Rick Warren - A Faith That De-Escalates Conflict (02/14/2024)
James 3:18 promises that peacemakers who plant seeds of peace will reap a harvest of goodness, and Rick Warren stresses that true children of God are peacemakers, not avoiders or appeasers. In a conflicted world, we desperately need to learn biblical skills to de-escalate tensions. Today he shares ten practical, Scripture-based steps to diffuse conflict and bring calm where there is anger and upheaval.
Introduction to the Series and Theme Verse
Hello, everybody. I am Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, pastor of Saddleback Church, and speaker on the Daily Hope Broadcast. And have I told you lately that I love you? Welcome to part 14 in our series on the Book of James where we are looking at a faith that works when life does not. And today, as we continue in our study of the Book of James, we are camping out on a verse that we looked at last week, James chapter 3, verse 18.
It says this. Those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and they will reap a harvest of goodness. Those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of goodness. James 3:18. Now in our last session I explained the six seeds of peace that James tells us in the verses right before that, that we are to plant. And he says if you plant these things in your relationships, you are going to have happy, good, strong relationships.
The Need for Peacemaking Skills in a Conflicted World
Today I want us to continue looking at how to be peacemakers in a world full of conflict. Three of the most important life skills that you have to learn in life are how to de-escalate a conflict, how to resolve a conflict, and how to reconcile after a conflict, a strained or a broken relationship. If you do not learn these three skills, you are going to spend a lot of your life miserable.
You know why? Because we are all different. God made us all different, and that means we are bound to have conflict almost every day of our lives. These are important skills that you need to learn and use literally everywhere. You are going to use them at work. You are going to use them at home, at school, you have to use them at church, in your community, in your small group, literally everywhere.
Now here is the problem. Nobody taught you these skills. Nobody. You did not learn how to diffuse a conflict or de-escalate one. You did not learn how to resolve a conflict. You did not learn how to reconcile a relationship. You certainly did not learn it from your parents. In fact, they might have been a terrible model of conflict resolution, because nobody taught them.
See, they do not have classes on conflict in schools. You never had a class on how to de-escalate a conflict, and yet it is one of the most important skills for you to be happy in life. This week, America is in its fourth week of protest, where protesters in over 2,000 cities have been protesting over some incidents where people did the opposite of diffusing and de-escalating a conflict.
In fact, it went the opposite direction. And because it got escalated, instead of de-escalated, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, and Rayshard Brooks all ended up dead. That is a tragedy. I think our entire nation needs the message that I want to share with you right now.
Encouragement to Take Notes and Remember the Theme
So I want to encourage you to take notes. You can download this outline and not only take notes on this, but teach it to your children too. Again, let us go back to our theme verse, James 3:18. Those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and they will reap a harvest of goodness.
He is talking about peacemakers. Now you know Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are the peacemakers. They will be called the children of God. So the proof that you are really a child of God, the proof that you are really born again, that you are on your way to heaven, that you are in the family of God, the proof is that you are a peacemaker in the world, not a troublemaker, not a conflict maker, but a peacemaker.
What Peacemaking Is Not
Now, before we look at how you diffuse a conflict from God’s Word, let me tell you a couple things that peacemaking is not. Okay, and you might write this down. First, peacemaking is not avoiding. And number two, peacemaking is not appeasing. It is not avoiding and it is not appeasing.
Avoiding, some people think, “I keep the peace in my marriage by just avoiding everything. I do not rock the boat. I sweep everything under the rug. I swallow it. I grin and I bear it. I just avoid the areas that cause us conflict.” That is not peacemaking, that is cowardice. That does not help at all. It does not grow your relationship in Christ, it does not build your marriage, or any friendship or anything else.
So peacemaking is not running away from the problem, or avoiding the problem, or heading the opposite direction of the problem. It is not avoiding. It is also not appeasing. Now appeasing means I always give in. Whoever I have conflict with, they always get their way. Peace at any price, it is appeasement.
Appeasement is not peacemaking. In fact, that is called codependency. When you are always giving in all the time. Jesus Christ never ran from a legitimate conflict. He knew how to diffuse conflict. He knew how to deal with it face on. He knew how to resolve it, and he knew how to restore a relationship.
The Ten Biblical Steps for Diffusing Conflict
So what I want to do this weekend is teach you what you have never been taught before in school or probably anywhere else, and that is the 10 biblical steps for diffusing a tense situation. And boy does our nation and our world need this right now. All right, get out your pencil, here they are. The biblical steps for diffusing a conflict.
