Vince Vitale [00:00:41] Such a privilege to be here with our church family tonight and just have the chance to share. We're going to be sharing on this theme. And the topic is redeeming conflict. Most people usually talk about resolving conflict, and we put that there first, but it just seemed a bit too soft. It just seems sort of like, I don't know, when you resolve something, you sort of get past it. But you just kind of manage to get past it. We just thought, no, our God can do more than that. He's bigger than that. He can redeem conflict. And we just feel, Joe and I, it is hard to overstate the importance of this as a biblical theme. If I could be good at only one thing in my entire life, if I could somehow guarantee that my kids would just be good at one thing in their whole lives, this might actually be what I would choose. And there's three reasons we were thinking that particularly for us as we are church at this time, this is a relevant theme. First, because we have been meditating through Ephesians and we've been in this second half of Ephesians 4 to 6 and it's all about healthy God honoring relationships between husband and wife, parents and children within the church.

[00:01:58] Obedience to that of Ephesians vision for relationships is absolutely impossible if we're not good at this. Nearly one in three Americans report being estranged from a family member. So that's like to look you're right and your left, probably one of you. Forty percent at some point during their lifetime. Average estrangement, nine years. In a broken world, the ability to resolve conflict is absolutely make or break from most of our most important relationships. Because our relationships are a bit like this road here. And then they have started well, the road looks pretty good to me. And it can be good on the other side as well. It doesn't matter how good that road is at the start or how good it is on the other side when you have a huge hole in the middle. And for so many of our relationships, this is what happens. Things are progressing on a good course and then there's a crisis. Then there's a conflict. And if we're going to get to that place where the relationship continues in a healthy way, we need to be able to get through that enormous hole. I think we think this is so important.

[00:03:14] And I kind of think it's crazy that you go through your entire education, not a single class on this theme, not a single hour of a single class on resolving conflict. And then what we've inherited from our families at home, our family history, it often doesn't help matters. In my family, my extended family, we didn't do conflict resolution. Got in a conflict, and then you just didn't talk to the person sometimes for years. You didn't talk to the person until it had been long enough that no one could remember what you're fighting about anymore. And then one person would dig up a tomato plant from their yard and walk over to the other person's house and just present them with the tomato plant. No words exchanged. No I'm sorry. No I forgive you. Just the tomato plant, which I know sounds really weird, but Italian-Americans in New Jersey this is just what we do. I'm sure you do other things that are weird. It's probably the same poor tomato plant that's just getting dug up over and over and just hand back and forth from one uncle to the next over my my family history.

[00:04:25] Second reason this is relevant to us. Holidays are coming. Holidays are coming up and 69% of Americans say they come into conflict with loved ones during the holidays. And even as I tell you that statistic, for some of you, someone specific comes to mind who you have trepidation about seeing them over the holidays. Police interventions up 20% in December. Sadly, many of us will be with someone over Christmas where there's tension in the relationship. And then thirdly, we do have church or at least garage church. A lot of us do garage church, but we do house church or garage church. We are trying at least very imperfectly, but we are trying to live out this Ephesians vision of the one another's, of being a body, of being in each other's lives in a deep way, which is often messy. I can probably get in and out of a large Sunday service once a week without winding up in a conflict. Jo's probably looking at me like it's questionable, but that's just about the bar for me. I can probably do that. But if we're really journeying through life together as a family, a united body, we're joined and held together by every supporting ligament, we need every single part of the body so that we can build ourselves up in love. That is a recipe for messiness. It's a recipe for conflict. That's what we're signing up for.

[00:05:53] But that's actually in a weird way, it's actually encouraging because it actually means that we're at least beginning to live out that vision for the church that we see in the scriptures. Because lounging on the couch, if you're just sitting back lounging on the couch, you feel pretty good, you feel fine, your body feels fine. A little popcorn, a little Netflix, nothing's hurting. Then once you get to about my age, you get up off the couch and you actually start to function as a body and then you feel all the tensions, all the misalignments. My back starts hurting. You feel that when a body actually gets up and starts to function. And so even in your own home churches, if you're finding, hey, there's some conflict between us, counterintuitively, it's actually a good sign. It's actually a good sign. It means you're actually in each other's lives in a deep enough way to at least make a real attempt at living out what the scriptures ask of us. And we'd wind up in those conflicts, not just be comfortable sitting on the couch, but actually getting up and beginning to function as a body so complex. Actually, the first sign of health.

Jo Vitale [00:07:08] And now to some of you, when you hear events say conflict is a good thing, that may sound a little bit bizarre. That would certainly have been my take on it when we first got married. I would have been appalled by that statement. I wasn't raised in a loud, mouthy, Italian-American family. I'm British. And so in England, Christians, we translate turn the other cheek as basically like lie face down in the mud and get run over and then invite them to reverse back over you. That is our approach to handling conflict. So this idea of conflict being something we do that's good for us, it is just not culturally intuitive for me at all. And I'm so many of you could say the same as well. We have to be so careful not to excuse ourselves from clear biblical commands just because they don't align with our cultural values or our backgrounds. Quite the opposite. Actually means we usually have to work harder to overcome our personal hang ups. Now, what surprised me was that even the research actually confirms that conflict is necessary for healthy relationships. There was a recent survey that invited participants to rate their interactions with their significant other, both the positive and negative ones.

