Risen King Alliance Church
The mission of Risen King Alliance Church is to reach Rockland County and its surrounding areas for Jesus by being good neighbors, looking outward, sacrificing comfort, building spiritual friendships, and working together with other churches.
Risen King Alliance Church
Emotional Healing Week 5 (feat. Mike Plunket)
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In conflict, ask yourself 1) How can I glorify God in this situation? and 2) How can I encourage the one I'm in conflict with and bless them?
Hey there. Thanks for joining us at risen King Church for our weekly podcast. We hope you experience God's Today. Make sure you visit us@risenking.life to take all your next steps and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and youtube. Enjoy the message. Good morning everyone. So when the Bible explains your inner life, your your inner self , it uses certain descriptors. When descriptor is , it talks about your spirit and the idea of spirit is really that idea of your identity or it's the idea, especially of whatever it is that gets the wind in your sail. What gets you motivated? What inspires you even inspires from the word spirit. The soul is another descriptor in the soul is really your essence. It's the seat of your personality. It's, it's the part of you of the way you think, the way you feel, the way you choose things. But Jesus, more often than not focused on the heart and heart was what he was always going after. And the heart in the Bible is more than just emotions. It's actually that part of you that you control. It's the part of you that, that you have this degree of control over what you decide. This is what I trust at the deepest core of my being. These are the things that I trust. It's like a , it's like a vault in your soul where you say, I know that I know this. It's the place where your deepest commitments are . It's the things you choose. It's the things that, that you believe, not just that you say you believe, but the things that you actually believe that are expressed or manifest when you're tested. So Jesus is always going after the heart. He wants your heart because that's the place where you decide what you love and what you don't love. And the truth is love cannot be compelled love. It's always freely chosen, freely given it . You can make someone obey you, but you can't make someone love you. And so the Lord has come after you to woo your heart. And Jesus has explained in his teaching about the issues of the heart, and it's one of his most famous parables. It's the parable of the sower and the seed. But another way to look at this parable is to call it the four soils. And for those of us who grew up in a more evangelical backgrounds , this parable is always used for people getting saved or for people getting, you know, the gospel or something like that. And we have missed some of the beauty and the comprehensive nature of what Jesus is teaching. Because what Jesus is teaching here is he saying there are issues. They are indicators in every single person's heart that either limit them or multiply them. Either they have a limited ability or they have a multiplied harvest. And so the first of the soils that explains, and he says many people's heart through the trials of life, through the difficulty of life had become very impacted and compacted and are basically nothing more than a sidewalk. That there is such a, there's such a resistance to any truth coming in. There's such a resistance to love. There's such a resistance to freedom. And the reason isn't because that person is well, it's because they're hurt and in their hurt, they have learned to wall themselves off. No one can really get inside their self protective asphalt cement, you know, Swat, shield, whatever you might have up. But it's so hard that even Jesus said that when the truth, the love of God comes in, it just lays there cannot penetrate and then the devil comes. He says as birds like birds come and just eat the seed. So that though the seed has been trying to penetrate the heart, the hardness of the heart does not allow it. Then the second, the second heart issue he says, is it , some of us have this rocky soil, so in the rocky soil there's a shallow bit of top soil . There's a little bit of a little bit of soil for something to at least plant a seed in and it grows up because, but because of the rocks, because of all the doubts and the fears and the wounds in the betrayals and everything else, this soil never allows anything to really take root. So the person has amazing infatuation, but no love. They have a lot of passion, but no patients. They have an incredible high, but it's followed by an incredible low because as soon as whatever the truth is, is uncomfortable, it dies in them whenever it's no longer convenient to love. They leave. And then Jesus says as the third soil, and this third Solon is a , is one where stuff can grow. But the person in their heart have weighted things that are basically weeds as ultimate. So much so that he says they are the cares of this world. Their money, they are things that you believe will give you security that you take as ultimate. So you put all of your investment in the soil of your heart into things. Give them wait , give them power over you. But then he says, but all they do to you as tear you apart. So much so that it says the weeds actually choke out any good plants. Do you understand what it , what he's saying there is, he's given you such a beautiful illustration of the heart. You see your heart gets to decide what matters to you is he ? Nobody worries about things that don't matter. You worry about something you care about. You worry about something that you have invested in so that the worry is actually revealing the idolatry so that even a good thing, your family, your children, your marriage, your job, any of those things, even those good things can become idolatrous when they become your cares and your worries and your anxiety because they will choke off the ultimate thing, the love of God, the reality of