Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks.

Where we connect the Bible to your life

in the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Tanya Wilmoth.

Right now we're going through the first book of the Bible, Genesis.

Are you surprised when there's conflict in your life? You shouldn't be.

Conflict entered the human race in the fall and it's been present since the Garden of Eden, so we shouldn't be surprised by it.

But we should try to get better at it.

Here's how I think we tend to handle relational conflict. We run away from it. We avoid it. We bury it. We suffer silently until we can't. None of these things are good options because they don't address the conflict we already have.

And since we know conflict is unavoidable, we're just going to keep piling more on.

But what if we saw conflict less as an obstacle and more of an

opportunity? So working through conflict with the goal of reconciliation

pleases God. God can use conflict to expose our hearts so they can be healed. We see this in the life of

Jacob. Jacob and his brother Esau had conflict before they were even born. We read were even before they were in their mother, Rebecca's womb, the children struggled

within her.

When she inquired of the Lord about what was happening, he told her in Genesis 25. Two nations are in your womb and two peoples from

within you shall be divided. The one shall be stronger than the other. The

older shall serve the younger. Even Rebecca and Isaac had different ways of handling this turmoil.

Rebecca tucked it away in her heart and would use it later to scheme and Isaac

tucked those words away and buried them, determined to make them untrue.

And neither of those strategies had good outcomes.

When I had roommates in college, our way of handling conflict was passive aggressive.

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