Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

This is the seventh message in our series we’re calling Games People Play. Today our game focus turns to Family Feud.   Family Feud was introduced in the ‘70s and it quickly became one of the most popular game shows on television. The show won an Emmy for Outstanding Television Game Show in 1977.

Since then, the show has gone through a myriad of hosts. It’s been on and off the air more times than you can count. But it is once again experiencing success with Richard Karn as the host. We all remember him as Al from Tim Allen’s show, Home Improvement.

You can bring the feud home as a board game or as an interactive game on DVD. It’s fun to sit around with family and friends and just feud away. It’s fun because once you’re finished, the feud always goes back in the box or DVD case.

But when Family Feud leaves the game world and becomes a reality in our lives, it’s not so fun anymore. When feuds, conflicts, divisions, and strife exist in a family, the results can be devastating.

This morning we’re in Ephesians 4. As we open God’s Word, we’re going to search for guiding principles that we can all apply in our lives. Our goal is not to just throw out a bunch of spiritual platitudes and clichés concerning family strife. Our goal is for everyone to walk out of here with a spiritual perspective and some practical tools that they can plug into their lives. These tools will apply to all kinds of family feuds. They universally apply to conflicts within your marriage, your nuclear family, your blended family, and your extended family. These principles also apply to conflicts within the church, which is the family of God.

Let’s jump into our Scripture. Ephesians 4, starting in the first verse. “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”

Skip to verse 15. “…speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”

Now skip to verse 26. “”In your anger do not sin.”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” (NIV)

That’s kind of a hodge-podge of verses from Ephesians 4. But as we go through this message, we’ll tie it all together as we pull out four principles in dealing with family feuds.

To make it easier, we’ll use the word FEUD as an acrostic to help us remember these principles from God’s Word.

The first Family Feud principle we learn from the Bible is that we need to focus on the issue, not the individual. Let’s go back and look at one key phrase from Ephesians 4.

When it comes to a disagreement or conflict, God tells us to speak “the truth in love.” (Ephesians 4:15) A lot of our conflicts with others go wrong from the very start. They go wrong because we enter them with the wrong focus. When God tells us to speak the truth in love, he is telling us where and how to focus our energy.

Our focus should be on the issue at hand. God tells us to speak “the truth.” The truth is whatever reality that exists that brought about the conflict.

God doesn’t leave the door open to focus anywhere else. But for a lot of us, we enter into the disagreement focused on the individual. We have some personal problem with this individual, maybe even a personal vendetta against this person. And that becomes our focus. The issue at hand just becomes the excuse we’ve been looking for to jump into an argument with this person. Our focus isn’t on the truth, or the issue at the heart of the dispute. Our focus is on the individual we’re feuding with.

And if we enter into the conflict with that focus, we’re doomed before we start.   A wrong focus will never bring about right results. We can try to justify the reason we’re having the dispute. We can say all the right words to make everyone else believe the conflict is justified, but if our focus is on the individual and not the issue, we’ll never achieve right results.   We’ll never achieve right results if our focus is misplaced and our attitude is mistaken.  John Maxwell said that, “Unsolvable conflict is almost always because of a wrong attitude…not because of the issue.”

God addresses our attitude when he instructs us to speak the truth in love. It’s pretty hard to speak anything in love if your goal is to hurt another person. You can clean up your words, sanitize your demeanor, win everyone else to your side, and even convince yourself you’re in the right…but if you’re not speaking about the issue in a spirit of love, you’re in the wrong.

Realistically, you’re not going to like everybody. And everybody is not going to like you. We’re all wired so differently that personality clashes are inevitable. But God’s point to us is that it is a mark of serious spiritual immaturity if we allow a simple personality clash to consistently lead us into more serious conflict.

Family feuds exist. Disagreements and conflicts will happen. The Bible even gives us scenarios where they should happen. Conflict can be a good thing. But it will never be a good thing if we’re more focused on taking down an individual than on rectifying an issue. So before the conflict begins, we’ve got to ask ourselves, “Where is my focus? Is it on this issue? Or is it on the individual involved in the issue?”

A second principle for conflict that God gives us is enlist help. There are those conflicts or feuds where you need some help to resolve the issue.

In Ephesians 4:16, the Apostle Paul writes that, “From [Jesus] the whole body, joined and held together be every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” (NIV)

We all have a responsibility to do something. A sideline spectator is not God’s view of a Christian. God sees the Christian as someone who is actively doing his or her part in the work of his kingdom. And at times, that work may mean mediating a disagreement or conflict.

We can see this truth illustrated in another letter that Paul wrote.   In Philippians 4, he wrote, “I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to live in harmony in the Lord. Indeed, true companion, I ask you to help these women who have shared my struggle in the cause of the gospel…” (Philippians 4:2-3, NASB)

First of all, Paul had some serious guts. The letter to the Philippians that he wrote would be read publicly, probably multiple times. He was essentially calling down two church women in public. That goes beyond bravery. It’s borderline crazy!

But he urges these two women to pursue peace to end their feud. We know that both Euodia and Syntyche are Christian ladies because Paul tells how they have shared in his struggle for the cause of the gospel. Conflicts in the church are nothing new.

