Relate Community Church
Relate Community Church
Next Level Love 2
The 7 Poisons Test: Identifying and Overcoming Relationship Pitfalls
Healthy relationships require self-awareness and intentionality. The 7 Poisons Test helps us examine harmful habits that can negatively impact our relationships and provides biblical wisdom for overcoming them.
1️⃣ How Selfish Am I?
Selfishness harms relationships, but serving others cultivates humility. (Philippians 2:3-5)
2️⃣ Do I Set Unrealistic Expectations?
Unmet expectations create conflict, but trusting God’s provision brings peace. (James 4:1-2)
3️⃣ Am I Keeping Secrets?
Secrecy breeds shame, but vulnerability leads to freedom. (Ephesians 5:11-12)
4️⃣ How Negative Is My Speech?
Our words should uplift and encourage rather than tear down. (Ephesians 4:29)
5️⃣ How Much Do I Compare My Relationship?
Comparison fuels discontentment, but gratitude fosters joy. (Galatians 6:4-5)
6️⃣ Do I Fight Dirty?
Attacking problems instead of people leads to healthier conflict resolution. (James 1:19)
7️⃣ Am I Putting Them First?
Prioritizing our personal relationship with Christ keeps relationships in proper order. (Psalm 127:1)
Reflection & Discussion
What stood out to you this week?
Which of these relationship poisons do you struggle with most?
In which area have you seen the most growth? How?
How can your Relate Small Group support you in becoming stronger?
What steps will you take to eliminate these poisons from your relationships?
By identifying and addressing these challenges, we can build Christ-centered, thriving relationships that reflect His love and grace.
Thank you for listening to the Relate Community Church podcast! Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. If today’s message spoke to you, share it with a friend or leave us a review to help spread the word. To learn more about Relate Community Church, visit us at www.relatecommunity.com. You are always welcome here, and remember—you are loved
All right, everybody who's excited to be at church today. All right, bring the lights up. That's good. I need to see you guys and y'all look great today. Tell your neighbor you look good, relax, you look fine. You look great, you smell good. You guys look fine, you look great, you smell good. You guys look great. And I'm so glad that you're here today.
Speaker 1:I want to tell you that it is the joy of my life and Angela and I we talk about this all the time and I'm going to ask Joey if he can get my mic. I'm in a tunnel here, it sounds like, so help me out. But Angela and I talk about it constantly that it really is the joy of our lives to be in this place with you on a Sunday morning. I walk in excited. I have friends. I'll just be honest with you and transparent with you that I know other pastors that dread having to come into church on Sunday morning because of the struggle, because it's a heavy weight, and I never feel that way. I always feel like man. I get to go to church, I get to be in the room with you guys and it's a blast. So this series has been fun and I want to dive into it in just a second, but I want to take a minute to look into the camera and let those who are watching online, whether streaming or on demand, it's a beautiful thing to us that you chose to click and worship with us today and study God's Word together in this series, next Level Love. God's taking us all somewhere, so can we do something? And that is everybody in the room. Can y'all put your hands together and let everyone online know you matter to us? It's always amazing whenever I hear the stories of Pastor Sean. We watched online for six months or a year before we got up the nerve, before we got the confidence, got brave enough to walk into the building. I know it's a big deal walking into a building that's unknown and I'm proud of a lot of you guys who have done that, but some of them are still watching online and sometimes you can't make it. Sometimes you're out of town, and so a bunch of our community members are around and watching online.
Speaker 1:So, with that said, I'm going to dive right into week number two of Next Level Love. We have to study to show ourselves approved, and our word for the year is stretch. God is stretching us, and this seems like one of those areas that seems easy to grow in, but it's not, I promise you. God is love and that means that if we're Jesus followers, we need to be pursuing how do I love better? That's not just husband, wife, that's not just parents, kids, neighbors, friends, family, co-workers, bosses, employees. This is every relationship in your life, trying to take an inventory of how do I become a better partner, how do I become someone who can love people better and that is not always an easy thing to do to see ourselves honestly and to see how we fit with other people honestly, especially as how we relate to God and how we reflect His love. So, with that said, today's message, we are a note-taking church and I want to challenge you, encourage you, pull out your notes, if that's online or in the room. How many of you got your notes in your hand? Let's see them. Just holding you accountable. That's good. Get those notes going. We remember it more, four times more likely to remember it if you write it down, if you're taking notes.
