U-Turn Towards Peace (Peacemaker 3)

When conflict arises, it’s easy to focus on others’ faults instead of looking in the mirror. In this challenging and encouraging message, Pastor Chris Teien teaches how making a "U-turn" toward personal responsibility can bring peace, healing, and stronger relationships. Discover practical ways to own your part in conflict, pursue reconciliation, and live out the humility and love of Christ.

Link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2285086/episodes/16335694

Key Points:

1. Our natural reaction is to blame others – True peace begins when we examine our own hearts and contributions (Luke 12:13–15; Genesis 3).
2. A prompt U-turn promotes peace – Repenting quickly and addressing our role in conflict prevents long-term damage (Psalm 73:21–22; Matthew 7:1–5).
3. True reconciliation requires a transformed heart – Only God's work inside us enables forgiveness, patience, and genuine change (Ezekiel 36:25–27; James 4:1–3).
4. Choosing humility over accusation – Jesus calls us to first remove the "plank" in our own eye before confronting others (Matthew 7:5).
5. Peacemaking starts with owning your words, actions, and motives – A heart surrendered to Christ can change the course of any relationship.

Personal Stories:
 Pastor Chris shares humorous and honest stories, including a confusing experience driving in Tijuana, marital humor from Adam and Eve, and real-world reflections on relational conflict. He also discusses the struggles of dealing with inner selfishness and the freedom that comes from focusing on personal transformation instead of fault-finding.

Quotes:

• “Making a U-turn in a conflict could be the very thing that saves a relationship.”
• “It’s easier to blame than to confess—but true peace begins with humility.”
• “A transformed heart will always seek reconciliation over retaliation.”

Takeaways:

1. Heart-level reflection: Ask God to reveal where you have contributed to conflict and need to seek forgiveness.
2. Daily-life application: Practice confession first when tensions rise rather than pointing fingers.
3. Spiritual step or challenge: Surrender your pride to God and invite Him to change your heart before addressing others' faults.
4. Practical next step: Memorize Matthew 7:3–5 and apply it the next time conflict surfaces.

Scripture:

• Luke 12:13–15 – Warning against greed and misplaced priorities
• Genesis 3 – The original blame-shifting after the fall
• Psalm 73:21–22 – Bitterness clouds judgment
• Matthew 7:1–5 – Removing the plank before helping others
• Ezekiel 36:25–27 – Promise of a new heart and Spirit
• James 4:1–3 – Selfish desires fueling conflict
• Matthew 15:18–19 – Out of the heart come evil thoughts and words

Keywords:
 Peacemaking, conflict resolution, Christian humility, forgiveness, transformation, relationships, reconciliation, biblical peace, self-examination, heart change

Closing Statement:
 Choosing to make a U-turn in conflict—by confessing our part and seeking peace—reflects Christ’s love and opens the door to deeper healing, stronger relationships, and lasting joy.

Message adapted using purchased sermon material from Peacemaker Ministries

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I hope this message helps you understand and apply God’s Word. Find sermon transcripts at Well.faith, learn more at ChrisTeien.com, or come visit us at Rockwell Church in Virginia, Minnesota. If this message encouraged you, I’d love to hear from you at wellfaith24@gmail.com.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:16

