Keith Battle - How to Squash a Beef God's Way

Hey, so we have a packed house tonight—today, I mean. It stays packed with angels, amen! But I do want somebody to come up on stage and help me. There are no criteria; anyone who wants to come up here is welcome. I’m going to bring some chairs up, and first of all, I need you to help me read these verses. Secondly, this will be transparent to you since you will know what I’m going to talk about. You don’t know yet, but I appreciate you, Leah—thank you so much! So, I have one person; anybody else want to come up? We have one for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Ghost. That might be enough, unless you want to put three over here for balance. I don’t know; it doesn’t really matter.

Good, good! I hope you’re enjoying yourselves. I think today’s message is going to be helpful because one thing’s for sure: if you’re snowed in with people, you’re going to need some tools on how to problem-solve, amen? I assume there are a lot of husbands looking at their wives, thinking, «Hey, are you busy?» I mean, «Am I busy?» We think every crisis is time for sex, amen? Just think maybe—no, because we can’t go in that way. Anyway, here’s my question for you all: it’s really simple. How do you handle—honestly, how do you handle when you have a conflict with someone? What is your conflict? Do they still call it a conflict? Like, you have to squash your conflict? I don’t know; is there a new term for conflict? Is it still just called a beef?

So, I want you to think about it. For those of you online, if you’re watching, I want you to think about your conflict-squashing strategy. In fact, for all of us here, let’s have our tribal moment. We do tribal moments here. I want you to group up with three or four people and quickly share your conflict-squashing strategies—how do you handle conflicts? You may have different strategies depending on what happened and who the person is, but you all can give a public answer. Talk about how you handle it and share what you’re going to say among each other—without the mics up.

But how do you handle it? What is your conflict-squashing strategy? When someone offends you, what’s your strategy? And does it differ based on the person or relationship? I want to talk about that today. Yeah, be honest now, be honest! You can also type into the chat room—it’s like a confession. «This is how I handle conflicts: I do XYZ, and that’s pretty much my conflict-handling system, my conflict-squashing strategy.»

Alright, ten seconds—nine, eight, seven, six, five, four… how are you doing? I’m Barry from the team getting blown out on an outdoor basketball court here, and a decent team is getting blown out. Alright, five, four, three, two, one—boom! That’s it, game over!

Alright, who wants to go first? You don’t have a mic? No? Okay, share how you handle your conflict; what’s your conflict-squashing or conflict-handling system? I guess I’ll go first since I’m the lady. So, I had to ponder whether I wanted to share my saved or unsaved approach.

Do both!

Okay, so my unsaved answer is, before the Lord saved me—about two weeks ago—if I had a conflict, I would just confront them and ask, «Is there a problem?» If they didn’t say anything, I would just make it a problem because I know whoever told me wouldn’t lie to me. But since God saved me—oh, so what you’re saying is, someone would get these hands real quick! Okay, I’m with that; we’re definitely going at it, then there won’t be any lingering questions like, «Is there really a problem?»

So that was my strategy before Christ. Now, since God has saved and delivered me—actually, just two weeks ago—I still approach the person. I love them dearly, so I give hugs to everyone and start talking to them. If there is a problem, it ultimately makes them uncomfortable, so they can start sharing it.

Oh, okay, so what you’re saying is, regardless of whether it was before or after the Lord, you still approach them?

Oh yeah, I don’t wait because that only prolongs it, which means it can fester longer.

Amen! What you got, Jason?

Honestly, if I hear someone has a problem with me and they don’t come to talk to me, I won’t do anything. If you don’t have the guts to come to me and talk to me about it, I’ll let you deal with it on your own.