Toxic Relationships

So, I got a question this morning by, you don't have to necessarily raise your hand, you can give me a thumbs up. How many guys are good at directions? Wow. Oh, okay. Good.

I was going to say, man, we don't have any Christopher Columbuses up in this piece, I guess, right now. How many guys are terrible at directions? How many guys, nice, nice. How many guys want to say the person that raised their hand that they're good at directions is actually terrible at directions? Does anyone want to say that this morning?

Because you know that they're terrible at directions. You know, we can get lost sometimes, right? When life is complicated, for sure. But, you know, hopefully you never get as lost as Harland Earl. You don't know Harland Earl, and actually, I don't know him either.

But I read about Harland, and I read about him in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, that on January, January 24, this year, Harland was heading from Harland was heading from his friend's house to try to get to another town that was probably like 30 miles away. And normally, he could go through Route 20 to Interstate 80. And that would take him in California, right? We have no idea. But sure, yeah, those things exist.

They're real roads in California. And he could go through. And he could get to his destination. But one of the problems was that he was up in the Tahoe area, high elevation, and there was a lot of snow. Blizzard came through.

And Route 80, Interstate 80, was closed. And so Harland trusted his amazing phone, the GPS. If any of you trusted the GPS on your phone, I always trust it, right? I got no judgment on Harland, dude. This is like, you know, Planet Fitness, no judgment zone.

You know what I'm saying? Harland, it was, it was, I have no judgment on him at all. But he followed his GPS, which rerouted him, and actually rerouted him to a county road that was not plowed and wasn't even paved. Okay, so in the middle of a blizzard. So Harland actually gets stuck.

And he gets stuck in his truck for seven days in a blizzard. I guess it wasn't blizzarding the whole time. But it was a lot of snow. For seven days, he was stuck. And then apparently, like, this happens all the time.

People trust the GPS. The GPS leads them astray. And then they end up in a truck somewhere for seven days. So hopefully that never happens to you guys. But it kind of is easy sometimes to be led astray, isn't it?

It's pretty easy, you know. And, you know, I've been in those places where the GPS has taken me somewhere I didn't want to go. I've been there on some of the scariest places I've ever been in my life have been because the GPS has led me there. I don't know why I still trust it now that I'm saying all this stuff. But, you know, I still do.

I'm going to trust it to get me home today. But it can lead us astray sometimes. Now, technology is one thing, you know. Technology can lead us astray. And it's also, you know, it's great.

It's a great part of our lives. But what happens, though, when actually we move from technology to relationships? You know, there's a, just like we put trust in technology, which really we're putting trust in the people behind the technology, right? It didn't just make itself. You know, the machines have not become self-actualized yet.

They don't, you know, they, yet, okay? We're not in Terminator, right? The people made it. But we put our trust in technology many times. And we actually can get this thing called.

Overconfidence, you know? And overconfidence, I mean, this has been like a really, really highly studied, like, cognitive bias. What I mean by that is actually a way in which our brains trick us. Like, we actually think we know more than we do. Ever noticed that one?

No, not me. And some of you are like, oh my God, this person. We actually think we know more than we do. And actually, it's funny, the less we know about something, the more we think we know about it, like at the beginning. I'll give you an example.

Like, when I was a freshman in college, I started taking Greek courses, like the New Testament, the Bible we go to so many times, those 27 books in the New Testament, they're all written in Greek, okay? So it's an ancient language, not modern Greek, ancient Greek. And I started taking that because I was in Bible school. And I learned the Greek alphabet. I learned some words.

I learned some grammar. And I was the cockiest, most prideful person ever when it came to my knowledge of the Bible. They, excuse me, that's not what the Greek word really means. And I had no idea what I was talking about. But I knew the alphabet, and they didn't, you know what I mean?

So I could like, I totally had a one-up on them. Anyone, I could like argue with them until I met someone who actually knew what they're talking about. And what's funny is that we get a little bit of knowledge, we get a little bit of experience, and we start thinking we know more than we actually do. Like, this has been proven. And study after study, we become overconfident.

We become overconfident in ourselves, and then we can become overconfident in other people. And we all need relationships, right? You're in a series called It's Complicated. I love that name because it's true. I never put that on my status on Facebook.

Number one, if I did that, my wife would kill me. I don't even know if you can do that anymore now. But I've never done that. But that's a great word because life is complicated, and relationships are complicated, aren't they? And what we're going to look at today is we're going to look at an idea of what happens when the relationships start going bad, when they start getting toxic, right?

