Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / May 6, 2018 | This Is Us - Fight Your Way To Intimacy (Part 1)

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May 6, 2018 | This Is Us - Fight Your Way To Intimacy (Part 1) · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, how are you doing?
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you are visiting today, and so let me let you know we're in a series called This Is Us.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's an eight-week series on marriage and parenting.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell a little more about that after I read our text.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, if you don't, there may be one close by.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to read Ephesians chapter 4, the last eight verses.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Ephesians chapter 4, 25 to 32.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's how we'll start this morning.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Ephesians is in the right-hand side of your Bible, most of the way to the end.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Ephesians.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Ephesians is Ephesus, is a was the fourth largest city in the Roman Empire when Paul wrote this in the late 50s A.D.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, it's now in Turkey.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be there with about 40 of you in about four weeks, five weeks.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And great city, amazing city, had a really thriving church.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Paul spent more time in this city than any other place.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so he writes one of his greatest books to this place.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he's going to write us, write something here in the last eight verses of Ephesians 4, which is really, really going to be helpful this week and next week.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is a two-part message entitled Fight Your Way to Intimacy.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Verses 25 to 32.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: In your anger, do not sin.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And do not give the devil a foothold.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those who have need.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up, according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Get rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that last line drives us to pray.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray, Lord, we are so grateful that in Christ you forgave us.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, we're sitting here with the table right in front of us, your table, we call it, table of the Lord.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna close in a few minutes, Lord, by taking the bread, drinking the cup as your son commanded us, because it will remind us, it'll bring our minds back to the cross, to Calvary, when in Christ you forgave us.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: We can't thank you enough for that amazing moment, for the fact that all these other commands and everything flows out of this gospel, this wonderful truth, that by grace we are saved, that you loved us and you sent Jesus down and he lived this perfect life and he healed and all this other stuff, but it was all geared to that moment where he could die for our sins.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're sitting here, standing here, we're thanking you for that.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're just so grateful for that on this bright May morning.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you for all you do for us, and uh Lord, we are compassionate.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: We pray for the people who are struggling in our midst, but we move it all back to the fact that at the cross everything changed for the world and for us in Jesus' name.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh my title here, fight, that may offend you a little bit, but I'm gonna blame it on Joe Delfonso last week.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: He brought boxing gloves up, you know, and he talked about how for six months he had kicked and boxed and hurt people or whatever in Phoenix.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I haven't even done that for six months, but he talked about fighting, so I decided to steal that term.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, if you prefer the term disagreement in marriage or conflict, that's fine.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: But when your kids see you doing it, they still say, What are you fighting about?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it all looks and feels sort of the same.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to talk to you about this because in this eight-week series, the first two weeks were on parenting, children.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next two weeks, weeks three and four, the last two weeks were on marriage.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And now in the second half, the first two weeks, I'm gonna do a two-week series on marriage, and then we'll end with two weeks on parenting.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Pettit, teacher at Dallas Seminary, written a number of books, grew up in this church, mother sitting right back there in Pew 17 or 13 or whatever.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Paul's gonna be here and he's gonna help us.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna talk about parenting, and then I'll close the series the last week in May with one more on parenting, and then, you know, it'll all be solved.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Your marriages, your child rearing, it'll all be perfect.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk to you about uh uh about fighting your way to intimacy.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this idea uh uh that that conflict is a good thing may be new to you, but it's not new in even secular psychology.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: A very famous psychologist, a German fellow who's died a few years back, Eric Erickson, famously wrote, Our failure to achieve intimacy in marriage stems from our inability to engage in controversy and useful conflict.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And controversy and useful conflict.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And a Christian counselor, maybe because of what Eric Erickson said, wrote a book, Greg Smalley did, entitled, Fight Your Way to a Better Marriage: How Healthy Conflict Can Take You To Deeper Levels of Intimacy.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And my favorite uh counselor of all time, Clint Eastwood, put it this way: they say marriages are made in heaven, but so is thunder and lightning.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we can all say amen to that, especially the woman who was chatting with her friend at Starbucks and said, our marriage was so wonderful, so wonderful at the beginning.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: But then as we walked out of the church, and it just, that's what marriage is, right?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: A man and a woman get married, they become one, the trouble starts when they try to decide which one.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of my favorite stories, a little girl came out of nursery school, mother picked her up, age four.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Lori gets in the car and she's chattering, she's so happy.