Speaker 1:So today's message is a little bit different in that I'm not going to give you three points, four points, five points on how to love better. What I am going to do is we're going to take a little test together. So today's message is a test. I'm going to be asking you questions and we're going to. I'm challenging you to be honest with yourself, and so, if you have the paper notes there are every point that we go through you're going to have an opportunity to grade yourself and I'm going to challenge you to grade yourself honestly.
Speaker 1:But this is not like maybe a test, a relationship test that you've taken before. If you grew up like I did in the 80s and 90s, then maybe you had one of those little tabloid tests or magazine tests. Is your relationship like this? I'll give you a couple of examples of what tests we're not taking today. That is, which new kid is your dream boat? Y'all may have taken that test. Or maybe you remember a test that's like this next one 21 signs you know you love him. This is not that test. Or for the younger ones in the room and those who are keeping up with modern times and modern relationship tests, it's a test to show you take a picture of you and your loved ones and you can see if you're compatible or not, based on who leans in.
Speaker 1:I'm not exactly sure how this test works, but those are not tests that are beneficial to us, especially if we're looking to love the way that God loves. We need to learn what he says about love and how we're supposed to love each other, how we're supposed to relate to each other, and so we're going to let God lead our relationships. And so today I'm giving you seven love poisons. So seven poisons that we need to look for, test for, and so we're going to start off that. The first poison that we need to watch out for is number one how selfish am I? How selfish am I and I've tried to write them in the first person. I've tried to put allow us to stand in a place where we can really take an inventory of our own lives.
Speaker 1:This is one of those questions that you probably immediately say I'm not selfish. You just go ahead and check the box, give yourself a one, because I'm not selfish at all. But I want you to think about it and challenge yourself a little bit. Let's dig in and see what that really looks like. I can tell you that for me, you can say well, he's a pastor, he's probably not selfish. But I promise you, we all deal with selfishness. We all deal with getting our eyes on our own selves. I'll give you an example of myself. It's not just in the big things, but also in the day-to-day small things.
Speaker 1:I've said this before, so you probably know some of you know this about me that my snack of choice every day I get an apple. Somebody asked me this morning what kind of apple it was, so I'll just let you know. There's really only one good apple, and it's a Honeycrisp apple. If you're not eating Honeycrisp apples, you're missing it. I have a Honeycrisp apple. I try to have one every day, right, not just for healthy sake, but I love it. But I go overboard on this apple. It's just an apple, but I like to peel it and I like to cut it up and I like to take my time and this is it's like my personal time. But someone in our house has figured out there's only two of us, so you know who it is. She's figured out when apple time is and she knows what. She knows when apple time is and she'll come and sit down next to me and she'll just hold her hand out like she's waiting on her peace. It's not our apple time, it's my apple time.
Speaker 1:You need to know something about me that I didn't grow up with people eating off my plate and me eating off of other family members, but we didn't share food. This was, this is my plate and that's your plate. Her family was not that way. They might eat off each other's plates and share or swap plates. I don't know what y'all were doing, but it wasn't. It wasn't the same as.
Speaker 1:So I have to come with, to come to grips with the reality that I've got some selfish nature in me that says this is mine and that's yours, and it's not just the big things, because I can say that I do my best to give up when it truly counts and when it truly matters. Let me give Angela what belongs to Angela. I'm going to take care of my family. I'm going to give her what she deserves, and then I reserve the right to keep my apple time mine, right. There are those spaces in your life that we don't have to. We don't have to get into, we don't have to dig into, we don't have to. I don't have to list the list of all the things. You just know that there are some spaces where you're selfish and where we don't live the kind of selflessness that God challenges us to live in.
Speaker 1:Selfishness is a sickness that must be radically removed for any relationship to survive, something that we have to aggressively say I'm not going to be selfish. This is what Philippians says. Philippians 2.3 says not going to be selfish. This is what Philippians says. Philippians 2.3 says don't be selfish. This is almost like a list of how to take an inventory. Don't be selfish.
Speaker 1:Don't try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. How often do we think of other people as better than ourselves? We typically put ourselves first. Don't look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others too. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. He's pointing us to Christ as our example. So here's a question Do you try to impress other people? A harder question is am I humble? Because humility is not an easy thing to measure, right, it's not an easy thing to gauge or to compare ourselves to. Here's a better identifier of whether or not you're a humble person Can I be humiliated?
