You Asked For It | Part 3

You know what's interesting? We've been talking a little bit about marriage, because you asked for it,

we've been talking about last week, talking about how we're wired a little bit different. Men and women are wired a little bit different. And I said, you know, that's not a popular thing in pop culture today because you hear different wiring, think better than and less than, and that's not what it means. But we are kind of different,

and you can see it. I noticed it with having kids, and my oldest daughter and my middle child is my son. When they were little, I saw how they were just wired and the way they communicated was different. We were sitting there eating waffles one morning,

and I watched them both as they played with their food. They were both playing with their food, but it looked very different. My daughter was talking to the food. The food was alive.

Mr. Waffle and Little Strawberry were talking, which gets really weird when after they're talking to it they eat it, but that's a whole another story. But they're sitting there and she's like, oh, Mr. Waffle, and she's talking. So she's putting her food that way. I look at my son

and he has chewed his waffle into the shape of a gun. And he's shooting and even saying, I'm shooting Mr. Waffle in the strawberry. And he's like da da da da da da da And I didn't teach him that. He wasn't playing video games yet. He had not watched violent movies yet. He just did that.

He was all about the action of it and the time. Not as many words. My daughter was just playing. And you know what? That kind of backs up in my own little laboratory

what studies over and over again showed. They've done studies where they take little boys and little girls, they're old enough to talk, and they put them in a room, multiple groups over and over again, and they just let them play for about an hour and they recorded it.

They were interested in what kind of sounds. What would the sounds be like? Over and over again they found that in the little girls' room almost 100% of the sound out of that room was words. The little boys' room was consistently almost 75% noises. 25% words.

Little boys, they record the girl's like, oh hey, how are you doing? It's so cold. Let's do it. Then you go to the little boys' room it's like burping and farting and sound effects.

Get to the choppa. That's the boys' room. And nobody taught on this. And and I go, where does this come from? And and comes from the fact that that I think God's Wired is slightly different. It is is that that we men and women, we have a relational language, the way we can communicate. And because it's different,

that complicates our communication. And it really complicates conflict resolution when you start to conflict. As a matter of fact, I think what a lot of what we're going to discover today, a lot of us that are struggling in our marriage, the fight you're having isn't even about the problem you're fighting over.

You might be in all this conflict because you're conflicting over the way you actually communicate. It's the lack of ability to communicate that's really the problem.

And that's why today what we're going to unpack is I'm going bring my wife up in a minute here is the big idea is this. I need to become fluent. I must become fluent in my spouse's native relational language. I need to go into their world and learn how they think and how they communicate.

And that really goes along with what we've talking about. Last week we talked about this idea that we're going have a covenant of love instead of a contract of expectations in our marriage. Covenant means I go all in and I submit. And we looked last week about submitting to one another and what does that look like with a man and a woman. And to submit to one another, I'm going to lay down my expectations

and I'm going to pick up their needs. In other words, we've been talking about a marriage is supposed to be learning how to be Jesus to one another. And when it comes to this communication,

I need to learn to go into their world to communicate. And where do I get this from? I want to read a passage of scripture. It's out of Philippians

chapter two.

What I want to challenge you with, especially those of you who've been in church forever, many of you have read this, probably been I went. I sent a Bible study through Philippians a few years ago, and you've looked at it, and you read these passages. This is to a church in Philippi, why it's called Philippians, And right here, this whole section is talking about how we need, in our relationships with one another, we need to take on the attitude of Jesus.

What's funny is how many times you've read this and thought about your friendships or your own little private personal walk. But guess what? Your spouse is a person, and there's someone you need to take this attitude with. Have you ever read these passages and said, this is how I need to be with my spouse?

It's really interesting when you overlay your marriage into this. So imagine this is what he's telling you because he is. I need to have this attitude in my marriage. So just listen. Here's what it says. Chapter two verse one. Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love?

Any fellowship together in the spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with one another, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose.

Don't be selfish. Don't try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. 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. We need to be Jesus in the relationship. Putting down our expectations.

Not being selfish. Then he explains it even deeper. What was the attitude that Jesus had? He says though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead he gave up his divine privileges.

So he didn't demand his rights. What did he do? When he gave up his divine privileges, look at this last statement. And he was born as a human being when he appeared in human form. He just said we have to be like Jesus. What was that last thing that Jesus did when he humbled himself? He chose to become one of us. Why?

