How To Get Rid of Strife in Your Life

If you're like most people, you've had your fair share of arguments and strife in your relationship. But, also like most people I'm sure that you'd prefer to see the level of strife go down and see more peace and unity in your relationships. Not only is that likely your plan, but it's also God's desire that we would live together in unity — but is it possible? Yes, and God's word unveils a key to the source of our strife so that we can make the adjustments.

Where there is strife, there is pride, but wisdom is found in those who take advice. (‭Proverbs‬ ‭13‬:‭10‬ NIV)

What a truth! Most of my issues with people begins with my pride getting in the way. Take a look at the current arguments that you have with your friend, spouse, or coworkers; has pride made its way in? Sometimes it could be the pride of the other person that's causing the tension between you, but our job is to focus on removing our pride from the situation not theirs.Pride is self-centered; it's all about me and "my way". If you allow pride into the driver's seat it will create friction and destroy your relationships. Here are two areas that pride can show its ugly head that if we address could bring huge peace to our world.

Pride makes life all about ME – humility makes life all about OTHERS.

My Agenda:

The pride in my agenda makes life about what I want and when I want it. If you find yourself always worked up when someone is messing with your agenda, stop and consider if maybe you need to consider the plans and preferences of someone else. Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan; the one who stopped his agenda to help someone else and was honored as the true friend. When life is about me, then everyone around me that doesn't 100% flow with my plan becomes an adversary to ME.

Instead of waking up expecting people to make your plans succeed, wake up and figure out how you can help others succeed.

My Reputation:

This is a big one for me. I am often way too focused on how people will "see" me or what people will think of me. And if we let that be the driver, we'll sacrifice the value of other people for the sake of trying to keep up our own reputation. The Bible says that the fear of man is a trap. This is huge in many areas but think about it in parenting. If my focus is that I have "good kids" that do what I say, when I say it so that people around us will think, "I'm" a good parent, then that will cause me to be more frustrated about them messing with my reputation than coaching them through their character issues. I'm going to have a hard time helping us when life is about me.

I don't write this as someone who has it figured out, but just someone on the journey. With God's help, let's begin to remove pride from the equation, and see how peace begins to rush in. If appropriate, apologize today for your pride, or forgive someone for theirs.