Teaching | Community as Confrontation | Practicing the Way Vision Series E09

Hello and welcome to the John Mark Homer teachings podcast. My name is Yinka Dawson and I'm your host. Each week we feature teachings by John Mark or other voices in the formation space. And it's great to have you with us. We're continuing to talk about community this week with a teaching by Alex Redman on conflict and confrontation in community and how to do it well.

Alex now serves as the senior leader of St. Hill Church in Newburgh. And in this talk, he argues that doing confrontation well is the way we move from disillusionment into acceptance. Here's Alex.

Hey, so we have been in this series on community, and last week Bethany gave a great talk on sometimes our expectations going into community, how they can be met sometimes, and how they cannot be met at other times. How in community... you can find some of your greatest pains because of the depth that you end up loving. But at the very same time, on the flip side of that, you can find some of the greatest healing because of the depth that you end up loving in community.

So we're going to continue in this community series, and tonight what I want to talk about is confrontation. Oh yeah, it's going to get so real. Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Philippians chapter 2. If you have your Bibles with you, Philippians chapter 2, or if it's on the iPhone, scroll on over to Philippians.

Two, if you're new to the scriptures, at the very front of the Bible, there is a table of contents. You can actually look up in alphabetical order where Philippians is. It'll give you a page number, and you can go there. Philippians 2 is where we're going to find the text for tonight. We're going to start in verse 1. It says this, Philippians 2, verse 1.

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded. Having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind, do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, rather in humility. Value others above yourselves. Wow.

Verse 4, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ. Jesus. I want to show you a slide that we've been using. We've been calling this like the cycle of community. And this is what you'll often find. You join a Bridgetown community or you get a part of really any kind of small group. And this is kind of the cycle of what tends to happen. So the first stage is...

idealization. You're excited about the people. You're like, man, I've never known an architect before, and that guy's an architect. This is incredible. Or, oh my gosh. I teach kindergarten, and so do they. This is so fantastic. We're going to just be best friends forever. So you come to community, and you go, this is so incredible. But then after a while, you bump up against each other, and you realize that it's actually not as incredible as you had once thought.

And you get to disillusionment. You've been there before? We were like, yeah, community's cool, but God, is it really the community night again already? Okay. And people begin to annoy you. You're sitting in the circle and there's that one person. Everybody's going around sharing about their week and they take an hour. You're like, what you're saying is that you're more important than everybody else in the circle.

And so you kind of get a little bit disillusioned, right? And it's right at that point that you have an option. You can break off, go to your own thing, say, you know what? This didn't work out for me. I wasn't really feeling it, so I'm out of here. Or there's a level of acceptance. Right? And there's a level of, hey, this is the community I've been given. We never said it was going to be easy.

And so I'm going to engage with this community. I'm going to try to love the people who are in front of me. Now, I would argue that the only way that we ever move past disillusionment into acceptance is if we learn how to do confrontation well.

Because you're going to have to confront some of those things. Either you've got to change or the other person has to change, and there's going to be some conversations that need to be had in that disillusioned place. And I would argue that if you never learn how to do conflict well, you probably won't taste the good.

goodness that God has for you in community. Now, who doesn't love a little confrontation, right? Like, so fun. You're at work. You're walking down the hallway. Your co-worker stops you. They're like, hey, man, what are you doing this weekend? You're like, oh, I'm just going to get together with some of my close friends, sit them down, work through some interpersonal stuff with them, point out some things they could be working on and some things they should stop doing. It's going to be a blast.

Like nobody's ever said that, right? No one has ever said that. Just to clear the air, because I know that this is kind of in this room when we talk about confrontation. What we're not talking about tonight is confronting just to confront. Or getting after people over annoyance. They annoy me, and so I need to let them know about it. or venting about what is wrong with everyone around you. No, what we are after as followers of Jesus is fruitful confrontation.

fruitful confrontation. We want confrontation that produces fruit in both parties, the kind of conversations that cause both people involved, both parties involved, to become the kind of people who God is making them to be. Jesus, if you read through the Gospels, the four documentaries of his life, he is constantly confronting people in love.

and pointing them towards the kingdom. And I would argue that for us to live like Jesus, and for us to grow like the people who lived around Jesus, that without exception, all of us need to learn how to do confrontation well. Every single person sitting here, whether you're an introvert, whether you're an extrovert, whether you're like, that's not just kind of, that's not really my style. All of us have to learn how to do confrontation well.

