A Good Church Fight!

And that is true, its best to deal with it right away and to talk to the person about it. Now if you don’t feel comfortable about that, please come and talk to me about it and we will see what we can do about it. If it is about me, please feel free to come and talk to me about it. Don’t be afraid, I’m not really that mean. Really. I had a girl in a church I pastored at the time named Kelly, and she was about 17 years old and was about 9 months pregnant and had just started coming to church, and during the sermon, I noticed that she was in pain and had her head on the pew ahead of her, and after the sermon, we had to actually carry her out to the car and take her to the hospital. She had gone in labor during my sermon, and afterwards I asked her why she didn’t leave during the message, she said she was afraid she would make me mad if she did. I’m not really that mean, but if you don’t feel comfortable talking to me about being mad at me, that’s one of the reasons we have a Pastor Parish Relations Committee, so speak to one of them and they will relay the message to me.

Now it’s important to remember that whoever the person is that you are mad at, remember that they are your brother or sister in Christ, they are not your enemy. Now notice that Paul in here says that these are not bad women. These were women whose names were written the book of life, these were both women who had labored to spread the gospel. The church has enemies but these women were not it. I remember something that I heard a while back that was told by a professor to a group of graduates in seminary. He said you go out there and you fight the good fight, but you make sure it’s a good fight you are fighting and not each other. Whenever you have a fight with a person in the church, remember we are people of grace, that means we treat others as we want to be treated, not like they treat us. That means that we practice forgiveness and not hold grudges. That means that we hold our tongues and not gossip or say things we would later regret.

Now what about we as a church when we see two of our members fighting in the church, what do we do? Well the first thing is that we can’t ignore it. Now a lot of times we simply don’t want to get involved in somebody else’s dispute. Our fear is that the result will only be that “both” parties are mad at us. Have you ever watched one of those “Cop Reality Shows” where the police are called out to break up a domestic disturbance, and when the police try to break up the fight they both turn on the policemen. That is what we are afraid will happen to us! They’re both going to get mad at us.

But as Christians we are called to be ambassadors of reconciliation. Paul called on his loyal yoke to help these two women get along. You see, in truth we are indeed are brother’s keeper. And we must work to bring folks to together.

You know, I love how in this chapter with all that Paul has going on in the church, with all the strife taking place, Paul has that wonderful verse that is often quoted, Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice. You see the church is supposed to a place of rejoicing, not a place of bickering and fighting. If you have something against someone this morning, I encourage you to take care of that today. Don’t let anything rob you of that joy in Christ that is yours today.