Matthew 18 Forgiveness - Guest Post by Daniel Demars

Most people who have been following the Lord for a reasonable amount of time recognize the importance practicing forgiveness and mercy. They grasp the concept that in light of both the holiness and mercy of God, holding onto grudges or desiring vengeance is neither Christ-like or healthy. They understand that harboring bitterness towards anyone is not evidence of spiritual regeneration. We know all of this. Yet I’ve spoken with people who confided that although they believe they’d forgiven, still find themselves upset about a situation to the point that it affects their lives. It’s entirely possible to make an intellectual decision to forgive, and to no longer wish for “karma” to fall on someone we are angry with, yet fail to cast the hurt brought on by the offense. 

Forgiveness is not always a one and done, quick release formula. The Lord gives us an image of a continuous approach. (Mat 18:21-22) The God who created us calls us to love people in response to His kindness, with reconciliation and humility. I can attest that at times I truly believed I had forgiven someone, only to find that the bitterness from a particular past situation was still on my heart. I found this hurt manifesting itself in other areas of my life. This greatly impeded my walk, emotional and spiritual well-being, and attitude towards life. When the Lord opened my eyes through His word it brought a new sense of liberation that changed the way I approach EVERYTHING. 

We must remember that forgiveness is NOT pretending it never happened. It is acknowledging real hurt before Holy God, and finding comfort His goodness. Knowing that He hates whatever wrong has been done to us, and that it has been paid for, along with every sin we have committed, based solely on the blood of Christ. Our immediate concern shouldn’t be gaining peace, but being obedient to God and bringing Him glory. We will come out the other side of the experience with Godly peace, but the process may be a refining process requiring sacrifice and submission. 

We might need to repent for assuming we are entitled to convenience in life, and instead embrace longsuffering and denial. We should reach out and make peace with whomever we feel has wronged us. (Mark 11:25) This may involve some uncomfortable conversations, which the Holy Spirit can adequately handle. We should lift the other party up in prayer and recognize that the Lord went to the cross for them with the same passion He has for us.

When we are actively involved in praying for someone, it is tremendously difficult to harbor anger towards them. We also identify areas in our own lives where we have fallen short in living a life of sacrifice. If we feel insulted, we need to remember God sees us as redeemed. If we feel we’ve been robbed, we need to remember God provides all our needs and ask for a generous spirit. If we feel betrayed, we should proclaim that God will never leave us, and ask for a spirit of commitment to others. This is yet another process of being conformed to the image of Christ.

And in it all, we must give glory to God. 

Daniel Demars lives in central Massachusetts. He is in the food distribution business and in his spare time enjoys driving for Uber where he says he is “cruising for cash and making friends along the way.”

Prodigal Kids - Guest Post by Jim Fontaine

     Prodigal sons and daughters cause great heartbreak to their parents when they rebel. It’s not just the rebellion against the parents that causes them pain, though. It’s also painful for parents to watch their children willfully turn from God.

     But does a descent into sin mean there is no coming back? Does it mean there is no hope for the person who turned away? Absolutely NOT! God excels in the resurrection and restoration business. We all love comeback stories, stories where people screw up royally but then turn their lives completely around.

     So, if there is a love of such stories, why do we sometimes act as if people who turn away are beyond the reach of God’s grace and have committed the unpardonable sin? We can’t look at anyone as a hopeless case. We have to look at even the worst of sinners as a redemption project and someone worthy of God’s grace. Remember, Paul could not have been further down the wrong path. He was against Jesus and was a terrorist to Christians.

     But Paul explained God’s unconditional love, grace and patience shown to him when he wrote in 1 Timothy 1: 13 – 16,

Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. ¹⁴ The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵ Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners--of whom I am the worst. ¹⁶ But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life. 

Paul wrote of God’s amazing grace and unlimited patience. God wants to show grace. God wants to show love. God wants prodigals to come home and He draws them to Himself with His love and grace.

     It must be the same with us. If we want the prodigals in our lives to come home, we can’t browbeat them. We can’t berate them. We can’t shut them completely out of our lives. Yes, we may have to let them go their own way, even if we know they are going the wrong way. Yes, we may have to speak God’s truth in love. We may even warn them in love before they go, telling them that they are headed down a dangerous path away from God.

