Do Church - Biblical Conflict Resolution

1. Good morning from me, it’s so nice to see familiar faces. My mind is torn between Greek and English at this moment. Let me give you a brief introduction. My wife and I came here in 1995, to Thessaloniki. We came with 2 little girls, 3 and a half years old and 10 months old, and we have another one 18 months later, so we have 3 daughters. We served in Thessaloniki for about 15 years, for church planting, networking, drawing the body of Christ together and reaching women in prostitution. In 2010, God calls us to Athens, and the reason was to work with the body of Christ, to help the churches to the missionaries, and organizations.
2. When we came here, we needed a school for our 2 younger daughters. My eldest daughter was going to go to the Greek Bible college, my middle daughter had already been pulled out of the Greek school system to homeschool her, and we were looking for another option for our younger daughter who was still in the Greek school system. I don’t know about you, but I have learned from God now to never say never.
3. We said 3 nevers: 1) Never live in Athens, 2) Never to do homeschooling, not because we disagree but because we felt not capable, 3) Never send our kids to boarding school, like some missionaries had to do. So, we started learning our lessons, the first one was to start homeschooling, because she was struggling in the Greek schooling system. The second lesson, to not send our daughters to boarding school, we ended up sending our 2 oldest daughters to Senegal in Africa for one year, Junior High and senior high school, and that was very painful as you can imagine. As an aside not, Pastors Gail and Brian had organized a conference with a church in Oklahoma, called Barnabas, to encourage people in ministry, both Greek and foreigners, and that happened a month before we had to take our 2 daughters to Afrika, and it was a huge encouragement for us. And the third lesson about not living in Athens, I heard God’s voice as clearly as in this room ‘that I want you to move to Athens’. I was scared to death to tell my wife. I come home and I tell her in fear and trepidation, and she said don’t worry, a couple of days before, in prayer with her best friend, God told her we were moving to Athens. That’s when we stopped saying never. Now we say ‘whatever, whenever, whoever’. God’s way is always the best way.
4. When we came here, my wife started to work with ‘Nea Zoi’, and I was working with the church leaders and ministries here. My girls grow up and studied in the US, we served continuously in ministries here, and I came to appoint where I found myself getting burned out. God intervened and did some wonderful work in my life and in my wife’s life and in our marriage. God called us to serve Him by helping to serve His workers. We stopped our ministries and we started helping other missionaries and workers, so that they don’t burn out. So, our current mission is that we have a house where missionaries can come and get spiritual, physical and emotional rest. In 2020, during the Covid lockdown, my wife started to get very sick, not with Covid. She had a long history of cancers, lung issues and heart issues. Her battle was coming to an end, and she passed away February first 2021. Many of you know her, you loved her and you prayed for me over this period and I thank you very, very, very much and my daughters do as well. It’s a crazy journey that you don’t ask for, and what we’re going to talk about today is another way which will reveal His power, His love in all of this. So that’s me in a nutshell.
5. Pastor Gail, and Pastor Brian, wrote to me about a month ago, and asked me if I could preach today. I had stopped preaching for about three years now, I used to preach a lot. I’ve never preached here in GCC, and when they first called me, I was like Uhh, and my immediate response was I didn’t have it in me and I was very busy. I said ‘Can I have one day to pray about it?’ The next day when I said ‘Yes’ to them, it was clear that God wanted me to do this, and the reason was that, that day I was teaching students at the Bible College on that exact subject. I could have been teaching on anything else, but on that day, they asked me if I could preach on ‘Biblical Conflict Resolution’. I was speechless, because just that day, one hour before, I was teaching from the Bible on that topic., and whether it was flattery or not, they said ‘You are the right person to teach on this topic’.
