Jesus calls us to a life of love. Sometimes love has to be tough, especially when there has been a conflict. Arguments and disagreements separate people and create division between friends, families, communities, and even in the church. It takes a great deal of courage, wisdom and sensitivity to resolve conflicts and restore relationships.

Jesus understood that conflict would occur and he prepared his followers for these times. He warned against anger and made reconciliation a priority for disciples (Matt.5:21-23). He commanded loving confrontation and taught a clear process for sorting out differences (Matt.18:15-17). He expected his followers to give their best efforts towards resolving every conflict as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

The apostle Paul picked up the teaching of Jesus, emphasising unity and living at peace with everyone, if at all possible (Rom.12:18; 14:19 Eph.4:1-3). He also warned against the dangers of anger and its potential to destroy relationships (Eph.4:26-27) as did James (Jas.1:19-20).  

Biblical Principles of Conflict Resolution

Here are five extremely important principles for resolving conflicts:

Continue reading “Tough Love” →

Men and women use same words but they sometimes have different meanings. For example when a woman says, “I feel like you never listen,” she does not expect the word “never” to be taken in a literal sense. It is simply a way to communicate the frustration she is feeling at the time. When it comes to their choice of words, many women use poetic license, superlatives, metaphors, and generalisations. Unfortunately, men mistakenly take these expressions as literally, causing all sorts of misunderstandings and even conflicts.

Here are some common complaints that are easily misinterpreted:

Woman: "We never go out." Man: "That's not true. We went out last month." Women means: "I feel like going out together. We always have such a good time."

Woman: "The house is always a mess." Man: "It's not always a mess." Woman means: "Today I feel like relaxing but the house is a mess. Could you help a bit?"

Woman: "No one listens to me anymore." Man: "I'm listening to you now." Woman means: "I'm afraid I'm boring you. I'm afraid you're no longer interested."

Woman: "You don't love me anymore." Man: "Of course I do. I'm still here." Woman means: "Today, I'm feeling a little insecure. I'm feeling as if you don't love me."

Woman: "I want more romance." Man: "Are you saying I'm not romantic!" Woman means: "Sweetheart, you have been working so hard lately. How about we have some time together. I'd love for you to buy me some flowers and take me out on a date."

As you can see, a literal translation can easily mislead a man. The key is to not just listen to the actual words and then respond logically. Listen for the meaning behind the words and seek to understand what she is trying to say and where she is coming from. Then learn to open up and share your feelings too.

For a bit of humour, check out this new Manslater which will be on the market soon. 

Forgiveness is never easy – even when someone apologises and asks for it …

Corrie ten Boom spent spent time in Nazi concentration camps for hiding Jews in her home during the Holocaust. 52 and unmarried, she had lived at home with her elderly father and older sister Betsie. All three of them had been sent to concentration camps when the Nazis discovered they had been hiding the Jewish refugees.

Corrie lost her freedom, her dignity, and her beloved sister and father in few months in those concentration camps. In God’s providence, Corrie was released due to a clerical error, just one week before the other women in Ravensbruck her age were executed.

After the war Corrie was invited to speak all over the world, and she tirelessly traveled the globe, thankful for every opportunity she was given to tell people about Christ. She always marveled at God’s infinite mercy toward sinners like us.

She also knew that everyone who had received God’s mercy had no choice but to show mercy to others; and she knew from her own experience that wasn’t always easy. In her book The Hiding Place she tells the following story:

Continue reading “Corrie ten Boom – the Power of Forgiveness” →

Here are some common questions about forgiveness:

1. “Is it wrong to be angry?” It is not necessarily sinful to feel angry. Anger is a warning system alerting us that something is wrong and needs our attention. The key is to not convert angry emotions into angry behavior. Allow your emotions to settle down then seek to address the situation calmly and seek a resolution. Make use of prayer and wise counsel.

2. “Is forgiveness conditional or unconditional?” Jesus commands us to forgive others whether or not they ask for it. We choose to have a forgiving approach to people, releasing them from our right to hurt them back. Whether they are forgiven or not will depend upon their own choices and responses. God holds each person accountable for his or her actions.

3. “Is forgiveness the same as reconciliation?” No, it is not. For reconciliation to take place, there has to be appropriate apologies and a rebuilding of the relationship, which requires an effort from both parties. You may never be reconciled to your enemy.