[00:08:17] And what the survey found was that actually if your percentage of negative interactions in your relationship are greater than 17%, then those relationships tend not to last. And I don't think that's particularly surprising. But the survey also found that if a relationship has less than 8% of negative interactions, then those relationships also tend not to last. And that did surprise me. That seems weird, right? Surely the less negative interactions, the better. Surely if you're down to zero, you're doing great. That would just be bliss. But I guess what it shows is that actually just because you're never in open conflict with somebody, it doesn't mean that there aren't problems. It's just that you're not invested enough in the relationship to add them or to challenge one another. When we first got married, Vince could tell just by the look on my face that something was wrong with me. But he would ask me like six times, "Jo, are you okay?" And I be like, it's nothing. I'm fine. It's nothing. I'm fine. It's nothing. I'm fine. Ironically, I actually thought that I was helping our marriage by being dishonest about my feelings.

[00:09:22] I thought I was somehow being more that us or faithful by trying to not be the one who had an issue or who was bothered by something. But actually, not only was that conflict avoidance, contrary to what research is healthy, but way more importantly, as we'll see in a second, it was also contrary to what we find in Scripture. Now that Vince and I know this data, if we're having a really great day, we just try and throw in an argument or two here or that just to make sure that our ratios don't get too high. But the serious point is this: conflict itself isn't the primary problem. We should expect to have conflicts. The problem is how do we deal with it when it comes? So when there's conflict, the first thing we need to do is to figure out, okay, well whose court is the ball in? Who needs to take the first step to resolve this conflict? Now, thankfully, Jesus gave us two very clear instructions for this Matthew 5 verse 23 and 24, if you are offering your gift at the old set and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, you leave your gift there in front of the altar, first go and be reconciled to them, then come and offer your gift.

[00:10:31] Just think about that for a second. How radical are those words? Stop what you're doing. Don't even think about coming to the altar until you have reconciled. What value to God is your gift, your offering, your declarations of praise if you know that somebody has something against you and you haven't done anything about it? Don't you know that disunity between your brothers and sisters grieves God so much more than any gift that you could give him? And it doesn't even say that the person who has something against you is necessarily right. It simply says if you know they have something against you, you go, the ball is in your courts. And then we have the reverse of Matthew 5 in Matthew 18, verse 15, if your brother or sister sins against you go and point out their faults just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have gained your brother or sister back. Again, we have this very strong instruction because it doesn't give us the option to do what it is that we normally do, just to keep your mouth shut and replay the grievance narrative in your head over and over and over. No, it says you've got to go.

[00:11:39] Saying you're fine when you're not or saying it's nothing when actually it is something, that's not actually an act of love. It's a lack of care because you're withholding from another the opportunity to be convicted and conformed more into the character of Christ. And you're also putting somebody at arm's length and you're keeping them there when there was this opportunity for true reconciliation and deepening intimacy. Having said that, let me make two important qualifications. First qualification is that when we're talking tonight, we're talking about everyday conflict situations. What we're not speaking to specifically are situations of abuse or oppression. Sometimes the Bible gives guidelines for how to handle a general everyday situation, but we make this interpretive mistake of taking it and applying those guidelines in any and every given situation, even when that was not always the context that the author had in mind. And I think Matthew, 18 would be an example of this. If you are being physically abused by somebody, it is not faithful or profitable for you to go on your own to that person and to put yourself in an unsafe situation.

[00:12:48] Yes, God's heart is for reconciliation wherever possible, but he is also a God who in Psalm 11 tells us he hates violence. A God who is gracious and compassionate and a good shepherd who gently leads the mother sheep and carries those who are young close to his heart. So if you're sitting here listening and thinking those steps don't sound safe or helpful in my particular situation right now, perhaps because it's one that lack safety or maybe there's this real power differential between you and the person you're in conflict with. And that's actually what the church is here for. It's to help you define what biblical wisdom looks like in your specific circumstance and to carry those burdens with you so that you're not facing them alone. So please do come and speak to us or to your pastor or one of the elders or their spouses afterwards, if you're in a particular situation like that.

[00:13:37] And then the second qualification I want to give is that the instruction in Matthew 18; to point out sin is not a license just to fling a criticism on your way out of the door. It's almost always unloving and unproductive to bring up somebody else's sin when you only have two minutes or maybe even 20 minutes to talk about it. Even if someone is willing to listen, even if they have this receptive and ready heart where they are like, please bring me more conviction of my sin. I need more of that in my life. Tell me more. Tell me everything I've done wrong. It still takes time to really meaningfully talk through an issue. And let's be honest, how many of us are in that starting point? And that is the goal, isn't it? It's not to drop this truth bomb and then just to leave the relationship in pieces. It's to be reconciled, to gain a brother or sister back.

Vince Vitale [00:14:26] I feel like you're talking about me?

Jo Vitale [00:14:27] No.

