Caring Well Training Part 5: Confrontation as Care

Last post we talked about the over-arching goals and art of speaking the truth in love to one another. But what about when we are going a step further to actually confront someone in our lives?

How do we begin to think about this well and do this in a way that is both

comforting and a calling to the person?

Let’s start big picture and then get practical.

We all need confrontation for a few reasons.

First, sin is deceitful and often sneaks into our lives gradually. Second, we naturally see things from our own perspective and have blind spots that, unlike the blind spots in our car, can’t be simply looked at ourselves but revealed by those around us. Third, our minds need renewing because wrong thinking or destructive emotions can lead us to behaviors that we need to untangle and replace with truth.

The gospel makes this act of confrontation with both a comfort and a call to us towards something better. You can imagine that we often need to do some work on our own hearts before we move towards confrontation of another.

Here are three things to consider:

1) Am I personalizing something that is not personal? Sometimes sin is against us but often we are gently pointing out something that is not personal to us and we have to remember that all sin is ultimately against God, not us.

2) Am I operating as “against” this person or am I “coming alongside” them as a co-fighter against the sin in their life. I am on their team and not against them.

Is this my will that I have for them or God’s will for them? Am I pointing them to truth or my own agenda for them?

After we have looked at our own hearts, what are the practical steps of confrontation?

Let’s explore:

1) Consideration— We want to pray and look at what God might want this person to see? This could be something about themselves, God, others, their life, or what is true.

Using questions here (which truly are the LEAST confrontative way to confront), we want to open two-way communication in this phase to allow the person to respond, explain and consider alongside us.

Here would be some good categories of questions:

What was going on?

What were you thinking and feeling?

What did you do in response?

Why did you?

What was the result?

2) Confession is us agreeing with God about our sin. This is what would hopefully be the result of the heart-revealing questions we have asked. We are to confess our sins one to another as a part of how God heals us. So it is appropriate for us to sometimes be part of this process with someone but we are pointing them to God’s forgiving heart towards them.

3) Commitment is the putting off process and putting on process described in Ephesians 4:22-4. Change does not just happen in confession but in looking more specifically at what we need to “put off” or “put on” in our lives by the power of the Spirit. We can be a sounding board and help to each other as we articulate what actual change would look like in response to consideration and confession.

4) Change happens over time as we put this new commitment into practice. This is where ongoing accountability can be appropriate and where time is needed. It would be great if growth was always a straight upward and onward experience but we know that it is often a

process that deepens our humility and dependence on God as we rely on Him to transform us as we cooperate with Him. He is not opposed to our efforts but rather to our earning. We are not earning anything but we are making every effort to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.

We want to always keep in mind that people change through truth and grace over TIME. We must be patient and faithful in this process and we must be open to this process in our own lives.

The hope is that we become instruments of change in each other’s lives through the giving and receiving of loving and truthful confrontation.

Lauren Turner

Lauren Turner & the CPC Women’s Discipleship Team

Much of this content taken from Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands by Paul David Tripp chapter 12