Señales de Alerta y Flores Rosas | Deja que el conflicto te construya, no que te destruya | Jeremy DeWeerdt

Hola, Iglesia de City First, tomamos un momento para darle la bienvenida a todas las localidades, Janesville, Cape Coral, Dios detrás de las rejas, los queremos mucho. Y cualquier persona que se encuentre en City First Anywhere, cualquier parte del mundo, gracias por venir. Y bueno, quiero presentarles el día de hoy, tenemos una oportunidad emocionante por un momento. Si has estado viendo las noticias, sobre todo si vives en la línea estatal, you know, this past week we had some crazy storms that were going through. And literally there were tornadoes here in the state line, almost like, you could say there were floods, like the Noah's Ark. And you know, I really felt in my heart that we had to do something like the church. This is right here in the DNA of our church. And so, what we're going to do is I would like to present an opportunity to give to a small fund that we're calling the Midwest District Fund. And what we're going to do is we're going to do this fund, and we're going to help people who have been impacted by the tornadoes or the floods. And the reason I'm asking all the localities, I want you to participate because although we're in many places, we're a church. When King Coral in Florida, there was the hurricane, we all helped, all the localities helped. And well, we have a location in Janesville, Wisconsin, where the flood was very strong. Thank God, our church is fine. We had a little bit of water, but it wasn't too bad. A lot of the neighborhoods and a lot of the people who are there, residents of that city, were not so fortunate. And there was a lot of damage. And unfortunately, they've had to leave their homes. And so, we're going to do this as a church.

And I'm giving an opportunity, not just to pray, because you have to pray, and it's important, but also to put facts and faith together, hand in hand. And well, because people need more than our prayers, they need more than our prayers. And so, if we all give a little, like thousands of all the localities, if we give just a little, it's going to make a massive impact. And so, there's a barcode on the screen right now, if you want to take your phone, if you want to give to it. And well, we're going to take this offering for the next few weeks, and we're going to invest it to giving to those people that have been impacted by these midwest storms. And we want to be a church that comes in the name of Jesus, and we say, here, we're here to help. So, I want you to be motivated. You say, well, now you can put it on your, on our website, it'll be a little bit later. There you can give, if you want to give later. And I'm excited about what God's going to do. And you know what? Many times, that opens up people's hearts to a spiritual thing as well. And we come, right? We come with a glass of water in the name of Jesus, so to speak. You agree?

Well, let's go ahead and put our hands like that. Let's just give a round of applause, right? Well, we're in a series called Red Flags and Roses. And well, I tell you, this is a great, great series. And Kyle, last week, talked about this. Relationships and friendships can also bring great joy, but also bring great pain, right? If I were to ask you, if I were to ask you the most beautiful memory, it's probably involving a person. If I were to ask you what's your biggest pain, it probably would involve a person. Your best moments have names, and your worst moments have names too, right? In fact, your greatest joys that you've ever felt probably involve a person or a group of people. But your biggest pain or what you regret, I think it may feel like a scarred by or probably involves a person or a group of people. Also, the point is in relationships and stuff like that. Well, that's how life is. It has this. And we need to know how to navigate the good and also the painful. So today I'm going to talk about something that I guarantee you 10 out of 10 people have had in their relationships, maybe romantic relationships, or maybe with friends, or maybe with someone at school,

or with a neighbor. I guarantee you that you've been through this. And we're going to talk about how to navigate this. And the topic today is about conflict. In other words, when two parties disagree. and find a solution. My message for today is to let the conflict build you, not break you. Whether it be a marriage, a romantic relationship, boyfriend and girlfriend, friends, family, the people you hang out with at work, your neighbor, the person you're going to school with, the people you're going to school with, the people you're going to school with every day, you're going to encounter a time where there is conflict in that relationship. I would say, and I would bet on it, because I know that if someone goes through this life, there's going to be conflict. I don't know anyone who hasn't gone through conflict. So why is conflict unavoidable? The reason why conflict is unavoidable is because you are not married to yourself and you are not going to school with yourself, is because the person you're in conflict with is not you. They see the world different. They see the world different. They act different. In fact, this is the thing, if you're not married, you're not conflicted,

you're going to have to marry you. But that's not the way it works. And maybe it's not about the fact that someone else is different than you. Conflicts can come into relationships because of how people act, what they say, what they do, what they don't do. All of those things can lead to conflict. So what do you do when the conflict bubbles up in the relationship you're in? I'm going to give you an example today out of two individuals who are cursing at God, who are cursing at God versus exiling the conflict. And you're going to notice this in the story. Everyone involved in this story is going to have a, every person involved in the story in Bahriah is going to have a love of Jesus. But there was a major, major issue in their friendship and in their relationship. They could not find the same thing. I can just issue. And so we come up in Acts chapter 15. And this is a story of a man named Paul and another one named Barnabas. And he says, well, sometime Paul said to Barnabas, let's go back and visit each city where we preach the word of the Lord. He says, well, he says to Barnabas, let's go back and visit each city where we preach the word of the Lord.

