"God help them see that I am right"

Human conflict is something we all deal with everyday. How we handle it seems to constantly change. As Disciples of Christ we are to always react with love. Obviously that is much easier said then done. So how do we worship God through our interactions with people who don’t lift us up. I guess the answer is to try. When people get mad at us, yell at us, or refer to us in a condescending manner, it is hard to react in love. I know because I, like all human beings, have a problem doing this. I tend to argue back, alienate them, or simply write them off saying that what they say means nothing. The problem is, it that it does mean something. It hurts, it wounds, and it affects the way we dialogue with the person in the future.

I have these kinds of encounters probably just has much as anyone, and how I react is not always Holy, actually most are unholy reactions. Sometimes when someone puts me down I react by attempting to put them down, sometimes I try to be “better” then them. This doesn’t solve anything, it just makes it worst. Sometimes I’ll tell other people about how mean or even unholy the person is, instead of making things better, I stain myself with sin. We all do this to a certain extent, but how do we stop our instincts.

The only two answers I have been able to come up with are prayer and a good friend. I find it healthy to have one (sometimes two) friend to talk to about these unfriendly encounters. I get to vent without gossiping, and usually it helps me realise that what really matters is what God thinks. The other way is to pray, and I don’t mean to pray ‘that God leads the person to see the truth’, because that actually does no one any good. Instead prayer for your relationship with the person, and pray that you can love them has Jesus loves them.

Anger and frustration are not bad, but what you do with them can be problematic.

Finding ways to deal hopefully and lovingly to hatred, anger, frustration and bitterness: that lies at the heart of WORSHIP.

I know he can, I know he can, I know he can

hey everyone. well it's late but for some reason I felt I needed to say my bit for the day. I was just thinking about the many people in my life. Like just today I had a practice with my worship team. The different people, with different experiences and different ideas can make some very interesting (and fun) situation. But it is kind of a random group. All from different parishes, we didn't even all know each other when we first started. But there we were people who used to be strangers working together, struggling together and celebrating together. We are doing an event for the diocese of Montreal in a couple of weeks and the organizers asked if we could put a choir together for it (normally we are 6 vocalist, 3 guys and 3 girls). So next week our random group will welcome anywhere between 10 and 25 new random people to join us in leadership. Yes it is only for this one event but it is still a partnership. These new members are probably even more random then the first group, but that's the point. We don't need to see or understand the link between us, we don't need to know how well we will work together, we don't even need to know how many can sing harmony. Instead we trust something called providence, a cool little gift that well make those who are meant to be there availible. A cool little gift from God. We so often forget that God truly does take care of us, we give Him trust and he won't let us down. And so I trust that there will be a large enough choir, I trust that God will bring guys who want to see, I trust that our key changes go smoothly, I trust that all instruments will be in key, I trust that we will be ready, I trust that He really did call us to this purpose. Now it's my turn to practice, my turn to have the meetings that are needed, my turn to type up changes, and my turn to do my job. I know that if I do my job, God will do His, because that desire to serve lies at the heart of life, it's worship.