The First Step Toward Resolving Conflict

One of the most important life skills you need to learn is conflict resolution. If you don’t learn it, you’ll spend much of your life miserable—because we’re imperfect people and we have conflict almost every day of our lives.

To resolve conflict, you’re going to have to make the first move. And to do that, you’re going to have to ask for God’s help.

It takes courage to approach someone you are in conflict with and tell them you want to sit down and work it out. Once you’ve taken that step, you don’t start with what the other person has done wrong; you don’t make accusations or list ways you’ve been hurt. You start with what you’ve done wrong.

You can always find something to confess. Even if the conflict is 99.99 percent the other person’s fault, you can admit your part. Maybe it was your poor response or your attitude. Maybe it was the way you walked away.

You have weaknesses in your life that others see clearly but you’ve never seen. Those are your blind spots. That’s why you need to come to conflict resolution with a humble heart and begin with your own faults.

Jesus said, “Why do you notice the little piece of dust in your friend’s eye, but you don’t notice the big piece of wood in your own eye? . . . You hypocrite! First, take the wood out of your own eye. Then you will see clearly to take the dust out of your friend’s eye” (Matthew 7:3, 5 NCV).

What’s the piece of wood in your eye that is keeping you from seeing the situation clearly? Don’t start with all the ways the other person has hurt you until you’ve confessed your part of the conflict first.

Did you cause conflict by being insensitive? Or were you overly sensitive? Did you not show compassion for the person who was hurting? Were you being overly demanding? What are your blind spots? 

Once you figure them out and confess them, you’ll be ready for the next step in conflict resolution.