And Paul said to Barnabas, strongly. This is a nice way to go, but Paul did not agree. No conversation that is continued. John Marcos had abandoned them in Pansylia. And since John Marcos had deserted them and had not continued with them in their life, their disagreement was so strong that Barnabas took John Marcos and sailed for Cyprus. And as he left for Cyprus, Paul took Silas, and as he left, the believers entrusted him to the merciful care of the Lord. Then he traveled across all of Assyria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches. Well, he was the first one to plant the churches, right? In the region, he wrote letters. Paul, now we call them books. But before he was a Christian, he was a very hard-working man. He was a Harvard-educated man. He was a Harvard-educated man. He was a Harvard-educated man. And he hated the Christians. He hated them so much that he would hunt them down. He would even authorize them to be Christians. He was not a good guy. He did not allow the area, their famous area, and as a person who was known in the area, he was going to this place, he called it the Mystery of the Lost Road, and one day he was going to this town

to encounter with Jesus Christ. And that moment, his whole life changed. This is to say, he got saved at that moment. He was saved. He gave his life. He was a Christian. He became a Christian. And they heard about Paul and his old name was Saul. When they first saw him come to Christian, they did not believe him. In fact, in Acts chapter 9, it says the following. It says, when Saul, or Paul, right? They changed the name. And they were all afraid. They had belief. They truly become a believer. They were afraid, right? Here's the other verse. Saul came to Jerusalem, tried to meet with the believers, but they were afraid of him. They did not believe that he had really become a believer. And well, what happened here? It says, Then Barnabas took him to the apostles and told him how Saul had seen the Lord on the way to Damascus, and how the Lord had spoken to Saul. Also, the Lord also told them that in Damascus, Saul had preached with courage in the name of Jesus.

Well, what happened at that time? Well, Christianity was illegal in the Roman Empire at that time. It was not a well-known religion. Apart from that, the Jewish people and the Pharisees and the Assyrians were trying to execute the Christians or go against them. And well, there were these religious leaders that didn't want Christianity. And there were people that would fake going against them to find out where the Christians were meeting in secret because they wanted to hide where they were meeting in secret like they were having. They were never able to tell you how you could say that. So, people would meet in secret places and they would become liars and tell all the people. And the government would turn to the government and give these people to the government or to the religious leaders. And some of them would even be imprisoned. You are a Christian, you are a Christian of the first century. And so, Saul, who had become Paul, is going around and persecuting these people. And he is now in Jerusalem and he is, quote unquote, saved. And he's already saved, so to speak, the people of Jerusalem. And I'll tell you this, many of them, a lot of them, their friends,

their fellow church members, might even be the first person to be persecuted and even killed because of them. And now Paul shows up in a church for Paul and he enters a church and they're like, we don't believe you because he persecuted all of them. We don't believe him. Barnabas is a Christian leader in the church and he basically stands in front of the apostles and he basically stands in front of the church leaders and the leaders of the church in the church in the church. And basically he says, I can vouch that Saul, now Paul, has given his life to Jesus, back up on the line. You could say, I'm going to stretch my neck out and say, he is saved. I'm going to risk my reputation by standing with Paul and I'm going to vouch he is truly a follower of Christ. Now, Barnabas and Paul are friends. So Barnabas and Paul are friends. They start planting churches all over the Mediterranean and they're preaching the gospel to unknowable groups that have never heard of Jesus. And this friendship is full of trust. It's full of camaraderie. It's like you're in the mission of building up the church with your parents, to put it that way. They're building up the church. Multiple biblical scholars, from the moment Paul's conversion

