There is an exhausting kind of conflict that does not come from trying to solve a problem. It comes from trying to convince someone to see you differently.
You explain what happened. You give context. You try to correct the story. You offer another example, another conversation, another piece of evidence, and another attempt to make the person understand your heart. Somewhere inside, you believe that if you can simply find the right words, everything will finally change.
But what happens when the problem is not a lack of information?
What happens when the person has already decided how they feel about you?
In “The Opps,” Bishop Omar Thibeaux uses Jacob’s encounter with Esau to address opposition, hidden hostility, our hunger for human validation, and the bitterness that can remain long after a conflict should have ended. The language of “the ops” may sound modern, but the spiritual problem is ancient. Bishop explains the term as opposition—the people who are against you, including those who may not openly appear that way at first.
The sermon ultimately asks us to look in two directions. First, we must develop enough discernment to recognize when we are wasting our energy on people who have already hardened themselves against us. Then we must look inward and make certain their opposition does not produce bitterness in us.
When Someone Has Already Made Up Their Mind
Jacob was returning home after twenty difficult years with Laban. During those years, he had experienced deception, changing wages, family complications, hard labor, and eventually tremendous increase from God. When Jacob learned that Esau was approaching, he sent messengers ahead and tried to explain what had happened.
He wanted Esau to understand his side.
Jacob explained that Laban had mistreated him and that the wealth he possessed had come after years of affliction and labor. In many ways, Jacob was trying to clear his name. Yet Bishop points out that Jacob’s explanation did not change Esau’s heart because Esau was already inclined to believe the worst about him.
That is a difficult reality to accept.
Sometimes people believe negative information about us because the information convinced them. At other times, they accept it because it confirms something they already wanted to believe.
There is an important difference between a person who lacks information and a person who lacks openness.
The first person may genuinely want to understand. A healthy conversation can help. The second person may listen to every word while searching only for material that confirms the conclusion they reached before the conversation began.
Recognizing that difference can save us years of frustration.
Discernment Does Not Mean Paranoia
This sermon does not give believers permission to become suspicious of everyone around them.
Bishop specifically warns against turning discernment into unnecessary confrontation. If certain behavior becomes a pattern, notice it. Learn from it. Understand what the relationship may actually be. But recognizing opposition does not mean running around confronting, accusing, or fighting people.
That distinction matters.
Healthy discernment says, “Now I understand what I am dealing with.”
Paranoia says, “Everybody is against me.”
Those are not the same thing.
A mature believer should be capable of acknowledging that one relationship may not be what they hoped it was without allowing that discovery to poison every other relationship in their life.
We can recognize that someone is not for us and still refuse to hate them.
We can establish distance and still remain godly.
We can stop sharing deeply personal information without becoming cruel.
Sometimes wisdom does not require a confrontation. It simply requires an adjustment.
Learn How to Say Less
The second movement of the sermon may be the most freeing: say less.
Once Jacob’s efforts to explain himself proved ineffective, the question became obvious. If Esau did not want to believe him, why continue using more words?
Bishop turns that question toward our lives. Why are we repeatedly presenting ourselves before people who have already decided not to receive what we say? Why do we continue returning to the same argument, hoping that explanation number twenty will accomplish what the first nineteen could not?
Sometimes we are not really fighting for truth anymore. We are fighting for validation.
We want the other person to finally say, “You were right.”
We want the parent to approve.
We want the former friend to admit what happened.
We want someone who rejected us to acknowledge our value.
We want an opponent to concede that they misjudged us.
Yet Bishop reminds the church that we can become spiritually and emotionally disordered while starving for something God has already given us. We do not have to keep chasing human approval when we already know where we stand with God.
That does not mean truth no longer matters. It means we learn when continuing the conversation no longer serves the truth.
Not Everybody Deserves Your Pearls
Bishop connects this idea to Christ’s teaching about casting pearls before those who will not value them.
In the sermon, the pearls represent things of value: truth, wisdom, and personal information. Not everyone has the maturity, heart, or intention to receive those things properly. Some people may simply reject them. Others may take what you shared and later use it against you.
That requires us to become more thoughtful about access.
Every person does not need to know everything happening in your life. Every accusation does not require a response. Every misunderstanding does not require an explanation. Every relationship does not deserve the same level of vulnerability.
There is nothing dishonest about privacy.
There is nothing unchristian about boundaries.
