Hi everyone. The leadership at Faith will be using our blog to discuss Ken Sande's book The Peacemaker. For the next twelve weeks we'll be discussing one chapter a week. You're welcome to tune in, and if you'd like to learn more - come join us on Sunday Mornings. Starting March 7th many of our Sunday School classes will be going through The Peacemaker Small Group Study. Call or Email for more information.To the Faith Baptist Leadership, I hope you enjoyed the first 43 pages of The Peacemaker. Please click the comment link below to let us know what you found to be most encouraging or helpful from this weeks reading. I was most helped by this statement from pg30 "Therefore, although we should seek unity in our relationships, we should not demand uniformity (see Eph. 4:1-13)." I'm hoping we can all take the additional time to apply the questions at the end of each chapter to any conflict we might be dealing with personally. I'm certain that will enrich our understanding of these principles. Praying for you. Pastor Craig
If our whole church learns to deal with the small conflicts we may have with one another within the church, we can have a unity that will make us a very dynamic church, ready to serve the Lord, meet each other's needs and have a close knit family.
Wow! I guess I've never dwelt on Proverbs 19:11 before. I thought overlooking an offense wasn't an option, unless you were going to look for an appropriate place and time to bring it up later and deal with it.
"Overlooking an offense is a form of forgiveness and involves a deliberate decision not to talk about it, dwell on it, or let it grow into pent-up bitterness or anger." Page 25
That will take some grace for me to live that one at every appropriate time!
I feel what encouraged me the most was the ways we can glorify God.."TOIA" (Trust,Obey,imitate,Acknowledge)this is such a key in everything we do. I Cor 10:31
I began reading The Peace Maker during the flight from Portland to Tokyo and quickly found that having a person trapped in the seat next to me for 13 hours afforded me an interesting opportunity to engage them in some spiritual conversation. Maybe it’s the mean streak that I seemed to develop in me in Jr. High, but I kind of enjoy some of the sheer looks of panic that I occasionally get as I bring up Jesus Christ and cooly slide my bible out of my jacket pocket. Ah … pray for me, please.
This day was a little different, however. The lady sitting next to me was interested in what I was reading and didn’t seem to mind that I already had my bible on my lap when she began to politely ask me what I was so involved in. I explained to her that I was reading a book that had been recommended to me by my pastor and that it dealt with ways of resolving conflict in our personal lives in a biblical way. “Oh. That’s nice”, she said and went back to reading her own book. Of course, that got my attention.
Elaine was a thin, well-dressed lady slightly my senior. I won’t call her elderly since she kept referring to “people our age” and I thought it impolite to point out that I thought she was probably 20 years ahead of me as far as that sort of thing went. But I digress. It turns out that Elaine was a believer but hadn’t been to church in some time. She was very conservative in her views, had accepted Jesus as her savior when she was a young woman, had been involved in the church initially, but had drifted away from her faith. As we talked, I asked her that as she looked back on her life in hindsight what she thought the turning point was that had caused her to leave her church. Her response was like a bolt of lightning. I thought she would say something like, “I was too busy”, or “My husband wasn’t that interested in church”, but it turned out to be unresolved, personal conflict with another lady in the children’s Sunday school class that had begun to sour her experience. Bitterness over a disagreement and the church leadership dealing with it ineffectively had led this woman to decide that she was better off focusing on things in her life other than church and, consequently, Jesus Christ. And it had gone on for years.
God is good and I’m thankful to Him for the opportunity to witness. I hope that I was able to encourage Elaine.
So far, I’ve found the book to be right on the money in pointing us to Jesus, His example, and his commandments to us to love and forgive one another. I was impressed with the amount of Scriptural references built into the text and appreciated the description of the different ways in which we all respond to conflict. I’ve also found the application questions to be pointed and useful.
I think that too often we Christians take our cue in how to deal with conflict from the world and either ignore it or let our emotions and pride get the better of us, going on the attack to make sure that we are protected from harm. I’m excited that the pastor is leading us in this direction and that we are, as a church body, focusing on how to be better witnesses to those around us by changing how we deal with conflict in our hearts.
John 13:35
35 By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
See you all again soon,
Frank