was about 10 years. And we know about this. This is 10 years of unclutched friendship. Barnabas and Saul, or now Paul, imagine, well, now they got into a conflict for 10 years. Why? Because Paul wanted to go back to the churches they planted and Barnabas and Saul said, this is a great idea, John Mark. John Mark, otherwise known as Mark, he eventually becomes the author of the gospel of Mark, of the New Testament man. Mark, Luke, John, this is Mark. This is John. But it's earlier, he's Henry, John Mark. He did something that really pissed off Paul. He doesn't know what it is. He pissed off Barnabas. In fact, we don't know what it was exactly, but in Acts chapter 13, it says the following. Paul and his companions, they left Paphos on a ship to Pamphylia and disembarked in the port city of Perga. There, John Mark left them and returned to Jerusalem. That's all we know. We don't know why. Maybe John Mark was pitching a boat back home or he was just looking for something to look at. We don't know. All of a sudden, we don't know.

He just had a legitimate reason to go home or not. But this is the thing, Paul's interpretation of this is that John Mark is the author of this. John Mark had to see to them. So Paul is not happy about why John Mark had to go home. And this event of John Mark going home takes place two to three years before and now is when they go back to all these churches in Barnas and all this stuff, and it's a great time to go home. So two or three years go by since John Mark bailed, but Paul has a super good memory of it. And Paul is like, no way, he's not coming with us on this trip. This trip is too important to have somebody who's going to serve time on this trip. Now, Barnas advocates for John Mark. He thinks he should go home. Barnabas has pride. He's even at John Mark's. So Barnas is seen to trust John Mark's failures and he wants to give him a second chance. Is this sound familiar to Barnabas? To give grace to somebody? Right? Paul is the recipient of Barnabas' grace. This time, Paul is not happy. So why do we play this background? Because I want to give you this for you. We read this verse and you say,

oh, I read this verse and I'm like, oh, I read this verse and you say, oh, we've read it. No, Paul and Barnabas are not neighbors who live five houses apart. They are blood brothers, right? There's a lot of years and decades worth of friendship. They can't agree on the same page as John Mark's situation. Paul is not agreeing. That they separated. Now, if you actually go into the Greek language, which is the New Testament, the New Testament was written in Greek, not in English. Sometimes when you take the Greek and you translate it into English, it loses a little bit of color. So I went back and I looked at the Greek word by John Mark's circumstance and I couldn't land on the same page. So these are the statements that the Greek words inform us in English. They're intense disagreements, emotional outbursts, explosion of feelings. We have the impression that Paul and Barnabas possibly are yelling at each other. This is not like a word at a coffee shop and we're like,

oh, we're at a coffee shop and we don't agree. No, I think there were bad things that were said in this. There is a relationship that's taking place in a gap of love and friendship. Now, let me stop this for a moment. This is a story. Let me remind any of you of any relational conflicts that you've ever had. Hurt, anger, yelling, frustration, when you're frustrated, nobody's getting it all around. And we're like, yeah, last Christmas, right? See, see, your best moments have names. Your worst moments have names too. Paul and Barnabas agreed. He doesn't agree with whoever doesn't have a mind. I did that this week with somebody. I did that with somebody today. I said, hey, let's do this. And then they parted ways. This 10-year partnership and friendship with the mission of the church, this is not like any kind of friendship. This is Barnabas who put his hand on the line and set his hands on the line for Paul. And God put his hands on the line for Paul. This is a pious church that's more than known in the world. And they planted churches all over the world. You know what? It's best you go that way with Mark. I'm going this way with Silas.

It's the least I can do to mount more attention and disagreement. And before him, to be honest, this isn't just those two people, it's the two of us. And to be honest with people, it's not just the two of us. It's the two of us. When I was in high school, I said, oh, my friends are going to be friends forever. No, it doesn't happen. And then at college, it's like, oh, we're all bad. It's not funny. I'm 30 plus years after my wedding and the people that sat with Jen and I in our wedding, we didn't have any disagreements with them. Some of them, we really didn't. Disagreements, with some, yes, but we don't talk to them anymore. Life goes on. Things happen. We have disagreements, but what happens when those disagreements are full of pain and wrong decisions and emotions that don't go or when there's conflict? What happens when you and the person you're dating cannot find common ground? What happens when you and your own partner are in conflict, the business partner you're in business with or your best friend or the person that you go to school with

or the person that you go to work with? You know what? It's not like you can just move away from them. What happens when the conflict comes and you're in those places? Wow, I'm glad you asked, because I'm going to talk about it. I took the first half of this message to build a little bit of a story because this is not a small conflict. This is a really nuclear situation. So what is the first thing to do? This is going to seem a little Pollyanna, what I'm trying to say, but the first thing is, yes, it's conflict because people are in conflict. Now, I know it sounds like, okay, Jeremy, I know you're in conflict, but no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, because sometimes we take the people we're friends with and we make them into people we're dating or people that we like or people that we don't like. You know what, little bit of conflict. And there's never going to be conflict. There may be, because people are in perfect effect. The half-brother, half-sister, the half-sister, the half-buddy, the last half-buddy. So, Santiago, Heimerdinger, he said, what causes problems and disagreements? That their passions are at war within you?

