The Real Needs Bullying Reveals

In the grocery store, on the news, almost everywhere you turn you find the topic of, "Bullying" is getting big coverage. It seems to come in waves. Usually the topic comes up when someone is killed or commits suicide because they have been bullied. It is such a big deal the U.S. Government has gotten in on addressing the issue with a web site, http://www.stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov/kids/.

Bullying is really an issue of the heart. None of the web sites I looked at was able to give real answers. Why? Because people can only impose physical restrictions on other people. The issue of bullying can arise from a variety of sources, but at the end of the day someone is becoming more popular or powerful at someone else's expense. In a society that has largely turned its back on God it is no wonder that bullying and other issues like it will be on the rise. Bullying grows when pride grows in our hearts and we think more highly of ourselves than we aught to think.

This happened very early on in the Bible when Joseph was bullied by his brothers for his dreams and his favored status. How did Joseph handle such mistreatment? He recognized that God is sovereign and He must have allowed it for a reason (Genesis 50:20). Without a relationship with a sovereign God there would have been no way for Joseph to see things through the way that he did. He embraced what God placed before Him and in the end He was used mightily by God to save many people's lives. God used His brother's bullying and evil intent to move Joseph to Egypt and put him in a position of power.

The most effective means of dealing with bullying is found in a relationship with Jesus Christ. For the one being bullied they can run to Jesus and find in Him a friend that sticks closer than a brother. Often in the context of a Christian home or Christian community of believers the bullied person can find others who really care about them and will love them.

For the bully the most effective way to overcome the pride that often drives bullying is to repent of their sin and trust in Jesus as their Lord and God. The movie, "To Save a Life" deals with passive bullying. It recognizes that the only way to effectively deal with bullying is to deal with the heart. The most effective way to deal with the heart is to introduce someone to Jesus Christ. He takes out our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). Anything short of this sort of transformation is simply a band-aid on something that’s broken. Become an agent of change. Get your eyes firmly fixed on Jesus and reach out in love to the those who are hurting others and those who are being hurt. Introducing them to Jesus is the best and most effective means of real heart change.

The religion of the non-religious

There is an article on foxnews.com today that is well worth reading. It is by a columnist named Steven Crowder and it is titled, "Think Religious Extremists Are Scary -- How About Secular Extremists?" In the article Crowder talks about the marks of religious extremism. He then compares those marks of extremism with the Discovery channel hostage situation created by James Lee and his commitment to save the planet. You see Lee was really a religious extremist too. His religion was the planet earth. He sacrificed his life to make a statement about the earth. The problem is not really extremism itself. The problem is the focus of our extremism. Crowder rightly points out that people try and fill the void in their lives with something.

Paul talked about this in his letter to the Romans. He said that, "they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator" (Romans 1:25). Man was created to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. When that component of our lives was removed at Adams fall it took a huge part of mans reason for living away. Since we are now rebels against God we will embrace anything other than God in order to try to fill that part of us that was made for glory. Anytime anyone's focus of their faith (no matter what that faith is in) is horizontal in nature (i.e. focused on the people and world around us) there is a tendency toward abuses. The only time that extremism is good is when it is focused on the God of the Bible. Why? Because that God focused life is one that is shaped by the love and grace of God. I don't think anyone will ever object to an extreme pouring out of love and grace. The secular and the sacred worshipper can't give a grace they have never experienced. May God grant you the grace to pursue Him in the extreme so that you too might be an agent of His love and grace.

Why no peace for followers of God

There is an article on Foxnews.com titled, "Obama Condemns 'Senseless Slaughter' of Israelis, Vows to Sustain Peace Talks". There have been almost countless attempts at peace in the middle east. Go back to the Romans in the time of Christ for the first versions, or perhaps we need to go back earlier then that. But the fact remains that there is no peace in the middle east. Why? Fundamentally the issue is spiritual in nature. The Jews claim a divine right to the land that they believe was granted to them by God. There is language that supports this view in the Old Testament. But even Jeremiah talked about how there would be no peace (Jeremiah 8:11). There will not be peace in this world until the Prince of Peace finally sets up His Kingdom here on Earth.

