In this podcast episode the discussion revolves around the pivotal theme of peacemaking and conflict resolution. We connect with Pastor Brian Noble, who highlights the complexities of conflict as experienced by individuals in various relational contexts, particularly within missionary work. He articulates the necessity for a structured approach to conflict, encapsulated in a four-step model: Story, Ascend, Reflect, and Connect. This framework not only aids in understanding one's own perspective but also fosters an appreciation for the viewpoints of others, thereby enhancing the efficacy of communication and reconciliation efforts. Throughout our conversation, we emphasize the profound impact of personal accountability and the importance of initiating reconciliation, drawing upon biblical principles and personal anecdotes to underscore the transformative power of peacemaking in our lives and communities.

Takeaways:

• The podcast emphasizes the significance of understanding diverse perspectives in resolving conflict.
• Brian Noble highlights the importance of self-reflection during conflicts for personal growth.
• The four-step model of peacemaking includes storytelling, ascending to core values, reflecting, and connecting.
• Effective conflict resolution requires both boldness and a commitment to peace in relationships.

Hey there.

Welcome back to the Clarity Podcast.

This podcast is all about providing clarity, insight, encouragement for life and mission.

And my name is Aaron Sandemier and I get to be your host.

Today we have the phenomenal opportunity to have with us on the podcast of Pastor Brian Noble and we get to sit down and learn from him about peacemakers.

I've spent the last 20 plus years of my life serving overseas and one of the primary reasons that people will abandon their call and leave the field is because of conflict in general.

I've seen it's good people that have maybe a good heart, but at the same time they come at a conflict from maybe their family of origin.

The other person or the other people come from their family of origin.

And at the same time the conflict seems to grow and it does.

Reconciliation does not seem to happen.

And so just wanted to invite Brian to share about peacemakers and the model that they share that I found really valuable.

And it's a model that has four steps where you go from story, recognizing that, understanding your perspective and other people's perspective.

Then we move on to Ascend.

And Ascend is just saying there's some core biblical principles that we're going to apply in this situation and then reflect, reflecting on my responsibility in the conflict, maybe gently confronting someone else in that process.

And then the other thing is we connect and coming up with a plan on a pathway forward.

So just really enjoyed learning from Brian.

Loved having him on the podcast and you won't be disappointed.

Do want to ask you to continue to send in your questions for Backchannel with Foeth.

That's where we get to sit down with Dick Foth and get to learn from him.

Also ask you to continue to subscribe to the podcast.

I know that there's many people that have listened into this podcast from the beginning and I am so grateful.

And I would ask you those that maybe you're just new to the podcast and ask you to subscribe.

That way the episodes will show up each and every beginning of the week and you know you'll have something to listen to in your drive time, in your car, on your run, on your bike, or out for a walk.

Well, there's no time better than now to get started.

So here we go.

Greetings and welcome back to the Clarity podcast.

So excited to have a new friend of the podcast with is somebody I got to spend a lot of hours with, but through video and learning from him.

Brian, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, thanks for having me on today, Brian.

As I got the opportunity to read Your book, to read your writings, spend some time going through the training on Path of a Peacemaker, but some of the people listening in might have not had that opportunity just yet.

So will you share just a little bit about yourself before we jump into this great tool that I'm excited about?

Yeah, absolutely.

I was in Deer Park, Washington, as a Assembly of God youth pastor and then a lead pastor for a lot of years.

And in my first church as a lead pastor, I was 26, and I actually ended up splitting that church.

And so it was just a lot of tension, a lot of conflict, and I didn't know what to do.

I was really beside myself.

I had called onto the network or the district and said, hey, can you help me out?

And so they gave me some great guidance and direction.

But along that process, I stumbled across Peacemaker Ministries, and I was like, this is exciting.

Like, there's an actual path that we can begin to walk down and move, move through.

So I started my own process of educating myself on conflict, on how to interact with boards, on how to work with teams and all these kind of things.

And I found out I have some blind spots.

You know, I have some things that I didn't.

I wasn't aware of myself.

And to really get that outside insight from the coaches and from those around us was very, very helpful.

So I've done this for a lot of years, and really in Sandpoint, Idaho, when I was leading there as a lead pastor at Assembly God Church, I.

We created a culture of peace where we still had tension, but how did we handle that tension?

And so along this process, there was some things in my personal life that were happening as well.

I have a wife, four children, but one of our children is wheelchair bound.

And so that also created a whole bunch of tension as well.

My family.

So finding out how do I apply these things both in my family life and in my work or ministry life, was really, really critical.

And God just brought me through a process, and so we came up with the path.

Wow.

No, thank you for that, for that Genesis story of it all.

And your efforts on took courage for you.

You shared about the challenge you went through with the church, but the motivation and the courage to say, I want to learn from this and I want to grow and develop.

Can you share just a little bit about that?

Because it could have been easy just to say, hey, I'm done with this.

This is, done with this church stuff.

I'm moving on, I'm going a different direction or because as a lot of people listening to us are missionaries and it can be easier just to say, cut off relationships rather than trying to learn and grow and restore them.

