Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / May 13, 2018 | This Is Us - Fight Your Way To Intimacy (Part 2)

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May 13, 2018 | This Is Us - Fight Your Way To Intimacy (Part 2) · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: How are you today?
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Happy Mother's Day to you moms, grandmoms, potential moms.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: So so exciting.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking about how happy the moms must be in three Korean American houses this this day.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Since three days ago, I think those uh prisoners from North Korea who had been charged of crimes against the state were released and made their way back home to America.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Three Christians, college professors over there in the one university, I think, in North Korea called University of Science and Technology.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And they'd been held.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: One of them at least, uh Tony, had been held for three years.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: How happy those families must be.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Praise the Lord for that.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's an answer to prayer for those of us who pray for persecuted Christians.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you're visiting this morning, and I know some of you are, you're here for Mom's Day.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're in an eight-week series called This Is Us, the series on marriage and parenting.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And this is week number six.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Weeks five and six are sort of a mini-series inside of a series in which I'm uh talking about how to fight your way to intimacy.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Next week, let's see, first two messages on parenting, and these next middle four have been on marriage.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now the last two will be on parenting.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Pettit, who's a Dallas Seminary professor, grew up at Topeka Bible Church, has written four or five books on the issue of parenting.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: He'll be here next Sunday to talk about parenting.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: That'll be great.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And um, but this morning, fight your way to intimacy part two.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And uh if you're visiting that maybe a little bit of a weird word for you, fight instead of discuss or whatever.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: I got an interesting story in my email.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure it can't be true, but he wrote uh that their lawnmower broke.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: He said when our lawnmower broke and it wouldn't run, and it was spring and the grass was growing, my wife was laying down lots of hints about getting the lawnmower fixed, but somehow I always had something else that sort of moved ahead of it on the priority list, like the car or the truck or fishing or ball games or whatever.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so her hints got a little more bold, and finally, when I drove home one day, she'd found a clever way, she thought, to make her point.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: And as I drove in the driveway, there she was on her hands and knees in the tall grass using scissors to clip the grass.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of steamed me a little bit, got a little mad, watched for a little while, went out, went inside, only gone a few minutes, and when I came back out, I handed her a toothbrush and said, When you finish cutting the grass, you might as well sweep the sidewalk.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: The doctors say I will walk again, but we'll always have a limp.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, man, there are enough opportunities for conflict in marriage that come all by themselves.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you have to create new ones?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's amazing.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's an interesting thing.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: We we don't like suffering, and yet God tells us that's the only way to grow, and we don't like conflict, and yet we're being told that that's the only way to marriage intimacy.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: The famous Eric Erickson, German psychologist, said our failure, our failure to achieve intimacy in marriage stems from our inability to engage in controversy and useful conflict, useful conflict.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of studies have come out since he wrote this, including some recent ones, that all uh go in the same direction, and they all agree that our differences, speaking now to Christian husbands, Christians' wife, wives and husbands, our differences are not what separates us, not what caused divorce, not what caused problems, it's not our differences so much as it is the way we deal with our differences, the way we discuss them, the way we fight over them, the way we conflict.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what this two-message series is about.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's about fighting your way to a better marriage.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: To steal Greg Smalley's book title last week, I mentioned to you that one of my favorite marriage counselors, none other Clint Eastwood, said they say marriages are made in heaven, but so is thunder and lightning.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't mention last week, by the way.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: He once also said, said, there is one way to have a happy marriage, and when I discover what that is, I'm going to get remarried.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: He had been divorced.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe he's not as reliable as all that.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: I came across this cartoon last this last week, though.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was great.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently, I've done something to upset you.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Marriage conflict.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Melody and I uh were happy campers.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: We were the ideal couple when we got married.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Totally compatible, of course.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Not.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is us in our first year of marriage taking a break from fighting.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: We probably didn't fight any more, certainly not less than the average first-year married couple.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was skilled at it since I was eight years older than she.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I still am.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh brought a lot of skill at things like sarcasm into our marriage.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Someday, if you haven't seen it, you need to go over to Allen Field House and see James Naismith's original rules of basketball.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that was 1891, I think, before that, about 25 years before that, had come out the Marcus of Queensbury rules, the famous rules about boxing, telling you, you know, the kind of rules that tell you not to hit below the belt, not to hit people when they're down, not to, number 11 is not to have spikes on your sh on your boots and so forth.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And when you come to the Bible, you find rules of combat or rules of fighting.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: You find them in the book of Ephesians.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh if you'd open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 4, there's six chapters in Ephesians.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is the fourth chapter.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: The great apostle Paul, writing to the church that he'd spent the most time with, speaks about communication in verses 25 to 32 of chapter 4.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he lays down the first rule of fighting.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: We derived that last week.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just quickly skim over the first four rules.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Went over the first four of the seven last week.