Fighting, Jesus Style, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. In order for your marriage to heal, in order for any relationship to heal, the cross has got to become larger. It's not that the cross isn't there, it's just it's not that weighty to you. The forgiveness is not that grand. The treasure of Christ is not that magnificent. That's why small things bother you and that's why small infractions against you are so devastating.

The cross has to become larger. Welcome back to Summit Life with J.D. Greer.

As always, I'm your host, Mollie Vidovich. Okay, has the smoke detector in your home ever woken you or your kids up, just chirping in the middle of the night? It always seems to need new batteries at the worst times in my house, in the baby's nursery. Now we all recognize the sound of a low battery and truthfully often ignore it for a while if we can. But what about an all-out alarm? We don't lay in bed ignoring that, right?

We act quickly. Today Pastor J.D. encourages us to mind the smoke detectors of anger and bitterness before they turn into fires in our relationships. Now here's Pastor J.D.

with a message he titled, Fighting Jesus Style. God put inside of you this little tuning fork called a sense of justice. And whenever something is unjust, it goes off and you've got to see it resolved. That's why we love revenge movies because, you know, it's being resolved.

And especially if the injustice is directed toward you, you just feel like you're not at peace until justice has been served, right? And when you are repaying somebody for the injustice they did to you, you feel in that moment the authority of God repaying justice where justice needs to be to be repaid, which is what makes what Paul says in Romans 12 verse 19 so very important. Do not ever take revenge, my friends.

Not in the big things, not in the small things. Never take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath because it is written, it is mine always to avenge. I will always repay, says the Lord. Paul says, look, justice will be served. And because justice will be served, you can leave room for the wrath of God. It means you never have to take upon yourself the responsibility to vindicate the wrong that was done to you. You know, one of the things I've realized is, some of you will hear this is over the top, but let me just say it like this. I realize that every single wrong that has ever been done to me, every single wrong that has ever been done to me will be repaid in one of two places. It will either be paid for by Jesus on the cross or it will be repaid by that person in hell. Therefore, I do not have to take upon myself the responsibility to right any wrong because God is going to take all the vengeance that is necessary. That releases me from all that malice and wrath and rage because I don't need to have it anymore. You know, I hear people say sometimes, well, you should just forgive and forget your marriage.

And I understand kind of what they mean, but let's be honest. When you've really been hurt, you can't forgive and forget. At least you can't forget, right? I mean, be honest.

If somebody has really hurt you, you can't just be like, I don't remember that anymore. It's too painful. Here's what I say. Don't throw rocks at me.

Let me finish this. God doesn't forgive and forget. You're like, what? God is, you know what we use the word omniscient, which means he's all knowing. There's no day that God looks back on and is like, I cannot remember what happened on that day.

He doesn't forget anything. When we say God forgives and forgets, what we mean is that God chooses not to remember or to hold that against us because Jesus has paid for it on the cross. For you to forgive somebody else, listen, it's not that you forget about the wrong altogether, it's that you choose to not remember or hold that wrong against them because you know that God will take care of it, has taken care of it on the cross or will take care of it in hell. Vengeance is his, so I can put away all that wrath. You see where Paul says back in Ephesians 4, don't let the sun go down on your wrath, give no opportunity to the devil. You see, when you hold a desire for vengeance, watch this, you are actually opening the door for Satan to enter your heart because you are doing the same thing Satan did that made Satan Satan.

You know how Satan became Satan and Satan wanted to be God? When you were taking a role of vengeance on yourself, you were wanting to play God and actually give vengeance. What that is happening is that is corrupting and destroying you and many of you are right there. You got bitterness in your heart toward a spouse, toward a fiance, toward an ex-boyfriend, a girlfriend, an ex-spouse. I've heard this before that holding unforgiveness and bitterness in your heart is like trying to repay another person by drinking poison yourself. You have got to let that go. You have got to say this is an issue between me and God and you have got to forgive because vengeance doesn't belong to you and you have to separate yourself from that.

