Personal faults and sins contaminate living in community in addition to being destructive to the holder. Such must be faced and resolved. Honing communication skills was of utmost importance for Fred and his family but even more important was the fine tuning of relational attitudes.
Fred sought counseling, saying, “What can we do about the three women in our home? MY temper explodes in response to their critical and controlling attitudes.” The counselor challenged him with the idea that they weren’t the cause of his temper. They just revealed what was inside and directed him to Galatians chapter six which provides a God-ordained plan for lovingly and encouragingly confronting faults that can pollute body life – personal and corporate… for Fred and his three living community women.
The counselor unashamably relied heavily on Scripture, having having found it to be true, that as Joshua 1:8 claims, “meditating on the Word and doing what it says brings success and prosperity.” For successful community living there needs to be healthy, positive confrontation. The counselor and Fred examined what God through Paul said about confrontation in Galatians six.
From the New Living Translation:
Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. 2 Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ. 3 If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important. 4 Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else. 5 For we are each responsible for our own conduct.
Fred was encouraged to tear this apart with the counselor for deeper understandng. We'll examine that in the next post.
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