Can you share how you navigated that?

Yeah, I think one of the important things to recognize that there are such things as abusive relationships.

So those extreme situation situations where we're threatened physically, or those kind of things that we do need to be kind of like Joseph in the Old Testament, where we leave our robe and we run and we get out of there.

Sure.

I would say that most of the things that we experience in church conflict isn't that extreme situation.

Right.

A lot of it has to do with how do we interact with people and how we see the world around us from a biblical perspective.

And so when I, when I learned about this and started growing in this, I mean, Peacemakers historically was more of a Reformed movement and Reformed theology.

And then when I came in as an assembly God pastor and CEO of it, it really took on this more direction of taking those foundations that we have from scripture.

Because in the reform movement, they have, you know, they kind of have rules for every little step of the way.

If you haven't studied that out and they're great.

I mean, they provide a baseline.

But then taking that and saying, okay, how do we make this a little bit simpler and how do we move it forward in a reproducible path?

And what I found was, is that if we, we say in James where it says, consider it all, Jo, when we encounter various trials, well, how do we get those joy during those trials?

And it's learning from the situations and circumstances that we're in.

And I remember it hit me one day, it said, brian, you know, you really talk about confessing Jesus as Lord that you're a sinner saved by God's grace, but when it comes to your conflict, it seems like you look at yourself as just being right.

Wow.

And so the step back and say, wait, if I'm a sinner saved by grace, probably when I'm in conflict, I'm still a sinner saved by God's grace.

Like, I still probably made some errors.

Right.

And so then that really hit me.

And so to self reflect and think through what it means to be a peacemaker, what it means to be confident and a bold leader at the same time, draw people closer to me.

And so learning from my, you know, My reformed friends and saying, hey, this is a way of a process that we can do, making it a little bit simpler than what it historically had been.

But really finding that way of how do I self reflect during this time so God can grow me?

At that point, when I was in my 30s, I was like, I had seen enough ministers who, from an outside perspective didn't seem to have learned from, you know, the conflicts they went from.

They went from one conflict to the next conflict to the next conflict.

And I was like, I'm committed not to doing that.

I really want to leave if I'm going to leave somewhere because God called me and leave on good terms and, and because of my experience in that church split, which I didn't do that I left on bad terms and, and, and not in a good way.

I wanted to figure out what do I need to do to be a better contributor to that.

And so, you know, I know on the mission field it's easy.

You can just kind of.

Not easy, I shouldn't say, but you can reassign yourself or you can, you know, get, go, go to a different location.

But sometimes we're missing the very opportunity for the gospel to penetrate our hearts and develop something new within us.

Yeah, good word.

So you mentioned.

So I'm gonna.

What is a peacemaker?

But then in that, in that definition you said peacemaker and bold leader.

And sometimes people might say, well, those are.

You could be a bold follower, bold leader.

But sometimes when you think of peacemaker, you don't necessarily think of boldness.

And at the same time, could you unpack that a little bit for us?

So what is a peacemaker?

And then could you also be a peacemaker and be bold?

Absolutely.

Think about Jesus as the prince of peace.

He's the same God, dude, human, all that.

You know, you never know what to say when you're using that.

Sure.

Overturned tables.

He never stopped being the prince of peace.

Peace during that time.

But he was the same God who sat with the woman at the well and had a great conversation about water and salvation.

And he's the same, you know, so when we look at this, what I'm saying is we see Jesus in a variety of circumstances and situations and he never relinquished being the prince of peace.

Yet somehow we only look at peacemaking through our flesh.

Other words, I gotta be like tranquil and I gotta be kind of like laid back and maybe look like I'm, you know, I'm high on something.

I don't know, we get this weird idea.

It's true.

It's true.

True.

Yep.

But the reality, Jesus wasn't any of that.

And so to think about, how can I be confident and bold, yet bring peace into the situation.

I think one of the best stories is the story of Joseph, who experienced a lot of injustice in the Old Testament.

And I love it because I think it's in Genesis 45, where he says to his brothers, have everyone go out from me.

And there was no one there when he.

When Joseph confronted his brothers.

And the next thing he said is, come closer to me.

And as a leader, I started reflecting on that particular encounter in the Word of God and saying, okay, here he is bold.

He's keeping it confidential, yet he somehow is in a position of power and authority, and yet he's willing to draw people closer.

You know, the most amazing part of that story is it says, and they came closer.

Yeah.

And then he said things like this.

You sold me into slavery.

He didn't tell a lie, but God had a plan.

You did this.

I think he does it seven times, and then 12 years later, he has to do it again, you know?

Cause the brothers lie in Genesis 50.

But that whole idea of bold leadership, when you're in a position of power and authority that can tell the truth and can move people closer to you, and yet you're not afraid.

So this is where we can learn from our friends is like, when you understand that God is sovereign over your situations, then all you gotta do is bring your free will into an alignment.

Do you understand that God is in control of that situation and there is no threat.