Step One: Lower My Voice
Number one. Lower my voice. Lower my voice. Proverbs 15, verse 1 says, a gentle response, that is lowering your voice will calm a person’s anger, but harsh words stir up intense fury. Now you know this is true, that the louder you get, the louder the other person gets in an argument.
When you start yelling or they start yelling, then you are both going to do the same thing. The reason why the first thing you need to do in any conflict is to lower your voice, there are a couple reasons for it. In the first place, your brain does not operate at the same level all the time.
You have lower levels, which are kind of more emotional and instinctual, and you are not even thinking about it. And then you have the higher levels where you are thinking pretty sharp and pretty smart. At your highest level is your cortex in your brain. And in your cortex, that is where you have the capacity for speech.
That is where you have the capacity for strategizing, for planning, for thinking, for reasoning. When you are using your cortex, you are thinking smart. You are much more able to work on a problem and solve it creatively when you are using your cortex. But when you get fearful, or when you get afraid, or when you get angry, you drop out of your cortex and you move down into the limbic part of your brain, which is just instinctual.
At that point, you do not think straight. In fact, you think dumb, and you call names, and you get mad, and you yell, and you say things you would later regret, because you are down in the limbic part of your brain. Anytime you are in a conflict and you start to get fearful or you start to get more angry, you drop out of your cortex and you are just not smart anymore and you do dumb things.
The more angry you get, the more dumb you become. You might write this down. The more I raise my voice, the more I lower my intelligence. The more I raise my voice, the more I lower my intelligence. When you are yelling, you are not in the cortex part of your brain, you are not in the smart thinking, rational human part. You are down in the instinctual gut part.
Now not only is that one of the reasons why you need to speak quieter, lower, softer, but you also have in your brain the thing that is called mirror neurons. You see, years ago, thousands of years ago, the Bible says lower your voice, be quiet when you speak. The gentle answer turns away wrath. We did not know the neuroscience behind it.
Today we know that in your brain, you have what are called mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are the ability to feel what you see. The only reason you would like to go to the movies is because God gave you mirror neurons. And when you see somebody being kissed on the screen, you feel that kiss.
And when you see somebody getting angry on a screen, you get angry. And when you see somebody wanting to get revenge in a movie, it is not even a real story, but you feel the need for revenge, and you feel the need for justice. And so, when they are happy, you get happy. And when they are sad, tears come to your eyes.
It is not even a real story when you are watching a motion picture, but it is called mirror neurons. And because we have mirror neurons, the same is true in an argument. Whatever you give out, you are going to get back, because their mirror neurons are going to reflect it back to you.
So if you get angry, they are going to get angrier. If you start yelling, they are going to start yelling. If you get sarcastic, they are going to get sarcastic. Those mirror neurons in your brain actually simply reflect what you sow, you are going to reap in any argument.
Ecclesiastes 9, verse 17 says this. The quiet words of a wise person are more effective than the shouting of a leader of fools. The quiet words of a wise person are more effective than the shouting of the leader of fools. Shouting means you have already moved out of the higher level of thinking.
So the starting point in de-escalating any conflict is to lower your voice. Just lower your voice. Do not get loud, go soft if you want to get progress.
Step Two: Breathe and Slow Down Speech
Number two, real practical here, breathe and slow down the pace of your speaking. Just take a deep breath and slow down the pace of your speaking. The more angry you get, the faster you talk. And the faster you talk, it creates anger in other people.
Not just the loudness of what you say, but how fast you say it. And when you are rattling it off like you are a machine gun, people are going to feel offended, they are going to feel defensive. And the Bible says this in Proverbs 29, verse 11. I love this New American Bible.
A fool gives full vent to his anger. A fool gives full vent. In other words, he just lets it go. He just vomits on people with all of his anger and his arrogance or whatever. A fool gives full vent to his anger. But by biding his time, the wise man calms it down.
How do you calm down your anger when the situation is escalating at home, or at work, or on a protest line, or anywhere else. How do you bring it down? He says by biding your time, the wise man calms it down. You know the first guy who said this was Thomas Jefferson.
He said, when you are angry, count to 10, and if you are very angry, count to 100. He is the guy who came up with that idea on anger management. It is actually true. By biding your time, you will calm down. So you want to lower your voice and you want to slow your speech when you are starting to get upset.