God, the truth of God, the power of God, the protection of God because you see God will never resource your idolatry if he's the means to another end , he won't be the means. He'll only be the means if he's the end. If something else is the end and you're saying, God, come assist me in this, God, come protect me in this. If something else is the ends, then that's your idol and he won't give your idol success. Here's the problem. There's only one soil that has a multiplied harvest, but it's such a beautiful thing. It says, once you have , your heart has been healed once your heart has been opened up, once you've dealt with the the harden places, once you've dealt with these shallow places, once you've begun to deal with these worries and cares and say, wait a minute, those aren't ultimate and I'm not going to make them ultimate and the heart gets opened up, he says, then the seed comes in and once the seed comes in it can multiply a hundred times. He said it can multiply 60 times, it can multiply 30 times and here's what he means by that. You can have a hundred small blessings and then in that same heart you can have 60 medium blessings and then you can have 30 huge blessings because look, you can't handle a hundred huge blessings. I mean a hundred oak trees is a lot of oak trees and one heart, but he sang. He will give you all the little things. He'll start giving you all the medium things and he'll give you the great big things. Now track with me on this just for met. Ashley said something that had triggered my thinking is using that, that passage in Hebrews 11 six it says, the Lord is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him. You know, and and what you have to begin to understand, he's the reward. You see, if something else is the reward other than him, he has to withhold it from you because then the reward is your guide . I, let's take that a step deeper. This is hard stuff, friends . Look, the reward in a friendship is not what the friend can do for you. The reward is the friend . The reward in your marriage is not what your spouse does for you. It's your spouse. And when we get screwed up in that and start saying, well, the reward is what you do for me. Now you are basically just using people and God is not codependent on you.
Speaker 2Oh ,
Speaker 1he will cut those cords and he will say no to your idolatry because he says, if I'm not your reward than what you're praying for is your reward. And it's a competitor to me.
Speaker 2Well now me .
Speaker 1Come on. Are you tracking with me on this? So in other words, let's just, let's make this really practical. If I'm your friend, I'm your reward.
Speaker 2Cool .
Speaker 1Just just keep that in mind.
Speaker 2[inaudible]
Speaker 1can you see that is so hard for any of us to say because it sounds arrogant even though it's true. It sounds arrogant because we are so unsettled in our souls. Wow . As to our own worth, our own identity and our own value that we're basically saying, oh, please be my friend and then I'll be somebody. And so then I look for people to be friends who will make me somebody , which again is a revelation. Friends, you see what Jesus is trying to say here is he is all about cultivating your heart. It doesn't see if one of the problems is you may have allowed in a place the seed of the Gospel to come in and say, I want a relationship with God, but you still have a multi issued heart. There are places where you have hardness and you say, okay God, I will receive this, but don't ask me that. There are many play people say, I love the love of God. I love the grace of God, but don't touch my sexual life. I love the love of God, but don't tell me what to do with my money. I love the love. I love God, but don't tell me what to do in my time, and you see that's a path. Then there are other people that there are, there's evidence is that they have rocky soil because they get all excited and they're all gung Ho and then as soon as it gets tough, they are , they lose their commitment and they stopped doing it. When people say to me, Oh, I used to read my Bible all the time, you're a shallow soil person. Oh , I used to pray. You're a rocky soil person. You're passion is superficial. Do you know how hard it is to have a relationship with a path person? How hard it is to have a relationship with the rocky soil? Because today you're all, you want me to come with you and as soon as it gets tough, you quit. Now what am I going to do? How can I have intimacy? How can I have closeness with somebody who's so passionate, but I know they're going to lose it? How can I trust them? How can I depend on you? Understand Jesus isn't pointing out these three swells to take away something good from you. He's pointing out what is limiting you, what is keeping you from greatness and fullness? Everything he wants for you is true. Success, true happiness, what he wants, his spiritual maturity, you wants you to know fulfilling relationships. But if the soils are not cultivated, they will continue as pass shallow and weeded. Weedy. So look, there is no way to walk with Jesus and not experience change. The change goes from the same change that goes from a seed till full grown fruit producing plant is change. Change, change. But notice this, he never says it's a microwave change. He gives you the gardening, a cultivating. He's cultivating your heart. That doesn't happen overnight. A path doesn't suddenly become a river. The rocks, I mean he was describing Rockland county. Have you ever noticed around here? Everywhere you look, there are walls that came out of the ground and you think they got them all to you. Dig again. I mean, he had this takes time. This takes, you know, and this is the beauty of Jesus. He knows where the rocks are. He knows how many there are and he never gives up on you. He's willing to spend the rest of your life taking the rocks out to make your soul fertile in , to give you deep roots. But this one is so dangerous, that third soil, because there's good soul there . Things grow there, but you have not guarded your