This is what we're after, fruitful confrontation. Now, to be honest, I know I'm going out on a limb here. I don't think that as a culture, we're very good at fruitful confrontation.

I don't think that we're very good at it. Here's what we normally see in our culture. The confrontation examples that we have are name-calling, labeling. Well, they're just that kind of person. An inability to see other people's perspectives on a given issue. That's normally what we find with confrontation. Here's what normally happens.

Somebody says something that bugs you, or they post something that bugs you, that you just say, I never thought, that should never come out of a human's mouth, let alone a human that I know. And so then, you know what you do? You comment on their Facebook feed, right? That's what you do. You let them have it with a comment. Or, if you're being extra kind of conniving, you tweet, right?

You post an article that demonizes all the people that you don't like, hoping they're going to read it and come to the light like you have. Like, oh, I love this article. Mind-blowing, especially for them. I hope they read it. And if you still can't get your mind off of it, here's how we see confrontation happen in our culture. It's through legislation, right? We legislate the things that we care about.

And so you have a group over here that they're passionate about this thing. And so they say, you know, we need to make this law of the land. Let's legislate it. Right and left do this. And then if that doesn't work, if legislation doesn't work, our last resort is we just break stuff, right? We protest, we fill the streets, and we make sure that our voices are heard. These are the examples of confrontation. Now, notice what isn't on that list.

list. A conversation over coffee or a meal. Not on the list. That is because most of us in this room tonight, would rather do just about anything than sit down and talk face-to-face with people we think need to change. Why is that? Why have we moved to a place where it's like we have an inability of actually sitting down with people and saying, hey, here's something in your life that I think needs to change, and it's actually loving for me to show you this. What's moved us here?

Well, we've been trained as of late to believe, as a society, as a culture, that we can know and be known without ever costing us as much as it used to. The promise of social media, which is... If you use social media or not, it doesn't really matter. It's changing your world. The promise of social media was greater human connectivity with a lower emotional, physical, and time cost.

Community without the mess of actually being present in each other's lives. What a brilliant idea. But it didn't deliver. And it won't deliver. Because what makes relationships good or bad is the amount of cost. And the willingness to sacrifice for one another, it always has been and it always will be. Now, I realize that I'm in the minority. I don't like social media. I don't have social media accounts. I don't check up on social media. So I realize I'm like one in.

A billion or whatever. And I also realized that social media is a really cool tool that helps give voice to people who wouldn't normally have it, but... But hang on. Social media... has crippled our ability to confront in a fruitful way. It is not just an online internet thing, something you do when you pull your phone out. It's actually seeped into the way that you see people in your life and the way that you do relationships. It's crippled us.

in a way where we can't actually do confrontation well. Here's why. Social media, if you're taking notes, write this down. If you're not taking notes, write this down. Social media tends to shut down conversation and dehumanize. It tends to shut down conversation and dehumanize. It should be fairly obvious that most people wouldn't talk to complete strangers in person the way they talk to them on Facebook. That should be obvious.

Or they wouldn't tweet at complete strangers the way that they do on Twitter. But what happens is the internet just doesn't seem that real. The screen in front of us just doesn't seem like it really matters that much. It's just like, is that really a person behind that? It's kind of hard for me to get there. And I've begun to notice, and maybe you've noticed this too, that people are far quicker to label others online.

than the people who are in their real life. To call someone, think about this, to call someone a racist or a bigot or hateful 10 years ago, some of you remember this, 10 years ago, that was a huge deal. That was a really, really big deal. We didn't throw those terms around lightly. But you just take a stroll through Twitter, and you'll see that people label others left and right like it's no big deal. Words like racist.

and bigot, and hateful, and socialist, and fundamentalist. All of these labels, they shut down conversation, and they cast aside the person who's being labeled. Because who wants to have coffee with the person whose social media labeled a hateful racist? Like, you want to go have coffee with that person? Maybe, but I don't know. I wouldn't want to be seen having coffee with that person.

We currently, as Americans, we're living in the myth of a tolerant society. This is not a tolerant society. We do not have free speech. We have a narrative that some people fit into and others don't, depending upon who is in power. you don't fit in it, you're encouraged to just politely shut up. But you've got to think about this.