Speaker 1:For many of us, it wouldn't take much to humiliate us. You could say anything and humiliate us. You could put us in our place, you could challenge us or do something physical to us. But can I tell you that it's hard to humiliate someone who is very humble Like Jesus. Jesus is a perfect example of this. When Jesus was stripped naked and beaten and broken and tortured and hung on a cross and exposed and humiliated and put shame on, what did they do? They did everything to him. They threw every accusation at him, but what did Jesus do? His thoughts were not on himself. He wasn't focused on how he was treated. He wasn't focused on what they were doing to him or how he looked. His thoughts were simply Father, forgive them. His thoughts were on other people and how they were going to experience this moment and how this moment was going to affect them, and not how it was affecting him. How many of us could say anything close to that? So our example should be Jesus.
Speaker 1:Let me give you two or three seconds to circle one through ten. Where are you? At One, two, three, four, five, six, seven? You're in there somewhere. Either you really have a lot of selfishness to deal with and you need to circle ten, or you know you're doing a lot better. Maybe it's just two or three or four. We are never more opposite of God than when we are selfish. So how do we overcome selfishness? It's very simple we overcome selfishness by serving. We overcome selfishness by serving. Then we take on the same attitude as Christ. Jesus came with all the rights in heaven and on earth, and what did he do? It says that he came to serve and not be served.
Speaker 1:Here's a key for all husbands and wives in the room, not one way or the other way, but both. You may have never said this to your husband or wife, but I want you to say this out loud right now. Just can you say this? How can I serve you? Hey, that's good, richie, I heard you. Brother, you must be used to saying that I don't know. It sounded very comfortable. How can I serve you? We should be able to say that to each other.
Speaker 1:Number two do I set unrealistic expectations? Do I set unrealistic expectations? I can tell you that with newlyweds, this is very obvious. When Angela and I have conversations with people who are either going to be married or just married, maybe you're in that place where everything seems perfect. My daughter you guys know that my daughter is engaged. So, grace and Jackson, they're in this mode right now where everything is perfect, nothing could ever go wrong. And when you ask someone in that place, what kind of problems could you have in the future? I can't tell you how many times that the responses that we get are like oh, pastor, we don't have problems like that.
Speaker 1:We don't fight like everybody else, we don't argue. We're not that kind of couple. Just wait, it's coming. Just wait, because we have this expectation that it's going to be a certain way. We have an expectation for a trip or a conversation or an event that it's going to be a certain way, and then when we get there, it's not. And then all of a sudden we're crushed in our freedom groups. We define that's one of our small groups. We define pain as unmet expectations. We have this expectation and when we don't meet it, it creates a struggle or a conflict or friction inside of us. And that happens so often in relationships because we have an expectation.
Speaker 1:James, chapter 4, says this what causes fights and quarrels among you? Does that get your attention? Don't they come from your desires? That battle within you? You desire but you do not have. Like you're not reaching what you expected, so you kill. I know that seems a little bit of an overkill. That seems like we're not killing each other yet, pastor, but we do kill conversations and we do kill events and we kill the atmosphere of peace that's in our house because we're not satisfied with the way things are going.
Speaker 1:I read this kind of with a renewed vision this week, this next verse, In verse 2, it says yet you don't have what you want. Because why? Because you don't ask God. I don't think this is a matter of prayer. I don't think this is a matter of I'm supposed to say a prayer and then God will answer my prayer. No, I think this is a matter of I don't have what I want because I'm not looking to God for it. I'm looking to my person, and when I look to a person to give me something only God can give me, I'll be let down every time.
Speaker 1:If I think that my wife will complete me and this relationship is the only thing that all of my eggs are in this basket and I need you to complete me I'm putting such a high expectation on you that you can never fulfill. That might be with a boss, or you might be expecting your job to be your source for protection, for safety, for security, when truly we have to look to God for the things that only he can give us. So the top unrealistic expectations. I'll just give you a list of them. Number one my spouse is responsible for my happiness. Guys, take a step back. We're expecting our spouse, or the people with the most intimate relationships around us. We're expecting them to give us what only we can choose. How about this one? My spouse knows my motives and my thoughts. Well, you should have known what I wanted for Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1:Hold on, Can I just do all the guys in the room a favor, ladies, please? We don't know what you want. You guys think a different language and your brain's working a way that we will never understand, never understand. But if you'll tell us, if you'll just tell us we can, we have no clue what you're thinking at any point. She's telling me to move on. I'm not Another secret, ladies. If you ask us, guys, what we're thinking, we're just kind of staring off into space and it looks like man. He must be in deep thought and we say I'm not thinking about anything. Believe us, we're not thinking about anything, because it's possible for a guy to just have no thoughts and just be empty, just zoning into nothing. And you think that's impossible. But it's true, am I right, kenny? Thank you. Thank you, guys. Back me up here. We have the ability to just turn it off.