In this talk that we've been having, this series on peacemaking, hopefully you've been reading the book. If you don't have the book, you can get the book at the back table there. It's like $15, I think, is what they charge us for the book, or $26 for the audio CDs if you want to listen to those. Really a great resource. And today we're going to talk about finding peace through a prompt U-turn. I know that in our culture, people get mad about the littlest things. People get upset about things, and if something happens to them, then they're quick to sue. Riddle. What does a bagel and broken teeth have to do with losing the care, comfort, consortium, and society of a spouse? Do you know? I don't know either. But um John and Cecilia O'Hare filed suit against a McDonald's restaurant claiming that a bagel broke John's teeth and damaged their marriage. Hopefully their marriage wasn't based upon the guy's smile or his teeth. They alleged the McDonald's owned was negligent and violated an implied warranty that the food sold was reasonably fit for human consumption. Further, the suit alleges the wife lost the care, comfort, consortium, and society of her husband. Now, was their marriage in that bad of shape? Was it that superficial that it was all based upon the guy's teeth? I don't know if they're just trying to take advantage of the situation or if when he broke his teeth and he no longer looked like he did before or whatever, that uh it would damage their marriage. But it seems like a lot of people don't want to take responsibility for their own actions. A lot of people don't want to take responsibility for their part in things. And sure, maybe it was a hard begel, but maybe he could have, you know, chomped into it a little slower too. I I don't know all the details, but I do know this that there are a lot of people out there that just want to blame everybody else for all their problems and want to take everything they can and turn it against somebody so it's all on them and never their fault. And you and I, you and I need to take responsibility for some of our actions. Now, sometimes we don't understand what's going on. Sometimes we don't get the communication signals. Sometimes we're in a new place and we're sitting there going, I don't get it. I went down to Tijuana, Mexico one time. Uh it was in San Diego, and I didn't have anything to do on the Tuesday night of the seminar, so I rented a car and took some other pastors, and we went down to Tijuana, in which I saw my first roundabout. That was before they started putting them all over up here, and signs that said alto. Now, looking at the form, the octagon, I'm like, that must mean stop. But the two arrows, I'm not really sure what that means. And most of the other people weren't stopping. So I'm driving the car going alto, elto, because they're just all rolling through the alto signs. I'm thinking they mean stop, but I'm not really sure. And so there's a little communication breakdown there. I guess I should learn Spanish. Nonetheless, it was a bit confusing. Now imagine if you're from their country and you come up here and you're driving out by the church land, and you keep seeing all these signs that say no you turn. No, you turn. Does that mean no you turn? Or does that mean no you turn? What does that mean? Well, hopefully the you know the sign makes it pretty clear in the international symbol that don't make a U-turn. But if you get a little confused, you might think, no, you turn, and then you'll be turning around in traffic. And it can create conflict if we don't understand the signals, if we don't understand the communication, if we don't understand what's going on. And today we want to break free from the habits of focusing on other people's wrongs and to promote peace by focusing on your own contribution to a conflict. In conflict, there's two things that I really like. I like one to know how I got into the conflict, and two, I like to know what exactly my part was in the conflict. If I can say to somebody, in this conflict, I realize that it was a misunderstanding on my part. It's partly my fault. I have caused some of this conflict, and then I can apologize for it. That would be good. That would be awesome for me to have that clear picture. But for me to just blame everything on everybody else to make myself look better because I don't want to deal with it, that doesn't really help anybody, and it doesn't promote peace. So our natural reaction to conflict is to blame others and focus on their wrongs. Now, often we are just so preoccupied by what we want and how we want it that we often will get into conflicts and say, my objective here, even though I don't know how I got into this conflict, my objective here is to win. So I'm gonna argue, I'm gonna say mean and rude things, I'm gonna do everything I can to put myself on top and say, hey, it's all your fault, not my fault. Our natural reaction is to blame others and focus on their wrongs. It's not me. Think about this for a minute. Jesus is talking to the people, and this man has an opportunity to ask Jesus a question. He comes face to face with Jesus, the King of kings and the Lord of Lords. And while it was common to ask rabbis to help make judgments and decisions, this man comes and he says to Jesus, someone in the crowd said to Jesus, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. Jesus replied, Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you? And then he said to them, Watch out, be on your guard against all kinds of greed. A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. Our sinful nature often will get us to try to grab and grasp everything that we can and say, This is mine. This is not my fault. I'm a victim and all of these things. And so maybe this guy really did have a case. Maybe this guy really did have a case to plead, and his brother was being unfair. But it seems interesting to me that if you had an opportunity to come face to face with the Lord, your first priority probably wouldn't be, hey, I need more money. So I don't know. In this passage, it's, you know, kind of vague, you know, what his motive was. But because Jesus says, watch out, be on your guard against all kinds of greed, it seems like Jesus was judging that guy's heart. And we too need to realize that our first and foremost priority needs to be on relationships with people more than stuff. And not to not to blame others. So, you know, Adam and Eve were the first ones ever to have conflict on this earth. Adam and Eve had difficulties that they really needed to deal with. And there was a lot of blame shifting that went on, a lot of difficulty. Maybe it was something like this. Maybe it went something like that. Now I'm sure that you've found yourself sometime in your life in arguments