When you have a passion for things, you passionately believe certain things. You passionately are going to dig your heels in the ground about certain things. And then you actually have an opinion about something, right? You know, the conflict happens when we realize that all the people involved are imperfect, including you. Inside the conflict, there is sin, there's pride, there's problems, there's not relational intimacy. There's also memories of the past, of PTSD, right, of PCSD. And we're divided in this division and various conflicts. Well, only one person really has a problem. Yes, maybe one person is wrong, one person is right, one person is wrong. In other conflicts, everybody's wrong. But you'll find that inside of every argument you find that there's going to be imperfection. Pride and conflict doesn't just happen because we're different, it happens because we're broken. Now, I leave you with that on point one. I'm not going to develop that much more, but it's the basic thing is nobody's perfect in the country. The second thing is this, that means we need to take all your parts with all your faults. It's not just our fault,

but we really need to realize there is not separity that you have in the country. It's a responsibility. Matthew chapter seven says this, it's very famous. We don't like it because it makes you very firm. It makes you very firm. Why worry about something in your friend's eye when you don't look back to your friend? How can you think about saying it to your spouse? Why do you think about saying it to your spouse? How can you think about saying it to your spouse? How can you think about saying it to your spouse? Let me help you get the log out of your own eye when you can't see beyond the trunk that's in your own eye. Then what does he go? Look, hypocrite. Thanks, Jesus. Right? He just woke up and he's like, hey, I'm shooting straight to you. I'm going to tell you that. Hypocrite. Get rid of the log in your own eye and then you'll see well enough to stand in your own car worrying that he's insinuating that he's guilty to that other person. And you know what?

He's insinuating that he's guilty to that other person too. But first, look at the guilt that you have objectively. Look at how you engaged in a conflict when you have a way of looking at the object. And we can try to look at the object and say, well, you can look at it in a different way. And sometimes we over-focus on the other person's problem or how they're making us feel. And this happens all the time on social media. Go to any comment section, any section of anything, and you'll find the tone. It's this, you all are idiots and I'm always right. It's this, you all are idiots and I'm always right. Tone, but we can carry that into our conflicts. You're the one acting like an idiot. Well, here's the thing. Maybe you are. Like, I mean, genuinely. Maybe the other person really is a bona fide idiot. But it may be true. Or maybe it's not all the truth. Maybe you have contributed to this conflict. Maybe not at the moment, but leading up to it, but maybe a spiritual maturity ends with that. So the miracle is, you know what? I'm going to see what my inner self has contributed to this. And now all of a sudden, I can build in me a spiritual maturity

and I can be a little bit more rational and objective. And you know, in the story with Paul and Bartholomew, we actually think he's a good guy. Because, well, he was the good guy. Well, Paul wrote the New Testament. Obviously, I think this is the right one. We think this is the right one. Paul was not a good guy. Jesus didn't sin. But Paul was not. So, I see his fault. But maybe he was so much of a type A leader. So he writes on where John Marks got it wrong. And he's like, well, you're now dead to me. You're now on my side. And maybe Bartholomew is the right one. Well, Bartholomew is the wrong one. I remember when your name was Saul, and you actually did really hate these things. And I stood there for three years to put my hands in the mouth for good old John Marks. Yeah, I'm going to get my hands in the mouth for John Marks. But he deserves a second chance. And I'm not saying that's exactly what happened, right? I'm just kind of giving you a quick, was it Bartholomew's fault? Who's right? Who's wrong? Who's right?

