The Goal of Communication: Oneness
Family Talk

Transcript

All right. Good morning, church. Well, it's been a great service already. We've had a full week with our KidzFest and it's just been a wonderful week. I'd like to report a couple of things to you about KidzFest.

This is the name we give to our vacation Bible school every year. We had it at both campuses, our Rocky Mount campus and here in Wilson, all week long. This week in Rocky Mount, we had 43 children attend during the week; in Wilson, we had 147. It took 71 volunteers to run our Rocky Mount program.

Here in Wilson, we had 111 volunteers. Thank you to all those that volunteered. We gave a presentation of the gospel; that's the main thing that we wanted to do. We asked the kids, did you have fun? They all said that they were having fun and that's important.

But, more than that, we want them to hear the Good News about Jesus. Sixty-eight children responded, between the two campuses, to the gospel. Six of them decided to make a profession of faith in Rocky Mount this past week. Thirty- eight here in Wilson made a profession of faith. Amen!

Praise the Lord for that. We sent information home with their parents, so the parents know how to do follow-up conversations with their children and they can clarify the decision that they've made. That's why we do what we do. So, thank you all volunteers and thank you to all the parents who brought your children. You know, if you ask adults when they made a decision to follow Jesus, a very high percentage of them will say, ‘I did it at a VBS’ or ‘I did it before the age of 12.’

This is why Jesus says, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, for such is the kingdom of heaven.” So, thank you for a great week. Now, we're starting a new sermon series today entitled, “Family Talk.” We're talking from the book of Ephesians, chapter four. All four of these sermons will come from Ephesians, chapter four.

Ephesians, chapter four is often the “prescription” that I will give to a family that's having some communication trouble. They'll come to me for marriage counseling or premarital counseling or some other kind of pastoral counseling. I will listen and talk about their problems, but then, usually, I'll write down a piece of paper, ‘Go home and study Ephesians 4.’ So, that's what we're going to be doing together.

All of you are going into pastoral counseling now for the next four weeks. No, not really. We're going to “unpack” this together, and we'll let the Holy Spirit apply as needed. Now, here's our theme for the whole series. It's from Ephesians 4:15 (ESV) 15 “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”

So, if you want to grow up as a believer in Jesus, you want to grow in your communication, then we want to speak the truth in love. That's really our theme for the whole series. Now we've entitled this message. The goal of communication is oneness, unity.

That's the goal of communication. We often think of good communication as being about wanting to be heard. I want people to hear me and understand me. Or, you might even admit, Well, I do need to listen better. So, we'll say, ‘It's to be heard and to be listened to; that's good communication.

But, God has a higher goal for our communication as believers. He says the goal for us, from His Word, is we're called to oneness, we're called to unity. That's a higher goal. It's not just to be heard, but it's to be right with God and right with one another as a result of our communication. But, what's the problem?

Well, here's the problem: For many of us, our communication, instead of leading to unity, often leads to division. It often leads to brokenness. That which is inside of us spills out of our mouths and affects our relationships with God and with one another. Good communication is more than hearing and being heard.

It's seeking oneness. It's seeking unity in all that we do. We're going to be looking now in chapter four of Paul's letter to the believers in Ephesus. Here, he urges them to pursue oneness in all of their communication; to pursue unity. I believe today, by faith in Jesus, we can do the same.

We can pursue oneness in all of our communication. As we look at the text, we are going to be looking at chapter four, as I've said, I believe that we'll see three ways that we can pursue this goal of unity in our communication. Let's start at verse one. We'll do verses one through three, and then 15 and 16. We will be working our way around chapter four the next four Sundays.

Ephesians 4:1-3; 15-16 (ESV) 1 “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. … 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” This is God's word.

Amen. We're looking for three ways to pursue oneness in the Lord as the goal of our communication. Here's the first way:

1. We can bear with one another in love.

I want you to take note, in our reading today, that the phrase “in love” occurred three times. I really believe that my job as a pastor is to be the “chef that prepares the meal from God's recipe.” So, it's not “rocket science,” people. I look for what the text is saying, and then I do my best. The three points come from the three phrases “in love.”