Vince Vitale [00:14:29] I do that, don't I? So now we know who's court the ball is in. If you're a Christian and you're in an everyday conflict, the ball is very likely in your court. Whether we have hurt someone or they've hurt us, we're told to go. The Bible sets this really high bar about proactively attempting to resolve conflict. And one thing I find amazing about these passages is that I tend to respond oppositely in both directions. If you hurt me, I'm like, well, you're the one who wronged me. You should know what you've done wrong and you should come to me and apologize. But if you feel that I've hurt you, I'm like, well, you're the one with an issue, so you should come to me and tell me what your issue is. I'm not a mind reader. And I find that so interesting. My flesh fights against these two passages in both directions, and I'd go so far to say as most of the pain and heartache in my life, at least so often comes down to disobedience to these two passages. If you're a Christian, the ball is in your court. If you're a Christian, you take the first step.

Jo Vitale [00:15:39] And once you've taken that first step, well, then you take the second step. And this one really took me a long time to learn. Back in college I lost one of my closest friends because I just didn't get this. I hurt her deeply by breaking a promise I made to her. And then even after I sincerely confessed and I apologized and I asked for her forgiveness, the friendship, it never really recovered. And at the time, I'll be honest, I blamed her for being unforgiving and putting up these boundaries between us after that event. But now I look back and I realize I think I had such a shallow understanding of what reconciliation is. I thought saying sorry was like one and done. When it didn't resolve immediately the way that I wanted it to, it just didn't even occur to me that maybe it was my job to keep pursuing, to show her by my persistence and love that my words weren't empty, they weren't insincere, that I really meant what I said, that I really did love her. And at the end of the day, I think my fear of rejection, it was actually greater than my commitment to loving her well. I just didn't pursue her. It was hard enough taking the first step, but it's so rare that we take the second.

[00:16:48] I think instead we throw our hands up and we just say, okay, well, the ball is in our court now. My hands are clean, but the goal isn't clean hands. It's not to pat ourselves on the back and to say, "Well, I did my part." The goal is to be reconciled. It's to gain back your brother and sister. So why quit before then? We've got to humble ourselves. If it doesn't work on the first try, try again. And if you need help or it's not going well, then take one or two others with you (Matthew 18) and have a second try. I find these words in Romans 12 verse 18 so challenging. It says if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. This verse it does acknowledge that sometimes it won't always be possible. Sadly, it will not always be possible. And that is a painful reality that we do have to accept sometimes. But honestly, I think our bigger problem is that we're too ready and willing to believe that it isn't possible. I think we give up before we ever really tried.

[00:17:47] So far as it depends on you, can we honestly say that we did everything that we could. And even if we did it back then, is it time to try again now? Is it time to try again? One attempt at reconciliation is not an attempt at reconciliation. How convicting I find those words even as I'm saying them to you. Even now there are people in my mind I'm thinking, I need to do more. Reconciliation is hard. But you know what? I thank God that he isn't halfhearted in his attempt at reconciliation. Thank God that he didn't take the first step and then just wash his hands of us and say, well, I did my part. The ball is in their court now. Like, how many times did God reach out to you before you responded to him? Didn't he take the first step and then the second step and then the third and then the fourth and then the fifth. Has anything actually ever deterred him? Has there ever been a point where God has stopped pursuing you?

Vince Vitale [00:18:49] God is so different from the world. This is the exact opposite of what the world tells us of worldly wisdom. We hear we have phrases like this. Love means never having to say I'm sorry. Really, I can never? And we just heard from Joe. The Bible says the exact opposite. We say sorry first right away before anything else. Even before you come to worship me, you go and you're reconciled. Mark prayed before we started our service. He prayed from Luke 7. This idea that Jesus says that he who is forgiven little loves little. He who is forgiven much loves much. And that's actually like a direct contradiction of this worldly wisdom. And I actually spent a lot of my life trying to live this out. Love being a valuable person means never having to say I'm sorry. So I'll just rationalize and rationalize and rationalize it. I don't need to say I'm sorry and that you were wrong and I wasn't the one that was wrong. And somehow that was going to make me a valuable, loving person. And Jesus actually says the exact opposite. He who is forgiven little loves little. He who is forgiven much loves much.

[00:19:58] I spent a lot of my life trying to be forgiven as little as possible. Now I'm striving to be forgiven as much as I possibly can, because it's when you experience the forgiveness of God and of others and that fills you up, that you then have that forgiveness to pour out to other people and you actually become a loving person. How about time heals all wounds? Does that work. But we hear this, right? We hear this all the time. Just give it time. The Bible says the opposite. It says don't wait. Go ahead. If anybody had enough time, God had enough time. If it was just a matter of just waiting it out. Just give it time. If anybody could have waited long enough, the everlasting God could have just waited it out. But he dealt with conflict so differently. He came to be with us in a dramatic way to resolve conflict.

[00:20:52] Conflict is not like fine wine. It does not age well. It is more like a disease. It is always in your system. You carry it everywhere you go. It's contagious. It will impact everyone you come into contact with and in particular the people that you are closest to. And sometimes we convince ourselves that we can somehow build high walls around one or two unhealthy relationships in our life. One or two conflicts in our life and think it's not going to affect anyone else. I got this bad conflict at work, but it's not going to affect any of the other relationships. It's not going to affect me when I come home. And conflict doesn't work that way. It's like a disease. It leaks out and it spread and it infects all the other relationships in our lives. Conflict not resolved in one relationship will inevitably impact all of our other relationships.

