Confronting for the Right Reasons

As you learn how to love like Jesus, if you want to move out of grade school and into graduate school, learn to confront issues in your relationships that are keeping you from being closer. You have to learn how to face issues that scare you to death — and you have to learn how to do it in love.

First, you check your motivation. How do you know if you’re confronting someone for the right reason? You’re doing it for the other person’s benefit and not your own. If you want to say something because you need to vent or unload, then you’re not confronting someone in love.

Did you know that we tend to criticize in other people the weaknesses we hate in ourselves? We do this all the time. If you know your weaknesses and you don’t like them in you, then you really don’t like them in somebody else. If you tend to be prideful, you can pick out ego in a second. If you tend to be lazy, you notice other lazy people. We tend to criticize in other people the very thing we don’t like in ourselves.

That’s why Jesus says, “Why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? . . . First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye” (Matthew 7:3, 5 NLT). Before you confront anybody in the spirit of love, make sure you’re not also doing the thing you’re criticizing.

You don’t have to be perfect to speak the truth in love. You just have to make sure that you’re not guilty of that exact same sin.

Start a confrontation with the correct motivation. What is the right motive? To help, not to hurt. Do everything in love!