He knew he needed to come into our world so we could understand him. He came to us. In order for us to know his love, he came to us. He came into our culture. He came to where we were at,

and it just says that that's how we should be in our relations with one another. If you're married, we need to be willing to put down all of our rights and not just say, hey, I said it. It's up to you if you're going to listen to what I said and maybe be a missionary to my spouse's native land.

I need to go in there and learn how to communicate so they understand. The problem is we are wired slightly different. In those boys and girls studies, I think it comes down to this. I want to explain what can complicate our communication. It's because our brains are just a little bit different.

They're just a little bit different. They do the same things, they have all the same elements, and contrary to what a lot of you women think, your husband does have And then the reality is they are wired slightly. I think what creates those communication differences with boys and girls

is this simple idea that they've discovered, and I'm not trying to be a scientist here, I'm just taking what they've seen and what I know from being alive, being married, and counseling people to be very true. But just a little disclaimer before I share this. We live in a weird world that things get miswired and crazy.

You might be the opposite of what we're saying here. You might be. It's just study after study. It says predominantly

this is how a woman's brain is. Predominantly this is how a guy's brain is. You might be opposite of that. You might go, I'm more like the other one. You're not weird. You're just different than everyone else in a really weird way. That's all I'm saying. No, no, just kidding. I'm kidding. It's okay. You can be reversed.

But for predominant, this is how it works. And one of the predominant things is they've studied and they realized that

women's brains have more connective synapses between the right and left hemisphere.

And what a synapse is is like is telephone line. If you know about how brains work, the right side of the brain works different things than the left side of the brain. What it's saying is for some reason women's brains talks to itself more.

How many are like, Yeah, thanks Captain Obvious. I could have told you that. So women actually have more conversation going on in their head. They're both hemispheres of their brain. You know what? That kind of frees them up for certain things. It's why they can usually multitask better than a guy.

Think about it. When you're driving somewhere and the radio's up loud, your kids are yelling, you're talking, and all of a sudden you're trying to find a street, what does the guy do? We turn the radio down, don't we? Why do I need to turn the radio down to see a street?

Because we don't talk to the sides of our brain. We're more compartmentalized. We're like, Quiet. I can't see where I'm going.

Ladies, guys, we might think we're the fast, better drivers, but predominantly what happens when your husband gets on the road and he's trying to do two things at once and talk? Doesn't he start going 30 miles an hour behind a truck?

And aren't you mad? Because you could weave in and out of traffic, put your makeup on, yell at him on the phone, and have an argument with your kid in the back seat all at the same time. It gets hard. It's this idea that it allows different things.

It allows these things. And how I explain it is this will affect our communication. I think the central CP unit of a woman's brain to a man's brain is how I like to explain it. A woman has a walk in closet brain. A man has a tool chest brain.

What do I mean by that? They have all the same elements. They're all organized in there. It's just slightly different with this ability to communicate. For the most part, women in a walk in closet, you come in, there might be drawers and stuff, so there's some compartmentalization.

But when you're in a walk in closet, what can you see? Everything at once. Right?

And that's why when the ladies get all together and you're all having fun, you'll sit there and there'll be seven of you. You'll start having a conversation. You start on one topic, and you start weaving in and out about 17 different topics. Forty five minutes later you circle back around to the original topic and none of you got confused.

You stayed the whole time. You were tracking with them the entire time. You do that with the guys and they don't know what's going on. You know why? Because guys have the tool chest print. All the same elements, but they're more compartmentalized.

They're more like they have these little drawers. And so when we have a conversation, we like to be in this is where I'm at. I'm in this part. This is my the cardinals are gonna win today conversation drawer. It's awesome. You know, and and and then and we we get a drawer. The problem is when you start conversing and you start bouncing around to different things and you're trying to communicate with your spouse and and it makes sense to you, he's like, okay, what's

going on? And and you're going, which drawer are we in? And you know what happens if you get all the drawers of a tool chest open at once? It falls on its face. And you know where a guy will go at that point? He has this drawer called the nothing drawer. Guys have a nothing drawer. Did you know that?

Guys can go to a place where they're literally not thinking about anything. They just kind of check out. They just check out. Have you ever noticed that? They can do it.

Girls again, I did it last night because I realized there was no bumper. Usually we have a bumper leading in the stern, but I had to come out to talk about courage. So I was sitting right behind this wall, I'm just praying before I walk out. The video announcements are ending, and I was praying and finished praying, and I just went into the nothing place. I just went

next thing you know, don't know how long I was back there. Because all of a sudden I noticed, wait, the lights are on and the video stopped playing. How long has that happened? So I walked out here and everyone's staring at me like, where were you? And I'm like, I went to the nothing place. I just checked

out. You know that can cause fights. Think about it. Guys, we like to go to the nothing place on long drives. Just lock in. Go to nothing. And then your wife goes, what are you thinking about? And you say nothing. Ladies, what do you think? You can't think about nothing. So what do you assume? He's lying.