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: She'd never, for some reason, been told the story of Snow White before.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so she's gushing, she's telling her mother about the story of White.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: She gets into the Prince Charming thing and the white horse and Prince Charming and then the kiss.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And do you know what happened then, Mommy?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And mommy says, and they lived happily ever after.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, she said they got married.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: So a brilliant, precocious statement, understanding that just getting married, of course, doesn't mean you live happily ever after.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's conflict, there's disagreement, there's fighting.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, Melody and I, some years ago, this is a picture up on the screen, this is actually what we used to look like.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is our first year of marriage, and we used to, shall we say, have mild disagreements about any number of things, especially, of course, it all started with the one that's most common to all couples, which is money.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up in a large family, organ farming.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: We spent no dime before its time.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we were very, very tight.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Melody came from small family, and uh and money was a way to get things done and so forth.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: So they weren't nearly as tight.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, of course, when we first went to Dillon's together to buy cereal milk and so forth, we didn't see what was happening.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't understand at that point from that for her, grocery shopping was a little bit like her favorite game, which was charades, which is, you know, kind of a fun, friendly thing, and you make as few hand motions as possible and get in and get out and get up and get down and sit down and you're all over.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you grab, grab the uh Cheerios and you go to the counter and so forth, and then you're done.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: For me, no, for me, for me, grocery shopping was like capture the flag.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: There was something precious in there that I wanted, but I was fighting with an enemy for it who wanted to put my billfold in jail, who wanted me to spend more than I wanted, and I was gonna take some weapons in with me.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna take at least one large envelope jam-packed with coupons for sure, and I was going to creep up and down the aisles, and I was going, this is in the days before heaven, finally got Dillons to put the pennies per ounce right underneath the Cheerios.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I was gonna use my mathematical degree to figure out exactly what was the cheapest.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And Melody did not understand there's a spiritual difference between name brand and generic.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: She she she would just go down, she'd grab the stuff and put it in there, whereas she her she could not understand why it was worth spending an extra one half hour to save 30 cents.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: But see, when you're playing Capture the Flag, you may spend all afternoon and you come out of there with the flag.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: So so we had lots of differences, and we had differences even before we got into the store about how many circles Jim should take around the lot until he got the very best parking place, two slots closer to the store.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we had a lot of these issues that we had to work through.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: And Ephesians chapter 4 is going to talk to us, and not just to married couples, if you're single, if you're divorced, if you're widowed, you'll find that these messages in Ephesians 4 is written to you too.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it'll help you in any kind of disagreement or conflict that you have.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: But Ephesians 4 gives us some rules for fighting, right?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Fighting fairly and some rules.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you have been over to KU and you've seen James Naism's 13 rules from 1891 or whatever about basketball, the initial rules of basketball.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh 25 years before that, you uh were written the Marcus of Queensbury rules for fighting.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Those 12 rules.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, because before then, if you got in a ring, if you were fighting, you could hit a person on the back of the head, you could hit below the belt, you could scratch, you could claw, you could kick in.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden you have these rules, these 12 Marcus of Queensbury rules, no more hitting below the belt.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: I love rule number nine or ten, which is no more wearing boots with spikes on them into the ring.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what Ephesians 4 is gonna be.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna give us rules for fighting.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And let me jump right in.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: The seven rules of fighting your way to intimacy.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 4, 25 to 32.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Rule number one comes right out of the very first word, therefore.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: When you see a therefore in the Bible, as you know, you ask what it's there for, and it's always pointing back.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because of something I've just told you, I'm now going to tell you something else.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what is it the Apostle Paul just told them, that on which basis he's going to give them seven rules of fighting their way to intimacy?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what he told them is the basis of the first rule, you must not forget who, yes, English majors, whom, who you are fighting.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: The who that you are fighting, dear believer, is someone who's not the who they used to be.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: They're a transformed person.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 2 in Ephesians, you, he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked according to the course of this world.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now look at this carefully.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Once upon a time, dear Christian, you were dead and you were walking, which means obviously you were the walking dead.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: You were like a zombie spiritually.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't know it, but you were dead inside.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Dear friend, if you're not a Christian yet, if you made that decision, we're glad you're here.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: No judgment here.