Read-along
Chapter labels by Rewind AI · transcript shown verbatim. Tap any timestamp to start playing from that line — the line being spoken is highlighted as it goes.
Hey. We're gonna need the powerful name of Jesus for today's topic. We're talking about conflict
in our in our home field advantage. How do we get the advantage in our homes and and deal with we're gonna deal with conflict, and so we're gonna need the name of Jesus to be able to deal with this today. But but you can relax because I am expert level when it comes to conflict management.
Probably because I cause it so much, I've learned how to deal with it. No, but seriously expert level, let me show you why I'm expert level. My wife was gonna be speaking with me, I told you guys about that, should've been last week, this week, She's not. So and so how I dealt with conflict was avoiding it altogether.
But no, she's awesome up here, but to to come up with me and talk, her way her brain works, it's super stressful.
Especially the way I'm wired because we can map it out, we can talk. She's the only one who has to write down and think. And even if we're just gonna have a discussion, she needs to know where this discussion's gonna go so she can think about it. And then I don't really pay attention to that and I go off script all the time. So it's it's always high stress for us. And and with all the things going on with my daughter, going to England, not going to England, all these things back and forth of when she's gonna go and all that, it's almost like PTSD after this. I could tell that as we were starting to talk about, hey, we need to talk about what we're gonna do when we go up and talk about conflict, I could tell that us trying to even come up to talk about conflict was gonna start causing conflict.
And I realized, so I knew she needed to be let off the hook because then she'll feel guilty, like hey, just don't do it. Well then I feel bad. I was supposed to do it. And then it's like, I just said, no. No. You need to not and then she came back and said, thank you. She realized, in the past,
it wouldn't have gone like that. In the past, she probably would have been up here, and then all of our illustrations about fighting would have been from this week. And so it's a good thing, see. So sometimes the best way to manage conflict is to avoid it altogether.
But like I said, twenty nine years of marriage has taught us to avoid this one, because we knew how it would be. You gotta learn, you gotta know each other, because back in the day, and it still happens, it's not perfect, but it would've went differently not too long ago,
Because I would have pushed her, and then we would have been fighting, and then we would start fighting. And you know what happens when you get fighting? It's like the weird thing about fighting, especially in a home,
is you start to have a fight and it turns into an inception. You have a fight within a fight with a fight, and within no time, how many of you end up you can't even remember what started the fight. You're you're now fighting about what you're about how you're fighting. And then you get historical, not hysterical,
historical, and every fight you've ever had comes back to the surface, and you end up in this mess. And and here's what complicates it, especially myoma. I've noticed that there's two types of people when it comes to to when you when you you have conflict. There is repeaters and there's retreaters. And
it's interesting how God has a sense of humor. Repeaters and retreaters tend to be married. A repeater is someone that just wants to go at it, they're right there, and then they almost think, call them repeaters because they say, hey, if I can just talk this out long enough, you'll realize I'm right.
You're like a salesman, so to speak. Give me enough time, and I will convince you. And they're the ones that just wanna keep talking. And then you go like, hey, we don't walk away from me. We gotta finish this. You might even spiritualize
it by saying, the bible says don't let the sun go down on your anger. The problem is if you keep talking, my anger's never going away. That's what a retreater's gonna say. And then there's retreaters that are like, hey, when the conflict starts, they need to back off. Now both of those can be done in a healthy way. Sometimes you do need to sit and talk it out.
But sometimes you need to back off and catch your breath. A a retriever might be backing off to avoid conflict altogether. A repeater might wanna talk, but not for the right reasons. But it's weird. Now now two repeaters rarely make it down the altar, because they're just
going at it all the time. But some of y'all, sometimes two retreaters end up married, and you're the ones that in premarital counseling, we don't really fight. Yes, you do. It's more like cold war. You don't fight because you never actually deal with anything.
You just go, oh, that was kind of weird. Let's walk away from each other till we can forget about it and then go on with life. And then it never happens. But here's the thing I've learned. We end up in a tense moment.
I go to my wife because, you know, and I'm like, hey, we need to talk this out. Don't let the sun set our anger. We need to work this out. You know, we need and then she gets frustrated and wants to pull away, then I keep following her, and I keep pushing and pushing and pushing, and there is nothing more wild and crazy and dangerous than a retriever that you've cornered. They're like the wild animal. Like, I tried to get away from the snarrow, now you're getting the claws and the fangs, man. And in my house, we had weapons of mass destruction.
My wife used cordless phones. Broke so many of those, thrown them at me. And it wasn't like cordless phones, it was and it was before the tiny little cordless phones.
It was those big ones with the antenna you had to pull up. It's like, it looked like the radios they used to use to call in air strikes in the military. Like, we've got a broken arrow. And she would be holding one. It seemed like she was always had the phone when I'm trying to work it out, and the next thing you know, woah, incoming,
incoming. Fortunately, she was really bad at aiming. The best place to be when she threw something at you was right in front of her.
And and and that's how it worked. And and and in that point, like, there was one time
I kept talking and talking, and she's like, I just don't wanna she's getting mad, I go, you need to talk to me, you need to grow up, we need to work this out, and so I'm I'm like doing all the right things, right, trying to tell her to talk. She got so mad she's like, that's it. I'm leaving.
