Handling Disputes in Joy City

In this week’s episode on dealing with disputes, many people think we are living in some far away land that it’s impossible to live in when you are surrounded by all this COVID, mask mandates, vax’d or un-vax’d, rising prices and homelessness – how you gonna live in Joy City. 

As the Word is spreading, some cities sent for the Apostle Paul to come and preach and teach in their city and Paul would respond by teaching the Gospel message from the beginning to the raising of Jesus from the dead and would conclude with the message that “and this salvation is now offered to all of you” and the city would rejoice. So much so, they would beg for Paul to come back each week and preach this message and the Bible says, nearly the entire City would come out.

Now envy arose, the Gentiles were glad but the Jews expelled Paul and Barnabas from the city. Now how do you handle these situations, how do you handle dissention – God always has an answer for us to follow. Paul and Barnabas took one route, they shook the dust from their feet and went their way. But they went their way it says with GREAT JOY and the Holy Spirit. You see they didn’t let what others thought about them, felt about them, said about them alter their JOY. Beloved, as residents of Joy City, our worth, value or significance does not depend on OTHERS. Hallelujah, it depends on how God values us. 

Now I’m already knowing, some of you are saying – well, I can’t just shake the dust from my feet, I can’t just pick up and leave, I can’t just take off – these people live with me, they are my spouse, my children, my parents, my family or co-workers on my job and students in my class. Whatever the relationship, I can’t get away from them – so what do I do. 

Let me say this, don’t ever get caught up on the demonstration of the Christian life over the true heart connection of the Christian life. What I mean by that is many times we hear, “hey, fake it till you make it.” No my friend, don’t try and fake it, it won’t last and then you really have a dilemma. No, no, what you do is get real with your God, Father, I’m really struggling here – I really need You to guide and lead like you did the apostles so that I can rejoice and celebrate in the midst of this chaos. Trust me, God wants to and He’s waiting to – He promises if you call He will answer, He will reveal Himself and He is not a respecter of persons, but what He does for one, he will do for all. Glory to God. 

So lets look at another example of resolving disputes from the Apostle Paul who has had his share of lessons in order to teach us. In the 4th chapter of the book of Philippians we see a dispute between Euodia and Syntyche. Now we don’t know what caused their dispute, which shows God is not necessarily concerned with the cause of the dispute as He is with the disruption of the UNITY in the Body. God desires the Body of Christ work in sync with itself, that every member of the Body functions as prescribed and performs its duty to the benefit of the Body, so anytime that UNITY is fractured, God has remedy. So here, Paul pleads rather than commands. You see, he doesn’t appeal to his authority over them, he appeals to them as their friend, a brother in Christ, giving us a glimpse how we entreat one another as brothers and sisters, not authoritarians. Then he calls the community to engage in the matter, yes we are one another’s keeper and we are to be concerned with what impacts one of us impacts all of us. We are relational beings, relationships are under attack from all sides; I mean our belief systems, COVID and mask or vaccines, families are being torn apart and over the last few years, we have clearly seen where the holes are as relationships are being ruptured daily. So Paul urges the residents of Joy City, hey lets come together and lets engage in this situation and then he directs them back to the constitution of Joy City, “be of the same mind in the Lord.”