You got to think about it. If these people's voices aren't heard, the ones who everybody's casting aside, here's what happens. The conversation comes to an end, and so does any hope for real and lasting change in our lives. When you end the conversation,

There's not going to be any change. This has happened, largely, because social media has showed our culture how to use shame as a motivator. Social media has shifted us from a guilt and innocence culture to a shame and honor culture. No longer are we, as Americans, afraid of a judge who's going to judge us. Instead, we're afraid of public opinion. Maybe you've noticed this.

An anthropologist named Ruth Benedict, she said this, and I just want you to see if this is how our culture feels, if this is how it actually feels to you. This is what Ruth Benedict said. She says, in a guilt culture, you know you are good or bad by what your conscience feels. In a shame culture, you know you are good or bad by what your community says about you.

by whether it honors or excludes you. In a guilt culture, people sometimes feel that they do bad things. In a shame culture, social exclusion makes people feel that they are bad. See the difference? And this is a fascinating shift that all of us have been a part of, whether we use social media or not. I recently read this book that was just crazy good called So You've Been Publicly Shamed.

And in it, the author chronicles being a part of the social media mob mentality. He says this, he says, fury at the terribleness of other people had started to consume us a lot. and the rage that swirled around seemed increasingly disproportionate to whatever stupid thing some celebrity had said, it felt different than criticism. It felt like punishment.

Interesting. Using social media and a collection of people who agree with the topic to shame others and use it as punishment. He then goes on to say this. He says, monopolises because they've been judged useless. So they got rid of them. Everyone is too busy being industrious to bother to trail some transgressor through the city crowds like some volunteer scarlet letter. But here's what he said, in all of my research,

I found no evidence that public shaming fell out of fashion because they were ineffective. They were stopped because they were far too brutal. Shame is this incredibly powerful motivator that has the ability to get people to do and say the right thing. And you'll see this in our culture today. Some of you who go to PSU or other college campuses, many of you feel like you have to carefully guard your words.

that you might transgress one of the new norms that just came into existence yesterday. You're like, I didn't even know that we couldn't say that word. I didn't even know that I couldn't act that way. But apparently, all of social opinion has just shifted overnight, and now I'm out. And now I face ruinous consequences because of my incorrect thought.

Many students, this is what another scholar said on the subject, many students feel compelled to post in support of a new crusade on Facebook within minutes. If they do not post, they will be noticed and condemned. This is actually one of the reasons why I got rid of social media.

Social media is great. You should use it. I'm just saying for me in my life, it stressed me out. So one of the reasons I dumped it was because I was getting emails and text messages and calls from people saying, how come you're not posting? How come you're not saying anything? How come you're not doing this? And it's like, gosh, there's a narrative.

that you're pushing forward and you want me to join the narrative. And I don't even know if I agree with the narrative, just give me a second. I gotta figure it out, right? Salvation in our culture is now seen as being approved by popular opinion. Being approved of is the new salvation. The new hell in our culture is being shamed by the correct social opinion. It's the new heaven and home.

David Brooks, one of my favorite writers for the New York Times, he says this, the desire to be embraced and praised by the community is intense. People dread being exiled and condemned. Moral life is not built on the continuum of right and wrong. It's built on the

continuum of inclusion and exclusion. This is the new society that we're living in. It's brand new. Now, this has taught us something as a culture. Shame is a fantastic motivator to get people to do and say the right things on the surface.

This has the potential to produce people that might do or say the right things, but end up being jerks to the people who aren't doing and saying the right things. And to live like they're better than somebody else, to give them an elitist mentality. And shame is not the way that God changes.

us. In fact, it's the opposite. How does God change us? How does he confront us? I think that Philippians 2 has the key. to how God actually brings about change in our lives. So here's what I want you guys to do. I want you to close your eyes. Practice this little exercise with me. I want you to close your eyes. And I want you to picture the person who you've been thinking about this entire message.

I want you to picture that person in your mind, and then I want to read a few things over you with that person in mind. If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the spirit, If any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.

Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others. In your relationships with one another, have this same mindset as Christ Jesus. Go ahead and open your eyes. We are not just confronting to be the righteous police. We confront to see fruit in the lives of our friends.