And she stormed out of the house and went to get in the car. Well I stood there and I looked. I go, well she ain't getting far. She left her keys right there on the counter. So I stood there right in the door. I'm like, she's gotta come back to me. And I'm waiting, and I'm waiting, and I'm waiting.
I finally sat on the couch to wait. So the next thing you know I fell asleep on the couch. She didn't come back in for like two and a half hours. Yet she didn't have the She went out and sat in the car.
No cell phones at the time that could get internet and all that. You can't just go surf. You can't go social media. Can't She literally just sat in the car for two and a half hours just staring at nothing. Now I get it. A lot of you young moms with young kids,
two and a half hours of just sitting in the car by yourself sounds like heaven.
But she'd rather sit and stare at nothing than talk to me at this moment. And it's interesting when I say that because it sounds like, well wasn't I doing the right thing and she was being immature? The truth is she wanted to pull away to think, and I didn't want her to. You see, what I was doing was way more insidious.
I acted like it was a spiritual thing. I acted like it was a mature thing, but inside I really knew that I am a quick talker, a fast thinker, and I'd do way better in a fight if I can get you to face me on the open battlefield right away. Don't don't jungle warfare me. Don't I I don't want you to have time to come up with a plan. I don't want you to actually think about what's going on. If I can get you to fight me now, I will win, and you will give me an unconditional surrender. So my whole thing inside of me, the how I was dealing conflict is I acted like I was the more mature one. I acted, but I knew that I was afraid. Don't let her go think about it, or else she'll be able come back and say, here's how I was hurt. Here's what you did. If I can get her to fight me now, I can get her confused and get her to just give up and say, you're right. I am so sorry.
Bingo. I got her to unconditionally surrender to me even if I was a jerk. And some of you, that's who you are, and you think you're right all the time. But that's not the way to do conflict. How do we manage conflict? And I call it manage because you have conflict. What we looked at last week in how we're all incompatible.
And we're incompatible not in our differences, we're incompatible in how we're the same. We all have ran from God. We all are born with this sinful nature, which means we have this selfish desire to just not trust God and go around him and listen to the enemy and say, you know what, I know me more than God does, and we end up with this pride that doesn't even look like, maybe we don't think we're beating our chest and looking how great I am, but we do think that I know better than God knows on how I should live.
And we wrestle with that. And we're gonna see that when it comes to conflict, because of that incompatibility, we all are gonna have conflict in all of our relationships. And so today I wanna look at what is really the cause of it,
and what's the real answer to it. And the neat thing about this, this applies to all of our relationships.
It's about conflict in general that you can apply to a marriage. You can apply to parenting. You can apply to that work relationship. You can apply to all these other areas. And what we're gonna see today, the big idea that we're gonna see in the passage of scripture we're gonna look at is simply this, Civility,
the ability to Starts with humility. If you take nothing away from today, you gotta see that. If you will not humble yourself, none of this is gonna work. It won't work. It's a lack of humility. And humility isn't thinking less of yourself, it's just thinking about yourself less.
It's more of you gotta be able to see and you have to really humble yourself for God as we're gonna see. We're gonna be in the book of James chapter four, and James is a real throat punchy book. There's 108 verses in this book, and in those 108 verses there's 52 commands. James was the half brother of Jesus
who was leading the church, pastoring basically the church in Jerusalem at a time when this church had fallen into like they were Christians talking to a church and he's saying, guys, we really know what Jesus did for us. We know that we can live by his love, through his love, not for it, from it.
But if you really are embracing his love, and you have the Holy Spirit in you, need to be humble, you need to trust him, and your life will change. And if your life's not changing, if you're not becoming more obedient to Christ, there is something wrong
in what's going on in your faith. So there are so many challenges here. And I'm gonna tell you, you think I get throat punchy, there's a few verses in here that are flat out in our faith. I mean it is like you might as well tilt and expose this area right now because it's coming hard and fast.
But in chapter four he talks about how all of this stuff of not living through the light of the Holy Spirit, we need to learn to draw closer to God because when we have our problems with God, when we're not trusting God, it is gonna affect every relationship we have and there's gonna be conflict.
So I wanna read in chapter four the first We're gonna read through
We're gonna be in chapter verses one through 10, but I wanna read the first three verses because the first three verses answer the question of what does cause conflict. And it says here, look, it even says, what is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don't they come from the evil desires at war within you?
You want what you don't have, so you scheme and you kill to get it. You're jealous of what other have, but you can't get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don't have what you want because you don't ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don't get it because your motives are all wrong, you want only what will give you pleasure.
So right there he answers the question of what is the foundational thing that really really really causes us to have conflict with one another, and that foundational thing is conflicting desires. That's really the cause of conflict. We have these conflicting desires at war within us. Really, we have problems with people
around us because we have a problem within us. And when two people are at war within themselves, if you're at war within yourself, it's gonna be hard to be at peace with others. And that's how he's describing. He says you have these conflicting
desires. And right there in those three verses it mentions, it kinda pulls out three types of desires we have, and these are repeated all through scripture. These basic desires, and I wanna show you that all three of them here is the desire to have, the desire to feel, the desire to be. Now here's the thing,
In our relation with God, the way he wired us to truly be, there's a right. We are built to desire to have, to feel, and to be. The problem is how we try to fulfill that. What's it supposed to be in? See, we have a desire to have, but what we are meant is a desire to have eternity, a relationship with God, a a a relationship with our creator in the way we were meant to be and to have that. We were desired to feel. We were desired to feel the the feelings. And and and and and and and what we're we are built to have is all the feels.
