Reconcile: When It Burns Series

Begin by READing the Scriptures aloud - Lecto Divina: Jonah 1:1-3, 3:1-3, 3:10, 4:1-4 (~760 B.C.)

The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” 3 But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD.

Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” 3 Jonah obeyed the word of the LORD and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it.

10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD, “Isn’t this what I said, LORD, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 But the LORD replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

Today, we move to our final message in our 3 week series entitled “Reconcile.” Jesus once said, the scriptures say an “eye for eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”(Matt 5:38-39) In this simple statement are two profound truths: conflict will happen and following Jesus requires a third way of dealing with conflict. As long as humans exist on the planet, there will be struggles between us, our environment and our God. We can choose to fight it, run from it or be changed by it. If we choose the later, then we recognize that Conflict can be an intense journey toward a new path of holiness, revelation and reconciliation.

It is this journey, we will continue discussing today. Let’s face it: our lives are filled with conflict or if you prefer a softer word, tension. The tension of our lives becomes most apparent in our relationships but often we miss the greatest transformational aspect of tension or conflict: what it reveals about us personally. However, to achieve this blessing we must be willing engage them.

Transformational reconciliation reveals that we must engage with those we are in conflict with to be more like Christ. It happens when we engage conflict personally, in our community and globally.

Engage in personal conflict

I’ll never forget a period in my business life when I was struggling with a woman who I had to interact with everyday. I would cringe at the sight of her. I would spasm at the sound of her voice. I would watch when she came into the room and watch who she would talk to. It made me enraged when anyone referenced something she did or said. If they praised her, I would have to fight the urge to point out little known facts about the person’s true character. It was really starting to affect my participation at work. So I called my mentors. I shared my experiences with them at nausea. Finally, I asked what I should do. The answers were as follows:

- Pray for her. Pray 21 days that the person gets everything you want for yourself.

- Sit next to her: I asked for the reason, one of my mentors responded that I needed to form a different relationship with her. I needed to ask myself what was so aggravating and did I possess any of those characteristics.

-I was also told to bow my head down when the person talked and really listen to her heart. To remove the visual and listen for God’s truth in her words.

- Finally, I was told to serve her. It could be as simple as a true compliment or bring her a coffee.

Honestly, This whole situation almost killed me. However, one morning while listening to this woman I came to understand she was dealing with her insecurity in this life by trying to control everyone and everything. She was phony because deep down she didn’t think she measured up. The funny thing was it was the same reason I felt a need to tear her down. I didn’t think I measured up either. We just handled it differently.