The Good and Bad of Church Conflict — Levi Miller

Levi Miller teaches on the good and bad of church conflict, using examples from Scripture, early church history, Anabaptist history, and his own experience. He distinguishes between healthy tension, destructive conflict, division, and separation from sin, warning that open fighting usually drags both sides into wrong even when one side began with a valid concern. His main counsel is that believers should not run from every tension, but should pursue humility, peacemaking, repentance for their own part, and love for Christ’s church.

Key Points:

– Paul, Barnabas, and Mark show that real conflict can happen between servants of God, but reconciliation and restoration are possible.

– Early church disputes such as the Pascha disagreement show that strong differences do not always have to become church splits.

– Levi warns that conflict often leads people to focus on who is right, while both sides may begin acting wrongly through fighting, harshness, or persecution.

– He distinguishes separation from division: separation may mean quietly removing oneself from sin or evil, while division produces hostility, anger, and destruction.

– Healthy church life includes tension, because brothers speak into one another’s lives; deadness can appear when no one cares enough to challenge or sharpen anyone.

– The key danger is when a differing opinion becomes an enemy. Believers should ask how they can be peacemakers and what they personally need to repent of or change.

Scripture References: Acts; Acts 13:2; 1 Corinthians 11:18–19; Mark 3:24; Jesus saying offenses will come; take up the cross daily

Guide me, oh, the great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land. Good morning and welcome to Hope for Wondering Amish. Hope for Wondering Amish holds a live meeting on Zoom the first Saturday of each month. And if you go to the website, just Google HopeForWonderingAmish.com, you can find

the website which lists the past meetings in video and audio form. And on the website, you’re able to sign up for updates by email. If you contact us, we can get you on an email list where you’ll be notified of upcoming meetings and also notified of when recordings are available. So this morning we have Levi

Miller with us from Ohio. He’s one of the admin. Levi and his family live in Ohio and you have seven children, Levi. Is that correct? And I think you have a very interesting topic for us this morning. The positives and negatives of church conflict. Yeah, I’m really excited to hear what you have to share this morning. I think it would be really valuable. I know of people that just totally avoid conflict. Anytime conflict comes up, they like running

and hide. But I think we should face conflict. There’s healthy conflict. But there’s, of course, unhealthy conflict. And I think the unhealthy conflict is what causes people to run and hide whenever there’s some sort of conflict. So, yeah, I’m really excited to hear what you have to share with us this morning, brother. Why don’t we just have a word of prayer and the time will be yours. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for this beautiful morning. And thank you for Brother Levi and his topic here this morning. And we just pray that as he shares your grace and your peace

would be upon him and that this topic could be could further equip your people and further equip your church and advance your kingdom for your honor and glory. Bless Brother Levi as he shares this morning in the precious name of Jesus. Amen. All right. The time is yours, Brother Levi. Okay. Well, welcome, everyone. I will be talking some about church conflict and also personal conflict.

Drawing from history first. And then in the end, I will share some of my personal experiences with some takeaways from that. And so conflict is almost interchangeable with fight. And we all like a good fight, don’t we? At least sometimes it feels that way. So I’m going to be starting with an actual Bible account. This is from Acts. We read about Paul and Barnabas.

A little bit earlier than that. So Paul was converted on his way to Damascus. And then he was baptized after that. And so later he was coming to the church and the church was saying, well, this guy is dangerous. We don’t trust this guy. He’s, you know, he’s persecuting the church. And Barnabas went out of his way and vouched for Paul. So you see Barnabas caring for,

Paul, and actually promoting him. And then the church was able to accept him because of that. Later, in Acts 13, 2, we read, separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. So you see that the spirit is working with Saul and Barnabas together. They are their partners going out and evangelizing. And that’s a beautiful picture of the spirit working in the church.

Later, in Acts, different times they went through different scenarios and situations. One time they were called gods. People wanted to worship them. So they were doing mighty things. But then later, well, the first time I think they went there, took Mark along with them. And then eventually Mark, he left them in the battle. It doesn’t really say why he left, but we assume.

From Paul’s later interaction with that situation that he probably left them in the thick of it. So Paul had a negative opinion of Mark. So going on later, they were again called to go somewhere. And Paul and Barnabas, they’re planning this trip. And Barnabas says, well, let’s take Mark along. And Paul is like, no, Mark cannot go along.