I'm not gonna go into a lot on that today, but you can go back. I did a series not too long called All the Feels.
And we're meant to have all the feels, not just the ones that make us feel good. There's feelings that make us feel bad, and sometimes we need to have those feelings. Matter of fact, in this passage it's gonna end with telling us we should be grieving, we should cry, we should have moments of pain.
And we do have a desire to be, but what that's supposed to be is be in Christ. We're meant to find our identity in who God is and who he made us to be, and it's found through relationship with Christ. But because of these evil desires, the fallenness, what we talked about last week, because of that incompatibility,
it's been twisted and we listen to the lies, and so we try to take these actually God given image things that we're drawn to, and basically we try to fulfill them in the wrong way, And it's never gonna fulfill. So what happens is our desire to have becomes about stuff. It becomes about stuff.
And possessions and things, and a matter of fact, they've done studies and in marriages that are ending, sixty percent of marriages that have ended, sixty percent says their primary fight and their problem was money trouble. Well think about it. If you have two people that your desire to have is all about having things,
and you look at your paycheck and everything you want, and then you're married to someone that has wants that are different than you, and you think that in my basic desire, I need this to be happy, I need this to to feel pleasure, to feel good about life, and you can't afford even one person's things, why do you think you fight about money all the time?
Because here's the thing, even if you had enough money to go after all those things, what God says, you're never gonna find what you're looking for down that road. But you end up pursuing it anyways, massive debt, now you're fighting not only over the fact that I wanna spend the money this way, you wanna spend the money that way, now you can't spend the money anyway because you owe everybody stuff.
This is such a critical thing to get right that you won't wanna miss next week. We're gonna talk about, you know, the sports illustration, how to avoid a financial collapse in your team. And all of go, I don't wanna talk about that. When
you already know that that 60% of you is that's what is is killing you right now. We're fighting over that because we have this desire to have and it's not gonna work. And a matter of fact, desire to feel, which is you know, I just wanna have pleasure all the time. I wanna feel good all the time.
I wanna, you know, avoid adversity. So if the idea to feel was meant to only feel what we call the good feelings see we think there's the list. Here's the good feelings, always have those. Here's the bad feelings, avoid these at all cost. You got a problem at that point.
Because if you're gonna avoid bad feelings when feelings are neutral, they're dashboard lights or indicators. And if you ignore the dashboard indicator, you're called my wife.
Shh, don't tell her I said that. Actually, she doesn't. She tells me all the time I'm joking. But adversity, those feelings of when life is hard is not always bad. You know they've done, the queen bees, you know they're the ones that create all the baby bees.
When these baby bees are hatched, they hatch in a little cell, kinda like those honeycomb cells. And there's this membrane on it. It's thick, it's hard. The baby bees have a really difficult time breaking out of that. Sometimes they never make it.
But it's really hard. But if the queen was to break them out, or other bees were, guess what happens to that baby bee? It will never fly. It's gonna die.
It has to struggle to build the strength that allows it to fly.
And if you take the fallen version of the desire, and all you do is that's where you end up with unhealthy copingism. I'll drink, I'm into sex, I'm looking at porn, I'm not into this, I'm always spending my money on these things, I'm always doing All those things that make you just get away from the pain but feel good for a moment,
there's things that God knows that you will fly on the other end of, but if you refuse that, you're gonna miss it. That's why we don't like to do hard things. And sometimes the hard thing, the hard feeling, the tough moment is exactly what you need to go through. And then there's that desire to be.
And instead of being who I am and finding my identity in Christ, we have this pride and this power idea, like I gotta figure out what I'm gonna be, and I know what it is, and no one's gonna tell me this is my truth, and I wanna be in control, and we try to find who we are in all the wrong things.
I mean, that's what's really
this our world right now is kinda jacked up that way, but not just our world. I see this as a huge problem within the church. Some of you in this room might have a problem with this. Like, keep trying to figure out, I gotta find out who I am. I gotta find out if you know Jesus, you already know who you are.
You were a child of the king.
You find your identity in Christ. It's not I know Christ, and now I gotta go find out who I am. Your identity is not what you do. Your identity is not in your career. It's not in who you married. It's not in your friends. It's not in the things you have. It's it's it's not in your sexuality.
That's the biggest lie of the world right now that's tearing the church apart because people are having a hard time with what God says sexuality should be. Because if if I'm not that, then God says he created me wrong because you're thinking that that's who you are. Your sexuality is not who you are.
It's not who you were meant to be. You you're you're you're you're doing the wrong thing. It might be an attraction. It might be something you like. It might be something that feels good, but that is not your identity. And that is the biggest lie.
And you're gonna say amen to that. Here's the one some of you might go, oh. A lot of us, you find too much of who you are in your political stances. And you spend more time watching news and reading reports and arguing about how we need to protect this and do that than you do reading the word of God. And
you have Christianized your politics.