You'll notice it in verse two, where it says, “...bearing with one another in love.” Then, you'll see it again in verse 15 and 16. Those are our three ways that the Holy Spirit gives us, through the apostle Paul, on how to seek oneness in our communication. Let's “unpack” this first way. Bear with one another in love.

Bearing with one another. Paul gives us the tone, the right tone of our communication, that we're to be tolerant of one another, to bear with one another. Then, he gives us the motive for our communication: Love. Bearing with one another in love.

He describes four essential qualities for that character trait of the Spirit of Christ in us as believers that enables us to do this in order to bear with one another and he describes them in verse two: humility, gentleness, patience, and then finally, love. Okay, so we see these four qualities. That word, “bearing” with one another could maybe better be understood by translating it like this:

“Put up with one another.” That's really the sense of it. Put up with one another because they're putting up with you and God's been putting up with you, right? This is just an idea. This word of “bearing” with one another is not passive. It's actively saying, ‘You know what?

I'm going to show you grace.’ You see, there's a category of behaviors that aren't sin. They're just personality differences. They're preferences. He's an extrovert.

She's an introvert. He's real orderly. She's a “party waiting to happen.”

Those kinds of things can fray relationships because of the differences, but the spirit is telling us, through His word here, that there's a category of stuff that's not sin. It's just different. Okay, you like this kind of music.

She likes that kind of music. You like spicy food; she likes meat and potatoes. These are preferences, but they often cause us to communicate poorly with each other instead of just putting up with each other. One of the challenges for newlyweds is often that little stuff that we get too picky about when we ought to just overlook it, you know? Now, my wife and I have been married for 46 years.

The little idiosyncrasies that we both have have long been overlooked, but in the early days, they weren't overlooked. They were picked at more by me than her because that's part of my personality. I'm kind of a perfectionist, or at least my version of it, right?

You know what I'm saying when I say that? But, she's more graceful; that's one of her gifts. She's just easier to get along with than me. I recognize that; I admit that.

You know, ‘admitting your feeling is the beginning of healing,’ right? You gotta admit what you are, right? But, there would be these situations. So, like this morning, she left for church before I did. She is helping lead worship next door in the Gathering Place.

Okay? She had to be here a little earlier before me this morning. When she left, her coffee cup, with that much coffee in it, almost made it to the sink.

She's doing better, right? In my humble opinion, right? She made it to the kitchen. It wasn't on the bathroom counter..

In years gone by, I would say to her, “Can it not make it to the sink?” Well, she could easily say to me, “Well, maybe yours could make it to the dishwasher.” We all have our little things. But this morning, as I walked to see her coffee cup sitting on the counter in the kitchen, I got a smile on my face, thinking, I'm going to talk about this in the sermon today because this is that thing that I'm talking to you about.

It doesn't matter. How does that matter? Does he squeeze from the middle of the tube or the end of the tube? When I do premarital counseling, I'll ask couples stuff like that.

I will ask them, “When you squeeze toothpaste, do you squeeze from the middle, toothpaste is all over the side of it and you don't care? You just stick it back up onto the shelf?”

“Or, do you have to roll it up so you get every drop out of it, so you don't waste any?” If I can pick a fight with them during premarital counseling, then I can observe how they behave..

Now, here's what Paul says, ‘That stuff doesn’t matter.’ Put up with it; just bear with it. It's just differences; it's preferences. Put up with it; bear with it.

Instead, he says that you should answer your calling. This is Paul speaking. He says, 1 “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,” Here's my credentials, believers in Ephesus, I'm chained to a Roman soldier. Right now, I'm under house arrest in Rome, waiting for my appearance to Caesar Nero.

Notice, he doesn't say I'm a prisoner of Nero because he recognizes who his king is. He says, “I'm a prisoner of the Lord.” They wouldn't be able to put me here if the Lord didn't allow it. So, I will tell you who the real prisoner was. It was the Roman soldier chained to him who had to hear the Gospel all the time.

If you read the book of Acts, you see that many of the praetorian guards came to Christ during Paul's imprisonment. I tell you what, they were the ones in prison. Paul was a free man; he was a prisoner of the Lord. He says, 1 “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,”

Now, what's the call? Oneness. Unity. That's the call. He goes on in verses four through six.

