Conflict

Join us as we explore God's Word, providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you're about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning gathering. If you'd like to know more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.org. We hope that you're encouraged by today's message.

Easter is almost here, guys. I mean, we're a little over a month away from Easter, and we're going to provide some information for you in the next couple of weeks. We're going to have some handout cards for you, some door hangers for you, and I just want you to be prepared to invite people to church, okay? We're going to give you every opportunity to do that. So be prepared.

4-16-17. Can you say that with me? 4-16-17. 4-16-17. That is Easter Sunday.

You know, it's interesting. A lot of people don't know that date. You know, when you say, hey, when is Easter? Oh, I think it's sometime in April, right? But it's 4-16-17.

So begin to get that in your head, and we're going to have a lot of information for you to connect with people in our community because we believe that that's just a point at which we can bring more people in, and they can hear the love of Jesus. And that's what we're about, reaching people for Jesus so that they may become fully devoted followers of Christ. Amen. We are in a series called Uncommon. Uncommon.

And the idea of the series is relationships are hard. They're very, very difficult. No two bones about it. And all of you know that there's issues. There's conflict.

There's communication issues. There's all these things going on in our relationships. And it's a hard message to actually teach. Every week I come in here, I'm heavily convicted. This week again, I'm heavily convicted because I deal with these same issues.

And we try them over again. It's not very probable to have good relationships. What do you mean? Because they're not really working. If we look at our divorce rate, if we look at the friendships, they're kind of in and out.

Nobody has long-lasting friendships and relationships anymore. There's always issues even in the workplace, right? Things are always happening because we're trying to do it the common way. But God shows us an uncommon way in our relationships. And that's what we've been hitting on for the last week.

In our theme verse, last few weeks, in our theme verse, Romans 12, 2 says this. It says, don't copy the behavior and customs of the world. But let God transform you. Let God do a work inside of you. Because we can't really do it ourselves.

We need God to do something inside of us. Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. The way you think you're mine. Then you will learn to know God's will for you. In fact, and what does he mean by that?

You can have a great marriage. You can have great relationships. You can have a great workplace experience. You can have a great family experience. He has all that for you.

You just have to let him change your mind. Transform you. It starts in here. Which is good and pleasing and perfect. And what God teaches us that is so uncommon that it actually is conflicting with us.

In fact, we attack it. Right? Like, this isn't right. This doesn't make sense. It shouldn't work this way because I need, I want, and this makes me feel better.

But God tells us something else. And it's so hard. We're hostile to it. We're hostile to it. We don't want to.

But if we open up our hearts, if we just take a minute and consider today. And if you're somebody here that doesn't really know the Lord or know Jesus, that's okay. I mean, you're still trying to figure out the Jesus thing. I mean, even this stuff makes a lot of sense. It does.

And it's very practical what God gives us. And when we look at Scripture, we've been kind of rolling through these different points. In week one, we talked about an uncommon love. An uncommon love. A love, an unconditional love.

Why would God love us when we didn't love Him? And then in week two, we talked about commitment. Boy, that was a challenging message that Chris shared with us. That sometimes it doesn't seem right to commit, to stay committed in a relationship. But God tells us differently.

And when we come on the other side of it, we learn that there is a better way than following the way my heart tells me to go. Or the people around me tell me to go. But God has something for me. And if I can follow that, if I listen to Him, if I obey Him, if I follow His word, there might be something better on the other side. Last week, we dealt with communication.

Communication. That's always a hard thing, right? How do we handle communication? And how do we talk to people? Our use of words.

And next week, you've got to be here for this one. It's about influence. Influencing people. Did you know you all have a sphere of influence? You all have people in your lives that you can reach that I can't reach.

And I can reach that you can't reach. And we all have, you have influence. And we're going to talk about that next week. How you can have uncommon relationships that influence people. But this week, I want to talk about conflict.

And I kind of giggle because conflict is in everything. Conflict is just something we're going to deal with. I don't like conflict. In fact, I kind of want to, you know, not deal with it. I want to, like, dodge it.

When I hear conflicts taking place, who can I get to take care of this for me? Because I don't want to deal with it. Because conflict is hard. But conflict is necessary. And it's inevitable.