     But prodigals need to know that the door has not been shut. Now, of course, we don’t affirm or condone the prodigal’s sin. Sin is sin, no matter who commits it. Prodigals need to know, however, that we still love them despite their sin and that, when they choose to come home, they won’t see us with our arms angrily folded or pointing a judgmental finger that says, “I told you so.” They need to know that they are coming home to nothing short of unconditional love and grace. Guilt trips never work. It is grace and unconditional love that will draw a prodigal back home.

     It’s like the story a prodigal daughter who left home soon after her father died. Night after night, the mother prayed and waited…but her daughter never came home. At her pastor’s suggestion, the mother printed off pictures of herself and wrote, “Come home” on the picture. She hung the pictures all over surrounding towns in tough places where she thought her rebellious daughter might go. One night, the daughter saw a picture of her mother with the simple message, “Come home”…and her heart started to be drawn home.

     She arrived early in the morning, surprised to find the door to the small apartment open…where she found her mother awake, praying, and crying. The mother threw her arms around her long-lost daughter, so glad she was home. The daughter, overwhelmed by her mother’s love, asked, “Mom, why did you leave the door open?” The mother responded, “Oh, Louise, the door has never been closed since the day you left. I left it open all the time expecting your return. I didn’t want you to find it shut when you came back.” That’s the way it is with God. Oh, you may think you’ve done something so bad that you can’t be forgiven. But you are NEVER beyond the reach of God’s grace! Forgiveness is always available because, when it comes to God and Jesus, the door is never closed. All we have to do is come home and ask.

     Do the prodigals in your life and mine know the same? Do people who have hurt us, disappointed us, angered us know that we still love them and have never stopped? Despite their descent into a sin-filled life that is not honoring God, do that know that amazing grace and forgiveness are still waiting at home for them?

     As with the Prodigal Father, the door of our hearts must always be ready to welcome them back home. We must be patient, as God was with us, praying and waiting for prodigals to come home. Like God was with us, we must maintain unconditional love for prodigals while they are away. And like God was with us, we must show amazing and undeserved grace when they come home. The prodigals in our lives need to know that home is a place where the grace and love of God is always waiting for them. So, whoever the prodigals are in your life, whether family members, friends, or church members who are missing, open your arms and your hearts…and always be ready to welcome them when they come home.

 

Jim Fontaine became the pastor of Friendship Baptist Church in Brimfield, MA in July 2016 after completing a 13-year pastorate at Burncoat Baptist Church in Worcester, MA. Jim has been married to his wife, Paula, for 24 years and has four children.

Moving Past Church Conflict

Commit your way to the Lord, trust in him, and he will act. Psalm 37:5

It was one of those meetings that I did not really want to attend. But I did not have a choice. It was part of my job as a denominational leader. The meeting was to help a church overcome a very significant conflict that had resulted in the pastor being dismissed. As a result, a significant portion of the congregation had left the church. The remaining members were in a lot of pain. They were discouraged. They were frustrated. Unfortunately, this was not the first time that this church had something like this happen. Several years before a similar event had happened and it had taken years to overcome the fall out.

When a church goes through such a situation, one of the greatest challenges is the lack of trust. Hurt people don’t trust each other. Sometimes they don’t trust themselves because they feel like they may have said or done something that made the situation worse. Though they often don’t want to admit it, there is even a certain lack of trust in God.

I think this lack of trust is one of the greatest things to overcome in a church that has been hurt. Though each situation is different, it is appropriate to create healthy accountability systems in an attempt to keep such situations from happening again, but there is no way to create a system that guarantees the problem will not reemerge. People make mistakes. By-laws, church constitutions, policy manuals can help set boundaries, but in the end, they lack the power to make people do the right thing. At some point, we simply have to trust each other. And we must accept the reality that from time to time our trust might be violated. We must be determined not to let the occasional violation of our trust in someone at church become the context of our entire faith experience.

That is easy to say. It is hard to do.

The only way I know to do that is to keep our eyes on the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the only one who will never let us down. We must realize that the church is HIS church. He will build the church. He will make it what He wants it to be. If we focus on Jesus, it will help us move past the hurt and pain that sometimes comes with being a leader in the church.

Lord, help me focus on serving You and learn to release the pain that church conflicts have brought into my life. Help me be able to trust others again. Amen.