He says, Ephesians 4:4-6 (ESV) 4 “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” We're one in Christ and we're one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He's the head and we're the body and we're to be at one with each other.

“So therefore, I urge you to live up…” “Walk” is the Hebrew term that he uses here. Walk, which means to have a lifestyle of a manner of living. Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called. You've been called to unity.

When you speak, you should be thinking, My goal here is for us to be closer after this conversation, more united. That's God's goal, for communication is oneness.

That we might do this with the character traits of humility. Now, humility is not thinking less of yourself, nor is it thinking more of yourself. Certainly, it's not thinking of yourself at all. It's thinking of the other. The idea of humility is to think of the other rather than yourself, to be humble towards another.

That's the idea for humility. Then, we have the word “gentleness.” It could also be translated, “meekness” and meekness is not weakness, but meekness is strength under control. So, you're gentle.

We say a horse is gentle. We don't mean it's weak. We mean it won't kick you if you walk behind it. It's a gentle horse, still big and strong.

Remember, we used to have this thing that we called “gentlemen.” Remember when there were “gentlemen” in the world? Ladies, do you remember “gentlemen” back in the day? They were strong, but they didn't use their strength to overpower, but to protect, lead and be “gentlemen.” Do you remember those guys?

You can find one of those. Maybe, he'll ask you to marry him. I don't know.

Gentleness. And then we have patience, which is a cool Greek word. You guys know I love the Greek language. The New Testament's written in Koine Greek. “makrothumia,”

that's a cool word, you gotta admit. It's a compound word. “Makro” means long and “thumia” means to come under heat. King James really does a good job at translating this. The ESV says “patience” and that's correct,

but the King James version says, “long suffering” long (“makro”) , “thumia” (suffering under heat.) You could say, “have a long fuse.” It should take a lot to disturb your peace. This is the character traits of the one who seeks unity. This is the way this one lives.

Now, these character traits come from a changed heart. If we don't have a changed heart, whatever's in our heart comes out our mouth. Jesus talks about it in Luke 6:45 (ESV) “Out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”
So whatever's in your heart comes out of your mouth.

Sometimes I'd be in a bad mood, especially when I was a teenager and my mom would say to me, “Gary Wayne, you need to go back to bed.” I'd say, “Why?” and she would tell me, “Because you got up on the wrong side of the bed.” Do you ever get up on the wrong side of the bed?

You forget to pray. You forget to get right with the Lord. The old self, the old man started taking control of your tongue. Godly communication flows from a Godly character. Paul writes this to the church at Colossae.

He says, Colossians 3:12-14 (ESV) 12 “Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another… 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” So let your communication evaluate what's coming out of your mouth. Is this coming from the heart of Jesus, my new heart?

Or, is the old character emerging here? Watch your tongue. James warns about this. He says, James 1:19 (NLT) “Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.” You have two ears for a reason and one mouth.

Listen twice as hard.

Imagine a family dinner, if you can imagine a family dinner. They have three kids. The wife loves to cook. She's cooked a beautiful meal.

These three little kids. One of them's a talker. He won't shut up. He's just ‘talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Yap, yap, yap, yap.’

Another is a spiller. He cannot get through a meal without spilling his drink. The other, she's little. She's a baby and she's whining the whole time. ‘Whine, whine, whine.’

Then imagine a father who's at the breaking point. He just got home from work and he's sitting there. Imagine the mother. She's labored over the stove; she's got in her mind the image of a beautiful family meal.

Perfection. They're all sitting there at the table. “Thank you, Mother. The food is wonderful….” But then, the talker says, “Yuck. What's this?”

The whiner says, “I don't like this” and the spiller spills his drink into his father's plate, ruining his food. How the father responds will set the tone for that whole meal. It's not the childish behavior of the children. Are they in sin?

Are they in willful disobedience? No, they're children. They're just children. They're different from you. They're not adults yet.

They have differences based on age, but you have expectations. They are disturbing you and so, you become impatient fathers. You become less than gentle in your verbiage and you explode with that

“basso fundo” voice of yours that changes the tone of the whole meal. Whether it's at church, the family of God here or at your house. The father has a lot to do with the tone of the house. You might say that God designed husbands and fathers as the “thermostat” of the house, and He designed mothers, wives and women as the “thermometer.”

