Recently, two individuals I love and respect so much got into a
needless braw that affected their admirable relationship that span for years.
Typical of me, I tried to encourage and share God’s truth with them but they were
more focused on tearing themselves apart than making peace.
Their ordeal made me think long and hard on how to act appropriately dealing with conflicts in relationships.
I notice that too often, we
allow the smallest, most insignificant things destroy beautiful friendship and
relationships we have with those dear to our heart. Like in the case of my
friends, what caused their brawl was so silly; it shouldn’t make them want to
kill each other.
The real issue with
conflicts is that we are a variety of different people with different
personalities, different orientations, different ideologies, different values,
different beliefs etc so in relating with each other it is natural that we’re
going to have conflicts.
We need to see conflicts a normal part of any healthy (sibling,
friendship, business or marriage) relationship. Any relationship that is without conflict is most likely not a real
relationship.
I can’t imagine living with a person for a life time and not
having any form of disagreement with them. Living with someone, you’re going to
have different ideas on different things that can cause conflicts.
I remember when I was much younger and growing up, my elder sister
Katharine was someone that easily got
angered. At the slightest provocation, she will lash out and most times, she
lashed out on me. Being a guy I would give her a fight… our quarrels and fights
got so much that our mother got tired of separating us. One minute we would be happy and playing together, the next minute we
would be at each other’s throat.
As we grew with time, we learnt how to solve our petty quarrels
and problems ourselves and the more we resolved our conflicts, the more we
began to understand each other and our relationship grew stronger. For many… many
years now, we’ve never fought. We’ve
only had a few calm disagreements.
I noticed that oftentimes, we turn to experience conflict as an
attack on a person instead of resolving a problem and that is usually where the
problem begins. So when conflicts arise, what do we do?
Fight
through the situation
Instead of fighting each other when conflicts
arise, we need to fight for one another. My friends eventually fought for their
relationship. Everybody thought their relationship was done and over but thank
God they made it through, and I pray that we’ll continue to make it through. A
real relationship requires a lot of work, and sacrifices and prayers and
patience and love so fight through whatever together, grow close together,
laugh together, and don’t give up on one another.
Communicate
the offence
You’ve heard it said several times that
communication is the key to a good relationship. That is so true… communication is the bloodstream of any
relationship. Real relationships
thrive on truthful communication. It’s important that people open up to talk
and share their frustrations as well as their expectations.
I’m somebody that rarely gets offended but when I’m offended, I
make sure I communicate the offence. I realized that a lot of time, we offend people and not even know that we’ve offended
them.
Communication helps both parties
understand one another and share concerns that could potentially grow into
major frustration. Communication can
solve just about any issue so to you reading this, I say don’t allow silence kill what communication
could possibly save.
Confront
every issue not matter now little
I can say from experience that the small issues
we neglect have the potential to turn into bigger problems. And the bigger a problem gets, the more it
gets out of hand and the more overwhelming and difficult it becomes to solve.
Next to communicating an offence, we must confront
and quench the small flames that can turn into a raging fire that could kill
our beautiful relationships.
Be angry but sin not
In the Bible, we are not told never to get angry! What Scripture
says is be angry and sin not – Ephesians 4:26 so you are not going to hell if
you get angry. Anger is an emotion like
any other feeling. Anger becomes a problem when it is too intense, occurs too
frequently and last for too long.
Anger if not handled properly gets out of control and once that
happens, innocent people get hurt and we hurt ourselves in the process. SOMETIMES, IT IS UP TO US TO STOP BEING ANGRY OVER SILLY THINGS.
Learn to forgive and move
ahead
I’ve been hurt severally by people I love and trust to the point I
was unable to forgive people for some particular offences but I'm glad to say
that God has delivered me from that! Trust me; not being able to forgive people
causes us to miss out on amazing people and beautiful friendships.
We can’t sustain a lifelong
meaningful relationship without forgiveness. If Jesus held on to un-forgiveness
would HE have died on the cross for us?
Why do we hold back forgiveness towards others?
The same way we’ll want God to extend mercy and grace to us, we
must endeavor to extends, mercy and grace to others. Mathew 6:15 says “But if you refuse to forgive others, your
Father will not forgive your sins.” We mustn’t forget that the
grace we fail to extend to others, we will one day need our selves.
Take your frustrations to
Jesus not on people
Life is full of plenty annoyances as there are loads of things
that constantly drive us crazy. Even the
most patience of people sometime get worked into a furious rage that they pour their
frustrations on the people they love. Whenever you feel angered, take a deep breath;
exhale then Cast all your cares upon the
LORD; for He cares for you. – 1 Peter 5:7 Take your frustrations to Jesus
not on people…
Conflicts from
all we’ve seen are indications that
there is something we need to address that have not yet been addressed. We
need to look for the issues and address them and not attack the person while
ignoring the issue(s).
At the end of the day one thing conflict does is, it puts our character and integrity on display.
One better reaction can change the cause of a failing relationships to for
good (especially if it’s a relationship put together by God). One prayer I pray
almost all the time is Lord help me
learn how to act right when others
act wrong.
In closing, if you’re dealing with whatever kind of offence, conflict
or issue in any valued relationship, may I suggest to you that God can redeem
anything if you let Him? Give it up to Him and He will settle it.
Life is about living, learning and loving… so live, learn and
love. Try
to live at peace with everyone! Live a clean life. If you don’t, you will never
see the Lord. – Hebrews 12:14 (CEV)
Grace and Peace be multiplied onto you immeasurably. ♥
Just Sharing My
Thought
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Quick Announcements
Living, learning and loving is taken from my book “thought of a youth” which is still in the works. Keep a brother in prayer. Prayer is free! www.thoughtofayouth.blogspot.com
