Love's Order For Life's Priorities IV, Building Better Relationships

While getting your North Way notes, teaching outline out, please, everybody, so you can follow along. You're going to want to jot down a few things today. Plus the scriptures that you're going to get on there. I just want to report last week we had a time of healing during the first service. You may recall that when people, during the middle of the service, rather, when some people came up and I had one brother, Tom Blumberg. Is Tom in this service? He came up during the first service and told me that his knee had been pretty seriously injured playing ball with his son, and he was heading in for some kind of a surgical procedure. And last week, during the time of healing, his knee was healed. And he came kind of running up these steps and was just amazed at how God had touched his body last week. So I want to encourage you with that, and maybe I'll get Tom up here in the second service to tell you the story. He also promised that he wouldn't try to be so athletic in the future. So tempting God's goodness. But anyhow, I always encourage you with that. And if any of you received any touch from the Lord, let us know so we can encourage each other with these things. All right. This series we're in, this is the fourth week, it's called Love's Order for Life's Priorities. And that title was very carefully chosen because we're looking at if we're going to live our lives according to love, how should we order them? What priorities should be in place if we're going to become people who live our lives according to the principles of love? How many of you have kids in school? Let me see your hands. Any parents here with kids in school? When they get report cards, have you noticed a pattern with report cards? I can tell you what happens in our house. When the report cards are good, you notice how they tend to find their way to your face real quickly? Parents, yeah? And then they end up on the refrigerator and on the bathroom mirror and every place. Oh, I got four A's and a B, or you know, two B's and two C's, and that was the best I've ever done, or whatever it might be. I've also noticed when the report cards aren't that good, I find myself asking, I thought the report period ended last week. Where are the report cards? Well, you know, they're in the mail, dad. They're in the mail. You ever notice that? Question for you. On what subjects will God grade your life's report card when you stand before him? Ever think about that? I can tell you what your major is going to be, and you want to know what it is? Love. That's the major course of life. Now, you're going to have minors in faith and hope and service and a few other things, but they're going to be basic category, your major, love, and they're going to be three primary themes in that report card. How did you love God? How did you love others? How did you love yourself? You say, well, how do you know that? Well, look at this scripture. Would you please put up Matthew chapter 22. Jesus was asked the question. Let's put it up there. What really mattered in life? And here's how he responded. Read it with me. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question. Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus replied, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. Now look at this next sentence. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. Folks, we can do everything right in church. We could have the greatest music and the most wonderful programs and the greatest facility, the greatest fellowship, wonderful home groups, everything. But if we don't learn how to love, we're not going to do very well on the final test. I want to pause here and just interject something. I pray that today your heart will be open to hear what God might say to you about this subject of relationships. Because it is the place where you find love. It's tested, where you can come to grips with how you're doing in love in your life. And I have to say that there's a measure of pastoral concern that maybe some of us have allowed ourselves to drift in this subject. The larger the church gets, the easier it is to not have relationships. And I want us to look very honestly at one another to see, or with one another, to see how we're doing in this. Because relationships are what life is about. Learning to live is learning to love. And I know that that's not easy to do. In fact, how many of you find that relationships come with one common denominator? Pain. How many of you had pain in relationships? The rest of you are lying, if you don't put your hand up, right? My pain started when I was a little guy. I don't remember this consciously. My mom tells me about it frequently. I couldn't find any boys to play with in my neighborhood, so one day I went out to play with the girls. They were a little older. It didn't last very long. I came home crying. My nose was running. You know how little ones can be, and I was all messed up. And I said, Mom, Mary and her gang beat me up. Her gang? Who's her gang? Judy! How many of you remember the pain of being one of the last two kids chosen for your pickup baseball game? And then how it really hurt when you were the last kid? I remember that. I remember my seventh grade girlfriend dumped me for a big ninth grader. I remember when my best friend in college and I poured all kinds of time