You've already said you're a sinner, saved by God's grace, so you're not threatened by it.

You're not trying to prove something.

You're not trying to impress someone.

And so that very moment, that's where Joseph, he gives us that illustration of.

I know that this free will was taking place in my life, but God's sovereignty was there, overarching all of that.

And I love that about Joseph because it really challenged me to take that step of, okay, how do I become now?

I gotta.

I don't bat 100 or whatever it's called.

I don't.

I don't always put it on the ballpark.

Right.

I make mistakes.

But that's where repentance and forgiveness and, you know, the blood of Christ comes in.

Yeah.

So being a peacemaker in our relationships you mentioned, this is not just something necessarily that we would use with our work colleagues or in work, but it also can impact our relationships at home or with our family or with brothers or sisters.

And, and that's actually one of the things in the training you talk about what navigating conflict in a family.

Can you share about how being peacemaker impacts our relationships?

Well, what you're going to realize is that we're natural idol making machines that just kind of somehow have idolatry just flowing through our hearts and through our lives.

Very simple.

And depending on the context of your life.

I come from a divorced family.

I come from a family that was in and out of church kind of.

We didn't really go consistently.

And so these historical background areas play into your marriage, they play into your childbearing.

I was raised on a farm and so I come from a very, very gruff kind of family and blunt kind of family.

And so those things play in.

They're not excuses for bad behavior currently, but they are context of why we do things.

And so to find a simple process that I can reproduce so I don't have like a process for my workplace, a process for my family life, a process for when I'm at the supermarket, but a consistent process that I can work through in my mind and my heart so that I can end up glorifying God in whatever I do is incredibly important.

And so I can tell you that oftentimes our behavior and our leadership and the public arena isn't as welcomed in the private arena.

Like your family doesn't want you to preach to them.

Your family doesn't want the charisma that you may bring on stage that you know, that they don't want at home.

And oftentimes in our, in our more intimate lives that those are more exaggerated.

Right.

So you know, maybe you're bold with your board, but you're rude with your family.

Maybe you're confident on the stage, but you're arrogant with your kids.

And so these, I'm just talking for the things I've seen in myself.

And maybe people are different.

And so I've had to figure out how do I take that same intensity and do it so that it serves the family well, because I haven't always done it well.

And the concepts we're going to teach you in these videos will help you with that because you begin to have some self reflection, you begin to think about your core values as you walk with God.

And then you make a plan of how do I do this?

And I used to when I would walk into my home, I would call it my threshold prayer.

This is when I had more or, well, I still have more theology than I Do application.

But I had a theology of peacemaking, but my application was very low, and I didn't matured in it.

And I would walk up the ramp into our home, and I would say, lord, I know these things.

I teach these things, but I'm not applying it at home.

Help me, Holy Spirit, you give me the power to apply this.

And sometimes I did it well, but, you know, sometimes I didn't because it happens to be that we're human and we're saved by God's grace.

So, yeah, one of the.

I was challenged by many things as I went through the training.

1.

And one of the first ones was this idea that people are not the enemy.

What do you mean by people are not the enemy?

And how is that?

I mean, it makes sense, a ton of sense now, but I had never really thought about it that way until you started talking about.

So what do you mean by people are not the enemy to me?

Well, we see that oftentimes the.

The.

Our ideologies or our thought process around things can make it feel like someone is evil, someone is, you know, a persecutor.

Someone is, you know, I can't tell you how many times I've had people question someone else's salvation when they're in conflict.

Like before that if I would have taken a slice of the pie and, oh, I love them, they love Jesus, and then they have conflict.

I don't even know if they serve Jesus.

I don't even, you know, and.

And even a believer.

And so I think that when we look at the process that we're walking through in our lives, that we forget that God's in process with everyone.

So if we know that God is working, maybe there was some sinful behavior from another individual or person, it's still that the sin is the issue, right?

Because if they're in process, just like I'm in process, we call that, obviously, sanctification, then I got to leave room for God to sanctify them.

I got to leave and see what part I am to play.

I like to say this.

If we're in a courtroom, there's a judge, there's a defense attorney, you know, there's the prosecutor.

And in the Bible, those three roles are all taken up by people who are not you or me, right?

We're not God's the judge.

The defense attorney is Jesus, and the prosecutor is the devil.

Right?

And so the issue that's brought in could be ourselves.

We brought.

We're.

We're on trial for our behavior, and we're on trial for what we've done.

But the reality is in 2 Corinthians 5, it says, do not consider people according to the flesh any longer.

In other words, we look at them, not what they've done, but what God is doing in them.

So then you start saying, okay, if I'm not any of those three things, what am I supposed to do?

I'm supposed to watch out and watch the gospel be played out in front of me.

How can I be a contributor to help that person see a blind spot?

Or maybe how can I pray for them and encourage them?

Because when I move beyond a personal issue into an issue of God's, refining, it helps me be a part of the process that moves me forward.

And it's very difficult because our knee jerk reaction is to see the person as the issue.

I'm glad Jesus didn't do that with me.