Who is the correct one? Who is the wrong one? Barnabé or Paul? And, well, we don't know who's to blame. But sometimes it's true. Literally, it's not your fault, but you're also responsible for how you respond. That's your responsibility. You cannot delegate that. You cannot delegate how you respond to do sinful things because someone did it. To do sinful things, to commit sins because someone did it. You're not responsible for other people's actions, but you are responsible for your reaction. In other words, your responses. Yeah, you know, right? So, point one, everybody's flaws. Point one, we're all imperfect. Point two, you own your own self. Own whatever it is that you say when you're uncomfortable, whether it's in a conflict or out of a conflict. Number three, you have to be careful how you respond to conflict. Number three, use wisdom, not revenge. Because I am in the enneagram, I'm number eight. I'm like a go, charge the mountain. I'm a leader that goes up the mountain. Let's go to what we came for. But when it's a conflict, everything inside of me says, I'm going to win.

Now, you're all looking at me like saints, but you ain't saints. I'm not saints. I know you're not. You want to win, too. When you're in the conflict, you want to be the one that's right. You want the person to go, Jeremy, you're right. You're always right. I remember a story, and I got permission to talk about Jen, my wife, Kayden, who is our oldest son, who is now a pastor here, another leader. Yeah, yeah, you can applaud. When he was really young, really young, like before middle school, before high school, he was a little bit of a punk. And here's the thing, he was very witty, like he is now, but his voice was kind of tied with that whole adolescent thing about him. And so, Jen, with Jen, and Kayden, he would push all of Jen's buttons, and he was an expert on this. I would hear them, and they would talk to each other, and all of a sudden, you know, there's a problem, and there's a problem. Kayden, he knew how to say things. He knew how to do it. He knew how to say things, and he would just fire Mama, man.

So Jen would just start going up, she would just start going up, and she would just keep going up, and up, and up, and up, and up, and up. And I remember one day, And I remember Caden said something that was like, I mean, that there's this on, I'm going to stick a dynamite on Jen's heart. And Jen just was like, what? And they started fighting like, oh, this is just not a level. Like, this is not a level. And I remember, I walked in and I literally grabbed Jen and I picked her up from behind and I put her in our army and as they were fighting, I grabbed my wife and all the time she was like, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta. Again, I got permission to do this story. You know, sometimes when we try to win an argument, we always lose because he can have the last word. He's 13 years old. I'm the mom. You know, sometimes we make it a moral decision to retaliate or to take revenge. And yes, we can lose. And remember this, in every war, in every physical war between two nations, there are casualties, there are people who die on both sides. You will never get into a conflict

where you may win or you may just end up winning. You will never leave that battle without some death, maybe internally or maybe with people around. And I appreciate about Pablo and Bernadette and I really appreciate it when I read the scripture. Nothing in there insinuates that they went scorched earth or anything like that. They just allowed the disagreement or the disagreement and they went into a physical war. So bad, they thought the other one was also wrong, but they left it there. So many times when there's a conflict, each party starts throwing grenades, verbal grenades, actions, retaliation. And there's a blast zone, but unfortunately, when those grenades are down, the other party is not the one that only takes the shot and they'll so do children and families and friends and coworkers and neighbors and fellow citizens. They take out a shrapnel too. They're just in the vicinity of it. Because what happens is the two people decide to go, they decide to go scorched earth on each other when there's something about each other. They start getting allied, Pablo's team and Barnabé's team and they start going at each other. There's a fight, revenge, revenge. We try to get this revenge with the people. We start making the other person's life miserable.

If you go there, there's going to be death, not just on the other side of the team, but also in your heart and in your children's heart. Romans 12 says, never pay back evil with more evil. Do things in such a way that everyone can see that you have honor. Oof, so you got to take a deep breath. You got to give him a round of applause for this. It's hard, but you got to take a deep breath, assess the situation and pray and say, God, give me wisdom. And then you speak, with wisdom you speak. Or maybe you don't speak, you stay quiet. It's an option. When Jesus was accused in the Bible, he said he stayed quiet. Sometimes you just don't owe to talk. And it looks like the other person won, but you know if you speak, no one's going to win. Even you. You pray and ask for wisdom, and then you take action, or you don't. Then your response, well, maybe you don't respond, or maybe you respond. It's a case by case as well. And you say, God will say, this is what I want you to do. This is how I want you to do it. Sometimes he'll just say, stay quiet, don't do anything. I'm moved by the way I live.

