First one to blink loses!

Most of us here on earth like to win! We are the ones that have to end up being the one who was right!

I grew up in an extremely competitive family - A Dad who could sing like Pavarotti, play cricket and others sports like a pro; a Mum who was so organised it would make your head spin and siblings with talents and confidence galore.

I tended to be the odd one out, lacking in the social graces, unable to make myself heard or even make a point, but nevertheless with a goal in mind to WIN!

Whether its fighting for promotion, jockeying for position in traffic or playing video games with a friend, most of us have a strong desire to come out on top.

AND... that's what makes CONFLICT such an explosive issue. We treat it like a competition - the first one to blink loses!!

Conflict at work, with individuals, with your partner and/or children can put us well and truly in the back seat when it comes to 'winning'. We then feel left-out, mad, vengeful, surly and offended.


So the conflict can grow; If we feel we have 'won' the conflict, we feel proud, sure of ourselves and successful - at least in the short term.

One of the most important skills you can learn and develop is how to deal successfully with conflict, and I can tell you right here and now without the workings of our great God and Saviour; conflict will keep on reappearing in our lives over and over again.

Being in the business world for 38 years of my working life I learned to manage conflict from text books, seminars and the like and YES! I achieved a measure of success and worked through heaps of conflicts in the Industrial arena, dealing with unions, employees and equal opportunity problems.

All of these 'conflicts' I felt were managed well by the team and myself and I prided myself that I was the one to be called on if something need resolving! How wrong could I be.

When I fully handed my life over to God; holding nothing back; and stopped being a "Sunday" Christian, one of the first lessons I learned was that God views life differently and so did I after His amazing Holy Spirit entered my life.

God understands that not every 'conflict' has a winner and loser.

What God does care about more than winning or losing conflicts is our attitudes toward other people.

God changed my 'winning at all costs' attitude! Now when I look back I shudder at some of the things I did and said to win a conflict or how I put people at such a disadvantage that they had no option other than give in. Very strategic; very professional AND very wrong!

God put a new attitude in my heart - It is far better to lose a conflict to gain peace with a person.

So now! Even if I lose a conflict I have actually won if by doing so has restored peace to the situation.

Saying all of that I have also learned that conflict for a Christian is well to put it bluntly inevitable!

Paul tells us that "all who desire to live a godly life in Jesus will be persecuted" (2 Timothy 3:12). So to those of us who see conflict as a sin I would suggest strongly that as Jesus taught us 'conflict is exactly what we should and will expect'.

Conflict as a Christian is inevitable because our accuser, Satan, engineers all conflict whenever and wherever possible, especially among our Christian brothers and sisters. Sowing discord and discontent, causing offence and conflict with each other and our God.

So understand this: we knowingly enter into conflict and dare I say even 'initiate' it whenever we proclaim the gospel of holiness, kindness and forgiveness. The world will not it kindly and Satan will use every opportunity to make us cease and desist, undermine and intimidate.

Conflict for the Christian is here to stay I'm afraid to say and we must learn to identify and manage it until that final day when our Lord will return and all questions will be answered and all conflict will fly straight out of the window!

So how do we as Christians manage this impossible-to-avoid conflict? Well firstly I have learned that to take offence is probably the very worst thing we can do. My beautiful daughter gave me a book by John Bevere called "The Bait of Satan" - well worth the read.

In this book Bevere describes in detail just how subtle Satan can be and how he uses offense to drive us away from God and our fellow believers.

The next thing I have learned is to grab hold of the truth that our God is bigger than the problem we are facing. Pray heaps about it and certainly don't say or do anything on the spur of the moment without first taking it to God.

The third thing I would do is to 'act in the opposite'. Example: if a person is mean be generous; if aggressive then you be passive; and so on....

God showed us amazing, stunning and incredible love when He sent Jesus to die on that beautiful/terrible/gruesome day.

This unique kind of love endures rejection and misunderstanding to bring about peace, healing and reconciliation.

This is the kind of love and respect Jesus commands even DEMANDS of us.

So conflict is to be expected - it's how we handle it through Jesus' love that will see us true to Him and ourselves.