Let’s ask ourselves, what’s the basis of a fight? It’s not just two people disagreeing.  That happens all the time.  I mean, please, you have a guy and a girl together trying to make decisions. If you haven’t noticed guys and girls are completely different – staring from birth.

Look at what girls play with.  Dolls, horses and flowers. What do boys play with?  Guns, knives and guns with knives.   Basically anything that has to do with killing. Putting those two personalities together is going to cause problems.

So in a relationship there are a million decisions where disagreements will pop up.  Each one a potential landmine ready to blow your relationship into little bitty pieces.

But what makes a disagreement a fight? …When both parties have pride.

That pride is what makes you start to raise your voice.  It’s not about resolving the issue – it’s about being right.  It’s about winning the argument. With pride, winning comes before the relationship. 

Who cares about reconciliation at this point, it’s about proving them wrong and you right. Fights don’t have to start over important things like where to invest your 401K or who’s the best American Idol, but they can start over stupid stuff like who’s going to do the dishes or what color should the curtains be? And no, guys have no idea what the heck the color ‘taupe’ is.  It’s probably a made up word to try to confuse guys and make girls feel superior.

The fight is all about how much pride both people have during the fight.

So what do we do?

What should you do when you’re in the middle of a fight? Someone has to realize that winning at the argument is not the point – but pleasing God.

How do you do that?  Well someone has to take the lead and stop the fight and pray, out loud, about the fight. And in that prayer they have to set the example of killing their pride with humility and ask God for forgiveness about their pride and raising their voice and ask God to help you two speak to each other in love.

Now hopefully the other person will follow suit and pray a similar prayer as well. This will get the pride out of the way and it won’t be about winning the argument anymore, but now it’s about submitting to God.  It becomes godly when glorifying God is the goal. That’s how you can turn a fight around and make it into something that glorifies Him.

And that’s why our curtains are taupe, with a pattern of semi-automatic rifles on them.

1CO 13:4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. [5] It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. [6] Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. [7] It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Take time to pray: Ask God to help you with your pride, so fights comes up less often, and when they do come up, for the humility to put Him first. Today’s Fruit of the Spirit: Self-control.