Proverbs 15 verse 18, I love this in the New Century Version. People with hot tempers start fights and they cause trouble, but a calm, cool spirit keeps the peace. How do you keep the peace? With a calm, cool spirit. Another verse says something similar.
Ecclesiastes chapter 10, verse 4. In The Message, it says this. If a ruler, or anybody else for that matter, loses his temper against you, do not panic. A calm disposition quiets intemperate rage. A calm disposition quiets intemperate rage.
If somebody comes at you with a full force of anger, he says do not panic, do not let your mirror neurons respond that way, but slow down, lower your voice, take a breath, and slow your speech. And he says that is what wise people do.
Step Three and Four: Listen More and for the Hurt
Number three, third step in de-escalating a conflict. Listen more than I talk. Listen more than I talk. We keep coming back to this verse in James chapter 1, verse 19 because it has so many applications. James 1:19 says be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.
If you do the first two, the third is automatic. If you are quick to listen and you are slow to speak, you will be slow to get angry. On the other hand, we do the exact opposite. We are quick to speak. We are slow to listen. And as a result, we are fast to get angry.
No, the Bible says you need to listen. Okay, just slow down and listen. Proverbs 13, verse 10. You know, I am laughing about this because this weekend is our 45th anniversary, Kay and I, and 45 years ago this weekend, we were off on our honeymoon.
And on our honeymoon we started arguing, and the first Bible verse we had to learn together in our marriage, we had not got off our honeymoon before we memorized Proverbs 13:10. And I will tell you, the King James version, it says only by pride cometh contention.
But in The Message, here is what it says. Arrogant know-it-alls stir discord. Arrogant know-it-alls stir discord. Okay, when you think you already know what your wife or husband or somebody else is going to say, or you think you understand them, and you do not, you are just going to stir up discord.
That is pride, that is arrogance. And the rest of that verse says, arrogant know-it-alls stir up discord. In other words, they create conflict. Pride is the source of all conflict. But, he says, wise men and women listen to each other’s counsel.
Oh my goodness. On Father’s Day, dads, are you listening to your wife’s counsel? And vice versa. Wise men and wise women listen to each other’s counsel. Why is it so hard to hear advice from the person that you love the most? I do not know.
But the Bible tells us that we need to put our pride aside and we need to listen, but we need to listen for something very specific, and that is number four. In this fourth step of diffusing conflict, listen for the hurt behind the words.
Well, if you get this, you are going to really make progress in your relationships. Stop listening to the words and start listening for the emotions behind the words. What they are saying is not nearly as important as the emotion they are communicating.
Are they afraid? They may not be saying I am afraid, but they may be afraid. They may be depressed. They may be jealous. They may be anxious. Look for the hurt behind the words. So many times we argue with somebody in an argument over words when that is not really the real issue.
The real issue is the emotion behind the words. You need to look for the hurt, hear the hurt behind the words. Sometimes I give you permission to just ignore the words and instead focus on the mood. What are they emoting? What are they saying in this?
When you do that, you will be a lot less defensive. If you come at me with anger, then I am going to tend to get defensive. Then if all of a sudden I realize that what you have is not anger, it is frustration, I am a little bit more likely to cut you some slack, or if you are fearful, I am a little bit more likely to cut you some slack, because I can understand fear and frustration better than I can understand anger.
Proverbs 14, verse 10 says each heart knows its own bitterness. What is that verse saying? God is saying everybody has a hidden hurt. Everybody has a hidden pain. Everybody has a hidden wound.
Step Five: Pray While Listening
Do you know? There is a famous old story about two men and he said, “Are you my friend?” He said, “Yes, I am your friend.” “Are you my friend for life?” “Yes, I am your friend for your life.” “Then tell me where do I hurt. Because if you are really my friend, you are going to know where I hurt. And if you do not know where I hurt, you are just kind of a casual friend.”
Each heart knows its own bitterness. You need to stop paying so much attention to the words that people say and listen to their mood, listen to their emotion, listen to the pain behind the statements. All right. Now here is what you do while you are doing that.
Number five in how to diffuse a conflict. Pray while I am listening. Yeah, while you are pausing, and being quiet, and you are just listening, and you listen for the hurt, you pray while you are listening. I ran across a verse the other day I loved in Judges chapter 6, verse 24.