Actually, you've politicized your Christianity.
And you think that your political stance is the gospel. I have very strong political opinions. I just don't preach them, because I'm called to preach the gospel, and let the gospel guide me.
Some of you, if you took away all the things you like to harp on politics all the time, what's left of you? Our identity is in Christ, see? And that's what causes fights. We find our identity in all these things,
and then if someone has a different idea, we fight with them all the time when our identity is to be found in Christ alone. In the Gospel. In the Gospel. Says in Proverbs, pride leads And that's really a version of pride, is because you're saying I trust me more than I trust God, which is what Adam and Eve did.
And so it's really about that. And here's what I've realized. Been married long enough, said twenty nine years, you know, in a row. Sad you gotta say that in today's era. In a row, you know, most of them good. And I've learned that if you're gonna manage conflict in your home, you're gonna have to come to this realization.
There are so many times that you can be right or you can be in right relationship. And you can't be both at the same time so many times.
Ask yourself when you start to fight, which hill do you plant your flag in? Is it being right or being in a right relationship?
Because you know what, there's moments, I've been married twenty nine years and maybe none of you have had this moment, but to me, my wife and I love each other and we don't get around, we fight, we have plenty of fights. You
got a Sicilian married to a Scottish man, and it's, I hate to just create this whole idea of what culture's like, but they're both loud and we both like to be right. And
the issue is we will get in fights, and it is the weirdest thing. You've been married twenty nine years, we have so much confidence that we will end up in a fight that's going on hours, and we never lose hope. We know, both of us know in our heart, we're eventually gonna both say we're sorry for what we did, and we're gonna be fine. It's just how long are we gonna do this before we get there? Now we're twenty nine years. We've got almost got in a fight like last week over something. We're all stressed out. It started to chirp up, and then I stopped, and we both looked at each other and realized, you know what? I am tired. Are you I am so exhausted. Hey. How about we just jump to the apologies and be done with this before we do all the stuff in the middle?
And she's like, good idea. I'll start. I'm sorry to this and this. I didn't mean to fight. I just meant but this hurt my feelings. You know what? I'm sorry about that. I meant, oh man, I'm so glad we avoided the three hours that was gonna be in between this. And what's weird is we know that going into the fight. We
fight with hope. That's what I'm telling you. If we apply the scripture, you're still gonna fight, but you fight with a hope that you know you're gonna get to the other side. But then it comes time stupid, it's like why don't we just get to the other side right now? Pride. I wanna be right, and I want you to be wrong.
Then you fight about who's in the most pain, and who's in the most this, and who's all that.
I do this with my kids, where pride will sit in as a father, like I'm trying to give them advice, especially now that they're all adults, and that's even worse, because now more of you switched into the coaching end of parenting. I'm an advisor. Know, unless there's money involved, they don't have to listen to me.
So two of them still have to listen to me. No. No. Only on certain things. But I'll sit there and sometimes I'll get frustrated when they're not listening. I don't think they're really appreciating
what I'm doing for them and asking them, and I will say this thing that I know it just comes from pride because it irritates them and I know it and that's why I say it, so push buttons, my turn. And it is this, I'll say this, you know what? You'll thank me when I'm dead. Anyone else say that to your kids?
That is like going nuclear on the guilt and the shame. I go, when I'm dead you're gonna finally realize I should've thanked dad for this. And they're they're so mad. And I realize that's a pride thing. Do you wanna be right or do you wanna be in right relationship?
In other words, what this first section is saying here is is you gotta deal with the problem within before you deal with the problem with them. Say that again for those in the back. You have to deal with the problem within before you try to deal with the problem with them. And you'll never do that unless you're humble.
Unless you humble yourself, you will never do that.
Because you know what you will do? You'll try to spiritualize it. He's talking to Christians. You might go to God. You'll say, but I'm praying about it. I'm praying about it. But if I don't humble myself and I just pray, I can pray wrong. Because verse two and three, what it say? It says you don't have because you don't ask. But when you do ask, you ask with the wrong motives only for your pleasure. Meaning, you do go to God, you're basically giving God a to do list. You're like, God, I already know what I need. You need to give me this. You need to change them. I need more resource because what you're really trying to do is get God to give you what you want to have, what you wanna feel, and what you wanna be independent of what he's called you to be.
It's interesting that this brokenness will actually drive us to pray. And you're like, well I'm praying all the time. I'm a spiritual person. I don't know what's going on. But we're praying wrong. Matter of fact, it says you want another scary throw punch. Last week I talked about play your position,
and I talked about the position of the husband to be the leader. And I explained what leader means. It doesn't mean boss, means go first, it means you're the catcher, not the pitcher. Yeah, you're the field general, but you're the one squatting down and getting dirty, and you're calling pitches, and you know, you gotta pay attention to the coach.
That same passage about love your wife in first Peter I kinda quoted goes on to say, and husbands, if you don't love your wife this way, and you don't really raise, you be a parent and a father like you're supposed to be, it literally says, God says, I will not answer your prayers.
God actually says to us men who are fathers and husbands, if you ignore the call to lead your home, God won't listen to you. Interestingly enough ladies, it doesn't tell the wife that. So once again, you should be happy that God calls the husband to be the leader. It's not a subjugation thing.