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: The word therefore is a reference back to an amazing truth in the previous verse and in the previous chapters that lays down the first rule of fighting your way to intimacy, which is you mustn't forget who you're fighting.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because who you're fighting is not your enemy.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Who you're fighting is a fellow saint, a brother and a sister in Christ, someone whom you're going to be living with forever, and the previous verse, you must display a new nature because you're a new person created in God's likeness, righteous, holy, and true.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, he says, you need to fight your way to intimacy.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine how that would change your discussions, some of your hot discussions with your spouse, if you realize the truth of who they are, their identity, the identity of your sparring or your boxing partner.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a serious thing, says C.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: S.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis, to live with possible gods and goddesses, the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to or argue with may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine how that would change the way you speak to them.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: The second rule we said that we found was that you must be willing to fight.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard the options are fight or flight.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Most men like the flight option better and hesitate to actually speak up.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: But the command here, first uh command, is to speak, speak the truth.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Speak the truth as you see it.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: You must be willing to fight.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: The key to a lasting marriage, famous article in Wall Street Journal, the key to a lasting marriage is combat.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Even happy couples aren't really compatible, suggests latest research.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Reminds me of, wasn't it?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Ruth Bell Graham said about herself and Billy.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: She says, Billy and I are happily incompatible.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And um that's, you know, probably the way God puts you and your spouse together.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: He gets a real kick out of that.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: You notice that?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so, but you have to speak up.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I said uh maybe if I didn't suggest it, I'll suggest it now.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Book you need to pick up, book you need to get.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Crucial Conversations.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Bestseller back uh about 10 years ago, I think it was revised just slightly in 2012.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: You ought to.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: I have one at work, I have one at home, close to my bed.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: I use this not just for marriage, I use it for all my difficult conversations.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Very wonderful book, Crucial Conversation, Tools for Talking, when stakes are high and the feelings are strong and the issues are important.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's the first chapter of the book that asks, what's your communication style under stress?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Is it more fight or flight?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Is it are you is it silence?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Do you clam up?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Avoiding, withdrawing.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: I love this picture of this old couple.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: They're not very happy, but they're sitting beside each other staring straight ahead.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the way many couples fight.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: They just simply clam up.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: The other side is of course you blow up, violence, you attack, you control.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the two opposite ends of the spectrum, and if you're like me, you were good at both, and you could move between violence and silence.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: You clam up for so long, and then it builds up inside you, and then you blow your stack, like Vesuvius, and you get it out of your system.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: In Crucial Conversations, as well as its sister book, Crucial Confrontations, says you can say almost anything to another person as long as you stay in dialogue, as long as you realize that you are actually what you're doing is you're not fighting against that person.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: You are actually just feeding information into the pool in between you.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's a pool of shared dialogue in between you, and your goal is to stay in dialogue and continue the free flow of meaning between yourself and your loved one, this pool of shared meaning.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, your fight with your wife or husband should not be a debate or an argument trying to win, shouldn't consist of hints, sarcasm, innuendo, verbal attacks, accusations, giving the silent treatment, running away, or playing games.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we talked about that last week, but that was all under rule number two.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: You must be willing to speak up, must be willing to fight.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Rule number three, you've got to be honest.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: You may also be angry.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Speak the truth, each one of you.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Be honest with your neighbor, remembers of one another.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Be angry and yet don't sin.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And God's the angriest person in the Bible.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: So anger it per se can't be wrong.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: It just simply must adhere to certain rules.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, uh, and if you lie to yourself and tell yourself you're not angry when you are, then you'll probably blow up and you won't be honest.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you must be honest.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: You may also be angry, and you say, well, how do I stay in dialogue, in the fight, in the boxing ring, when I'm angry or upset or scared or hurt?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: We answered that question last week.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: You can look that up if you want.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then we came to um rule number four.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Last week we ended with this rule the way not to sin, by the way, is you don't let the sun go down on your anger.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I told you that I was pretty obsessive about this when I came out of seminary.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was the Bible, and therefore, Melody, we will stay up until we resolve it, and it'd be one or two in the morning.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And she'd say, But the sun went down seven hours ago.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so but the rule here is that you just simply have to fight to the finish.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: You can't cop out, you can't hit and run.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Once you've engaged in battle, you can't retreat and simply drop it and never bring it up again.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: And no guerrilla warfare, no attack and leave, attack and leave.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Once you begin to deal with a matter, see it through to resolution.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And those were the first four rules last week.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to know more about that, you can access that online.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the last three rules are uh really interesting, really significant, because rule number five is when you could guess, you must fight fair or fairly.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: For you English teachers.