And there's a difference between good conflict and bad conflict. And God shows us some things about conflict. And it's important for us to know, you know, when conflict is good and bad. In fact, Kerry Newoff, a Canadian pastor, shared this in an article I read yesterday. It says, I have no statistics on this, but my guess is fighting has killed more churches than moral failure has.

I mean, just think about it. I've heard the stories. I mean, we all know the carpet story, you know, where the church splits over the color of the carpet. Or, you know, there's this fighting going on. You know, this person said this or this happened.

And the church ends up dividing over those issues. We have those stories there. Fighting. Conflict. It's something that we really need to look at.

So, I want to kind of introduce you to a few things about conflict to kind of educate you on what really causes conflict. And then we'll kind of dig into what it really means. The theology that God gives us on conflict. And how we can manage conflict in a godly way. So, we're going to give you four causes to conflict today.

The first one is, as we talked about, poor communication. Poor communication. Now, I did a whole message on that last week, so guess what, our website is live, amen, and we have our series up there, and we'll have our other, our past series up there in the future, but you can go back to last week's message, and you can hear it. You can share it with people, and isn't that great? I was just like, Chris and I were like, how do we have this great tech team, and we don't have things online?

But sometimes it takes time to get to where we need to be, but we have all that online now. Check out our new website, really, really incredible job our tech team did. Matt worked hard on that, and we're so thankful for that. But most conflict starts out small, you know, but it builds, it gets worse because of our tongues, and primarily communication is about what we speak, the things that we share, and we have these loose tongues that, that I'm gonna have to change this mic because I feel like I'm spitting. Yeah, let me just go with another, another mic here.

Right, can y'all hear me? All right, I can hold it up close like this and get loud. Right. Okay. So, conflict starts out small, and it gets worse because, you know how it is when you, when you have a fight, and one person says one thing, and then you get louder, and then you get louder, and then you get louder, and then, then all of a sudden, you're not even arguing about the things that, that you started off arguing about.

You're just raising your voice to see who can be louder, and who can do this better. Right? And that's kind of, and then, and then it just turns into an absolute mess, and then it gets, it's bad, and we, we walked through stages of that last week. And, and, and our, our words can be awful. They can be terrible.

In fact, there, there was this man and woman, they were arguing, and, and, and the man said to his wife, he said, he said, I can't believe that you can be so beautiful and so stupid. And she said, well, allow me to explain. God made me beautiful, so you would, you would be attracted to me. God made me stupid, so I'd be attracted to you. Now, you can't, you, man, you can't win those fights.

Okay? Don't, don't even try. Don't, don't even try. But we could just be harsh with our words, and the fact is, words do, do create reality. And now, I'm not saying it in a, in a weird, uh, hocus pocus sense, but, but when we say things to our children, when we say things to our wives, when we, when we push things towards our husband, we're actually creating things.

We're, we're planting seeds inside people. So we really need to be careful with our words and our communication. The Psalms 141, Psalm 141 says this, and I want us to pray this. We need to pray this often. Set a guard over my mouth.

Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord. Keep watch over the door of my lips. Because our lips are like a door. We can open and close them. We can actually call, we can decide whether we're going to allow those words to come out or not.

But we need to ask God to transform us in the inside, right? Look at our hearts and put a guard over my mouth. It first goes to God. That's why we pray this. We need to pray, God, put a guard over my mouth.

Second, unmet expectations. Unmet expectations. All anger results when you want something you don't get. When you want something and you don't get it. Almost all, in fact, I would say all anger starts there.

I wanted this and I didn't get this. So I'm angry. I like this and, and this is happening here and I don't like this. So I'm angry. I get out on the freeway and there's a lot of cars and I deserve to be on the freeway with no cars, right?

And all these cars are here and I've got to deal with this mess and I don't like it and I'm mad. Or I had a hard day at work and I get home and I should be able just to sit down and enjoy myself and the kids bring other kids over. And then the, the, the dog next door starts barking and all this stuff is going on. I am so, I don't deserve this. I am mad.

I wanted it this way and it didn't happen that way. And, and this, this is, this, this is, this kind of goes across the board because, you know, we do, we do this in church, don't we? I don't like the music. I don't like the way that pastor had to change his microphone in the middle of the message because I didn't like his microphone wiggling on his ear. So therefore I'm done.

I don't like these lights. Yeah. I've had comments about the lights already. Do we have to have all those lights in there? You know, God should, you know, I'm going to stop.

