Talking and Walking It Out

Look at the person next to you. Hey. If you know you are jacked up by sin, if you're an imperfect person, raise your hand. If you know the person next to you is a little bit more jacked up than you are, go ahead and raise both hands, point to them, and judge them a little bit. Alright? It's okay. And if you know that you're imperfect, it's okay. Welcome to the family. You're you're in good hands. We're we're all in that together. [00:04:34] (20 seconds)  #RelationshipsAndConflict

Like this enemy is just there to destroy our relationships. Aren't you glad you came to church today? Don't you feel motivated and picked up and encouraged right now? Well, I'm gonna pour some more gasoline on that fire. Let's see what the Bible actually says. First Peter says this. Says, stay alert. What are the next two words? Watch out. Watch out. If you're online, type them in the comments. Watch out. [00:05:38] (21 seconds)  #EnemyAtWork

Stay alert. Watch out for your great enemy. Who's your great enemy? Well, he tells us. The devil, Satan himself. He prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone, a relationship, your influence. He's looking for someone to what? Devour. Devour. That's a big word. That's more than just he's looking to distract you. He's looking to, you know, make you focus on something else. [00:05:59] (25 seconds)  #WatchOutSatan

We react whenever conflict comes. Whenever somebody says something that you don't like, you don't agree with, you know, we tend to react in a lot of ways. We might give them the we might give them the, nope. I'm not gonna talk to you now. We might blame somebody else or something else. Well, I did that because of this and the other, or, well, you did this. We might deflect it. Right? I'm sure nobody in here has done any of those things because we're a perfect church, But you might know somebody who has these defensive mechanisms. [00:06:45] (27 seconds)  #ReactOrRespond

So we don't need to react. What we need to do, just like the the guy in the wedding singer, I might be dating myself a little bit. If you ever seen the movie, the wedding singer, the guy has this shirt and he says he opens it up. He says, you know what you need to do? You need to relax. Anybody remember that? So good. [00:07:12] (19 seconds)  #DefensivePatterns

So we don't wanna react. We want to relax so that we can learn how to respond. Right? We don't wanna react. We wanna respond. And so we wanna respond by speaking the truth, but not just speaking the truth. We're gonna see it in a minute. The Bible says to speak the truth what? In love. Right? We wanna speak the truth in love. We'll talk about that. [00:07:32] (21 seconds)  #RelaxAndRespond

we will speak what? The truth and thought. There it is in the Bible. We just talked about it. And this next word is awesome. Growing. Somebody say growing. Growing. Growing is such a big deal because we wanna grow to be more like Christ because we're not already there yet. We're always trying to take steps. We have it all figured out. We're not the perfect Christian. We're not the perfect disciple. We wanna speak the truth in love as we grow as we grow in every way, [00:08:28] (28 seconds)  #SpeakTruthInLove

more and more what? Like Christ who is the head of the body, the church. And and that's a big deal. We need to understand that this is about growth. It's not just about being good, it's about being godly as we align our hearts, as we align our minds, and as we align our behaviors with the Lord. Does that make sense? Give me an uh-huh. So here's a thought, and this thought's gonna be a huge revelation. It's it's so deep. [00:08:56] (25 seconds)  #GrowingInChrist