You guys should write this down. Confrontation is always showing people what's true about them. You want to know what confrontation is? Fruitful confrontation is always showing people what's actually true about them. This is why when you go on Facebook, it's such a cesspool, and why Twitter is so pithy and mean, is that you have a bunch of people who don't really know what their value is, and they're on there making comments about other people's value.

and it just gets super, super ugly. Fruitful confrontation can only happen in an environment of security and who you are and grace for one another. So just three thoughts tonight on how we do confrontation.

three thoughts on how we do confrontation. The first is this. Start with identity. You have to do confrontation well. You have to start with your identity. And I know this might seem auxiliary to the point, but it is so fundamental. This is so important. Get this. How many of you here tonight, you know... that who you are or how you see yourself will decide how you treat other people. How you see yourself is going to decide.

how you actually treat the people around you. So if you see yourself as being slighted by somebody important in your life, your husband, your wife, a close friend of yours, a mom, a dad, you will always walk through life. feeling like there's somebody to get back at you maybe wouldn't say it that way you maybe wouldn't even think in those terms but this is how you live you're always trying to get yours out of life

to make your life worth it. You have a one-track mind, and it's taking care of your business. But if you see yourself... As blessed and given more than you've ever needed and loved by God, you will be far more open to people. You'll tend to be far more generous to people. You'll walk through life wondering, how can I impact this situation and give?

in this situation rather than what will this situation do to benefit me? You see, if you don't know who you are, you don't know your identity, you will constantly try to change people for your benefit. But... If you know who you are, then you will help the people around you change for their benefit. This is why we have to start here. You have to know who you are. And this is what Paul is talking about when he says, put their interests above your own. Notice what he says. He says this,

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ. Okay, so you've been united with Christ. There was one moment where you were not in Christ. And then there was a moment where you believed in him. You put faith in him and his work on the cross, death and resurrection. Now you're in Christ. And there's encouragement from.

being united with Christ. If you have encouragement from that, if you have any comfort from his love, has his love ever kind of comforted you? If you have, if you have any common sharing in the spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then Make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love as Christ Jesus. So notice where Paul starts.

If your identity is full of encouragement, full of comfort, full of sharing in the same spirit, the spirit that rose Jesus from the dead is now living inside of you. This is a truth in the scriptures. if you have any tenderness and compassion, then you'll be freed up to actually love the people around you well. He starts with identity. He knows, what Paul knows, is that you cannot value others If you first don't value yourself and what you've received from God. So for a moment.

because we all need to get on the same page. Sometimes we forget what's true about us. When you come into Christ, there's a moment where you were not in Christ and you crossed the line and you became in Christ. This is true of many of you tonight. There is now no condemnation over your life.

Here's what it says in Romans 8 verse 1. Romans 8 verse 1 says this, for those who are in Christ, there is now no condemnation. So think about this. Some of you, you are in Christ and you feel loads of condemnation. Do you know who that's not from? God. Okay? So if you are in Christ, you now live without any condemnation. No matter what you do for the rest of your life, there's no condemnation. Christ has taken it all. Do you believe that? We need to believe this.

You've been welcomed into the family of God. So at one point you were not in his family. He welcomes you into his family. You get to inherit the very thing that Christ inherits. It says that we're co-heirs with Christ. Do you understand this? So whatever Christ is inheriting, which is all things, it's a pretty nice inheritance, you also get to inherit the very same thing. Your inheritance is his. You're going to do greater things than Jesus did.

Because he's going away to be with the Father and he gives you his spirit. How many of you, you wake up in the morning and you're like, I can't wait, to be honest, to do greater things than Jesus did. I mean, look, we have to have, our theology cannot be shaped by our experience. Our experience has to be shaped by our theology.

Okay, so we have to, when we see these things that are true about us in the scriptures, for us to not take those things to heart, it is going to be massively not only detrimental to you as a person, but to the people around you. When you become a Christian, here's another thing that should happen. You should now love yourself. If you don't love yourself, you're disagreeing, not with me, you're disagreeing with God. Because God loves you. He thinks that you're worth...

dying for. That's a lot of love. So do you love yourself? How many of you here, I just thought about this the other day, I had a massive shift happen for me over the summer. where I basically realized that God actually, he loved me. I was like, yeah, I know you love me, but he liked me. Do you know that God likes you?