heart. You have not allowed your heart to say what is truth and what is a lie. And you have allowed things that are not ultimate to be ultimate. When you treasure what is not ultimate, it will disappoint you, but it also takes up space that other good things could have. And so Jesus, Jesus Disney isn't somebody who just plants a seed and then then just says, okay, I'm just going to plan it and let it go. Now Jesus is cultivating your life. He's, he's planting the seeds, he's fertilizing it , he's watering it, he's weeding it. One of Lisa's favorite things for mother's Day has always been that we buy her annuals, all these flowers and all of this stuff, but her favorite thing is that we do all the work, which was great when I had a son and a daughter at home, but now it's just me and I hate the garden. I do. I tell you, I want to live in a condo. She wants a garden. She wants to , so I , so I get out there and I have to get my hands dirty. I , I got a doctorate so I don't have to get my hands dirty, but do you know what? As soon as you get it , you get it all cultivated. You get it all laid out, you water it, you do all that stuff and the very next day we'd start coming up immediately and then you have to pull those suckers out. I hate that because you've got to cultivate it. You can't just, you can't just plant it and then have it come to full fruition and it is a joy when all the flowers bloom and the colors are beautiful and all of that, but you have worked every step of the way for that to happen. Wow. A lot of people think I , all they have to do is plant a seed of a relationship. I just give a little bit of relationship and it's just going to be so full and it's going to be so rich. I remember this good old boy in Mississippi. He came to me because his wife was leaving him and she goes, he never says I love you. He never tells me one thing good ever, and we've been married 30 years. He looked at her and he said, I told you I loved you on the day I married you. If I change my mind, I will let you know. See, he planted it. Any thought, I don't need to cultivate it. I don't need a weed it. I don't need to water it . I don't need to do anything. It just should just yield fruit without work. There's a hardness of heart. There's a shallowness of soil, there's a weed infested garden, and that describes, you. See, none of us are immune from any of those soils. We have some good soil . So at Church we show our good soul , but at home with the people we know the most, sometimes we start to get revealed. We start to manifest where the bad soil is. Here's what I want you to grasp. The troubles in your life and the conflicts in your life are not producing the manifestations. They are revealing the character. Floss. Yes , they are revealing the soil. They're revealing the hardness of heart. They're revealing. So it is not to condemn you, but to serve you that the Holy Spirit does this. Now, Jesus is goal for you. The Spirit's goal for you, it's maturity. He's going to do whatever it takes to make you flourish, to make you great, to make you fall , to make you fruitful. So these conflicts that are coming on, you cannot resist them unless you want to stay a path, a shallow soil or a weed infested soil . It's your decision. That's your heart. You can decide, no, I don't want to feel no . I'm going to keep living like a rollercoaster up, down in all around. Now I'm going to keep living with all the cares in the world and keep complaining that nobody understands me. Do you know why? Why people who really would really worry have no one really in their life? Because you can not worry as much as they worry.
Speaker 3Yeah .
Speaker 1You can't feel what they feel, so they're always alone even if other people care about them. Because anxiety is something that separates you from everybody. It is something that choke shoe . Jesus said, it chokes the life, the spirit out of you , and so we have to begin to realize that these trials, they're not. They're not there for us to go. You did this to me. You made me angry. This situation did to this. This to me. It made me worry. Know that that conflict, that trial is Jesus . Cultivating the hard places, the shallow places in the weed , places of your heart, and until you start to see it's not somebody else to blame, you will not know the victory. But once you realize there's a holy spirit standard for your heart, when you are full of the Holy Spirit, you are self controlled. You experience peace, even in trouble. You experienced love. Even when people are hating you, you experience a joy because it's not in the circumstances. You're appropriating a joy from heaven, which becomes your strength because you can be sad, but you can have a joy because you know this is not the end. This is not it. Here's what I have learned, that when I face these conflicts, I have to face them from a perspective of faith that before I ever enter into the victory of it, I already have the victory before it starts. Not because of my victory, because Jesus has already conquered sin and death and his victory is my victory. But you see, if you go into it saying , Lord proved to me that you're victorious, Lord, show me that you're powerful. Show me that you love me. Show me that you answer prayer than the enemy will be able to accuse you every step of the way. Do you see this trouble? That can't be because he loves you. You see, if you're in the holy spirit and you're yielded to the holy spirit, every conflict is his curriculum to advance you. But if you're not, then every conflict is just random and unnecessary. But you can stand up tall and you can face any conflict because you as a believer, you are in Christ and in Christ. You're in his victory. So here's, I'll give you a very personal way that this works. Because when I face a conflict, I do not deny the reality of the conflict. You do not say something doesn't hurt when it hurts. That's just a lie that will not defend you. God will not bless. Lies Double Only blessed the truth. So I, I heard early in the morning that morning that Lisa had