6. So, I believe that the Holy Spirit is in this from the beginning, He is here now and I am joyful that Leto was filled with the Spirit and earlier talked about worshipping and so my heart was lifted up. We need that as we go into the Word. So, I’m going to talk about Biblical Conflict Resolution as we said before, 1 Cor 6: 1-11, is where I talked from to the students. I was teaching on that passage that day and the whole course was on 1 Corinthians. This subject is very close to my heart. Currently, I’m wrapping up my Master’s Degree on Clinical Mental Health Counselling, and it hurts me to see people divorcing, fighting each other and hurting each other, because I believe all these things can be prevented, because God wants to redeem all our relationships. I’m not going to focus on the legal aspects of conflict, and conflict resolution, because I believe most of us do not have conflict at that level, or at least I hope not. I’m not going to focus on conflict or disagreements we may have with non-believers but only between believers.
7. Conflict has a couple of definitions: A book I highly recommend is called “Peacemakers”. It’s from a lawyer who has seen so many families divided, businesses divided, especially in a church where God helped him create a ministry, where he could come alongside them and help them have biblical reconciliation. The definition he would give for conflict is “The difference in opinion or purpose that frustrates someone’s goals or desires”. Webster’s Dictionary defines it as, “Clashing or sharp disagreement”. When you think about conflict, what comes to your mind? You may be thinking about what happened before you came to church, or a family issue that you have, a co-worker, a person who cut you off on the road this morning.
8. There are 4 primary causes of conflict: 1) Misunderstanding from poor or lack of Communication (Ex. Joshua 22, where the leaders thought that the tribes were doing something wrong, but it was a misunderstanding, but when they explained it they solved the problem). This happens regularly and small misunderstandings can grow to be a very big problem.2) Difference of values or goals or opinions and even our spiritual gifts, their differences can cause conflicts. We see that in 1 Corinthians 12 and 13, and throughout the New Testament where people were fighting over whose gifts were better than others. 3) Competition over limited resources. Think about Abraham and Lot, they were both very rich with many animals and they both didn’t fit in the same land anymore, they needed space. Their herdsmen started fighting amongst themselves, and Abraham, by the wisdom of God said we need to part ways. 4) Sinful habits that we have (James 4:1-2) we can see our sinful attitudes can create conflicts.
9. Conflict is not always bad, Conflict can glorify God, if we let God be glorified through us in the conflict. Ken Sanders, the writer of the above book says, “Conflict is not always an inconvenience, its also not an occasion to force our wills on others, but it is an opportunity to demonstrate the power and the love of God in our lives”. We see something that’s very important – a slippery slope as if there is a layer of oil on top of it, and if you’re standing on a curved object, if you move just a little bit you going to go down the side. This gives us an idea to the different responses to conflict. On the left you have the escape responses to conflict – firstly to deny that there is even a problem, you don’t want to deal with it at all. That leads to running away from it. Hagar responded in this way by running away from her mistress Sarah. We can also do that, just run away from the conflict. Usually, introverts will fall on this side of responses, this can lead to suicide where there is no way I out and I kill myself. Look now at the right side, the attack responses – the extroverts, strong personalities (I’m one of those, and my wife was on the other side), but my wife, because she felt safe with me she could also go on the attack, so this is not limited to one or the other, and there are times when I could go to the escape responses.
10. But I want us to focus on the middle section – the peacemaking responses. Proverbs 19:11, First one says “Overlook”. Sometimes the thing is so small that we should just overlook it. We need to overlook offences than we probably do. We always want people to overlook our small offences, but we’re very good at doing that to others. We should pursue reconciliation. In Matthew 5:23-24, Jesus said something very clearly; How many of us have thought if someone has something against us, before we give our tithes and offerings. We don’t take the time to allow God to show us that we may have hurt someone else. The Bible also tells us to forgive those just as God has forgiven us.