He's thinking about something he doesn't want to tell me. He thinks I'm fat.

You just end up in this progression and then there's a fight.

The other problem is when you can see everything, this kind of helped. We like to say in our culture that some of the roles that played way back in time was it was forced upon by society like the hunter gatherer. That was just like this misogynistic men hunt because it's cooler and they're better, and women gather and watch the kids because they're less than that's not really how that happened. It happened about necessity because the way we're wired. See, because think about it. When you go hunting, if you're trying to kill a woolly mammoth with a stick, you've got about 14 guys and you've got to track this thing down. You have to be quiet and focused, don't you?

Imagine a group of women trying to go do that for three days. You're gonna come back and be like, well we didn't catch anything, but man did we bond.

We got no food. But then guys if you left them to gather, because when we could gather they can gather food, but you know what? When you can hear everything at once you don't have that nothing place. If you hear, you're in a mall. Have you ever just in a mall yelled, mom, and watched how many they

could be totally into what they're doing, but that's like the bat signal to you. You hear it. Guys don't do that.

They they can't hear it. They're in the nothing place. So so so imagine hunting together. You send the women, they gotta be absolutely quiet and focused. That ain't happening. But you leave the guys to gather and try to listen the kid. You're gonna come back. We didn't catch anything. We're not gonna have much food. That's okay. The berries should last because the kids are dead.

Cause they didn't live. Because I couldn't hear them at the same time. It's happened all the time at your house. You hear a kid yelling, mom, mom, mom. And you finally come downstairs all exasperated and you see that dad is sitting 10 feet from them on the couch watching something on the TV. And What do you do?

Did you not hear them? You know what the answer is? No. You didn't hear them because you were in the zone. So it starts all these fights. This is true. So here's what can be an issue. Women, you have this incredible ability to see everything, which allows so many amazing things. But here's the one thing that

starts to become a problem for you that guys don't understand. What happens when the dirty clothes pile starts to become the pile in the room? You have all these seemingly disconnected little issues and worries and concerns

and things not going like the kids are being weird. I'm not sure about the work. My husband and I haven't been talking. You have all these things. It's just the pile. You ever get the pile in your When you walk in, it doesn't matter what you're trying to look at. What happens? That's all you see. You can't get past it.

So the problem is you're trying to sort this laundry and then you want to have a communication with him. He's trying to help you, and he comes in and you're like, what about this? What about this? And you're trying to sort this stuff.

The reality is you're not trying to wash it yet, you're just trying to sort it out. Sometimes while you're trying to communicate to your spouse is, I just want you to be a sounding board. Just be my partner as I sort the laundry. Can I get the lights from the darks? Can I get this?

Since the guy is more compartmentalized, we tend to talk when we have a solution. Women tend to talk to get to one, so you're just trying to come around get this, and he's thinking you're throwing all these problems at him that he has to fix.

So he's looking at all this, and he's starting to get all these drawers open, and then sometimes he gets completely distracted. He doesn't see the pile. He sees something else that has really, really bothered him. He wants to talk about this betrayal.

He's like, how did this even happen? You're worried about it. He's like, what is this? And he wants that out. So he's running over here, and and he's opening up his drawer. Goes, I got a tool to fix that. We need to put this up here. This is why and you're worried about the laundry.

No. No. Wait. I'm not gonna disrespect. I'm not gonna disrespect another team. This is all in fun. Put it back up there. We'll leave them on the ground when we play them. So anyways, back to where I was. And and and so You're sitting here trying to sort laundry, he's trying to figure out where are we.

He's opening drawers and trying to go, got a tool for that, got a tool for that. What happens is when it gets really weird and you don't even know, you're just trying to sort this stuff out, he's thinking he has to fix it. When he gets so confused of opening all his doors he finally just gives up and he goes to his good, good, trusty tool that fixes everything. A hammer.

And he goes, alright. I can pound out these problems with you. Bring them away. I'll start pounding them. The problem is if the only tool you bring is a hammer, what's every problem? A nail. I think I just got where a lot of you have a problem now. Guys, listen to this.

