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On the surface, confrontation may sound ‘un-Christian’. We may feel that as Christians it’s our duty to love and be nice, kind and gentle. Which of course it is. But because we are to love God first before others there will be times that our obedience and duty to God, as our own convictions lead us, causes disagreement between us and other people. How we deal with this disagreement is very important. Disagreement is unavoidable and we need to understand that sometimes we are to let things drop and sometimes we are to confront. Discerning the difference and having the strength to do whatever the Lord leads us to do in each disagreeable situation is very important. First we need to know that our strength to either let things drop or to confront will not come from our emotions. It will come from our spirit, which is where God speaks to us. He imparts His strength to us spiritually, not emotionally or intellectually. Often, our first reaction is emotional. When someone disagrees with us it may anger us. This is what I want to discuss—the anger response to disagreement. Because we cannot properly confront anything as long as this anger response is ruling over us. Anger will keep us from properly being able to have a discussion with a person who disagrees with us. Sometimes we may give in to the anger and blow up and go into a rage. And of course we know that the Lord doesn’t want us to respond that way. But sometimes because we know that the Lord doesn’t want us to have ‘knock-down, drag-out’ arguments we may still have anger but respond the opposite way. We may have a tendency to avoid having discussions where any level of disagreement is involved because we are afraid of becoming angry and sinning. Because we don’t want to stir up our anger we may feel it is better just to let it lie dormant. But in reality, we don’t want this anger to lie dormant, we want to deal with the underlying cause of it. The Bible says that "a man of wrath stirs up strife, and a man given to anger commits and causes much transgression." (Proverbs 29:22 The Amplified Bible). There’s a difference between strife and confrontation. Strife is more of a competitive type of argument birthed from wrath and anger. It’s an argument whose end is to find a winner and determine who is right. Where confrontation can simply be stating your stand on a subject and it can be done without strife. However, for confrontation to be done without strife we must have a certain level of confidence inside. Let me explain. One reason we may become angry is because we may feel threatened by a feeling that we will be ‘forced’ to change our opinion and agree with theirs. Many times other people do try and argue with us forcefully because they want to prove we are wrong and need to change our opinion. That’s strife. We, as Christians, know that we are not to respond to that strife with strife in return. But there also may be times that we become angry because of this threatened feeling and the real cause for it is our own insecurities. The Lord will have us to look at our own hearts when this happens. If we somehow feel that we really don’t have a ‘right’ to our ‘own opinion’ then we may resent those who disagree with us because we feel the pressure from within ourselves to agree with them. This insecurity is actually an evil thing trying to undermine the authority we have over our own lives. Proverbs 25:28 says "He who has no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls." (Amplified Bible). God designed for each one of us to ‘rule’ over our own spirit. To rule over our own life. And whenever we feel that someone else may succeed in taking this away from us then anger is our response. So in order for us to successfully deal with this kind of anger when disagreement arises then we need to look and see if it’s not a ‘protective’ response that we are using because we feel insecure about our right to have our own opinion and we feel pressured into changing our opinion. We need to understand that no one can take away our will. It can only be given away by us. Even God won’t force His will on us. (There are times that through physical force or restraint your free will is controlled or limited, but this is another subject too lengthy to discuss here). The truth is that God has given all of us a free will. He designed us this way. All of us have the right to believe what we want to and to make decisions accordingly. The devil would like to get us to give up this right, through insecurity or however else he can get us to, because when we do then we will be able to accomplish absolutely nothing for God. We will get stuck in a rut of anger, blame, fear and irresponsibility because we will have no ‘rule’ over our own life. So if you tend to have an on-going problem with anger, or you tend to avoid confronting a person when necessary, then understand that the love of God does not require for you to change your beliefs for another person. It doesn’t require you to give up the rule over your own life. On the contrary, the love of God means that you will love Him first and do what you feel the convictions of your heart are first over and above what other people say. Then and only then, out of that love and obedience to God will you be able to willfully lay down your life for others and walk in the true love of God. Remember that your obligation as a Christian is not to do everything that everyone else wants you to do. And your obligation is not even to agree with every other Christian. But your obligation is to the Lord and to protect the convictions of your own heart and do what you do out of love and submission to Him, not people. When you know that someone else can’t come and take your will away from you then you will be able to confidently, yet lovingly confront when you need to confront without blowing up into a rage or harboring bitterness in your heart. You can’t give away what you don’t own. So if you don’t ‘own’ your own life then you can’t give of it to others. The devil has tried to blind the church’s mind to this truth using false ‘love’ and false ‘unity’ as a disguise. Loving someone doesn’t mean never saying no to them or never disagreeing with them. Unity comes, not when we agree with each other but when we all individually begin to agree with the Spirit of God. I want to encourage you to begin to rule over your own life to the fullness that God has for you, without guilt or insecurity. Without excuses and apologies. And as you do, you will experience the freedom to truly love as God intends. |
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