11. Then we have Negotiation, Mediation, Arbitration, and Accountability. When we focus on these things, we will have peace in our lives. The whole purpose of resolving conflict Biblically, is to glorify God. That should be our number one priority – is God being glorified in this conflict that I am facing right now. It’s easy to say, “But God, they’re not glorifying You!” But we know that God is saying, “Alan, first at that log in your eye”, where we are saying, look at the small one in someone else’s eye. And He wants to be glorified in how we respond to that conflict. 1 Corinthians 10: 31 – 11:1, here we see that whatever we do (eat, drink, etc.) but also conflict we should glorify God.
12. There are 4 “Gs” in peacemaking 1) Glorifying God. 2) Get the log out of my own eye should be the second, i.e. to allow God to search me, convict me and show me my wrong doing 3) Gently (kindly) restore our relationships should be number three, 4) Go and be reconciled, don’t let something sit and fester. Colossians 3:12-14. So, when you’re in a conflict, or hurt or mad, and the last thing you feel like doing is read the Bible, STOP and read the Bible. Read that passage. Let the Lord hold up a mirror, to remind you of how He wants you to be. Because when He is glorified in us, we have peace. It’s not just for the other person to have peace. Maybe the other person won’t receive, but you be obedient to God.
13. Ephesians 4:1-6, Paul here is not talking to leaders here, but to the church at Ephesus. 2 things come to mind here, we’re supposed to pursue peace, and Paul shows what character we should have to pursue peace. Something else that is not often talked about or taught – we have the same Spirit of the Lord in each one of us. We call each other, brothers and sisters in Christ, but when we’re in conflict with one another, somehow, we forget that we have one Lord, one Savior and one Spirit in both of us. That’s huge, because that means that if there’s conflict, there’s a problem in one or both of us in listening to the Spirit. And when we can say, “Lord You are the one who connects us and helps us, You’re not divided in Yourself, You don’t want us to be divided, You want us to be one, so the same Spirit will help us to find Oneness in Christ and that will help us to let go of what we want and ask for what He wants.
14. 1 Corinthians 12:21-31, this is amazing because this reminds us that when there’s a problem, we are the problem. We need each other and yet we can try to be better than the others, we try to defend or claim entitlement, we start to put ourselves above other people.
15. 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, unfortunately it’s usually at weddings, it isn’t only for the marriage, it wasn’t at all for the marriage when Paul wrote it. It’s for us the Church, he says that no matter if we have all the gifts and skills, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have love. Love is patient, it does not dishonor others and it is not self-seeking. We want to say love is Jesus, that’s who Jesus is, but Paul through the Holy Spirit is saying that this is the love you should have for one another, because you have the love of Jesus in you, so, we’re supposed to live that love. When I teach my students this every year, and we read these Scripture passages for every lesson, I have them read these in turn and by putting their names in place of love, because it is really important to identify with this passage. This is huge, it is a way for us to have a checklist, to use as a daily check, to see if we are loving the way Jesus wants us to love. Where and whom do I need to love better. We should celebrate when we learn to love better, we praise the Lord for that, we give Him thanks, because the enemy wants to pull us down. But our Heavenly Father wants us to see Jesus in us. We need to look for the opportunity for Jesus to say “I’m here, I’m going to give you a little patience today. I’m going to help you forgive that other person without digging that up again later on, I’m going to help you let go”
16. I want to close with John 17:20-23 (this is part of what is called ‘The High Priestly Prayer of Jesus’) I thank you all for your patience, I usually preach 40 minutes. This subject requires at least 4 Sundays to do justice to it. If you have been following me, you have been drinking from the fire-hose (an expression of receiving a lot). There is so much information right now. My prayer in my car and in my seat here, is if you don’t get everything, I pray God will help you keep one thing that will help you become a peacemaker. Jesus’ prayer is our mission, to glorify Jesus, to reflect the Trinity and to reflect the unity of the Trinity, to show the world what real love is, to show them the better way. If you face some conflict, ask the Lord, how He wants you to respond, what He wants to show me, what He wants to change in me, and help me to glorify You, Father.
17. Prayer follows.