Even Jesus did not respond to every person in the same manner. Bishop contrasts Christ’s silence before hostile religious leaders with His willingness to engage Pilate, whose heart had not already been completely closed to hearing the matter.
Wisdom recognizes the difference between someone asking a question because they want truth and someone asking because they want ammunition.
Let Time Tell the Story
One of the hardest lessons in life is accepting that we may never receive immediate vindication.
A person may misunderstand us today.
Someone may believe a false version of events.
People may walk away thinking they know what happened when they do not.
Our natural instinct is to fix that immediately.
But some things cannot be explained into resolution. Bishop repeatedly emphasizes that there are situations where time will have to tell the story.
That requires faith because silence can feel dangerous when someone else is controlling the narrative.
We may fear that if we do not respond, people will assume the accusation is true. We may believe that defending ourselves is the only way to protect our reputation.
Yet there are moments when continuing to speak only gives the conflict more life.
Faith sometimes means allowing God to handle what another explanation cannot.
When Opposition Begins Living Inside You
The sermon eventually makes an important turn.
Up to this point, we have been examining the person who may be against us. But Bishop refuses to let the message end there.
Esau had a legitimate history with Jacob. Jacob had done things that hurt him, and Bishop does not pretend otherwise. Yet approximately twenty years later, Esau could still return emotionally to the offense as though it had just happened.
When Laban spoke against Jacob, the old wound came alive again.
That revealed something deeper.
Esau had never really released it.
Bishop describes this as someone living rent free in your mind.
The expression is humorous, but the spiritual reality is serious.
A person can leave your home and remain in your thoughts.
They can leave your workplace and remain in your emotions.
The relationship can end while the argument continues inside your head for years.
You replay what they said. You imagine what you should have said. You check what they are doing. You wonder whether they are succeeding. You rehearse old conversations and allow yesterday’s offense to consume today’s energy.
They are not paying rent.
But you are paying dearly for their occupancy.
The Hidden Cost of Bitterness
Bishop makes an insightful observation: someone living rent free in your mind is not actually there for free.
You are paying with concentration.
You are paying with presence.
You are paying with emotional energy.
You may sit with your family while thinking about the person who hurt you. You may be physically present in worship while your mind remains trapped inside an old conflict. You may have work to do, dreams to pursue, a business to build, relationships to nurture, and a calling to fulfill, but your mental energy remains attached to an offense.
Bitterness becomes expensive.
The sermon describes bitterness as a root because roots operate beneath the surface. A tree can be cut down while the root remains alive underground. In the same way, someone can appear to have moved on while the unresolved wound continues feeding attitudes, reactions, conversations, and relationships beneath the surface.
That is why simply avoiding a person is not always the same as forgiving them.
Distance may protect you from another harmful interaction, but only healing can remove what the interaction planted inside you.
Do Not Let a Hater Turn You Into One
Perhaps the sharpest line in the entire sermon comes near the end when Bishop says that the worst thing a hater can do is make you a hater too.
That is the real danger.
Someone dislikes you, so eventually you begin hoping they fail.
They gossip about you, so you gossip about them.
They celebrate your losses, so you secretly celebrate theirs.
They become bitter toward you, and without realizing it, you become bitter toward them.
At that point, their greatest victory is not what they did to you. Their greatest victory is what their actions produced inside you.
God does not want opposition to reproduce itself in our hearts.
Forgiveness does not mean pretending the offense never happened. It does not require us to restore every relationship to its former level of access. It does not mean ignoring patterns that wisdom tells us to recognize.
Forgiveness means refusing to allow another person’s wrongdoing to determine who we become.
Protect Your Peace Without Losing Your Heart
“The Ops” is ultimately not a sermon about becoming better at identifying enemies.
It is about becoming mature enough to know what to do once you recognize opposition.
Some people need less access.
Some conversations need fewer words.
Some accusations need no defense.
Some relationships require healthy distance.
Some situations need time rather than another explanation.
And some people need to be released from the place they have occupied inside our minds.
There is freedom in realizing that everybody does not have to approve of you.
There is peace in understanding that everybody will not understand you.
There is maturity in knowing when to speak and when silence is wiser.
But the greatest freedom comes when the person who opposed you no longer controls what happens inside you.
Let them go.
Do not spend another season paying the emotional rent for someone who should no longer occupy that space.
Save your words. Save your energy. Protect your peace.
And above all, protect your heart.