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I get that rule from verse 28 and 29.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, verse 28 doesn't sound like this rule at all.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very strange, right in the middle of a passage on communication, all of a sudden you have something about thieving, about stealing, about robbing.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: The verse goes, if you're a thief, quit stealing.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, use your hands for good hard work and then give generously to others in need.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Notice the move there from the past.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a thief, stop stealing.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: But then he moves, he doesn't just end there, not a period at the end of the sentence, he then moves positively.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, positively, use your hands for good hard work, then give generously to others in need.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I think that's great advice, of course, for a thief, for a you know, for a shoplifter, for example.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's great advice.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that there has to be, there's a lesson here, it's a metaphor for how you fight as well, that you don't just look in the past and you win that argument.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: You were wrong there.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see it?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see it?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And finally there they are on their knees.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay, okay, I blew it.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: I was wrong, and so forth.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then you keep hitting.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: You don't keep hitting when someone's down.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: No, the the point is you don't want to stay back there with a problem, you want to be part of the solution.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: So then you need to turn and you need to get positive, right?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and become a positive, bring a positive solution to the table.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's move to the future and look in the future.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: How can we, how can we do this better?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and in the text, it's listen, the focus is use your hands for good hard work and give generously.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: And whatever your argument is about, you should be able to come up with something that's positive so that you're not staying in the in the minuses, in the negatives.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's uh the first of the three how to fight fair rules in verses 28 and 29.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: The second is no hitting below the belt.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: First is no hitting, stop hitting when they're down.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Second, uh, but get positive.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, no hitting below the belt.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Don't use, verse 20i, foul or abusive language.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's new living translation.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's just one word in the Greek, and it's the word used for rotten fish.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's don't use smelly, don't use rotten, don't use putrid language.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that could mean bad language, it could mean name-calling.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: You're so stupid.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're like your, you're just like, you're just like your mother, you know.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: You've always got to have your own way, you know.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're like your dad, you know, you're all, you know, and it goes on like that, and you're attacking not the problem, but the person, right?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: I shouldn't tell this story, but it's in a family magazine.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: It might have been focused on the family, where the woman said, you know, I was really good.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was better at better at talking, arguing than he was.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: And in the midst, I would oftentimes drop just sort of a name-calling word.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, I stopped, though, and this after this one argument we had where I was nailing him and so forth, right in the middle I called him a jerk face, a jerk face.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: So sounds a little seventh grade to me.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, she said I called him a jerk face, and so in his reply to me, he was stumbling around, but he called me Thunder Thighs.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, that was the last time I called him name.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, there's a number of reasons to stop doing that, but name calling is of course never helpful.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: And neither are the words always or the word never.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Ken Berry came up after last service.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: He said, he said, haven't you heard the George Jones song?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the moment he said, I thought, of course I should have used it.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so I get to share it with you here in third service.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Third service gets this only.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: George Jones, one of his greatest hits of all time, it was the leading country music song of the year in, I forget what year it was, uh, 59 or something like that.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Wrote a song called Battlefield.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: George Jones, if you don't know country music, too bad.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um I didn't either, you know, a few years ago before I got in this radio station.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: But um, George Jones is the best.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And in his song, The Battlefield, listen to these words.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is so perfect.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Hello.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Have there been any slides ever?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll unplug this and I'll plug it back in.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's up.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: What try again.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Hello?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I have no idea what is going on here.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: What's that?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so anyway, I'll I'll just read it to you.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a um, this is George Jones' 20 greatest hits, and this is a song called The Battlefield.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it goes like this.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Dawn breaks.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I know how to fix this, by the way, just a second.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: I wanna I want to prove to him I can do this.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: No, I I'm gonna be really cool about this.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, that's not it.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, that's a good picture.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's not exact oh, there it is.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Never leave.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Never leave my side.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Stay here.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Don't, don't, no, okay.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, George Jones, he's this great country singer.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Most people agree he's one of the greatest of all time, and he sang a song called The Battlefield.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Ken came up, Barry came up last service, and and as he always does with me, he starts actually singing it.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not memorable, but the words are great.