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just telling you, the Bible would say, as pleasant as you are and as wonderful, there's a dead spot inside you.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: You're a spiritual zombie in God's sight.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: You are one of the walking dead.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: But when you come to the cross and when you see Jesus Christ there, you recognize he's dying for your sins, you put your trust in him, laying down your deadly behavior, your doing of good, at that moment he gives you forgiveness of sin, salvation, and eternal life.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: He makes you alive so that you're no longer the person you used to be.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Which is why when you get to our passage, the previous sentence leading into it, Ephesians 4.24, goes like this.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you must display a new nature because you are a new person created in God's likeness, righteous, holy, and true.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: To identify the fighters, then you need to recognize as you look at yourself and as you look at your partner that you're not the people you used to be.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: You're not dead, you are saints, you're alive, you are brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: You will be living together happily, yes, happily, in eternity, you must not lose sight of that fact.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: C.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: S.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis put it this way in his most popular book, The Weight of Glory, it's a serious thing to live with possible gods and goddesses.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: To remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to, yes, wives, that's your husbands at times, may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's who you are.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you must not forget who you're fighting.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: You're fighting someone amazing in Jesus Christ.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's rule number one.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Rule number two, therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Open your mouth, openly communicate, decide you are willing to fight.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is a big problem because, as you know, at least half of us, I'm talking to you men now, no, uh, tend to one, but Larry Crabbe said that.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: He said, typical way that a man responds to conflict is that he clams up.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Typical way that a wife responds to conflict is that she moves to control.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's just typical.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: There are exceptions, as I found out between the services, believe me.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, but rule number two is you must be willing to fight.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Wall Street Journal ran a very interesting and still famous article a few years later entitled, The Key to a Lasting Marriage is Combat.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: That was the headline.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Subtitled, Even Happy Couples Aren't Really Compatible, suggests latest research.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: And after quoting research and after talking about, you know, this and that and the other study that's been done, the Wall Street Journal article went like this.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's increasingly clear that most couples, whether they're happy or unhappy, have a similar number of irreconcilable differences.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Stop right there for a minute.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: One of the studies followed like about 160, 170 couples for over a 15 year span.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of that span, they found out that about one-third of them had gotten divorced.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: But when doing that study, they found out that there was absolutely no difference in the number of irreconcilable differences or conflicts, small ones and major ones that the couples had who got divorced and the ones who stayed together.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we continue.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: What is more, all couples, happy or not, tend to argue about the same things.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Top of the list, whether you're rich or poor, is money, money, money.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Other common topics include household chores, work obligations, kids, and differing priorities.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Then, quoting the number one marriage guru today, John Gottman, up in the state of Washington, 69% of agreements are never resolved.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's true whether you got divorced, whether you've stayed married.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: 69% are never resolved.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: The result is a gradual shift in counseling and psychology toward helping spouses manage, accept, and even honor their discord.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds like Ephesians chapter 4, verse 25, that you need to be willing to see the value in fighting your way to intimacy.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let me go a little bit deeper.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: A book uh I've probably consulted in the last 500 books I've read, I'd say this book is in the top 10, maybe the top 20.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've consulted this book more than any other outside the Bible in the last 10 years, called Crucial Conversations, subtitled Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, New York Times bestseller.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: I would recommend it highly.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And by crucial conversations, what they mean is a conversation between you and your spouse or you and anyone where you have opposing opinions, where your emotions are very strong, and where the stakes are high.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: In chapter one of that book, uh the question is floated: what's your communication style under stress?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Most people gravitate toward one style or the other.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Is your style silence?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: That is, you clam up, you are tip typically you would avoid, you would withdraw, something like that.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it the opposite?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Is it violence?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: You blow up, you attack, you you you control, right?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or are you like me, you try to exercise both of those, moving between violence and silence.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Some of us are really good at clamming up, clamming up, clamming up until it finally builds up and then finally you explode.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's a way to exercise both of your spiritual gifts.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we move between violence and silence.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right about that?