It's a go first kind of a thing. And you know why? Because men, we wanna be heroes. We like war movies. We like Captain America. We like Superman. We like these things. Why? Because of machismo? No, that's the dumb side of it. We like it because God built us to go first.
He built us to step into those gaps. And we all we do it in sports, we do it all these things, we let that outlet in all the wrong ways instead of being the hero in our home that we're supposed to be. And God says you can be praying with all the wrong motives.
And God says, especially to the husbands, in your home if you're not leading, God says I'm not listening to you because you refuse to listen to me. That's what he's saying. And I think we end up praying wrong.
I read a study that shocked me. You know how long the average family when they go to a national park stays? Four to five hours.
I can test that. Remember when I was kid, my dad, we finally went up to see the Grand Canyon, my mom wanted to take us up and see it. We got there, we walked around for a couple hours, looked at stuff, my dad says, alright, let's go, let's beat the traffic, let's head back. And the grand it was beautiful, you saw this amazing, was overwhelming, But man, imagine how underutilized our time was. We
saw a piece of it that blew our mind, but that's it. And then we drive away. And I think that's a lot of us with a relationship with God, especially when it comes to prayer. I think often we pray wrong because we don't pray long. And I don't mean you gotta spend three hours a day, I just mean we don't spend that much time
praying because we don't spend that much time in the word of God. And so we end up praying wrong like these prayers that he doesn't answer is because you're still trying to operate through the flesh, through this fallen broken way of trying to to have to feel and to be. And when you're trying to do that but still know God, you end up waiting till you're in a crisis. You go to God, tell him what you think needs to happen, and your idea of him answering prayers is him giving you what you want and doing making the other person be who you want him to be, and so you just shoot up these quick prayers that have nothing to do with the relationship he wants to have with you.
And then God says, that's not gonna work because I'm not gonna answer those prayers. I love you too much. Just like you know when your kids you know, if you let your kids have everything they ask for from their point of view, first of all, CPS would take your kids away from you.
And that's what God's saying to us here, he's like, hey, deal with the problem within before you deal with the problem without.
You see, that's why our desires aren't fulfilled, we don't ask in prayer or we ask with the wrong motives. So what's the cure? Let's go on, verse four, read the rest of this passage and point out what it's saying. And this is where it gets really, guys, you're gonna have to make a decision today in your heart.
And this gets really throat punchy. He says you adulterers. You see when we don't listen to God and we do this, basically God calls it adultery. He said you're in a relationship with me, but you are cheating on me left and right. He goes you are an adulterer.
He goes, don't you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? He says, I'll say it again. That's the first century version of I'm gonna say this for the back row.
He says, I'll say it again, if you wanna be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. So he's saying, hey, even as a Christian, if I refuse to listen to God when God's word clearly states something, it's not I didn't know, it's not and you can even admit I'm struggling with it. I fail, but at least I'm attempting. But if you sit here and hear what God's word says, this is how relationships should work, This is how your life should work. And you just flat out say, well, I know what it says, but I just absolutely am not gonna do it.
You have now become an enemy of God. You've set yourself up to be his enemy.
And then he gets really serious. He goes I he says, do you think the scriptures have no meaning? How many of us says, well, don't like that part. I'm gonna change it. The world does. Lots of churches do that. Well, that's not that doesn't really count for today because of we we we try to go around God. And he's like, you think the word of God is meaningless?
He says, you your society's only gonna last for a little while. The word of the Lord will stand forever. And he says, you think it has no meaning?
They say that God is passionate, that the spirit he has placed within us. Because if you know Christ, you have the Holy Spirit in you. And it says, within us should be faithful to him. It says, when we know the Lord and we ignore the Lord, it grieves the Holy Spirit. You are fighting God is what he's saying.
It says we need to be faithful to him. What this whole passage is trying to say is our problem is we have this brokenness. So we have a war within us that's really causing us at war with God,
which really then leads to the war with each other that in a minute he's gonna say, and the enemy likes to come in and take advantage of that and try to tell you your way of seeing it is right. Don't trust God. Stay in this war.
And so he says all this stuff about you better take me serious. You're setting yourself up as my enemy even though I'm not. Because in the middle of all this throat punchiness, look what he says, and he gives grace generously. What he's trying to say is, I have loved you. Jesus died for us.
We would never pursue God if he didn't come after us. And he loves us so much that he still loves us. He gave grace, he still died on the cross knowing we were gonna do all these knuckleheaded things. I'm trying to say why do you keep fighting me?
Why do you keep fighting me? Because you're at war within yourself and you need to realize that. Because he says, but why we won't realize it? He says God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. So here's the answer. Humble yourselves before God.
Resist the devil and he'll flee from you. Come close to God and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. If you're a person that all that feels is I have to always feel good and can't feel bad, you're gonna be confused by this. God says there's a moment that you better have some grief. You should be remorseful. You should have tears.
And that's a good thing. And then he wraps it all up by going back to what I started with the big idea, because this whole section is about this. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up in honor. In other words, you're not gonna do any of this unless you humble yourself and realize you're screwing it up.