Pastor Leon sent me a text when he asked me, he's like, hey, we're going to do like a series on relationships. It's called It's Complicated. And I'll give you two choices. You can do money or toxic relationships. I was like, man, thanks for the easy, you know, you're really like lobbing it slow to me today.

So I chose toxic relationships. I don't know what that says about me, but that's what I did. And toxic relationships, though, they're interesting because those two things that I'm talking about, like this idea of going astray, trusting something too much, becoming overconfident in this thing, in our knowledge, in that other person, they're real. I mean, if you have ever lived any more than just a few years on this earth, you start to realize that relationships are the most important thing in your life, and relationships hurt you more than anything else, and relationships let you down. And then there's certain relationships, guys, that let you down so much, and they're so persistent, and they're so destructive that the only thing left to do is it has to come to an end.

It has to stop. Something has got to change. But what's amazing is that we tend to keep going down the same cycle with the same people. This is going to be done by giving me to the Wolves that up for all these different things. So things are different.

So this is going to be done at that same time. Thank you. We tend to continue to move down the same path, not learn from previous experience. You know, experience is a great teacher. That's actually not really true.

It's evaluated experience. That's a great teacher. So you can keep like going and going and going and say, why haven't I learned this yet? Well, you haven't really thought about your experiences and you haven't learned lessons from them. There's a reason why three quarters of the Bible is history.

It's a narrative. It's a story because we're to look at stories and understand they're telling us something. Maybe we can look at our own lives and understand it's telling us something. And here's the one thing I kind of want us to understand and get from today. We should do everything we can to limit toxic relationships in our lives and to maximize our relationship with Jesus.

Let me repeat it for emphasis because repetition is so important. You know, we all need it. You know, we have to hear the same thing again and again and again. It's just part of who we are. Okay.

We should do everything we can to limit toxic relationships in our lives. destructive relationships in our lives. People that lie to us. People that betray us. People that abuse us.

People that don't really tell us who they are. People that take more than they give. Okay. We should do everything we can to limit toxic relationships in our lives. Now, I'm not talking about your kids.

Okay. Not talking about your five-year-old right now. Okay. All he can do is take. All right.

I get it. My son's seven and oh my gosh. Anyway, I'm not going to get into that. But what I'm saying is when you have adult relationships, guys, adult relationships. And I also need to make a distinction here.

Marriage is in another category, guys. I don't want you coming to Pastor Leon and said, look, he told me I could divorce my husband. No, I did not. No, I didn't. That's complicated.

I get it. And there are ways to pursue that. There are ways to, to move into those relationships to restore health. But here's the thing, guys. We need to minimize toxic relationships and maximize our relationship with Jesus.

Because here's the thing, when our relationship with Jesus, thank you, Keisha. Keisha's awesome. I met her last time and we had developed a friendship between me and her and Gan. And it's, it's awesome. Our relationship with Jesus, when it's the center, it's like something that aligns us.

And when we're aligned, you know, when your alignment's at a, at a whack on your car, it's not good. You're like flying all over the place. Okay. So when your alignment is good, then you're going to go straight. And what's going to happen is you're going to know how to find the right people.

You're intuitively going to be able to understand this person's good. This person isn't. So let me, let me separate right now. Okay. We have our kids, we have our family, but I want to focus right now on principles that talk about our friends, understanding that these principles can come into our marriage.

They can't come into our children who are like now moving into adulthood. Okay. Not talking about your five-year-old, but maybe you're 25 year old. Okay. Or maybe you're soon to be like thinking into the future.

These are principles that you can distinguish between these different types of relationships, because all of us, if you can imagine yourself in the center of a circle of concentric circle. So go back to, you know, high school, and whenever they talked to you about that idea, when you first came, the concentric circles, there's one circle in the middle, and then there's a bunch of bigger circles that go out. And you're essentially in the middle of this target, right? And we're talking about those people that are not on the outside of your concentric circle, but they're in the middle. They're getting close.

They have influence. You notice that you change when you're around them. You notice that certain behaviors only happen when they're around. You notice your attitude is different. It's those people that aren't just someone out there.

They're close. They influence you. They have power in your life. And the huge question today is how, how do you identify a toxic relationship? Now, I'm not Dr.

Phil. All right. I'm not going to give you the 12, you know, you know, psych, you know, psychological things that you need to know. I love the Bible. I'm going to try to go to the Bible and tell you some principles from the Bible that I see that speak to our relationship because it's amazing.

The Bible says a lot about relationships. And we're just going to focus a little bit and actually spend a lot of time in a verse. And when I read you this verse, let me just warn you right now. It's, it's like intense. You know, it's one of those verses.

