7 Ways to Stay the Course of Joy Through Conflict

Sooner or later every relationship encounters disagreements. Sometimes we cannot even remember what we were discussing, but we do remember the general way we feel about the person we were having conflict with. Philippians 2 shows us that joy is an internal celebration of God and His ways that overflows externally and gives us seven ways to stay the course of joy through conflict.

1) Continuously chase a lifestyle of relationships filled with harmony and being of the same mind, intention and purpose. Some differences accompany disagreements others expose lifestyles that are diametrical. Prune off the diametrical. Seek to find the source of disagreements and humbly resolve them. Sometimes self-denial is needed. Other times assertiveness is needed.

True friends support and complement our life purposes. Choose relationships carefully. Much conflict can be eliminated by careful initial selection.

African American Bethann Hardison helped launch Click Models after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. A time came when it was time for her to leave the nest and build her own. Nurtured by legal and model friends she started Bethann Management. These friends really helped. No attitudes and actions of, "I wish you well, but I'm not going to give you on-going resources to work with." A mother and daughter in the modeling business gave Hardison money for real-life bills like rent, utilities and whatever was necessary. Another legal friend negotiated the office space for Bethann Management and didn't charge her legal fees.

Hardison was called to be a leader in the fashion industry. Her friends may have disagreed from time to time regarding how she lead, but they encouraged her leadership and supported it in profuse, physical ways. Hardison was also wise enough not to keep friends who were opposed to her being a leader.

In a similar way Paul and the Philippian believers were in Christian ministry. They could not have shared as much joy if either one of them did not support each others ministry.

 2) Helping people help themselves also helps ourselves. Friendship flourishes with reciprocity, so does almost everything else. In 1867 Marie Sklodowska was born in Warsaw, Poland. Early in life she showed enthusiasm about education and an extraordinary ability to learn. However, her father could not afford to educate her beyond early childhood. Instead of responding to the obstacle with fear, unbelief and self-limiting practices, Marie took a job as a teacher then later as a governess to fund her advanced educational dreams.

Marie paid for her sister's, Bronislawa's, education with her earnings from her governess job. When Bronislawa completed her studies, Bronislawa paid for Marie to attend university.

Both Bronislawa and Marie became scientists. By 1891 Marie studied at the world-famous Sorbonne in France. She also became the school's first female teacher. Marie married a physics professor in 1895. They devoted their lives to science. In 1903 Marie shared the Nobel Prize in physics with her husband, Pierre Curie, and Henri Becquerel. In 1911 Marie Sklodowska-Curie won a Nobel Prize for chemistry by herself.

Marie is the first person to earn two Nobel Prizes each in sciences. She developed a theory of radioactivity, techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes and discovered the elements polonium and radium.

Like Marie and Bronislawa helped each other to be educated, the Philippian believers and Paul helped each other share God and His Word, the Bible, with others.

3) Celebrate equality with humility. Black people are equal with white people and any other people. Women are equal with men. Galatians 3:28 New Living Translation Bible says, "There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus."

Revealing equality through humility works better than hate. Jesus Christ never stopped being God and equal with God the Father and God the Holy Ghost even when He experienced violence instead of the respect due royalty. Black American and Christian Marian Anderson kept her wisdom, elegance and humility even when she was rejected from opportunities because of her race. Anderson wrote in My Lord, What a Morning in response to a music school rejecting her admission due to her blackness, " . . . I could not conceive of a person surrounded as she was with the joy that is music without having some sense of its beauty and understanding rub off on her. I did not argue with her or ask to see her superior. It was as if a cold, horrifying hand had been laid on me. I turned and walked out."

Walking out on evil is walking into good. God ensures that good is honored in due season. Jesus Christ was crucified at the instigation of the local religious leaders, but three days later He rose from the dead and shortly after the Christian church was founded as God's means to express goodness on earth.  With donations from a local church, Anderson was able to take singing lessons with coach Giuseppe Boghetti. In 1924 she launched her career by giving her first recital at New York's Town Hall. Later she went on to have a flourishing singing career that broke through racial barriers including a 1939 Easter morning concert in Washington, D.C., to 75,000 present and millions by radio.