Jo Vitale [00:21:43] That's why it's so crucial that we take action now. If you're in this community and there is a relationship in your life that you're struggling with, then please don't go it alone. Please don't. Sometimes we stay quiet because we convince ourselves it is not a big deal. Maybe the trajectory is off course, but [inaudible] by one degree, right? Sure one degree isn't a big deal at first. But if that course isn't corrected, then 30 years from now one degree off course will leave you a long way from the destination that you were aiming for. My dad's a pastor and a few years back he told me that in his 35 years of pastoral ministry, there's only been a couple of occasions where a husband and wife have come to him early enough to actually restore the marriage. Usually by the time that even thinking of bringing it to their pastor, they're feet are already out the door. And if that's the case with marriage, how much more true of this is this of other relationships where we didn't even make vows to one another in the first place? And so we don't feel half so bad about just walking away. It's not going to get better with time. It will only get worse. So let's have the tough conversations now. Let's not put them off.

Vince Vitale [00:22:54] Let's get very practical for a few minutes. We want to give a couple of remarks on what tends to cause conflict and then what most frequently keeps us from resolving conflict. And so if we ask that question, what most frequently causes conflict I think the clear winner is assuming motive. People do things and we assume the motives that they have for doing those things. Hands down I think that is what most frequently causes conflict. And studies show that we are actually very bad at assuming other people's motives. When someone does something and you don't like it or you find it frustrating and you guess why they did the thing that frustrated you, we are usually wrong in what we've guessed, and even more intriguingly, when we assume people's motives. Rather than asking questions about them, we usually assume whatever will hurt us most. Isn't that weird? Such an odd part of our human psychology. But have you ever noticed that? But there's actually a reason for this. It's a self-defense mechanism because when we're operating out of fear, because there probably was a time in my life when someone betrayed me or when someone did leave me or when somebody was saying things about me that weren't true and was huddling together with others and shaming me in some sort of way and it really hurt.

[00:24:32] And so in that moment, my brain tells me that was really painful that time when that actually happened. And so we need to be extra careful to never let that happen again. We need to be extra vigilant to make sure that we never get hurt like that again. And we need to be especially vigilant with the people who can hurt us most. And who are the people who can hurt you most? The people that you're closest to. And so counter-intuitively, our assumptions actually tend to be worst about the people that we know best. And for me at least.

[00:25:13] Realizing that was a light bulb moment in my marriage because I think, well, if I'm good at guessing anyone's motives, it's Jo's because I know her better than anyone. We've spent all this time together. Surely I'm going to be pretty accurate at least when I guess her motives. But no, it's the opposite. I'm inclined to be even worse at guessing her motives because somewhere deep down, I'm most fearful of her having the bad motives because she's the one who can hurt me most because I care so much about her. And so when I assume those motives and don't ask questions, we wind up in these situations. Like I mean just a hypothetical example, if you're married out there and maybe there's a situation in which you kind of imply that you might be intimate with your partner and maybe there's kind of just a little giggle and the person kind of keeps walking like they're maybe not that interested, just hypothetically this is, you might just start assuming and your brain and the enemy and your flesh are going to tell you preempt it, preempt getting hurt, put a bad assumption on that so that you're ready in case that's the bad motive. And you're going to think she's not attracted to me anymore.

[00:26:37] And you're going to say she doesn't care about our marriage. She's not valuing our marriage. She doesn't respect me. And then three days later you're going to find out actually she's just really getting sick. And she felt quite gross that day. And she was fearful that you were going to find her unattractive. Literally the opposite of the assumption. But of course, I had to live with frustration and conflict between us for three days because for three days I assumed motives rather than actually just asking questions. Hypothetically, of course. Hypothetically if that had happened to someone in the room. So we need to not assume motives. When you feel yourself beginning to do that, you need to slow down, stop by yourself some time. Your brain needs like six seconds to stop taking a kind of fight or flee approach and to actually just settle down and reroute in a different direction. Have a verse, have a prayer that you go to that gives you those six seconds to get going in a different direction and then pray and then start to ask some good questions.

Jo Vitale [00:27:47] Obviously it was hypothetical. It wouldn't have to take us three days to work out a conflict.

Vince Vitale [00:27:51] That's fast.

Jo Vitale [00:27:54] Yeah, but what most often then keeps us from resolving conflict? If assuming motive is the most common cause, then what most keeps us from dealing with it? Well, Vince and I went through something a few years ago in a Christian community that we were a part of that just led to a lot of people being deeply hurt. And it shattered so many relationships between brothers and sisters in Christ. And at the time, we were so grateful to the Holy Spirit for convicting us that we just really needed to focus on our own sin and how we had contributed to the harm and just to make repentance and restitution our priority before worrying about anything else. Even as we felt the Lord leading us in that direction and we were actually really thankful for it, it then became quite disorienting when a number of people started saying to us, "Well, just be careful. Don't own more than you need to own." I think that instinct is so human, isn't it? If you can prove to me that I'm like 23% wrong, then okay, fine. I'm 23% wrong. But don't you dare imply that I'm 24% wrong.