It says this. Gideon built an altar for worshiping the Lord and he called it The Lord Calms Our Fears. What a great name for an altar, The Lord Calms Our Fears. Okay, now, when you are in a conflict with a parent, with a child, with a spouse, in a protest, with an officer, with a teacher, with a boss, with a store clerk, any time you get in a conflict, okay, then you need to stop and pray.
And while you are praying, say, “The Lord calms me. The Lord calms my fears.” And when the Lord calms your fears, then you are going to be able to do those other things, like lower your voice, take a pause, slow your pace, start to listen.
When you pray, what are you praying for? You are saying, “God, calm me down. Calm me down.” You know He is the God who calms our fears. Psalms 65, verse 7 says this. God stills the raging ocean, He quiets the noise of roaring waves, and He calms the uproar of the peoples.
Look at the phrase. He calms the uproar of the people. That is an interesting phrase. I looked it up. In The Living Bible, it is translated He quiets all the world’s clamor. Do not you need that done in your life sometimes, to have all the world’s clamor just quieted in your life?
New Living translates it, He calms the shouting of the nations, the shouting of the nations. The noise pollution we have in our modern world. The Message paraphrase translates it he calms the mobs in noisy riot. That is the kind of verse we need today in all the things we are seeing and facing.
So you pray and you say, “God, calm me down, calm my fears, calm my anxieties, calm my worries, calm my frustrations, calm me down.” He is the King of kings and Lord of lords who can calm the seas. And if He can calm a stormy sea, He can calm the storm in your heart.
Steps Six Through Ten
All right, number six, the sixth step on lowering the conflict and diffusing a tense situation, seek to understand before seeking to be understood. Seek to understand before seeking to be understood. Try to figure out what they are thinking and they are saying, before you start trying to convince them about what you want to say.
Do not worry about them understanding you until you fully understand them. That is the loving way. That is the Christ-like way. That is the Christian way. Proverbs 18, verse 13. ICB says, a person who answers without listening first is foolish and disgraceful.
A person who answers without listening first is foolish and disgraceful. So often we are so busy, disgraceful, we are so busy trying to get other people to see what we want them to see, to see it our way, that we do not even stop. We do not even stop to even listen to what they say.
Make sure you understand them first. And you might even say, “You go first.” And then when they have shared what they have shared, then say, “Now let me understand it. Did I get this right?” and you can say back to them what you think they said. If you did not say it right, let them correct it.
Right along with that is number seven. And number seven is try to see their perspective. Okay. Listen to them, seek to understand before seeking to be understood. But then while you are doing that, try to see their perspective.
Philippians chapter 2, verses 4 and 5 says this. Each of you should look not only to your own interest, but also the interest of others. You should look not only to your own interest, but to the interest of others. Try to understand their perspective.
Right now we have got people on different sides of different arguments, and all they can see is their side. And this has happened all over America and all around the world. All they can see is their side. They cannot see the fears of other people.
They cannot see the hurts of other people. They cannot see the injustice of other people. They cannot see the criticism of other people. They cannot see the pain of others. All they can see is themselves. He said, “Do not just look at your own interest, but be interested in the interest of others.”
And then he says it like this. Your attitude should be the same as that of Jesus Christ. Now I will tell you, friends, that is not easy. It certainly is not natural. I am by nature a self-centered person, and so are you.
I am by nature more interested in me than I am interested in anybody else. Only Jesus can change my want to. Only Jesus can change my perspective. Only Jesus can make me as interested in what you have been through, as interested in your background as I am in my own, and protecting my kind of people in my background, in my religion, and all these other things, my family.
Only God can make that change in you, and that is why the eighth step, number eight, is ask God. Ask God to give me a clear picture of myself. That is one of the scariest things to do. God, I want you to give me a clear perspective, a clear photograph, a clear portrait of me.
One of the verses I memorized in college and I have used it literally tens of thousands of times in my life as a prayer is Psalm 139:23 and 24. And it goes like this. Search me, O God, and examine my heart. Test me and know my nervous thoughts.
You know, when you get in a conflict, you get nervous. Know my nervous thoughts. Point out in me, not in somebody else, not in my wife, my kids, my staff, my friends, my neighbors. Point out in me, anything in me that is wrong, and then lead me on the path that is always right.
Psalm 139:23-24. Memorize that verse. It is a good verse to help you to pray to God when you are in the middle of a conflict. All right. And if you genuinely pray that, “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. See if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting,” you know what, God will show you.