together. We became very close our first year transfer at the end of our freshman year, and I had to start over again with friendships. Remember the first night that Carol and I slept back-to-back after our marriage? Remember that, couples? When you had your first real fight, how cold it was in that warm bed. I remember times when people would tell stories about me or my ministry or my church. People that I thought were friends. And all these painful things, if you look at them, they're all there. We all have them, right? We all share in the pain of relationships, so why have them at all? Why not just withdraw and get a farm and a cabin and live somewhere out in the woods, except there'll be a Unabomber next to you, maybe. But why put up with pain and disappointments and wounds? Well, the reason is obvious to most of us, isn't it? Because on the other side of the coin, nothing is more wonderful than a relationship that's going the way it's supposed to. Nothing is more pleasurable. I mean, it's what life is about, to be loved and to love others. To love God and to be loved by him and by family and by friends. I mean, that's what life is really about. In fact, if you're taking notes, the first thing I want to say, it's the original design of God. To be in a relationship of love is God's original design for us. It's what he planned all along for us. Back in the Garden of Eden, we read about Adam and Eve. God created this wonderful environment where things would be just perfect, where life could be shared in all kinds of ways. I mean, to ask why not have relationships is to like ask, you know, why shouldn't an airplane fly? Why doesn't the piano play music? Why doesn't a rose bloom? They're all made to do those things, just like we are made to have relationships. You've probably seen on some documentaries or on TV programs or whatever, maybe you've seen them yourself, as I have. Out in Arizona, they had these airplane graveyards. You're driving down the interstate and you can see off in the distance these huge tail fins of abandoned aircraft, commercial airliners and military planes and so on, and you can make them all. As you drive down by them, you'll see that whole chunks of the aircraft are missing. Wings are off and holes in the fuselage and all that kind of thing. And you realize that these huge machines will never fly, and it's kind of an eerie feeling. It's like something was created to do something and it's no longer useful, so it's put. And you see, I have strange feelings. I have feelings of grief when I find people who have withdrawn from relationships because they're not fulfilling what God had designed for them to be in their life. Genesis 2 tells us clearly that before the fall of man, two people, Adam and Eve, were totally alive and sharing life. In fact, the Bible says they were naked and unashamed. I thought about making that the title of this sermon, you know. That would draw a crowd. Naked and unashamed. But what that language really means is that they were completely open to each other, transparent, intimate, with nothing to hide, innocently whole. It's a picture of life as God designed it. And friends, listen, life as God will one day redeem it for us. In heaven. Free and safe and secure and spontaneous. Sensory, full of possibilities. Anything can happen. I really labor to find an analogy in life. What's like that in our lives? The only thing I could think of was a litter of eight-week-old kittens. Ever see a little litter of kittens? Aren't they that way? I mean, they're just like, they'll try anything. They'll climb up drapes. They'll jump off a furniture. They'll change their world and tumble. And they're just free and spontaneous like nothing else. And that's what I thought of. Then you give them away. And that's what I like best. Think of this. Jesus came. And we only really know about three years of his life. Most of the rest that we don't know very much about. And at the end of those three years, Jesus turned to the twelve men that he had spent most of his life with. And he said, I no longer call you servants. I call you friends. On your outline there, John 15. I call you friends. Circle the word friends. Folks, this really impacted me. Listen. If the Son of God came to redeem the world, gave his life for our sin, but also modeled what a perfect life was to be. How many of you believe he did that? How many of you believe he modeled a perfect life? I believe that. If he did that and he invested his life in meaningful relationships, how do we think we can get away with living our life by just kind of keeping to ourselves? We need to see the model of Jesus and follow after him. And you know what? Most of us know that that's true. Most of us want those kind of relationships. That's what we want. But Roman numeral two, instead we find incredible difficulties in this life with having relationships. Relationships can be wonderful, but they can also be extremely difficult and painful. As you know, Adam and Eve chose to listen to the deceiver. If we took the time to look in the second chapter of Genesis, we'd find that they were, in chapter three rather, they were tuned in to his lies and they bought into it. And they basically said, you know God, I don't want to do it your way. I want to do it this way. And they told God to take a hike. And at that moment, a huge relational rupture took place that we are