? We’ll let her sit out there another
five hours. Because time heals
everything.” Time heals
nothing. The only way to resolve
conflict is to face it.
So you say, “Ok, fine. Convene a peace conference. When they come to me then I will face it.” No. That’s not it.
God says I expect you to take the
first step. I expect you to take
the initiative. I expect you to be
the peacemaker. You make the first
move. It’s always my
move. It doesn’t matter if I was
the offended one or if I am the offender.
It doesn’t matter if I am the victim or I am the one who caused the
pain, the problem. God says it’s
always your move. You make the
first move. That’s called being a
peacemaker.
God gets very specific about
this. Matthew 5 Jesus says this, “If you’re standing before the altar in the
temple, [in other words, you’re worshipping] and you’re giving an offering to God, and you suddenly remember
someone has something against you, leave your offering there beside the altar.
Go first and be reconciled [take the initiative] to that person. Then come back and offer your gift to God.” What’s He saying? He’s saying reconciliation takes
priority over worship. When you’ve
got something wrong with somebody else, don’t worry about coming to
worship. You go get that right
first. He says worship is
worthless if your relationships are messed up. Go get it right.
Then come back and worship God.
It says here, “Go first and make that thing right.” Once you’ve decided to have a peace
conference, you’ve asked for God’s strength, you’ve made the step, you’re
actually together – you’re having this peace conference. What’s the first thing you do when
you’ve finally gotten together for this peace conference?
4. Confess my part of the
conflict.
Instead of starting by
accusing. We always want to start
by rehearsing the past, going all over the past and talking about all the
details, or you start by attacking or start by blaming.
You don’t start with any of
those things. Instead you start
with humility. Even if it’s ninety
percent their fault, you confess the ten percent that’s your fault. Even if it’s ninety-nine point nine
percent their fault. You confess
the point one percent that’s your fault.
The truth is none of us are
perfect. So in any conflict
there’s always two people involved and because none of us are perfect we’ve
always got something we can say, Here’s
what I did. Here’s where I had a
problem.
All of us have blind
spots. We often don’t see ways that
we are actually making the conflict even more deep. Jesus taught us that if I want to resolve a situation with
somebody else before I can get to what’s wrong in their life I’ve got to first
deal with what’s wrong in my life.
Here’s the picture He gave
us. Jesus said this in Matthew 7 “Why do you notice the little piece of dust
in your friend’s eye, but you don’t notice the big piece of wood in your own
eye? First, take the wood out of
your own eye. Then you will see
clearly to take the dust out of your friend’s eye.” First you deal with what’s in your life, what’s in your
eye.
What am I talking about? It could be things like I’m just being
unrealistic and that’s part of what caused this conflict. I confess to that. Or I confess that I’ve just been
insensitive. I haven’t been
thinking about you. Or I confess
that I’ve been over sensitive in this situation. I confess that I’ve been ungrateful, I’ve really been
ungrateful lately. And I’m sorry
and I know that’s brought us to this point. I confess that I’ve been too demanding. Look for what’s in your life and you
begin by confessing that first.
The truth is any relationship can work when we confess our part of the
conflict.
There’s this idea out there
sometimes that somehow a relationship just can’t work. In fact, the number one excuse for
divorce, the reason people give, “We’re
just incompatible. It just won’t
work because we’re just incompatible.”
That is a total myth. There’s no such thing as two people
being “just incompatible.” That’s
not the problem. It’s not that
we’re just incompatible. It’s that
we’re just stubborn. It’s that I’m
just selfish. It’s that I’m just
self-centered and I’m so focused on myself. I’m not willing to say here was my part. Here’s what happened and why it
happened.
We say to ourselves “It just wasn’t meant to be.” The truth of the matter is I just
didn’t grow up. I didn’t grow up
enough to say I was selfish in that situation. I’m unwilling to admit my fault.
What I’m saying is this: more marriages die because of inflexibility
far more than adultery. So
when you’re solving a conflict, when you’ve finally gotten together to meet,
the first thing you do is you lead with humility.
You lead with humility. “I’m sorry. I was only thinking of myself.” Just say in the relationship, “I’m sorry. The reason this happened…” Try that this week. Lead with humility and watch how God
uses it to begin to resolve the conflict.
The fifth skill you need to
learn if you’re going to learn how to restore broken relationships is:
5. Listen for their
hurt.
Don’t listen for the problem,
don’t listen for the issue. Listen
for the hurt beneath their complaint, their anger, their issue.
When people are hurting
others it’s because they’re hurting.
Healthy people don’t hurt other people. Holy people don’t hurt other people. Happy people don’t hurt other
people. It’s hurt people who hurt
others. Parents who hurt got hurt
somehow when they were growing up.
They got warped. They got a
thorn in their side that caused them to pass on to others the hurt that they
were feeling.
This is a principle and it
doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about marriage or talking about the
market place or you’re talking about the Middle East. When people are hurting they lash out at others. When people feel devalued. When people feel nobody shows them any
respect. When people feel that
their dignity has been robbed.
When people feel nobody’s listening to them, they get mad.
Honestly, American foreign
policy would be a whole lot better if we’d just treat people with more
respect. People around the world
are dying for respect. It’s the
tinhorn dictator from the nothing country who walks around with a chest full of
medals. The President of the
United States, the most powerful country in the world, never has to wear a
medal to show how important he is.
We know how important he is.
It’s the person who’s trying to build themselves up that has to say,
“Watch me! Watch me! I’m important!”
Everybody wants dignity. When you treat people with dignity the
anger just dissipates so quickly whether it’s with nations or with businesses
or with churches or with ethnic groups or with your own family. You treat people with respect.
And what is the greatest way
to show people respect? Listen to
them and look them in the eye.