It belongs to him. So he gives you that first command, put away all malice and wrath and hatred and in order to do that, you got to know where it comes from and it comes from two places. One, it comes from idols that you worship that have replaced God and number two, it comes from your desire to play God and get vengeance. If you will let God be God in your life on both accounts, then you will find that stuff just goes away naturally because you've pulled up the roots of malice and anger and hatred and rage. Just put it all away by letting God be God.

Here's a second command and be kind to one another. Tender hearted, verse 32, forgiving one another just like God in Christ forgave you. Underline that little phrase as Christ forgave you.

You see Christianity is supposed to be the experience of being so overwhelmed by the magnificent grace of God towards you that every relationship in your life changes because of how greatly you have been loved. First, it's just the experience of having been forgiven so that you know that there's nothing, listen to me, there's nothing your spouse could ever do to you that would compare in the slightest bit to what God has forgiven you of. I've told you this before, but one of the clearest lines of demarcation in my marriage was the day that I sat in an office and a counselor looked at me and my wife and said to me, hey pastor, your problem JD in this marriage is that you don't really think of yourself as a sinner. He said, theologically you know that you're a sinner.

He said, but it's never really gripped your heart and you want to know how I know that? Because you can't forgive your wife of the places that she's forgiven you and that points to the fact that you don't really see yourself as a sinner before God because if you had any concept of how much God had forgiven you of, forgiving your wife of much smaller things would become very natural. He said, you think of yourself in your marriage as first one who is sinned against and then later you think of yourself as sinner.

He said, you're going to have to reverse that. You are first a sinner and only secondly sinned against and there is nothing you will ever have to forgive you of your wife where she has disappointed you that compares in the slightest bit to what God has forgiven you of. You want to know why some of you find forgiveness so difficult? Because you don't really see yourself as a sinner as being forgiven by God because if you did it would just come naturally. Listen, when you won't forgive your spouse, you know what you're saying? You're saying your sin against me is worse than my sin against God. You really think that? Do you really think that?

I know that you would say no I don't think that but the fact that you hold other people accountable for those things shows that you don't believe and that you haven't been gripped by how much you've been forgiven because if you did it would just come naturally. Here's the other part of that. Christianity is supposed to be the sense of having been given such a treasure in Jesus that everything else that happens to you, even the bad things in your life, they become trivial.

John Leslie, the 18th century pastor, one of the guys behind the Great Awakening, he said that Christianity is discovering the gospel is like a man who hears that he has a relative who has left him millions of dollars and he didn't even know that relative existed. He said so he is summoned to the bank to collect this enormous inheritance that he didn't realize was coming to him. He said as he's on his way to the bank that the carriage that he's riding in, one of the wheels falls off on it.

He's about a quarter mile from the bank. He said now what is that guy going to do? Is he going to jump out of the carriage and start kicking the carriage and like you scoot back and cursing at God about how bad his life is? He said no. He probably wouldn't even know that. He probably just jumped out of the carriage and just skipped the rest of the way to the bank because he's so overjoyed about what he has obtained that all the things that have gone wrong seem like they're just trivial or meaningless.

It's just a carriage wheel and I got millions of dollars. He said a Christian who is bothered by anything that happens to them in his life, what they're showing is that they've lost touch with the greatness of the grace that God has given to them. Your ability to be joyful in all things is the test of whether or not you actually understand the gospel. Your ability to forgive the smallest infractions in God's sight are the test of whether or not you know how much you've been forgiven.

Can I tell you what the real issue is in some of your marriage? Listen, is that the cross is so small in your lives. And in order for your marriage to heal, in order for any relationship to heal, the cross has got to become larger. It's not that the cross isn't there, it's just it's not that weighty to you. The forgiveness is not that grand. The treasure of Christ is not that magnificent. That's why small things bother you and that's why small infractions against you are so devastating. The cross has to become larger. That will do more for you than any sermon, any seminar, any book, any couples counseling, any weekend retreat, anything. It's just for the cross to become larger.