cancer and immediately it was a punch to the gut. I mean , it was one of the hardest things I've ever most shocking took the wind right out of me. I knew we were in for a trial. I knew this was an unexpected conflicts . So once I got her settled into her hospital room, I said, I need to go out in the hall for a minute to call the kids. But what what I was really going to do was I was going to go out into private place all by myself and say, Lord, you got this Lord, the victory is already yours. Lord I, I'm not gonna deny how much this hurts. I don't deny how painful this is. I don't, and I said all of this through tears , but my head was up and my back was straight because it doesn't matter if it's cancer, if it's, if it's financial, if it's relational, it doesn't matter what it is. Those are the moments where his victory is most precious to us, but you have to stand up to it and say, God, you've got this. The victory is yours and because I am in you, your victory is my victory. And you see, then you have an overarching thing as different aspects of the trial comp. Because most trials are nuanced. Yeah, most conflict or not simple, you can't just simply wish it away. You have to walk through that fire. You have to walk through the storm. You have to walk through it. But when you get to the other side, you will say, I was right to say the victory is yours, but you can waste every conflict because if you're keeping the hard path of a heart, if you keep in the shallow soil of a heart, if you keep in the weed, we , you know filled heart, then you will not, you will not learn from the conflict. And here's the thing that I've learned, and especially if you run away from it, our God is a stubborn guy. He will take you right back where you left and he'll say, do it again. Do it right this time. Because see, his curriculum is carefully designed. It is the way through. It is not a way around. It is not a way away. It is a way through and until you're willing to go through the cultivation, we'll stop right there. Now he will convince you you need to be cultivated because he will show you how stupid you are. Are you hearing me? I'm saying stupid in the nicest way. So , so if , if , if the conflict is his cultivation of the heart, then what we have to begin to realize is there's purpose. Yeah. See, a lot of us make the mistake. Why is this hat that's a reason you see you're the child. He's the father. Guess what? Fathers have reasons children don't understand fellow man
Speaker 2[inaudible]
Speaker 1some. Some children need to be seen and not heard.
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1So if you keep asking an infinite God why in your finite mind, he will not answer. But if you look for his purpose and you stay on his purpose, which is always clear, then you realize that every trial, every trial is working in a way you could not work on your own. See, he has things for you that you can't get to by yourself. You can only get there if you trust in and you walk again. Listen what I'm saying. These are matters of the heart. So you can fake behavior. You can't fake your heart. So when we began to say, okay, Lord, I'm in conflict and I want to be healed, then the standard of a healed heart is you look at the conflict and you say this, there's something bigger here. So how can I glorify God in the midst of this conflict? Now the unhealed heart says, how do I get out of this? How do I win this? How do I make them know they can never treat me like this again? But the the yielded heart, the heart that is open to the seed of the truth of God and the love of God in the freedom of God says the Lord. This is a time where I can show that my heart belongs to you and since my heart belongs to you and it's settled who I am in you, then I can rise in this conflict and say, Lord, I will glorify you. Yeah , well, the way that you glorify him according to Jesus is you serve. So you asked the question, not how can I destroy this person who would just hurt me? But how can I serve the person who's hurt me or the people that have hurt me? Because you see whatever happens in this temporal crisis or conflict has not changed your eternal destiny. It has not changed your eternal worth. It is not. It is not damaged your intimacy with God unless you let it. What God is often doing is he's often showing you that you have treasures here on earth that other people touch, that other people mess with, and then suddenly you're like, God, why did you let them do that? Why did you let them take my job away? Why did that relationship in God, why didn't I have enough money for this? Why didn't this happen? And what he's doing is he's saying, well, you just hear yourself. You're not serving anybody but yourself. That's either a hardened heart, a shallow heart, or we'd heart and which is it that's gonna actually multiply and get the harvest. It's the heart that yielded. It's the heart that's cultivated the heart that can receive the seed because he wants God is your treasure in these other things or not. Then he can give you all those other things because they'll never be your treasure, but he cares to withhold. He has to. He has to inhibit. He has to limit what you can have and what you can do until you learn that he's your treasure, not those things, and you will know it. When somebody touches your treasure and you go to God instead of go at them. When somebody touches something that matters to you and you sit there and think and think about, how can I serve this person? How can I love this person? Instead of thinking, how can I kill this person? Don't tell me you haven't thought that. If it wouldn't hurt my car, I would've killed many people. I mean they make me so mad on the, I mean that's not even anything. I mean I, I go crazy when they run the red light and make me have to wait. I mean we are egotistical people. We don't see higher purposes. We don't see that. Even that crazy driver is God's saying, look, you've got a problem. You have a whole lot more stress in your life, then you're dealing with it and you're taking it