Like he likes you. He wants to spend time with you. He thinks you're pretty great. He happened to make you. So he likes you. So many of us, we walk through life as if God doesn't like us very much. We've done something wrong to offend him. No, when you're in Christ, there's no condemnation. Man, let that set you free tonight. And then lastly, here's what happens. When you start hanging around Jesus, you begin to get good at what Jesus is good at.

So he gives you his spirit and he says, I'm giving you the ministry of reconciliation. So you're going to take things that have been broken apart by the enemy and you're going to bring them back together. Isn't that amazing? You're going to get good at it.

This is the trajectory of our life. It's not from glory to, eh. It's from glory to glory. This is where we're headed. In other words, You are free to have the same love for others as Christ had for us if you have received his love and his grace. So confrontation isn't something that we do just because people are annoying. At the very core of it, we do it to love one another well. We do it from a place of, I've tasted and seen the goodness of God and I want the same for you in your life.

Fruitful confrontation begins with identity because reaction, you've got to get this, this is so important, reaction to error will always produce error. So if you spend your life reacting to other people's error, guess what it's going to produce? Even more error. We were not made as followers of Jesus and sons and daughters of the King to react. We were made to act upon the truth. So we need to know what's true about us and about others.

constantly be showing that to one another this is the core of confrontation this is what's true about you and I want to see you live into this secondly we have to produce a culture of grace in our church I want a culture of grace. You want a culture of grace. The entire world wants a culture of grace. Nobody knows how to get it.

The opposite of the culture that we currently live in is a culture of grace. And what an opportunity we have as followers of Jesus to actually show people grace, what it looks like. I don't know if you know this, but as you walk up and down the street, as you walk through the halls at work, as you walk through the halls at school, as you hang out with your own family, everyone around you, and you included, everyone is secretly, inwardly calculating on why they're better than most others.

And we wouldn't necessarily verbalize this. Most of us wouldn't verbalize it. Most of us haven't even really thought much about this. But we use different things to measure ourselves up to other people. We use the way that we dress.

You walk into the room, and there's a bunch of other people in the room, and you size yourself up. Am I cool enough? Am I wearing the right things? Oh, God, they have those jeans. I wish I had those jeans, but I can't afford those jeans. And so instantly you go, okay, point for them. I lost a point. We do it with education. We go, oh gosh, that guy has a PhD. Or it only took him four years to do his undergrad. It's taking me eight years to do my undergrad. And so instantly you go, point for him.

I'm at zero still. Or we do it with morality. We look at what people do and say and we go, I mean, I would never say that. Or I would never do that. Or we do it with open-mindedness. This is the fallacy of our culture, by the way, that we're so open-minded. Nobody's really open-minded because here's what we're doing with our open-mindedness. Well, listen, I'm not like those people who are narrow, okay? Far more open-minded than that.

We do it with wealth or with our poverty. Well, hey, you know, I've been responsible with my money, and if they were responsible with theirs, they would probably be in a much better situation. So, you know. Or we go, ow. on earth could they have all that money and not do anything good with it? God, who do they think they are? Man, they don't know. They don't understand the way of Jesus. Didn't they know he was homeless? Come on.

And so we're constantly playing this game where we're measuring ourselves up to other people. We all have reasons internally why we're better than others, and though we may never verbalize it, it secretly is working against the very thing that God is trying to produce in us as his followers, which is grace for ourselves and grace for others.

We constantly play this game and size one another up to see who is winning and who is losing, and this is super detrimental to fruitful confrontation. If you live this way, you will not confront in a fruitful way. Fruitful confrontation can only happen in an environment. of grace. Because in an environment of grace, the calculating stops. I'm going to do like a little deep dive into grace for a second because this really matters. Grace tells us two things.

Grace is telling you tonight two things. The first thing that grace is telling you is that you need it. You need it. The very existence, the very idea of grace existing in our universe means that there's some wrongdoing that's happened, and there's some grace that needs to be shown for it. Somebody needs this grace, and it's probably you, and it's probably me.

Like, we don't really talk about this very much. I think we should talk about it more. But the message of Jesus on the cross tells us that we deserve death. You deserve death. And so did they, whoever they is and whoever they are in your life. So stop it. You're not better than them. I'm not better than them. I'm not better than you. You're not better than me. The playing field has been leveled. Jesus went to the cross for you, and he went to the cross for me, and he went to the cross for them.