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: But this passage, by the way, is primarily directed, as is the book, directed, toward those who tend to fall silent and withdraw, right?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh one of my favorite stories about climbing up and withdrawing was sent me uh by by Judy Stoffer.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you know uh the Stoffers, he got his doctorate yesterday up in Big Red Country, huge Nebraska fans.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's all I'm gonna say about that.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: But um Brad and Judy spent decades here, whatever.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And she sent me, she said, you ought to use this story, so I'm gonna use this story.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's great, it's a great story.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: So uh Judy uh and he got his doctorate yesterday, and I forget what he got his doctorate in, but I think the Nelsons, Hank, and Nan drove up, and Jeff and Judy Sorensen.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the story.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: We used to be, Judy writes, the poster children for how not to resolve conflict.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Our motto was don't face any issue.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Don't fight, don't communicate, just clam up and go to your separate corners to stew.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Our story goes like this.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is a classic story.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we'd only been married a couple of years.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Brad had to have surgery to repair an ACL in his knee.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time we weren't believers yet, and I had also this deep-seated hatred of hospitals, but now Brad had to go to the hospital.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the date Brad chose to get his surgery coincided with my single busiest week of the year.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I was under super stress.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: And because we'd only been married a short time, working a short time, we were as poor as church mice.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I was really nervous about what insurance would and would not cover, and the hospital wouldn't accept my coupons.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, she says we survived the surgery, we began rehab, Brad began rehab, and then the bill started coming to the house.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: And one morning we received the bill we'd been dreading the most, the hospital bill.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the backstory, she says, is that when we were at the after surgery, when Brad was moved to a room in the hospital, for some reason they did not put him in a semi-private room with another person.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: They gave him a private room, and we were pretty sure we were gonna have to pay the difference, but we didn't know how much it would be.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: So Brad took the letter from the hospital, the bill from the hospital, one of the sat down at the table, ripped it open, and he began pouring over the list.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Nervously I asked how much the room rate difference was for those three days.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he casually replied, 1250.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: I began stewing.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Brad's uh terminology, I was the ice queen for the rest of the day.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: I would not talk to him.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: At suppertime, Brad finally blurted out, What is your problem?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I spun around and fired back, and I've changed a word or two here.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think you're pretty darn glib about twelve hundred and fifty dollars.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he stared at me in disbelief and replied,$12.50.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: And in my best Gilda Radner impression, I said, Oh, never mind.