Dr. Terry W. Dorsett serves at the Executive Director of the Baptist Convention of New England. He has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. He writes extensively and you can find all of his books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Terry-W.-Dorsett/e/B00405U4NY

Every Day is a Green Day - Guest Post by Landon Ressor

Back a few years ago when one of our older kids was in kindergarten, the teacher had a system that monitored and tracked the students' behavior. When they were being good, their little sticker stayed on green. When they got a warning, the teacher moved their name to yellow. And if they broke the rules repeatedly, she moved them to red. Nobody wanted to be on red. But inevitably it would happen. 

Yet here was the beautiful thing ... no matter how bad a kid acted one day, no matter how many times they were warned or how many times their teacher had to move them to yellow or red and back again, each morning when they walked into class, their name was always back on green. What happened the previously day didn't matter, and it had no bearing on how they would be treated the next day. They would always get to start over each morning. This system reminded them that every day was a fresh beginning and represented a new opportunity to make good choices.

When I think about that story, I reminded of Lamentations 3.23, "Great is his faithfulness; HIS MERCIES BEGIN AFRESH EACH MORNING."

Think about that ... His mercies begin afresh each morning!

As I consider the grace and compassion of a God that, through Christ, continually offers me new mercy each morning regardless of my failures, sin, or rebellion the previous day, I am deeply moved. The passage promises me that each a.m. represents my opportunity to repent, submit, and surrender my will to His own and see Him work in a powerful and transformational way in/thru me!

So here's my encouragement, as a new year begins, as we seek new opportunities and fresh beginnings, embrace the grace and mercy of God offered to you uniquely through faith in Christ that moves you to green and provides the promise of a continual new start in Him.

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Landon Ressor serves as pastor of Christ Community Church, Darien, CT. He is a happy husband and proud father. He has a passion for reaching the world for Christ, starting in the New York metro area.

Good Friday Meditation for 2016

Good Friday. What a name for a day on which something so terrible as the death of Christ happened. To think that an innocent man was brutally murdered in front of an approving crowd is almost unimaginable, except that it wasn't just a myth or someone's vivid imagination, it actually happened.

Good Friday shows the depths of the depravity of man. It shows how low people will sink to protect their political aspirations, their theological assumptions, or their place in the world. It shows how even good people will deny the truth or hide in the shadows while great horror happens around them, which begs the question, are they actually good? The answer of course is that there is none good, no not even one (Romans 3:10).

Good Friday also shows the amazing love of God. That He would endure such agony for us is something hard to fathom. None of us deserve it. None of us can truly appreciate it. None of us would even understand it without the gift of grace. Yet, while we were yet sinners, God demonstrated His love for us by allowing Jesus to die for us (Romans 5:8).

What makes this day good is not the agony of Jesus, but the love He had for those He was in agony for. Because of what happened on this day, every good and perfect gift can now come to us from the Lord who does not change like the ever shifting court of public opinion (James 1:17). He has declared that He loves us. And that declaration stands. No matter what. This is a hard truth to accept, and yet we must if we are to have any hope for a joyful life on earth and a more joyous one on the other side of death.

Let us remember Good Friday on days in which we feel unloved, or unlovable. Let us remember that He has decided that He loves us and nothing can change that. Nothing. Period. We can resist that love (which does not change the fact that He still loves us), or we can embrace that love (which gives us great peace and comfort). I chose to embrace it, and that makes this day good.

Dr. Terry W. Dorsett is an author and Christian leader in New England. He is a happy husband, proud father, adoring grandfather and thankful cancer survivor. You can find his books at:
http://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Terry-W.-Dorsett/e/B00405U4NY/

We Need to be In Relationship With Others

My wife and I once watched a movie about a young man who decided to move to Alaska and live all by himself in an old bus in the middle of nowhere. The movie portrayed a number of relationships that others tried to build with the young man but in each case he walked away from those relationships. He walked away because he had been hurt by a close relationship he had in his childhood. That made him afraid to allow other people inside his walls. The movie ended rather sadly. He made a mistake in reading a book on plant life and accidentally ate a poisonous plant. Regretfully, that led to his death a few days later. He died as he had lived, isolated and alone. The movie was based on a true story that was portrayed in a popular book written by the young man’s family after his body was found several weeks later by hunters.

As I have reflected on that movie it occurs to me that it is a picture of the lives of far too many people in our broken society. Many have been hurt in various relationships and that hurt has caused them to emotionally isolate themselves from those around them. They think they can make it all on their own without other people. This is flawed thinking. We need relationships with others. Even though we can be hurt by relationships, we really cannot live without them. Knowing this, God designed us to desire friends, look for a mate, enjoy family, and seek out a faith community. When we ignore those urges, we are less happy than we could be.