So everybody needed Jesus to go to the cross, and so the playing field levels out. Nobody's better than anybody else. No longer are we to drop bombs on people. From our social media ivory towers. You begin to see yourself as a part of the human dilemma, not distanced from it. So grace tells us the first thing is that we need it. And then the second thing that it tells us in the very same breath, grace tells us, hey. It's been given to you freely without measure. God was willing to come for you.

you were an offense to God, and he was willing to take the punishment that you deserve to make you right with himself. There is a judge, his name is God, and he will judge us for our lives, and here's what he's offering to anyone who wants it. I will get off of the judging seat and I will come down and I will be judged for what you've done wrong and I will take your sentence and your punishment and you can go free. All you have to say is that you want it. What kind of grace?

What kind of value? What kind of love? And not only that, but he then says, oh, and I want to give you grace upon grace. We go from grace to grace so that I can empower you to change the world. Consider that kindness and that kind of love. I heard this quote the other day that just made me think at a deeper level about this. It goes like this. Consider this.

We could travel off this planet in any direction at the speed of light, which is 186,000 miles per second, for billions of years, and never begin to exhaust what we already know to exist. All of that rests in the palm of his hand, and this is the God who wants to fill us with his fullness. Wow, that is really good. What a good God.

So when you understand grace, you're humbled by the fact that you're in need of God's grace in your life. But at the very same time, you're filled with this incredible sense of self-worth that your creator was willing to go to whatever length it might have took to make.

you right with him. And people who understand this, if you understand this tonight, people who understand this are the kind of people who are humble and filled with an incredible amount of self-confidence. Isn't that so rare in our culture? You're either, we ricochet between self-hate and self-praise, and I'm not that great, or I'm not like them. And what God wants to do is he wants to bring humility into your life, and he wants to bring at the very same time self-worth.

An environment of grace, a church that is filled with grace, isn't a place where we constantly say, oh gosh, can you believe that person? Oh well, no choice. A place of grace, an environment of grace, is a place where we're constantly saying, I can see who God is shaping that person to become, and I can't wait until they live with the freedom that God has for them.

Because when you know where to find your identity that can't be stolen, and the security that comes from knowing your creator's affection, you stop playing the game of who's winning and who's losing, and you start pointing to the one who makes sons and daughters out of it. us all.

To end, I want to end like this. I want to give you guys some practical considerations because up to this point, we understand we need to understand who we are in Christ before we go to confront. We also need to understand the grace that we've been shown so we can show it to other people. How do we actually confront?

How do we actually go about that awkward, most of the time, awkward conversation? I want to get super practical here with all of you tonight, and I want to give you a thought from Jesus, and then I want to follow that up with three questions on how we can... front fruitfully when you know your identity and you understand grace. So we have to start with Jesus, our teacher. Here's Matthew 18.

This is like the passage on confrontation from Jesus. This is what he says. We're going to read the whole thing. If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault. Just between the two of you, okay? So the first principle and the formula that Jesus gives you is if there's sin against you, then you go and you work it out just between the two of you. If they won't listen to you, you have won, if they listen to you, sorry, you have won them over, but if they will not listen,

Take one or two others along so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. So they don't listen to you. They won't repent. They're not going to change. That's okay. Bring some other followers of Jesus along. to sit down and have the conversation again with them. If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church. That could get awkward. And if they refuse to listen, even to the church. Treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

So Jesus actually kind of gives us this formula for us to use with one another. And by the way, there's no text messaging, there's no emailing, there's no even phone calls in the first century. So just do this face-to-face. Meet up with the person. If there's somebody who's offended, you go meet with them one-on-one. If they won't listen to you, they won't repent of their sin.

That's okay. Bring somebody else with you so that there's a group of you who can establish, hey, here's what's been said. There's kind of a mediator in the situation. If that doesn't work, come to the church leadership, and we'd be more than happy. I would probably be the one who gets to do it because I get to do all the confrontation on staff. Just kidding. Not all of it.