like that. And it's easy to see that the blame game always makes conflict worse. You see through the Old Testament many people that would shift blame and not take responsibility. And many times we'll get into a war of words, and we'll do everything we can to win that war of words, and we often will find ourselves alone. What's difficult though is if you want to have a relationship with somebody and you want them to be there for you and to care about you, then together you need to be careful of the words that you say, and you really need to look at yourself in the midst of all that and try to figure out okay, what did I say that wasn't necessary? What have I said that we've already had an argument over or already discussed, and you know, we asked each other and God for forgiveness. What are the things that we should just leave in the past and to move forward, forgetting the past and pressing forward to what is ahead? So Jesus knew that the blame game would create difficulty and keep our eyes off the important relationships and keep our eyes off of our own contributions to the conflict. So, in controversies like that, we can ruin our careers, we can divide families, we can create all sorts of trouble. And sometimes we are the victim. Sometimes maybe we've done some stuff and asked for forgiveness and move forward, and those people won't forgive us, or maybe other times people have hurt us and they continue to hurt us, but we really need to take a look at ourselves. Sometimes we need to do a U-turn into the mirror and say, okay, which part of this is on me? Sometimes we take a U-turn because we realize we're headed in the wrong direction. Sometimes we take a U-turn because we forgot something that we left behind. Now, when we take a U-turn because we're headed in the wrong direction, then we would say, hey, you know what? I'm off course, I'm going the wrong way, I need to turn around. And maybe that's what you need to do in the conflicts and the difficulties in your life is you need to back up, turn around, and go back and make things right. Maybe, like if you left the stove on, or you know, you think that uh there's natural gas leaking into your house, or who knows what, you left the garage door open, you turn around to go check on things. So you're headed on your trip and you're like, you know, I think I left the garage door open. And I sure don't want more mice to come into my garage, so you make a U-turn and you go back. And you don't really think you made a mistake, you don't really think you did anything wrong, but you want to make sure everything's okay. So what you do is you make a U-turn and you go back to the people, to the situation, and you ask some questions like, I think we said some things we didn't mean to say, I think that there might have been a misunderstanding here, and I just want to make sure that everything's okay here. Is everything okay in our relationship? I value you that type of U-turn is better than the blame game. It's interesting that the Bible says in Psalm 73, 21, that when my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant, I was a brute beast before you, or the New Living Translation says, when I then I realized that my heart was bitter and I was all torn up inside, I was so foolish and ignorant, I must have seemed like a senseless animal to you. No wonder Jesus says, watch out. So sometimes when we're in the mood, sometimes when we're stressed, we will just lash out at people and we will seem like a brute beast or a bulldozer. And uh get what we want at all costs, no matter how much it uh hurts people that get in our way. We don't want to do that, but we can change the course of a conflict with the prompt you turn. A course of a conflict, which means that when you turn, that then you start to make those changes. The Lord knows that driving straight ahead and emphasizing others' wrongs always makes conflict worse. Therefore, he commands us to turn around and look at ourselves. He essentially says, No, stop blaming others for this conflict. You should be the first one to turn around and look for ways for the ways that you have contributed to this problem. Turn aside from blaming and take the road of repentance and confession. It's the way to peace and reconciliation. And Jesus says, He says, Don't judge, or you too will be judged. Now that doesn't mean that we shouldn't call sin sin. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be discerning, but that means that we shouldn't lay out a punishment for someone else's wrong. God gets to do that. So there needs to be a balance there. You know, we can't be all hypocritical and say, oh, look at you, look at you, do all those bad things, and then not realize that we do some of the same things too. But the Bible says, Don't Jesus said, Don't judge, or you too will be judged. And the same way you judge others, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye, when all the time there's a plank in your own eye, you hypocrite, first take the blank out of your own eye, and then you'll be able to see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. So you and I need to think about in the midst of conflict, what's in our what's what's our problem? What is it about us that we need to take care of? Jesus is showing us the way we can turn conflicts around. Instead of indulging our habit of putting the emphasis on others wrong and sticking them in the eye with our sharp accusations, he teaches us that the shortest route to peace and reconciliation is to take a careful look in the mirror so we can identify and confess the planks in our own eye. And then, once we have resolved what's in us, then maybe we can help others resolve conflict or find a resolution to the conflict in our lives. You know, it's really hard to find true reconciliation if we haven't truly been transformed in our heart. But God does something in the lives of believers to fill us with his love and to help us to experience his forgiveness, gives us a love for other believers, and enables us to be able to be more forgiving than the Christless people that have no transformed heart. So genuine reconciliation and lasting change require a transformed heart. Has your heart been truly transformed? We talked about communion and having Jesus Christ in your heart and your life, being saved. Have you truly been transformed? Are you truly a Christ follower or are you a religious person? Do you come to church to observe or do you come to church to participate in worship? As you walk along during the day, do you say, Oh, I can't wait for Sunday so I can get close to God in church, or do you walk around saying, I thank you for this day that God is with me everywhere I go, and that I can be part of his plan, and I can be part of what he's doing, that he has