I don't like my job because I don't like the way my boss does this or does that, you know, and life and everything, unmet expectations. And James talks about this in chapter four, what causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desire with, uh, desires that battle within you, within you? Because it starts right there. Don't they really come from the things you, doesn't it come back to you?

Doesn't it start right there? It's not really about that other person or what's going on. Doesn't it really come back to, to, to, to, to you and what's going on in here? Because I want it and I didn't get it my way. I wanted this and it didn't happen the way I wanted it to.

So I'm mad. You didn't meet my expectations. You didn't meet what I thought I needed. You want something, but you don't get it. You kill and you covet, but you cannot have what you want.

You quarrel and fight. See, what's going on here is we're expecting people to fulfill our expectation and it just doesn't work. When you put your hope and faith in people, it's just not going to work. So why? And because people are never going to meet your expectations.

People cannot be your God. Only God can be your God. So we put our hope in people rather than we then put our hope in God and our expectations aren't fulfilled. So therefore there's conflict. We're mad and we're insulted.

Three, clashing differences. Clashing differences. The problem is we don't respect each other's differences enough. We think that, think about it. When you, when you came in, if you married people here, you know this well, and some of you who may have been married and not in a marriage anymore, you know this well.

When you marry somebody, you're like, they complete me. You know, I, oh, this is the one, this, everything I was looking for. I even like their little quirks, you know. I like the, yeah, y'all laughing because y'all know where I'm going with this. I thought it was cute when he smacked his lips a little bit between, you know, meals.

And now I'm, now I'm completely irritated. No longer completed. I'm completed. All right. And things get weird.

I was looking at, I was, I kind of posted to Bojangles. One of my favorite fast food places is Bojangles. All right. I love some Bojangles chicken, you know. Chicken biscuits.

Biscuits during the day, you know. I'm from North Carolina. You know, Bojangles are like on every corner. When they started putting them here in Virginia Beach, it made me excited, you know. They're starting to get around everywhere now, and I'm really excited about that, you know.

But if you don't like it, then I'm not asking you to make a comment, okay? All right, but some of you, I know you're all right. I like Popeye's better. Come on, that's insane. All right, that's from the devil trying to split our church.

But there's this commercial, and it's just so funny. This is a pun guy. I actually posted on Facebook. It's hilarious. And he's eating the new fish sandwich, right?

I haven't had the fish sandwich yet, but he's like talking about, he's sitting with his family, and he's like calling out, he's the funniest guy. Like, why would you not sit at the same table with this guy? And his family starts leaving. He's talking about, this is officially my favorite sandwich, you know. And then he's like, I'm definitely getting this again, you know.

And they're like, his family's kind of rolling their eyes. And she says, honey, don't, don't do this right now. And he kind of, I kind of looks over there, don't be so shellfish, you know. And then, then they start clearing the table, and she's like grabbing the son. He says, your boy, don't take the boy, don't take the boy, you know.

And then he says, I'm not doing this on porpoise, you know. And he goes on and on. And then he looks over at the guy and says, if I don't eat this, salmon will, you know. And he just keeps going and going and going. I was like, this guy's funny.

But, but the character in that story, I'm sure it was, it was cute and funny when they first got married. But by the time, you know, this happens every meal, I'm sure it gets a little irritated for it. It's funny. It's just hilarious. And so people are different, you know.

Our, our, our differences come out, especially after we're married. We can be, we can date a long time. We can be engaged for a long time. And, and, but, but really the, the truth comes out when you're actually in that marriage, right? So, and, and we need to learn instead of, of hating each other's differences to actually celebrate the differences because you don't want everybody to look like you, right?

Miranda and I are completely polar opposites. We are so different. I mean, I'm an outdoors guy. She's an indoors guy. We, I'm, I'm, I'm like the conservative person.

She's like, I, let's just blow it and spend it. You know, life is short. Let's do it. You know, she gets that from her dad, which I'm okay with that when he comes and visits us because he pays for all of our meals and all these, I was like, go for it, brother. You know, I enjoy that part, but we have to be, you know, we have to celebrate each other's differences.

We're, we're, we're a team. You think about a baseball team or basket, we're in basketball season right now. You know, if everybody, if everybody played the same, in fact, I'm going to move it over to football because most people in here are football fans. I mean, that's why we're, we're, our numbers are really low during football season because most of y'all are getting prepared for the football game, I guess, because church usually is over by football time. So, but, but, you know, you're not going to have the small guy.