But one of us will come and meet with you and the other person, and if that doesn't work, then you get to treat them like a pagan and a tax collector. How fun is that? How do you treat pagans and tax collectors, people who are far from God? You treat them with an incredible amount of love and an incredible amount of grace, and you continue to try to win them to see what is the possibility of who they could be in Jesus Christ.

So the first thing we have to get is Matthew 18. You need to jot that down, come back to the passage, do a little bit of a deeper dive on it later. Matthew 18 is super key. We have to go actually talk to people one-on-one. Now, I wanted to just kind of give... you three questions to end, kind of a filter for you to work through before you go to do confrontation. So the first question that you need to ask yourself is this, do you have the right?

Do you have the right to talk to this person about this issue? It's pretty often that people confront those that they have no business confronting. Has that ever happened to you before? You've been confronted by somebody that you're like, mm-mm. It sucks. It's horrible. And the cheesy line is true. You've all heard it before. But people need to know that you care before they will care about how much you know.

People need to know that you care about them before they're going to care about how much you know about them. So the question is, are you the right person to actually go and do the confrontation? Here's a little filter. Have they invited your critique? Have they asked you, hey, listen, I want you to speak into my life. Here's an area I'm struggling with. When you see me do this, can you let me know?

I want to work on this area. Have they invited your critique? That's like a green light. Go for it. Are they speaking into your life? That could be kind of a good indicator. It might go both ways. If they're speaking into your life, you might have the opportunity to speak into theirs. Here's a really important one. Are they a follower of Jesus? Our job as followers of Jesus isn't to tell the world how to be the world. It's not our job.

We're not confronting people who don't have the same standard of morality and the same standard of Jesus' way of living and teaching. We're confronting one another who have agreed we're coming underneath the lordship of Jesus and pointing each other in that direction.

Can this person trust your motives? Or has there been something, have you done something in the past or said something in the past that's broken trust with this person and it's really not going to work if it comes, even though it might be true, it's not going to work if it comes from you. Secondly, here's the second question that you got to ask yourself before you go to confront. Are you winning them over in love?

Are you winning them over in love? All confrontation is showing people who they really are in love. That's what all of confrontation is. What's your motive? When you confront somebody, you need to ask why. Why am I confronting them? Is this out of Jesus' agenda or is it out of my own agenda? Am I trying to make my life easier or am I trying to make them more like me? Or is this something that's in their best interest?

Also, you gotta ask yourself, is this something that I need to let go of or bring up? Is this something that God is already winning them over in love with? And you just need to be there and just affirm the process that, hey, God's at work in this person's life and it doesn't actually need to be brought up again. Or is this something that this person has no idea about and you actually need to be the one to bring it to their attention?

And then lastly, and maybe most importantly, the question that you need to ask is, are you being clear? in your confrontation? Are you being clear? More often than not, when we go to have that difficult conversation with a friend, we either sugarcoat it or we exaggerate it, right?

Either of those responses, whether you sugarcoat it or you exaggerate it, either of those responses shows a lack of love and an increase in fear. I'm afraid that if I tell them the truth and what I honestly think about what they're doing with their life, that they're not going to like me very much.

Hey, listen, man, here's something that I've noticed. And, well, I've kind of noticed it. And maybe you should think about it. Maybe working on it. I don't know if you want to, I guess. And so we kind of sugarcoat it. And we're like, oh, it's not really that big of a deal. No, you're great, man. Don't worry about it. Gosh dang, that's not going to help anyone. Or there's an increase in pride. And so we go, well I would never have said what she said. And so she should be ashamed of herself.

She should know that this is an incredibly shameful thing, the thing that she did. And so we demonize people. When you let fear or pride run your relationships, the focus becomes you. And it can mean making sure that other people like you at the expense of their own growth. And that is not what we're called to. The desire in our hearts to never cause discomfort in another person has kept us from honesty, boldness, and the great faith that God has called us into.

We can't, reaction to error produces error. We have to act on what's actually true. We need to be clear in our confrontation. This is wrong, but I still love you. Say what you really think. Then give your reasons for it. And then wait. And listen. Here's how you know if your confronter loves you. They stay. They remain your friend. They stay in your life.

They walk with you. Now, I realize that there's a lot of you who probably tuned me out at this point, even like, well, I just don't confront. It's not something that I do, not my style. And I realize that this is what we're after is really, really difficult. But what we're trying to do in this next year, especially with these disciplines, is we're trying to become like Jesus Christ. I'm trying to grow. And this is what you signed up for. This is part of counting the cost.