He is not going to play any games with you, and He will show you. How many times has God said, “Rick, here is the problem, you are the problem in this conflict. You are the problem. Or even if I am just part of the problem, here is your part of the problem.”
And when you do that, you come to step number nine. Step number nine is admit any part of the conflict that I caused. I am responsible for my part. You are responsible for your part. Whether you own up to your part or not is none of my business.
That is your business between you and God, but my business is to admit any part of the conflict that I caused because of my bias, because of my background, because of my prejudice, because of my insensitivity, because of my immaturity, because of my busyness and I did not pay attention, or a thousand other reasons that could have caused the conflict.
I need to admit any part of the conflict that I caused. Jesus loved to use hyperbole or exaggeration to make a point. In the Sermon on the Mount, when He is talking about admitting the part of conflict that you caused, He says in Matthew 7:3 and verse 5, he says, “Why do you notice the little piece of dust in your friend’s eye, but you do not notice the big piece of wood in your own eye?”
He says, “First, take the wood out of your own eye, the big wood out of your own eye. Then you will see clearly to take the dust out of your friend’s eye.” He says before you start working on that splinter in your spouse, or in your neighbor, or in somebody you work with, before you get that splinter out of their eye, why do you not get the telephone pole out of your eye? Okay, that is jamming up everything. You cannot see wisely.
That is the ninth step. And finally, number 10, this is really important. Choose my words carefully. Choose my words carefully. If you are going to de-escalate, words have the power to set a forest on fire, the power to destroy a life, we are going to actually come back to this.
I do not have to go into it, because there is a major section in the Book of James on the power of the tongue, and we are going to cover this in detail. But when I say choose your words carefully, I am thinking about Proverbs 12:18 that says this.
Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. The tongue of the wise brings healing. That is what you need to pray for. God, give me the tongue of the wise. I want my tongue to be a healing source, not reckless words that tear people up.
A lot of cold cuts. God, put a muzzle on my mouth. Ephesians 4:29 says this. Do not use harmful words, but only use helpful words, the kind that build up and provide what is needed.
Application and Closing Invitation
Now, I have gone through those 10 steps pretty quickly, but I want you to take this outline and I want you to review it. I want you to study it. If you meet with your small group this week, talk about this in your small group.
I have given you more than enough information on how to be a peacemaker in these 10 steps. Jesus once said, “Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.” You are not going to be blessed for hearing this message. You are going to be blessed if you actually do it, if you take these 10 steps and use them in areas where you have got conflict in your life.
Why do we want to do this? Because as Jesus said in Matthew 5:9, blessed are the peacemakers. They will be called the children of God. Are you a child of God? Are you a peacemaker?
Every week, at the end of the service, we recommit our lives to Jesus Christ. I do not know about you, but I feel like I need to recommit my life to Jesus Christ after just reviewing these 10 things, because there is a lot I need to work on, and my guess is it is probably true of you too.
But maybe you have never even met Jesus Christ. And if not, it would be my privilege to introduce you to Him right now. You can open up your life to Him. I want us to bow our heads, and I am going to pray a prayer and you can just kind of say it along with me, and let me introduce you to the God who saved you, created you, loves you, has a plan and purpose for your life, and will give you the power to do these 10 things that we just talked about so that you can have more peace and less conflict in your life.
Let us bow our heads.
Father, I want to thank you for your word. It is so practical, so relevant, so needed. And Lord, we need peacemakers. Of all times, we need them right now. We need them in our schools, we need them in our cities, we need them in our churches, we need them in our communities, we need peacemakers in our families, we need peacemakers at work, around the world. You have told us from your word how to reduce conflict, how to diffuse it, and then even how to resolve and restore relationships. And I pray that this week you raise up a group of peacemakers, and that you will tell us who we need to go to to make peace with, that we have been on the outs with, that we have had a conflict with. And Lord, where there is so much conflict in the world, we pray that these truths will be shared, that there could be peace where there is violence, where there is destruction, where there is conflict.
If you have never invited Jesus into your life, you say:
Jesus Christ, come into my life. I do not understand it all, but I want to know you. I want you to be the prince of peace in my life. Fill my life with your love, take out hatred, take out bitterness, take out pain and hurt, and fill it with peace and purpose. I want to get to know you and I want to follow you and trust you, and I pray this humbly in your name. Amen.