Conflicted Part 4: The Pathway to Peace

In this series we look at a Biblical approach to handling one of the most common challenges we face in our lives, conflict. Not just arguments or disagreements, but genuine conflict that can tear relationships apart and break our hearts. The Bible speaks directly to the issue and teaches us how to have peace and make peace in these moments.

This week: Conflict Resolution / The Pathway to Peace

Transcript

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When we lived in the States, there was a time in our life when we lived in the southern part close to Orlando where Disney World and all the theme parks are. And we used to go there, I used to take the kids and some of their school breaks. And one year I was there with my son. He was probably 10 or 11 years old. Perfect time to take a kid to a theme park, you know. We're riding rides, and then a huge thunderstorm comes, which is common in Florida. And then after that, it got out pretty quickly, but the park was pretty empty. And we went to one of the large roller coasters, and we were literally one of the very few people in line. And we get on there and they say, sit wherever you want, ride as many times as you want. So we jump on the front seat, we're strapped in. I mean, and this roller coaster has curves, loops, spirals. It is amazing. And we go through and we come in and we end the first one and they like look at us and we're like, yeah, let's go, let's go. Second time, man, the second time was more thrilling than the first. We come in for that third one, they stop asking. They just keep sending us through. The third time, I'm like, I don't, you know, maybe, maybe three's enough. My son's like, no, no, four, five, by six, I'm like, no more. I never want to get on a roller coaster again. I never want to loop around. What is going on? It was too much, too intense all the time. And you know, something that can start off feeling intense and energizing, the longer it stays in our life, it can actually begin to drain us and take our energy, take the intensity. And at first, we all think it's something we think about, it's raw and urgent, but after a while it leaves us tired and worn out in places that we didn't even realize. And the topic we're talking about tonight is one of these things that will sap our energy. When it first happens, and maybe there's energy and a rawness to it, is not necessarily a good thing, but it it hits us, but then it ultimately saps our energy and weighs heavy on us. And it's as we finish tonight this series called Conflicted. It's conflict. And we took to we've looked at where conflict comes from, a different perspective. We looked at the story of the disciples seeing the same truth and having different outcomes. We looked at ways Jesus handled when pain was poured into him, when actual hurt was put onto him. How did he deal when somebody intentionally brought pain in his life? A couple weeks ago we looked at Jonah and how he dealt with doubting God and not trusting God and running in a different direction from God and having conflict with God, and how, even in the midst of that, God was faithful to pursue Jonah. These are all beautiful things that we've looked at, but today we come to this final message of this series, and we're not just gonna stay in the realm of understanding conflict and how to process it internally. Today we're gonna talk about what we actually do with it when it's there. How do we actually resolve it and get it out of our lives? Get rid of it, not let it define us, not let it set up who we are. So it makes us ask the question to begin with what is conflict resolution? It's a nice thing. We've heard it, there's classes on it. You can probably even get a college major on conflict resolution. They have people in businesses now that specialize in conflict resolution, but what is it? And ultimately it is this that it is a desire to extinguish the hurt of the conflict and let the impact of the conflict expire, to be done, to be finished with it. Resolving conflict is about dealing with the impact that it has left on us, the hurt, the offense, the bitterness. And when we think about this, maybe we think about a negotiation table, somewhere where we're finally gonna sit down with a person who hurt me, who I have an offense with, who we had a different perspective on, or we're gonna sit down and we're gonna get it out. We're gonna put it all on the table, and it's gonna culminate in this huge moment of conflict resolution, and they're finally gonna admit what they did and they're gonna apologize, and I'm finally gonna feel better. It's like this the finale of a fireworks show. A couple years ago in the summer, Cannes has uh they have it every year, the fireworks show, and our kids were here, and we were watching the finale of this. This is an image of Catherine and our daughter watching the last finale of one of the fireworks show over the Bay of Cannes. Beautiful. Just so much, so much. And this is what we often think is going to happen in our life when we resolve conflict. This big, memorable moment. But the truth I want you to hear is this is unresolved conflict is not inactive. It's not inactive, it grows in our life. It has to be dealt with fully. Even a small ember has a chance to still set the fire alive. Think about a campfire. If you don't fully extinguish it