Everybody's not going to be the small guy running up and down the field, right? I mean, you need the big guy. You need the small guy. You need the people who are a little slower, people who are a little faster. Everybody has a job and everybody has a position.

It works together, but they're different, but it works. And in relationships, we need to learn how to celebrate our differences and pull our differences together and make the best out of our situation. In fact, it makes us better. We need that as a church, as a body, we have differences. We have different gifts.

In fact, our growth track and our growth track, we have 301 that happens next week at nine o'clock. And you need to be here. If you haven't been a part of that, if you don't know your place in the church or you're not, that will help you define who you are and your purpose. You have a gift that nobody else has. You have a purpose that nobody else has.

A lot of you in here today, and Gene, I'm quoting you on this, brother. You don't know what your purpose is. What is your purpose? What is your purpose? What is your purpose, right?

We need to define who we are and that we need to celebrate each other's differences. And everybody can't have the same passion you have. Because if everybody had the same passion you had, we'd be a church going in one direction but not doing anything. We all help each other. We all, you see this in the business world as well.

You know, you have the administrator. You have, I'm more of a visionary. I'm a terrible administrator. Like numbers and things like that just, just kill me. I, spreadsheets, I'm lost.

You know, but thank God there's people that come by beside me that like actually like this. Morgan actually likes this stuff. I don't know, crazy boy. I don't know why you like this stuff, but you actually enjoy it. People like actually enjoy this stuff.

And, and, and we don't, I don't criticize that. I celebrate that. Man, go for it. You know, just do it. You know, we all come together and accomplish a single purpose.

So clashing differences. Mark 3 25 says, if a house divided against itself, a house divided against itself, that house cannot stand. It can't stand. We won't stand as a house. Appreciate your spouse.

Appreciate the differences in the people around you. And number four, and this is always offensive because this doesn't make sense to a lot of people. But sin nature, our sin nature. Why do we do all these things? Why do we think about ourselves before others?

Why do we have the problem of accepting others in their differences? Why do we always want to do the right thing, but we end up doing the wrong thing? Why does that happen in our relationships? Why, why do we have broken relationships? None of us want to have broken relationships, but why does that happen?

Where does that come from? It's because we're all a little messed up. There's something inside of us that's not quite right. That's, that's why we need a Savior. We all have a little, little bit of that messed up.

In fact, Romans 3 23 says this, for anyone, for everyone, excuse me, for everyone, it doesn't say for some have sinned. It doesn't say for the bad people have sinned. It says everyone has sinned. We all fall short of God's glorious standard, and we shouldn't expect people to always get it right. When it, when it comes to us, we're good at giving grace, right?

Man, you know, I'm going to stumble. I'm going to fall, you know. It's okay. God's got my back, yada. You know, we, we, we kind of, we're good at that, but when it comes to someone else messing up or something happening, we're not good giving that out.

It's, it's one-sided. It's bias, but, but God expects us to look at people, and, and, and as, as people who are really trying to figure it out. We're all a little messed up. We're all, we all have a, a little, of, a little bad in us, you know, that, that, that the Holy Spirit is transforming us, and that's why it really starts not with the people around you, not with what people are doing over here, or going where. It starts right here.

Conflict 101. Here, here's, here's this, here's the message for Conflict 101. It starts with us. It starts with us. Easy class, easy thing.

Yeah, and you're out. Starts with us. So, with that, here's four ways we deal with conflict. We start with my way. My way.

It's all about me. You just line up with me. Do it my way. Get, you know, I know what I'm doing. Wife, kids, marching orders.

My way or the highway. I pay the bills in this house. I have the job. My way. And where does that get us?

Nowhere. Nowhere. Creates a bad culture, actually. It creates a, a, a, a, a, a negative culture for us. Number two, it's your way.

That's when we say, okay, I give in. We're just going to do it your way. But that doesn't work either because you're just upset all the time. You're miserable. You're walking through life.

You're not, you're not really, it doesn't really do well for you. And then, the third way, we think this is the right way. We meet halfway. That's what the world would say. Well, why don't you just meet halfway?