That's all I gotta say.

No, it's the truth, Brian.

Somebody might be listening and say, well, Brian, you're from the Northwest and maybe the people you're around are not as mean or unkind as the ones I'm around.

Or maybe they're not as difficult.

They might say, hey, the people in my life, they're more difficult.

How would you respond to somebody would say, brian, that's.

The people in my life are just more difficult than that?

Well, I think that comes back to oftentimes when I've taught overseas, there's this idea that we have that there's the cultural idea and there's the context of how people are brought up and people like to, and I'm going to be a little bit blunt, hopefully this is okay.

People like to have lots of excuses for bad behavior.

So, so in other words, like when I've done mediations in New York, you know, they tend to be very blunt and matter of fact and, and you know, all this.

But yet the Bible still calls us to, to a righteous lifestyle, a holy lifestyle for him.

Regardless.

If you live in New York or you're passively aggressive from the south or you're in Uganda or, you know, wherever I've been.

And so we like to have these, these human excuses as to why we can not glorify God.

The reality is our expression may be slightly different and there may be some cultural things that are okay and not okay and, and we want to be aware of those things, of course, but they can't become excuse.

So to, to put it mildly or bluntly, is that the Bible or the biblical worldview always trumps culture.

It trumps everything else that, that we, we encounter, even personality.

And so then we're like, how do we take that gift of God, that personality that God has entrusted to us and bring it so that.

Could you imagine if we were all like New Yorkers just in your face?

I mean, we would get nothing done.

Or if we were all passive aggressive, we would get nothing done.

Those personalities God uses so that we can both have fun and clarity and get contacts, do all these kind of things, but we all want to bring it under submission to what God would have us walk in and to walk in his holiness and the power of His Holy Spirit.

No, it's so true.

As we look at teams serving around the world together, there are those different.

You have families of origin you've mentioned, you've already hit on that.

And then this, this idea of culture and, and there is different ways of navigating conflict.

I, I grew up in a family with one, you know, one parent was an exploder and one was a stuffer.

And so you bring those kind of ways of navigating conflict in.

And I got a few questions on that as we work down through it.

But it's, they, they impact us.

But then we're on a team and we're all supposed to work together and, and we have an enemy that comes to kill, steal and destroy.

And he, he's not there to, to see the, we're there to establish the church and he' and you know, one of the top reasons, if not the top, that missionaries continue to leave the field is conflict.

And majority of the time it's conflict with coworkers.

And you see people with a call of God come and conflict arises.

And so that's what I'm super excited about, having a common way that we can navigate conflict together.

So you've mentioned earlier that you developed kind of a process, some several steps.

Can you share what those steps are in the path of a peacemaker speaker?

Yeah.

So we actually do a little hand motion tour.

So it's.

Tell me your story.

So it's story.

So the idea is that we're quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger.

And I will tell you that if you're working in team dynamics, learning someone else's story before you enter into conflict is very, very healthy because it helps give you context of what chapter, what verse you're entering into their life.

Yeah.

So listening to each other's story, and if you're like me, or maybe you're a talker or you're not a good active listener, Work at it, you know, get over it and just work at it and say, you know what, I'm going to listen, I'm going to ask questions, I'm going to get to know this individual because I'm going to hit conflict.

Then we go back to our core values, which most of us have more core values than we have application.

Right?

So we have things that we value and we say and we do, but the reality is, do we apply them across the board?

Do I apply them at home, do I apply them at work with my team member?

And so that's ascend.

And then we reflect, we take personal responsibility to achieve those core values.

And so both for the future and for the past.

Right.

So want to own those things.

And then we make a plan to implement them.

So I suggest with team members is before relationship is broke, when you're in the honeymoon state, sit down and have a proactive conversation about discovering each other's story.

What do you value?

You might find I recently hired someone probably about a year ago, and I value going out to lunch.

This person does not value that.

But we didn't have the conversation, so I was always annoying him because I'd invite him to lunch.

That was his time to, you know, rejuvenate himself and just be by himself for just a moment.

And so I wasn't serving him well because I didn't know his story.

Right.

And so then when I found that out, I'm like, oh, that's not a problem.

I reflected, I won't invite you to lunch, you know, and we're going to make a plan for the future.

And so if we can do that with our, with our team members, it's important.

So let me say the words.

Just really, it's story, ascend, reflect and connect.

That's the path of the maker.

And it can be used for looking back at conflict.

It also can be used prior to conflict to create a plan for how you're going to interact as, as a team.

Wow.

So those difference, those different steps, do they.

Have you found over the years that some of those come easier for some people than others?

Maybe somebody's very good at story, but maybe not necessarily at reflecting or connecting or they're, they're not really good, understand somebody else's story, but they can, you know, they're good at the ascend, right?

They understand the core biblical values.

Have you seen that?

Or is that, or is it just a growth in all areas?

No, no, no, there's definitely there.

There are areas that we're better at than others.

Right.

So I'll put it in more of a secular humanist term, emotional intelligence.

Right.

So oftentimes your self awareness is practical.