[00:29:00] And I think, tragically, we just see this all the time, don't we? In the news it's just constant headlines among politicians or business leaders or cultural influences or even sadly church leaders, that we just watched this thing play out where people minimize and qualify their statements to death and they really only own whatever they think you already know, whatever they've already been caught out for. And it's just so depressing, but we can't be hypocrites about this ourselves. If we don't like it when we see that happening in public, then we need to not act that way in private. We have the chance to be truly distinct as God's people here. Because when somebody says to you be careful not to own more than you need to, the first thing that should come to our minds is, wow, I am so thankful that Jesus didn't have that attitude or He would never have owned all that He owned for me.

[00:29:53] Jesus didn't need to own anything, and yet he owned everything. He who had no sin became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God. Our heart are so different than Jesus's and our hearts there is just this self-righteous asymmetry. We love owning things when things are going well. You should just listen to Vince and his dad when they're talking about the New York Yankees. And I know New York Yankees fans it's terrible, but don't shoot me. I'm just the messenger. I actually don't even know what baseball is. When Vince and I started dating, he told me I came out of left field and to this day I actually don't know what that means.

Vince Vitale [00:30:30] First time we watched baseball, Joe said, "Why are all the men running around in circles in their pajamas?" Never thought about it, but the uniforms do kind of look like pajamas.

Jo Vitale [00:30:41] It's not cricket. Anyway, whenever the Yankees they have a great game, Vince gets on the phone with his dad and it's all we won, and we this, and we that. And I like the off season moves we made and we really have a good shot this year. I mean, if you could hear them, there is such a sense of ownership in their voices that you would think Vince is batting third for the Yankees and his dad owned the team. But then as soon as this they start losing like end of the World Series (sorry Vince) they change that tune and it's like, look at these bums. Where did you find these guys? Sorry, that's such a bad jersey accent.

Vince Vitale [00:31:13] It's alright.

Jo Vitale [00:31:13] But they need to get their act together. But I'm the same, right? I have this similar asymmetry in my heart when it comes to this thing in my life. I am more than happy when I wind up not having to own something that I should own when I get away with something that should have been brought into the light. I'm not worried about a lack of justice at all, but if I'm asked to own even the tiniest crumb more than I am responsible for, then I'm outraged. I'm up in arms at the grave injustice of the situation. Just think about it. Like how many times have you rung somebody and got away with it?

Vince Vitale [00:31:49] A few questions for our hearts just to consider together. Would you rather someone think you are better than you are or worse than you are? I feel like I spend most of my life trying to get people to think that I was better than I am rather than worse than I am. Trying to get people to see all the good and not see all the bad. And the longer I live, I just think that's a fool's way to live. I don't want people to think I'm better than I am. And if I receive criticism, I don't want to respond to that criticism by trying to convince people that I'm better than they think that I am because that's not true. And that's not the gospel. I'm worse than you think. Far worse. But that means that my God is far better. He's far better because this is the sinner that I am and he would love even someone like me. This is how badly I needed his rescue and he would rescue someone even like me. If I talk like I'm so great, I had this great life that I had produced by myself and really I just needed God as a bit of a value add, I was kind of climbing my way up on my own. I just needed him to give me a little bit of boost. The greater I make myself look, the more minimal I make him look. But that's just not the truth. I was dead. He is life. I had nothing. He is everything.

[00:33:13] When we let people see the truth about us, then we let people see the truth about our God as well. Would you rather be right and unreconciled or wrong and reconcile? And maybe you know the right answer, but you got to be honest with your heart. Are you more concerned with being right or being reconciled? Most people would rather be right. So they spend their lives winning arguments rather than winning people. And when I wrote that line in my notes, I just had this image in my head of two people coming to the end of their life and appearing before Jesus and sort of presenting their gifts to Jesus. And the one person presented all the times that they felt they were right. All the great arguments that they made, all the wisdom that they had convinced themselves that they had, how right they were in all these situations, and they presented that to Jesus. And then there was another person who just came to Jesus and just presented all the people who he had won. The people that he won to Christ, the people who he had made disciples. The people when he had come up to the altar and said, no, I need to go and make something right first and gone and reconciled and won back his brother or his sister. Which person do you want to be?

[00:34:37] And so think about whatever conflict you are in right now, who cares if you're right? Does it really matter? Is it really that big of a deal? It's actually not. If you are saved by grace rather than by works, your identity, your value, your worth, the love that is showered upon you by our Heavenly Father, completely secure. Has absolutely nothing to do with whether you're right or you're wrong in the conflict that you're in right now. How badly we need to be right tells us a lot about the depth in which we have embraced the actual gospel. And think about how arrogant we sometimes are. We always assume we're right. Like in my conflicts, I think I'm right 90% of the time. And you probably think you're right 90% of the time. And the people that I'm in conflict with, they think they're right 90% of the time. Well, the math doesn't add up. It doesn't work. And the scriptures tell me to consider others better than myself. But on what grounds do I think 90% of my conflicts I'm in the right? Is it because I think I'm smarter than the other people? Is it because I think I'm more faithful than the other people? When it's in the context of our church family in particular, why should I have a particularly strong opinion on that?

[00:36:04] I think the reality is so often we have no idea who is right. Jesus will tell us in the end. But what we do know is that he longs for reconciliation. So scripture sums up all of this. All these that we've been saying far better than any words that I could use. And with perhaps my favorite all time question, first Corinthians 6 verse 7, why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be wronged? If I ever get a tattoo, probably going to be my tattoo. This is written in the context of lawsuits between believers where believers were getting into lawsuits with one another rather than working towards resolution and redeeming conflict within the church. But I think because of that we sometimes kind of think this doesn't really apply to us unless you're in an active lawsuit. But how much of our time do we actually spend prosecuting lawsuits, prosecuting other believers in our heads? Like Jo said before, those narratives, those grievance narratives just playing over and over and over in our heads.