When you try to help your wife by just pounding on the problems, guess who actually feels like the nail? Your wife. You're not pounding on the problem. She feels like she's the nail that's getting hit. And now you're in a fight over that. Not over the issues, not over what's going on. And can I just tell you something?

Ladies, he thinks he's helping. He really, really, really does. It's that there's just a miscommunication here. You don't know what's going on, so you end up with the hammer. And you end up not getting the stuff sorted, and it gets confusing, and then you're distraught.

Can I just tell you something? Last week we talked about men. We submit to our spouses by being leaders, and I but I explained that. That a leader does not mean what we think it means today.

A leader means you go first, you go furthest, and you'll go alone if you have to. That's what it means to be a leader. And so even though we both need to become fluent in each other's

language in order to really communicate, we need to learn, we both need to commit to that. But guys, I'm going challenge you. You can fix this. You can go first. You can go first. So write this down. This is going be you're going to want to live by this jewel of wisdom right here. Guys, if you go first,

if you can learn how to just be the sounding board and help her sort the laundry, she'll get in your drawers.

It took me eighteen minutes to set that one up. I should probably bring my wife up before this gets any more out of control. But she said she wouldn't come up here if I was saying that, so I had to say it before she got up here. But it's true.

Anyways, but we want to unpack how does this work? How does this affect us biblically? How does this affect our communication? How do how do we learn how to do that? So I wanna welcome up my beautiful bride of twenty six years, Carrie. Come on up here.

She can't think and see that at the same time. Does that not prove the point? Thank

you. Hey, thanks for being here. Thanks for Because I'm tired, I need a break. You want talk for little while? You know, we just kind of shared this and what I wanted to ask you to kind of unwrap for us is that we've discovered that this not only what's the answer to how do we how are we supposed to communicate,

but how does what we're supposed to do just get even more complicated? Yeah. Communication is such a it's been a thing for us, and we've had to work really hard at it. But the one thing that I have learned, that we have learned is, and you talked about it a little bit earlier, was just that communication

really has not happened until the other person has heard and understands what you're trying to say. And so what realized with that is then, at that point, it has become if I'm communicating, it's become my responsibility to figure out a way to say it so that the other person understands. That's I mean, we know that's true in

marriage and work relationships with children. It's just a reality. We could run around, hit our heads against the wall, saying the same thing over and over again, and it's just not going to if you didn't hear it, if you didn't understand it, we didn't communicate it. But I have something else to go along with that.

I, that is a concept that is hard because it does take a lot of intentionality to, to really figure out the other person's language and the way to say it in a way that they would understand it. And I had learned something in a process that I had gone through some recovery a couple years ago, and it was a saying that helped me

learn how to communicate a little bit better. It was just a simple saying, and it's, Say what you mean, mean what you say, and don't say it mean. That was so helpful to me, except what I began to realize is a lot of times, I didn't actually even know what I meant. So I couldn't even say

what I meant. And I noticed So that's where it gets complicated. What you're saying is, if communication has happened until I can communicate the way you understand,

I can learn how to translate it. But what if I'm translating the wrong thing I don't even know myself. I don't even know what I'm really trying to say. Right? Well, it just it can muddy those waters and and another level to to work through. But I think something that we can do, and what I did, was I would,

instead of saying what I meant, I was speaking through the filter of my own fears, my own insecurities. I was assuming things. I was, you know, protecting myself or defending myself or whatever. So I wasn't I was never really saying what I meant. And I thought it was really interesting just to share a little story about us

and how we work. You may or may not really want to know too much about us, but I'm telling you anyway. We had decided on Friday to come up here and just kind of talk through a little bit about what we were going to share up here. And honestly, as soon as I walked up those steps

to work through this, all the emotions of being up here just hit me like a ton of bricks. I started to feel very insecure about it, overwhelmed. I was feeling the expectation of making sure I said the right thing, and just every fear really came to the surface. When I experienced that,

I tend to react in a couple different ways. One of them is I want to just get that off of me, I want to blame it on somebody else, or I want to justify Somebody else is my other name, by the way. You're just it's true. So

we're sitting up here, and we're literally on this point of say what you mean, mean what you say, don't say it mean. And I am like, I'm just, I'm not saying what I mean. I'm not meaning what I say, and I'm certainly saying it very mean. So And mean. It wasn't pretty. But I'm blaming him.

You just talk so much. Just stop talking and let me have a chance. Don't know what because I grabbed the hammer and said, I'll fix this problem, and that doesn't help. It doesn't help. So this just became real life, real time working through this.