I would actually say your.

Your ability to discern.

So spiritual intelligence, I don't know if that's even a thing.

But the ability to discern what God is doing in you and others is really, really important.

And so whether we use either term, we're talking about the same thing.

So growing in that self awareness is important.

For instance, I know I talk very fast, right?

I know I have a fast pace of talking.

Be aware of that.

That doesn't serve people well.

For instance, if I'm putting together a funeral for someone, right.

I got to figure out how to slow that down and use that energy in a way to serve them better.

The same thing with conflict.

You begin to say, okay, how do I serve better in these areas?

Now, the more passive people that like to reflect and want to be very calculated about the words, they tend to do really well in understanding their story and understanding the reflection.

What they oftentimes sometimes do though, is that that self conversation that they have going on, they end up rewriting the story into guessing a lot of things that didn't really take place.

Wow, okay.

Where someone who's a little bit more spontaneous and instantaneous.

Instant.

You know, they instantly have an opinion.

They instantly have.

I don't even know if that was a word that I just said, but they instantly have an opinion.

They instantly want to take charge during story.

They kind of make it up, but they haven't really thought through it.

It.

So personality plays a huge part of this.

And their reflection, ah, they didn't reflect at all.

Just get over it, you know, and so there's strengths and weaknesses to both.

Both things.

And, and I'm just using two.

Two examples, but really there's 100 in between.

You know, that that can be a different mixture of those things.

But to really think about what, what personality do I have?

And guess what?

This can invert.

Given the level of intimacy in the relationship, what I find is, you know, the people that we love more, oftentimes we have a different personality response to them.

Maybe we're overly blunt because we feel comfortable, or maybe we stuff it with our family, but we express it with our co workers.

So you really got to sit down and get to know yourself.

And this is, I think your daily devotions, quite frankly, is spending some time with the Lord each and every day and allowing him to wash over your heart and speak to you.

You and.

And get.

Make you more self aware, I guess, is what I'm saying.

No, it's challenging.

Challenging for sure.

Brian, when it comes to addressing walking this, this path, how do you figure out the right time?

You know, is it you.

I really appreciated you said, you know, you can use this path, even thinking about a situation and you know, walking it through so it doesn't end up in a conflict, but maybe somebody's thinking about.

Well, I've tried, I've had conflict and I tried to address it early and then that didn't go well.

And then if I don't address it early, then I just stuff it and I never address it and then it's unresolved and I'm bitter.

So how do you navigate that discernment, obviously from the Holy Spirit, but any, any practical tips someone can decide on when, on how to navigate, when to pick the time to navigate a conflict.

So for me personally, my rule of thumb, if I thought about it two or three times, I'm going to handle it.

It.

Okay, that's good because, you know, the reality is that, and maybe this is an assembly God culture.

I, I'm not, I'm not sure because I've only had this context.

But having, having done mediations in a lot of different denominations, it seems like some denominations have a much higher ability to give reflection back to their core leaders.

Right.

And they have the systems to do that.

That.

But at least in the Assemblies of God, and this may be just my own perspective from being in the Pacific Northwest, it seems like oftentimes we don't invite feedback or we don't invite those kind of conversations.

So it gets stuffed and stuffed and stuffed and we can actually see a pattern that at 7 years and 15 years we redefine the relationship in a negative way because we haven't handled things.

Wow.

And so what we will do is, you know, and I've literally sat down with pastors or leaders and they said, I knew nothing about this.

Well, everyone else was talking about it, but not to the pastor.

And I think that we need to handle that as well.

I think it's also important to look at Proverbs where it says it's to a man's glory to overlook an offense.

But what that means is that when we intentionally overlook something, we intentionally lay it at the cross and we're not going to use that against them.

So if you're managing someone, it's not overlooking to go back and say, well, 10 years ago you did this, five years ago you did that, I overlooked it.

But now I can't.

You can't.

That's not, that's keeping a laundry list of punitive action that you want to take in the future.

So I always tell managers, use the most immediate things to have these kind of conversations, you know, and if there is a pattern, hopefully you've addressed it along the way.

Right.

And because little corrections are much easier than turning a whole ship.

So I think, I think about it two or three times, I handle it.

And then obviously going before the Lord and say, lord, is this something that we're supposed to, to continue to work on, or is this something that you're working on?

And I need to step aside for just a moment, you know, And I think having that direction is really important as well.

And I appreciate so much the, the reflection that you encourage in the path, in the path of being a peacemaker, for sure.

What do you mentioned earlier on, what if somebody feels unsafe?

What do they do with that?

How do they decide if they're safe to step in?

You, you do talk about this in the training.

But, but if I'm safe to have to walk this out, how do I find somebody maybe to walk it out with me?

For somebody listening in saying, brian, I really want to walk this out, but I don't know if I feel safe with the person or the individuals that I'm having conflict with.

I don't know what to do with that.

Yeah, well, first, I think to a certain element, we've become overly sensitive at times, and so we need to be careful of that.

That and asking lord, am I just being overly sensitive?