[00:37:08] And then we start to gossip about it maybe in really subtle ways. We're looking for counsel, but then there's some gossip in there and we're just prosecuting our brothers and our sisters with our words. We're making sure that we can find some sort of symbolic way in our heads, in our conversations with others, to exact punishment, to exact justice and vengeance. And we set ourselves up as who? As God. Because it's his place to avenge, not ours. Why not rather be wronged? Why not? Why not rather be wronged? Let's never forget that every one of us has wronged someone worse than we have been wronged. Maybe just close your eyes and just consider that. I just want you to hear that. Every one of has wronged someone worse than we have been wronged. Our sin put Jesus, the holy one, on the cross. We believe that. And yet we have been treated with such extravagant mercy and such extravagant grace. How, then, will we treat those who have wronged us?

Jo Vitale [00:38:21] So the other thing that Vince and I kept being told as we pursued reconciliation is that we should wait until others were willing to meet us halfway. And I think that's pretty common. And I can see how it makes sense. It's only fair, right? Sure, I got some things wrong, but you got somethings wrong, too. So you were hurt. I was hurt. So I'll repent of where I was wrong as long as you repent of where you wronged me as well. Let's just meet halfway. And it's often this kind of like dance we do where each party will only apologize to the extent that they think the other person is ready to apologize to them?. It's very transactional. Once again, thank you Jesus that this wasn't your approach. If Jesus had taken this approach, if Jesus had waited until I was ready to meet him halfway before doing everything he could to pursue reconciliation with me, I would still be dead in my sins. I would be dead in my sins. But if Jesus is willing to die to take that first step towards reconciliation, even though he was 100% right and he was totally blameless, then I can take the first steps of repentance and the conflicts in my life. That is the very least that I can do.

[00:39:33] Romans 12:10 exhorts us to outdo one another in giving honor. What if one way that we sought to outdo one another in showing honor was by competing to be the first to apologize? Imagine that in your relationships. Rather than fighting to be the one who gets to go last, you were fighting to get to go first with your I'm sorry. A good friend of ours likes to put it this way. He says love takes initiative. And when it comes to conflict, it's almost always takes two to tango, doesn't it? Even if you're only 2% responsible for a conflict, you are 100% responsible for your 2%. So ask for the forgiveness that you need and really mean it. Take ownership of it, pull it apart, and ask the Holy Spirit to sift through the heart motives behind it. Because I promise you, when you do, so much more stuff is going to come out when you start really asking the Lord to examine your heart motives. It is remarkable how often the act of humbly asking for forgiveness will, number one, make you realize that your part is so much more than 2%. It is way closer to 50 or more. And number two, it makes it much more likely that the other person is going to respond in turn because confession is actually contagious.

[00:40:45] It is the kindness of the Lord that leads to repentance. And when someone vulnerably and humbly acknowledges the hurt they've caused and asked for forgiveness without qualification or defensiveness, it is such a deeply healing gift and it immediately lowers our own defenses and it inspires us to offer that same gift in return. So instead of having to stand off where we're trying to meet in the middle but we're fighting over exactly where the middle is because we don't want to give an inch of ground more than we have to. What if the choice to confess first was actually this choice to run towards the other without worrying about where the middle is? Because the goal isn't to win the argument, it is to be reunited with that person. So you will just run as far as you need to run to reach them.

Vince Vitale [00:41:32] Then when we get to the point where we're actually ready to make an apology, we need to make a good apology. And so often, even when we get to the point where we're ready to apologize, we so badly want the other person to see that they really should be meeting us halfway, that really they were wrong in this situation as well. And we even tell ourselves I'm not going to turn it around. I'm not going to say I'm sorry but. And it's like we literally get the words out of our mouth and we just can't resist it. And when we throw the but in there. And we so often apologize in some of these ways that have come up on the screen. I'm sorry if you took it that way. All right. I'm sorry. Okay, good start. The ifs and the buts really get us. If you took it that way, which is actually a subtle criticism of saying I'm sorry, maybe I got part of this wrong, but really, it was your interpretation. if you were just smart enough to interpret me correctly, then we wouldn't be in this situation. I'm sorry if you felt that way. So, actually, the problem's really your emotions. You're just not emotionally kind of together enough.

[00:42:37] If you didn't feel that way in response to what I did, we'd be fine. I'm sorry for X, but it was just so frustrating when you did Y. This is one of those ones where we kind of like know we're not supposed to say it and we just can't resist the urge. And so many of our apologies are like that third one. That should always be two separate conversations because you can't really be sitting in remorse for the way that you have hurt someone and saying that you're sorry while literally in the same breath trying to communicate and rebuke them for their sin, which has frustrated you. That's like literally asking your heart to be in two different places at once. It's not that the other person hasn't hurt you, and maybe that's legitimate and it has to be dealt with, but it has to be two separate conversations. This is maybe my favorite one. I'm sorry, but you know my heart. It's kind of this way of saying like there couldn't possibly be anything impure in my heart. It couldn't possibly be that actually there was something wrong with my heart and out of the overflow of that came my words or my actions. So it actually must have just been like an accident or like bad luck in the universe or maybe I just kind of misspoke. It couldn't actually have been something that was in my heart.