And you can only do it through the power of God. You can only do it by trusting the Holy Spirit. You can only do it by having a relationship with Jesus Christ through the gospel. So what is it we're supposed to do? Because in verse seven through nine, he listed like some
things. Some things that it's gonna take humility to do. But our natural tendency is not to be humble in these moments, especially when conflict happens. We wanna go the opposite way. Anyone ever hear of a guy named Roy Regals?
Some of you might remember if I give you his nickname that he came he was known as Roy Wrong Way Regals. Anyone have a clue now? Roy Regals was an all American football player and a captain of his team that in the nineteen twenty nine Rose Bowl
picked up a fumble and it got a scrum and there was, it was just like conflict,
like hitting and everything, he beating around, he got beating around and beating around, and all of a sudden he said in the aftermath, he says, I was just hitting and hitting and trying to look for a way out, and I saw an opening, and so I just ran through the opening, I had clear open ground and I just took off. The problem is he was running the wrong way.
He got all spun around, he started running the wrong way. Matter of fact, if you ever see there is some old timey film, you see one of his players running to catch him, finally catches up to him after a 69 yard run. He's almost to the wrong end zone, and his teammate grabs him and turn and you could see he kinda looks confused, like, why are you and then instantly, like, eight players from the other team go, wham, and just wail on him and tackle him. And and yet, this guy was an all American, went on to great things, but he's remembered as wrong way Regals.
And here's the thing, that's what I think we naturally do. We get in the middle of conflict, it starts we start getting bounced around, and the enemy comes in. He says, resist the devil. And he goes, wait. Here's the way out. Go this way. It's the wrong way. We go the way of pride. We go the way of I'll fix this myself. We go the way I'm mad at God for not doing this. We go the way it's all them. We go the way that I have to be right. We run the wrong way.
And then someone like me comes up and grabs you on the on the five yard line, says you're going the wrong way. Then the enemy just bam, hits you and you're like, that didn't help. And now you're under this pile and you feel buried and you're like, just don't run the wrong way.
Here's what he's saying, and so there's these four steps that he said in those verses. Go back and read, I'm just gonna give them to you what they are. It's these four things he says, this is what you do, but you have to be humble or you won't do it. And the first thing is give in to God. Gotta surrender.
Gotta go, you know what? There's some ways I think that seem right to me, and what God says to do sounds so scary,
but the Bible repeatedly says there's a way that seems right to man. It actually will make sense to you. But God says, but in the end it leads to death. Not that he's threatening you. He's saying, you're not gonna find what you're looking for if you keep going down that road.
You can fight God on on how to diffuse conflict. You can fight God on what he says to do with your money and your time and your stuff. You can fight him all you want, and it is never gonna work. You will never win that fight.
And the other thing is you get wise to Satan. The fact that there's an enemy that when you never notice how when conflict gets bad, of sudden, wow, that escalated really quickly. A lot of times because there's an enemy going, I'm gonna take advantage of this moment.
I'm gonna stir the pot because I wanna mess with God's people. And then you're never gonna truly surrender to God and give in if you don't grow closer to him.
You know, they say seven days without the word of God makes one week. Man you guys had your coffee, you got that. The other service is like I go, should I write week and week on the board so you can see the two different spellings of it?
I'm in the word right now, I dig into it all the time, but if this is the only time you're in it, you don't stand a chance. Because how do you surrender to a God you don't know?
You gotta draw closer to him so you can give in. Matter of fact, when it says here, this passage, throw this in here for you for those that like a little bit more meat here. When he says wash your hands and purify your hearts, hands is symbolic in scripture of your actions. So whenever it says your hands, it says what you're doing. So when he says wash your hands, he goes you're gonna have to change the way you live. You have got to quit doing what the definition of sanity is, is doing the same thing the same way and expecting a different result.
You have to change the way you that's what repentance is in scripture. God already died and forgave you. But he says if you wanna live out this life, you gotta repent. Repent is a word that just means turn around.
It means stop going the wrong way. You can't just stop going the wrong way. You can't just stand there and stop. You gotta turn and start going the right way.
But they says, wash your hands because you have to purify your hearts. You won't really consistently wash your hands and change your ways until you change your heart. And when it's a purified heart is indicative of attitude in scripture.
So he goes, the only way you're gonna change your ways is to really see things differently. It says in Romans, you know, we are transformed by the renewing of our mind. That's not just get more information. That renewing of mind means to basically change your viewpoint, change your attitude,
and say, I'm gonna choose to see my life in this world through the lens of God's point of view, not my own. And you gotta curl closer to God to do that. Why he says you draw close to me, I'll draw close to you. He's not saying God's over here like this. Well, I come you come curl me and then maybe I'll He's saying when you draw closer to me, I will be closer to you because you'll understand it better. You'll be closer to me is what he's saying.