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Dawn breaks on the battlefield, and all the morning mist lays heavy on the ground, and the silence is like thunder as the enemy prepares another round.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: And her soft satin armor lying on the far side of the bed, wounded and heartbroken and scarred by the killing words I said.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: I have no rules in battle, so I fired the guns of anger once again.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, she's such a little thing, and there's no doubt about it, I can win.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's so sad, by the way.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: The next line is, but she has the stronger weapon, it's her tears, and that's why she won.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, uh, so but what a great, what a great, great picture of what uh what please don't use, excuse me, I hope I didn't get you with that.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Please don't use foul language, don't use abusive language, because you can crush people.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot unsay a cruel word after you've said it.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you say something and you realize later there is absolutely no forgetting that, there's just forgiving.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people have said stuff to you that they shouldn't have said, they shouldn't have said.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: They went too far, they got in anger, they decided they needed to win.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't anymore, their goal was no longer intimacy, their goal no longer was positive, it was just, I'm so mad, I'm gonna win.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they said something that was really cruel, and you've never forgotten it.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact of the matter is you'll never forget it.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now the only thing left is to forgive it.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now the third rule about fighting fair, first, no hitting while they're down.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Move to the positive, don't stay negative, no hitting below the belt, right?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Don't name call, you know.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh don't, you know, don't, you know, and well, third, let's move on.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: No hitting with razor blades.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: It used to be that boxers would actually hide little pieces of razor blades.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: I I hear Major League pitchers used to do the same thing, but boxers hide a little razor blade piece in their gloves so they could cut you, they could slice you.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the Marcus Queensbury rules is no razor blades in your gloves.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we can do that in our fighting when we forget that we are limited by God to only use words that are good and helpful, words that are encouraging to those who hear them, which eliminates razor blades.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: It eliminates those sharp words that slice and dice instead of boosting and building.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was an expert, I was skilled, high level skill.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sarcasm.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: All Conged and Tsar came from a large family farm.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: You had to win.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: You had to win.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: You weren't fighting for peace or for truce or anything.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: You were fighting to win, right?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was the oldest of six boys in a row.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: I could just cut them off at the knees, baby.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I brought that skill into our marriage.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I bring this skill of sarcasm into the marriage.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know what it is?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's these witty comments that are so cute and clever, which always contain this little slice that brings blood.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this little bit of razor blade.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I found out before too long, because of this weeping girl beside me on the couch, you know, that somehow this was not a skill that really helped in marriage discussions, in conflicts, right?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: I just realized this is something that actually made it worse.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: She wasn't sitting there admiring my wit at all because I had just sliced her.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: And sarcasm is a way of hiding a razor blade in your glove.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the other way that I think of most often of hiding a razor blade in your glove is bringing up something from their past that you know can defeat them.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: I know Melody really well, and she knows me really well.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we each know what criticisms have really cut them down in the past from their family members, like from her mother or from her sister or from somebody else.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: She knows what's worked on me in the past, what people have criticized.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: We each know our core and where we are weakest, and we know what we can do, you know, to remind them of the past.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you've had this happen to you, if not with your wife or husband, with a family member.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Many of you have had have a brother or sister, you've got a conversation with them, a grown brother or sister, and out of the blue, they brought up something from 20 years ago or 30 years ago about you that really, I mean, you wanted to forget that forever.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it hurts you so badly that you didn't even talk to them again for at least a year, maybe two years, maybe still don't talk to them.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: It separated you.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Those are, I like to think of those things as stumps in your past, those places of hurt in the past where you've been cut, you've been sliced, right?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: And and if you bring those things up, if you take them back to a stump, it's like plowing that argument right into the stump.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's an old farm line that goes, life is easier if you plow around the stump.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I was thinking married life goes smoother when you mow around the stumps, when you stay away from those old cuts and those old wounds.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: And and if, you know, fighting fair is so much, it's more than just saying the right word at the right time.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's even more, I think, about not saying the wrong word, you know, at the wrong moment.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why I think this text emphasizes you must fight fair.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Rule number six is one that may surprise you.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: You must listen to the referee.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there is a third person in the room when you're having an argument with your wife or with your husband, a conflict.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's a third person there, if you're both Christians, that third person is the Holy Spirit which indwells both of you, and he's the referee, and occasionally he will tap you on your heart.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, verse 30, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption, meaning he's extremely an emotional creature, he's an emotional God.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: He can be deeply grieved or cut when you make a cutting comment.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens is that if you're sensitive to the Holy Spirit, if you see that there's like a referee in the ring who separates you at times or who blows his whistle during the basketball game and you suddenly stop, then what happens is sometimes I will say something and I, you know, you go into an argument, and I'm always like, prepared, man, I've got this thing.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: So can we have a talk, you know?