Because when you fix the vertical relationship the horizontal ones just fix themselves. Which leads me to command number three. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear. Paul is identifying in this command two different kinds of speech.

If you understand the first two commands this will come naturally. He said there's two different kinds of speech. Watch. There is the first kind of speech that tears down condemning speech and then there's the kind of speech grace speech that builds up. He said your speech should be speech not that cuts and condemns your speech in conflict and especially in marriage should always be speech that is ministering grace and lifting up. We'll be right back with more teaching in just a moment but first let me remind you as we're learning this week that if there is one thing we all need help with it's forming and building healthy relationships.

In many ways our relationships with others are windows into our relationship with God and we can only love others well by saturating ourselves in the truth that he first loved us. We want to help you learn how to connect more fully with those that you're closest to in our 15 day devotional called Devotions for the Distracted Family. It comes with your generous gift to the ministry right now so give us a call at 866-335-5220 or you can check it out at jdgrier.com. Now let's get right back to today's teaching.

Here's Pastor JD. Now I thought of different ways that I could describe this to you but I think the easiest one is just going to be for me to walk you through the stages of what grace saturated speech looks like. Alright so I want you to start I'm going to write down some stages you need to go through in the midst of conflict whether it's conflict at work conflict with a friend or conflict in marriage.

Alright here's stage number one. Number one always examine your heart first. Even if you've been wronged what does your anger and rage say about your heart? Now I'm not saying they didn't wrong you we'll get to that but I'm just saying that first you got to say why did it produce this kind of reaction in me as has idolatry is that's what's behind the wrath and the anger and bitterness because I got to deal with that with God. You've got to mind these smoke detectors that are going off in your heart because those emotions are like smoke telling you that there's a bigger problem and that bigger problem is your disconnect from God the fact that you're an idolater. I hate the smoke detectors in my house.