And that doesn't really work because you're only happy 50% of the time, right? And you're miserable the rest of the time. Or we can do it God's way. And I hope that this, the thing about this, I try to bring this to you every Sunday. God's way.

And if you dedicate yourself to being here on Sunday, to listen to what God has for you, you can begin to walk down that path of a better future. Because we always want to do it the uncommon way. We're always led to the uncommon way. But God has a common way. I first go to Him.

I first listen to what He says. I first look at Him. A family Christian counselor said this. I kind of shared this with me. He said, the best way to settle disputes is not to moderate.

We think that's the way to do it. Well, if somebody steps in and moderates, maybe things, you know, kind of keeps that. And, you know, counseling. My father's a professional counselor, and I'm a firm believer in counseling and needing somebody to listen to both sides and keep things straight. But that's not the best way.

But in fighting, the best way, but 9 out of 10, it's not about, it's not about, he said this, 9 out of 10 people that he counsels, it's not necessarily about the fight. It's about their closeness to God. It's about what's going on right here. And if they get closer to God and understand God better, it makes a big difference. It actually works.

That sounds uncommon. But God has something common, uncommon for us to bring out a better result. So let's talk about uncommon conflict today. And we're going to be looking at Ecclesiastes 3, 1 through 5. If you have your Bibles, you can turn to that.

You know, that's kind of a loaded word, I guess. Bibles. Because Bibles can be electronic devices and everything else. But we do have it on the screen there for you. Ecclesiastes 3, 1 through 5.

It says, there is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven. A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them. And y'all will kind of recognize some of these words probably. It actually was in a song in the 60s, you know, about the turtles. Was it the 60s?

The birds. The birds. Was it the birds? Okay. Okay.

Yeah. Gene knows his music. So correct me on that. Yeah. Y'all remember that song, Do Everything.

There's a season. That actually didn't come from them. That came from God. Okay. And God teaches us that.

And there's a time for everything. A time, a season for everything. A season for every activity under heaven. A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them. And let me just talk about that for a minute.

A time to scatter and a time to gather. What does that mean? Well, when we come into conflict with somebody, some of us are going to choose to scatter stones. We're going to throw stones. We're going to toss stones because we're aggravated.

We want to throw stones. But then there's a time to gather. And when we look at Scripture, we learn that gathering is actually building an altar. There's a time where we want to react. And there's a time, or we can make the choice to act on what God has for us.

And there's a story that kind of shares this piece here. And it comes from Genesis. And most of you know Jacob. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And I'm the God of Abraham. I'm the God of Isaac. I'm the God of Jacob. Y'all know what I'm talking about. And we're going into Jacob's story here.

And if you know anything about Jacob, you know, he kind of fled his brother. He did kind of something bad to his brother and kind of ran off. And as he's out, he runs into this family with this beautiful daughter named Rachel. And he wants to marry her. And he asks for the father's hand in marriage.

Laban's the name of the father. He asks for his hand in marriage. And he says, well, you need to work with me seven years. And then you can have my daughter. Well, he worked seven years.

And he goes through the marriage ceremony. And the next morning, he wakes up and realizes this is not Rachel. This is the other one which the Bible tells us wasn't quite as attractive as Rachel. And I'm still questioning how he didn't know that until the next morning. So that's another story altogether.

So he works another seven years. And then over years and years and years, he's still working for them for things. And finally marries Rachel. But he still, he gets, his pay keeps getting reduced. His father-in-law is really not taking care of him like he used to.

And it's just this, it finally just gets frustrated. And he's like, I'm out of here. So he leaves. And Laban goes out to find him. And when they meet, it comes to this place in Genesis 31, 46.

And see how they handle conflict. He said this, he said to his relatives, gather some stones. So they took stones and piled them in a heap. And they ate there by the heap. Before you can settle with any person, before you can even begin to find a solution to the argument or the conflict you're involved in, you need to first do like these guys did.

Go to God. First we go to God. Let's bring God into this. And they've, you've trapped yourself. See, the problem is you've trapped yourself.

Many people have trapped themselves in putting their hope in the person that has offended them. Somebody hurts you or somebody harms you. And you're allowing that person, when you don't involve God and you don't involve forgiveness, you're allowing that person to dictate your peace and your happiness. That person controls. When you're angry at someone, they are controlling that.