So there was a major conflict there, it seems like. There was a parting of ways. So it ended up Paul took Silas and Barnabas took Mark. And they went their separate journey. And as I was thinking about that, I thought, well, that was a really good setup for a church conflict and even division. Obviously, this was on an individual level.

And I also just looked at it briefly on who was at fault here. And that’s normally what happens when there is conflict. Who’s in the wrong and who’s the guy that started it all? And I don’t really think that that’s important, but I just thought I’d point this out because I thought it was interesting. My personal opinion was that Paul was actually at fault.

Paul, at one point in time, was hated, or I shouldn’t say hated, he was definitely distrusted by the church. And Barnabas stepped out and vouched for him. So Barnabas had a, oh, what do you call it? He had a mentor mentality, and Paul did not. So Paul was an evangelist, and he was not giving Mark a second chance.

Even though Paul himself had a second chance. So, but the point that I wanted to bring out here was, later they were reconciled. Because you read, Paul actually mentions Mark as his beloved brother. So obviously, Mark did prove himself, and later Paul accepted him. So that’s a beautiful picture of, even though there was conflict, there was reconciliation at the end.

To another early church conflict, if you will. I’m not sure if you would call it an open conflict, but it definitely had tension. And most, it’s not a very obvious one. This is the Easter conflict, or the Pascha. So basically, the backstory for it, Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna, which would be modern-day Turkey, who was a disciple of the Apostle John,

he was taught by John that Easter comes on the 14th day of Nisan. And I’m not even sure what that would be on a modern-day calendar. But if we would just translate that into our modern days, let’s say it was the 14th day of April. It was always on the 14th day of April. It didn’t matter if it was a Sunday. That’s just when Easter happened. But the rest of the world, the Christian world at that time,

was following the Jewish Passover. So whenever the Passover happened, and that is going by the equinox, it does not follow a calendar date. That’s when Easter happened. So Anicetus, the Bishop of Rome, had an argument with Polycarp. And I call it an argument because I think that’s really what it was. And it was mostly through letters written to each other.

And it was starting to actually bring conflict into the whole church. So there were sides taken. People were just not liking what the other people were saying. So it was kind of geographical in Turkey. So obviously that was a geographical area. And then the rest of the Christian world. So again, that was a very good setup.

For a major church split. But they didn’t. Which is what blesses me with this whole interaction. They wrote letters. Some of those letters were very dogmatic. They were very insistent that the way they were taught is the correct way. And we have to remember Polycarp was also. Or no, I should say. Yeah, Polycarp was the disciple of John.

And I was actually standing on his position because I got this directly from the Apostle John. Why would I do different than what he taught me? But eventually, they actually had a meeting. And they mutually decided to accept each other’s differences. And Polycarp continued keeping Easter’s the way he was taught.

And they continued their practice. And they did not split over it. I think later in history, then, the Catholics would have basically demanded that this is the way that Easter should be kept. And it slowly was actually changed. But it never actually caused a division. It might actually have been the Council of Nicaea that established the method for determining Easter. So I’m going to move on up to the Council of Nicaea. There again, we have church conflict.

And it often starts with two people. So Arius claimed that Jesus wasn’t fully divine. And Athanasius, I think he had the true view of Christianity. And in the beginning, if you look at what they actually believed, it was so hard to tell the difference between what they thought.

And that’s often how conflict starts. It starts so small that it’s often hard to tell really what is the difference here. So they had this huge council that was chaired by Constantine, which was the emperor of Rome. So he was not a Christian. He was leaning towards the Christian. He appreciated the Christians, but he was not a Christian at that time.

Christians worked with the secular sector concerning church matters. They were working together and having a secular non-Christian meddle in their affairs. And we should also remember that in that time, during that time, there were multiple views of the nature of Christ. They were not all the same. I think it was, and it probably is still the same way. It’s a hard subject to understand.

Grappling with this whole issue. Up to that point, people, for the most part, were faithfully following the teachings of Jesus. That was what was important. And it seems like that was the time that council set the precedence for having more importance on how we believed rather than what we did with what we believed. So they were trying to, it became theology. That was why it was important.