I mean because I don't it's like they continually need batteries. I don't know maybe it's I'm doing something wrong but all I do is replace the batteries in those things and they always go off like three in the morning they start chirping at three in the morning I'm getting up at four thirty in the morning I'm trying to figure out which one it is and replace I hate them but I would never want them not to be there because I don't want my house to be on fire and not even know it but you've got to mind these smoke detectors these emotions that point you back to a deeper problem as the problem of your idolatry. By the way that's why you need outside counsel in your life that's why you need to be in a small group that's why you need to be connected to people because other people point these things out to you. I can't tell you how many conversations Veronica and I have had with like one of our respective friends about a problem in our marriage and one of our friends be like that's ridiculous you're an idiot you need to let that go because God gave us the body of Christ to help us see what was really going on in our heart because no man or woman sees his heart correctly and if you think you do then you're a bigger fool than anybody in here right at least know where you're blind and get help right number two overlook whatever you can you see the phrase as fits the occasion as fits the occasion means watch part of grace saturated speaking is knowing what in a particular situation is actually going to help and give grace and what's not really going to help which means there's a lot of things you just don't ever comment about because you might be right about them but they're not going to help the person or the relationship proverbs here's a couple verses that are dear and near to JD's heart because he is so bad at them proverbs 1911 it is to a man's glory to overlook an offense proverbs 12 16 the vexation of a fool is known at once but the prudent ignores an insult which one are you are you the kind that like the moment you see that you've been wrong you're pointing that out to somebody you're you're given the confrontation he said hey you know sometimes a wise man shows that he's wise just by not just by ignoring the insult my analogy for this is always I'm playing tennis you're playing tennis and you're warming up and when you're warming up you're just kind of hitting these little volley of soft you're hitting back and forth through each other just real solid and then all of a sudden somebody kind of spices one up a little bit you know so what do you do you hit it back and then you keep it escalating until you're like three feet from each other at the net just killing the ball at each other well in marriage what happens is you're in this relationship where you're just kind of volleying you know little shots of love at each other and then all of a sudden somebody gets a little feisty with one and puts a little English on it you know spin it back at her and it escalates until metaphorically we're three feet from each other the net just pounding that ball back and forth at each other there's a way to not get in that situation Solomon says just the first you know little mean ball that comes just kind of stop and let it go by it's a fence we're gonna start this one again all right and we're gonna go back and forth it's a man's glory to overlook an offense now that never applies to where the wrong that the person is doing is causing lasting damage to you or to the relationship or to themselves sometimes you got to speak up because you know that a relationship that's going to endure can't have the presence of that in it and sometimes you've got to go into the confrontation do not hear from this that as person who operates with grace never confront somebody else because that's exactly the opposite you see how he said speak the truth with one another and there's a lot of times in my marriage where I know that I need to confront my wife about something but I know that if I do it's going to be the Arctic winter for about three days and the greater household and part I'm a peacemaker in place is not worth it I just wanna let that go but I know the loving thing to do is to actually confront and to say hey if we're gonna be able if we're gonna I've got to say this because this is how I'm just gonna endure the winter because our relationship and our family it's too important for me not to now you say well JD how do I know the difference how do I know the difference between things I should speak up on and things I should be quiet about I really can't tell you I mean I wish I could but there's no like fast rule it's a Holy Spirit art you got to develop all I'll do is leave you with the words of that immortal theologian Kenny Rogers the secret to surviving son is no one wants to throw away and no one wants to keep you got to know when to hold them you got to know when to fold them you got to know when to walk away and know when to run all right and that's all I got to say about that number three number three you need to be practical in how you fight you need to be practical in how you fight again the phrase as fits the occasion means that you're mindful of when a word is going to be profitable and helpful and when it's not just because it's true doesn't mean it's helpful at the moment Proverbs 12 18 there is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts didn't say they were untrue it just said that they're rash but the tongue of the wise brings healing rash words are words that might be true but are not thought out not given in the right way in the right time my wife and I found it helpful to bounderize our conflict into certain zones right we know that there are certain times a day we should never fight after 10 pm because if we start fighting after 10 pm it's going to end with us angrier than ever at about 4 30 in the morning still yelling at each other worse than when we started so it's like we just don't fight after 10 pm we're going to punt they're like oh but you shouldn't let the sun go down in your wrath I'll get to that in a minute okay we don't fight in our bedroom because that never turns out well we don't fight when we're either of us in a bad mood we have what we call the 24 hour rule which either of us is allowed to invoke 24 hour rule means I'm not ready to talk about this now but I promise you in 24 hours I will bring this back up now men women if you do this you've got to bring it back up otherwise you lose credibility right but you bring it back up at a time when the words will not come out like sword thrust they're going to come out in a way that is that is healing now you're like well yeah but the sun the bible says don't let the sun go down in your wrath I've heard that verse used and misapplied more than I mean it's all right first of all it can't literally mean that you never ever go to bed without having resolved the situation