The neat thing was, in the next kind of step of this is I wanted to share about a passage that God had really revealed to me in my time of working through some recovery. And that was Ephesians four:two. And thank you. I highlighted it for you. Thank you. So Ephesians four:two,

always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other's faults because of your love. And, you know, literally as we're standing up here working through this,

I was, of course, reminded of this verse. And I love this so much because to me, it's such a covering of grace over each other's faults. And I, you know, as I'm wanting to blame him, and I'm wanting to deflect off of me, and I'm all caught up in this, and just This verse just brought a calmness and a grace,

and I was reminded that, you know, show grace, show love, kind of work through this. And we did. We we survived it. We're still here. We're still here. And I I was able to just stop for a minute and just say, hey, here's the deal. I'm just I'm just afraid. I'm just feeling the weight of this. I don't know how to do this.

Which caused me to calm down and realize I'm not helping. The hammer is not needed in this moment. It's making it worse. But for me the hammer was, well, tomorrow's coming whether we figure out what to say or not. So I'm going to keep talking if you don't because we can't just stare at each other for thirty minutes. So

you kind of started in other words, what you're trying say is it's ironic that we almost got in a fight trying to talk to you guys about how not to get in a fight. They're like That's our life. And it kind of reminds why we want to be up It's not we're sitting like, oh look at how much better than we are at you all this.

Or look at how we were so perfectly matched together. It's like It's the idea that what you've understand is the differences are never going away. The different ways you communicate, the different ways guys, that never

stops. We think that sometimes to get to a good place in a marriage means we'll be around each other so much that you're more arrogant, eventually I'll win and they'll become like me. You know what I mean? And you think that's going to happen. Or you think that a perfect marriage is you never have conflict anymore.

That's not true. The differences never change. You're always one bad moment, one stupid mistranslated phrase, one mumbling over sock because foots and mouths. See, you can't even speak right now. And you're only one of those away from a fight if you're not careful

at any given moment. It's not about not having conflicted moments. It's about learning to spot it. Because you're always going have to deal with conflict, but it doesn't have to turn into a fight. It doesn't have to break down to the level of a fight. Because that's what it says in Proverbs seventeen fourteen.

It says, Starting a coral is like opening a floodgate, so stop before a dispute breaks out. It's saying like when you start to have a coral, it's going to happen, you're going to start to have disagreement, it's really describing a dam starting to crack. And it says realize it before the dam breaks.

Because when the dam breaks, now a full on fight has started. And that means what happens when the dam breaks? You're not putting that water back. And where does water go? It travels down. Water always finds the lowest point.

When we start getting into a fight, the communication breaks down. We stop. When we don't learn how to say what we mean and mean what we say, and we let the dam break, we will say a lot of mean things. And every time we start just out of that pain, of that fight, saying the mean things, we are hurting our relationship.

A little piece of it is getting torn away. It's like you say things that you're like, you can say you're sorry, but you can never take them back. You can't un say things, can't undo things, and that creates a scar tissue and an issue. So the idea is not that you never conflict,

it's the idea is have you learned. What I'm proud of is a couple of years, even just years ago, we would have gotten into a full fight. But instead we just come in here and we're like, you're right. I'm sorry. I'm doing the hammer. Let's reset. We open the drawer here and

where is it? The guys have the drawer. We pull out our mulligan. Let's start over. Let's try this again. Let's go mulligan and try again and do it. That's what we're really talking about, what we need to do because you don't want to let the fight fully break out. You don't want that to happen because then boom,

then it gets ugly and it gets messy. And then what happens is when you start to actually get into a conflict, we add another layer to this because now we go to our management conflict.

How do I like to walk through a fight? When I start to break down, how do we walk through fights? And this is not male and female. There's

two reactions that once you start to fight that everyone in this room does one or the other. You've to figure out which one you are. And when I get to the fight level, I run to this and I call it how do I walk through a fight? And you realize a fight is when you stop trying to solve an issue

and you're just trying to either win or avoid. Now you're in a fight. We get it. And win and avoid, that's really the basic. I like to use it with shoes. We like to describe this with shoes. We put on our conflict, our fight shoes. And what do we do? And there's your shoes and here's mine.

You can be backwards, it doesn't matter. This isn't male female. This is just which one are you? And and what are yours? I'm a runner. Not in real life. I don't run at all. But in conflict, I run. And really, I just I don't I try to avoid conflict because mainly the reality is is that I don't know how to handle it.