Had that young man in the movie had some other people with him, they might have noticed when he mistook a poisonous plant for an edible one. Or perhaps they would have been able to help him hike back to town and seek medical help. Even if he felt he really needed some time alone, had he been willing to share his life with others, they would have known where he was and could have come looking for him when he did not return. Unfortunately since he told no one where he had gone, no one could come rescue him. The story had a sad ending, but what made it even sadder was that it did not have to end that way. He did not have to die alone and isolated far from home in an abandoned school bus. But he was not willing to open himself up to other people and trust them. His determination to do break off all relationships with other people ultimately resulted in his untimely and tragic death.

We must do all that we can so that others do not follow the same depressing path with its sad ending. We must learn to trust again. We must encourage others to trust again. We be willing to open ourselves up to having deep and meaningful relationships. Even though we may have been hurt in the past, and there is a chance we may be hurt in the future, the reality is, we cannot live happy productive lives without relationships. Relationships are a risk, but we must realize that relationships are a risk worth taking.

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Dr. Terry W. Dorsett has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. He has written a book about the spirit of offense that prevails in our current society. You can find all of his books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Terry-W.-Dorsett/e/B00405U4NY

Stop Being Offended

Some time ago a friend of mine was highly offended by a joke someone told which they were convinced was aimed at them. The joke was made by a person leading a meeting. There were dozens of people in the room, but the person who was offended was 100% positive that the joke was pointed specifically at them. I was a bit confused because I did not see any connection between the joke and the offended person. Clearly the joker had not intended the joke to be aimed at anyone. But to the person who was upset, it was obviously all about them.

Then there was the time that someone in the youth group put a movie quote on Facebook as their status, and half a dozen people were sure it was some kind of veiled jab at them. It wasn't. It was just a really cool quote from a movie the person had seen earlier in the day. But to those half dozen people, it was obviously all about them.

It seems that people are more easily offended now than ever before. Our culture has somehow created a hyper-sensitive emotional state where everyone is convinced that the world is out to get them.

Perhaps it is a result of low self-esteem. We feel bad about ourselves; therefore we think others feel bad about us too. Since we think that everything feels bad about us, then we interpret anything they say or do as a "bad" intention toward us. Or perhaps it is a result of arrogance. We think the entire world revolves around us, so therefore everything everyone does or says must be about us too. In reality, most people are not paying attention to most of what we say or do, and the world does not revolve around us, but in our arrogance we often think it does.

Whether from low self-esteem or from high levels of arrogance, someone how our culture has convinced us everything is about us. Once we get angry and upset about one "offense" that someone did to us, we transfer that anger over into other relational experiences as well. Instead of finding joy in our relationships, we just find pain and hurt. This causes us to end friendships that are really important to us, which just brings more pain and hurt. Or keeps us from allowing our friendships to become as deep as they need to be, which also bring pain and hurt. The end result is that we spend a lot of time angry and upset about stuff that often only exists in our own mind and engaging in relational sabotage that only starts the cycle all over again.

News flash, the world does not revolve around any particular one of us! People do not really sit around dreaming up ways to hurt us. People are too busy trying to make a living, trying to pass math class, trying to find a job or be a better parent to spend time being obsessed with offending us. The only person obsessed with us, is US. It is time we learn to relax a little and stop creating drama that does not exist. We will all be a lot happier if we stop taking everything everyone says or does personally.

It's not all about us. And that's a good thing.

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Dr. Terry W. Dorsett has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author in New England for more than 20 years. He is a happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times of suffering. He has written a book about the spirit of offense that prevails in our current society. You can find all of his books at:

http://www.amazon.com/Dr.-Terry-W.-Dorsett/e/B00405U4NY

What Happens When Our Devotion to God is Shaken?

