I recommended this book in my last newsletter. Because it also fits with this month's story—and because it is such an important topic for all of us to master—I mention it again.

Conflict is inevitable. With Joyce's help, we can at least make it educational as we learn to depend on God for justice, instead of demanding it for ourselves.

There is a difference between proving we are right and doing what is right. Never was this more true than when I faced my culinary nemesis a week later to pick up an order for takeout. Braced for the worst, the owner surprised me with his best grin when I walked through the door.

He never smiles, I thought to myself as I cautiously approached the counter.

“When you call last week, you order small orange chicken,” the owner gushed before I had a chance to speak.

“Yes, and your employee wouldn’t make it for me,” I replied.

“Small orange chicken only on the dinner menu,” the owner clarified. “Orange chicken on the lunch menu. Cannot use the word small.”

You’ve got to be kidding, I thought to myself as I stared at him in disbelief. Just when I thought I had figured out all the rules, another one tripped me up. Not ready to fall alone, I boldly asked: “Isn’t the orange chicken that you serve for lunch the same size as the small orange chicken on the dinner menu?”

“Yes,” the owner said proudly.

He doesn’t get it, I said to myself as the man walked away to retrieve my order. Our words can get the best of us or bring out the best in us; and instead of mastering the English language, it had become the master over him.

As I waited for the man to return with my food, I had to wonder: Is this how people in biblical times felt when religious leaders interpreted God’s laws with such stifling legalism that commonsense took a back seat to the pretense of putting policies before people?

Jesus experienced this behavior firsthand when the Pharisees challenged his decision to heal a crippled man on the Sabbath. “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?”

When the Pharisees did not answer, Jesus “looked around at them in anger” and was “deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts”. Like the owner of the Chinese restaurant, instead of mastering their interpretation of the law, it had become the master over them.[v]

Nobody wins when we put rules before a relationship with the people they are designed to serve. The restaurant employee lost a sale and I lost my sense of peace by challenging the authority of someone who, in the end, proved unwilling or unable to change.

It was this lack of peace that made me want to set the restaurant owner strait. To remind him that his menu was made for man, not man for the menu. Instead, I took Joyce Meyer’s advice when she said: “God can't change a person if we stand in His way … Set the people in your life free, and trust God to make whatever changes are necessary.”[vi]

The saying is true: Sometimes the best thing we can do is nothing at all as we stop taking disagreements personally and started taking them directly to the One who can work out even the worst misunderstandings for our good.

I walked out of that restaurant a better person, not because I had my say, but because I held my tongue. The saying is true: Sometimes the best thing we can do is nothing at all as we stop taking disagreements personally and start taking them directly to the One who can work out even the worst misunderstandings for our good. It is when we trust God with the conflict around us, that He reduces the tension within us as we let go of being right and trust our Creator to do what is right in His, rather than our own, time.

Quotes to Grow On