So I can tell you, having come from, I'll just say a high conflict family, sometimes I can be overly sensitive at times and I got to just ask the Lord about it.

But when there's a power imbalance, like let's say, like you have to go to a regional individual or you need to manage up, is what they say in the secular world.

And when we need to manage up there, sometimes it's a good idea to bring someone with us.

Right.

To have someone go alongside of us.

Now, I've seen the scripture weaponized where key leaders will use.

Well, you didn't use Matthew 18.

And they come to me privately and they use it as a weapon.

And I would just say to key leaders, first and foremost, Jesus teaching of Matthew 18 is a great principle in leadership.

I can tell you that there's other biblical examples where either Jesus said something wrong or he's making an overarching statement that says, hey, this is kind of the guidelines for everyday relationships.

Yeah, but when, when we look at Esther, we look at David as a king, we look at people in the Old Testament as well.

That there was when people were managing up and a prophet was managing up, oftentimes, you know, he, he would go there with a story or they would have banquets or they would have relationship that, that move that way.

Now, at least in the assemblies of God, there's a little bit of a system that's great that can help you walk through that.

Yeah, but if there's not, you know, that system isn't utilized, then, then it's not going to do any good for you.

You have to utilize the system.

And I would say this to the key leaders is don't be offended if someone does a system a little bit wrong.

In other words, if they go above you a little bit, be encouraged, they want to mend the relationship.

Right.

Don't be threatened by that.

I think that we can rest in who we, who we are and whose we are and our identity does not change.

And this is where I find a lot of this unsafe kind of stuff comes in, is in our self talk.

We begin to switch our identity and we begin to switch, you know, the things that God has to say about us with what that other person says about us or the circumstance may reflect on us.

I think it's really refreshing and freeing to recognize that God is your provider.

God goes before you in all things.

And this is an opportunity for the gospel message to be demonstrated to those in the conflict or those around you.

And so, yeah, I think if there's a truth threat, like a physical threat or spiritual abuse, you might say, or those kind of things, then go to that next level and then you may have to remove yourself ultimately, if that is a true threat.

Wow, good word.

And I love the, the idea of as leaders not being threatened and not being, you know, necessarily insecure.

If somebody in celebrating that somebody wants to, they wants to, they want to resolve it and they want to see reconciliation.

You know, I think that's one.

One of the.

I said there was many things that jumped out to me was, was just.

I was convicted about this idea that the principle that Christ came to us.

So when there's conflict, I can't just sit back and wait for people to come to me.

And you know, I'm sure I've been guilty of that in the past, both in family relationships and also in work relationships, of saying, you know, I'm just sitting back and maybe doing the silent treatment and waiting for somebody to come to me, but I was really challenged by that.

I did with, with the concept that, you know, Christ came to me.

And so I need to have.

I need to have the courage.

And if I'm going to say, I'm a Christian, I need to be able to go to others when there's conflict.

Can you, can you unpack that a little bit more?

And how do you land on that thought?

Yeah.

So Matthew 5:23 and 24 really talks about, if your brother has an offense against you, go to your brother, leave your offering and go to your brother.

So it's kind of like the bookends Matthew 5:23 and Matthew 18.

So they kind of give you these, these statements about, hey, if your brother sins against you, you go to them.

So, so in Matthew 5:23, it talks about you become aware that your brother is offended by you.

The concept is, leave your gift at the altar and go be reconciled to your brother.

Right.

So that's that direction.

And the other direction is man, you know, they sinned against you and you need to come.

So if both parties have this in mind, guess what?

They collide together in a conversation that hopefully is productive and glorifies God.

God.

And so I just, I'm really thankful that Jesus didn't wait for us to come to him.

Because the gospel, and this is what, you know, we learn from those who teach a little bit more about the sovereignty of God.

We learned that the gospel message was God's idea, not man's idea.

Right.

The gospel message was or is, I should say, the reality of Jesus, death, burial, resurrection and appearance came from God.

And that's why it says that God foreseen he would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, foresaw like all this, and he said, hey, here's the gospel message.

And so we like to say we're Christlike, but when it comes to our conflict, we don't want to handle it any way like Christ.

And what do we mean by that?

We don't want to die to ourselves.

We don't want to be the first to initiate reconciliation.

We don't want to be the first to forgive.

We don't want to be the first to apply grace.

You know, we want the other person to make payments.

And so I think that when that concept of Matthew 5:23 and Matthew 18, that it brings us together where we can say, God is big enough, Christ has paid the price and paid the bill.

In fact, I like to say this oftentimes in our most unjust situations, Is our opportunity to be Christlike Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin on our behalf.

What?

I'm a Christ follower.

I only want to take responsibility for those things I intentionally, premeditatively and willfully have done.

And you're like, no, no, it's not the gospel.

The gospel is, hey, I recognize sin has entered into our relationship, a broken relationship.

I'm going to be the first to apologize.

I'm sorry.

Will you forgive me?

I'm sorry I turned from that.