because I mean just think of it that would mean in certain parts of Sweden you would have three months to resolve an issue because the sun doesn't ever go down for three months and it would mean during other seasons you got two hours before the sun goes down you got to get it worked out that's not what he means what he means when he says that is you've got to deal seriously with the rage and the wrath and the vengeance and you got to get it out of your heart and sometimes 24 hours will help you separate unrighteous selfish irritation from righteous anger that's concerned about the relationship all right number four be quick to listen and slow to speak be quick to listen and slow to speak again as fits the occasion how are you going to know what words fit the occasion if you don't listen listening Brad Hamburg our pastoral counselor said that most of the communication problems in marriage listen biggest problems in any relationship is communication the biggest problem he said in communication is usually not an expression problem it's always a listening problem now these points apply to both genders but let me just talk to them in for a while and ladies you just listen in on this because we're just really really bad at this including the guy on the stage Proverbs 18 13 he who gives an answer before he hears it is a folly and a shame my relationship with my wife consists of her beginning to tell me a problem and me interrupting her telling her how to resolve that problem or why she shouldn't we think it's a problem you've got to develop the ability to be what we call a servant listener a servant listener would be defined as one who seeks to understand before seeking to be understood a servant listener is one who seeks to understand before he or she learns to seek to be understood Philippians 2 when it's defined a servant remember servant is one who thinks of other people's interests more highly than his own a servant listener is one who thinks of other people's opinions and other people's statements as more significant than their own which is 100% the opposite of how I go into most arguments I go into most arguments already with my points and I'm just waiting on you to take a breath because the moment you take a breath boom I'm putting in my point because my point's more important than yours a servant listener is one who jot these down doesn't interrupt because whenever you interrupt what you're saying is my thoughts are more important than your thoughts your thoughts are so stupid I'm not gonna let you get to the end of that sentence because it's just trash I'm gonna go ahead and put out the truth right here right now and I'm gonna interrupt you if you're a servant listener you won't interrupt if you're a servant listener then if you don't know what to say you're gonna ask questions if you don't know what to say after that you're gonna ask more questions if you still don't know what to say after that you just repeat what the other person said back to them honestly that will resolve 90% of the communication problems in your relationship because sometimes what they want is a companion and they're paying not a solution to their problem right sometimes that's 90% of it is I just am expressing myself because I need somebody to feel who I what I feel can I tell you where I learned this I didn't learn this in my marriage I learned this from Delta Airlines Delta lost my luggage on one of my trips back and normally you know I just kind of roll with it but I was I was mad I had rage malice anger clamor slander all of them I had them all bound up in one so I walk into that little lost luggage office and I walk in there and there's this dude behind the desk just kind of like he just a big old smile on his face and I was like I'm gonna I'm about to go Old Testament on this guy and I'm looking at him because I'm like please don't please don't go to our church because I've had that happen before where I go off on somebody like hey pastor JD I'm like oh sorry about that but he didn't look familiar and so I just I mean I just for two and a half minutes I just I just told him the way things were and he's listening to me he goes like yeah I can't repeat what he said because he cussed like a sailor he goes bleepity bleep those stupid blankety blank they're such idiots they're always doing stuff like that and I was like he's as mad as I am about this and I totally felt better I mean really I was like ah yeah and then he starts you know doing this thing on his computer I know he's not doing anything and he knows that I know just type it on his computer like oh we're gonna but I come my anger was completely gone it was completely gone because in that moment he felt my pain and I was like that's that's awesome because he didn't do anything to resolve it he just felt my pain that made me feel better I won't buy that um baggage office now at RDU airport and I'm always like that's my man right there because I'll see him in there there are places in your relationship listen guys she is not a problem to be solved she's a person to be heard you're listening to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer as a reminder if you've missed any of the previous messages in this series you can listen again online at jdgreer.com I sat down with Pastor J.D. earlier and I asked him how our newest resource sets out to meet families today right where they are we are all so distracted by the news by the latest app on our phone by whatever reminders are coming through by our families going in a hundred different directions and various activities what we want to do is we want to help you connect easily and quickly without adding something else to your plate we created a set of conversation cards they're just cards with one question or one prompt on them that will just take the dialogue in some directions that it may not otherwise go to help you and those you're closest with talk about about faith and and rest and what it means to trust God and what it means to to love and serve each other it comes along with the book of 15 devotions that I wrote around those same topics if you will will go to jdgreer.com we can start that conversation that relationship with you and give you this resource and access to a lot of other things as well when you give a suggested donation of $35 or more to Summit Life you're helping people around the world dive into the gospel and we are so grateful so be sure to ask for the devotions for the distracted family 15 days on relationships faith and rest as well as the conversation cards when you give today call 866-335-5220 that's 866-335-5220 or if it's easier you can donate and request the pair online at jdgreer.com I'm Molly Vitovich be sure to join us tomorrow when Pastor JD concludes this message on conflict called fighting Jesus style see you Thursday on Summit Life with JD Greer today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.