Because you're allowing them to control that. And if you, and here's a statement I want to make. Conflict cannot continue without my participation. Conflict cannot continue without your participation. If you're not involved, it stops.

If you're involved, it keeps going. If you keep playing it, it keeps going. It builds. It escalates. But if, but if you get out of it, if you stop it right here, starts right here.

If you stop it, then it cannot continue. It has to involve you. So it starts right here in our hearts. So I want to get a little real right now. Galatians 2 20 says this.

I am crucified with Christ. I surrender my expectations. I kill those things and allow Christ to live in me. You've got to allow Christ to live in you. You've got to allow Christ to deal with your heart first.

You've got to, whenever you're involved in conflict, you need to first turn to what's going on inside of here. And is it right with God? Am I going, am I building stones? Am I gathering stones or am I throwing stones? Am I scattering stones?

Don't start with that person. You know. Thank you. You need to start with yourself. Conflict cannot continue without your participation.

So let me give you some things. Let's just look at what God says about how to respond in this way. First of all, don't act. I mean, act. Excuse me.

Act. Don't react. Act. Don't react. Act.

Ephesians 4, 26 and 27 says, In your anger do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. So what we often do is we allow that anger or that bitterness to kind of set inside of us, and we say, well, I'll sleep on it. And that's probably not the best thing to do. It says do not let the sun go down.

It means you need to settle these things when they happen. Don't allow them to incubate. Don't allow them to grow. Don't allow them to become rooted in your very thoughts, in your very heart, in everything you do. You can allow something to just grow inside of you.

You need to deal with those things while they're still small seeds. And don't do this. Let me just offer you some advice here. Don't call people names when you're in conflict. Don't call out.

Don't say you're stupid like that guy did, and he got the results of that, right? Don't call people stupid. Speak things as if they were. Like you need to be encouraging. You need to encourage your family.

You need to build up your family. You shouldn't be breaking them down when you're angry. You stupid kid. You stupid, you know, you're an idiot. You know, those things set in people's heart.

They're little seeds that you're putting there. You don't even realize you're saying those things and doing those things. And you're calling them names. You got to be careful with those things because you need to speak things. You need to speak for things in their life because it helps direct their lives.

It gives them positive reinforcement to see that they have a purpose and they have a plan. And some of you in here are still dealing with the things that your parents have said or those in authority over you have said, those mentors in your life. You're still dealing with some of that stuff. And we want to stop that. Also, when you're in conflict, keep calm.

Don't raise your voice. Don't be so loud. Don't be so angry. Even if you're a loud person and that's just how you talk, maybe you need to think about toning it down a little bit even when you talk regularly because that can kind of push some buttons there when you raise your voice. Thirdly, don't bring up the past.

We have a habit of doing this in relationships, right? Like when we fight, when you're a married couple, well, you did this. Well, you did this back 10 years ago. Remember, you were wearing those shoes and you had that thing. And women are better at this than men.

And we were like, what are you talking about? I don't even remember. Yeah. You remember when you did that? We were standing up.

No, I don't. You know, and you bring up the past. Remember, I could have been here and I chose you instead. Blah, blah, blah. And, you know, you go through that and it just ends up going nowhere.

It doesn't work. Don't bring up past things. Don't don't even go there. Don't go to those things that may be hurtful from back then. And don't say you always.

You always. You always do this. You always do that. You and even the you statements really pointy. If you can even get the you statement when you're discussing something and fighting about something, we always like to say, well, you did this.

Well, you did that. Well, you said this. And you, you, you. And that's like a pointy you, you know. Here, here's what you do.

That's kind of scary. And never use the word. This is for married people. Never use the word divorce. That should be eliminated from your vocabulary.

Never say, well, I'll just, we just need to get a divorce. Don't ever use that in an argument. Number two, focus on the good things. Focus on the good things. Philippians says, Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.

Don't think about the evil things. Don't think about the bad things. Don't look at that person when you're looking at their flaws. Look at the good things. Look at the positives.

Look at what they're able to accomplish, what they've already accomplished. Praise them. Build them up. And the peace that passes all understanding will guide your heart, right? It will do that if we are able to fight fair, to do it the right way.

Three, apply God's grace. Apply God's grace. Again, we like to receive grace, and we receive a lot of grace, but when it comes to giving grace, it's a different story. Whether it's in our marriage relationships or whether it's just a friendship or whatever, we like to accuse them of what they've done, but when we've done something wrong, we love the grace, right? We throw the grace card.