And you'll be able to do that. And the last thing is when he says you should grieve over these these days, we need to go to God for forgiveness, but it also implies we need to be willing to give forgiveness to others and ask for forgiveness. This is where you ultimately gotta get,
because I don't care where you go, you can do all these right things, but if you can't truly get to that point of forgiveness, especially in your marriage, you're never gonna get all the way through. My uncle was a
head mechanic guy at the State Fairgrounds for many years, and so he could get us into stuff free, my cousin and I. And so because it was free, I went to a lot of things that a kid growing up on the mean streets of Scottsdale wouldn't have gone to
just because they're free. And some of them I was surprised that I actually enjoyed them. And one of the things we went to was a tractor pull. Anybody ever been to a tractor pull? Anyone ever compete in a tractor pull? Had two last night, two. Alright. I immediately apologize for what I'm about to make fun of. No.
No. It was awesome. I loved it. But attractables, imagine a monster truck rally, only instead of monster trucks, it's souped up tractors. And you got Billy Bob and Roy, and then they bring their souped up tractors, and it's a contest to see they hook these weights, these weighted carts, these sleds,
and they see who can get either all the way through this boggy kinda ground or how far do you get, and you win. But almost invariably, almost every one of them eventually gets stuck. Every now and again, there's one that makes it through. And the first thing is it's dumb, but it gets kind of exciting. You're in the crowd, everyone starts cheering. You start I started getting into it like, yeah. Let's go, Billy Bob. Let's do it. You know, and you're cheering and it felt like a football game with less teeth.
I tease, I tease. But I noticed that every time a tractor got stuck, there's only one way they can get it out. You have to unattach the load. They can't pull it through with the load. That's the first thing I always do, unattach the load then they can get the tractor out.
A lot of you are trying to pull through and souping up your You're saying, alright, I'm gonna apply God's word. We're gonna be better, but we're gonna do all this. And you're getting the souped up tractor in your life, but you won't unattach the load of unforgiveness, of bitterness, of asking for forgiveness,
of willing to say I'm sorry. And it even starts with are you willing to go before God and do that? And I'm telling you, you need to ask for forgiveness even if you are convinced that it is 99.9% their fault. Okay. Your list that you're gonna ask for forgiveness for is gonna be short. But every one of us has a list,
and that's a whole another process. But you got you know, some of you probably need help. You might need a counselor because you're gonna have to walk through how to unpack because most of us never really truly we say, okay, we'll get past this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Good. But did you really forgive? Or did you just throw another brick on that load and say, I'm just gonna keep pulling this through? Because that way, every time it gets tough, you're not weighed down by that moment, you're weighed down by every moment.
And a lot of us have a hard time with forgiveness because it even starts with do you really understand the gospel? Don't hide from God. Don't run from God. Run to him, especially when you've blown it.
Be the prodigal son that runs home because he says he will run. That's a perfect example. He says, if you return to me, I'll return to you. The father sees his son and runs to him. He's waiting for you to come home. But you got to get real, you got to make a decision as it says here.
And it starts with humility or none of this works. So where you at on that? Make a choice. If you know Jesus there's some things in your life you gotta go, alright, I gotta say I'm sorry and I'm gonna choose to step the way you've asked me to step into my life, God. Stop fighting them. Let the pride go. Let the fear go.
And see what happens. You know, I talk a lot about my parents, especially my dad. I don't tell as many stories about my mom because she makes me cry harder when I tell too many stories about her. If I start crying with a mom story, there's no recovery.
Dad, I can just say throw some dirt on it and move on in the story, okay? But my parents were great examples to me. And sometimes I tell so many stories, you're like, wow, you must have had perfect parents. No, they failed in many ways, but they got the big rocks right.
But one thing I haven't really shared very much is when they got married, they, I describe it like a dance. Their whole marriage was like a dance. They loved dancing. Literally, loved dancing. They would go dancing all the time. When they were kids, they'd out and they'd dance. That was one of the
main things they liked to do. And my dad was like John Travolta, I mean this guy could dance. And I saw him dance at my sister's wedding when he was like in his 60s, and I'm like holy cow, why are you so good at dancing? And he goes well in my generation if you wanted to woo a girl you better be a good dancer.
I'm like well then why didn't you ever teach me? And my dad looked at me and goes because there's only so much you can do son.
I like dance like Elaine and Seinfeld or whatever, I don't know, I just never had the moves. Guess he looked at me and says, hopeless cause. And they danced. But you know what, his generation, there was another use of the word dance.
And my wife figured it out one time when we were over at the house and there was a We're having a problem with somebody, and my sister and then a person came by, my dad had already been in bed, he thought there might be a problem, he comes walking out in his pajamas with his tennis shoes on.
And my wife goes, why do you have your tennis shoes on? He's looking outside at this person being kind of rowdy and not leaving, and he goes, in case I gotta dance. And my wife says, looks at me like, dance? I go. So
there's dance of love and dance of enjoyment, but then there's also the dance that means we're gonna fight. And that was their marriage. If you're not dancing, they were dancing.
And matter of fact, it was bad. I don't remember as much, my sister would tell me because I was younger than her. But she remembers when they got married and they started off on a bad on a bad place, they immediately started to not like each other.
And it got bad. It got to where they hated each other. Matter of fact, my mom threw her bowling ball through my dad's windshield once. I mean right through the windshield. And it was definitely a lot of dancing. My sister remembers a lot of yelling,
and I was too little to remember most of that. And they basically came to the conclusion they were gonna get divorced. They'd both been divorced before too. But then as they were thinking about we're done, they did sit down and talk and they realized both of us have been divorced before, but none of us had kids before.