You know, it's one of those verses where you look at it. You're like, wait, I can't really mean that. And I will warn you that it's in the Old Testament. So what I mean is that in the Old Testament, like I'm so glad we don't live in the Old Testament because I would totally be dead. Anyone who's ever read it knows what I'm talking about.

Like I would have been dead like 25,000 times over. All right. I'm so glad we don't live in the Old Testament. And what I mean is Jesus came and he made a new way. He revealed who God was at the core of who God is and a God of love.

And yet there is this part of the Bible that is what God gave us. And it is from God, but it has there. It's just that there was a different kind of reality that they had to live in back then. And so there are more severe punishments. There are more severe rules and obligations.

There are things look very severe. So I just want to forewarn you when we look into this verse, it's, it's not like, um, it's not necessarily the verse that you're going to make your life verse, you know, or that you're going to tattoo, you know, on your chest or something like that. You know what I mean? Um, it's the kind of on your arm or whatever. Um, it's, it's, it's a hard hitting one.

So let's do it. It's Deuteronomy 13. And here's what it says in Deuteronomy 13, six to eight says, if your very own brother, okay, or your son or daughter or the wife you love or your closest friend secretly entices you saying, let us go worship other gods, gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far from one end of the land of the other. Do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity.

Ouch. Do not spare them or shield them. Okay. Okay. It goes on to say, you are supposed to be the one, the first.

Person that lays your hand on them to kill them. Okay. Whoa! That got intense quick. What's going on here?

What's happening? Okay. I don't have time to go into all the difference between where we live with Jesus, who loves us, who brought in a new way of living. Okay. And what they had to do in the Old Testament.

But let me just tell you, it was, it was different. But the same God wrote it. And the same principles, when you actually look into it, you can start to discover. And here's what it's saying. If there's someone in your life that is causing you to start to stray from the values, you know, are right.

From the things that are core to who you are. If they're doing things in your life that are starting to make you violate your conscience. If things are happening and you don't feel good and you can feel it emotionally, God gave us emotions because they're much quicker to help us understand what's happening in our lives than just pure logic. And when you're around them. And when you're around them and you start to feel like this isn't working, this isn't right.

They're making me like, and I can't get away from them. Like, they're like an addiction. Like, like, like, like I'm with them. It's like, you think that addicts like just want to be addicts? No.

It's like they're into something that's destroying them and they can't get away from it. Okay. But there are signs of that before. And you can learn from other people, right? It's a path that's well worn.

And it's a path that goes to the very core of who we are because we want to be loved and accepted. More than anything else. We want to be loved and accepted. And so if we find someone that we feel like loves and accepts us, that's like, I don't know, sugar to a sugar addict. I was going to say something more intense, but I just felt like it was church and I shouldn't do that.

It's like this addiction. And what this, what this verse, the intensity of this verse, here's what it's saying. God expects uncompromising worship, uncompromising devotion and loyalty. Let's not get it twisted. God wants us to love him more than anybody else in our life.

And we can, we can try to maneuver that and make it say something different or feel something different. But you simply will not get that when you go to the scriptures. He's saying in that verse, under that old way that God was working with those Israelites. He's saying, if your very own wife tries to get you to worship another God, you are not to show mercy. I mean, guys, I, I don't want to miss the intensity of this.

I don't want to be too much. I don't want to make anyone feel, you know, yucky inside or anything like that. But we cannot miss the intensity of this. The deepest, closest, most influential relationships. Son, daughter, brother, sister, closest friend.

If they are taking you to a place where you're worshiping another God. And here's what that means. If they are taking you for us. If they are pushing you away from your center place where you know what makes you who you are, your relationship with Jesus, your relationship with God, your values, the things that you have in your heart that you know make you who you are, this worship of God, if they are pushing you away from it, there are some options, I would say, that we could think about. On this side of the cross, if you know what I mean, after Jesus had done everything he has done, there are options we can look at, but if it's persistent, and it's consistent, and there's an intensity to which they are influencing you in your life, there is one end that has to come, and that is the death of the relationship.

Guys, that's hard. It's hard. And what's amazing is that you have to be the first one, the first hand. You can't run away. You can't ignore it.

You have to confront it. You can't go around it. You can't go over it, right? You have to do what? Go through it.

Because once you've gone to that place, it's not talking about like the dude on the street that just is trying to get you to sign some petition that you don't like. You know what I mean? You're not going to like karate chop that dude in the gullet and say, away from me, Satan. You know, you're trying to influence me in the wrong way. It's not talking about that.