Speaker 1:How about my spouse and I can solve any problem together? That is an unrealistic expectation, because there are things that only God can solve. That is an unrealistic expectation because there are things that only God can solve. You think we get this attitude and this mindset of it's me and her, me and him against the world. You need some other people in your life. That's why we need small groups. That's why we need accountability with other people mentors and mentees and we need people who are running side, beside us. We need pastors, we need friends, we need other relationships and we can't isolate ourselves, and when we do, we're creating a world that's destined for struggle. So go ahead and grade yourself. Give yourself a grade on how well you're doing. Give yourself a grade on how well you're doing.
Speaker 1:We overcome unrealistic expectations by recognizing the limited humans and the unlimited nature of God, the limitless nature of God, that the moment I start looking to this world to satisfy me and fulfill me and to be the thing that makes my life right, I'm not made for this world, the minute you buy into the idea that you are a citizen of this world and that you were not created for better things and heavenly things, and we take our eyes off of heaven and off of the God that made us. We start to feel like, well, this thing can satisfy me, if I could just get this new model of phone or this new car or this new house, or two more kids, or if I could just make more money or get a better job. And then we end on this, we end up in this rat race. So two poisons.
Speaker 1:Number three am I keeping secrets? Am I keeping secrets? There are things in every one of our lives. I'm just going to get real still right now, because there are things that all of us, we don't want anybody else to know about us. There are things that we, in fact you might say, well, I was just trying to protect you, you didn't need to know about that, I just I didn't want to bother you with this. And there are things that we leave in the dark.
Speaker 1:Here's the problem Trust is the core currency of all relationships. Trust is the core currency of all relationships. So every failed relationship fails because of broken trust. That's not just in your marriage, in all of our close relationships. Sometimes we struggle with God because we can't trust Him. I'll tell you parents. How many parents do we have in the room? Raise your hand. We've got parents, lots of parents and parents of little kids. This is so important. Sometimes you undermine the trust that you have with your kids and, without even knowing it, you think you're building trust, but you're actually breaking trust. And I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1:When you say something like the kids ask for something, they want something, they're begging for something and you say no, sometimes that's hard. I know they need to hear no every now and then. But when you say no, and then inevitably what happens? Whenever the kids hear no, what do they say Please, or they say no, can I please have this? Can I please have it now? Can I please have it now? What about now? What about? And they keep bugging you and pestering until finally you just say fine, you can have it, but leave me alone. What just happened is you taught your kids that they cannot trust your no, they can't trust your word, and when you say something, it doesn't mean anything if they actually want it, that their desire is more valuable or stronger than your word. Parents, if you say no, your no needs to be no. We used to tell our kids if we said no, I would tell them if you ask me again, the answer will be no for a week. The answer will be no tomorrow and the next day. If you ask me again, you will never get this thing that you're asking for. Sometimes that hurt me more than it hurt them because I wanted them to have that or whatever it was. I wanted to play with them With whatever they wanted. I wanted them to have ice cream, I wanted them, but they needed to know what no meant and know the value of it.
Speaker 1:In your marriage, there are things that we hide. There are things that we keep hidden In Genesis, chapter 2. It says Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame. What does that mean? That means that in a marriage, we have to be able to come exposed to each other without things hidden, without things becoming a shame. There have been times when Angela and I have met with marriages that were people, their marriage, struggling in their marriage and inevitably something comes out that I found out they were doing this, or I found out they did this and then they lied about it, or then they hid it, and so often they're not even upset about the thing. They're upset that it was hidden. Because now, if you're willing to hide something, how can I trust what you're saying now? So we cannot put things in secret.
Speaker 1:Ephesians, chapter 5, says this have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, hiding things, but rather, what does it say? Expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. It's easy to just relegate these ideas and these concepts and these scriptures into big, bold things. Well, like if you cheat, obviously you want to hide that, but there's other things that we need to be able to expose and reveal to each other. So give yourself a grade, grade yourself, and then I'll tell you.
