Video Transcript: The Reconciliation Triangle

In this section, we continue our discussion of God's power and how it changes our opportunities in responding to conflict.

When someone is trapped in a fire, house fire, let's say, they need to be rescued.  Sometimes in the conflict Wildfire, ourselves or someone we know can get trapped in that fire trap of offense and need to be rescued.

So when we take offense sometimes we're blind to our condition, blind to our situation.  And we forget to recognize that when we're offended, we're not where we belong.  But be encouraged by this, because when a Christian is offended, Jesus Christ will make an endless pursuit until that lost sheep is restored to its rightful place.

In Matthew 18, after Jesus has talked about how wrong it is to cause offence and how if you're offended, you need to get out of the trap of offense, and after He makes the statement about not despising someone during offense, He gives us this parable in Matthew 18:12-14.  He says, “What do you think?  If a man owns a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off?  And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off.  In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.”

Isn't that fascinating to know that the Father's heart in the midst of conflict is that He is pursuing lost sheep.  He's pursuing those sheep who are caught in the trap of offense to set them free, to rescue them, and get them back where they belong at the Peacefire, relying relentlessly on Jesus Christ.  And as His ambassadors, we have the privilege to do the same.  To come to the Peacefire and to be sent back to the Wildfire to rescue lost sheep. 

This is the Lord's purpose in conflict, reconciling people to relationship with himself, and then with one another.  And He uses his people to accomplish his task.  Have you ever been a lost sheep in the midst of a conflict?  Where you’ve gotten so consumed by that conflict Wildfire that you lost sight of your relationship with the Lord and you were trapped?  What did the Lord do to rescue you? Who did He send?  What did He send?  But He sent someone or something to rescue you to bring you back where you belong, back into relationship with Him where He then can begin to change and restore and reconcile relationships. 

Maybe you've been in conflicts where relationships haven't been reconciled yet.  Maybe you've been through a divorce, and you haven't reconciled that relationship with your former spouse. And your children are living in the midst of relationship that's broken.  And they go from home to home waiting for that relationship to be restored.  I don’t mean a marriage being restored, I just mean a relationship because what happens in a divorce is oftentimes the relationship between the former spouses is so strained and so fractured, so damaged, that it becomes a curse to the children.  But I've also seen it, I give you this word of encouragement, in those relationships, it just takes one party to decide they're going to seek the Lord Jesus Christ at the Peacefire and they can have peace restored in that relationship regardless of what the other party does.  If they want to continue in their bitterness, they can continue in their bitterness, but you can have that peace that transforms and that Jesus Christ will rescue that lost sheep, get them back where they belong, and become another ambassador of reconciliation in the midst of all the conflicts.

So when a Christian is offended and the Father pursues them, begins the process of reconciliation.  And in the process of a broken relationship and reconciling that relationship, there are three steps that the Lord lays out in Matthew 18. And we want to look at those three steps and the last of our triangles of the course, which we call the Reconciliation Triangle. The Reconciliation Triangle has three legs to it:  confront in love, humbly confess, and freely forgive. 

The exposure and confrontation of sin happens oftentimes when someone has been offended, and we recognize that they need to be rescued.  Sometimes it happens when the person who is offended goes to the person who offended them and confronts the situation.  Sometimes it's a third party who will confront the situation.  But know that when your sin is exposed or confronted, it's the Lord at work.  He's bringing opportunity for reconciliation to occur.  

We often think we're more at peace when our sin has not been discovered yet or not been confronted yet and we think we might somehow escape.  But when our sin is exposed, it is the Lord's loving confrontation that's happening.  He's exposing our sins so that either we can get free, or someone else in the conflict and get free and return to that relationship and relentless reliance on Jesus Christ. 

 After sin is exposed, and confronted, the opportunity to confess that sin is presented.  And if sin is confessed, then the opportunity to forgive that confessed sin is present.  And if that sin is forgiven, reconciliation and restoration of relationship can occur.  

In this three stage process of reconciliation, know that the battle between the kingdoms is present at every stage.  And you might find that sin is confronted and confessed, and someone's unwilling to forgive.  Or sin is confronted and exposed and they're unwilling to confess or acknowledge their sin.  So don't be surprised and dealing with conflict as a Christian leader, when someone is confronted with sin and they refuse to confess it, or sin has been humbly confessed to another and someone's unwilling to forgive it.  The Battle of the kingdoms always exists.  Remember, we do not wrestle with flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers of darkness. 

Now these three steps are not a formula that guarantees reconciliation.  It is merely the steps of progression through the reconciliation process.  Sometimes reconciliation doesn't occur in spite of our best efforts as leaders, or even as a participant in the Wildfire.

 Romans 12:18 reads, “If it is possible as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” 

There is that place in the midst of the conflict Wildfire, where you can experience the Lord's transforming peace regardless of how the other people in the Wildfire respond.  If you confess your sin to someone that you've offended and they refuse to forgive you, you've done as much as you can, as much as it lies within you, you’ve tried to make peace. And now it's your opportunity to wait until they're ready to forgive. Or maybe you're ready to forgive and willing to forgive and you've forgiven this person before the Lord but they haven't come to you and acknowledged their sin.  As far as it lies within you, you've done what you can to make peace and you remain willing and ready to make peace.  And until that day comes you'll wait and remain at the Peacefire, continue to love and bless and do good to those who are in the Wildfire waiting to be rescued, unwilling to be rescued at the present time.  But our role as ambassadors of reconciliation is always be ready to reconcile.

The goal of reconciliation of relationship, I want to contrast that issue with the issue of resolving a conflict issue.  Because there's the fight we have over the lamp. You want it I want it, and we have a conflict over that piece of property. But there's also, that's created a breach in our relationship.  This created offense.  And we might resolve the property issue and leave the relationship issue unresolved.  Thinking that well, we've taken care of the lantern and we can just move forward now.  But every time you see me, you're thinking about that lantern.  And every time I see you, I'm thinking about that lantern.  And we're not moving forward in relationship, the fire’s still burning. And now because we've resolved the issue with the lantern, we don't have to talk to one another.  And we'll both be content to let that fire burn until the Lord stirs one of us to address it. 

I encourage you to pray about reconciling relationship issues before you reconcile property or other issues in a conflict Wildfire.  The reason I say that is when we have a conflict and we reconcile the relationship issues first, it's much easier to resolve the property issues. 

If you're married, think about conflicts you've had with your spouse. When your relationship is healthy and a conflict occurs, you probably can resolve those conflicts quite easily.  But when your relationship is strained, and conflict occurs, it becomes much more difficult to resolve those situations. 

So if you and your spouse are fighting over a lantern and it's caused a breach in your relationship, once you restore that breach, you're going to deal with that lantern in a very different way than if you try to deal with that lantern before restoring your relationship.  But if we restore the property issue before we restore the relationship and we reconcile that issue, we may never address the relationship issue.  We may just move on because the conflict’s been resolved, at least the one we can touch. 

So be aware of that dynamic in the Reconciliation Triangle. And we're going to spend the next few sessions going over each of these three legs as we continue to discuss the Lord's power at work and how it changes our opportunities in responding to conflict.  Regardless of how others respond to our attempts to resolve and reconcile, remember that it's our privilege and our opportunity to rely relentlessly on Jesus Christ in the midst of conflict. 

God bless you.  We’ll see you next time.