changed me, he's transformed me, and while I'm not perfect, I'm not the same person I was last week, last year, or in the past. He has transformed my heart, Matthew 15, 18. But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man unclean, for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, and slander. And these are difficulties that many people are experiencing, and some Christians even experience difficulty with their thought life. They have difficulties with moral boundaries, they have difficulties with lying and slandering others. We can get victory over that. We need to confess that to the Lord. We need to pray that through and try to move forward. But James 4 says a lot of the quarrels and fights that they're coming from inside of us. They're just welling out of what's in our heart. What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within? You want something but you don't get it. You kill and covet. You cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. And when you do ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. Maybe that's the whole heart of conflict right there. Maybe it's because you are struggling with unmet needs, and God is saying, I don't want to meet those needs for you because I know it's not best for you. So you're like, I'm so mad because I don't have a car like my neighbor. I'm so mad because I didn't get that promotion. I'm so mad because I've not gotten all that I thought that I wanted. And the reason that you wanted it is because of the greediness and the covetousness inside of you. And God knows your motives, and he also knows what's best for you. And so we need to evaluate where we are at that, where our heart is in that. And there's a promise for those with a transformed heart, for those that have come to the Lord and been truly changed, to become a new creation, Ezekiel 36. God says, I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you, and I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. That is something that is one of the best benefits of being in Christ. God knows he can't do it alone. So he is forgiving, he's cleansing, he's cleaning us up, he's helping us to get our thoughts and our desires in the right place. He's given us a soft heart and his Holy Spirit in us so that we can make this happen. Not us obtaining it on our own, but us walking in it and God working in us. So Ephesians 4.24 says there's a thing that we need to do, an action step that we need to do, and it says that we need to throw off our old sinful nature and our former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes, put on your new nature, created to be like God, truly righteous and holy. And when you do that, when you're living in Christ, you will be more resilient to those types of conflicts. I'm you're still probably gonna find yourself in conflicts, but you're gonna be quicker to go back and make things right. You're gonna be quicker to be forgiving, and hopefully you're gonna be more forgiving after somebody throws so many gourds at you and you get to sleep on the rock with your new bear skin, like in the video. You're gonna be more careful to say, I've been down this path before, and it doesn't lead to a good place. I need to watch my words and be careful what I say. I need to love and care for the other person and think about their best interests. So we want to challenge you to make a U-turn. It means that you're going to go in another direction. You need to lay out a practical plan for the route that you will take, and with God's help, as you go in this new direction. You know, as you go through this peacemaker stuff, it gives you lots of good ideas of how to help others through peace. And I think that what we often find a safety net in doing is talking about somebody else. You know, then we're not becoming real vulnerable ourselves. But, you know, well, if I were to help somebody through this situation, this is what I would do. Um, sometimes I give people counseling material that's written up to help others, and I'd say something like, I know that they're struggling with a problem, but I would say, you know, if you had a friend in this situation, here are some good steps that they could take to get out of the hole that they're in. So maybe you know somebody like that, and I gave them the material, and then they can hopefully apply it to their lives. But it it creates a buffer there. And they don't want to be totally transparent, but we have so many opportunities. We have so many opportunities, and sometimes we're too nice, and we don't say the things that need to be said because we're afraid that somebody won't like it. We don't want to just avoid conflict so that there's always a false piece, but we want to avoid saying things and doing things that create hurt and pain. But sometimes you do need to come forward and you need to check your motives, you need to check your desires, you need to check everything that you're doing to help guide and direct this person, and you need to lovingly come alongside them and you know somehow let them know that they are off course, that they are hurting you by doing these things, that they are uh offending you, and that you want to have a close relationship with them, but this is the thing that's really causing you hurt and pain. And so sometimes you make a U-turn, you go back, sometimes you realize that I am not off course. It seems difficult, the road is bumpy and rough, I I feel like I'm going the wrong direction, but I know between God's word and my motives and everything that I'm headed down the right path. And then hopefully, as you get victory in the conflict with your friends, your neighbors, your family, you'll be able to spend the rest of your life together in peace. So we're gonna talk about that next week, actually. Next week, I will not remain silent is the topic of the message, and it really talks about when it's time to speak up. So the worship team is gonna come forward, but I'm gonna pray. Lord, we just thank you so much that you've given us an opportunity to see and have and to hold your word. Lord, I pray you'd help us to make it our priority. And I pray that through your Holy Spirit that you would be quick to guide and direct us, and that when we are off course, that you would, that your spirit would tell us that we're headed in the wrong direction, we're doing the wrong thing, we need to confess the sin before you, or we need to go ask forgiveness for something that we've done to hurt somebody else. But we also pray that we can help people to find peace with you. Sometimes that leads to conflict. But that's more important than anything because we want all the people we care for and love to spend eternity in your presence and enjoy your blessing here on earth. In Jesus' name we pray.