Speaker 1:We overcome secrecy by being vulnerable. We have to have relationships in our lives where we are vulnerable. That's why, again, small groups matters. Our teams matter, because there needs to be someone in your life that you can go to and you can say, look, needs to be someone in your life that you can go to and you can say, look. I know it's only been a couple weeks, but I just got to share this with you and you don't have to tell.
Speaker 1:Vulnerability is not one of those things that you wives don't go on Facebook and just blast everything that your husband has ever done on Facebook. That's not vulnerability, that's unreasonable vulnerability. That's not vulnerability. That's unreasonable vulnerability. We're not here to expose each other, but we need to be trusting enough and strong enough in trust with someone. And let me say, guys, for all the men in the room, sometimes it's not healthy to share, even with your wife, all the things you're worried about. Not healthy to share even with your wife, all the things you're worried about. Sometimes that makes her worry about those things. Well, if he can't figure it out, he's supposed to take care of the family and he's worried about how he's going to pay the bills.
Speaker 1:You're trying to just vent, you're trying to share. Can I tell you that you need to go find a pastor, you need to go find a counselor, you need to go find someone that you can trust, that you could share with another man. Ladies, there's some things that you struggle with that you don't need. I'm not trying to tell you to hide it. I'm trying to tell you that there are things that you don't need to share with other people. And maybe, just maybe, you'll hear me when I say this. There are some things that you only need to tell to God. There are some things that you need to vent and you might be saying, well, I just needed to get that off my chest. Wait a second. No, you don't. You need to tell the Lord, and if you don't trust God enough to carry you through it, then again we're dealing with trust.
Speaker 1:The Bible says in James, chapter 5, confess to one another that you might be. What Healed, we confess and we share and we take the mask off of this is who I'm hiding. This is what I'm hiding behind so I can show someone. You don't have to tell everybody your deepest secrets, but you need to tell somebody. All right, number four, this is going to get somebody right here. So when I tell you this one, don't look around, just keep your eyes forward. How negative is my speech. How negative is my speech? You don't have to elbow your neighbor and elbow your wife or your husband. So there's a psychologist.
Speaker 1:John Gottman has a decades-long study about predicting divorce and finding the elements of marriage that make marriage strong and the elements in marriages and relationships that make them very weak, and he came up with what he called the four horsemen of relationships, meaning that if these four, any of these four are present, then they are high, high, high indicators of divorce and separation. I'll tell you what those four are. The first one is criticism. If you have a relationship, dynamic and listen, we often get into these dynamics by just being playful, and well, that's just how we are Pastor. We just like to rib each other, we just like to poke fun at each other, we just like to. We're just cynical and we're critical of each other, but it's all in good fun. Listen, there's some things that you don't need to play with. There's some things that we need to.
Speaker 1:Marriage is a sacred thing, so there's some level of holiness that we need to maintain, and leaving criticism out of it is a big thing by saying things like hey, you are so lazy, you always do this, why do you always bother me with this? Why do those kinds of things sometimes just become second nature? And what we're actually doing is we're tearing the other person down. Maybe that's you today and you need to circle two or three on where you're at in negative words. Maybe it's contempt, and John Gottman actually says that contempt is the number one indicator of divorce, and he says he can usually see it within five minutes of talking with a couple and contempt looks like you know what. What were you even thinking? You are such a child. You always do this and you make the other person like you take the moral high ground when we should have a partnership in marriage. In relationships we should be, especially in marriage we should be partners. I should not be tearing down my wife.
Speaker 1:You cannot speak down to someone and expect the relationship to be built up. This one's huge Proverbs 13. We look to the book of wisdom for this. Those who control their tongue will have a long life. Opening your mouth can what? Opening your mouth can ruin everything. We tell little kids to put your finger over your mouth. Sometimes you need to tell yourself just don't say anything. And the problem is sometimes the people closest to us, the people we love the most, the people that we are most intimate with, they get the worst of us. Sometimes the contempt we didn't get to the other two, sometimes defensiveness and stonewalling those are the things that begin to ruin a relationship.