[00:43:56] And whenever I hear that, I just immediately think of the words from Jeremiah. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Yes, I know your heart. And I know my heart. And so we shouldn't be surprised if there are things that overflow out of our hearts that hurt each other. The way that we apologize tells us so much about the extent to which we have really embraced the gospel we want to get to the place where we're not just speaking words. I'm not going to give you some formula, and these are the words that you say in order to say a good apology. Is that we need our hearts to be in such a place where it's just natural and actually feels freeing and life giving when somebody points something out. And by the Holy Spirit, you feel the conviction and you know that you have done something wrong and you have wronged them. And it's just natural to just say, "I am so sorry. I see it. I see what you're saying. I wronged you. That is my fault. I hurt you. I'm so sorry. I'm a sinner. I thank Jesus for his grace in my life. I hate that I hurt you in that way. Is there anything at all that I can do to help? I mean it. I would love to. I hope that you could consider forgiving me. There's nothing that I would love more than to be reconciled with you." And to not in any way make us feel like demeaning or in some ways we're in a place of shame. That is our privilege as Christians.

[00:45:24] It is our privilege to be able to bring things into the light. And as first John says, that is how we have our fellowship with one another. It's the opposite of the world that says you bring something into the light and you'll be canceled, cut off no community. We want nothing to do with you anymore. No, we bring things into the light. And it's precisely through that in first John that we have fellowship not just with God, but it says with one another. So we get to this point where we can just freely own our sin, and that just makes us just honor God even more for his grace in our lives. And it's a communication of the gospel. We need to get good at apologizing. I don't mean that as some kind of artificial skill set. I mean we need to get our hearts in a place where we are ready to apologize, and then we need to share the beauty of that reconciliation with everyone and everywhere. I'm particularly passionate about sharing it at work if you work with the team, when is the last time that you asked for forgiveness from a colleague? A Christian should not have a hard time answering that question. And if we do, then we're missing such an opportunity.

[00:46:29] People often lament to me that they can't share the gospel in their secular workplace, or at least not without losing their jobs. But there's no HR policies against reconciliation. And 85% of employees say they are in conflict at work. What an opportunity. What an opportunity to humble yourself before a non-believing colleague when you mess up, when you get something wrong and own it. Not even because they've come to you and asked you to. Just because you've been praying with the Lord and you haven't been saying, "God tell me if I need to ask forgiveness from someone." You've been saying, "Lord tell me if I have an opportunity to ask forgiveness from someone. Tell me if I have an opportunity to share with someone that the way that you restore relationship when something's gone wrong.

[00:47:17] When you've gotten something wrong is not by just trying to do good deeds toward that person until your good deeds somehow outweigh your bad deeds and then the relationship can get back on track. No, the way you restore relationship is by humbling yourself and acknowledging your wrongdoing and then asking the person for forgiveness." When you do that with a nonbeliever in the context of the workplace, have you communicated the gospel? Yes, you have communicated the gospel in a powerful way. Most people in your workplaces could go their entire lives without ever having that experience, without ever having the experience of someone genuinely humbling themselves before them, owning a mistake and asking for forgiveness. What an opportunity you have to present the gospel in a real life way right there in the context of the workplace.

Jo Vitale [00:48:12] The other place that I'm excited we get to share reconciliation is with your kids. And I'm not just talking about the nuclear families in the room. I'm talking about the relationship all of us have with the children in your lives, whether they're your biological kids or not. You may not realize it, but you have a huge impact on our children. They talk about so many of you at home all the time. And I mentioned my dad's a pastor and I must have had him preach in like hundreds of sermons through my childhood. And they were great sermons. But you know what sticks with me more than anything about my father's example, was the way that he handled reconciliation. Because whenever we had a conflict, usually because I was being an absolute brat, he would inevitably come up to my room where I was sulking and he would immediately take the initiative by confessing how he'd sinned against me and asking for my forgiveness, even though I was clearly the more offensive party and even though he was the authority figure, both as my father and as my pastor, he wasn't afraid to go fast. Seeing him do that time and time again. That spoke so much to me about his identity and Christ.

[00:49:19] That he didn't see repentance as diminishing him or undermining him on unmanning him somehow. But he understood himself to be first and foremost one who had been forgiven much. And so it just liberated him to love much without insecurity creeping in. It was such a beautiful model to me of godly leadership, and it just showed me, hey, this isn't just something you preach about. You live this life. This life of being forgiven and forgiving and it's beautiful. It made me want to be a Christian more than anything else, watching the way he lived out reconciliation with us. And so it begs the question, like, when was the last time you asked a child for forgiveness? And then second, we get to model reconciliation by letting children see you reconcile with each other. If my kids hear me speaking in an unkind way to Vince, they also need to hear me asking Vince for forgiveness. Otherwise, they can have such a warped perspective on what to expect from relationships as they grow up.