I bring this issue up because tonight while out street witnessing we encountered some opposition. Some people did not want to hear the truth about the pending judgment we all face if we do not know and accept Jesus as our Lord. Jesus knew that when we took a stand in the public square for Him we would no doubt face opposition (Matthew 5:11). The unsaved man has no interest in spiritual things because he is spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1-3). We all were before we were made alive in Christ. If we realize what a great gift we have been given in Christ then we will begin to see the dilemma that faces all of those who do not know Jesus. This eternal damnation that awaits them should burden our hearts for them. We must realize that the utter terribleness of a never ending eternity suffering God's wrath is what awaits all unbelievers. Do we care? Is there a burden in our hearts for their salvation. If there is you will soon begin to see the persecution and reviling that comes to those who stand for Christ and reach out in love to the lost and dying world. May God grant us all a clearer vision of that which is coming so that we will be more diligent to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke 19:9-10).

Inception: a reflection of longing for more

I saw the movie "Inception" a few weeks ago. The movie is a reflection of our post modern sensibility. Essentially we like to believe that reality is what we make it out to be. Inception turns that inside out and asks us if reality is really all its cracked up to be. Perhaps the reality in our minds is a better place to be.

What really struck me though was how the dream state in the movie was the thing that people longed for. There is a point where we see people lying in beds hooked up to drugs that allow them to dream. We are told that they have gotten to the point where they can no longer dream without the drugs. Supposedly this heightened dream reality is so great that it is worth giving up more and more of real life to live in the dream world. One of the students that is introduced to this world says that they are going to quit because of some things that were going on. Decaprio's character says with confidence that she will be back basically because the experience is too compelling. Sure enough she comes back.

Each person is enamored with what can be in the dream world. The characters reflect a dissatisfaction with how things are in reality. This is a true reflection of the heart of man. We all know that something is missing (Romans 8:19). We all feel the pain that tells us to long for something more something better. The problem for the unsaved man is that his longing looks like this:

I want something to satisfy. I will embrace anything that promises satisfaction with the hope that it will somehow make me fulfilled. I will accept anything that is except the all Sovereign God of the Bible that demands my soul, my life, my all. I will maintain my autonomy thank you (or at least what I believe is my own semblance of that autonomy). Romans 1:20, 24-25

 The true follower of Jesus has discovered that the longings they had prior to meeting Christ have been fulfilled. The true follower has been made whole and can testify to the satisfaction that is theirs in God. We were made for Him and our hearts are truly in a state of longing until they are satisfied in Him. If you believe you have committed your life to Jesus and yet you still feel the emptiness and longing that you always did then perhaps your pursuit of God has been corrupted by our culture. To really grapple with this I would point you toward my book, "The God Focused Life". There is a lot of help here for pointing you toward the God who will truly satisfy your soul. So if you have not yet done so, join me on the journey to live a God focused life.

Emotional reminders of our insufficiency

Today was an admittedly challenging day. I looked at our bank account. (When your unemployed this can be a discouraging thing to do.) While I know that it is God that supplies our needs sometimes I get hit with a tsunami of emotion when I contemplate the gravity of it all. After applying for what seems like hundreds of jobs one begins to feel a bit rejected. My pride quickly kicks in and begins to feel injured. Thoughts like "No one wants me", "I'm just not good enough" and "Perhaps if I had just contacted this person or that one". All of this is really an emotional roller coaster that takes off from the platform of self, climbs the mountain of pride and quickly plunges into the maddening spiral of self in the pit of pity. Thank God for His grace, and the examples that we have in His precious word. Paul talked about being buffeted by a messenger of Satan. He requested that it be taken away. God's responded that His grace was sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:9). God's grace is just as sufficient today. These times of my failing are valuable reminders of my insufficiency. They cause me to depend even more on Jesus. Without Him this time of challenge would be truly overwhelming. Because He has so graciously granted me a heart that desires to focus on Him, He saves me from myself. The Holy Spirit draws my eyes to my magnificent God and plants my feet on the solid rock of Jesus. If you find the trials overwhelming turn to our Lord and use our insufficiency to embrace the sufficiency that can only be found in Him.