There's a story of Abraham Lincoln, right? He obviously knew, he was part of this nation that was divided in a civil war, literally one half of the nation on one side, one half of the nation on the other side. But there were all kinds of enemies that the president had. And Abraham Lincoln, he would, he would write what he called H-O-T letters. He would sit down and when someone was misbehaving, somebody would betray him, someone would get at him, he would write a letter to that person, unedited, in the wrong way, and he would fill it up in some sort of a mailbox. In fact, he never actually wrote a letter, he never sent a letter, never sent, never signed. Sometimes he would take those letters and burn them, so what he did was he processed his private anger into a weapon that he was in public with. And in so many times in our world now, people are not seeing their hurt or their publicly, and people are taking it out on other people. Listen to me, do things in such a way so that people say that you're honored, because I'm going to tell you that your reputation, five or 10 years from now, is more important than you winning this battle today. May the wisdom be, and not the anger that guides you, may the truth be that guides you,

and not the patience, not the impulses. May the patience define you, define you. May the wisdom guide you, may the truth not be the emotion that guides you, and the patience, not the impulses define you. And most importantly, don't let the conflict ruin you, and let God refine you. Maybe it's something that you say, oh, this is stupid. No, but not every conflict is resolved, and not every disagreement is resolved. There are conflicts in my past of people that I love, that we were together for a long time, that we really don't talk about now. I'm not saying that they are in the right, and I'm in the wrong, or the other way around, but there was a conflict. And like Pablo and Perno in V, we couldn't put ourselves on the same page, so we left separately. And the only thing I do know is that one day in heaven, we're going to be better friends. But on this side, it all can't go back to a box, it can't be. There were things that we said, there were incorrect actions on both sides, trust was broken, trust was broken. You can't say, oh, no, no, it didn't happen. No, it did happen.

And we have an agreement in life. Pablo's going to Silas, and Barnabas is going to take John Mark. You'll have these in life. And every conflict does something, though. It reforms you. Whether it's resolved or not, whether there's a restoration or not, it changes you. How are you molding? Is it making you more like Jesus, or is it making you look more like your old self? Because in both situations, you'll be pushed to be more like God, or further away from God, but it's not going to take you to be the same person. Genesis chapter 50, Jesus said this, you tried to hurt me, the person who had the conflict, but God intended it all for you. In other words, you can't control the outcome, but with God's help, you can control who you are in that person. You can't control, perhaps, the conflict, but you can't let conflict shape you to be a bad person. You can't let conflict shape you to be who you should be, or you can allow conflict to undo you. Don't let conflict undo you. Instead, let conflict shape you.

So I say this, I go, let conflict build you, shape you. I know it's easy to say, but here's the part, and I'm going to close with this story. There was a person that I trusted a lot in them, that I felt might be true. This person would have a different story, but I felt so bad that I couldn't go back to being the same. And I remember there was a third friend by the name of Monty, told me something that I will never forget in this season. He said this, he goes, Jeremy, you are a relational leader. So you're a good leader. You're a relational leader. This situation is going to tempt you to not be a relational leader, but to be an authoritarian leader, where you're going to lose position to do things that you shouldn't do instead of gaining relationships or friendships. And he told me, no, please don't let this situation shape you into someone who isn't yourself. Don't decide to be. Don't dare to do that. And I remember that wisdom from my friend Monty because it was so critical in a time that I was so angry and I was so hurt.

I remember, I remember as if it had been yesterday. So there are times that I've chosen, oh my God, you have made me a relational leader. That's my superpower. And I don't want to allow the enemy to keep creating conflicts and discover and make me the other leader that I'm not. Rather, I need to be molded to who you want me to be as you, Jesus Christ, not as the enemy wants me to be and to distance me from people, not trusting anybody. Instead of that, taking the risk of relationships and friendships. Well, the conflict is molding you. Who do you want to be on the other side of the conflict? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I just thank you. I thank you, God, that you, God, will allow the conflict to mold us. In Romans 8, it says, you will turn every good for good, all those that are devoted, committed, focused on you. These situations that are not good, you can turn them around for something good for you. You will not waste conflict. Lord, I just pray that you would help us to choose the right way of engaging in conflicts so we can be more like you, more like Christ. God, give us strength. I'm evangelizing people today that are in the middle of this conflict.

It's hurtful, it's frustrating, it's created a lot of pain, anger. I pray that my words are like something really healing. And Lord, if there can be restoration in this problem, what happens? And if there can't be restoration, then I pray that you build my friends. Don't allow the conflict to break them. We love you, Lord, we love you. We give you thanks in the name of Jesus. And we all say, amen, amen.