before you leave, even the smallest of spark can be carried by the wind, land somewhere else, and set the forest on fire. And in the same way, when we don't fully deal with conflict in our hearts and just say, I just don't want to be around that person anymore, but actually deal with it, that small spark of bitterness can eventually burn through other areas of our lives. I think about when something goes bad in your refrigerator. You know, you open it and that smell just, ah, oh, what did I what did I forget to talk about? What piece of fruit, what milk have I forgotten that's there? And that smell, right, doesn't just stay in that one spot. It spreads, or a fruit that's gone bad starts to mold and affect the other fruit around it. This is what unresolved conflict does in our life. It begins to smell and affect everything. And we allow it to stay past its expiration date, and it begins to contaminate other parts of our life. This is why in Ephesians it says, in Ephesians 4, it says, get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, slander, along with any other form of malice, and instead be kind, compassionate, forgiving, just as Christ forgave you. What does it say, get rid of? Not deal with, not keep in a back corner, not just have it around a little bit, so it doesn't have that big of an influence in your life unless that person just happens to be walking down the street and you see them, or you see a text, or you see something good happen in their life and it flares up again. No, it says, get rid of it. Get rid of it. Because when you don't, it starts to take root in your life. And you see here on the screen what it does. Unresolved conflict starts to build resentment in our life, where I don't see the person as a person anymore, I see them as a problem. Then comes anger where I want bad for them. Not just that I don't want to be around them, but I want bad for them. And then bitterness takes deep root into the soil of our lives and starts to soak into everything else, the way we view every circumstance. We start to see even people who haven't hurt us as potential people who will hurt us, and we see somebody who has hurt us as somebody we'll never forgive. And that leads us to isolation, right? Where we start saying, I can't trust anybody, and we start walking back in isolation, and then we arrive at destruction, destruction in our own lives, and destruction that we want for other people. We're not healing, we're not hopeful, we're vessels of destruction. And the key idea is this even ignored, unresolved conflict grows and produces damaging fruit in our lives. Even if you ignore it, it's active, it's working in the background. You may say, look, I know we disagree about this, or this person hurt me intentionally, and I'm just gonna hide it in the back room of my mind and not deal with it. Or man, God's challenging me in ways that I don't want to face him and talk to him, and I'm just gonna act like ignore it. Ignoring it, hiding it, these do not stop it from growing and bringing damaging fruit into our lives. And this is why unresolved conflict is so costly. It doesn't stay small, it grows and left alone will eventually damage far more than we ever intended. So then, how do we actually resolve conflict? How do we actually stop this pathway of destruction? So, over the next few minutes, I want to give us some biblical principles to hold on to, some actual steps that we can take to walk what I call the pathway of peace in our life. That we actually become at peace and peacemakers. After seeing the painful and destructive path that we just saw of unresolved conflict, I want to shift our focus now to something better. Because God has not left us without a way forward. He has given us a clear path of peace. But I want you to hear this: peace is not just a destination, it's path. We talked about this before when we did our peace series, but it is not just this destination we step into, it's a path that we walk step by step. It's why Hebrews 12, 14 says, make every effort to live in peace with one another. Make every effort. Work at it. You have to step into it. In other words, peace is not passive. It requires intentional effort. We just don't wait for peace to happen. We have to actively pursue it. I think many of us in here, if we said, Do you want peace in your life? We would all raise our hands. But we'd always know how to get there. We don't know how to get past the conflict. We don't know how to get rid of it. And so let's walk through this pathway tonight. And I'm going to tell you the steps get more and more difficult as we walk. But as we do walk them, we also experience more and more freedom. So step one to the pathway to peace is actually to make a decision to reconcile. To reconcile. When we talk about reconciliation, we're not just talking about nice feelings or surface level agreement. The word itself comes from the idea of settling accounts. Think about closing the books at the end of the year or counting the money at the till at the end of the night from a register. Reconciliation means nothing is left unaccounted for, everything is brought to light, examined, and resolved. And in the context of conflict, reconciliation is both a decision and an action. It's a decision to stop allowing the conflict to remain open and unsettled in your heart. And it's a choice, then, an action, to