still feeling the effects of thousands of years later. Where their connectedness to God and to each other was broken forever. And all of creation cried, because what God had designed was now laid aside. And the eyes of both Adam and Eve were open and they knew now that they were naked. And so guilt and shame entered into the human condition. And they sought to cover their shame. They made coverings, Genesis 2.10 says, coverings of fig leaves. So that their shame and guilt would be hidden. You see, up until now, listen, fear had never been mentioned in the Bible. You know, God never wanted us to live in fear. We see the caps, you know, and the t-shirts and stuff that says no fear. Well, that's what God wanted. He wanted there to be no fear. But because of sin, fear entered into the human condition. And now man became afraid. And to this day, we still cover ourselves from one another. Why? Because we're afraid of being known. We have a good self and we have a bad self. We have a kind and generous and caring self. We have a selfish and prideful and hurtful self. And now we, like Adam and Eve, have to find a way to hide the parts of us that we're ashamed of. The imperfect parts. The fallen parts. The difficult parts. We don't want other people to really know us. Totally and completely. And it's amazing to me, the fig leaves that we use today. We create some unbelievable ones, don't we? Designer fig leaves, I call them. One of them is workaholism. You know, if you work enough, you can keep yourself from having any meaningful relationships at all. And in the eyes of the world, you can be commended for it. Put in 80 or 90 hours a week, and you're always too busy to find people to build into. Even your spouse and family. You can be a big, secure, kind of imposing, successful figure in the business world. Wow! You know, he's terrific. He's an achiever. She's this. But underneath, there's pain. How can I get approval? How can I get acceptance? That's what people are striving for. You know, another designer fig leaf that I see more and more these days, and this is a little unusual. You may not like this, but I think it's true. I see it in some parenting habits. I see it particularly with women. Who, somehow or another, their kids become the very thing that they hide behind. And in the name of being an efficient mom, they pour their whole life into their kids, literally to the point where they cut themselves off, sometimes from their spouse and certainly from their friends. And their whole world revolves around those children. And then when those children are gone, their whole world collapses. Parenting can be a very wonderful thing, but it can also be a very difficult thing, if you allow it. Another one is food. Some people like to wear the fig leaf for food. I have too much food, too little food, whatever. I can make myself unattractive enough. I can hide behind that. No one really wants to get to know me. Another one is just stuff. You know, if we have enough stuff, that makes a nice fig leaf. I can just be busy with my stuff. I can have my yard stuff, and my house stuff, and my car stuff, and my boat stuff, and all my stuff. I have so much stuff. I don't have time to be with you. I don't have time to build relationships. Another fig leaf I see is the nice fig leaf. That's the superficial response. That's the one that you wear every time someone asks you, well, how are you doing? Really? I'm fine. How are you doing? Fine. Fine, fine, fine. Fine, fine, fine. And everything's nice. Everything's fine. But inside, no one really knows how you're doing. One thing I hope happens in this church is when we break up from here and someone says, hey, let's go talk a little bit, that you have the courage to open up and say, well, here's how I'm doing. Here's what's next in my life. Here's a challenge I'm facing. It wouldn't just be nice. Another one, an obvious one for many people, is alcohol and drugs. Another one is TV. You know how easily you can get just absorbed into television? 20, 30 hours a week. It happens all the time. Religion is another designer fig leaf. Religion is when you say, praise the Lord just right, no one ever wonders what's going on in your life. Praise the Lord. Okay, you're fine. And there's more of these. Last week we talked about busyness. Friends, the point is all of these fig leaves are designed to hide our shame, cover our inadequacies, our hurts, and keep us from being known by other people. Let me just ask you candidly, what fig leaf are you wearing? And keep in mind before you answer that the most common one is denial. Oh, I don't have a fig leaf. Every one of us have built some walls around us. What is it for you? Ask God to show you. Ask him to allow you to open up. Once you start to face those things about yourself, you'll begin to be able to build into relationships and begin to make the change from just being a passive receiver to being one who can invest in other lives. And I want to bring this message kind of right down to its point by talking very briefly about five investments that you can make in other people that will literally change the quality of your relationships. And I specifically wrote those on the other side of the page so you can save this and put it up somewhere and remind yourself of the people in whom you are investing. Now just to give you a little frame of reference here, I want to talk