I tend to be an I not tend. I am an internal processor, and I'm highly emotional as well. So I have all these emotions coming in very quickly, and my internal processing is rather slow. And so I just kind of become this

like a computer with a million tabs open, and I lock up. And so I want to book it. I just want to get out of there. But what I've realized, actually, in this is that I'm not ever running away from an issue. You can't ever get away from an issue if you don't deal with it. And so what I was really doing was basically putting

a lid on all these fears and insecurities and hurts kind of inside. I was just shoving it. So I was just kind of running circles, running around it. And you just you can

put that lid on all of that for a really long time, but what ends up happening is it just starts kind of boiling over. And I like to call things come out sideways, start coming out sideways. And I start seeing things and feeling and acting through the filter

of these emotions that I'm trying to shove, but they're coming out sideways. I'm seeing everything through my resentments, through my hurts, through my fears, all these things. So it's just a constant battle, and at the same time, I'm just continuing to reshove. And

I don't know if you have ever experienced a pressure cooker explode, but it is not a pretty sight. It is a mess, and there's carnage. And that's what what I that's what I would do. Just because you run doesn't mean you don't toss grenades over your shoulders. Yes. Had grenade. Maybe even call in an air strike.

Yell broken arrow and send yeah. That'll happen. Here's what's think about the layers here. I still have the basic brain. I compartmentalize. But I'm an external processor. So I externally process. She has the walk in closet but internally processes.

That creates a lot of complexity to manage a conflict. She'll get all these things out and she doesn't even want to say them out loud or know how to say them out loud. I want to help say it out loud. I want to fix it, but I only know how to be in one drawer at a time. So it just gets really bizarre.

And so when this happens, like what happened just Friday, and we're starting in this moment, it's like I put on my combat boots. We're starting to have a fight. So instead of running away, I march after. And the combat boots is this way of trying to say, you know what, we've to solve this. Matter of fact,

some of us in this room, you are what I call the over spiritualized combat veteran. You think the combat boots is this idea of Ephesians four twenty six says don't let the sun set on your anger. We've got to deal with this. That's really an excuse. You want to force this person into the confrontation.

Because what I said, a fight is when you stop trying to solve it. Here's the thing. I don't even know what I really mean. I probably got my feelings hurt. But I haven't figured that out yet. Because now I just want to win.

And how I try to show that my feelings have been hurt is I have to show her how wrong she is and correct the way we need. I want to fight. And then she runs away and throws grenades. I'm like, hey, come back here and face me like a man. Let's do this the old fashioned way. Put on a bayonet and let's fight it out hand in hand.

You know why you want to do that? The person that likes to do this is I'm an external processor. I can think fast on my feet and the reality is why I want her to engage is not about a solution. It's about if I can get you to engage right now I'll win. I'll win. And then you get mad. Why do they run away? If

you're marching at someone in combat boots waving a hammer around, what does that look like? It's not pleasant. And so I don't even really know what I mean. I'm just wanting to win a fight and prove the truth. It really comes down. I think what these come through is it's actually back in Ephesians four, it's interesting

how in that same passage, just a few verses down in verse 15 when it talks about when we truly learn to be mature in Christ, we won't be deceived by lies and tricks and like that. But it says that instead we will speak the truth in love,

growing in every way more and more like Christ who is the head of the body of his church. Remember that's the same thing that brings back up in chapter five when he talks about being married. And this visual of us being Jesus to one another. And so I think what happens, these are the wrong ways to deal with conflict,

because they're only part of it. I think the runner is a misguided attempt to love, but there's no truth.

When you try to love without truth, you're really saying I just don't want to rock the boat, I don't want to figure this out, I don't want to deal with it, I just want things to stay and so I'm going to love without truth. And love without truth isn't love. It's just avoiding. You're running.

And I think what I tend to do is I take the combat boot which is truth without love. It becomes all about truth. Then I turn it into a quagmire. Arguments become quagmire of, you know what, it's like our own little Vietnam.

I'm winning every open battle but losing this war because she's fighting guerrilla style now and now it's like there's no end to this thing. We never resolve anything. There's no peace. You end up having the same argument for years. You might not think it's the same argument because it's just coming out sideways.

And the lack of communication, you never really resolve anything. So the answer is you've got to put truth with love back in your communication. Understand how each other communicates, learn how to say what you mean and mean what you say. And in order to do that,

you need to have truth with love. And what that looks like is a third pair of shoes.

It's these. They're hiking boots. Do realize you hiking boots have elements of running shoes and elements of combat boots? But you know the difference is?