look at the pain, the offense, and the brokenness honestly and to deal with it fully. And you may say, well, that's that's easy. I'd much rather have peace than pain. And as strange as it sounds, sometimes it actually feels comforting to hold on to our pain. It becomes familiar, it gives us a sense of identity. We know how to feel angry, we know how to rehearse the offense, we know how to stay on guard. And the question becomes: if I let this go, who will I be? What will fill this space? Listen to Psalm 34, 13. It says, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn from evil, turn from the pain, do good, seek peace, and pursue it. Jesus in Matthew 9 calls people blessed, and one of the blessed people, he says, are the peacemakers. They shall be what? Called sons of God. And what these verses remind us is a beautiful key thought I want us to hold on to tonight when we talk about actually choosing to reconcile, having the decision to reconcile, our decision to pursue reconciliation reminds us of something much greater. It reminds us of God's choice to reconcile with us. Even though we were the ones who turned away from Him. Even though we were the ones who moved away, who sinned. He did not wait for us to get it all together. He pursued peace with us at a great cost to him. But to do this, you have to be willing to let go. To let go of it. Reconciliation means you bring it up, set it on the table, count it for what it is, and then you wipe it clear and let it go. Two years ago, on Catherine's birthday, when we were in New York, she wanted to do something unique, and so she chose to do trapeze. We went to a trapeze school. And here's a picture of her uh on the trapeze. Look at that form. Look at that. I mean, she is exactly like they told her to do. You have to, there was another body, you have to let go of that, her legs are coming like she is straining toward the guy who's gonna catch her, right? Who was much better looking and more muscular than me, you know, and she was straining uh to get to him. Just like we should do, like when we strain toward the things, get rid of the things and strain, reach for something new. But you can't reach for something new if you have your eyes on the old things. And to experience true peace, to walk in a pathway of peace through reconciliation, you have to let go and reach toward what God wants for you. What they did to you, who they are, who they are even now, whatever it is that still angers you about this moment, you have to let it go. And here's the hard truth: you cannot reconcile with the past while still holding on to it. You can't. It's impossible. You cannot reconcile with the past while still holding on to it. You can't experience the peace of God while refusing to release the pain that's keeping you bound. And the truth is, some of us have been holding on for a long time. We know it. We know the pain well. We don't have to explain it to anybody. They even others know it. We've protected it. You told yourself that by letting it go it would be weakness, or that somehow the other person would be off the hook, that they wouldn't pay the price. But I want you to hear something tonight. When you choose not to reconcile, the only person still paying the price is you. If I don't do it, it's me. Because what I'm missing is what I could be grabbing on to instead of holding on to. Are you ready to let go? Because if you are, then we can take a step two. And step two is a choice to defeat selfishness in our life. Resolving conflict in our hearts and lives will always require us to confront our own self-centered and self-serving nature. The Bible points us out clearly, Philippians 2, 3 and 4, do nothing out of selfish ambition and conceit. But in what? Humility, count others more significant than yourself. Let each of you look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. I wish there it said, do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count those who love you and support you and do everything for you as more significant than yourselves. That's not what it says. It says to count others. Others. Even those that have brought us pain. Why? Not for their good, but for our good. We have to set aside selfishness. James 3, 16 and 18. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder in every vile practice. But a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. Read that part again. A harvest of righteousness is what's sown by peace by those who make peace. Selfishness is an enemy of peace. Wherever it is allowed to remain, it creates chaos, confusion, and damage. And when you and I have even experienced unjust pain and suffering, there is a desire to be vindicated, to see the wrong made right, and to elevate ourselves to the point of moral authority and judgment. But we are not and will never be an adequate judge. We will get it wrong. We will overstep. We'll allow selfishness in our pain and our desire to control or cloud our judgment. And this is the key thought. Selfishness is an enemy of peace, but it has been defeated by the sacrifice of Christ. What was the sacrifice of Christ? It was the cross. Not just to live, but to live a perfect life, and then to willingly pay the penalty for our sin and our rebellion through humility. He modeled humility. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross, Philippians tells us. Jesus had every right to hold on to his position, his power, and his glory, but instead he let it go and he demonstrated humility. God gave us peace through humility, and now it is ours to take hold of. Just like step one is letting go. There comes a point where you have to grab hold of something else. And what we grab hold of is humility. My favorite events to watch in the Olympics is the relay race. Four by one hundred, four by four hundred, because there are key moments in that race when it can go really good or really bad. And it's when they hand the baton off. And I love this picture because the one running in front, she is straining, she has her eyes on where she wants to go, but just as much so she is reaching back, she's not looking, but she is concentrating on being ready to receive what the other person's going to give her and then take it and run with it. And this is what this second step is all about. We've let go, but the pathway to peace is now taking up the humility of Christ and running with it. Taking it into your life, taking it into the places of pain, taking it into the places where you have been hurt and you think that we'll never get past this. This is not a good idea or a nice character trait. Grabbing hold of humility in Christ is how peace is pursued. It is how peace is restored, and it is how we are truly reconciled both with God and with others. You cannot walk in humility with Christ while still clinging to your own version of justice. Your need to win, your desires to be elevated. At some point, you have to open your hand and reach for something greater than yourself. You have to receive the mindset of Christ, the one who laid down his life so that peace could be possible. This is the defeat of selfishness. It is not something we achieve through our own efforts, it is something we receive through the finished work of Christ. So let me ask you a big question. Are you even reaching out your hand to receive? Maybe you've let go, say, all right, I can let that go. But are you even thinking about putting your own selfishness aside and reaching out and embracing the humility of Christ? It's one thing to say you want peace. It's another thing to actually open your hands and reach for what Christ offers. That humility heals. Grabbing hold of his humility means you stop reaching for the things that fuel your selfishness and start reaching for the one who laid down his rights. It's the defeat of selfishness. And you grab hold of humility and take it wherever you go. So I ask you again, what are your hands full of right now? Or more importantly, are you willing to open them and grab hold of something greater and take it into your life? Because if you can grab hold of humility, let go of your pain, let go of the need to be the judge, and you can grab hold of humility, you just might be ready for the third step. Which is then a desire to forgive. This is the hardest hurdle. We've done sermons on this. Uh, I'm not gonna rehash everything, but true forgiveness is the ultimate and only healing response to conflict. It is the soil in which resolution grows and flourishes, and without forgiveness, conflict may be managed or avoided, but it will never be truly resolved. Forgiveness is what allows healing to take root and peace to become reality. And true. It's easier to say I forgive you than to actually forgive. Because forgiveness is a change in the condition and the position of our heart. It's a decision to no longer hold the offense against that person and to release them from the debt they owe you. That's the harder part, isn't it? Alright. I'll let that go, but you still have to get back in my good graces. You still owe me something. Matthew 6, 14 and 15 says this. For if you forgive others of your trespasses, then your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don't forgive, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. We talked about before this verse uh is a picture of that when we have truly experienced the forgiveness of God, it can't help but flow out of us. It can't help but naturally flow through us. And this is why require forgiveness requires more than words. It requires a deep change in who we are and how we look at this. Those of you know, a couple of months ago we moved into a new apartment here, and when we came first came in, but before we uh even looked, you know, we looked and saw stuff, but we opened the doors and we came in, and there was a there was still some dirt left over from the previous tenants. There were some dirty places, the places that need to be cleaned, some of their stuff, and there was a distinct smell. They had cats, and so there was a cat smell in the in the apartment. There, there's dirt, there's smells. And so we talked, and some people graciously came, and man, they de-cleaned the apartment. Every milk and cranny, baseboards, up the curtains, everywhere, inside the refrigerator, inside the stove, everywhere. And the next time we walked in, you know what we smelled? Not the old, the new. The new. And now the apartment is filled with our smells and our dirt. And if somebody came in, they would probably know that we have a dog. They probably know what goes on in our life. But it's new. We went from the old to the new. In the same way, deep forgiveness requires a cleansing of our heart. It's not just an outward spray and wipe down, it is a