He sets the tone, and she tells him what the temperature is. She'll tell him that she's got discernment. He often doesn't. He's often unaware of what he's doing, tone wise,

but she'll tell him, “You've scared the kids to death. You thought you were helping. You've made it worse. You've made it worse by being angry and saying you're not going to eat with the family and going to go eat by yourself, where you can get some peace and quiet.”

Well, I don't have to imagine that story. That was my life.

Stephen was the talker, Jonathan was the spiller and baby Erin. Hey Erin, down here!

She used to come home from church sometimes and say, “Daddy, you didn't tell any stories about me today.”

Well, I got you this time. I got you this Sunday.

We started our family young; we had all of our kids before I turned 28. We got married young and had all of our kids when we were young. I was immature in a lot of ways and I blew it a lot. I'm glad that God's merciful, but I've grown a little, I think, through the years, and maybe you have, too. Here's what I'm learning:

Put up with differences.

Give people grace. They're not like you. They're younger in the Lord than you are. Wherever they're at, you don't know what they've been through today.

But then, there's this other category. He says to put up with differences, but not offenses. What if they've sinned against you or they've sinned against one another and you're privy to it? That's a different category. He gives us a different love phrase. Okay, here's where we're at.

2. We can speak the truth to one another in love.

We can speak the truth to one another in love. Bear up, put up with those differences. This category of sin, where someone has sinned or offended you in some way, don't bury that, but speak the truth in love.

Now we're at verse 15. This is the second occurrence of the phrase in love, 15 “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,” So, we're growing in maturity now, which means instead of avoiding, we address it. But, be aware of this: Truth without love is harsh.

Truth without love is harsh. Love without truth is hollow. But, truth with love is healing. It's transforming. It can change your relationship.

You mix it together. Truth with love.

We tend to, if we're in a relationship with somebody and we don't care if we keep the relationship, we won't tell them the truth. We just won't answer the phone call or the text message. We'll get out of that group that we were in. We'll leave that church. Rather just avoidance;

That's our whole pattern through life. Run away.

I'd rather run away than speak the truth. It's not worth it. It's really exposing that you don't really love that person that much, because if you really love them, you speak the truth in love. If you really were aiming at unity, you would say, ‘Hey, you hurt my feelings when you said that

and I know you didn't mean to.’ You're showing grace; you're showing love. ‘But, when you said this, it hurt my feelings. I just want you to know that, because I care about you and I want our relationship to improve.’ So, you speak the truth in love. Here's what Paul says in verse three. He says, in verse 3, “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Be eager for unity. The word, “eager,” has the idea of “to exert oneself to guard.” Christians should be eager to guard rather than gossip. They should be desirous of guarding relationships rather than tearing them down.

The world is eager to tear you down, but believers should be eager for unity, to build one another up. All you have to do is go on what formerly was referred to as “Twitter X.” If you want to see people tear each other down, go on social media. If you say something positive or you tell a positive story,

it will rarely go viral, but if you get some “garbage” on somebody, oh, it'll go viral. It's human nature. It's the sin nature. It's the brokenness of our hearts that spills out of our mouths and goes on our phones and our social media. It spills out because the world is eager to tear down.

But, Paul calls us to unity. He said, “be eager for unity.” That's the new you in Christ. “Be eager for unity” and then he says, “…in the bond of peace.”

In the Greek, the word “prisoner” and “bond” are the same Greek word. He says, ‘I'm a prisoner of the Lord and I want you to be a prisoner of His peace. I want you to keep the bond of His peace.

I want you to grow up into the head, which is Christ.’ Now, here's what I want you to hear: Love without truth is hollow, right? You think what's more loving, not to tell them? No. If they've hurt you, you're bottling it up.

Truth without love can hurt. It's harsh, but if you put them together, it can be healing. Notice what Proverbs says, Proverbs 27:5-6 (NLT) 5 “An open rebuke is better than hidden love! 6 Wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy.”