Running away is by yourself and you're running away from something. Combat boots is you're marching at someone.

A hike is meant to be done side by side to go somewhere together. You're together on this. You're going on a hike that says we're going to get to a place that's better than where we're at, and we're going to hike as long as it takes to figure out how to communicate, to figure out,

have a mulligan, start over. We're going to go on this hike until we get there. But like you said, everyone wants a simple answer. To tell the anger and avoidance to take a hike, there's really no way around. What is it? No. It's just I mean, this is this is a journey that takes time and patience and hard work. I mean,

a hiking path is sometimes treacherous, and it's long, and there's dangers, you know? There's things along the way, but I just that intentionality to work and to do that. And I think it's interesting. I've had know, Bill and I have had several couples, married couples even say to us, You know, we're just not compatible. And

that truly confounds me because when I think about the complexities of each person and how our brains are wild wired and how we approach situations and how we approach conflict and react to it and everything that we bring in, the the the pains and the hurts and the baggage and and our personalities.

I mean, there's so much involved and so many layers to work through. I just wonder who is compatible. Who is? We're all compatible. Every one of us is compatible with each other, but I'm not sure anyone is truly naturally compatible.

It's just am I willing to put the hiking boots on and say let's walk side by side and always say it's not about face to face. It's not about face chasing butt, going after the wrong way. It's about let's side by side go up that hill. And it might be hard and it might be tough, but you know what? There's a view up there

of something beautiful if we're willing to to go there. Yeah. And and it gets difficult. And it's hard because we're sitting here going, there's your answer. Everyone's like, well, how do I fix it? Well, there is one simple thing. You know the difference between a hike and and running or battling?

One simple thing you can do is when you when you sense the tension and you're trying to communicate, it's okay to stop and after you say something, ask the person you're actually talking to, what do you think I just said? What did it feel like? What

do you think I was trying to communicate? You've got to be careful what you say. What do think I just said? Now you sound like a mom or a dad to them and they're going to get mad at that.

Realize, help me understand, did I land? What do you think I said? And you know what you're going find out? Sometimes you think you were so clear and when you stop and ask it, what they say they heard is not even anything remotely close to what you meant.

I hear that all the time. I preach to thousands of people every week. People come up and go that was so great. I'm so glad that you taught me about blah blah blah. And then the things that come in your mouth are like that's not even close to what I was trying to preach. That's like, were you in the same room?

I'm not even sure if what you're saying is biblical. How do you even I am telling you that your best attempts to communicate, you'll be shocked at what the other person hears. That's what a hike does. A hike says let's stop. Here let me reach down and give you my hand. We're going up this hill. What did you hear me say?

Help me help you help me help you. Which helps me. You know, and you just gotta put in the work. You just gotta take the journey, right? Yeah. And and just I think really what I wanna convey as well is just how important it is to not only spend the time getting to know the language of your spouse, but really asking God to help

get to know yourself. And that's what we're talking about next week.

We're going talk about the baggage we bring in because that's what complicates the hike. You can fix all of this stuff and still not because we're all carrying a backpack with a bunch of rocks into it. And if we don't know how to unpack those rocks, it doesn't matter how committed you are to hiking, it's going be exhausting. And then you're going get mad, and guess what you're to do? You're going to open up your backpack and start throwing your rocks at each other. That's what's going to happen. We'll see that. Don't miss next week. But in the end, we're really trying to say the hike is a commitment

to go on a journey together, and it takes time. And you know what the real issue is here? We say we're not compatible because I just think the average couple, we don't take the time to learn how to speak each other's language and work through the issues.

UCLA did a study a number of years ago of how much meaningful conversation does the average American couple spend having a week. And what they meant by meaningful wasn't like, hey, did you go to the store? Hey, we got this, don't forget the appointment

tomorrow. Hey, which one of us has to go talk to the principal about what Junior did again? It's

more of having conversations like this. Talking about your hopes and dreams, Talking about how you're wired. Talking about where you're going. Talking about deeper things. They found out the average couple only has thirty seven minutes a week of meaningful conversation.

But then they studied that if you don't know how to converse, they go what complicates that thirty seven minutes is that the average couple only hears half of what is said, only understands half of what they heard, only believes half of what they understood and only remembers half of that. That's 6.2%

of the conversation actually lands. If you have thirty seven minutes a week, 6.2% is two minutes and twenty nine seconds a week. That's a commercial. I think the reason we feel we're incompatible is we spend about a commercial's length a week actually connecting. We've got to spend the time.