Speaker 1:Ephesians, chapter 4, 29 says it this way do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building up, building others up. According to to what I know. Y'all don't like to say that or think that or hear that, but what does it say? Building others up according to their needs, not my needs that it may benefit those who listen? What does that look like? That means that whenever you are arguing with your husband, with your wife, with the people that you care about, what usually comes out? It comes out like this you know what I'm going to let this go, but I just need to say this Well, wait a second. Who needs to say this? Who needs you to say this? Not them. They don't need to hear you say this. You need to get this off your chest. We come right back to that place where there's some things that you need to tell God. There's some things that need to be between you and the Lord. And here's the good thing. You feel like you're not going to be able to get this processed. You're not going to be able to heal from this or move on from this until you get it out of your heart. God can clean your heart way better than your spouse can Amen. So, instead of saying that God can listen to your venting Friends and your spouse sometimes the thing that you need to get off your chest is the thing that's going to offend them and they're not going to be able to come back from it.
Speaker 1:I like what John Maxwell says. He says people tend to become what the most important people in their life say they can become. People tend to become what the most important people in their life say they can become. My wife needs me to be building her up constantly and I need her to be building me up. We become more together. Same for our kids. So go ahead and grade yourself on this one. Give yourself a grade and then I'll tell you.
Speaker 1:To overcome negative speech, we do that by choosing our words wisely and deciding that I'm not going to say this because it's not beneficial to them. It's not making this relationship stronger. So, number five how much do I compare my relationship? And I don't feel like I need to stay on this one for very long, because we talk a lot about this. Comparison is the thief of joy in relationships and every other part of our lives. Where do we compare ourselves most? Probably the moment we open up social media and we start seeing. Well, the moment we open up social media and we start seeing. Well, he took his husband on a date for a candlelight dinner at a fancy restaurant. Why don't you do that for me? Why don't we ever go out? Why don't we have nice things? Why don't we? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We begin.
Speaker 1:Here's the problem. We compare ourselves to other people's highlight reel, and that highlight reel is highly edited. They have taken out anything that you might think is bad, and I know. That happens every day, even with you, and I look at you. Sometimes. Y'all are making a post online. You're just making a little selfie post and you're sharing some idea or some thought, or even a prayer, and then I see your house in the background and I think wait a second, I've been to their house and it is not that clean. We get everything just perfect. And then we compare ourselves to other people and what they've posted online. And listen, it may not be just what they've posted online. It might be a story of something that a friend is telling you.
Speaker 1:Galatians 6, 4 says each one should test their own actions. In other words, let's keep our eyes on ourselves. Let's keep the focus of who we are, not on other people, but on where we are right now. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load. So let me give you some common traps of comparison. You can write these down Comparison with other couples. That might be online, that might be with people that you know.
Speaker 1:Comparison with your upbringing. How many times have the conversation turned to if I come into my marriage and say well, listen, babe, every time my dad got home from work, then my mom was there with a snack and a drink ready for him to kick his feet up. I want that. That's not what our marriage looks like right now. So because I'm not setting an expectation based on my upbringing. Comparison with your spouse like I can't look at. I'm putting so much more into this than you are. Our focus should be on how how much can I, how can I serve you, and it shouldn't be 50-50. So I'll just erase that in your minds. That that's not what it should look like. It should not be that I'm giving 50% and you're giving 50 and we meet in the middle. It should be that I'm giving 100% and you're giving 100%. Comparison with your past, other relationships, things that we've experienced, the pain that we carry. So go ahead and grade yourself. Give yourself a grade and then we'll go overcoming comparison.
Speaker 1:We do that by living in gratitude. Living in gratitude, if I'm focused and thankful for what I have, it's really hard for me to complain. We like to focus on gratitude and thanksgiving. At one time in the year, that's in November, you can be grateful and thankful for your spouse and for your kids and for listen. When you start to look around and think, my god, my kids are the worst kids in the world. That's your indicator that you need to start a gratitude list of what am I thankful about for my kids and start to live in that gratitude and thank God for all that.
Speaker 1:I can't tell you how many times someone has prayed for even becoming pregnant and then the very next month, praise God, we got pregnant, we're going to have a baby. God answered our prayer and then a couple months later, pastor, you got to pray for me. I am in such pain. This is the worst, most complicated thing I've ever gone through in my life. I feel like my life is over. Wait a second. I'm not trying to make little of the problem and the struggle and I'm not trying to make. You prayed for so long for a marriage and for a spouse and now you're complaining about everything about them. You prayed for a job and now you can't stand the people you work with. What about getting back to the place where God? I thank you for this job. I thank you, god, for providing for me and taking care of me. I thank you, god, for my wife and that you're making us strong together. I thank you for my kids. God, if we could start living in that gratitude, how much better and stronger will those relationships be. Okay, number six Again, don't look at anyone when I say this.
