The body of Christ truly is a beautiful thing. It's unity brought out some of the best and most memorable experiences I have ever had. A church that is united together through the strands of brothers and sisters following the Bible and enjoying God can hardly be looked at as a "dead church." Of course there is a bad side to the coin.
When people make mistakes against each other (and they will, eventually), the pain that is generated is magnified incredibly! The victim senses the severing of emotions, and it hurts! Some of my most troubling experiences have been in the context of the body of Christ. We live in a fallen world, and things like this happen. No matter what the attack, intentional or unintentional, Jesus places a specific command designed to create a healing and bonding process between the attacker and victim.
Before I continue, perhaps it would be good for you to understand one thing: These verses are among the most ignored in all of Christianity. These are the most broken commands, and the most over looked, simply because they challenge people to do something unthinkable. I personally hate conflict, which is why this is the hardest thing in the world for me to do. As far as difficulty for me, Evangelism is a cake walk compared to this.
"If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have" gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector."
~ Matthew 18:15-17
Needless to say, I don't think many Christians ever do this.
A lot of Christians like to try to rationalize a person's actions. "Oh, they didn't mean it that way. That's not a sin so I don't need to talk to him about it..." Yet they begin to harbor up some sort of resentment against that Christian, weakening the church and Body of Christ.
Mark Roberts, a Pastor, said it pretty good, "I cannot tell you how many times I've seen a Christian sister hurt another sister inadvertently. The victim, though truly hurt, doesn't want to engage in awkward and risky confrontation, so she chooses instead to try to ignore the offense. But the hurt in her heart is real. So she ends up building a wall of resentment and protection between herself and the one who hurt her."
That's pretty dangerous. Even if your not sure if it's sin, you should at least talk to the person about what they did. Whether it was on purpose or not, their actions or words hurt your relationship with that person. If there was no relationship with that person, then consider the fact that resentment towards other people weakens the church.
As for myself, I have to talk to a certain person. My aim in conversing with this man is to build reconciliation between him and I. I don't want to resent him any longer, and I don't want his view of me to be misplaced in the wrong light. Who knows, maybe I hurt him somehow. I will ask when I meet him. I really want to follow what I believe, and even though the whole world say's , "Ignore him Jorge, your getting too confrontational. You'll only agitate those people more..."I will do it, simply because Jesus commands it.
I trust that Jesus will be with me, and I am hoping for reconciliation with that man. I'm doing this out of love, and I am not going to grind anything in my words. While there, I only hope God halts me before I say anything stupid. Things have been so misunderstood and now I have an opportunity to follow scripture and do things right for once. I will not bend and listen to the world in these matters of confrontation.
I did this to a friend a few years ago. She was incredibly thankful afterwords, and that even helped create a friendship that I really enjoyed. It was a rare friendship for the summer. For the next few weeks as I got to know her, I found that she had grown tremendously, and I enjoyed watching her grow. Jesus' words and teachings actually unfolded before me, and I loved seeing the results. It brought me and her incredible joy. To this day I still greatly respect her. :)
I had to do it again about a month ago, but I failed to do it right. The person had no idea what I wanted to talk with them about, so they became defensive. I should have told them it had to do with Matthew 18:15... maybe they would have actually listened... Believe it or not, the face-to-face conversation never happened. I made the mistake of doing it over email. That was a bad move on my part. I never knew if any reconciliation happened, nor do I know if the person ever read it. That's why Jesus said, "Go". He didn't say, "Send a letter" or anything like that. If I can go to the person in a face-to-face conversation, then it should happen.
So I'm going to "go" and confront this man, with humbleness and a sincere heart. Quite honestly I'm scared. He can literally destroy my life if he wanted to. Since I had a pretty bad run with a close person to him (which I will not share), he probably doesn't view me in the greatest light. If he wanted to, or if there was a bad misunderstanding, he can literally get a restraining order on me. That would destroy my future in Ministry, and it would haunt me for the rest of my entire life.
But
Since Jesus commands it, then I'll do it. I will lay down my future for Him and follow. I'm willing to sacrifice so much for the Unity of our church. I don't want to ignore it and then have it haunt me for the next few years. I will be a man of God and I will initiate if I have to. I just called him only yesterday to set up a time to meet him, and I found myself trembling. My chest was shaking. It's about time I start doing some pretty hard things. Jesus didn't die to have his church broken.
I'll update this when I speak with the man in part 2...
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