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Complied By: Michael Tao
"Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof." - Romans 6:12
I have made a decision that life is too short to spend it trying to help Christian resolve disputes in a Biblical manner in a situation where no one is willing to do what the Bibles says. My ministry is to those who are willing to pursue a scriptural, charitable, Christian path in these situations.
We, as individuals, are made up of three parts: our spirit, our soul (which is our mind, will and emotion), and our body. Most of the conflict resolution or peacemaking attempts between individuals or churches involve something in the soulish realm of our lives. They involve our mind, or our will, or our emotions. I can guarantee you, from my experience, that if a conflict is resolved on the soul level, you will have to work very hard to maintain the resolution, and occasionally patch it up, to keep everybody happy and to call it "a successs".
Truly resolving conflict is the process by which we move from the fleshly or the soulish realm into the realm of the spirit. There is not, and never will be, any conflict with the Trinity or in the Trinity. Nor does the Holy Spirit tell different messages to different people. Thus, the real agony of resolving conflicts is the process of eliminating any thoughts, designs, or intents from the decision or dispute which reflect the flesh or soul life of man as opposed to the spirit life. Any resolution of a dispute apart from the spirit life amounts to a compromise, a negotiated settlement, a cease-fire, or a best guess. Using man's logic to replace God's thoughts is a poor replacement for spiritual reconciliation! To move past the flesh or soul life involves a death -- a death to the way we want to solve a conflict or deal with an issue. In other words, the cross. It seems to me that conflict cannot be resolved in the spirit until we first visit the cross."
Gene Edwards and Tom Brabdon - Preventing a Church Split, Published by Christian Book, P.O. Box 1389 Scarborough, Maine 04074, 1987
