Sermon quotes on conflict
Augustine of Hippo (Attributed)
Nothing so clearly discovers a spiritual man as his treatment of an erring brother.
Winston Churchill (Attributed)
Never let a good crisis go to waste
Kent Crockett
Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” not “blessed are the troublemakers.”
Elisabeth Elliot
If we do anything to further the kingdom of God, we may expect to find what Christ found on that road – abuse, indifference, injustice, misunderstanding, trouble of some kind. Take it. Why not? To that you were called. In Latin America someone who feels sorry for himself is said to look like a donkey in a downpour. If we think of the glorious fact that we are on the same path with Jesus, we might see a rainbow.
John Hagee
A pure heart won’t get us out of conflict and controversy. It may well be the very thing that gets us into it.
Ronald A. Heifetz
When you take “personal” attacks personally, you unwittingly conspire in one of the common ways you can be taken out of action-you make yourself the issue. Attacks may be personal, understand that they are basically attacks on positions you represent and the role you are seeking to play”
G. Campbell Morgan
If you have no opposition in the place you serve, you’re serving in the wrong place.
Watchman Nee
The sight of any trouble strikes terror into the heart of those who do not have faith, but those who trust Him say, “Here comes my food!”
God’s Keeping Power
Dominic Pire
Les hommes construisent trop de murs et pas assez de ponts.
Trans: “Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.”
(Pire attributed the quote to “Newton” in his Nobel Peace Prize address and many have since erroneously attributed it to Isaac Newton. Pire was paraphrasing Joseph Fort Newton (1880-1950).)
Charles Stanley
Adversity is not simply a tool. It is God’s most effective tool for the advancement of our spiritual lives. The circumstances and events that we see as setbacks are oftentimes the very things that launch us into periods of intense spiritual growth. Once we begin to understand this, and accept it as a spiritual fact of life, adversity becomes easier to bear.
Source Unknown
A troublemaker is a man who can rock the boat and persuade everybody there’s a terrible storm at sea.
Thomas Paine
These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph.
Philip Yancey
The issue is not whether I agree with someone but rather how I treat someone with whom I profoundly disagree. We Christians are called to use the “weapons of grace,” which means treating even our opponents with love and respect.
Randy Alcorn
Birds need two wings to fly. With only one wing, they’re grounded. The gospel flies with the wings of grace and truth. Not one, but both.
The Grace and Truth Paradox: Responding with Christlike Balance (Multnomah, 2003).
Jack Handey
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.
Howard Thurman
I have always wanted to be me without making it difficult for you to be you.
Buster Benson
The easiest thing you can do to have more productive disagreements immediately is to remember to ask the other person: “Is this about what’s true, what’s meaningful, or what’s useful?” Is this about the head, the heart, or the hands? If you can agree on the answer, then you’re on your way.
Rick Love
Conflict is a painful fact of life. Many of us have not experienced the trauma of war or the violence of racism, but we have all been wounded by words.
Taken from Peace Catalysts: Resolving Conflict in Our Families, Organizations, and Communities by Rick Love Copyright (c) 2014 p.8 by Rick Love. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Thomas Merton (Attributed)
We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.
President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers)
“Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the war room!”
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Miles Finch
“You feeling strong, my friend? Call me elf one more time.”
Elf
Luke Bretherton
When I meet someone with whom I disagree, whom I dislike, or whom I find threatening, I can do one of four things. I can kill them, I can create a structure of coercion so I can control them, or I can make life so difficult that they run away. Or I can do politics. That is to say, I can form, norm, and sustain some kind of common life amid asymmetries of power, competing visions of the good, and my own feelings of aversion or fear without killing, coercing, or causing them to flee.
Article: “Recovering Democratic Politics” in Breaking Ground, May 7, 2021.
Mark Twain
Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.
Following the Equator (1897)
Joseph Fort Netwon
Why are so many people shy, lonely, shut up within themselves, unequal to their tasks, unable to be happy? Because they are inhabited by fear, like the man in the Parable of the Talents, erecting walls around themselves instead of building bridges into the lives of others; shutting out life.
The One Great Church: Adventures of Faith (1948)
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