cleansing. Ephesians says, let all bitterness, wrath, and anger, clamor, slander be put away from you. Put away. Cleaned. Instead, move new stuff in. Kindness. Be tenderhearted. Forgiving. Just as God forgave you. Put it away. And this is the key thought I want you to grab here. This is why forgiveness should never be the last resort. It should be the first option. The first option. If it is the true source of healing, I don't want to try other experimental medicines. I want the one that I know works. And forgiveness works. Forgiveness brings peace in your heart. It's what it does. And when we choose to forgive, we have the incredible opportunity not just to experience peace in our life, but to display that forgiveness that we have received from God to everyone else. There's a picture of where we used to live in New York. This is right outside of our building. It was the view we had, and you'll notice the Empire State Building there. And sometimes it was just white, but many nights it was lit up in different colors. And those colors always represented something. Maybe it was a team who won a sporting event, a big sport, a World Series or an NBA championship. Maybe it was a local cause that was going on National World Day that they were there. Or somebody could even pay money to put their colors up there for something. And there was an app you could go to and look and see what those colors were displaying and what they meant. And it was fun every night to kind of see and look and be like, oh, that's, I wonder what that is. Some were very creative, some were just a single color. But they always represented something. And in the same way, when we forgive, our lives become this visible display of something much greater than just ourselves. They reflect and display the forgiveness of God. And this is how something becomes significant in our world. When we choose to forgive, we're putting God's mercy on display for the world to see. We're showing what the heart of God looks like. We're revealing that there is a love powerful enough to absorb pain instead of returning it, and a grace strong enough to release what is owed instead of demanding payment. And this is exactly what God did, right? He brought peace into the world and displayed it through sacrifice, and ultimately through forgiveness. And it was on the cross. The cross was not just an act of love, it was a display of forgiveness. And through that display, God made peace possible between you and I. And ultimately, this is how peace spreads. We say, man, I would love peace in our world. Then you have to bring it. You have to bring peace to your world so that others can bring priests to their world. And I'll be very clear: forgiveness is not easy. It's going to cost you something. But in the final and most powerful step of this pathway to peace, when we choose to forgive, and when we have been forgiven, we are not only healing our own hearts, we are becoming living pictures of the gospel. We're displaying to the world the very thing that changed me and can change everything. So the question is what is your life displaying? Start back, you have to let go. Grab hold. And then display. These three steps here, they're not easy. The hurdles get higher at each step. These three steps, letting go, grabbing hold, and displaying, they're not just good ideas. They're an actual pathway to peace that God has given us. And when we walk this path, we don't just manage our conflicts, we resolve them. We don't just survive our pain, we allow healing to take place. Which brings us to our question of the day. Simply, which path do you choose to walk when conflict comes into your life? The pathway of destruction or the pathway of healing? The pathway with resentment, anger, bitterness, isolation, and destruction that will damage our relationships and leave us exhausted and alone? Or the pathway of peace, humility, and forgiveness that's not always easy, but that will lead to real resolution and lasting peace. The pathway to peace requires something from us. It requires us to let go, grab hold, and display the forgiveness of God. And I want you to hear this tonight. Wherever you sit here spiritually, this pathway that we just talked about, I didn't, I said it was hard, but I actually want to be more honest with you. It's impossible without Christ. It's impossible. We cannot truly let go of our pain and our own strength. We can't defeat selfishness with our own hands, and we cannot display this kind of forgiveness unless we have experienced the forgiveness of God in our life. And the only reason you and I can walk this path is because Jesus walked it first and showed us the way and said, follow me. Follow me. This is the path he was asking us to follow. And if you have never trusted him, today is the day to begin to walk this path. He is the only one who can give you a new heart and a heart that's capable of letting go, grabbing hold, and displaying real peace. He offers you forgiveness, not because you deserve it, but because he loves you. And when you receive his forgiveness, it will automatically give you the power to extend it to others. So I challenge you and invite you today to choose Christ, choose his ways, choose the pathway of peace. Not because it's easy, but because it's the path that leads to life. And it's the path he's calling us to follow. Will you pray with me?