1338) In any relationship you have, a wonderful ability to nurture is to choose which battles you should fight and which ones you should just leave alone. As a 20 or 30-year-old (hey, maybe even a 40-year-old), I would have fought tooth and nail against some things. There are some things we never should overlook, but most of them were probably “battles” that I would have been better off not fighting. Why? Because the damage of war can be worse than the damage of leaving things be.

Paul understood the need to discern which battles to fight and which ones not to, and he alludes to this in Titus 3:9. We know there are many things in the Bible that are not open for debate, but there are choices people have made based on scripture that might be. Paul is not suggesting to compromise on what you know God has commanded us. Instead, he seems to refer to the petty and sometime pious choices some Christians make and then dictate that these are choices others should make, too.

Paul continues to say these types of “battles” are unprofitable and useless. They rarely change the minds of others and the damage that is caused when no positive outcome arrives is worse than it would have been just left alone.

Praying that we know which battles to fight and which ones to leave alone should be a priority.