specifically about the people that really matter to you. Look up on the overhead. You see there's different kinds of relationships. Do we have that? Yeah, there's the kind of relationships that are just acquaintances and then there's friends and then there's ones that we really value. I mean, these would be our spouse, our children, our very dearest relationships in the church or friendships outside the church. And these require different amounts of investment. The acquaintances don't require all that much. It's now and then you just touch base. The friends require a moderate amount, but the highly valued people in your life, they require investment upon investment upon investment. Those are the ones I want to talk about in just the remaining moments. And I want you to be thinking of someone in whom you might make these investments that I'm going to share here. First investment I want to encourage you to make is the investment of, here it is, initiative. The investment of initiative. It is amazing to me how easily we can expect the whole world to come to us. Have you noticed that? We are programmed by advertising to believe that the whole world revolves around you. You deserve a break today. US Air begins with you. We do it all for you. And the more advertising you watch, the more you hear slogans saying that you are it and everything in the world will come to you. And friends, understand something. One of the greatest investments you'll ever make in a person is to reach out to them with initiative. You'll be the one that picks up the phone. You'll be the one that stops by the house. You'll be the one that cares enough to make the first move and the next move. You'll be the one that would take the initiative. You know, if you walk into the local bookstore and the borders are one of those, the largest section in the bookstore is self-help and self-actualization. People want to know how they can find fulfillment, how they can enrich their lives. I believe if you walked into God's bookstore, what you'd find is the others section. He'd help you to find ways that you can enrich others because in so doing, you'll find that your life will be enriched. It's rare for people to take initiative. I mean, they're even surprised when you do. A couple years ago, I had met a person who was coming to the church, who was rather new. And I said, well, let's you know, let's get some lunch together sometime. So I called and went down and met them on the north side and we had lunch. At the end of the hour, the bill came and I picked up the bill. We were getting ready to go and he said, well, what do you want? I said, I don't even know. I just wanted to spend the hour, get to know you. He said, but isn't there something you wanted to talk about? No, this is what I wanted to do. I just wanted to talk to you about you. He said, I've never I've never had a lunch with someone who didn't want something. He said, you don't want anything? I said, well, you can pay the bill if you really want to. That would make me feel better. I just want to know you. When's the last time you took initiative? When's the last time you took a step towards someone to say, you're important. I'm interested in your life. I want to know what's going on. And you know what? You can do this. You can show an interest in someone's life very easily by just doing two simple things. The first one is just learn to ask a good question or two. You know, people love to talk about their favorite subject themselves. Learn to ask him a question about themselves. I was at a retreat out in Colorado Springs a few years ago and for a couple of days with pastors from all around. And my roommate was assigned to me from Colorado Springs. He happened to live there. And for two days, I learned everything about Colorado Springs. I learned everything about the government, about the churches that were there, about the restaurants, about the local sites, about this, about that. His family, the whole thing. But in two days, that pastor never asked me a single question. I finally called Carol and she said, well, how are you? Oh, I said, hon, ask me again. Learn to ask questions. People will open up their hearts to you. Just ask questions. A good measure of whether or not a conversation is going well is who's talking the most. The scripture on your outline here says, you know, be quick to listen and slow to speak. What are we normally? Quick to speak and slow to listen. It's so important you give people an opportunity to speak about themselves. The second thing that you can do to make a simple, clear initiative and interest of people is to give them focused attention. Listen to them. Not just, you know, but right at them. People yearn to know that you're really hearing them. Focused attention says to people, what you say really matters. How many of you ever, you have little kids and you come home from work and the little kid would jump on your lap and start talking to you? And if you didn't show an interest, I remember one time I went into that and Jonathan said, Daddy, listen to me. Do kids ever do that? They grab your face in their hands and say, listen to me. Because even little kids want you to give them the attention that they deserve. How about those people that you start talking to them and they look at someone else going by? Don't you just want to step on their foot? Are those people that ask you