Responding To Conflict – Part 1 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning,

Welcome to the start of a new work week. And I trust as you head into this week that you recognize that God is so important in your life and that you look forward to these few moments every morning where we just stop and open the Bible and say, what does God have to say to us today? Because building your life around God’s view of the world is reality.

When we treat life as though we are the center of this universe, everything revolves around us. The only thing that matters is what matters to me and what happens to me and how people treat me. When we treat that as a reality, it is so distorted. That is not reality at all. I am not the center of this universe. How can we all be the center of the universe? No.

God is the center of the universe. Everything revolves around Him. He has made us for Himself. Our hearts are restless until we find our place with God. And so putting God at the center, treating his view of the world as reality, that’s what makes life meaningful. And so we take time each day to say, God, show us a little more of your view of the world. And this week we want to look at one of the very strong realities of life, and that is that there’s conflict in life, isn’t there?

It’s inevitable – relational conflict, and we need to know how to respond to it. I want to start out today by taking you to a verse that we come back to every now and then, and you know we do that with certain verses because they are so pivotal to our understanding of the world from God’s perspective and to have a Christian world view, this verse is right at the heart of it.

Romans chapter 8 verse 28 in the Bible. The apostle Paul is writing, and he says, and we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

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Notice he doesn’t say all things are good because we know many things that happen in this world are not good, including much of the conflict that we face in life. But God causes all things to work together for good. Not for everyone – only to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Conflict is inevitable in this world we live in, but how you respond to it is shaped by your world view, your value system, your belief. And when conflict hits you, you can face it with just anger and irritation, and thinking how to get back at someone, or you can stop and say, nothing is hidden from God. Nothing can touch my life without his permissive will, and God is working even this that may be a very negative, bad, even possibly evil conflict. God is going to use it to produce good in some way.

I can trust him with that. God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, and so I need to come to God and say, God, I am called according to Your purposes. I do trust you with your purpose for my life. I know that.

A good earthly father is sometimes going to stand back so that painful lessons can be learned by his children, and sometimes you’re going to allow conflict to continue in my life because you’re teaching me lessons about trusting you, about humility, about patience, about responding to others in the way that you would respond to them. And so I’m going to choose gentleness in my response because I’m trusting in you. I don’t have to defend myself. You are the one who is defending me.

Trusting God forms a foundation for responding to conflict in your life.

I’m John North.