I clearly remember that day in November 1993 when the members of Eureka Baptist Church in Anderson, SC, helped us pack our big moving truck and off we drove to Vermont. Only months before we had never even heard of Vermont, but through a partnership South Carolina Baptists had with New England Baptists, our church had taken a summer mission trip to Vermont. While there I learned that only 4% of the people who live in New England attend an evangelical church. I was challenged by how small the churches were and how quickly the pastors came and went because the people were often unresponsive to the Gospel. I also heard of a small mission church in a mountain village that was on the verge of closing down. They desperately wanted a missionary to come help them reach their community for Christ. My wife and I began to feel a calling to leave the strong and well established church we served in Anderson, SC and move to Vermont to serve as missionaries with the North American Mission Board. I am not quite sure what we thought would happen when we accepted the call and agreed to move to Washington, Vermont, a little village with only one paved street and more cows than people. But we knew that we wanted to serve the Lord and whatever it took to do that, we had promised God we would do it.

There was already six inches of snow on the ground when we arrived and we did not see grass again for six months. The little house we were living in had such crooked floors that we had to put wooden blocks under certain legs of the furniture to keep it from falling over. It was cold. The house was so poorly insulated that one entire side had to be wrapped in a giant wall of plastic to keep the wind out. The church was small. We were making $60 a week from the church and $500 a month from the North American Mission Board and trusting God to provide whatever else we needed.

During our 8 years there we saw God do some great things. Fifty four adults came to faith in Christ and the church grew from less than 20 to more than 90 in regular attendance. But the work was hard, and slow, and fraught with perils. If we had known all the perils that would come, it might have scared us away. But God often keeps us in the dark about the future, and honestly, that really is for the best.

Perhaps the greatest challenge to our devotion came one winter after we had been missionaries for five years. We were on the way into a bigger town a few miles away to visit a community member who was in the hospital. While driving on a narrow winding road we were hit head on by a drunk driver. The accident was quite severe. My wife’s arm was broken. My leg was shattered so badly that the paramedic who first arrived on the scene said they might have to amputate it. But the greatest injuries happened to my young son who was in the back seat. His back was broken and they doctors told us he had massive internal injuries.

I think most Christian adults can endure whatever we need to in our service to the Lord, but when our children have to pay the price for our devotion to God, even the most committed begin to question if our devotion is well placed.

In the days that followed we learned that the drunk driver who hit us was not a stranger. She was the cashier at the small country store across the street from our house. Her name was Barbara and she nearly killed my family.

It took me nine months of physical therapy to be able to walk normally again. It took my son months in a body cast to recover, though I am pleased to report that God was gracious and gave him a full recovery. He is now a junior at a Baptist college in Philadelphia preparing for a life of missionary service. I wish I could say that during all of this recovery time that I was so devoted to Jesus that I instantly forgave Barbara and loved her despite what she did to our family. But sadly, I must report that that was not the case. Even missionaries can get angry and bitter. I had some very dark moments when I was mad at Barbara for what she did to us and mad at God for letting it happen. At one point I even prayed that Barbara would get drunk again and drive her car into a tree and die. What kind of missionary prays for that! Surely not one who is truly devoted to serving the Lord.

But as time went by the Lord began to deal with my lack of forgiveness and my growing resentment. Finally there came a cold Vermont winter night when God and I argued for quite a while. At one point I angrily said to God, “Do you know what THAT woman has done to my son?” And God, in the still small voice of His Spirit simply said back to me, “Terry, do you know what you have done to my Son Jesus? Your son is alive and will eventually recover. My son had to die for your sin. Who are you to harbor anger toward another sinner?” That night I promised God that if He would help me, I would forgive Barbara.

It took time. It took work. It took me going to visit her in prison. It took me inviting her to church. It took a lot of prayer. But one day I was able to forgive her. And one day she asked me to come visit her home and tell her about this Jesus whom I seemed so devoted to. So a deacon and I went to visit her. Sitting in her kitchen, surrounded by more liquor bottles than this Baptist missionary had ever seen before, Barbara repented of her sins, and gave her life to Christ. Since then she has never had a drop to drink and all these years later is still faithful to that little village church. She remains fully devoted to the Lord and TODAY is her birthday. Happy Birthday Barbara and THANKS for helping me deepen my devotion to our Lord.

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Dr. Terry W. Dorsett has been a pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author in New England since 1993. He is the author of numerous books including Breaking Free from the Spirit of Offense. Find all of his resources at: amazon.com/author/terrydorsett

The Fear of Judgment Ultimately Hurts Us

Proverbs 28:1 - The wicked flee when no one is pursuing them, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.

My friend suddenly stopped coming to church. I reached out to him several times before he finally called back to say that he would no longer be attending church. He was honest in confessing that he was engaged in a particular sinful activity but felt that no one had the right to judge him for his actions. He went on to explain that when he came to church, he felt bad about himself, so his solution was to stop coming to church.