It's talking about the people closest to you, and that's what makes it so hard. And guys, all of us, if we've lived life any amount of time, significant amount of time, we are going to come into these relationships. It will happen. If it hasn't happened yet, it will happen. Excuse me.

It will happen. And when we get to those moments with those people, here's what I think, just some principles here that have to happen. If there is a relationship leading you away, leading you somewhere, you know, you shouldn't go. That is a very clear sign that this is a toxic relationship. If you're with them and you can't make your own choices, let's get real for a second.

I mean, I've said this to myself. I know I'm not going to do that. I know it. I'm going to go hang out with them. I'm going to be okay.

And I'm not going to do X, Y, or Z. And then, you know, the next morning, shoot. Next time, I swear, when I'm with them, I'm not going to do X, Y, or Z. Fill in the blank, guys. Whatever it is that's violating your conscience.

Whatever it is that makes you feel dirty. Whatever it is that makes your soul hurt. Whatever it is that makes you feel like, wait, I'm not who I want to be. I'm not who I know I'm supposed to be. I'm not any of those things when I'm around this person.

And there are some times we want to be savior. We're going to save them. No, you're not. Jesus will, but not you. Come on, somebody.

Right? You're not their savior. Come on. I'll have you, then. Let's move on.

Thank you. Bye. That's a big burden to have, by the way. It's not one you or I can carry. You're not going to save them.

You're not going to change them. Not unless they want to be changed. I mean, guys, we tell ourselves lies, don't we? It's going to be different. I'm going to change them.

They're going to be better. But when we've reached a place where we are no longer in control, and I think you know what I'm talking about when you've been there, we can't make the choices. It's like we're in a place where we're not really even ourselves. Guys, that's a toxic relationship. And what the Bible says, what this verse says, is you need to maximize your relationship with God with every intensity you have.

And you need to confront this relationship. And you need to end it. If it's come to that. Here's just something, guys, that I think is going to be really, really, really important. Your values are going to be two things.

They're going to be guardrails, and they're going to be guideposts. They're going to help you make decisions. They're going to help you know when this is the right way to go and the wrong way to go. We all want a GPS. Guys, GPS is going to let you, you know, end you up in a truck for seven days in the snow.

Okay? Follow the signs. You know what I'm saying? If it says the road's closed, don't go down there. You know what I'm saying?

Follow the guideposts, the values. They're going to show you where to go. They're going to show you, you know what? When I'm with that person, I just don't feel like their character isn't good for me. Maybe I can't even pinpoint it, but their character just isn't good for me.

So I think I'm going to keep some distance there. It's okay to set boundaries. Let me just give you permission now. It's okay. You can say that guy at Salt Church that forgot his name.

He told me I could do this. All right? So you could say, I don't want to talk about that. I don't want to go there. No, I don't want to do that.

And guys, if you tell someone that you don't want to talk about that specific thing, or you don't want to get into these conversations or you don't want to engage in this kind of argument again, unless you can do it in a different way, in a healthy way, if you come to someone and you clearly lay out your boundaries and they don't respect that, that is a toxic relationship. And maybe it's not at the place where it has to end, but it should be sending up some serious signals in your head. This person doesn't respect me. Can you really say they're your friend and they love you? If they abuse you, they might have problems.

I get it. I'm sure they do. You're not going to fix them. Someone else has to. You're too close to it.

And guys, I know I'm being, is that okay? If I'm real this morning, I'm real this morning, guys. Honestly, I'm real because I've been there. I've been hurt. I've hurt other people, right?

I've been the toxic one. I've hurt. I've hurt my wife. I've hurt my wife. I've done things that I shouldn't do things that are sinful and I've received forgiveness and I.

Changed? See, if someone will continually do the same thing, and they won't change, and it's been pattern after pattern after pattern after pattern in your life, where it's the same thing happening, then I just want to say God is trying to speak to you. He is alerting to you to something key. That this kind of person, that that kind of situation, that this kind of conversation, that these chain of events lead you somewhere you don't want to go, and you haven't been able to develop the character to say no yet, so you just got to get out of it. You got to set boundaries, and when they cross boundaries, you got to have a conversation about that.

Don't just ghost them. Say it. If this happens, then this will be the consequence. Go on, guys. We need to pray and allow God to bring in some backbone into our life.

If this happens, this will be the consequence. And if someone can't handle truth, guys, then they're not, they're not good friends. If they can't handle that, then it's not going to work out well. And I know that they're hot, or whatever, or they're fun to be around, or they're cool. I get that.

But last time I checked, when I read this verse, it doesn't say, hey, you know, make sure that you're completely in this relationship. Oh, unless they're super hot, or cool, or fun to be around. When this starts happening, guys, it's so important, because here's why it's important. We're built to be in relationship. We're built to be in relationship.