Is that true for you? Can you handle rebuke? This is just my personality – If I feel like I'm supposed to speak the truth in love to you, I'll lose sleep over it

until I handle it. I will. I don't know about you. Some people can be like me. If I care about you, it bothers the daylights out of me and I feel like the Holy Spirit's telling me to do it. I gotta do it. But then, I start getting afraid that you won't hear it and that it'll break our relationship.

So then, I start postponing it, but then it gets worse. The Holy Spirit gets heavier on me to deal with it. Does anybody relate to that? That's the Holy Spirit; it wants unity so much.

If the Holy Spirit lives in you, then it stirs you to unity. It grieves Him when disunity happens. Here's the thing about the recipient of that – when you speak the truth in love, even though you obey and you do it exactly with the right mixture, it doesn't mean that everyone will respond well to rebuke.

There's really two categories I was thinking about of people who have trouble responding well to rebuke: One is someone who has a low self esteem and they care so much what people think of them that if you rebuke them, they're very defensive because their whole self image is based on what you think of them and what others think of them, not what Jesus thinks of them. So, they have a low self image. Someone with low self esteem often has a lot of trouble receiving a rebuke because they think you're trying to tear them down rather than to seek unity and oneness. They think you're trying to tear them down. Do you know what the other category is?

It is people who have a really high self image and they're so prideful. They're never wrong. When you try to rebuke them, they go into defensive mode because you can't be right. They are always right. They have a hard time receiving rebuke. What about you?

Speak the truth in love. But, what about hearing the truth in love? Can you do that? I think the people who have the right relationship with the Lord Jesus and they are humble, they can hear a rebuke.

If anybody's going to line up out in the lobby to rebuke me after the service, let me give you a tip –I'm pretty good at hearing a rebuke, as long as you're not smiling when you tell me. Yeah, I got you, Pastor. But, if you’ll have a sad look on your face like it's hurting you as bad as it's hurting me to hear it, I'm more apt to hear it.

That's just me. We can speak the truth in love. Love and truth are not enemies. Paul says to the church at Corinth, 1 Corinthians 13:6 (ESV) “[Love] does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.”

They're friends. So, don't avoid the hard conversations. Follow the spirit's prompting to unity. A husband is asked by his wife, ‘What's bothering you?’ He says, ‘Nothing.’ He's lying.

She's got discernment. She can tell something's bothering him. He just doesn't want to get into it because he doesn't feel up to a fight right now. So, he postpones it and it turns into bitterness. Over time, he begins to accumulate a list of offenses that she's done to him.

It could be on the other foot. She says to him, “Well, you never listen to me when I'm talking to you.” She might be right. But he thinks immediately of the one time that he did listen. So I have this saying for my own house and for the church house, when I'm trying to teach us how not to lie,

because we all have a tendency to lie, to bend the truth. It's the old nature. So I have this saying, “Always avoid always and never say never” because you're really using “battle words” there. You're not speaking the truth in love.

If you'll say, ‘When you kept watching TV while I was trying to talk to you about something important, it hurt my feelings.’ Now, you've been specific when you were talking. Do you see what I'm saying? Instead of saying “never” or “always” and starting an argument, can we talk about something that's been bothering me? Can I have a minute?

So, you learn to do this in Christ. We can speak the truth in love. Love without truth is hollow. Truth without love is harsh. But mix them together and healing can take place.

3. We can build up one another in love.

Here's number three:It's the third time we see the phrase, “in love.” We can build one another up in love. That's in verse 16, ”from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

“builds itself up in love.” Do you see it in verse 16? So here's a quick summary. The motive in all three instances is love. That's our motivating energy; I love the person.

We've already said that the tone is graceful, bearing with and putting up with. We've said the content is truth. The content of our communication is to speak the truth. Now, we see the means for building up oneness.

The means is to build, to encourage and to edify. It's the means of building up. I remember when I worked in the corporate world, I was a district manager for a retail chain and they would send us off to leadership conferences. I would always come home with a new book on leadership.

There was this book that was written by Ken Blanchard named “The One-Minute Manager.” I remember, in “The One Minute Manager,” that he was teaching you a management style. It was somewhat a “Dale Carnegie” style. He said, ‘If they've done something wrong, you should give them a one-minute talk. You either give them a “warm fuzzy,” which means they did something right, or a “cold prickly.”