Many people in our society have adopted the same approach as my friend. The problem with this approach is that dropping out of church does not address the behavior that brought out the negative feelings to begin with. Regardless of what our culture may say, there are some behaviors that are right and some that are wrong. Simply avoiding people, or groups, who may point those wrong things out will not solve our problem. That is like a person with a heart condition refusing to go to the doctor out of fear of what the doctor may say. If the condition goes on long enough without treatment, the result is not going to be positive and the treatment for the condition will be much more invasive than it could have been if it had been addressed earlier. The same is true when we have poor behavior in our lives that we have not addressed. Eventually we will reap the consequences of that behavior. By the time all those consequences finally hit us, it may cost us far more than we ever intended to pay. In essence, our fear of minor judgment eventually causes us to experience much more significant judgment because we have not dealt with our sinfulness.

Perhaps it is time to start re-examining our opinion of church. Obviously there are some overly judgmental churches that may not help us be healthy. But there are many churches that understand that in our human weakness we made bad choices and now we are trying to fix those issues. Those churches will walk with us through the journey until we get where we need to be. They will not tell us that all of our behavior is acceptable, but we already know that. But they will remind us that God loves us in spite of our behavior and that He will help us become the person we always wanted to be. It is time for us to overcome our fear of judgment and start dealing with the baggage in our lives. We are going to need the help of other people to do that. That is what church is all about. It is a group of sinners encouraging one another to be transformed into the image of Christ. There may be some painful moments in the short term as our sinfulness is exposed, but the joy that comes from godly living will be worth it.

Lord, help us examine our own hearts so that we can be in right relationship with You. Do not let our fear of judgment cause us to flee the very thing that can change our lives. Amen.

This post is an excerpt from the book, The Heavenly Mundane: Daily Devotions from Ordinary Experiences. Filled with stories of how God spoke in big ways through small events, the book will encourage people to look for God in the mundane things of life. Great for both personal use and to give as a gift to friend, either the print version or the e-book version may be purchased at this link:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MJ2UE4E

Did He Really Say What I Thought He Said?

A good friend and I were chatting the other day about a complex situation we were concerned about. We had gathered information about the situation from a variety of sources, but when we compared notes, there were significant differences in opinions from those involved. We questioned aloud how the stories could be so different. Could one or more of the parties be purposefully lying to us?

While it is possible that one or more parties was being less than truthful, it seemed more likely that each side was giving the truth as they saw it. Often our perspective greatly influences how we perceive an event. For example, if someone jokingly says something us, but we thought they were serious, we become offended, even though it was only meant in jest. From our perspective, they were being mean, but from their perspective, they were only joking. Or if we overhear a piece of a conversation, what we think we heard may not be what we heard at all, no matter how convinced we are that it was. Or perhaps someone makes an offhand comment that we barely remember, but then months later something else is said that makes that offhand comment come back to mind, but now we hear that comment in light of the current situation, though that was not the context that it was said in at all. All of these misunderstandings can be cleared up with adequate communication when calm heads prevail. But in tense situations, those very same misunderstandings grow and morph into something much darker than they really are and make a bad situation even worse. Neither side is trying to lie; they simply view the same set of facts from different perspectives.

A good rule to follow is to make sure we do not assume we know what a person meant without asking them first. It is better to ask a clarifying question to make sure that what we thought we heard is what the other person meant to say. The more tense the situation, the more questions we should ask and the fewer answers we should assume we already know.

Another concept to remember in these type of situations is that sometimes we will never be able to sort out exactly who said what to whom and why. Sometimes people say things they do not mean. Other times they say things without realizing how it sounds to those around them. Even if we recorded what they said and played it back to them, they would not remember saying it, because at the moment it was said, it did not mean anything to them. When those who heard it interpret it through their own lens, their words no longer mean what they meant them to say. So it becomes pointless to try to get everyone to retract or restate their past comments. All we can do is clear up the present situation the best we can and move forward. We should ask all the questions we can, seek to understand the best we can, and endeavor to communicate better in the future and then offer the gift of forgiveness and move forward.

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Dr. Terry W. Dorsett is a church planter and writer who has lived in New England for over 20 years. An energetic speaker, he often finds ordinary things in life to help him teach powerful truths from God's Word.