How to Show Up in Conflict X Sarah Jakes Roberts
How to Show Up in Conflict X Sarah Jakes Roberts
Sis, conflict is bound to come knocking, but don’t let it scare you off or push you into hiding. Instead, lean into it, embrace it, and watch as you discover the true depth of power that God has placed within you. Embracing conflict isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a testament to your strength and resilience. So, don’t shy away—dive in and unleash the power within!
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Women who make history are seldom well behaved. I know you all have heard that quote before.
It is to suggest that a woman makes history, it means that she has first created conflict or has decided to be the remedy to a pre existing conflict.
Can we go deeper? There are some of you who in your heart desire to acknowledge generational generational conflict that has kept your family from becoming whole, that has kept people in your community, people in your schools, in your friendship circles, from showing up as the best version of themselves.
The conflict is there. And when god calls you to break a generational curse, he’s asking you to be the answer of to be the remedy and solution of conflict.
All while I’m talking, I had this thought come to my mind, now we’re gonna go on a journey together.
Come with me. Everyone’s fine. I wanna look up the etymology of the word conflict because cause it helps to understand what it means when we’re studying it.
Okay. So Khan would I know means to with, right, even in Spanish Con is with, right?
It means together struck conflict fought together bought, fighting something together to strike together.
Oh, I like that because conflict suggests that there 2 opposing forces having a confrontation.
And yet the word means together to strike, together to fight, that means that when we show up in a position of conflict, that that means that there is something that has come together within us that is then propelling us to strike what is ahead of us.
So when you tell yourself that you are not someone who engages in conflict.
When you tell yourself that I am not one who enjoys what happens when we’re in conflict, what I am telling you is, like, Sis, it doesn’t have to be you enjoying the movies.
It doesn’t have to be a day in the park, but when something comes together within you, it doesn’t just come together to stay inside you.
It comes together to make war with what’s happening outside of you.
For you to deny yourself conflict is to deny yourself destiny. I’m gonna say that again.
For you to deny yourself conflict is to deny yourself Destiny.
Anything that Destiny’s gonna do in your life, anything that is connected to purpose in your ultimate position in life is going to require there to be conflict.
You are not just created to be on this earth for vacation. There’s conflict.
There is purpose assigned to your name. You are not random.
And so the question is, what needs come together in me so that god can work through me to confront your part was tearing my family system apart.
I’m gonna be praying right now, even as I am speaking to you, that god would begin to bring you together I just feel this for myself.
And for those of you who have been divided for so long, part of the reason why the enemy, part of the reason darkness and depression is so successful in keeping us stagnant is because it keeps us divided.
Regret keeps you divided. Bitterness keeps you divided, hating your past, shame. It all keeps you divided.
And as long as you are divided, you are not a threat.
But the moment you come together, the moment you become one with yourself, the moment you say this is who I am, This is what I’ve been through.
Now god, what can you do with me?
You have come together in such a way that god says, now I can use you as a weapon.
Now I can use you as a tool.
So as you come together, from that place of power, you have to be willing to go to war with whatever is going to war with you.
Deborah, who we’ve been studying all while we’ve been in this month of revolutionary power is in judges 4 and 6, and she begins speaking to the commander of her army Barack.
And she says to pro to Barack has not the lord god of Israel commanded you to go to war, go and deploy troops at Mount Tabore, take with you 10,000 men of the sons of Naftali, of the sons of Zebulon.
And against you, I will deploy to Sarah, the commander of Jabin’s army with his chariots and multitude at the River Caschaun, and I will deliver him into your hand.
You know what I love about this text?
First of all, big, bad, Deborah, is empowering other people around her to be big, bad. That’s uses.
When you get in a position where you’re comfortable in your power, where you’re seated, and your identity, and you trust who god has called you to be in any given season.
You empower other people to take their position as well.
But she doesn’t withhold what god has told her about the need for conflict in hopes that it won’t cause any freight amongst those who she’s connected to.
And said she empowers them with the details.
When you’re going into conflict, if you’re like me, there’s like fight, flight, or freeze.
Your girl will freeze in a minute because I start feeling conflicted, and I’m not exactly sure what to say.
But what this text reveals to me is that in conflict, when we stay connected to god, when we stay seated in our power, there are details about how we are to show up in conflict.
That’s so good to me because a showing up in that conflict means that we have an opportunity to say should I show up in this moment?
You’ve got that one coworker, conflicting you and your bones, telling all of your business, trying to outshine you.
You’ve got issues at home with your partner.
The conflict is bubbling and owing so much so that there’s words unsaid that fill this space in the house.
But you don’t have to stay inflicted just because you don’t have the words.
Revolutionary power is confronting the conflict, but then also hearing the details on how to confronted.
When Deborah has this conversation with Barak, she ends up finding her she ends up finding herself in a position where she’s willing to produce the fireness necessary for the conflict.
The fire is in the details.
The fire is in the desired outcome, the promised outcome connected to she’s experiencing.
And when that promised outcome becomes reality through words, then that promised outcome is how rock takes action in his life.
There are some things that you need to speak regarding that conflict.
There are some details that cannot be released in to you except that it is now time for me to address it.
And there is fire that will propel you and sustain you through the war, through the conflict, through this season connected to transformation.
I wish I could say that better.
But what I want you to understand is that when we engage in conflict, we get fueled up along the way.
We become fire up along the way.
And I don’t mean fired up necessarily in this angry way or in this way that sounds like it’s gonna be exhausting when it’s set all said and done.
I mean, you become powerful. I was thinking about Candice.
And when I was listening to her podcast in you haven’t heard the podcast with Candice Venville, you need to go back and listen to it.
Candice underscores for me how so many times in her life, she experienced conflict, conflict with her own journey, conflicts with her faith, conflict with the church, and one of the things I admire about her is she did not allow conflict to turn her away.
When I was listening to those stories about what happened to her in church about what was said to her.
I feel like I understood her so much better.
And I don’t know that I could have been as brave as she has been.
I don’t know that I would have doubled down and gone to seminary and tried to do my own work and my own journey to find my worth and value that was stripped away from me.
From a community that was supposed to support me, and yet she did.
And on the other side of it, just as she said when the podcast was ending that she found herself in her power in a way that she could have never imagined, that she was walking in the fullness of who she as a woman.
My prayer for you is that you will discover the power and conflict.
Not in you shrinking, out and you’re not rocking the boat, but that you will recognize sometimes in order to be revolutionary, you can’t just rock the boat.
You gotta turn that thing over. Trusting that you’re gonna swim to shore.
Trusting that when it’s all said and done, your faith will allow you to walk on water.
But, yes, it’s gonna create conflict, and that’s okay.