We should have some grace, you know? Are you giving grace? In fact, Jesus talks about this in a story in Matthew 18 where the master forgave the servant, and the servant went out and found the other guy that owed him much less and threw him in prison. And when the master heard about that, it was all over. Because you didn't apply the same grace as I did for you.

How could you do that? We need to learn to apply grace in people's lives. Because we have a lot of messed up people here. We have a lot of new Christians here. We have a lot of Christians who've been out of the faith for a while that are coming back.

We are still pretty messed up, right? And we need to work through these things. We need to apply grace. Yeah, I'm not saying continue sinning. Don't go on sinning.

The Bible says that. Do not continue in sin, but turn from it and walk towards the cross. And receive healing and grow from there. But I'm saying we fail to apply grace. We always like to accept grace, but we don't apply grace.

Romans 12 says this, See, we like to take the revenge on ourselves, right? I'm the one that needs to solve this problem. I'm the one that needs to fix this. I need to bring justice to this. But sometimes it's not about the justice that we bring.

It's about letting God do what he does. Let God be the definer of that. Let God decide whether someone needs to be corrected or not at times. It says, It is mine to avenge. I will repay, says the Lord.

On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. Wow! You can feed your enemies. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.

Now, I'm not suggesting that you're thinking about that while you're helping someone, okay? What he means there is that you can kill evil by offering good. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. We learn to gather stones. We go to God first and offer grace.

And some of you here, for the last point, and I want to take this point very, very seriously. Some of you here are like, Pastor, I just can't. I can't do that. There's no way I could do that. I have so much unforgiveness in my heart.

I have so much anger. I have so much bitterness. I have all kinds of things going on in here. It's just a mess, and I just don't think I can go that route. Well, I want you to look at number four.

Remember God's grace to you. Remember that God changed you. That God transformed you. ... That God, when you didn't deserve it, when you were far from Him, when you were running the other direction, when you were so divided between, there was the great chasm that separated you, the Bible calls it, there was this hostility that was separating you and God.

There was a hostility, but because of His Son, because of His Son, as 1 John talks about, because of His Son, He was able to reach you, and that hostility was overcome with grace and with love. There was a Savior that forgave you, and it's so hard for us to forgive, and some of you have walked in here today with so much pain, and so much hurt, and so much ache in your life, in your hearts, and you're broken because of a relationship, or a conflict, or whatever it is, you're hurt, and you've never ever really understood what it means to have God's grace, to receive God's grace. So I want to take this time very seriously right now, with all heads bowed, and all eyes closed, I just want to pray this prayer with you. If there are those here, if there are those here, I really want to pray with you today. Maybe you've walked into this room, maybe you're that person that you've never really experienced the grace and forgiveness of God, and you need it so bad.

Today is the day. Today is the time to make that decision. You know you can make a decision for Christ today, that He has made a way on the cross for you, that He wants to come into your life. He wants to transform you. He wants to make you a new being.

He wants to do something inside your heart today. Today, and the Spirit of the Lord is here. The Spirit of the Lord is here, and He's touching hearts right now. And some of you are getting ready to make a decision. Some of you are getting ready to make a decision that will change the course of your life.

If that's you today, if you need to know Jesus, if you've never accepted His grace, if you would just quietly raise your hand, I'm not going to call you to the front. Just lift your hand. I'm not going to embarrass you. Just lift your hand if that's you today. Hallelujah.

Hallelujah. Amen. Just give it a few more seconds. If you're that person, you need to know God's grace. I'm telling you today is the day.

Give your life to Christ. Make it right. For some of you here, you've walked away from God for a long time, but you're ready to recommit your life. If you've been hurt, and there's pain there still, and you know, and you felt like you're just so far from God for so long, and there's no way that He can love you. If that's you today, if you're ready to rededicate, to recommit your life to Christ, if you would just lift your hand.

Pray with me this prayer if you raise your hand. Father, I believe that you are the Son of God. I believe that you came to this earth to forgive me of my sin. I believe that you shed your blood on the cross so that I can have life. I admit that I am far from you, but today I confess my sin, and I give my life to you.

I walk from here on out of abundance, a life focused on grace and Calvary, and I confess it today in your name. God bless you.