Athanasius had an agenda. I think if you really look at it, he was promoting something. He was promoting himself. And we don’t really see Jesus’ teachings of love being used in this conflict. After the council, they were, they, I’m not sure if you would say that they just ruled upon it, but Arius was exiled and his followers were persecuted. And that was,

that set the precedence for the church to persecute those whom they deemed to be heretics. So something that I learned from this account is that often in conflict where a division happens, usually both parties end up doing wrong. I think very clearly the council, the decisions they made ended up

a place they did not want to be, where they started practicing wrong things. Maybe they had their theology correct, but their practice was not correct anymore. So I’m going to skip over quite a bit of history and come all the way up to the Reformers. Luther, Zwingli, Calvin. I’m not going to speak a lot about that, but there you had major church division happening and conflict between the Catholic

Church and the Reformers. And the Reformers had some great errors, which often happens in conflict as well. The Catholic Church at that point had decayed greatly, and they were correct in recognizing that, but then they overcorrected in the opposite direction. So they were both wrong, and they were fighting. And when I say fighting, eventually it was true fighting because they were fighting wars. In fact, Zwingli,

was killed on the battlefield. So within that period, you have this other small account. It’s sometimes called the stepchildren of the Reformers, which became known as the Anabaptists. Initially, it was Conrad Grebel, George Blaurock, and Felix Manz. They were actually walking alongside Zwingli in the beginning, but then he wasn’t willing to go all the way in his

walk with the Lord and seeking truth. So we have to ask ourselves the question, was this another division? Was this conflict? But I want to make a distinction here between conflict and division and just what I call separation. They were appalled at the unchristian conduct in the Catholic and the Reformed Church. And I say in the Reformed Church because the Reformed Church did not really change

their practices a lot as far as living the Christian life. They changed some other practices, but it didn’t actually change their lives. So they looked at that and they said, well, this is not good. We can’t live this way. We’re supposed to be followers of Jesus and actually follow his teachings. So they didn’t, I don’t feel like we can call that a division or a conflict because they quietly removed themselves.

They didn’t, they did not. In the case of many divisions, they will, there’s an open conflict. There is hurtful things are said, hurtful things are done. And then there’s a parting of the ways in anger. And I don’t think that happened in this case necessarily. They didn’t try to cause harm to the other side. And then if you move on into Anabaptist, I’m not going to follow the reformers.

Or the Catholic. And then the multiple divisions after that in the Reformed Church. But I’m going to follow the Anabaptist division just a little bit here. Moving up to Menno Simons. Menno, in the beginning of his spiritual journey, was very loving. He had a vision. He was a great evangelist. And he traveled a lot evangelizing.

And bringing people to the Lord. But as time went on, there were some differences amongst the Anabaptist churches. It was mostly regional. But it became much larger as time went on. So Menno Simons had many writings. And in his writings, it’s actually very obvious that he changed his positions as time went along.

He was very lenient, loving, and he was very strong about you have to use love when you’re expelling an erring brother. But later in his life, and as these conflicts started growing, he became very dogmatic and harsh in his opinions. And he was actually the cause, or one of the people that was the cause of the first major split.

There were a few small divisions, and then he took a position upon those divisions, and eventually he was one of the people that signed the letter. They wrote to different regions, mostly like in Switzerland and southern regions, and told them that they need to agree with the position they took, and if they don’t, they will excommunicate them, and eventually did actually do that.

There was no hearings together, you know, getting together and listening to the other side’s opinions. There was just a hard line, this is the way it is, and if you don’t agree with us, then we are excommunicating you. So they excommunicated whole regions because they were not willing to concede to their position. And interestingly enough, the main area that was affected was Switzerland.

They were very saddened by the position that the northern churches had taken and said that they didn’t do it with love and that this was not the Christian way. So they were very saddened by that, and then as time went on, they just were kind of a separate group of people, the best I can tell if you study history there. But then this group is where the Amish originated out of in later times.