out on the traffic. Here I got a lot on forgiveness and all of a sudden you're just yelling at drivers. See everything he's doing, he's cultivating in you a heart that can receive truth and, and I'm not saying glorify God so that you have legalism. I'm saying when you, when you see you don't really care about glorifying God, it's telling you where your heart is and the gap between where your heart is and where it can be is what God wants to bridge. He doesn't want you just to restrain anger and depression and worry once you free of it and until you will acknowledge where the rocks are and where the path is and where the weeds are until you knowledge that he can't heal those places. Are you with me? Three of you. I'll keep going. Notice a servant's attitude is through out the instructions of the Bible. It says, carry one another's burdens if even if someone is caught in a sin, what happens to many of us when we see someone caught in sin, we become rabid dogs , uh , for their , for the them to get it. But here's what the Bible says. When someone is caught in sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. I've seen very little gentleness. I've seen a lot of anger and a lot of hate, but again, I didn't, you know, again, I didn't make this up. This is the revealed word of God that says, even if somebody sins against you, you are there to restore them gently. You understand that can't be doing that . That cannot be done naturally. I don't want to restore them. I want to relieve the planet of them. Some of you, some of you aren't in touch with how mad you really are. You're you . You're nice on the outside. Nice is another path. It's another path that can't be penetrated. People that are dead, everything's about being nice and they're not being real. They're not being honest. They're not being truthful, just being nice. And then you hear what they really think and you go, Whoa, whoa. You don't understand this thing Jesus is talking about. You can't escape it by being nice. You got to be healed. You gotta to be healed and and the junk in you has to come up, and that's what the spirit uses conflict for . He's cultivating you in such a way that even the roots of the weeds come up. Set an example, Paul says, for believers in speech, one of the things the Bible says is if you can control your tongue, you can control everything in your life, but if you can't control your tongue, then you're not in control. Someone else's in control. So what do we do about this? Well, thank through. Then what does Jesus, his relationship goal is? Relationship. Goal is he already knows who you will be. So everything he's doing, every conflict, every trial that you're facing, every even every annoying person he allows into your life is a part of the Holy Spirit's curriculum to get you to your future self. You're already a reality to him. But here's, here's what you have to grasp is that you're not lovable. You're not lovely. You're not. And until the day you recognize you're , you're evil, you're sinful, you're broken. You know, you're a Christmas tree already cut off from the stem with a whole lot of ornaments. Some of you more expensive ornaments than others, okay? But because he loves you, you are lovable because he loves you. You're lovely. See, he makes you lovely. Not because you are, are , you deserve it or you performed for it. He takes all that pressure off of you and he says, look, you are lovable because I love you. You are lovely because I love you. Huh ? You see that might be hard for men. It's like going, I'm lovely. I Dunno . That's a tough one. Maybe. But the idea is that there is something so powerful that he's doing to a broken person and it is not based on any conditions in you. It's based on everything in him so that now I can see, I don't have to have you say I'm this or I'm that or prove this to you about this or that. I already had it settled in him. The one who is truly lovely has made me lovely. The one who is love, does it just have love, but his love loves me. I can never say again, I am unlovable and so when I come into conflict, I don't come to prove him right. I don't come to prove that I'm smart or that I have value or you should never treat me like this because I want you to know how important I am. Rather I'm coming into conflict because it's part of the curriculum and that I can begin to be a servant in the conflict. But if I'm not healed in my motors , we'll be egotistical. See this, I really want you to go deep with me on this. You know why you become egotistical is because nobody takes care of you because nobody thought about your deepest needs. So you learn to get your own needs met. You became the broker of your own needs because no one else was meeting those needs and we become more egotistical in deprivation. Now you might've had all the clothes and you might have all the money or you might've had all this, but what you long for with this deeper sense of acceptance and security and safety and this deeper need for someone saying you really have significance and I want to spend time with you cause it's worth it kind of things. And when you have deprivation through neglect or abuse or whatever it might be, then the ego has to rise up. It comes up because it no one else is protecting you. No one else is providing. So you become egotistical in order to meet even legitimate needs in illegitimate ways. Pride is, is, is connected to that. We only have pride as long as we think no one will take care of me but me, I have to promote me. I have to make people make sure people know I'm something or I'm somebody. That's pride. But it all really is based on fear. So you see fear, pride, ego, they all get stoked in conflict. How can you say that to me? How could you lie to me? How could you treat me like this? You see all of a sudden all of those, those rocky places come back. All of those we'd filled places come back and you're beginning to say, I have got to take care of me. I can't let people walk on me. I can't let people take advantage of me. I got to get to the front of the line.