And I realized that when you confront in order to see fruit in someone's life and your own, you're probably going to endure some level of offense. You will probably be offended by the initial thing that brought about the confrontation. You may be offended in the middle of the confrontation, and there might remain something awkward between you and the other person. But through all of it,

We're called to know the value that we have and the value that they have and to point them to Jesus. Because the truth is that we're not saviors. We're not saviors. We're pointers.

showing others that their best interest is in him. We don't change people. God changes people. And so I want to end by showing you one last passage that my wife and I have just been mulling over. It's become something that has just so influenced me. our lives together and the ministries that we lead here at the church. But this is how we actually change. And we all who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory.

are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. So how are we actually transformed? By seeing him. By contemplating him.

Sometimes we think that introspection and looking at, I thought about this the other day, I'm going to just create a list of all the things that I need to work on, God, and then maybe you could just walk me through that. And he goes, no, you're not the shepherd, I'm the shepherd. You get your eyes on the shepherd and I will lead you to green. pastures. Gosh, put your eyes on him. That's how we actually change. How do we change? We get in his presence.

Our transformation comes from seeing his face. That is where true heart change comes from. Not just behavior modification, real deep down heart change. I just want to share a story to end. I went to George Fox University for my undergrad, and there was the campus pastor. Her name was Sarah Baldwin.

I remember nothing that this lady said except for this story, unfortunately, because she was a really smart lady. But anyways, she told this story that has always stuck with me, and it's just so pertinent for tonight. Hey, I...

She told this story about how she was going through this incredibly hard time. I don't even remember what was going on, but she was going through this really hard time. There were people who were kind of stacked up against her. She'd gone through this immense heartbreak. She was just feeling the weight of just loneliness and isolation. and all of it.

And so in this completely broken place, she goes to one of her best friends and she sits down with her and she says, look, I got to just unload all this stuff. Here's the things that I'm going through. Here's the stuff that I'm feeling has been spoken over me. Here are the things that I'm believing that might be lies. I don't know what.

what's true and what's not true anymore. It's all clouded. And her friend said, okay, well, yeah, I want to talk about it, but can we do something first? Can you follow me to my bedroom? So she walks back to this gal's bedroom, and she said, okay, hey, just go sit down, and I'll be right back. Okay? So her friend goes to leave.

And when her friend leaves, she comes and she shuts the door and she like locks it and props a chair up against it so that she can't get out of the room. And she says, you don't need to meet with me. You need to meet with him. Have you told him all these things? Have you brought your hurts? Have you brought your pain? Have you brought your frustration? Have you brought the lies and the half-truths or whatever it is, have you brought it to him?

Because we all, with unveiled faces, as we contemplate the Lord's glory, we're being transformed. When in your life do you bring your stuff before him? Fruitful confrontation is always pointing people to him. showing people him so that he can actually change us. What a great reminder. We aren't saviours, just pointers. Ultimately, our healing and our transformation all comes from Jesus. And our role in confrontation is simply to point to him.

But when we have unprocessed hurt, pain, frustration or lies, we tend to be much more likely to engage in conflict in unloving ways. So to end, let's just take a moment to go to Jesus ourselves.

If you're able, slow down with me and take a few deep breaths. Become aware of God's presence. And now in your mind's eye, picture Jesus. Maybe he's sitting beside you or standing in front of you. Maybe he's at the cross. And now take a moment to name the pain or lie you're carrying. Imagine placing it into his hands. Picture yourself releasing it. Stay with that image for a moment. And listen for anything he might want to say to you. Amen.

This podcast is from Practice in the Way. We develop resources to help churches and small groups apprentice in the way of Jesus. Thanks for Little Thoughts for our show music. We're a crowdfunded nonprofit, so everything we make is completely free. because it's already been paid for by The Circle, our community of monthly givers. Special thanks today goes to Daphne from Utrecht, Netherlands. Whitney from Notporth, Alabama. Cade from Plaintoe, Texas.

Amy from Quincy, Illinois, and Cooper from Hartsell, Alabama. Thank you all very much. To join this Friends in the Circle or learn more about our resources, visit practiceintheway.org. Until next time. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.