Resolving Everyday Conflict


If you've ever been asked to lead a discussion or teach about a certain spiritual discipline, you can be sure that the Lord will lovingly bring just that exact topic to the forefront in your own life. He'll graciously put your ugly sinful tendencies "right on Front Street," as my good friend Dara likes to say. This is grace! This is God's kindness to reveal sinful tendencies in our own hearts so that we can repent, seek renewed relationship with God and others, and be used of Him.

Here is a story about one such evidence of God's grace to me.


Josh and I were late to our small group last night. Oh, we were there. We had technically arrived on time, but we remained in the parking lot of the neighborhood's clubhouse for over 45 minutes before we were able to walk in holding hands. Much later in the evening, on our way home from Grace Group, Eden begged to be the one to fill the boys in on why we were late (the boys had driven separately from a soccer practice and had seen us sneak in 45 mins late without explanation). This is one of Eden's new favorite things: to be the Deliverer of Important Information, and she gladly supplied this succinct, if rather embarrassing, version:

"It was time to go and Dad wanted to make a phone call and he asked Mom to drive and Mom wanted Dad to drive because there was a lot of traffic. So Dad drove, but when we got there we just sat in the parking lot and had to talk all about it. For like a hour!"

If that's not a humbling way to put it, I don't know what is.

Wait, we were fighting over who was going to drive? Well...yes. But as most conflicts are, this ran much deeper than that. This was a battle stemming from two sinful people who each wanted the other person to be the servant. "I drove last time!" was one of my arguments. "I drive most of the time" was one of Josh's. But as I mentioned, the feud over whose turn it was behind the wheel was just a flimsy veneer on a conflict whose ugly underlayment was selfishness at its core. It was a battle over who would serve the other, with neither wanting to be the one to yield.  It was the age-old problem that creeps into close relationships. I had a professor in college who put it this way: "It's like there are two ticks on a dog, but then you realize there's actually no dog. Now you just have two ticks interested in their own meal, feeding on each other." Gross, but true.

I had desires. Josh had desires. I didn't want to bend and neither did he. Enter stage right: a conflict. "What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?... You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel." James 4:1-2

I wish I could tell you that we handled our conflict completely humbly; that we quickly discovered the root of our problem, repented, asked forgiveness, and served each other happily ever after. But in this case it took us 45 minutes to come to a place where we could even walk into Grace Group as friends again. And another 45 minutes at home after the kids had gone to bed to finally come to the place where we were both forgiven and both in right relationship with God and each other again. 

And believe me, the fact wasn't lost on me that in just 36 short hours I would be facilitating a discussion from Ken Sande's book Resolving Everyday Conflict. Chapter 3: Escaping, Attacking, or Peacemaking. Yes to the escaping and attacking, No to the peacemaking.

Why had I ever agreed to do this? Me: the one who was guilty to the uttermost of one of the most childish, ridiculous conflicts ever fought. The verse from Proverbs that I've often quoted to my children, "The beginning of strife is like letting out water, so quit before the quarrel breaks out" did not come to bear in my mind at the beginning of this thing. I had stubbornly held on to my right to be right. I can only echo Paul's cry: Oh, "who will deliver me from this body of death?" Romans 7:25 

At 10:30pm I had the phone in my hand with Dara's number ready. I was going to back out. Then it occurred to me that I'm probably not the only one who has been through a conflict. Well, maybe I'm the only one who would blog about it and open myself up to scrutiny from who-knows-whom, but certainly not the first or the last one to have battle stories from such a selfish, silly fight. In fact, maybe that's why Mr. Sande wrote this book in the first place: to help people like me! "It's me, it's me, it's me, oh Lord; standing in the need of prayer!"

Grace upon grace that God would show me my own deficiencies, that He might also show me that His forgiveness abounds.

So it is with humble thanksgiving for God's grace that I'm preparing to share a lesson on Resolving Everyday Conflict. The kind of everyday conflict that we all face and that's become a little too ordinary on this side of Heaven. In fact, it makes me long all the more for eternity with the Lord when "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." Rev 21:4



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