Prop 8 - Winning battles and losing the war

Last week the news was falling all over itself to report on the overturn of proposition 8. I am not sure how this is being reported in the rest of the country so if you need to get up to speed here is an article from the San Jose Mercury News titled, "Federal judge strikes down California's ban on same-sex marriage". 50 years ago we would have said universally that homosexuality is sin and it was viewed by most people as morally reprehensible. Today this is no longer the case. Today people see pedophilia as morally reprehensible and sin. Will this still be the case 50 years from today? It is a legitimate question in the light of how our culture has changed in the last 50 years. What has happened that has brought about the changes that we see today. 50 years ago the 1960's were kicking in and free love with a strong dose of independence was the siren call many could not resist. The moral walls of our society began to crumble. What caused the walls to be so weak in the face of the immoral tide that struck it? I did not live then but I think that the roots of the problem can be traced to the church of the early twentieth century. From what I can tell in church history there was a strong reaction to the neo-orthadoxy coming out of Germany's seminaries and universities. Two things happened. Neo-orthadoxy called into question the literal inspiration of scripture and saw inspiration as being something more personal that happens when the word of God becomes inspired for me (This is a broad simplification because of space. E-mail me if you want to discuss this.). The second thing is the conservative church over-reacted to what they saw as a liberal take on inspiration. Another thing was coupled with this. The church was hit with a widely distributed set of books called, "The Fundamentals". This produced a conservative swing that put up code of conduct fences and condemnation fences. Phrases like, "I don't smoke, I don't chew and I don't run with boys that do" were byproducts of this conservative swing. I think it was during this time that some denominations developed the theology of secondary separation. In a nutshell they separated themselves from anyone that did not adhere to their brand of doctrine. Some denominations still hold this view to this day. What happened is, we added a whole bunch of things to the Christian life and walk that were not scripture, but were held in the same regard. This did not have the intended effect of strengthening the church. Quite the opposite happened. The young people growing up in this environment in these churches saw right through the hypocrisy of it. Essentially the moral strength of the word of God was gutted by man insisting on adding his two bits to the pot. Since the churches moral base seemed to many to be arbitrary the next logical decision was that anything goes. People started crossing lines that were clearly spelled out in scripture. Line after line was crossed. The church retreated from this onslaught. Usually she demanded more and more that her position on all these added things was the right one. When she seemed to be losing the culture she resorted to politics. The church began to be seen as political -- seeking to legislate her version of morality. This brings us to today with a society that is rapidly sliding toward an ancient Roman style of life. Rome was marked by open pedophilia, gladiatorial games and meaningless marriage. The church as it appears to the world is a moral mess. She has very little integrity left. She pats herself on the back when a bunch of conservatives in California rallied the people to make a state constitutional amendment even in the face of great opposition. We won that social battle but we lost the court battle at this point, and it looks like we could lose the war.
And yet there is still hope. I see a fresh desire for God, a renewed embrace of God's word and a greater compassion for the lost. God is moving in people everywhere to ignite a passionate fire for Him in their hearts. The only way that this war will be won is in the hearts and minds of people. They have to meet the awesome God of the Bible Jesus the Christ (Psalm 24:1-5). Their moral foundation needs to be in the bedrock of His word and His word alone (Hebrews 4:12). Is this a daunting challenge? NO! God used 12 men to turn the world upside down. With God anything is possible (Mark 10:27). Be encouraged. Don't be ashamed (2 Timothy 1:12, 2:15). Keep your eyes on Jesus and show the world around you the magnificent God that you serve. Helping others to embrace a God focused life will bring them freedom from slavery to sin and give them the greatest possible future they could ever hope for. So seek the Lord and take Him with you into the world.

Worthy Worship Wars

The question of worship music is one that is appropriate for consideration on this blog. When modern day Christians speak of worship they are usually referring to the music that begins a service at the church building. Often there is debate about what style of music should be used. We define services as contemporary, progressive, traditional or integrated. The goal in these labels is to help define what style of music the church service is employing in its worship. We used to think of the whole service as worship. Webster defines the worship of God like this,

“The act of paying divine honors to the Supreme Being; religious reverence and homage; adoration, or acts of reverence, paid to God, or a being viewed as God.” 

Perhaps the church body would become more healthy overall in its relationship with God if it got the idea of worship right. True worship is something that issues from the heart. It manifest itself in adoring Jesus in song, adoring Him in the giving of our offerings, adoring Him in the taking of the Lord’s supper, adoring Him in the act of baptism and adoring Him in the opening of His word. There are a multitude of additional ways that we can worship (i.e. personal evangelism, thankfulness for provision, etc.) they all have one thing in common. Worship comes from the heart. Since it comes from the heart it is the result of what our hearts are focused on. If we understand the fundamentals of worship then we can begin to better consider the mechanics of music.
Music is a framework for the words of the song. If you have music with no words there is nothing to sing. If you have words with no music you have a poem. To have a song to sing you must have both. Music can either compliment the lyrics or detract from the lyrics. But beyond the complimentary nature of music it can set the focus of our hearts. Music can be sensual. If our hearts are focused on sensual things I believe that is contrary to worship. Sensuality by its very nature focuses our hearts on the bodies of people. Music can also be transcendent and thus our hearts follow that focus to the transcendent realm of God. We can all think of times that our souls have been enraptured by a song. I have heard transcendent music coupled with man centered lyrics and it almost puts you in a place where your worship is of man. Both the lyrics and the music should move our hearts toward God. I think that Bob Kauflin in his book, Worship Matters: Leading Others to Encounter the Greatness of God
 has done a lot of good work in this area, and is well worth any music leader consulting his material. Does style matter??? In Colossians 3:16 Paul encourages them to sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. You could argue that these represent different styles of music. But perhaps the style issue would become a moot point if our goal in the music we sing in our church gatherings was the exultation and glory of God and not a sensual appeal to the entertainment of men. After all we are here because of God He is not here because of us.