• 21:59
  unknown: Great.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Story, and isn't it typical?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: All of us have had, all of us who tend who are great with drawers like I am, are you know, have found out that by not communicating, we had a total misunderstanding about the situation.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we only discovered it once we blew up.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: So the issue in Ephesians and in crucial confrontations, that book, is that your goal is to stay in dialogue.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: And what that means is stay in a free flow of meaning between two or more people.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: So as though you're not fighting against this other person who's across the room, there is this pool in the middle between you, and you are dumping information into that pool.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: You are sharing meaning.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not debate, it's not argument, it's not trying to win.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's not hints or sarcasm or innuendo, it's not verbal attacks, it's not accusations, it's not giving the silent treatment, running away or playing games.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: It is continuing to talk in dialogue, and if you'll do that, you can talk about anything, almost anything, no matter how strongly you feel about it.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: In the book Crucial Confrontations, they keep running this picture of you and this other person, me and this other person, of you breaking through, no more silence, no more violence, no more withdrawing or attacking or controlling into this safety zone around this pool of shared meaning, and you continue to dialogue and you continue to share.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the third of the seven rules, or the second of the seven rules of fighting your way to intimacy.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Being willing to fight, i.e., being willing to engage in open dialogue and open communication.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: The third of the seven rules of fighting your way to intimacy, therefore, laying aside faults, said, speak truth, each one of you with his neighbor, for remembers of one another.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Be angry and yet do not sin.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Rule number three, you must be honest.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: You may be angry.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Honesty, you see, is a requirement.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: You there's no option.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be utterly honest.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, anger should be anticipated.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody's probably going to be upset.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody's going to probably be angry.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, if you're angry and you deny that, then you're not being honest.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: And honesty is necessary.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: But it's interesting here that both truth, both speaking truth, honesty, and anger are both, in a sense, commanded.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: And which leads us to, of course, a bunch of questions.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: How do I stay in dialogue or in the fight or in the ring when I'm angry or upset or scared or hurt?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer that I've uh sort of distilled from the Bible Crucial Confrontations in the Wall Street article is uh three Rs.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Realize, rethink, and recognize.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, realize my reaction when I'm angry or upset.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's the typical reaction that everybody has.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: I defend me and I blame you for my anger.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I spin a story that I believe in my mind that takes everything in the worst possible way.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's as though I had asked myself a question.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: How can I take this in the worst possible way and think of you and what you've done and what you've said in the worst possible way?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that upsets me even more.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I need to realize that's what I'm doing when I'm angry.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so, number two, I need to rethink my story.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: I need to rethink this tale I've told myself, its judgments and its conclusions.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: I need to imagine for the moment a new, better story, more sympathetic to you, that will allow me to stay in the ring in dialogue, even though I'm feeling quite angry or upset.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: And number three, I need to recognize, I need to look, I need to watch for the early warning sides inside myself or in the conversation or in you that that safe conversation is now giving way to silence or to violence.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: I need to be alert for my own actions and feelings.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where, this is so important for me, for example, and maybe for some of you, that I'm so logical and so calm and so withdrawn and so on, you know, and so forth, then all of a sudden it begins to rise, begins to rise, and then I'm saying things that I later regret.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the third of the seven rules of fighting, that you must, you simply must be honest.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you may be angry, and that's going to lead to more questions, which we'll answer when we get to rule number four, which is right now, don't sin.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: How would you sin in your anger?
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, don't let the sun go down on your anger.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Rule number four, you must fight to the finish.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: You must fight to the finish.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so often you want to attack and leave, not fight to the finish, and it gets really hard, you know, doesn't it?
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Late at night at times, and you're sleepy, and you just want to get away from the argument, and it hurts so much.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: So let's deal with some of the questions we ask.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: But isn't anger sinful in the first place?
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: How can you be angry and sin not, right?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let me let me again sort of vacuum-pack the teaching in the Bible, not explain it, not defend it.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: I could teach you on it for you know half an hour, but I won't.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just list the main points.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, anger is not sinful in itself.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: God gets angry.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, more than anyone else in the Bible, God gets angry.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, anger can't be sinful in itself.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: There is unrighteous anger, but there's also righteous anger.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, anger becomes sinful when it's inappropriate, or when it rages, or when it controls us and our thoughts.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Or, says Paul here, when it's not dealt with and resolved.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, anger need not be an impediment to intimacy, but it may be, it may be if it hangs on and hangs on, you don't resolve it, and it becomes resentment and bitterness.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: But really, you ask, must it always be resolved before the sun goes down?