4. “What about confrontation?” Choosing to be forgiving of others does not mean that we do not appropriately confront them about issues in a relationship. We are called to “speak the truth in love” and this means being appropriately assertive about our feelings.

5. “Should I stay in an abusive relationship?” Abuse of any kind is contrary to God’s commands about loving relationships. Sometimes withdrawal or at least separation from a threatening relationship is necessary to protect your own wellbeing. Also, forgiveness does not mean that an offender is free from the consequences of their actions, especially if there are legal or criminal aspects to a situation.

Continue reading “Common Questions about Forgiveness” →

The Christian God exists eternally in a Trinity of loving relationships – Father, Son and Spirit. God created us as the object of his love and invites us to participate in a community of loving friendships. As we fully understand how much God loves us, we are able to love others from a strong foundation of acceptance, significance, security, and purpose.

Because of sin, loving others is not always easy. In fact, sometimes it is awkward. This is especially so when people act in ways that offend or cause hurt to us. Situations such as these provide opportunity for us to obey God’s command for us to forgive others. When teaching his disciples to pray, Jesus told them to pray for forgiveness for their own sins while also ensuring that they had forgiven others. Failure to forgive others affects God’s forgiveness of us (Mt.6:9-15). Jesus went so far as to tell his followers to love their enemies (Lk 6:35-36). When giving instructions about his new community, the church, he emphasised the need for avoiding retribution and acting in mercy to forgive those who cause offence (Mt.18:21-35). Jesus modelled his own teaching on the cross as he chose to forgive those who crucified him (Lk 23:32-34). The apostle Paul frequently affirmed the importance of forgiveness in his letters (Rom.12:16-21. Eph.4:31-32. Col.2:12-13).

Opportunities to Forgive

Have you ever been hurt by someone else? The truth is that everybody has been hurt by other people – many times, either intentionally or unintentionally. Inevitably, someone will step on your toes or ruffle your feathers (Luke 17:1). Hurt can come in the form of words (lack of kindness, unfair criticism, harshness, gossip or conflicts), unmet expectations (unfulfilled promises, disappointment, abandonment, rejection, injustice or lack of appreciation) or even physical abuse.

Continue reading “Awkward Love” →

Robert Enright (2008) Forgiveness is a Choice: A Step by Step Process for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope  Washington DC: American Psychological Association

Dr Robert Enright was called the forgiveness trailblazer by Time Magazine. He is the unquestioned pioneer in the scientific study of forgiveness. He is a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a position he has held since 1978. He is co-founder of the International Forgiveness Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge about forgiveness and community renewal through forgiveness. He is a licensed Psychologist. He is the author or editor of 4 books, and over 80 publications centered on social development and the psychology of forgiveness.He has undertaken 

Studies on Forgiveness

In his book Forgiveness is a Choice Dr Enright outlines substantial anecdotal evidence and credible scientific studies which show that forgiveness improves the psychological well-being of those who forgive. For example, he refers to R.C Hunter, a Canadian psychiatrist who reported that people with a wide variety of psychological symptoms can experience healing through forgiving. Hunter found that those who are anxious can experience an increased inner peace through forgiveness. Those who are depressed, intensely angry, or even paranoid have shown significant reductions in these symptoms (208-17). Similarly, Morton Kaufman, an Israeli Psychiatrist found that genuine acts of forgiveness lead to an overall improvement in a person’s emotional maturity (229-38). Following pioneering work in the use of forgiveness therapy, Richard Fitzgibbons, a Pennsylvanian psychiatrist observed that when a person forgives fear is reduced. He attributes this to a reduction in guilt for their unconscious violent impulses (238-47).

Continue reading “Choosing to Forgive” →

There are lots of similarities between men and women … and also lots of differences (far beyond the fact that men can't get pregnant). Here are a few that I have read about (and yes, there are exceptions to every one of them!):

1. The average man has 6 items in his bathroom – a toothbrush, tooth paste, shaving cream, razor, soap, and a towel from Holiday Inn. The average number of items in the typical woman's bathroom is 437 – the vast majority of them totally unidentifiable by most men.

2. Apparently, women don’t think about sex as much as men (an average of 33 times a day according to one researcher). 

3. Many men tend to be goal-orientated: focused on doing tasks, solving problems and fixing things. They value competency, efficiency and achievement. Many women tend to be more relationship-orientated: spending time helping, supporting and nurturing. They value love, communication, and relationship.