4) Be willing and ready to help. "The roots of happiness grow best in the soil of service," says educator and African American Ruth Love.

A husband was addicted to pornography. He confessed his addiction to his wife. He didn't try to blame her for his addiction or to blame his upbringing or someone or something else. He sought ways to overcome it. His wife was hurt by his addiction, but she was willing and ready to help her husband. She listened and talked with him to understand why he likes pornography and why its so hard to leave it. She didn't condemn him by thinking, saying or doing things that communicate, "You're so weak to be wrapped up in this trash." This couple participated in helpful activities like Christian counseling, and over time his pornography addiction was conquered.

5) Caress copiously through cheerfulness. When Paul wrote the book of Philippians he didn't know if his current jail sentence would end in death or release. Paul didn't shower people with self-pity, but rather he talked about and lived out God's wonderful ways of pursuing the best even amidst the bad. Paul probably didn't always feel cheerful, but he expressed an attitude and actions of cheerfulness because this is how God is and what pleases God. In Philippians 2:12 Amplified Bible Paul counsels us to behave, " . . . timidly shrinking from whatever might offend God and discredit the name of God."

That's an incredibly large request for imperfect people to fulfill. The good news is we have a power source living on the inside to help us fulfill it if we tap into Him. Philippians 2:13 Amplified Bible says, "[Not in your own strength] for it is God Who is all the while effectually at work in you [energizing and creating in you the power and desire], both to will and to work for His good pleasure and satisfaction and delight."

6) Cherish people in your real life and release comparisons and excessive thoughts about fantasy people. Not many people look like and have achieved career success like Hollywood and Bollywood celebrities Halle Berry, Angelina Jolie, Denzel Washington, Hrithik Roshan and others. If we spend too much time reading about, looking at and thinking about the stars, then what's on earth may become disappointing and breed envy and other negative qualities.

Our spouses, family and friends have a lot of wonderful qualities. Think a lot about these. Love grows when we nurture it. Conversely when we don't, it dies.

It may take a lot of work to think about the good in our spouse, family or friends, but God put it there! Psalm 139:13-14 New Living Translation Bible says, "You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it."

Five years ago you may have sent sexy and funny texts, emails and telephone calls to your spouse, but now it's mostly perfunctory. You used to enjoy the feel of mouth and tongue all over your spouse's body and yours, finding each others multiple moan zones, playing games like, "Does this feel good? How about this?," but now when was the last time you had sex? Try again. Ignite the flame of love that you let die, and keep it burning hot. Marriage is suppose to be filled with merriment.

7) Appreciate people especially spouses, family and friends. Sexual, emotional and other types of infidelity start by the negative way we are thinking about our spouse. Fault-finding is a negative mindset. Fault-finding is a focus on what is wrong with someone. We are betraying a sacred personal trust when we stew on the bad in our spouse instead of meditating on the good. If we have a low opinion of someone, then it is hard to feel good about them and to treat them well.

The Apostle Paul writes about his friend and co-worker, Epaphroditus, in Philippians 2:30 New Living Translation Bible, "For he risked his life for the work of Christ, and he was at the point of death while doing for me what you couldn’t do from far away." Paul thanked Epaphroditus for what he did without any undertone of criticism. A fault-finding person might have wrote about Epaphroditus, "Epaphroditus wasn't too smart in the way he tried to help us. He allowed himself to work so much for other people that he got ill. It's a miracle that we got any help."

A fault-finding person wouldn't make Epaphroditus or others feel good. Instead of inspiring others to choose to be together, to experience joy, the words of a fault-finder are repelling.

Fault-finding spouses, family members and/or friends are setting themselves up to seek appreciation in someone else. We all desire to be appreciated. Some fault-finders are surprised to find themselves sharing intimate thoughts, feelings and desires with the opposite sex that lead into sexual, emotional or other types of infidelity; they failed to associate the source of infidelity in their thinking unappreciative thoughts about their spouse.

The joy of God is in believers. If we don't seem to be experiencing it, then we aren't cultivating it.

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