Speaker 4Yeah ,
Speaker 1no, I just told that really well, and you're just sitting there. Let me, let me, let me tell you what this means. You can't just say, go away. You Go, hold on . No , you can't just say, I'm not going to be prideful. Not going to be prideful .
Speaker 4Okay ?
Speaker 1You have to have something that makes those unnecessary. My God shall supply all my needs according to what his riches and glory in Christ Jesus, guests who I'm in, I'm in Christ Jesus. So then suddenly that the , all those three bad soils start to change because I began to believe that someone really cares for me, that someone even in this conflict has a purpose for me. And even though others may not see me like he does, he sees me this way and I will see me this way. And guess what happens when you don't need pride? You dismissed pride, but until you feel like you don't need it, you will keep it. Even as a Christian, even as a pastor or a missionary, whatever it is, until you realize, I don't need to take care of myself. I have a father who is taking care of me and listen, when you're taking care of you, it's always out of fear.
Speaker 4Wow.
Speaker 1It's the fear. Nobody else sees what I need. No one understands what I'm going through. No one really knows me. And so until love comes in to that heart than fear and pride and ego continuum and you can immediately see when you get in conflict with somebody, is it going to be ego or does the servant heart of Christ come out? See if the servant heart comes out, you're not ignoring the fact we're in conflict. The truth is the closer you get to anybody, the more usual conflict is the more normal it becomes. And so the question is, will I, will I really have in this conflict the servant heart? Do I want to make the relationship go forward? Do I want to help the other person grow? Do I? How do I have the humility to say and to believe that my perception of life might be wrong? See, most of us when we're egotistical, way of looking at things is the only way to look at things. And so we are immediately convinced, which is pride, that we have the right answer and we have the right argument. And so when you disagree with me, you're disagreeing with a deep seated ego issue.
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1So Jesus says, the servant looks at the log in his own eye before he ties to take out the speck in somebody else's eye. Now the truth is in this parable analogy, Jesus, it might be that you just have a speck in your eye. It might even be the same spec somebody else has in their eye, but because it's right in your eye, it's a log because it's big, but you're not looking at the log. You're not looking at the SPEC . And you might even be trying to help that person with their Spec, but because you haven't taken it out of your own eye, you basically a hypocrite trying to help somebody else. I mean , you think about those of us who were in marriage who yelled and screamed when our spouse did a certain thing and then a month or two later we did the exact same thing and then we it justified by saying, well , you did it. And they go, well, you yelled at me. I mean, we're not getting any. We sound like children and our most important relationships because we haven't followed Jesus' teaching. If I have a SPEC in my own eye , I have to take it out because it becomes a log. It's blocking. It's , it's interfering with my perspective so that even as I'm trying to help other people, I'm not helping them. I'm hurting them.
Speaker 2You Bet .
Speaker 1Plus, the truth is the one person you have control over the SPEC is you. Well, what that looks like is this. You start attacking the person instead of attacking the problem. How many times and close relationships, family, business, even in marriage, how many times did we go after the person and not the problem? Now, here's what I grew up in a family of fighters. I mean, man, we fought over everything. It was blood sport in my house, but it always became about the person because as soon as you ran out of argument, you go your fat and they go, well you're stupid. And then they'd go, I can lose weight, but you'll always be stupid. And I mean , it was just, it was just horrible. Kind of just, Ah, and you know what would happen with that? We never got any better because when you attack a person, they attack you back. So you're not dealing with the problem. You're just, you're just venting the energy that whatever the situation or the words provoked in you and what God wants to do is he doesn't want you to waste your passion. You only have so much. And he doesn't want you to waste your, he wants you to direct it to advance you forward. So at least, and I began to think through how do we, you know, what do we do to walk through our conflicts because we see things very differently. And so one of the ways that we started to say is how can we say the problem and not attack the person? And one of the , I'll give you the four things that are kind of a template or framework for us advancing in our conflict. First we say, I see you doing this now that you're not attacking, you're just saying, here's what, here's what's happening. You're being real. You see, the Bible says, speak the truth. Now if you speak the truth without love, it's not truth. And as you speak, you love without truth. It's still not truth. All right ? So you've got to speak the truth in love cause you can't just keep going. Nothing's wrong. Nothing's wrong when something is wrong, because you'll blow up over something stupid. So the, so the, the wise thing here, the healed thing is to say, here's what I see that's happening. Here's what's happening. And , and it affects me like this. See most of us go, it's just wrong. Well, now you've made a universal moral statement to which they have to respond defensively instead of saying, wait, this is personal. This is how it affects me. Now, see, you are giving the person who loves you a chance to love you instead of attacking them, you're saying, this is how it makes me feel or this is what it does to me. Now, the third one is so important to me. Lot of people are great at telling you all your problems. A lot of people can say, I've been in church my whole life there in 30 some odd years of being a pastor. I've had tons of people who said, there's a problem here. There's a problem with this. There's a problem with this. I don't like this. I don't like that. Let me tell you something. There is no gift to being a person who knows everybody's problems. Jesus said, blessed are the Peacemakers. Just Problem Pointer outers are not peacemakers. Do you know what a peacemaker , they bring a solution. They're invested enough to say, I see this and here's how I can help with this. And some ways what happens is we just want to blow off steam. We just want to let our egos out. We don't want to solve a problem. We just want you to hurt like this hurts me. And as long as that's true, then you're not allowing the spirit of peace. You're not allowing yourself to become a peacemaker. If you're great at telling everybody what their problem is, you're the problem because you know what? In this fallen world, there will always be problems and if all you are is somebody points them out, guess what? You have a weed field heart , and if you have no solutions, you're just dumping responsibilities on other people that are not responsibilities. Please hear me in this. We can change the world by being peacemakers.