We can't, we can't not be in relationship. That's not, the answer is not to just isolate yourself. That's how you end up dead. It's how you end up in a terrible place. Isolation is never the answer.

Boundaries, your guideposts, knowing, hey, these are my values. I'm not going to, I'm not going to do that. I don't want to do it anymore. I'm not going to drink that much. I'm not going to do these activities anymore.

I'm not going to talk about these things. Because when I talk about these things, and you and I talk about these things, this is where it leads. Just look at what's happened before. That'll give you a very good indication of what's going to happen next. If you repeat the same things.

And what God says, is he says, listen, if someone is bringing you to a place, worship, I'm not talking about someone's telling you to go like sacrifice a bull to Satan or something like that. Right. I'm saying worship is how you talk. It's what you do. It's how you live here.

Excuse me. It's how you live your life. Think about that. When you praise someone that's coming from inside, when you tell someone how good they are or how much you love them or how much you care for them, that's a reflection of your heart. And when we're telling that to God, that's a reflection of our heart.

That's why God says, don't go worship other gods. Because that's what you're doing is you're saying, I love these other gods. I'm going to obey these other gods. I'm going to do these other things, replace gods with relationships, replace it with sex, replace it with the pursuit of money, replace it with the pursuit of partying and just having a good time. I don't know.

Those are like the big obvious things. There are so many more. There's so many more. And you know, it's not right because you feel it inside. And the more you get into this word, the more sensitive your soul becomes.

The more you get around people that love Jesus and tell them what's really going on. And they say, oh, that doesn't sound like a good idea. Or, oh, is that person right for you? Or, oh, man, that seems crazy. I don't know if you should do that.

That should be sending signals in your head. You don't have to do what they say. You're your own person. Okay? But that should be sending signals in your head.

Toxic relationships. Our relationships are so important to us, guys. We can't ignore them. And when they go bad, and there's a persistence in it, they won't stop. There's like a conviction they have.

It's almost like they need you to do something different, right? They need you to do what they're doing. They need you to do what they're asking you to do. When someone needs you to do that, and it's something that's violating your conscience, come on, guys. That's bad.

Right? That's bad. Not good. You know, that's like, let's just put it in the simplest terms possible. You know, toxic relationship, bad.

Jesus relationship, good. And when this happens, guys, we just have to identify it. Someone's leading us away. We're violating our values. When that happens, you have to set boundaries.

If those are crossed, you have to set bigger boundaries. And if those are crossed, you have to end the relationship. If you, I mean, all right. They don't care about you the way you think they do if they will not honor those boundaries. Bottom line.

And if they move you away from Jesus, because here's the thing, guys, and here's how we're going to end today. If they move you away from Jesus, what they're doing is they're moving you away from the best friend you'll ever have. I want you to imagine this scenario. And guys from the band, you can come back up and play something if you want. I want you to imagine.

I want you to imagine. I just want you to look at these two ideas. Okay. You have a relationship on the one hand. And this relationship is going to, it's from a person.

So they are going to fail you. They're going to hurt you. Every relationship has hurt guys. Okay. I'm not, that's just, that's just life.

You might, you're going to get hurt and you're going to hurt them. It's not always the victim thing. We hurt other people and it becomes this cycle. Okay. But, but here's what it comes down to is you have this human relationship there.

And, um, it's already hard enough sometimes to figure out the dynamics of relationship. Um, but when you actually have someone who's starting, who's consistently persistently with conviction, leading you to a place you don't want to go. That's going to lead you on a path that will not end well. Then I want you to look and think about the other side. And the other side is Jesus.

And this is someone who will never leave you or forsake you. That's a promise from the Bible. This is someone who knows everything about you and still loves you. This is someone who instead of trying to make you do what he wanted, he died for you. This is someone who instead of trying to force his way into your life, he invites you into a love relationship and has proved it through his actions.

His care. This is someone who you actually were a toxic relationship to him. And yet because of who he was and who he is and his power and his love and his grace and his holiness and his cleanness, he could come into that relationship and he can dispel those toxins and he can purify you. He's not someone who's going to make you more toxic. He's going to someone who's going to make you clean.

He's someone that's going to make you so clean that you can go forward in his power and you can actually start bringing other people to meet him. Because that person, they don't need more of your love necessarily. They need Jesus' love. They need something different. And there's a relationship before you where you have Jesus.

And he promises to be your friend. John 15, 15. I no longer call you servants. A servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends.

For everything I've learned from my father, I have made known to you. I have called you friends.