But Paul goes beyond urging these two ladies to work out their own differences. He enlists help for them. He asks his “true companion” to help mediate and resolve the conflict between these two women. We don’t know the identity of Paul’s “true companion.” The name is never shared. But whoever he or she was, Paul was calling this person to intervene in Euodia and Syntyche’s conflict.

Sometimes we have to enlist the help of someone else to resolve differences. Nicki and I kept Josh Morrissey this week while Brian and Cara were at CIY with our students. This was my first real taste about what it would be like to have multiple children in my house. One of the first lessons I learned is that when you have more than one child, you automatically become a referee. Josh and Ryan really were pretty good all week, but there were still those moments of one taking away a toy from the other one, one making the other mad or hurting his feelings, you parents know the routine. There were times when it felt like all we were doing was mediating conflict.

It’s one thing to mediate conflict between a two-year-old and a four-year-old. It’s quite another when the participants are significantly older than that. Getting involved in other people’s conflicts can really go against our grain because this type of mediation is a messy, unpleasant thing to do. It’s very uncomfortable. But unity and peace in your family and in God’s family are worth fighting for. Sometimes that means we have to enlist the help of someone else.

God’s third family feud principle for us is understand the ultimate goal. Understand the desired end result of this conflict. Paul tells us what the ultimate goal is in our passage.   In verse 3, he writes, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”

When we get into a conflict, we usually have an end result in mind. Our ultimate goal may be to win an argument. It may even be to inflict harm on the other person as we win the argument.

There are countless married couples who fight this way. They don’t fight fair. Their goal is to win the argument and if they have to hurt their spouse in the process, that’s the breaks. When conflict inevitably happens, there are couples who go days at a time without speaking to one another. Apparently they don’t realize that the silent treatment was invented by a kindergartner. There are husbands who demean and demoralize their wives. There are wives who withhold sex as leverage to win an argument. Neither of these are biblical, godly solutions to conflict.

When we’re involved in a feud, we’ve got to keep the ultimate goal in mind. The ultimate goal is not to win the battle. It’s not to hurt the other person in some way. The ultimate goal is unity and peace.

In yet another one of Paul’s letters, he wrote, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” (Romans 12:18, NIV)

Peace is our ultimate goal in conflict resolution. That may mean admitting you’re wrong. It may mean asking forgiveness. It may mean changing your style of confrontation and conflict. It may mean that you need to lower your voice and adjust your attitude.

Now, notice that Paul doesn’t say “peace at all costs.” He said, “as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” All we can control is ourselves. We can keep our temper in check. We can lower our voice. We can refrain from inflicting pain and hurt on the other person. But we can’t control the other person. If a person has chosen to be divisive, hurtful, mean, and vindictive, then there’s nothing we can do about it. We’d be well-advised to just walk away from the situation.

I decided early on in my ministry that I wouldn’t participate in shouting meetings. If I’m in a meeting with a person and that person gets out of control, I’ll walk away. Thankfully that has rarely happened. But I know that the only person I can control is myself. And I’m a pretty passionate person, so if I stay in the meeting with an out-of-control person, I may allow myself to get out of control. Sometimes it’s better to just walk away.

It’s not always possible, but in any conflict, our ultimate goal has to be restoring unity and peace.

The last FEUD principle we can pull from God’s Word is don’t turn the situation into a sequel.

In the last part of our passage,   Paul wrote, “”In your anger do not sin.”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” (Ephesians 4:26-27, NIV)

This is a call for immediate action. When conflict arises, we’re instructed to get proactive and try to resolve it immediately. Don’t even let the sun go down, don’t let a day pass by without trying to resolve the issue. In other words, don’t turn the situation into a sequel.

Nicki and I recently went to the movies to see the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, I won’t give anything away. Let’s just say that the movie just ends with no warning. As soon as the movie ended, Nicki sat up in her seat and said, “You’re kidding! It’s over?” I looked at her and said, “Yeah, didn’t you know there is a sequel coming out next summer?” Apparently she did not know that. She said, “You mean we’ve got to wait a year to get this thing resolved?” “Yep.”

Sequels, cliffhangers, to-be-continueds…that may work in the movies. But that’s a terrible method of conflict management. We’re not called to put things off or to allow things to fester. When a family feud happens, there is supposed to be immediate action. Our goal is The End, not To Be Continued.

Paul is just reiterating the words of Jesus himself. Jesus said, "…if you are standing before the altar in the Temple, offering a sacrifice to God, and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there beside the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.” (Matthew 2:23-24, NLT)

You can’t miss the immediacy in Jesus’ words. Don’t allow time to pass by before you try to resolve the conflict. Don’t even come to worship God until you have first made every effort to make peace with this other person. That just doesn’t leave much room for sequels.

The game Family Feud is all about trying to come up with the most popular answers to a survey question. If we took a survey of everyone here and asked, “After hearing God’s Word today, how many of you have some work to do?” I bet the survey would say, “Everybody.”

Family feuds happen. Conflict will always exist in our relationships. God doesn’t call us to avoid conflict. He does call us to handle it His way and not our way.

I know I was convicted about some things as I prepared this message this week. I don’t always live up to these standards and principles from the Bible. But that’s why there’s grace. There’s grace to forgive us when we mess things up. There’s grace to give us another shot to get it right. Most of all, grace gives imperfect people the promise of an eternal life of perfection in the presence of God.

Mike Edmisten