Speaker 4Okay ,
Speaker 1can I, I'll give you an illustration of this. We could have in this room a thermometer to that tells us the temperature, but rather we have a thermostat and so that thermostat tells the temperature connects to a power source that can change the atmosphere. People who just tell problems and nothing but the monitors. But I love it when people realize Christ has given them the power to change the atmosphere that you can attach to. You say, look, this is uncomfortable, but I know who can make this powerful. And instead of being a thermometer, you become a thermostat and then it takes this , are you tracking with , I don't want to waste this on, you know , so here's, here's the thing that I have found most important, all of this is that in conflict, I have to realize my perception might be wrong if I don't ask that question, I will not learn. I have learned so much from my wife and it is just annoying how right she is all the time. And I have learned so much. I've come in just with a head of steam saying we're going to do this, this is going to happen. And she goes, have you ever thought about this? And I go, Oh crap. Yeah. I just saw a knowing that she'd Cz sinks cause cause that just if I'm egotistical now I'm going to , I'm going to make all kinds of, you know, mental exercises to prove her wrong and make me right. But if I'm the servant, I go, Oh thank you honey. You just have added to to the wisdom of God in my life. Do you understand? When God gave out wisdom, he gave a portfolio, diversified in all of us in culture, in gender, in all kinds of different personalities and all of that so that not a single one of us has all wisdom until we come together as one body in one family together and we learn from each other because apart from each other, our perception is always limited.
Speaker 4Yeah .
Speaker 1See Alvin Allen likes this. So I'll just keep going. So Le Again , this is the evidence of a changed heart is that you begin to realize that you have to make it safe for the people who love you. For the people that are committed to you have to make it safe for them to criticize you. You have to make it safe for them to correct you or to instruct you. See there are many of you that we all know how screwed up you are, but we're not going to tell you cause you're not going to receive it. I hear it this way. I would tell my husband this but he just would fight with me and argue with me and there's no point in telling them . I would say this to my children. I would say this to my parents, but there's no point cause they are just going to be defensive. So why waste the energy you see if in your life, no one can speak correction to you. You are a path. You are a hardened heart and see because when people get near you, you just put the walls up and it's dangerous because you'll actually begin to hate those who love you because they don't see you like you see them. I remember a guy that I was mentoring and disciple I really liked. This guy was really, there were many things about them that were very, very likable. But as we went below the surface, I could see he was damaged. He was very hurt. He was very secretive. There was secret shame in his life. There are all kinds of things, and as I got close to say, come on, let's, let's get the healing that you need. He put up a wall and he began to slander me all over the church because now see, you can't be him. It's gotta be me. Can't be that he needs correction. It can't be that he needs instruction. It has to be somebody else's fault. If you're not somebody who can make space for people to instruct you or correct you, now look, when they're instruction , you may be just like feeling like there's fingernails on a chalkboard. Ooh , but see, that's you. That's you. Being willing to let your heart be cultivating that. You'd be willing to let God put, put some instruments into there and get the weeds out because he never ever does it to embarrass you. He only does it to heal you. Now, am I making sense to you? I'll give you, I'll give you one more practical one. Often the people who love us speak feeling to us and we give them fact back. Here's what Lisa used to do to come to me and say, I just don't feel very connected to you and a meal . I go , well , I took you here. I did this, I did that, and we did this together and, and you know, she goes , I can never talk to you. Okay? So I answered feeling with a fact now that all I need, it really was to know my wife felt disconnected. And here's the woman I love more than anyone else. I don't want her to feel disconnected, but because ego got in the way, I got defensive and I answered fact when it should have gotten at the feeling . Now what this really means is that when we're trying to love each other, we struggle with communication. And the , uh, you may not have realized this, but I tend to be a very blunt, direct communicator. All right? If your toes hurt, if you , if your toes hurt at the end of the sermon, I have successfully accomplished my goal. All right? But that doesn't always work in a marriage. So I would say to Alisa , do this, I want you to do that. I'd be very with her. And you know what,