And learning another language, learning how to communicate in another language is hard work. I know this. When I was in college, I had to take three semesters of a foreign language. But guess what I figured out? There was a loophole. The college I was at did not specify it had to be the same language.

So I took the first semester of three different languages. I took first semester of Greek, first semester of Hebrew, then threw in a semester of German just to make it simple.

And you know what? I did because the second it got hard. Second semester it got a lot harder. And so once it got hard, take a new language. Take the first semester over and over and over again. But you know what? I paid a price because when I went to seminary because I didn't want to be a pastor,

I had to take three semesters of Greek and Hebrew. If I had just taken one of those for three semesters, wouldn't have to take it again and go to grad school. I was going to have to face that if I was going to get to where I wanted to go. If you want to have

a marriage that's working, it's not a marriage that doesn't have conflict, you're going to have to put in the time to learn the language because too many of us, what we see over and over again is too many relationships are broken because you only want to take the first semester of the relationship

and then when that gets hard you're going to go start over. I love this phrase. A mentor of mine once said, you can have a new marriage with the same spouse or the same marriage with a different spouse. It's up to you. And it's just going to take the time.

And trust me, there's hope. There's hope. Because back in the day, would have moments where it was just so exhausting.

And we had a fight that lasted one time. I remember it was several days. It just you know, it'd calm itself. You'd not skirmish. Hey. Alright. We gotta, you know, take care of our wounded and all that. Then,

you know, lights out. We'll start the artillery barrage again tomorrow or whatever. But it it was going on. It was just this one and I finally was so frustrated. I just quit.

And and I end up saying something to Carrie that just changed everything, and it wasn't because I was brilliant. I literally was saying this out of just desperation. I was washing my hands of the whole thing, and it's like I accidentally found the combination to Fort Knox.

Is what I looked at her and said, finally said, you know what, I'm done. I'm done. I'm just done. I don't care anymore. Do what you want. I'm done. And then all of a sudden, right as I was about to walk out, I said, all I've been trying to tell you is that you hurt my heart. All I said is you hurt my heart. Four words.

The whole dynamic changed. She took the grenade back and put the pin back in it and sat it down. She goes, call off the air strike. Ephesians four:two, She showed me incredible grace. Started to go, really? And then just unpackage. But she did say one thing. She looked right back at me and the first thing she said is,

you should have led with that. What you're saying is if I would have just said that two days ago, we never would have been in this fight. I spent two days of truth beating with a hammer To really what I was trying to say because I didn't know what I meant. My feelings were hurt.

And guys, I think we all do this, but guys we're really bad. We tend to filter every emotion through anger at some point. We're hungry, we're angry. We're horny, we're angry. We're angry, we're angry. We get our feelings hurt, we're angry.

And so what I was trying to communicate to her just sounded like she was all wrong, was all messed up, everything was broken, it's not about me. I was mad, I'm trying to fix her. When all I needed to say was my heart was broke. There's those moments if you go on the hike together, you'll get to them.

And you catch yourself. And improvement is not the lack of conflicted moments. Improvement is you have fewer times the dam breaks. You'll go on the hike together. In other words, what do we need to do, Carrie?

Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Don't say it mean. Amen. Let's pray. Father God, thank you, Lord. I thank you that that we're able to come up here and just share, Lord. And God, I I I pray for everyone in this room, Lord. There's some people in this room that are not even married.

And Lord, I I I think this is more important for them to hear. Lord, I pray that what they would hear in their heart from what we've talked about today is it's more important to figure out who you are than wandering around looking for who you want to be with.

Lord, just pray that they would take these words and learn, learn, learn, learn, learn how they've been wired so they can then learn how to explain that when they get into relationship. And Lord, I pray for those who are maybe having a tough go over and they're in a tough season

and hiking is getting hard. Lord, I pray that you would give them that Ephesians four:two ability to just choose grace, choose to take a mulligan and just keep walking side by side. Maybe get help but not to run away or run into battle.

And Lord, I I I really pray for those who are here maybe have had a a marriage that's too late. It's already broke.

Lord, I do not want them to go away here just beating themselves up and saying, wow, failure, failure, hopelessness. But Lord, that they could see that God, you are a God of grace. You are a God of second, third, fourth, a million chances. Lord, that you would help them get healing from this brokenness.

Put pieces back together and learn and learn to just trust you. But Lord, in in all of our relationships, may we choose to take a hike, not run, not battle, but to say what we mean, mean what we say, and not say it mean. I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.