a question and then when you start to answer it, they say, well, that's it. We need to learn to listen. Give focused attention to people. Second thing that you can do. Second investment is the investment of acceptance. You know, so much of the time in the world today, our acceptance is determined by our achievement, isn't it? I mean, and it starts when we're little. Little kids, if they wear the right clothes and hang out the right places, they get accepted in a group. When they get to be junior hires, acceptance becomes a huge thing. But it's the same when we're adults. If we have the right stuff and we're, you know, the right look, the right style, the right lingo, the right neighborhood, the right car, whatever, we're accepted. But a great investment is to give someone you care about your love and your attention unconditionally. Not based on their image and not based on their achievement. Look at Romans 15, 7 says, Accept one another because in fact Christ has accepted you. That's the basis of how you can reach out and love to someone. Acceptance says to people, listen, I love you, period. Not I love you if, I love you because, I love you when. And parents, would you please again listen, I think that this is something that we need to watch very carefully. We can sometimes, in encouraging our kids to achieve, you know, to become superstars or whatever, in business or whatever, music, athletics, we can sometimes send a message. Hey, I really do love you when you're doing this. I'm not as pleased with you when you're down here. And there's a real fine line between encouragement and withholding that kind of love. I know for me, I mean, I was, like some of you, I wanted my kids to be something that I wasn't. And I wanted my boys, especially, to be great athletes. Wouldn't that be great? A lot of dads want that. And so at an early age, you know, I got them out there trying different sports, and I really wanted them to excel in baseball and basketball, because those were my two sports in high school, a little bit in college. And they liked basketball. They picked that up okay, but baseball, you know, they just didn't care all that much for baseball. We tried all those t-ball crazy things and all that stuff. But they liked soccer. Now, how many of you grew up like I did, and soccer wasn't even a sport? Soccer, I said, what soccer? Okay, you know, and so I went reluctantly. But over time, I keep trying to like, you know, at nighttime, I'd take their soccer balls off of their desk and put a baseball up there. At nighttime, I'd put bats on the side of their bed and stuff like that. Just sublimely say, you know, it's really baseball. But, you know, they never played baseball. They always played soccer. I couldn't make them after my image. I had to let them be all God wanted them to be. It's important, parents. Let your kids be what God wants them to be, not what you need them to be. And you know who is most needing of acceptance that's here today in our church? People who are kind of coming to grips with who they are in God. There's a lot of folks that are trying to find their way, trying to find, man, I've got a boatload of problems. I need acceptance. I don't know if I fit in here because I'm not like the rest of these people. Well, friend, let me tell you this. We have a basic rule of operation here is you come as you are, we receive you where you are, and we let God take you where he wants you to be. I want you to meet a couple right now who came into our church about six years ago. They just told me, six years ago, Easter Sunday, and their lives were quite a mess at the time, and what they found has changed them. And now they're in the process of helping others. Would you welcome Stephen and Mary Bechet as they come? Let's give them a warm hand. Hi again. Well, six years. When you first came, we were back in the restaurant building, right? What was happening in your life at that time, six years ago? Well, we entered the North way six years ago. We entered separately. We were separated at the time. Our family was being ripped apart. Shortly thereafter, about three months after we began to come to North Way, we filed for divorce because we didn't see any hope. We continued on that path for quite a while. And then over time, as people began to invest into us and to encourage us, we began to see some hope. Mary, what were you thinking during those first months that you were here at North Way? I thought that, boy, my life is a mess, and everybody I talked to, I told them about my mess, and I was just trying to reach out and see if anybody else could relate, if anybody had ever been there. And I expected people to shy away. I thought people would think, no way, she's got too many problems. We had three kids at the time, and we were heading for divorce. Well, we had filed for divorce. It was just all but waiting for it to be final, and people reached out. Nobody seemed to be intimidated by our problems. They just saw us as God's children, and that we just needed Christ, and we needed somebody to just care for us. It's important to notice at the time, too, that you weren't really Christians. You didn't have a personal faith. And so you came in, and all this was going on, but it didn't really make a lot of sense to you. All you knew was you just had this relationship and meltdown, and you wondered if there was any hope. And God