daily Broadcast

When Dealing with Relational Conflict, Part 1

From the series Inner Peace

Jesus said, “My peace I leave with you.” Very likely, when we pray, peace is often what we ask for - peace in the world, peace at home, and maybe most of all, peace in our relationships - but what did Jesus mean when He said His peace? And how could that make a difference in our problem relationships today? If you or someone you know is struggling with a difficult relationship this message is for you.

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Message Transcript

Is God at the center of your life? Is He at the center of your relationships, your decision-making, your finances, your family? I did not grow up as a Christian, probably like many of you. And what I can say is maybe one of the greatest experiential things that happened in my life when I received Christ as my Savior, I surrendered and really made Him the center.

And by “the center,” I mean you pre-decide, God, I am going to do life Your way. I am going to obey what Your Word says about…and then you fill it in. Here’s the greatest thing I experienced: Inner peace.

I didn’t have to perform, no people to impress – peace. Peace with God; peace with myself. And we are in a series here called Inner Peace: How to Find It and to Keep It.

And on the front of your notes, there are three basic approaches. And you may be involved in one or all three. But let me just highlight them so we can get very, very clear, because God has a plan for inner peace for your life.

Approach number one is what I call the “inward approach.” The three key words here would go something like this: meditation, relaxation, and center. If you Google “inner peace” as I have done, what you will find is the flow will be very Eastern in its thought. It will be, “You need to learn to meditate.” The inner peace comes from within you and what you need to figure out is how to find this calm within through some techniques.

The “outer approach” is a bit more Western. And the three key words would be: control, achieve, and conquer. It’s a little bit more the American approach, the Western approach. In other words, if you want real inner peace, you need to perform, you need to achieve, get into a good school, make a good living, have a good family, whatever your goals are – fulfill those goals.

And when all the things work out in a way that you can control and circumstances line up with your desires, ahhh, then I’ll have peace. I’ll have peace when I…and you fill it in. And then this crazy thing happens: we get that and then we want something else.

The third approach is what I call the “upward approach.” The key words here are: trust, depend, and obey. This is a supernatural peace, it’s a gift, it’s when you make God the center, He literally comes and takes up residence inside of you and He will give you a supernatural peace, because He actually is in control and you can trust that.

The dictionary defines inner peace in this way. It says, “It’s the absence of disturbance and hostility. It’s free from internal and external strife.” When the world thinks about peace, the dictionary talks about peace, it’s external hassles or internal hassles are removed. It’s something that you don’t have.

By contrast, Scripture has a very rich word, you’ve probably heard it, shalom. It’s the Hebrew word. And the New Testament takes the content of that and imports it into some very important Greek words.

But shalom is a lot more than just the absence of conflict or disturbance. Shalom is a wholeness. In fact, I put it in your notes, there are four aspects to the kind of peace that God gives.

One, it is to be complete or sound or whole. It’s emotional, physical, mental wholeness. It’s even including your health.

Second, it has to do with harmony in relationships. You have a shalom in your relationships. There’s a peace, there’s not a friction.

Third is there is a success and a fulfillment of purpose. Part of peace is you were made by God, He has a design, there is something He wants you to do. There is a peace, there is an alignment that what you were made to do, you are actually doing.

And then, finally, there’s a sense of having victory over your enemies. All throughout the Old Testament, the peace or the shalom of God – it’s a fallen world, there is difficulty, there’s hard stuff you go through. In the midst of that, God is a warrior who gives shalom to His people.

In fact, on the very last night, when Jesus was on the earth, imagine how fearful the disciples were. He has washed their feet; He has talked to them; He has, multiple times, told them He is going to die, rise from the dead.

And then notice this word of encouragement He says to them, “Peace I leave with you,” and notice, “My peace. I do not give you what the world gives. Do not let your heart be troubled; do not be afraid.”

And in their minds, their hearts, He says, The shalom of God. I am leaving. But the soundness of your heart, your mind, your soul; victory over your enemies and the difficulties that are coming. Harmony, My very peace I am implanting, I am giving it to you. And you experience that by the Holy Spirit living inside of your life and then you allowing Him to orchestrate your life according to His will.

