Forgiveness,
Forgiveness and conflict go hand in hand in church life. Forgiveness is something easy to be said but hard to be done when it comes to relationship. All relationship go through conflict which sometimes stretches that relationship.Conflict also can often cause emotional hurt which resides deep beneath the emotional feeling that one could experience in their daily life.
Just the other day I was asked to attend a meeting in the evening to specifically deal with
conflict with two of my friends. All though during the past months I have tried my best to resolve the conflict but was not successful since one party was not willing to be open and understandable. But during the period of time, that relationship grew colder which in turn gave growth to bitterness. Somehow I was caught in the middle of this conflict between two of my friends.
Often times I felt frustrated because I could see that situation was not getting better because the
conflict was not resolved in the beginning itself. However there came a call for both parties from a respectable person to end this conflict issue as soon as possible and they both agreed.
During that meeting one evening, each shared their part of story of what really happened. Surprising enough both parties discovered that it was just a miss communication error, that one party interpreted wrongly the message that was communicated. But because of the misinterpretation of the words that was communicated a period of time lead growth to conflict without a purposeful intention.
Two parties offered their apologies to each other and reconciled their relationship through the love of Jesus Christ. Forgiveness and reconciliation is no strange word in the Bible itself. Just as we were forgiven by God we need to forgive others although it may take a journey or two to forgive, but try to take that journey to forgive because you will feel that huge weight being lifted of you.
The more you carry unforgiveness, the more you are weighed down by the feeling of hurt and pain which God never intended for man in the first place. Well, I don't want to live the rest of my life with pain and anger towards somebody else ! we are only going to live one time so let us make it right.However since we are fallen in our nature, our very words that we speak could often hurt certain people without us noticing it.
On the other hand, some might interpret wrongly and use it against us.often this could be seen in the church !But no relationship and conflict is hard for God to restore, as long as we are open to God and others, you can count that you relationship is on the way for restoration. It may take time but trust God to heal that pain and hurt, God is a healer!
1 John 4:9,
