Embracing Grace: Navigating Conflict with Love
Devotional
Sermon Summary
Bible Study Guide
Sermon Clips
### Quotes for Outreach
1. "Anybody can fight. It just sort of seems to come naturally to us. Anybody can lash out in fear. And how often have we seen this in the church? This overcoming the conflict that exists between us is an age-old kind of thing. There is no golden age, certainly, of the Christian church. There's no golden age in our forebears, in the Jewish tradition, because we see these sorts of conflicts." [38:02]
2. "One of the interesting things about having a goal for somebody to hear you, right, which is this step one, is that it's not in your control to have someone else hear you. The things that are in your control are, you know, again, that spoonful of grace, the I statements so that you're not accusing someone and talking about their motivations and things like that. But one of the things you can do is to model the kind of behavior that you want to see. And so you can approach the person with ears open as well as mouth in gear. So you can listen for their story as well." [54:48]
3. "A lot of times if we just tried the little spoonful of grace, or sugar, depending on what song you're singing, we could maybe see a miracle happen, like friendship." [01:02:26]
4. "I know it's frightening. I know it's scary. But boy, how exhilarating it is when the storm subsides and a miracle happens." [01:02:26]
5. "There's something that's almost irresistible to a cry for help from another human being. It's an extraordinary thing. Because the goal in this step one is not just to have the person hear you out. The goal is to win and to restore." [55:17]
### Quotes for Members
1. "The New Testament, for instance, doesn't try to hide it. One of Paul's missionary journeys involves a person named Mark, who Barnabas wanted to take along, and Paul goes, over my dead body, and poof, we have two missionary journeys instead of one. Perhaps that's a win, I don't know. So there was no golden, you can't look back at some golden age when we didn't have conflict. We have conflict. The question is, how do we work?" [38:02]
2. "It's pretty simple stuff, right? It says, go to them when the two of you are, what does it say? Alone. And point it out. And if the person hears you, it doesn't say if the person falls on their knees and begs for forgiveness. If the person changes their life in every way, it says if the person hears you, you've won them over. There's a restoration." [40:19]
3. "One of the phrases in the Bible that mystifies me is this idea of speaking the truth in love. It's not just about a spoonful of sugar. It's about being able to speak in a way that you can be heard. Being able to share a story that, well, let me just give you a concrete example. One of the things that psychologists tell us, is that if we want to be heard, when we bring to our, here's a classic example, two people who are married, right? They're supposed to love each other and care about each other. And when they're in conflict, it actually hurts the marriage if the person who has the issue, right, if the issue's on their heart, won't bring it to their partner. It actually hurts, it's like a cancer that grows inside, like a tumor." [50:53]
4. "To me, that's what this step three looks like. Where a community doesn't send someone or banish someone out to hell or excommunicate them. Where a community restores one who is lost. One who is looking for redemption. It's possible. It happens. It's not some let's drum them out, let's all vote them out. It's the community cares and gathers around somebody. I think that might be what Jesus has in mind." [46:36]
5. "What does it say? It says treat that person as a what? A Gentile and a tax collector. So I want to ask you a question. How did Jesus treat Gentiles and tax collectors? Oh, by the way, what was the profession of the tax Apostle who's writing this gospel. Why, he was a tax collector. There's a sense of welcoming back home. There's a sense of restoration that happens here." [47:21]
6. "One of the things that was interesting to me about this whole breakup in the United Methodist Church, I don't know if you've been following along, but in the last four years, about 25% of the formerly United Methodist Churches have left. And here's the thing, when we were in the run-up to 2019 and these different ways of living together as a church, Dr. Russ Ritchie, who taught us history at Duke Divinity School, wrote a study in which he said, the first hundred years of the United Methodist, of the Methodist Church, it was called the Methodist Episcopal Church, in the first hundred years of our existence, we had breakups like this, every decade, every decade." [52:29]
Ask a question about this sermon
1. "Anybody can fight. It just sort of seems to come naturally to us. Anybody can lash out in fear. And how often have we seen this in the church? This overcoming the conflict that exists between us is an age-old kind of thing. There is no golden age, certainly, of the Christian church. There's no golden age in our forebears, in the Jewish tradition, because we see these sorts of conflicts." [38:02]
2. "One of the interesting things about having a goal for somebody to hear you, right, which is this step one, is that it's not in your control to have someone else hear you. The things that are in your control are, you know, again, that spoonful of grace, the I statements so that you're not accusing someone and talking about their motivations and things like that. But one of the things you can do is to model the kind of behavior that you want to see. And so you can approach the person with ears open as well as mouth in gear. So you can listen for their story as well." [54:48]
3. "A lot of times if we just tried the little spoonful of grace, or sugar, depending on what song you're singing, we could maybe see a miracle happen, like friendship." [01:02:26]
4. "I know it's frightening. I know it's scary. But boy, how exhilarating it is when the storm subsides and a miracle happens." [01:02:26]
5. "There's something that's almost irresistible to a cry for help from another human being. It's an extraordinary thing. Because the goal in this step one is not just to have the person hear you out. The goal is to win and to restore." [55:17]
### Quotes for Members
1. "The New Testament, for instance, doesn't try to hide it. One of Paul's missionary journeys involves a person named Mark, who Barnabas wanted to take along, and Paul goes, over my dead body, and poof, we have two missionary journeys instead of one. Perhaps that's a win, I don't know. So there was no golden, you can't look back at some golden age when we didn't have conflict. We have conflict. The question is, how do we work?" [38:02]
2. "It's pretty simple stuff, right? It says, go to them when the two of you are, what does it say? Alone. And point it out. And if the person hears you, it doesn't say if the person falls on their knees and begs for forgiveness. If the person changes their life in every way, it says if the person hears you, you've won them over. There's a restoration." [40:19]
3. "One of the phrases in the Bible that mystifies me is this idea of speaking the truth in love. It's not just about a spoonful of sugar. It's about being able to speak in a way that you can be heard. Being able to share a story that, well, let me just give you a concrete example. One of the things that psychologists tell us, is that if we want to be heard, when we bring to our, here's a classic example, two people who are married, right? They're supposed to love each other and care about each other. And when they're in conflict, it actually hurts the marriage if the person who has the issue, right, if the issue's on their heart, won't bring it to their partner. It actually hurts, it's like a cancer that grows inside, like a tumor." [50:53]
4. "To me, that's what this step three looks like. Where a community doesn't send someone or banish someone out to hell or excommunicate them. Where a community restores one who is lost. One who is looking for redemption. It's possible. It happens. It's not some let's drum them out, let's all vote them out. It's the community cares and gathers around somebody. I think that might be what Jesus has in mind." [46:36]
5. "What does it say? It says treat that person as a what? A Gentile and a tax collector. So I want to ask you a question. How did Jesus treat Gentiles and tax collectors? Oh, by the way, what was the profession of the tax Apostle who's writing this gospel. Why, he was a tax collector. There's a sense of welcoming back home. There's a sense of restoration that happens here." [47:21]
6. "One of the things that was interesting to me about this whole breakup in the United Methodist Church, I don't know if you've been following along, but in the last four years, about 25% of the formerly United Methodist Churches have left. And here's the thing, when we were in the run-up to 2019 and these different ways of living together as a church, Dr. Russ Ritchie, who taught us history at Duke Divinity School, wrote a study in which he said, the first hundred years of the United Methodist, of the Methodist Church, it was called the Methodist Episcopal Church, in the first hundred years of our existence, we had breakups like this, every decade, every decade." [52:29]
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