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: Before I go to sleep?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'd graduate from seminary and I knew that.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: No way, man.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'd keep melding it up.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we'd be up at 1 a.m.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: and 2 a.m.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're dragging, we can hardly talk, but we've got to resolve it.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: We've got to resolve it before I go to bed.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: She pointed out to me that the sun had gone down seven hours before, so you know the rule didn't apply, or maybe I ran into that Hagar, the horrible cartoon, where the where he says to his friend, my wife and I have this agreement that we can't go to sleep while we're still mad at each other.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, says the friend.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Does it work?
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, replies Hagar.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't slept in weeks.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: So so there.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the real answer is that what this is saying is don't let the sun go down your wrath.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's a figure of speech that means resolve it soon before it turns into resentment.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: When we got a little wiser, what we do is we'd say, listen, I'm too exhausted.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even think straight.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get together tomorrow.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: When would it be a good time for you?
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let's meet such, such time, and let's let's get through this thing and figure this out, right?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: But the important thing is you do need to fight through to the finish.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Or to put it in other terms, we must not retreat from the battlefield after we've engaged in battle.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: No more guerrilla warfare, attack and leave, you know, attack and leave.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Ney palm and run, you know.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Once you begin to deal with a matter, see it through to resolution.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's rule number four, fight to the finish.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the seven rules of fighting.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Your way to intimacy, rules one through four.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'll take the final three next week, including fighting fair.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: They get really practical in the last several verses of Ephesians 4, 25 to 32.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: And let me summarize this way as we go to the table.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: G.K.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Chesterton, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, one of my favorite journalists and so forth, uh, said, marriage is an adventure, like going to war.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it is.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's supposed to be that way, in a way, because unless there's controversy, unless there's a difference of opinion, you're not both necessary in marriage.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: You need to have differences of opinion and disagreements and conflicts and fights so that you can work your way through to intimacy.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: For marriage is a partnership between a husband and wife who have learned how to fight well.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Resolve to fight your way to intimacy.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Amen?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, as we come to the table, we thank you so much for that battle that you fought for our souls and how you conquered the enemy.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Sin, death, Hades.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Conquered them on the cross at Calvary.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, you've forgiven us from our sins, you've given us eternal life.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: You allow us to sit here and celebrate that event so that right now we get to sit around your table, and as your son commanded, we get to take the bread and drink the cup.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Think back on what he did for us at Calvary.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, I know some of you are here for uh uh are new to TBC, so uh let me really quickly, I know I'm in the dark here for the video, but uh let me really quick just tell you what we do here at TBC.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: We have uh bread, which may be a little bit different than the bread uh that you take at your church.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is uh a cracker, a special kind of cracker, Jewish matzah cracker.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's uh, and the Jews have this cracker because it's unleavened.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: That means it's not like there's no yeast.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: And in 1 Corinthians 5 7, we're told that our Savior Jesus was an unleavened sacrifice.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: So that's when we decided that most of the time that's how we're gonna take the Lord's table.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: So as you take this, you'll notice it's also pierced as Jesus was pierced.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: A nice picture of our Lord Jesus Christ, absolutely pure, without the leaven of sin, and pierced for our sins.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: So as you take that, see him on the tree pierced for you, his body.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then the cup will come around a little bit after that, and you'll notice that it's the color of the blood that Jesus shed for us.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry if you're Episcopalian, but this is just grape juice.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's the right color, doesn't have the zing to it.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but but this is a wonderful reminder, as Jesus said, take the cup, which is the new covenant in my blood, picture Jesus hanging on the cross for you, his body, his blood, and thank him for this life-changing move that he made.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: Drink this, to eat this, walk out of here with a changed life.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you, we bless you for what you dreamed up, this incredibly bloody sacrificial death.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus told us to celebrate this uh when we got together.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's exactly what we're doing.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Bless us, touches, and changes as we see this in our minds and as we participate.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, if you're just visiting, don't you don't have to wait, just take it whenever you're prepared.