Why are we so conflicted???

A piece by Christopher Ryan in CNN's opinion section grabbed my attention today. It was titled, "Monogamy unnatural for our sexy species". What I find completely remarkable when I read articles like this is how they isolate one thing. If you look at humanity we are not just in conflict over sex. We are in conflict over just about everything. We want to look good but we want to enjoy our food. We want to help others out but we want to have our free time and recreation. We want to be dedicated to our jobs and to our families. The list could go on and on. The secular world comes up with one solution after another. The solution of not having any sexual commitment was tried in the '60's and found to be bankrupt. Ryan seems to be proposing that that sort of freedom is what we need. The problem we really face is that we sense something is not quite right. We lack a certain level of expected fulfillment. The natural man (because he still thinks he can be a god unto himself - Genesis 3:5) looks for answers of his own making everywhere. There is one place he refuses steadfastly to look. He will not look to God. Yet there is the real answer to the lack of fulfillment that men struggle with. There are a lot of people in the church that still struggle aren't there? Yes and in almost every case the struggles we have are in areas that we are growing to trust God in. Many who attend church struggle with even knowing how to pursue God in a personal manner. This very problem is one of the key reasons that I wrote the book, "The God Focused Life". I am just tired of seeing Christians who are no different then the world. We should be different. I know that my life is very fulfilled and that is because of the person and work of Jesus Christ. He is a living Lord who takes our burdens and gives us His peace that passes all understanding. The only reason that humanity finds all of these things unnatural or conflicting is because we are born in sin. Our sin nature is self-desturctive. It causes us to do things and long for things that are detrimental to us. Do you want peace and rest for your soul then turn to Jesus for His yoke is easy and His burden is light (Matthew 11:29-30). He will give you true rest for your souls. But you will never find that rest until you want Him more than you want anything else. When the desire for personal peace or affluence or anything else eclipses our desire for God our souls feel the bankruptcy of the substitute longing. Jesus is not a means to an end. Jesus is the end of our seeking. The relationship available to us in Him will satisfy the most hungry and thirsty soul. To know Him repent of your rebellion and sin against Him and seek Him with all that you are. This God focused pursuit is the only true answer to our conflicted natures.

How cereology conflicts with the Bible

There is a fun video on crop circles posted on yahoo's, Who Knew? section. The study of crop circles is called cereology. In order to be a cereologist I assume that you must take crop circles seriously or is that cereiously. Either way that means you believe that they are being done by aliens. The problem with the Bible here is found in Genesis 1:14-19. In this passage God claims to have made the sun, moon and stars for the earth on the fourth day of creation. The Bible tells us that the earth is the platform that God has created on which He has chosen to display His glory. Everything else in the universe is created to display God's glory on the earth. So what is the problem with a belief in aliens. Quite simply it assumes that the earth is not the central platform for the display of the glory of God. It sees the earth as one of many planets on which God created life for the sake of the display of His glory. This would mean potentially multiple deaths for Jesus as the Savior of multiple planets. It would also mean multiple potential fallen demons in different worlds. It starts to get ridiculous when you think about it. Cereously if you want to be a cereologist be my guest. As for me and my house we will continue to believe that God's word has been faithfully delivered and preserved by God and is accurate about what went on when He did His great work of creation.