I don’t have an opinion of how that all came about, but the interaction between Jakob Ammann and Hans Reist was there in that Switzerland area where the original people were excommunicated just because they wouldn’t align with Menno Simons. So I’m going to move on up into modern times now or current times, and I’m not even going to go into the many, many different

church divisions that have happened in the Anabaptist world, and we can’t even really just look at the Anabaptist world. It’s all over the Christian world. There are so many divisions and different denominations and opinions, and I’m not going to get into that, but I’m just going to share a story of my own experience with church conflict. This would have happened before I was a Christian, before I was converted, but I was still a part of a church,

and what I learned from those experiences I think are helpful to me now. The first time was, there was two times that I went through a church conflict. The first time was right after we were married, and my wife’s family and my family were on opposite sides of the issue, which caused extreme tension in our marriage and just relationships with our parents and in-laws, and both sides were convinced the other side was completely wrong,

that they were probably not even going to be able to be saved because of their wrongdoing. And both of our parents were trying to convince us to join their side because they didn’t want us to be lost. And we didn’t take a position. We were able to see it from both sides because we had both sides input and drew the conclusion that they were both wrong, which is often the case in conflict.

Open conflict, there usually isn’t the right side. At one point, we went to her parents and tried to explain to him what we see that they’re doing wrong, trying to be redemptive. And interestingly enough, they could not see what they were doing wrong. The only thing they could see was what other people were doing wrong, the other side.

I went to my parents and did the same thing, tried to show them what they were doing wrong. And my heart with that was that it doesn’t matter what the other side is doing wrong. The only thing we can do about the conflict is to work on ourselves. But they were not willing to do that. So there was just open conflict and eventually there was division. It was very painful for us.

It’s painful to see people hurting each other and there’s just nothing you can do about it except pray. And in that case, they ended up parting ways. Very, very, very painful. And then later, maybe four or five years later, there was another church conflict. And this time I was brought into the conflict. I should actually back up to the original conflict.

I had visited with my father and I told him that my opinion is that it doesn’t matter if you’re on the right side. If you’re fighting, you’re wrong. I just wanted to bring out that point because I was very convinced that to fight in any way is wrong and that if someone does that, you can’t be on the right side. But later, when there was another church conflict, I was pulled into that.

I was on a journey, but I was attacked. There was a conflict in the church and I was, again, I was not going to get involved in it. I didn’t believe in it. But then I was attacked basically by one side to try to attack the other side through me. And it was a very sobering experience because I discovered that I was not above church conflict and fighting

because I was very hurt and I was very, very angry that they were disciplining me for something that wasn’t wrong just because they had the power to do it. But looking back, I actually appreciate that it happened because it was a time of deep seeking for me because I had depended on that church for my salvation even though I wasn’t saved yet. And it pushed me out of that.

Realized that this is not what is going to save me and I realized that I was in a lost state. So ultimately it propelled me into going deeper and then it was converted after that. Not very long after that. So through that, I’ve learned several things and I don’t know that I have, I don’t have the answers to church conflict, but maybe some of these experiences and some of my takeaways

help you as you grapple with this whole subject because every one of us at some point in time faces conflict. It might not be church conflict, but it is conflict of some sort. Basically, if you have two people, you will have two opinions and where there’s more than one opinion, you have potential for conflict. So I want to establish a few different points

on words and also from scripture. One of them is division is the result of unresolved conflict. And I want to establish here as well that some people will actually justify division. They say it’s a good thing, usually referencing 1 Corinthians 11. And I will read this account in several different versions just to try to establish this point.

The Bible in easy English says, this is 1 Corinthians 11:18–19. For first of all, it has come to my ears that when you come together in the church, there are divisions among you. And I take the statement to be true in part. For divisions are necessary among you in order that those who have God’s approval may be clearly seen among you. So there it almost appears like division is necessary and it’s actually good.

No, it’s actually, sorry, it’s the easy to read version. I’m just reading verse 19 because that’s the one that we’re actually focusing on. It says, because of your idea that you must have separate groups to show who the real believers are. Basically, he’s saying, he’s making, it basically puts it out in a different sense of being a separate group. And then the King James Version says,

And I look, I kind of, I followed that trail of why does it say divisions in some versions and heresies in others and discovered that the root word is a completely different word. It doesn’t even refer to division. Basically, the idea that I gathered from my study on this subject is that he says there are divisions.

