D. J. Manuel

James Dixon, a friend of mine from college, shared this recent post on Facebook.   “That 3 year old head of household asked “Does God like bad people?” I answer, “Yes God loves everybody, he just doesn’t like bad behavior.” Her: “Does God love me when I act bad?” Me: “Yes baby, he still loves … Read more

“Therefore I urge you to reaffirm your love to him. Now whom you forgive anything, I also forgive. For if indeed I have forgiven anything, I have forgiven that one for your sakes in the presence of Christ, lest Satan should take advantage of us; for we are not ignorant of his devices.” (2 Corinthians … Read more

We’ve all had to forgive others and be forgiven by others. I know I’ve been on the receiving end of forgiveness far more often than I’ve had to forgive others. I also realize I’m not very good at forgiving because from childhood I was always just told to “forgive”. You know how it goes. Chris … Read more

One of the biggest barriers to conflict resolution is hightened emotions. It’s hard to approach someone to resolve a conflict when you’re hurting inside. It’s hard to even entertain the idea of resolving conflicts when your anger is calling for vengeance. In some cases our feelings are so strong nothing a person says or does … Read more

The single greatest conflict in the history of the world is the conflict between humanity and God. When Adam and Eve failed to follow God’s commands they committed what is called sin (missing the mark). As a result, they were cursed with death and banished from the Garden of Eden. Since that time, every descendant … Read more

This is part 2 of our post addressing a great question related to conflict resolution: “what do you do when the relationship is beyond repair?” As I stated in the last post, I’m sharing four steps to consider when trying to resolve conflicts that seem impossible. The first two steps were: 1. Focus on the highest … Read more

Someone asked this great question related to conflict resolution recently: “what do you do when the relationship is beyond repair?”    Sometimes we reach a point in our conflicts that cause us to walk away angry, hurt, and unresolved. Friendships may end with a misunderstanding or maybe family members disown each other and refuse to … Read more

A teenager in our church youth group shared a conflict that escalated to a physical altercation. Without going into too many details the scenario went like this; the teen’s personal space was invaded, a request was made to correct the situation, the invader replied by hitting the teen, the teen hit them back even harder, … Read more

When God created us he gave us emotions. They are a natural part of what it means to be human. We are blessed to experience happiness and joy as well as compassion and sympathy. Whether we realize it or not, we have emotional responses to everything we experience in this life. Even in our relationships … Read more