When evil becomes good and good becomes evil

The New York Times has an article titled, "Evangelist May Be Disinvited to Prayer Day Event at Pentagon". A more complete article was on Yahoo, "Army considers rescinding invitation to evangelist." Apparently the Pentagon is considering rescinding an invitation for Franklin Graham to pray at the national day of prayer event at the Pentagon. The reason for the potential recall of the invitation hinges on a statement Franklin made in 2001. After the terrorist attacks he said, "Islam is a very evil and wicked religion". Since we have Muslim employees at the pentagon people are afraid that Graham's presence might endanger American troops by stirring up Muslim extremists.
Now lets think about this logically. Our troops are in the middle east fighting muslim extremist because they attacked us first. Somehow a Christian preacher praying at what is a historically Christian tradition in a Christian country is going to stir up muslim extremist. The extremist are not already stirred up by the fact that our troops are fighting their fellow extremist?!? A preacher praying for a few minutes in our country is going to push the extremist over the edge? I guess they will now become extreme extremist (whatever that is). This is just evidence that we have become a nation that is held hostage to the radical belief that we can somehow pacify our enemy into accepting us. This will never happen and that is apparent. Since this is not a political blog why the political focus? I am glad you asked. You see we do the same thing in the church. We do it with the seeker friendly movement. All this is a watering down of the gospel to make it relevant to the unsaved. What we have done is stripped the gospel of its power to change lives in the name of having more friends. We are trying to pacify them into accepting us. This will never happen. Men and women need a change of heart in order to accept Christ. Jesus was not acceptable in His day and to the pagan He is still not acceptable. Why? Jesus requires us to repent of our sin and accept Him as our Lord. Paul called people to repent and believe in Acts 19:3-5. There are people in the church today who would tell you it is evil to share this message with someone. We have begun to call good things evil when we do this. We seem to have forgotten where we should be seeking our friends. James 4:4 says that friendship with the world makes us an enemy of God. See what we need to do is seek Christ first and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33). This will result in a transformed life and a real care and compassion for people that comes from Jesus. This is the only way that lives will be changed from evil to good. We must never give up seeking to live the God focused life.

Responding to health care legislation

No matter what position you take on this issue one thing is certain. It will cost us more money not less. There is no possible way to add a layer of government oversight to this big of a sector of our economy and not have the total cost be higher at the end of the day. This can only drive us ultimately to a more dire financial position as a country. What does this have to do with living a God focused life? In Jeremiah 25:9 God calls Nebuchadnezzar His servant. He served as God's hand of judgement. If you know the story you remember that Nebuchadnezzar took the kingdom of Judah into captivity. This was not a positive thing. Why did God bring all of this destruction on His people? Jeremiah 23:13-19 give us a pretty good clue if we will only listen. In the beginning of this passage God says that the prophets of Baal in Samaria did an unsavory thing by leading the people astray. This is easy to identify. Any cult or thing that man puts his faith in other than God is an unsavory thing in the mind of God. This would include government. Our trust should be in God not the government. The second part of this passage is the toughest and most important. The prophets in Jerusalem are condemned by God not for doing an unsavory thing but for doing a horrible thing. They claimed to speak for God and yet they did not. They told the people the things that they wanted to hear, not the things God was telling the true prophets like Jeremiah. If healthcare legislation drives us to financial ruin and plunges us into a depression or worse it would be the hand of God. We must realize that the reason God brought calamity on Judah was to turn her heart back to Him. For far too long now in America many of the churches have been preaching to people what they want to hear. That message will wither under the wrath of almighty God. He judges harshly those who claim to speak for Him but say what they perceive people want to hear. He judges harshly those who want to hear from people like this. It should be our goal to turn our hearts toward God not legislation for our help. We need to guide our families to look to God, and yes we need to encourage our pastors and elders to point us toward God. We need to say with the Psalmist, “My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.”(Psalm 121) Our only and best hope is to focus on our marvelous Lord Jesus in every situation.

Christian business?

I had what has come to be an uncomfortably common experience today. A business that shall remain nameless, called to answer some questions I had about an item I was receiving from them. Previous conversations had led me to believe that they were making every effort to correct the problem. However the phone call I received was to tell me that the problem could not be corrected because it was caused by their software automatically. This is where I have a huge disconnect. I do video work on a professional level for high end corporate clients. I could never get away with telling a client that the problem can't be fixed because the software did it automatically. Somehow since I am a Christian and they are a Christian business I am supposed to just take their comment in stride as if they have done their do diligence and oh well that’s just the way it is. In the secular marketplace where I work, my vendors would have told me to get new software or get lost. Far too often Christian businesses get away with doing poor work. We should be the reference standard for excellent work. People should want us over everyone else because of our integrity and excellence. When Christians work they ultimately work for an audience of one. If the widget you make or the service you provide is not done for the King of kings then who are you doing it for? A God focused life will drive us to work as to the Lord Jesus and not men. Os Guiness in his book "The Call" talks about Justin Martyr recording that over 100 years after Jesus' death, plows he had made were still in use. Plows made by Jesus and Joseph were the best. They are the ones that people wanted. They were so well made that they were still in use after all those years. What kind of work do we do? Is our work done with the goal of pleasing our Lord Jesus?