And this is why there are divisions, because people were, there are evil people with heresies. They have different opinions that are not true. And that is what causes the division. And, but that the division wasn’t a good, it was not good that there was division, but division came because of the evil. And the division was caused by the evil. It was never brothers in Christ causing the division. But because of the division,

the ones that were not involved in the conflict, if you will, or the ones that were not causing the division were actually manifested. They were, they were brought out into light that, okay, these are the true brothers. The ones causing divisions are not. I don’t think we can justify division by scripture. At least that was my, my conclusion with that. But it’s, it’s not quite that simple in real life. Often, many times,

have division between what were true brothers. And I feel like in many cases, division is between brothers in Christ and brothers in Christ. But once it comes to conflict and moves on to division, then both, in that case, both parties are actually the cause of it. So there is no distinction made. The true brothers are not manifested because now both of them have been dragged down into the mire.

So how do we grapple with this issue of needing to be separate, coming out from among them? Is this nullifying that requirement? I don’t think it is. And that’s why I would like to make the distinction between what I call separation and division. There’s a very fine difference there. And if you look these words up, there’s different definitions for these words.

Because they mean more than one thing. But the definitions I liked is what I listed here. For separation, it’s the process of distinguishing between two or more things. In this case, obviously, right and wrong. So there’s a distinguishing between two different things. And so it’s not… So it’s in the case of coming out from among them. It’s distinguishing between right and wrong or good and evil.

Disagreement between two or more groups typically producing tension or hostility. So we can see that there’s actually quite a difference between separation and division. The end result of division is hostility, tension, anger, just a lot of pain. And separation doesn’t necessarily have to be. And we should also remember that Jesus did say that there will be a difference between the good and evil. He says, I didn’t come to bring peace but a sword.

So there is always that tension between the good and evil. And that’s a natural outworking of that. Division also generally happens over, it’s hard to explain this, but maybe earthly viewpoints about something. And separation is when individuals or groups quietly remove themselves from sin or evil or wrong.

Division generally is not, that’s often not the case. I mean, look back at the separation or almost division of Paul and Barnabas. It wasn’t about right or wrong. If you look at the Easter conflict, that wasn’t about right or wrong. The Council of Nicaea, I don’t even feel like it was about right or wrong. It was about minute little differences of viewing the nature of Christ that most common people didn’t even know what the people were talking about.

And that’s still the case today. If you really read into that, it’s really hard to tell what was the difference right in the beginning. The difference was exemplified because of the conflict and people being dogmatic. And then they stood, eventually took positions that were in error because of the conflict. But initially, I don’t even think there was a difference that was really, you could really tell. So I think that separation is still,

part of the Christian life. We still need to be separate from the world. We need to be separate from evil. But I don’t think we have any argument to claim it’s right to have division. Okay, I would like to do a little bit of study on the word conflict and then also tension. I know we talk about conflict a lot, but conflict seems to be the wrong way.

It’s the wrong word that we actually want because we talk about healthy conflict and unhealthy conflict. I don’t really actually think that that’s the correct term. This has just been from my study. So the definition of conflict is a serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one to be incompatible or at variance clash. So once you have that, it’s already unhealthy because it’s already moving towards pain and hurts being acquired.

The definition for tension is a balance maintained in an artistic work between opposing forces or elements. Or another definition was either of two balancing forces causing or tending to cause extension. So that’s healthy. And I want to say that there’s a difference between conflict and tension. Tension is good. Conflict is not. So think about growth in the Lord.

There’s tension. That means that brothers are pushing each other out of their comfort zone. They’re talking about these things. So there’s tension. It continues building their relationship with Christ and their Christian walk. So tension is healthy. Conflict is not. And I’m not being dogmatic about that. That was just my research.

It would be healthy conflict. I just think that a better term for it would be tension. So if you have two people, you have two opinions. And if you have people, there will be tension and sometimes conflict. I don’t think we can get away from that. If we are in a church with no tension, it probably means the church is dead. I know dead is kind of a strong word here, but I don’t know what else to call that. It means the church is not

seeking in the word. They’re not speaking into each other’s lives. Everybody just does whatever they want. So there is no tension. So we all don’t like tension or conflict. I don’t. I wish everybody in my church would think the same way I do. They believe the same way I do because obviously I’m right. But the problem is if all of us would think alike, there would be no growth.

