How to Resolve Conflict with Your Spouse (Part 3) by Rick Warren
Wisdom … is peace-loving and courteous. It allows discussion and is willing to yield to others … James 3:17 (LB)
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If you’re going to pull together when you’re pulled apart, you have to:
Concentrate on reconciliation, not resolution. Reconciliation means to re-establish the relationship; resolution means to resolve every issue by coming to agreement on everything.
That’s simply not going to happen. I don’t care if you both love the Lord and are both deeply in love with each other, there are some things you’ll never agree on because God has wired each of us differently.
But you can disagree without being disagreeable. That’s called wisdom. The Bible says in James 3, “Wisdom … is peace-loving and courteous. It allows discussion and it is willing to yield to others.”
The Bible says it’s wise to compromise. You can have unity without uniformity. You can walk hand-in-hand without seeing eye-to-eye. You can have reconciliation without resolution of every issue.
Some of you are worn out from the conflict in your marriage. You want to throw in the towel. Don’t do it! It is more rewarding to resolve a conflict than to dissolve a relationship.
Let me close with a couple of suggestions:
1. Get help. Many marriages are miserable, and they go year after year with the same old problems because the couple doesn’t seek professional help. Don’t go to just anybody; get a godly counselor who bases his/her practice on God’s Word.
2. Let God help. The other thing you need to do is get help from God. You can’t do this on your own. I’ve seen these steps work, but you need Christ’s power to work them.
Many marriage conflicts could be solved overnight if both the husband and wife would kneel before Jesus and say, “We humble ourselves and humbly ask you to make this thing work. We submit our egos to you and our hurts to you. Jesus, do what only you can do.”
© 2008 Rick Warren. All rights reserved.
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