ministered to us through people here who loved and accepted us, and in that word, acceptance, I can't tell you how we were accepted and cared for. I never felt judged, and as a result of that, people can't shock me now. When I'm ministering to a woman, there's nothing she can say that's going to make me shy away, because I've been there and done that, and God still loved me, and I just can totally relate to where they're coming from. It's amazing. God brings people to me that have been in similar circumstances, and I just love how he does that. Because of where you were, as low as you had gotten, and I might add here, this was like over months and months of time. It wasn't like one Sunday in. It was like a car wash, you know. This went on for months, and there were times when highs and lows and weeping, and then hope would rise, and then it would fall again. And I remember a lot of those times together. So give us an insight. What kind of people are you spending some time with? Who's God sending your way in these days to help minister to? Well, I have a friend who was wounded a few years ago, and I just started inviting her over, and it's brought a precious eternal friendship for both of us, I believe. Young women, married couples, many married couples that come in relational situations, people in relationships, that we can just love and accept them and pour into them. We can see hope in their lives. We know that it's not, even when they're hopeless, oh, we were there. You know, you just wait. You just give God time. I can remember Pastor Jay saying, just give God a chance. He's worth it. Boy, to give up on myself was to say that God wasn't worth it, and he is. It's just been incredible that all the people that God has brought to us, some that just need guidance, like Mary said, young couples, people that are just finding their way in marriage. It's just been wonderful to be able to share our lives with people, some who are in desperate need, and to be able to give them hope, like we've been giving them hope. It's just been a blessing. Now, this is a, I found this out in the first service. This is sort of a special week for you. It is. This Thursday, we didn't realize this yesterday until we started to really talk through it, that on Thursday, our anniversary, we're celebrating our wedding anniversary. It wasn't too many years ago that we never thought that that would be possible, that we would ever truly celebrate a wedding anniversary. I can say that Mary and I are more in love today than we ever have been, and it's great. I look around this church, and I see faces of people who invested into our lives, who didn't give up hope. Some couples spent over two years of building marriage in mine and Mary's relationship, because we didn't have any idea how to be married. They invested, spent two years of their time in us. Today, when I realized that we have a one-year-old daughter who wouldn't be here had we not stayed together, and that we can truly say that we're celebrating, there's many faces here that should be celebrating with us, because so many of you are a part of that. We just want to thank you for never giving up on us, for all the time. I want to say to Stephen and Mary, thank you for being available. If you're here today, maybe your relationship is near the bottom, and if so, don't give up. In fact, put your name on the communicator, and Stephen and Mary will give you a call. Maybe they can talk with you and help you. I'm going to ask you, do you want me to finish the message? Let me do that. I get sensitive, because I realize that we all have lots to do in our lives, and we're real busy, and we all have commitments, but I think there's a couple things I'd like to finish with here that maybe, if you get a hold of them, will affect the people you care about the most. Let me just highlight them, all right? The third thing, the third investment I'd encourage you to give is the investment of experience. You know, when I say that, it's simply this. People really don't want to hear all that much about what you have to say, as much as they want to do life with you, and Jesus modeled that again. I mean, he had times when he taught, but by and large, I think the greatest lessons the disciples learned were when Jesus just modeled it. I think people, by and large, learn both positively and negatively from us. They learn in our times of laughter and joy, and in our times of sorrow and pain. There's not a lot of verses in the Bible about laughter, and I have to admit that. It doesn't say, thou shalt laugh, or it doesn't say, ho, ho, ho, and be free. It rather declares, however, that the joy of the Lord is our portion and our strength, and joy is the foundation of happiness and of laughter. Joy comes from our relationship with God. Jesus said in John 15, 11, I've told you this so that your joy could be complete. So, I think he wanted us to have that, and as I look at Jesus and the disciples, I mean, he loved people, and he loved life. Kids wanted to be with him. How many of you ever known kids who want to hang out with grumpy people? I found just the opposite. When you're grumpy, kids like they know. They're like, get away from that guy, but when you're happy and when you're joyful, when you're laughing, they flock to you, and I believe Jesus had lots of times when he was full of laughter. I mean, think about it. He hung out with 12