And so many people, we all have this tendency, and I have had this tendency in the past, and I still do. We have this tendency to avoid conflict, and I don’t like conflict at all. I try to avoid it at all, if at all possible. And so if your church is having some conflict or tension, and it might even move to conflict,

our tendency is to run away from that. We try to avoid it. We want to go somewhere else. But if that’s what we do in our lives, which is avoid conflict, we’ll end up in churches that have no life. They don’t have any tension, they don’t have any conflict, and there’s no life there. Which means that we won’t grow in our Christian walk. And with that, it’s impossible to escape conflict or tension.

We’ve experienced this, especially if we’re married. There is no marriage that will not have tension. And probably some conflict as well. So if we move into this mentality that we are always going to avoid conflict in church life, that’s often where it kind of exemplifies itself. And we align with that. Eventually, conflict arises in our marriage. And if we just continue following that, there’s only one result, and that is divorce.

We have to avoid it if at all possible. And in this case, the only way to avoid it is to leave the cause, which is always the opposite spouse. Or it could be with your children, neighbors. It’s just impossible to avoid it. So I don’t think that we should ever try to avoid tension or conflict. Even if it turns into conflict, we can’t avoid it. The best way to deal with it is to actually

look at it and deal with it. Kind of a small side note here. I have noticed when churches do outreach, so now this is not a division. It’s a unified effort to do in a church plant. But there’s a tendency for like-minded people to flock together. Like-minded people decide that they’re going to go with the outreach because of some small thing in their mother church that they don’t like.

And I’ve come across this illustration, and I think it really applies very well. And it’s the illustration of how our body functions with muscles and bones. Muscles are very flexible and bouncy. They stretch a long ways, but bones, they don’t have much give. They’re very hard, very stationary. And that’s what happens when like-minded brothers flock together

and start a new plant. They’re either the bones or the muscles. But we need that healthy tension, differing viewpoints to balance each other out. So I came across, actually, one of my coworkers one day told me this quote, and I really like it, and I’m just going to share it here. He said, and this can go for a church setting, for a work setting, let’s say a team at work.

Where you have people working together. He said where two people in a group think alike, one of them is wasted. Basically, if you and I think the same, and we really like that, but one of us is not thinking, we’re just following along, we’re not actually, we’re not really contributing to the whole diversity of gifts and working together.

So the main problem is when a differing opinion becomes an enemy. In a church setting, in a marriage, wherever it’s at, that’s what causes conflict. As long as we look at a differing opinion as valuable, as an asset, it’s not an enemy. When it becomes an enemy, then it turns from tension to conflict. And just to kind of wrap this all up, I wanted to

bring back into the picture of something that Jesus said. And he was talking about Satan’s kingdom in this case, but I think it very well applies to every kingdom because he talks about a kingdom. In Mark 3:24, he says, and if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. So my cry to all Christians is that we, instead of destroying each other, that we unite and stand together.

Obviously, there has to be a distinction made between right and wrong, which is what I call separation. But we shouldn’t look at a church as the enemy and destroy churches. How does demolishing other churches build my church? So the key thing, I think, is we look and seek for a fellowship, a brotherhood,

is that the church is, are they right or wrong? Are they actually living in sin or not? And also whether they glorify God. So a few things that don’t glorify God is sin, division. Division does not glorify God, even though we might not think about it that way. And slandering others does not glorify God either. So Christianity is about love.

Loving each other, loving other churches, and just being more gracious about differing opinions as long as it doesn’t include sin or actual wrongdoing. So I’m going to leave it with that and turn it back over to you, Elam. All right. Thanks so much for that, Brother Levi.

And with what you shared, you went through history. You had a personal testimony of going through conflict, a very difficult situation. And then you had a lot of good teaching on this subject. So thank you so much for that. And we’re very happy to have people in our audience here. I’ll give you the ability to unmute yourself.

Be able to unmute yourself and talk. And then also we have, I always hate to do this, but we have a person that called in by telephone. It looks like a Pennsylvania call, which there’s background noise coming through. So I had to mute that, but I can ask that person to unmute himself or herself if they want to. And also, yeah, they should be able to talk also.