There are four things that I think destroy inner peace. There may be a lot more, but four for sure. One is when you are bombarded by technology. The second is relational conflict. That’s what we will talk about today. Of all the things that can rob your peace; a relationship that isn’t right.

Third is fear. Fear of the future. Fear of something bad happening. Fear of what is happening in the world. And finally, anxiety. All these things, that anxious mindset.

And so we are going to go, for the next few weeks, through Philippians chapter 4. It will address each and every one of these.

So are you ready? If you have your Bibles, open to Philippians chapter 4, and you’ll need it for the context. We are going to look at the first five verses. And in the first five verses we are going to find that the apostle Paul, in context, has been a part of planting a church in Philippi.

The church begins to grow, Paul gets in trouble, He ends up in prison, He gets beaten, there’s an earthquake, the Philippian jailor comes to Christ, there’s a revival, and this is one of His favorite churches. He loves this church. They have this great relationship. It is one of the early churches that financially supported him so He could do ministry full-time.

But there’s a problem. There’s a little relational conflict, there’s a little tiff going on in the church. And there’s not a bad person. There are these two ladies who really love God, really love Paul, have been greatly used by God, and are absolutely followers of Jesus.

They have one, small problem. They don’t get along. There’s a division between them. And what you know and I know is when two people aren’t getting along and there’s friction, it impacts them. But it impacts the small group, it impacts the church, it impacts everyone.

And so in verses 1 through 5, the apostle Paul is literally going to lay out a very clear plan of God’s design or instruction about how to resolve relational conflict.

Now, lest we have a seminar on relational conflict and you pull out a pen and say, Oh, this is quite interesting and I took Psych 201 and I’ve done some counseling courses and, wow, this is very interesting. This is in the Bible. That’s not the goal.

Here’s the goal; I want you to answer this question. What one person on the face of the earth today do you long to be at peace with? Past, it could be a parent, it could be one of your kids, it might be the person you’re married to and they’re not here. It might be the person you’re married to and you’re both sitting here going, You know, man, the relational conflict is us. It could be someone who ripped you off in a business deal. It could be someone in a small group. It might be you’re actually at this church because of a relational conflict in some other church.

But if there is one person that, as far as it depends on you, you could just put this thing to bed and there would be inner peace that, when this person’s name comes to your mind, when you would meet them at Costco or Safeway or run into them at Target, that you would have peace, that the junk…

It might be a family member that you haven’t talked to in five years or ten years. Okay, now, have you got their name? You got it in your mind? I want you to listen to God’s instructions through that lens so it’s not just academic.

The context, he says, “Therefore, my brothers, whom I love, whom I long for, my joy and my crown, this is how you should stand firm in the Lord, dear friends.” I’d like you to underline just the word brothers, love, long for, joy, crown.

And the context here in chapter 3 is, in verse 17, he has talked about a group of people who were walking with the Lord and they got caught up and they started drifting away from the Lord. And he reminds them, he goes, One, it breaks His heart. And then second, he says, Our citizenship is in heaven. Our identity is in heaven. We are not living just for now, but forever.

And then he talks in the end of chapter 3, “Not only is our citizenship in heaven, but our hope is in a God, the Lord Jesus, who has control of all things, and He is going to transform our lowly bodies.” And he is giving this perspective, because he has talked about the difficulty in life, and He says, You need to go through the difficulty in life with this big picture, eternal perspective.

And then what I want you to just get out of verse number 1, it’s a transition from chapter 3 to chapter 4. Listen to his heart. Sometimes a relational conflict, we feel this, They’re down on me, get this right, straighten up. “I love, I long for, my joy, my crown.” I want you to hear, this is a pastor’s heart who has two people that aren’t getting along. He loves them both. And he says, The way we are going to stand firm is that we need to think about this bigger than this little conflict. We need to remember we are a part of God’s bigger plan.

And then notice the plea for unity is verse 2, “I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord.” And circle the word agree. He is basically pleading with these two ladies, Look, since I left, I heard about this, there’s a problem. The word literally means, “to be of the same mind.”

In Philippians 2, the apostle Paul would write, “Be of the same mind toward one another, that was also in Christ Jesus, who although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself,” literally, He veiled His attributes, “and became a servant.”