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: So sit down and look each other in the eyes, and I know that since my case is airtight, airtight, dear friends, that she will certainly agree with me within seconds, if not minutes.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, you know, you say something and you see this look cross your spouse's face, and you realize in that moment that you're getting a tap on the soul from the Holy Spirit of God who's saying, Whoa, you just hit below the belt.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Whoa, do you realize you listen to what you just said from her perspective?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: You just cut her.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's bad news.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: And what you have to do at that moment, you know what you have to do, you have to stop immediately, you have to fall silent, maybe take your gloves off.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: If necessary, you have to apologize right then and say, I'm so sorry.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: I never thought about how that would sound to you.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: I realized that was really unfair and so forth.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: But but that's that's the that's the Spirit of God touching you in the heart because you're one of his people.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: He indwells you.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Realize you have that referee in the room.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: You need to pay attention to the referee.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Be sensitive to the referee, the Holy Spirit, as you're having that difficult, crucial conversation with your husband or your wife.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that leads us to the final rule, rule number seven, you must end the fight, not with a knockout, but with a clinch.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: You must end the fight, maybe a regular fight, of course, you end with a knockout, with a KO or TKO, but you want to end this with a clinch.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's verses 31 and 32.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: That pile of words there.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: So applicable, aren't they?
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: To these critical conversations you have in marriage.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: No bitterness, that means you're hanging on, haven't forgiven them for what happened before sometime in the past.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Wrath, that's the little explosion, or gay, the explosion of anger that you tend to make when the anger boils to the top.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Anger is this chronic anger.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Clamor is when you inundate them with words.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: You can't, maybe she's a better talker, but you can inundate her with words, or vice versa.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: And slander is when you tell a falsehood, along with all malice.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: Malice may be the most important word here, because malice means you your goal is not to end with intimacy or clinch.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Your goal is to hurt the other person.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: When you get so angry at your partner that your goal is to hurt them, you need to stop and realize that you are giving the devil, this is verse 27, you're giving the devil an opportunity.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is way out of line.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Your goal cannot be malice.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, verse 32, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, when I think of how I offended God, how upset God was at me, how he I deserved no forgiveness from him, and yet he forgave me.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: When I think of what I did to God, it's a small thing that I should be asked to forgive you.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: And your goal is to come to that clinch, that intimacy at the end where you go, I'm so sorry.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Will you forgive me?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: I forgive you.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Could you find it in your heart to forgive me for this whole mess, for how I handle this whole thing?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's why every young couple knows some of your some of the best love that you have between you comes after a fight.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you take that fight all the way to the end, to resolution, and you end in a clinch and you end in an understanding, that's fighting your way to intimacy.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that should be your goal, whether you're newly married, whether you've been married 10 years, whether you've been married 50 years, to end the fight not with a knockout, but with a clinch.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Greatest three words in the English language, I love you.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Greatest single word, thanks, the greatest two words are probably forgive me.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Forgive me, but they're also maybe the hardest two words to say, especially to someone that you love, someone that's your spouse, but you want to end the fight, not with a knockout, but with a clench, realizing, in comparison to what God did for me, this is such a small thing.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: If I was thinking, if these uh these guys are going home, they're going home to their wives, and you know what?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'll bet they can drop their clothes on the floor, not make their beds, not take out the trash, and they'll their wives will probably let them get away with it for a month or a year or a day or something, because you know what?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's just something bigger here.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: They came home and they thought they might never see their husbands again.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: It reminded me, some years back there was an explosion in Melody's Homestay, West Virginia.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: There was a mine, a huge mine disaster.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody died, all 12 down there except for one guy.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: He came out and he was in a coma for weeks.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: His wife stayed in the hospital by his bed.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the funny thing was, when he came out of his coma, one of the first things he did, this 26-year-old guy, is he stuck his hand in his mouth, started biting his nail.