Hello, my name is Ford Taylor with the FSH Group and Transformational Leadership. Welcome to God Today. Have you ever found yourself in a place with a friend, a relative, a coworker, a boss, an employee, where you found yourself in conflict? Is there a place where maybe they’d done something where you felt hurt and you weren’t sure what to do about it? If you are watching this you probably believe in someone that I believe in – His name is Jesus.
He has told us clearly what we are supposed to do in that situation. He tells us that if someone has hurt us, offended us, or sinned against us, that we are supposed to go to them one-on-one and share with them how we feel about what has happened. If that doesn’t work we take a witness or two. If that doesn’t work, we get an agreed-upon group to help us determine whoever is right and who is wrong. Sometimes we can be accused of doing something that we didn’t really do and it could be the other person’s lens.
A lot of people don’t want to do that. It is because they don’t really know how to go. What I have found is that if you go to someone one-on-one, if you go in this posture, almost always the conflict is resolved in one meeting. If we could learn to go to each other in humility – what does humility mean? “I could be wrong. This may be me – it may not be you.” If we could go in pre-forgiveness, not bitterness. Now we wouldn’t go and say, “I may be wrong and I forgive you.” That would undo the fact that “I may be wrong.” Pre-forgiveness is a place in your heart. What if we went in love? What if we took the risk to go because we cared more about the other person than we do how much they care about us. If I am right I wouldn’t want to see you do this to destroy relationships with your family, with your spouse, with your friends.
What if we went in 100% truth? If we didn’t just say what we are comfortable with, but even the things we are uncomfortable with. I have found that when we go to one another that way: humility, pre-forgiveness, love, and truth, that reconciliation can take place very quickly.
If there is someone you need to talk to, consider doing that. I am going to pray that you would have the courage to do that. Father, I ask now, that anybody that is listening to this, if there is someone that they feel they need to go talk to restore the relationship, that they’d be able to go in humility, knowing that they might be wrong. Pre-forgiveness with no bitterness, but all about restoring the relationship. That they would go in love, that they would care more about the person they were talking to than they cared about how they felt about them. Father, that they’d have the courage to go on 100% truth. When they go, you would show up and the relationship would be restored. I ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.