Speaker 5it would make her feel hurt. You don't understand me, you're not speaking my language. And then the same thing happened though. I started seeing it happen with my sons , especially in his teenage years. So I would have these long conversations with him and he goes , yeah, I don't know. You know, kind of a thing. And my wife would go, you're losing your son. And I love my son. He's, he's my oldest. I love him. But I knew she was right. Cause I, I was trying to say all these things that I thought were important, but he was just, he can't take direct because he's indirect. So I said to my wife, I don't want to lose him. Teach me how to speak indirect. And so I started watching her and listening. I learned how to be more diplomatic. I learned how to have more open ended questions. And then I went and tried it on him . Okay. So I went in and I said, cause I want to connect with them. And I know what he loves. He loves the guitars. So I went and I said, son, what do you think is better? A fender stratocaster or do you like a Les Paul Gibson Better? Oh Dad. And he talked for an hour. And I learned that if I could learn how to phrase, if I could enter into his world, he let me into his world. But if I forced him into my world, he wasn't coming, I would have lost him. So some years ago he came to church, he was living in Brooklyn and he came to church. And you know, usually when he would come, he'd take the train up and we'd go get him a Tarrytown . And then we'd drive him over here to the church. And then we'd take them back who are driving over the Tappan Zee . And he starts at say, today , you know, we were talking about spiritual gifts and stuff like that. And I have some questions and everything. And we , we talked about spiritual gifts and I realize I'm not taking them Terry town . I'm going to take it into Brooklyn and you know on Sunday afternoon, Brooklyn is three hours from here. I mean, it was a long, we did an entire systematic theology on spiritual gifts, but you know what? He led me into his world. I didn't want to miss that. You understand why this is? I'm trying to get it to you. You see, when you let him cultivate that heart, those soils, the richness, the fullness, the flourishing is , is then enabled and empowered in your life. If you don't, you may protect yourself, but you're protecting yourself from love. You're protecting yourself from truth. You're giving yourself to things that are not ultimate as if they were ultimate's and they'll choke and split you into where you stand with me as a close at this time together. I want you to change where it says you are anything else. Then I want you to say me, I whatever is the appropriate pronoun there. I want you to make this personal because, because this is the response that the spirit wants. He wants you to ask, how can I go from where I am, which is being revealed by the conflicts in my life to where you want me to be, where you have destined me to be? I can tell you this. Everywhere that I have given him an inch, he has taken a mile. All you have to do is give the inch because if you give him a little bit of the garden, he'll take over the garden for you know , but if you hold back and say, nope, got to do it myself, then you'll do it yourself. He'll let you love cannot be compelled. It has to be freely given. So if you will say this with me, it is his word. It is his agenda. But as you aligning yourself, so let's say this together, Lord, how can I grow spiritually and emotionally through this conflict? God say this with just read it with me. God is using every conflict in my life for healing and events . Say that again for me. God is using every conflict and my life for healing and advancement. He shows me where I need healing and he shows that he is conforming me to the likeness of his son and we know come on that an all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his son. Here's the thing, it doesn't matter if you came in here with good soil or hearts or he wants to make it good, so his , his desire for you is multiplied harvest and the truth is your heart wants that too. Would you surrender that soil to him today? Here I like you to close your eyes with me. You know the first soil is, it's like a path. The second is shallow with rocks. The third full of weeds. Would you say this with me, Lord, I surrender the hard soil, Lord, I surrender the shallow saw Lord I surrender right where the weeds have grown. Now come in, change my heart, cultivate my heart so that I have a multiply to harvest. 100 blessings, 60 bigger blessings. 30 of the biggest blessings in Jesus' name. Amen. We have some people who will pray with you. I think when we do stuff like this, it's just good for you personally to pray with somebody, make a commitment or heart commitment. Today it's good to verbalize it. Satan is not subject to your thoughts, but to your words. So if there's anything that has resonated, and I, and even I would say if their families that want to come forward, marriage is want to come forward, common be prayed , a pray with someone. Make this a verbal commitment today. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next week.