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: She laughed.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: She said, That's one of the three things I've hated about him since we were married.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: I hate the way he bites his nails.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: I hate, and she lists the other two things.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Oh, it's just so nice to see that.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, in light of having him back home and back home from the dead, in light of something huge and mammoth, it's such a small thing.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And in light of the fact that God forgave you and Jesus Christ did, such a small thing that you be kind, kind, forgiving, forgiving to your husband, to your wife.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just as God in Christ has forgiven you.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite singers, songwriters, is a wonderful lyricist named Andrew Peterson.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: And one of my favorite songs he's done is called Dancing in the Minefields.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who've been married a while, you know exactly what he means by that one.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: Young marriage, no, no, you're still convinced that life should be easy.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: But um, minefields are like there's this war going on.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: And marriage is like walking through a minefield.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Andrew wrote the song in 2009.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was a couple of days after their 15th wedding anniversary, and um they had a knockdown drag out.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: They had a fight.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: He and his wife did, he says.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and there were tears.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it was tough.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: They finally sort of worked their way toward a toward a truce, and he said she went upstairs to go to bed, and I went downstairs to my den.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I just sat there and I thought about the fact that the reason we were still married is really a promise, a simple promise I made to her 15 years before, and a promise that she made to me, and how beautiful marriage was that promise would keep you together.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: He said, and it was such a small quarrel, but as you all know, you know, the tiniest of spats can grow into a full-fledged barroom brawl, you know, at the drop of a hat or at the drop of a razor, you know, a little cutting comment.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I sat there and I thought about how wonderful it was.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought about the fact that really marriage is all about like walking or dancing through a minefield and remembering that you, the Bible says you don't gain your life until you're willing to lose it.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said, he who will lose his life for my sake will find it.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: He picked up a pin and he wrote down these words.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'll let you see them on screen here in just a moment, as you hear him sing it.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: I love the words to the song, and especially one paragraph that I'll read you for just a moment, as he wrote the story of their marriage.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, I was 19, you were 21, the year we got engaged.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone said we were much too young, but we did it anyway.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: We got the rings for 40 each from a pawn shop down the road.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: We said our vows and took the leap now, 15 years ago.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: We went dancing in the minefields.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: We went sailing in the storms.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it was harder than we dreamed, but I believe that's what the promise is for.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: And this next paragraph is so biblical and so true.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he says, I do are the two most famous last words, the beginning of the end.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: But to lose your life for another, I've heard, is a good place to begin, because the only way to find your life is to lay your own life down.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe it's an easy price for the life that we have found.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: And after you watch him sing this, I'll come back and close us in prayer.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Bie your head in prayer.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to suffer, Lord.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: We just don't.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: But it's the only way to grow.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to fight either.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: We don't like conflict.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: But you tell us it's the only way to intimate to be intimate with each other.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: We don't understand the way you put things together, Lord.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: We like things to be easy.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you tell us we actually have to die in order to really live.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we hear you, Lord.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: We understand that.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: And some of us have already been through a lot of suffering, a lot of death, a lot of conflict.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray for those people that you would heal them.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Heal them enough so they can get back in the fight and fight wiser, fight better.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Help us all, Lord, to be willing to speak up, to fight fairly, to fight kindly, to aim for resolution and forgiveness and a clinch.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because of Jesus, what you did for us in Jesus, so that we can make that promise come true, and we thank you for your promise to us that you'll never leave us, never forsake us, you'll bring us home to yourself.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: Bless our fights, Lord bless our arguments, bless our conflicts.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: For your sake and for the sake of our families, we pray in Jesus' name.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you just much.