[00:50:18] And thirdly, have your kids reconcile with each other as well. Have them practice Matthew 5 and Matthew, 18 themselves. We were actually shocked by how young our kids could grasp this, maybe because they got into so many fights they had to learn early. But at ages three and five, they were actually far better than most adults at reconciling because they didn't have this backlog of years of developing bad habits, of suppressing their emotions and conflicts. And it was just so much more effective than when I just stand there trying to fix the situation and just yelling at them to say sorry to each other. Even at this young age, when I watch them do it, I can just see that these kids they were created for reconciliation. It is this part of the DNA that God has formed in them as being his image bearers. But developing that muscle of reconciliation, it takes time. And so we can give kids such an enormous gift by helping them develop those muscles from a young age.

Vince Vitale [00:51:11] Yeah. And we're inviting people not just into the beliefs of the faith, but into the actual practice of the faith. Whether it's children or children in the church or colleagues, faith is not just something we think. It's something that we live out and just had this image of riding a bike. You can look at the instruction manual and I can kind of sit there with my kids and just kind of talk them through the instruction manual or I can get out there and put them on a bike and run behind them and hold the seat until they're off and riding on their own. And this is what we can do when we pursue reconciliation in the context of the church and outside of the church. We give people an actual experience of the gospel of reconciliation. Sometimes we just give people the Christian instructions and we leave them to figure it out. But we can do so much more than that. We don't just want to tell people about the Christian life. We want to actually show it to them. We want them to experience it. We want them to know the feeling of that weight falling off your shoulders. We want them to taste and see that the Lord is good.

Jo Vitale [00:52:16] So hopefully you've captured the sense that there are many reasons to fall in love with reconciliation. But the one reason that I love this topic more than any other is because I just think it leads to absolute awe and wonder at God when we think about our approach to reconciliation and then we look at how he does it. Because whenever somebody wrongs us, we distance ourselves and we try to make them pay for it through gossip, through slander, through replaying those grievance narratives by withholding affection, maybe sometimes just cutting them out of our lives entirely. But Jesus instinct is that the exact opposite. He runs towards those who have hurt him and he willingly pays the price. As we finish, just consider the incarnation and the atonement the night he was born. Christmas is coming up. The angels were singing Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to those on whom his favor rest. Peace on earth at last because the prince of peace was literally taking that first ever reconciliation into a world that was at war with one another and at war with God.

[00:53:26] And then think about the cross. Just even tonight in worship JJ as we were worshiping down here, he looked up at the cross here and he said, "Mom, is that the cross that Jesus died on?" So I told him, no, that's like a picture of the cross that Jesus died on. And then he said, "But, mom, is it true that Jesus he came to Earth and he went and died on the cross while people were running away from him?" I was like, yeah, that's pretty much it. He did it while people were running away from him. And then he looked down from that cross at that those who were killing him and he prayed with a heart full of love. Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. And then at his resurrection, when the first word that he greets his disciples with after dying to reconcile man to God is shalom. Peace be upon you. My brothers and sisters, that is the heart of Jesus Christ for you. He who is himself at peace.

Vince Vitale [00:54:24] And you may be sitting here thinking, that's not what's in my heart. And then you may be thinking what's in my heart is defensiveness and pride and bitterness and resentment. And that's okay. Not okay for that to stay that way. But God offers us his heart. He pours out his love into our hearts by his spirit which he's promised us. And this is one of the primary reasons that I'm a Christian today. Before I came to Christ, I cannot say it emphatically enough how resistant I was to apologizing to anyone for anything. Because I felt somewhere deep down that my value and my worth was dependent on me being right. And I was philosophical in the way that I thought about things. So I could argue and I could argue and I could persuade and I could rationalize and I could make other people convinced that they were wrong and I was right. I gave my life to Christ in my dorm room in college. One of the next mornings that week, I woke up and for the first time in my life I woke up with a flood of conviction. Not condemnation, life giving conviction, where there was just name after name, face after face going through my head, and all of a sudden I could see clearly to the ways that I had wrong people.

[00:55:45] And I sat down at a table in my parents’ home, and I just couldn't write fast enough. And I just started writing one apology letter after another, just apologizing to one person after another. And it just felt so freeing and so life giving. And I saw a beautiful reconciliation take place through that. That is one of the primary reasons that I am so confident in my faith, because I can't overstate it. For that to happen to me psychologically overnight, it is as miraculous as if God grew back a limb that I never had. That is something that just simply was not in me in any respect. And God gave that in abundance when I humbled myself and came to him. Is there someone that you know you need to ask forgiveness from as you've been listening tonight? Is there someone you know you need to pursue reconciliation with? Let's not leave here tonight with just the Christian instruction manual. Jo and I are never excited about sharing a message if we think people are just going to know a bit more about God and about the Christian faith. We get really excited if we actually leave this place with God having given us life giving conviction, having maybe put someone on our hearts, put someone in our minds and asking us to go out as a body and take steps towards the reconciliation that he asks of us.

[00:57:11] And I just want us to ask those questions directly to the lord, not to just kind of figure it out ourselves and think hard about it. But let's just spend a couple of minutes in prayer and just ask him, "Lord, is there someone that I need to ask for forgiveness from? Lord, is there someone that I need to take a step toward reconciliation with?" And so, Jesus, we just bring these questions before you now and we ask that you would give us ears to hear you. We trust you for it in these next couple of minutes in your name Jesus, amen.

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