Speaker 1:Number six do I fight dirty? Do I fight dirty? Some of you know, and you're saying, pastor, get him, she's sitting right there. Get her, pastor, he's sitting right there. Some of us, we punch below the belt. There's no button that we won't push because we know what gets them. And so as soon as something begins to happen that we don't like and we start to argue, this fight starts to happen. All of a sudden, we just take the gloves off and now everything's fair, because we don't know how to argue. We don't know how to fight. So here's the deal All relationships have conflict, but healthy relationships know how to resolve conflict the right way or God's way.
Speaker 1:There are some ways that we should approach conflict resolution. Here are signs of unhealthy conflict resolution. Number one the silent treatment. This is stonewalling. This is me not giving you a 20-minute break, because I'm a big proponent of a 20-minute. Let's just cool down a cool-down time. But if you turn that cool-down time into, I'm not talking to you for the rest of the day or I'm going to make them pay. They're going to know how bad they hurt me and I'm not going to talk to them for a week. That's the silent treatment. How about bringing up the past, making a list and checking it twice? Corinthians says that love keeps no record of wrongs.
Speaker 1:Extreme statements like always and never, or bringing in outside support or involvement for family and friends. If you've got a sister or brother, aunt, uncle, cousin that you call every time you get into arguments so you can have somebody on your side, that's a problem. The people that we need to be bringing into our conflict is the people that can help us. So you could have somebody on your side, that's a problem. The people that we need to be bringing into our conflict is the people that can help us, in the same way that we don't say negative things, to try and force the other person to feel shame through an issue is. I'm bringing in leaders. I'm bringing in someone who can help lead us out of this conflict. That might be a pastor, a counselor. If you've never seen a counselor as a husband or a wife or in the most important relationships in your life, go see a counselor or a therapist, someone who can talk you through some strategies and give you some tools, not someone who's going to carry the offense even after you feel better about it.
Speaker 1:James 1.19 says you must be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to get angry. Sometimes it's just slowing down, taking a minute, taking a breath, taking that 20 minutes. One of the things that Angela and I've had to do several times over the last 20 years Is that whenever things get really heated and we know we are not going to fight our way out of this problem, we're not going to fight our way out of this disagreement. We're not going to fight our way out of this disagreement. Sometimes we'll just hey, let's take a break, and I like to come out of the break, not by sitting back down where we left off. I'll send a text, because a text is a lot harder to read into and a text is harder to read between the lines and think. Well, you're just saying that because you just we think the lines and think well, you're just saying that because we think the worst of people and we see the look on their face and we think their apology is insincere. But if I tell you I'm sincerely sorry that things went this way, I want us to be able to work through this, I believe that and we start to just be honest with our feelings and not you did this, and then I said this and rehashing and relitigating the last argument we had, but trying to reach forward, we can walk through it. So we overcome fighting dirty by attacking problems instead of attacking people, attacking problems instead of attacking people. And that looks like me saying, hey, how do we fix this? How can we solve this? How can I make this better? How can we try to not let this happen again? If we can learn to live together and love stronger, then we become better followers of Jesus. We follow his track. So instead of me saying you know what? You have a bad attitude. I will just tell you. That doesn't work. Instead of saying you have a bad attitude, I might just say what can I order you from DoorDash? That's free, you can take that one.
Speaker 1:Finally, the last, the last point, the last poison that we, that we all, get in our relationships is this Am I putting them first? That sounds a little backwards. It sounds like of course we want to put them first. I want to put them on a pedestal. I want to make them the most important person in my life, but wait a second. I want to make them the most important person in my life, but wait a second. It's very easy for that dynamic to turn into idolatry, where we put this person as the most important thing in my life and we think that all the effort that we pour into them will make this relationship work, and what we've actually done is we've taken and put them in the place of God in our life.
Speaker 1:Your spouse can't be your God. Your spouse cannot be the most important thing in your life and your kids can't be the most important thing in your life. This church is not the most important thing in my life. Your job can't be. When we put God first, then he adds all of these other things and he makes all the other things worth. Angela has to know that our relationship is stronger because I put God first and vice versa. So watch this when God is first, the rest is blessed. When God's first, the rest is blessed. We see that in the week we come to church and we honor God on the first day of the week so that he'll bless all the rest of the week.