So we always, I always say that hearing from the audience is the icing on the cake. So please share, talk if you have something to share. So we heard, so I wrote down some words here. We heard Brother Levi, you used the word tension, you used the word conflict, the word division. There was another word that I wrote down that I don’t think I heard you used that word, and that was offense or offenses.

If you use that word, I didn’t pick up on it. But Jesus said that offenses will come. And just over the years, you know, you meet people that carry offenses. And some of the offenses may have been things that happened like many, many years ago. And I think it’s hard for a Christian person to go through life carrying offenses and really have a positive tone in their conversation and their voice or a positive outlook on life if they continue carrying those offenses. And that doesn’t mix too well in church life, I don’t think. So I think if you’re a person that carries offenses, as soon as there’s any kind of tension, any kind of conflict, any kind of division of any sorts, everything just turns negative. But Jesus said offenses will come. And I didn’t do any word studies here,

interchangeable and related to each other in some form or fashion. But yeah, so offenses will come. And you had a lot of good teachings on that. So we should, rather than run and hide, we should embrace them and make the best out of them. So anyway, thanks so much. That was very, very rich. So is there anybody in the audience that would have a question or comment for Levi here this morning?

Thank you, Levi, for your testimony, your input. I really appreciate it. I guess one thought that’s going through my mind is

you said if there’s no conflict, it’s a dead church. I think I can see into that. But then in the end, you were mentioning that divisions don’t glorify God. So conflict is not necessarily divisions. Is that what you were saying? And I would like to distinguish even between conflict and tension again.

I’m trying to make a distinction between what I call tension is where brothers are actually speaking into each other’s lives and they won’t always agree. It’s impossible that everybody agrees on everything. That’s healthy. That’s stretching our mind, our growth in Christ. When it moves to conflict, that was where I was making the distinction where they’re actually arguing about it. They’re actually probably coming a little bit angry about it.

They’re brothers. So conflict, I don’t feel like, might not be healthy. So I wasn’t saying if you’re in a church that has no conflict, but if you’re in a church with no tension, meaning that nobody cares if you are following Jesus Christ or not. You can do whatever you want and nobody cares. So that was my distinction. And division is when they actually separate, meaning they actually divide and are going their own separate ways, if that makes any sense.

Looping around to what Elam said about offenses, that is actually, I really like that, Elam, because offenses are part of that hurtful journey. That’s a whole separate study, if you will. I think you could have a whole message around offenses, taking up offenses or not. So Jesus said offenses will come, but he didn’t say that we actually have to take up an offense and carry it.

We will be offended. We don’t have to carry it. So anyway, just thought I would share that as well. I think that’s very good, Elam. Thank you for your questions and appreciate more feedback. Yeah, thank you for that, Nathan. Is there anyone else?

I think it’s always good to remember that as challenges come in life that we have to realize, hey, we’re not home yet. We’re still in this broken world with a lot of troubles, a lot of trials. It’s a battleground. And as tensions and conflicts and divisions and offenses come our way, if we allow it, it has a way of making us into a more Christ-like person.

Good morning, everybody. Could you give some input on how to stop conflict when there’s like a conflict and somebody is getting under your skin, so to say? So what is the best approach to either get away or deal with it?

I don’t think that I can tell you what the solution is. I have come to the place, so I was in major conflict in my life, not only with the church, but also with my father. I don’t know if you ever listened to my testimony, but I didn’t grow up in an ideal home. So my conflict, I did have church conflict that I experienced.

And I talked most about that, but all conflict, I feel like, is related or connected to the same source. And the conflict with my father was much worse and much more hurtful. I was, at one point, I hated him with a passion. And I say all that to come to my point. The only way that I was able to resolve that and actually come to peace with that is to realize that it wasn’t about him, it’s about me. I mean, I shouldn’t say about me,

it rested upon me to make it better. We still don’t agree. We don’t view things the same way, but we have come to the place where we accept each other. But the resolution is not dependent upon him changing his opinion. It rested upon me changing my view of it. I didn’t change my opinions as far as how I viewed Christianity and what following Jesus means.

Which was what some of the conflict was about. But I changed my position in the relationship. I realized that my heart is what needed to change in the relationship to resolve the conflict. And got to the place where I realized that I really need to go back and apologize and ask for forgiveness.