So they said, you know what? Let's stay together till the kids are older. We're gonna stay together for the sake of the kids. So that was a good first step of humility. Like, alright, they're now thinking about someone other than themselves,
but they still weren't really thinking about each other. They were only thinking about us. So they started to try to do that, and that's the part my sister remembers, and I remember a teeny bit because when I was about four or five, they realized this isn't working.
Because they realized they were fighting so much that I go, we're gonna give our kids trauma. They're gonna see a horrible example. This is terrible. And then you think, alright, they called it quits. Nope. They said we still need to stay together,
but what we gotta do is you and I gotta choose to be civil with one another. Don't have to love each other, don't necessarily even have to like each other, but we're gonna learn to live with each other. And they made a commitment
to not blow up, and if they're gonna really have to have to fight, go somewhere else. They didn't want us to see them fighting, but they were gonna learn to live civilly in front of us, and that's what they committed to. And they kept going down that road, and that's why I don't remember a lot of fights.
But they were still fighting a bit. But then the next thing that changed is our neighbors across the street got to know my parents, loved them, but they could tell something was off. They started inviting them to their church. And they went to church, and my dad went first. He walked down and accepted Christ.
And we went to church for a couple years while I was a little kid. Problem is I hated church, my sister hated church, my mom didn't really take it that serious, so we wouldn't go. And my dad was the opposite of most families. He was the only one going. And like I said, not a perfect story.
It's not beautifully wrapped up in a neat little package because it basically, after a few years of going by himself, he's like, well, sick of going by myself. I'll stay home and watch football too. Still believed in Jesus. He was exactly what the scripture's describing.
Still believed in God. Still believed in the word of God. Still believed all that stuff. He just really wasn't walking with God. And and he stayed at home for a while. But then the Holy Spirit got ahold of me, and I became a Christian
later on on my own in high school. My dad started coming back with me. He started to really get into faith. Led my mom to the Lord, my sister to the Lord. We all, you know, started knowing the Lord. My dad actually exceeded me because he did all these things so good. He got so close to God. He started, you know, reading his bible. One year he read his bible cover to cover with this commentary thing I gave him two four times in one year. He would start quoting stuff when I was struggling in ministry. He goes, you know, it says in this book of like Habakkuk or whatever it is. I go, is that a book in the bible? And he'd look at me like, you go to seminary, you don't even know the books of the Bible? I go, don't you really pay attention in class? I go, sometimes.
But what I noticed my dad do, and it was part because of the way he was raised and how he was as a leader, especially in combat, is he felt leadership was go first. He knew the biblical understanding before he knew the bible. And what he did, even when he stayed at home, is when they would fight, which they would,
when they would fight even when they didn't like each other. I watched my dad go first. I don't remember one time they were fighting that he was not the one that said, sorry first. Now don't hear what I'm not saying. He didn't own everything, he would say, here's what I feel like you did that hurt me,
but he would say, but I have to own my own stuff. And he went first. And through that process he led my mom. And their dance started to become not this anymore.
And in 2003, when my dad had a heart attack and fell down in the bathroom and died, the last word he ever uttered was he yelled out, My mom's name, Diana. Which was kind of ironic because she knew something was wrong because he had called her Diane
since their wedding vows. I don't know why, she doesn't know why, but he just started calling her Diane. He never said her name right. And then when he's peeling over, going to glory, he's like, Diana. She's like, what? He just said my name right. Something's desperately wrong.
And goes in there, she catches him, he dies.
She died less than ten weeks later.
And part of when she was dying, she had cancer, she goes, I don't really even wanna fight this. I wanna go join my dancing partner. Matter of fact, they're buried together at the National Cemetery, and the military lets you put one little phrase on their gravestone. You see there, it says we're dancing in the river.
That comes from an old song we used to sing. It's usually not a full song. It's like we tag at the end of a worship set because all the only line is it was we're gonna dance in the river, yeah.
And it just builds and builds and builds. Usually how you end, it just gets rowdy. My dad loved it because he loved dancing and it reminded him. And that dancing in the river comes from scripture where it says what it's saying is you know that all through eternity, matter how bad this world gets, how bad that, however it is, that if you know Christ, eventually we will be dancing in the river of God's eternal love for all of eternity.
And so my sister and I agreed that when we thought about our parents and what happened, they're dancing in the river because they love dancing. But their story only happened because of humility and because of Christ, that they went from dancing to a thirty six years marriage that was a dance of love
because it was a dance of humility. So there is hope no matter where you're at. But if you want to stop dancing, got to start dancing with humility in Jesus. Otherwise it won't work. Father, I just thank you, Lord. I thank you for how you love us enough to challenge us.
And that Lord, I just pray a simple prayer for everyone in this room, everyone online, that Lord if we that we would humble ourselves and embrace your love, and then be humble before one another and embrace these steps on how to deal with the conflict that we have. And God I thank you for the example I had with my parents.
And I just pray that anyone in this room could hear from their story and have their story be that story. And Lord, I especially pray for those that maybe are really, really struggling right now. That Lord, they can just humble themselves before you and just embrace you and let you embrace them with your love
and give them clarity, courage, and comfort. I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on rockpoint.io for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.