Extreme fighting for Jesus???

A headline caught my eye today that I just could not resist weighing in on. The video report was titled Jesus was the ultimate fighter. I looked up the guy's web site http://xtremeministries.com/ and was struck by the main thrust of the rationalization. Are you ready? The goal is to make the gospel relevant or attractive to a certain segment of people. What amazes me about this approach is that you could use the relevancy card for anything. Let's start gangsters for the gospel, because even gangsters need Jesus. How about prostitutes for pentecost. They use their business to bring guys in and then when they are finished they give them the gospel. Come on when we go down this road we essentially are saying that the gospel is not relevant enough by itself. Apparently the Holy Spirit cannot change a heart without us hanging something relevant around the gospel. It is so completely ridiculous that I find it amazing. First of all you and I do not change people's hearts. The Holy Spirit does the work. I don't have a problem with someone being a Christian and playing at a sport like extreme fighting. The problem comes into play when we change it into something that goes beyond a Christian that plays a sport. Somehow now it needs to be a Christianized sport? I don't get it. People can be Christians. Sports cannot be Christian. They are a thing and have no soul. We don't need a sport or a certain style of music or a network marketing business or a political platform to carry the gospel. We need people to get their eyes off of all of these temporal things and fix them on Jesus. The creator of the universe came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the most magnificent being that has ever existed. He offers to rebels that are completely corrupt, the potential of reconciliation to God through repentance of sin and commitment to Him. I don't know how you can make that more relevant. Really anything that would be added by us only distracts from that message. We must keep our eyes on the Savior. Our only hope is found in Him.

Happiness: SELF focused vs. God focused - Part 4

This is a continuation of a post I started 4 days ago. The other day Lucy Danziger published an article called, "4 Simple Secrets to Feeling Happier Every Day." Lucy is the Editor-in-Chief of SELF magazine. This is the final point she made about happiness from a secular perspective. It is titled, "Conflict can be OK!" WOW! She deals with conflict management in a very simplistic manner in 3 very short paragraphs. There are many passages in the Bible that treat this subject in detail. A brief list would include Matthew 18:15-17, Luke 17:3-4, 1 Corinthians 6:1-8, 1 Corinthians 9:19-21. These passages cover a variety of different situations. They deal with everything from confronting a brother to forgiveness and not being able to forgive and seeking to identify with others. The scriptural perspective on conflict and managing it is dramatically different from Lucy's point of view. Lucy's conclusion is that, "Connecting, especially with friends is important to your happiness." The Holy Spirit declares to us through the word that conflict management is not about us but is for the glory of the kingdom of God. 
Let's take for example a brother or sister in our fellowship who is in sin. If we ignore the sin or gloss over it in order to be reconciled we are embracing a worldly answer. Do we condemn them? Not readily and not immediately. Our goal is their reconciliation to God. First we go to them privately and express concern as a fellow believer. We need to make sure they understand that we are coming because we too are sinners and have experienced things that separate us from God (Matthew 7:3-5). It should be our earnest desire to help them understand that what they are doing is building a wall of sin between us that we cannot overlook because we care about their relationship with God. Matthew 18 above gives additional steps to follow but the point is that conflict resolution is focused on bringing them back into fellowship and relationship with God. In the Christians case this will not always be comfortable. Sometimes we will have to forgive people that we do not feel like forgiving. We may have to separate from someone that we really like for the sake of helping them to understand the seriousness of sin. We have to remember that it is vital to stay open to embracing them and bringing them back into fellowship should they desire that. But at the end of the day the most important thing for anyone is that there is nothing standing between them and God. Remember if someone hangs onto a sin when confronted then that sin is potentially a god to them. If it is something they are holding onto and yet claiming to be a Christian then we must for their sake show them that sin separates. That is the point of separating from an unrepentant brother or sister. We are pointing out to them that if they persist in this that they may indeed be separating themselves from God. Some would say that this is judgmentalism. Unfortunately people who say this fail to understand that if this is done correctly and in love that we may truly be winning someone to true repentance. If we succeed in bringing them back into fellowship we would have literally saved them from hell with the working of the Holy Spirit bringing them to repentance. What do I want to do? Shall I accept someone, have personal peace now and watch them slip into a Christless eternity? Certainly not! We must risk all for surpassing greatness of knowing and having others know Jesus Christ our Lord.