And what I did wrong is what matters to me. I don’t know, does that answer your question or not? But I guess what I’m saying is, it really ends up in our own court to resolve the conflict in my life. And you could take that to even like, let’s say, your wife. You have a conflict about something. It often ends up being that we need to humble ourselves. And we want them to do that as well.

And sometimes whoever initiates that, that causes the other one to also realize, oh, I’m not doing the way I should be doing. And with all of this, conflict is a very hard subject to talk about. And don’t think that I have the answers to conflict. I definitely don’t. I still try to avoid it. Yeah, thanks a lot. I appreciate your message this morning. Yeah, very good.

Thank you, Chris. Yeah, I like your response, Levi. I guess I was thinking about a couple things. Yeah, when conflict rises, a thought would be, how can I be a peacemaker in this situation? How can I return good for evil if there’s evil there anyway? And a lot of time when there’s conflict, naturally, we want to view the other person as the problem. But Jesus said to take up our cross daily and follow him.

So very good. Well, we’re almost to seven o’clock, but we still have some time for some more questions or comments if anyone else has anything to say. We may have to have you do another part, Levi. It sounds like, you know, just hearing a talk, like there could be another whole message on other subjects, whether it’s offenses or whatever.

So, yeah, appreciate what you shared this morning. And I would just like to maybe stress that point again, that it isn’t dependent upon the other parties to change, to resolve conflict. I think that’s just the key to my experiences with, and I should maybe even actually

wrap around back to a little bit of my testimony there with when I was brought into the conflict, the church conflict. In the beginning, I fought back. I was actually very humble afterwards when I realized that I was very strong. I was very opinionated about people that fought, if you will. I mean, that’s conflict, strife. But then I did the same thing. But in that time, as time went on, I became converted, and eventually,

well, actually, during that time, I stopped fighting, if you will. And it came to the place where I didn’t really care. I didn’t care what they did to me. And I actually felt joy in it. My wife was still not converted at that time, and she didn’t appreciate that, that I could be joyful in the midst of persecution, if you will. But that taught me a little bit about how conflict works. It’ll be conflict.

It will continue to be conflict for you, as long as you don’t realize that you are the one that has to change, has to do your part. I think if you are in a fight, in a conflict, an argument, and the other person actually does redeem the situation by their actions and starts coming to the realization that what I’m describing here, they will actually be the one that’s reaching out and is realizing

that they’re part of the problem and they’re doing their part. And if you don’t accept that, the conflict will never go away for you. They might actually have completely worked through the situation and are free of the conflict, actually feel good about you. But because you haven’t done that, the conflict is still present for you. And so you’re still walking in that. You still feel like the conflict is present and active. So just an additional thought there at the end to clarify that.

So, hey, I appreciate everybody coming on and thank you all. Yeah, a lot of wisdom there you shared, Levi. Maybe I’ll just quickly add something here. For myself, there’s been times I found myself in conflict. And what happens when there’s conflict, a lot of times our emotions get caught up in it and we can turn our little anthill into a mountain. But I know for myself, I remember being in the midst of conflict and I started just looking at it.

Is there a sin in this situation or sin in these brothers’ lives? And I remember coming to a conclusion that these are all brothers. They’re my brothers in Christ. And they all have a heart to serve the Lord. And none of them is living in any sin that I’m aware of. And if you can just put your emotions aside, that can actually change your perspective of the conflict you’re in. So, yeah.

Thank you to everyone coming on. It’s been a blessing. And it’s been very rich here this morning. Would you like to close us in prayer, Levi? And then we can consider ourselves dismissed. Sure. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you this morning and thank you, Father, for your work in our lives that you have given us the ability through Christ to work through conflict and division and to be humble.

And in these situations, Father, we pray for the Christian people or anybody in general, Father, which is pray that as they interact with other people and as conflict arises, that they would be able to be redemptive in their actions and that they could realize that it depends upon them to make the difference and to make the changes. Father, just pray for everybody who listens to this message, that it would help them in some way.

In their search for truth and peace and resolution. Father, just bless them and just help us as your people to be humble, to be peacemakers, and that you would be glorified through our lives. I just pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Amen.