Photo by yirsh, courtesy of stock.xchng
[This post is part of The Power of Stories series.]
I once heard someone say
God is more concerned with the journey of who you are becoming then where you end up.
I believe it to be true.
The journey of who you are becoming is the adventure of your story. When everything is going right, people can look at your journey and see your blessed. When everything is going bad yet you embrace the journey, you are blessed.
I’ve had many bad days. Conflict arose and seemed to take over my day and nothing felt like it could go right.
It happens to the best of us and there is no avoiding it, yet we can embrace it. Yes, I said we can embrace conflict… it will help you write the greatest story ever told.
Who are you today? How do you respond to today?
Without ever answering these questions we cannot become who we are to become tomorrow. Your story depends on going toe to toe with conflict.
Some people will question this thought.
“You don’t understand my pain.”
“You can’t relate to what that person did to me.”
“Why would God let something like this happen?”
I want to help us move through conflict and see it as a source for bettering ourselves.
I believe God uses conflict to mold us into the men and women he’s been planning for us to become since time began.
Two questions we ask to learn how to embrace conflict:
- What is God teaching me through this conflict?
My wife and I have found ourselves in large debt a couple times in our young lives. Since we’ve been married, we’ve had to go through trying financial times in order to work our way out of that debt. While I know it was our choices that led to financial frustration, God was using these conflicts to teach us a hard lesson.
We are learning (present tense for a reason) to not chase materialistic things. This is especially hard for me, because I came from a family of lack to become a man with some means to buy the things I wanted; but taking the kids to the park or the lake has become a higher reward than a week on a cruise ship in the middle of the Pacific.
God used our financial failure to teach us the importance of quality family time.
What could he be teaching you through your conflict?
- How can God use my conflict to help others?
Your story isn’t for you to keep to yourself, but is meant to be shared (we’ll explore this thought in another post). This means that you cannot just share when things are going good, but through the conflict in your life there is something that can be used to reach the people in the world around you.
My financial failure is a tool of advice I give to students and newly married couples. If they can learn from my mistakes, then it makes it all the while for me to share it. But how can they grow their story if I never shared mine?
Your story of conflict could help someone else write their story without it… share your story.
Conflict has a funny way of bringing out your worst, but it can also bring out your best… if you are willing to embrace it.
How will you embrace conflict and focus on the journey of today?
[Check out other posts from The Power of Stories series.]