And what he is saying, exact same word, “Be of the same mind in the Lord.” You don’t have to agree – your personalities – you don’t actually even have to really like each other a lot. You can have legitimate differences, but I want you to be of the same mind in the Lord. What is your purpose? Why are we here? What’s going on? Don’t let petty differences or different personalities or a little wound, whether intended or not – don’t let that separate you. I want you to be of the same mind. Let’s get the big picture focus.

Third, he is going to call in for some reinforcements. There’s a request for competent counsel in verse 3. He says, “Yes, and I ask you, loyal yokefellow, help these women,” and then he describes the kind of women they are, “who have contended,” that’s a strong word, “contended at my side in the cause of the gospel.”

They were laborers in the church. They were giving their lives away, “…along with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are written in the book of life.”

And so he is asking for some competent counsel to help these two ladies solve this, because obviously they haven’t been able to solve it on their own.

In verse 4, there is a command about their relational focus. He says, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice.” And, by the way, it’s a command. Literally, it’s, “Find your joy, your focus, in the Lord” – how often? When? What does it say? Always.

I talked to a young gal last night who, I’ll tell you about a little bit later, but whose father, the day before her fourteenth birthday, abandoned the family. And she’s never heard from him or seen him since. And she came down after the service crying and just said, “What do I do? I just don’t know what to do.”

Well, we are going to learn what to do. But what I can tell you is, is that she is almost sixteen now – in her mind and in her heart, until somehow her father changes and something happens, her life has been a mess. And God was saying to her, I want you to find your joy, I want your relational focus to begin with Me. People will always let you down.

And then, finally, notice in the last verse, he says, “Let your gentleness be evident to all,” and then he gives a reason, “the Lord is near.” Put a box around the word gentleness. There are just a handful of words in the New Testament that…

Imagine them a bit more like a rainbow instead of a color. There is not one English word. And so let me give you a rainbow of colors. The word gentleness means: forbearance, reasonableness, geniality, considerateness, generosity. It has the idea to go beyond justice, to go beyond the letter of the law.

One commentator said, “It’s sweet reasonableness.” It’s to yield your personal rights for something that is bigger.

And, see, here’s what you need to remember about relational conflict, especially in God’s family. It’s bigger than just your relationship with the person, it’s bigger than your self-esteem, it’s even bigger than your emotional health. When you are a part of the family of God, when there’s division among God’s people, according to what Jesus taught, the world can question the validity of Him and the gospel when they see us divided and at each other’s throats.

That’s pretty heavy, isn’t it? Remember the very last night? He washed their feet, Judas had left the room, and then He said, “I, being your Teacher and Lord, have done this. Blessed are you if you do the same to one another.”

And then toward the end of chapter 13, in that room He says, “A very new commandment I give unto you, that you disciples love one another the way I have loved you.” Well, how did He love them? Sacrificially, giving His life, laying down His life, not claiming His rights, not waiting for us to get on board. He took initiative.

And then He says, “By this the world will know that the Father sent the Son, by how we” – what? “love one another.”

And so we live in a real therapeutic, psychological day and we all have our relationships and, They did that, or, We did this. As a follower of Jesus, all I want you to get, this is way bigger than how your life is working out. And this is way bigger about, What they did and they were wrong.

I know they’re wrong! Right? When you think about this relationship, you’re not thinking, Wow, I totally messed up and the reason it’s all messed up is because of me. You’re thinking what? You have a division with this person because of what they did! And I want you to know I agree with you.

All the problems I have ever had in any relationships with any person, it’s always been their fault. Don’t we all think like that?

So what he is going to say is that’s your lens, and as long as that is your lens, reasonableness is saying, “You know what?” There is a willingness to yield, there’s a willingness to realize, Maybe this person is seeing it from a different angle. Maybe there is at least some minute level of truth. Maybe I participated in how this thing went down. And even if it’s – are you ready? If it’s ninety-five percent their fault, which it probably is, and only five percent mine or yours, what this passage is saying, you take your five percent and you own it in humility, because the relationship matters more than your rights. The relationship matters more than who is right and who is wrong.