4. Communication experts tells us that the average woman speaks 25,000 words a day while the average man speaks only a little over 10,000. Marriage counsellor, Gary Smalley, says that the average wife needs 45-60 minutes of meaningful conversation daily, while the average husband only needs 15-20 minutes … 1-2 times per week. 

I believe that God created men and women differently – on purpose. His intention was to enhance our lives not to mess them up. Both men and women need to educate themselves so that they understand each other better. Both men and women were created in the image of God and both are required to reflect God's nature accurately. Love, respect and appreciate the opposite gender and treat them as partners in life and ministry. 

Finally, have you ever noticed that all of women’s problem’s start with MEN … MEN-opause, MEN-strual pain, GUY-naecologist, and HIS-terectomy.

P.S. Also check out: Common Questions Women Ask About Men and Men and Women Communicating. 

Men and women process information very differently. Women often think out loud, sharing their process with any interested listener. Men, before they talk, silently mull over or think about what they have heard or experienced.

Women tend to process things by talking them through. Men tend to process things by thinking. 

A female brain is organised for multi-tracking – she can juggle four or five balls in the air at the same time. Multi-tracking can even occur in a single sentence. Here's a slightly exaggerated example …

BILL: “Is Sue coming over for Christmas?”

DEBBIE: “Sue said she’ll come depending on how things go with carpet orders which have slowed down because of the economy and Fiona may not come because Andrew has to see a specialist and Nathan has lost his job too so he has to get a new one and Jodi can’t get time off work – her boss is so tough! – so Sue said she could come down early and we could go dress shopping for Emma’s wedding and I though that if we put her and Len in the visitors bedroom we could ask Ray to arrive early so …”

BILL: “Does that mean ‘yes’ or ‘no’?”

DEBBIE: “Well, it also depends on whether Diana’s boss Adrian will give her time off work because his car is off the road and she has too ….” 

Bill thought he had asked a simple question and he would have been happy with a simple answer like ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Instead, he got a multi-tracked answer involved 9 different subjects and 11 people. He feels frustrated and goes outside to water the garden. 

Both men and women talk to convey or gather information. Women also talk to explore and discover what it is she wants to say. Women often talk in order to feel better when upset, while men often stopping talking when upset. Women talk to create intimacy too. Women often talk when they are stressed, using conversation to process their feelings, while men can tend to withdraw into silence when they are stressed.

All of these examples and illustrations are generalisations and there are always exception but learning about the differences so we can understand each other better is essential to healthy relationships … for men and women.

In the book Why Men Don't Have a Clue and Women Always Need More Shoes, the authors discuss common questions women ask about men, based on over 5,000 letters they have received. Here are a few of them. [Note: I take no responsibility for the information or opinions presented in this BLOG post]

1. Why do men continually offer solutions and give advice?

When a woman wants a man to show empathy, he thinks she’s asking him for a solution. Advice-giving is perceived differently by men than it is by woman. If one man asks another man for advice, the man who is asked sees the request as a compliment. A woman usually wants to be heard not fixed.

The most frequently expressed complaint women have about men is that MEN DON’T LISTEN. Either the man completely ignores her when she speaks to him OR he listens for a few beats, assesses what is bothering her, and then proudly puts on his Mr Fix It cap and offers her a solution to make her feel better.

2. Why do men keep flicking through the channels with the remote control?

Dictionary definition of "Remote control":

     noun, female; a device for changing one TV channel to another;

     noun, male; a device for scanning through 55 channels every 2.5 minutes.

Apparently, in heaven, every man has 3 remote controls and all toilets seats are left up.

Of course, the truth is that men don’t want to know what’s on TV, they want to know what else is on TV.

3. Why don’t men stop and ask for directions?

Why does it take 4 million male sperm to find and fertilize an egg? Not one of them wants to ask for directions.

We all know that Moses wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. He couldn’t ask for directions either.

Of course, the truth is that men don’t get lost; we simply discover alternative destinations. 

4. Why do men make such a fuss about going shopping?

For a man, one pair of shoes, one suit and a couple of shirts will last for many seasons. The same hairstyle endures for years, perhaps decades. And even better, his wallet, as a consequence, will last for longer too.

A woman will dress carefully according to the weather, the season, fashion, her own colouring, where she’s going, how she feels about herself that day, who she’s seeing, what she’ll be doing. A man merely performs the sniff test on a piece of clothing he’s left lying over the arm of a chair.

Continue reading “Common Questions Women Ask About Men” →