And yet oftentimes we are so protective of our reputation or what have you, that we were afraid to do that.

Wow.

So, Brian, what does a sincere apology look like?

Because you said, you know, being hesitant to apologize.

What, what does.

What would it.

Yeah, what would that look like?

Well, I'm going to say this.

I'm going to say that oftentimes people are waiting for an emotion or feeling.

And I think sometimes as Pentecostals, we get a little bit on this because we like the emotions and feelings.

But really, an apology and.

Or asking for forgiveness is a transaction, and people don't think of it that way.

Way.

Let me lay a foundation with Cain and Abel.

God asked the counselor.

He said, hey, if you do what's right, your countenance will be lifted up.

So he says, if you don't, sin is knocking at your door and you mismatched.

Right.

So he gets the idea of doing the right thing, produces the emotions inside of us.

Right.

That we need to do so first and foremost, when it comes to forgiving and apologizing, that we find that many Christians want to wait till they feel it.

You know, that's not a biblical.

I mean, do you think Jesus felt like going to the cross?

No.

In fact, he says, if there's any way, take this cup from me.

So.

So it's not like he didn't feel like.

So that's.

Number one, the feelings will come later as you obey God.

Number two is to figure out, how do I say it without blame shifting.

We have a tendency when we apologize to shift blame with if but maybe, or, you know, I didn't mean to.

And we're so concerned about people's judgments of us that we usually water it down, down to such a degree that it means nothing.

There's a lot of public confessions that you can look at in the public square and say, oh, that meant nothing.

You know, it was just.

It was just blame shifting.

So to know at the core of your.

Of what you want to do is to say the words do matter.

People don't think about this.

They do now.

Sometimes you got to write it down and then say, God, help me to have the belief in those words change my heart, to understand this is God.

I know what you're requiring of me.

This is.

This is what will be honoring to you now.

Help those emotions to come later.

And then I like to tell people this, and I can give you a story of a pastor who was addicted to pornography and confessing that before a congregation.

I can tell you that he didn't feel it at the moment, but when he was faithful to say, okay, this is owning my sin and asking for forgiveness and asking for grace and mercy.

Those years later, the motions began.

I mean, he didn't feel it for five or six years, quite frankly, but he began to see the fruit of that.

That.

That confession or that forgiveness apology he gave out.

Wow.

One.

I got one.

One more question for you.

Well, I got two more questions for you if I can ask.

And then we ask you to pray.

So blame shifting.

What does that.

What does that practically look like?

Well, first off, there are some.

There's internal blame shifting, okay?

And there's external blame shifting.

And we got to handle both of them because we can say the right words, but still inside, think I'm self justified.

Okay?

In Romans, he says, who will bring a charge against God's elect?

God is the one who justifies.

So at the root of blame shifting is this idea or concept that I have to justify myself.

Okay?

Okay.

So, you know, Adam and Eve in the garden, I mean, you can just go through lots of times in the scripture where people somehow, you know, Saul in the Old Testament, we can look at how they diverted the attention from themselves and put it onto someone else, sometimes even God.

Right?

And so blame shifting is taking that responsibility of a broken relationship and saying, I must justify myself instead of saying, God is the one who justifies me.

And this is that internal work that needs to happen, say God, I've already said I'm a sinner saved by your grace.

And you have made me now a saint, right?

I mean, you.

So I'm no longer a sinner who tries to do saintly things.

I'm now a saint who occasionally sins, right?

I'm walking in.

These things help me not to try to justify myself.

You're not justified by your leadership.

You're not justified by your preaching skills.

You're not justified by how accurately you could and handle the word of God.

You are justified because of the blood of Jesus Christ, Period.

And he paid the price for that.

So when you have that concept.

You can say, you know, I have this broken relationship.

It's there whether I intentionally, willfully, and premeditatively meant to do this.

The outcome is it happened, right?

I mean, and so I've had it.

Like, one time I was working with a board member, and we went from high conversation to where all of a sudden the conversation was shut off.

And I was like, what happened?

And I need to be careful with this story because part of this does include the general counsel.

But the board member wasn't part of the general counsel.

But I sought an attorney at the general counsel for some legal advice.

And in that email, I had put down just really quickly, a context of the situation that we were handling at Peacemaker Ministry Industries.

Well, when the board member read it, he read it a different way.

He read it like I was blaming a board for.

Because I. I copied everyone.

Like, I wasn't trying to hide anything.

He read it as if I was blaming him and the board for certain actions.

So when the conversation, you know, got shut down, I. I finally said to this person, hey, what?

Can we just talk?

Like, I don't get it.

Like, we were talking a lot.

Now we're not talking.

Like, what's going on?

So Matthew 5, 23 and 24.

Something's like job.

So he said, hey, that email that you sent to the attorney at the.

At the general counsel, it sounds like you're implicating the board in.

In this conflict.

And I said, let me pause here.

I was driving, so I said, I'm going to pull off, get some coffee, and I'm going to reread the email.

As I reread the email, tell me what you saw.

And so he told me.

Yeah.

So I stopped, got.