When you look somebody in the eye and you listen to them you’re saying,
I value what you have to say. I’m
listening to you. I’m paying
attention. You matter to me.
This is a principle that if
you want to connect with people, it doesn’t matter if you’re a coach or a
teacher or salesman or a manager or anything, you always start with the other
people’s hurts and needs and interests.
Not your agenda. In a peace
conference, you need to stop and listen beneath the words what they’re saying
and you start saying what is the hurt they’re expressing?
When people get angry at you,
you tend to push back. When people
are hurt you tend to be sympathetic.
So look for the hurt in their life.
James 1:19 tells us how to do
this. “Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.” This verse says God gave us two
ears and one mouth. He wants us to
listen twice as much as we speak. The
two words listen and silent use the same letters and you need
both of them together to have either one.
What you need to do is try to understand the perspective of other
people. You don’t just look at the
situation from your point of view.
You seriously, intentionally switch your focus from my needs, and my
agenda and what I want to say back to them to listening for their hurt. As St. Francis of Assassi said “Seek to
understand before seeking to be understood.”
“...we must bear the ‘burden’ of being considerate of
the doubts and fears of others...”
Rom. 15:2 (LB) You need to understand where people are
coming from because when you understand where people are coming from you just
cut them a lot of slack. It all
comes from understanding.
Number six is the hardest one
to do in restoring relationship
6. Be willing to absorb
the pain.
This is a mark of
maturity. Yet it is the most
difficult part of reconciliation.
Being willing to absorb the pain.
Paul Kagame is the President
of Rwanda right now. For years his
country suffered genocide of one tribe against another. Many, many people were killed. There were many atrocities on all
sides. When that happens and a new group comes to power, there is always the
temptation to retaliation. But he
did not retaliate, even when his group was victorious and ended the war.
Kagame said, “If you’re going to bring peace to a
country, somebody has to absorb the pain.
Somebody has to say, Enough’s enough. We have the right to get even and kill you back, but we’re
not going to. Somebody’s got to
end it. So we will end it by
absorbing the pain on our side.”
That’s exactly what Jesus
Christ did for you and for me. He
absorbed the pain. When I was
thumbing my nose to God and saying, Jesus Christ died on the cross, paid for
all my sins. He absorbed the
pain. He took the initiative. I didn’t take the initiative to get to
know God. God took the initiative
by sending Christ to me – to make peace between me and God.
“When we were unable to help ourselves at the moment
of our need, Christ died for us. Although we were living against God.” He
said “I’ll absorb the pain. I’ll take the initiative in the
reconciliation.”
Romans 5:10 says :“We were God’s enemies, but we were
reconciled to Him through the death of His Son.” He was willing to absorb the pain.
When you absorb the pain in a
relationship, you are being Christlike.
You say, Yes I have a right to get even but I’m going to let you off the
hook. I’m going to let it go. Here’s the point. Whatever you want from God, whatever
you want God to do in your life you’ve got to do it for others.
The last step….
7. Emphasize
reconciliation, not resolution.
There’s a very important
difference. Emphasize
reconciliation not resolution. Reconciliation focuses on the
relationship. Reestablishing the relationship. Resolution is all
about resolving the issues and
agreeing on everything.
You’re going to discover that
you’re not always going to agree on everything – in your marriage or anywhere
else. But you can disagree without
being disagreeable. That’s called
wisdom. You can have unity without
uniformity. You can walk hand in
hand without seeing eye to eye.
You can have reconciliation of a relationship without having resolution
of all of the problems in it. When
you focus on the relationship many times the issues become insignificant.
Here’s my challenge to
you. In a world that is divided
and divisive and polarized and partisanship and people angry against each other
and people being rude and uncivil, and broken relationships and broken treaties
and a broken world, my challenge to you and I’m going to ask you to do this
today, is that you will commit to become an agent of reconciliation in our
world. The world desperately needs
that. Peacemakers. People who know how to put
relationships together, not blow them apart.
I believe that’s God’s goal for His church. I believe it’s God’s goal for Forest
Grove church. That this family,
this church family will be known as, “That’s
the place where they put their lives together and they put their relationships
together and then they help everybody else do the same.” That’s a church full of peacemakers, not
cranky cultural warriors who are mad at everybody but who are peacemakers who
know how to do the ministry of Jesus – reconciliation.
“God has restored our relationship with Him through
Christ, and He has given us [that’s you and me]
the ministry of restoring relationships. [That’s the ministry of
reconciliation.] He did not hold people’s faults against
them, and He’s given us this message of restored relationships to tell
others. [This is the good
news, the war with God can be over and the war with other people can be
over.] We are Christ’s representatives and we beg you on behalf of Christ to
become reunited with God.”
“God blesses those who work for peace, for they will
be called the children of God.” I want that blessing on your life. I want that blessing on your
family. I want that blessing on
your marriage. I want that
blessing on my life. I want that
blessing on our church and on our nation.
“God blesses those who work for
peace. Blessed are the peacemakers
for they shall be called the children of God.”
Maybe you’ve never made peace
with God. Today’s your day.
Prayer:
Would
you say this? “God, I don’t want to be at war with You any more. I’m going to humbly surrender to You
today. You’re God, I’m not. You’re in charge, I’m not. You call the shots. Thank You for sending Your Son, Jesus
Christ to absorb the pain for me, so I could be reconciled to You. So that I could be just-as-if-I’d never
sinned. It’s amazing that You
would do that. When I didn’t even
care about You, You cared about me.
So today, Jesus Christ, I open my life to You. I open my heart to You. I’m saying Yes to You.
I don’t even understand it all but I’m just saying Yes. I want to end the war. I want to have peace with God…”
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