Speaker 1:We put God first in our finances. So, god, I pay my tithes and my offerings and I want to make sure that God blesses the other 90% of my income, that there's a supernatural blessing on it that wouldn't be there if I didn't give God the part that was his. The same thing happens in our year. I say, god, I'm going to fast and pray for 21 days in January because I want you to bless the rest of this year and make it the best. So all of those things are reflected in our marriage. When I say God, you are first. In our marriage, we're going to pray first. Together. My relationship with Christ comes first. So everything that is healthy starts with God.
Speaker 1:Last verse, psalm 127, verse 1. Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. What does that mean? That means that I could give you the 100 points and we could study for the next year on how to make our marriages strong and be the best blessed marriages, and we could make all the effort to learn all the points and all the strategies and all of the psychological, therapeutical. I could teach you all of those things, but if God's not first, it's in vain. Unless God is first, we're working in vain.
Speaker 1:So I'll give you a moment to grade yourself. Then I'll tell you this that we overcome idolatry by prioritizing your own personal relationship with Christ, your own personal relationship. When I put God first in my life, I'm stronger. Same goes for her. So I want you to get real, get honest, be authentic when you look at your grades and think about those seven areas, those seven poisons that can poison our relationships. Instead of pointing fingers at them and seeing what they need to fix and why I can't talk to my parents and why I can't have a great relationship with my kids, start looking at yourself and saying God, how do I become strong and healthy and a good wife or a good husband? Would you stand up on your feet and we're gonna worship for just a moment and we're gonna challenge ourselves to put God first and allow him to begin the work and the process of getting us through all those things. Then we'll come back and close. Would you worship with us? Your promise still stands. Reach your faithfulness, faithfulness.
Speaker 2:I'm still in your hands. This is my confidence. It never fails. Your promise still stands. Rage on faithfulness. Faithfulness, I'm still in your hands. This is my confidence. You never failed me yet, father. You never failed us yet. We believe in you, god. We know that you can move mountains. You know that you can walk in the air. Hallelujah, we go right now. Come on, help me sing this. I'll sing your book. Come on y'all. When there was no way, and I believe I see you move. You move the mountain and I believe I see you do it again. You made a way when there was no way and I believe I'll see you through the night. I'll see you through the night. You broke my heart and I believe I'll see you through the night. You made a way, but there was no way. I believe I'll see you doing again.
Speaker 1:I'll see you doing again. I'll see you doing again. I'll see you doing again.
Speaker 1:The last point that we had was putting God first was putting God first. Maybe you're here today and you've never put God into that first position of your life. God is sitting on the throne of heaven. God is sovereign and nothing surprises Him and he will always be the ruler of heaven and earth. But there has to come a point in your life as a created person, as his masterpiece, as his children. There has to be a moment in your life where you come back to him and you put him on the throne the throne of your life, and say God, you are my Lord and my Savior. Not just let him pay a price for you, but say okay, you're gonna. You are the. You take the first place in my life. You are above all things. And we put him back into the first position. He becomes our Lord and we begin to follow him instead of our own desires and our own feelings and our own destiny, whatever we decide. And he can lead us and he can guide us.
Speaker 1:The Bible says whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, and it's not just about an eternal salvation that one day, when we leave this world, god wants to walk us through. God wants to lead us through finding freedom and walking into purpose on this earth before we ever get to eternity. It starts right here and it starts today. So if you've never said that prayer and made that confession, I would invite you to say that prayer with us together. And would you just bow your head and close your eyes, right where you are. I'll invite everyone in the room to.
Speaker 1:If you're ready to make that commitment and invite him to be your lord and savior, would you just repeat these words after me dear heavenly father, come into my life and save me, forgive me of my sin, take my old life and make me new, and from this day forward I'm going to follow you wherever you lead. In Jesus' name, amen, amen. Would you put your hands together for all those who said that prayer? I want to say thank you to all of you for being here in the service with us. I'm going to invite the prayer team to join me at the front. If you'd like someone to pray for you or with you before you leave today, then just step out before you leave. Step out as we worship for just a minute. Otherwise I'm going to dismiss you in the name of Jesus, and we will see you next week.