Got some coffee, and I read it.

I'm like, oh, my goodness.

Holy guacamole, he is right, right?

Like, this could be taken two ways.

Like, I totally, like, threw the board underneath the bus.

So I call him up and I say, you are 110% right.

And so I went through a whole, you know, just saying I was wrong, this is not right, and asked for forgiveness.

But he asked me this question.

He goes, but I really want to know why you did it.

Why.

Why did you say it that way?

And I said.

I said his name, and I said, said, I don't want to answer that right now because I don't want to put my motive too close to my apology.

And he goes, no, no, no, I've lost sleep over this.

I really need to know why you worded it that way.

And I said, but if I do, if I explain it, it's going to sound like I'm justifying or making up my excuses.

Right.

I don't want to do that.

He goes, I am giving you permission.

I've got to sleep.

I need to know.

That's what he said.

I said, okay, I'll tell you.

You honestly, I pulled off at a coffee shop.

I, I was negligent and thinking about the full implications of what I wrote.

And I hastily wrote the email trying to get off my plate because I didn't want to do it.

And I, and I said, so because of that, I didn't think about others reading the, the email and I was rude and, you know, whatever, I, I owned it.

And he goes, seriously, you just didn't think about it?

And I said, yeah.

And he goes, and I've lost so many nights of sleep over this because you didn't think about it.

I felt like, I'm so sorry.

So that's what I'm saying.

When we put the explanation of motive too close to our apology, it seems like justification.

So we went on to have a great relationship and he's no longer on that board that we were serving together, but to this day we have a great relationship.

But he lost sleepover.

I had no idea I had done it.

Yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't, you know, intentional, yet it's the, it's the outcome of my actions.

And so I could own that 110% because it caused him a lot of stress and conflict internally.

Yeah.

Does that help?

I mean, 100% it does.

And I love the practical example.

100% it does.

And I love the analogy of, you know, not putting the explanation so close to the apology because it does.

It can turn real quick and being secure in enough to sit in the silence for sure.

Last question I have for you.

You've been doing this for a lot of years and you mentioned that.

Is there anything that maybe you thought was really important 15 years ago when it came to navigating conflict, that today you'd say maybe that was not necessarily as important as I thought it was or anything that you see differently that you maybe would have saw 20 years ago as you've navigated conflict, conflicts personally and with others?

Yeah, I think when I first started, I was a little bit hyperactive on resolving every form of tension.

Right.

So.

So I didn't use proverbs.

It's to a man's glory to overlook a transgression.

So, you know, I became a Firefighter everywhere I went.

And I would say now, I think going, you know, so we, we talk about healthy tension brings us closer together, and unhealthy tension pulls us apart, apart.

And, and, and so the healthy tension, I've learned how to manage that a lot more.

And I do that by doing this.

Lord, I noticed this item, you know, between these two employees or between myself and this other person, what would you have me to do?

And really seeking the Lord for that direction.

Like, I, I, I, I've actually prayed, Lord, if you want me to handle this, have that person bring it up right away.

You know, I've prayed those kind of prayers, or I've prayed like, lord, just make a moment that this is just appropriate and not a big thing, you know, but to be, to rest in the fact that we're all in the process of sanctification, that is a new concept that I would say came later.

Because at first, again, this would have happened at Sandpoint when I was lead pastor there.

Unfortunately, those guys kind of got the peacemaker, you know, strong arm.

Because I would be like, no, we're going to resolve this now, you know, but I've learned to just take a breath, relax, rest in the things of the Lord and see if God has a different plan, if he's working through that.

I will say this, though, don't use that as an excuse to stuff.

I mean, there's a difference between seeking the Lord's timing in that, because I found that there have been times where I thought the Lord said, don't handle it, and then it becomes a pattern, and then now it becomes awkward.

So, you know, there's just discernment in that.

And, you know, I'm not, I'm not perfect at it, but awesome.

We appreciate you so much and thank you for sharing and thank you for the tool that you've given us.

Brian, will you pray for us?

Yeah.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the assembly of God World missions and all of our missionaries around the world, both local and abroad.

We thank you that you have called them and set them apart for such a time as this.

This.

Lord, we know that the enemy will step into our relationships and step into our interactions and try to distract so that the gospel message won't go out.

And so, Lord, we pray that you would begin to reconcile those relationships, that you'd begin to heal hearts, heal minds, that people would simply be able to know that you are God and that we are your servants.

Lord, help us to be quick to forgive.

Let us be the first ones to the cross to run there and know that you've paid the price.

Lord, let us not think more highly of ourselves than we ought.

That we are not a big deal, that you're the big deal.

God and God go before us in all situations.

God, I pray for those that may be discouraged right now.

I pray that you would encourage them not in their circumstances or their situations, but encourage them.

Because the blood of Christ covers a multitude of sins.

And so we thank you for what you want to do.

We thank you for your goodness, your mercy and grace that are new every morning.

God, give us your wisdom, give us your insight as we reach our world for Christ.

And we thank you for this.

In Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.