Make Every Effort To Keep Unity

I am now starting yet another book on love. This one is called If You Bite And Devour One Another : Biblical Principles For Handling Conflict by Alexander Strauch. When I met with Alex back in April he told me the key to a healthy Church and healthy relationships is love, Christ-like love. Once we can grasp this concept and follow after the example of our Messiah, our communities and our families will thrive. He then gave me three of his books on love. This one is his latest book, which was released in May. He explained to me that years ago, when he was a young Christian, he saw conflict and anger, bitterness and fighting between mature Christians in his community. He could not understand how a believer in Yeshua Messiah could behave in such a manner. This experience is what sparked a desire in him to begin studying about Christ-like love. He's been studying and writing about love ever since.

If You Bite And Devour is about conflict resolution within the body. In the book Strauch explores God's way of handling conflict so congregations may experience peace and unity. The goal of the book is to provide a better understanding of what the Bible teaches about conflict and to help believers learn how to respond to conflict according to biblical principles. At this point I've only read the introduction during my lunch break; but I am eager to start digging into this book this evening. Another thought that Alex shared with me is that the more we study and teach Christ-like love, the more we will begin to love like Christ did.

"We must recognize that every conflict is an opportunity to display Christlike character, the wisdom from above, and the reality of the gospel in our lives. Every conflict is a test: Will we respond according to the Spirit, displaying its beautiful fruit, or will we react in the ugliness of the flesh? Every conflict reveals whether we practice what we preach, whether we are doers of the Word or hearers only. Every conflict indicates the genuineness of our faith."
-- Alexander Strauch from If You Bite And Devour 

Download sample chapters of this book here: Bite And Devour



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