He had two categories. Believe me, if you give somebody a “cold prickly” for 60 seconds, that's a pretty “cold prickly.” If you give him a one-minute “warm fuzzy,” they won't be able to keep eye contact with you. It'll feel so good to them, they might start crying because you've bragged about them for so long. One minute's a long time.

He had these two categories. Here's what Paul's teaching. He's not trying to teach us management manipulation. That's not what he's doing. He's not giving us a style from Dale Carnegie, telling him something good before you tell him something bad.

That's not what he's doing. He's saying to seek oneness. That's your goal. Put up with the differences. We're all different.

If there's an offense of sin, love them enough to rebuke them. Speak the truth in love, but let your goal always for this oneness to be, after we have this conversation, that the recipient of my communication feels built up. This is what he's talking about. The words, “build up,” have the idea of someone building a house. He has this description here.

He's actually more descriptive of a body, like a body growing. He says, 15 “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,” Christ is the head of the body. Verse 16, “ from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” So we're the parts when we're working properly.

In other words, filled with the Holy Spirit, communicating towards unity. It makes the body grow so that it builds itself up. So that, when you come to church on Sunday, I just pray that the word of God as I preach it, that I'm speaking the truth in love. It kind of hurts a little bit, okay, because rebuke does hurt a little bit. But, I pray the final thing for God's word for you, because the gospel is good news, is that it builds you up ultimately, if you'll receive it and repent of those areas you need to grow in.

If we all will do that, I pray that we grow up together into the head which is Christ, so that we're coming closer together in unity. This works at your house, your marriage and your family and it works in our house as a church. Paul's talking about the family. When he gets to chapter five, he gets very specific about husbands and wives, but he's talking about the family of God as well as your house.

We can build each other up or we can tear each other down. Later in chapter four, we'll get more into this later, but I wanted to give you a preview. Ephesians 4:29 (ESV) “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

Does your language make people feel grace? Do they feel built up? Do they feel blessed by you? In 1 Thessalonians, Paul writes, 1 Thessalonians 5:11 (ESV) “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up…” So, words have the potential to tear down

and they have the potential to build up. Think about your words this week. I want to give you a challenge. Before you leave the house every morning, ask the Holy Spirit, ‘Would you give me an opportunity today to say a word of blessing over at least one person today that really needs to hear it? Watch what God will do this coming week? Say, ‘Holy Spirit, show me the person you want me to talk to that would build them up and help them grow up in Christ.

Give me the ability to edify and build up. I want to be a blessing with my words.’ Ask yourself this question, ‘Are my words

always self focused? Am I always talking about myself? Are my words edifying others? Are they building others up? Do I tear down or build up?’

This is true for both the home and for this home, which is the church in Christ. We can build each other up, we can bear up with each other, we can bear one another, we can put up with one another, we can speak the truth in love to one another and we can build each other up in love. This is the word of God and we can do it. We can do it, believers, by the spirit of God that empowers us. “For we can do all things through Christ who gives us strength.”

Amen. Let's pray. Lord, I pray, first of all, for that person that came in the door today, far from You. They've never made a decision to follow You. I want to pray for you right now, right in your seat.

Maybe, you're watching online. Right where you are, the Holy Spirit's calling. Would you answer? Pray with me, ‘Dear Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner. I've been living by my own will. But I surrender my will to You today.

I believe You died on the cross for me, Lord Jesus, for my sins, and that You were raised from the grave and that You live today. Come and live in me. Forgive me of my sin. Make me the person You want me to be. I give You my life.

I surrender my will to You. I want to be a child of God and follow You all the days of my life. If you're praying that prayer of faith, believing, the Lord will save you. Others are here and you're a believer, you're a Christ follower. But you're in a relationship.

It's a husband, it's a wife, it's a child, it's a parent or it's a friend. Things aren't going well. You know what I'm talking about. The Holy Spirit's telling you right now about that. What do you need to do?

Do you need to put up with it? Is it just something where you've been avoiding them and it's just petty stuff? Lord, help me have wisdom. It's a difficult thing and I need to address it. Lord, give me the grace right now. I lift up that relationship, Lord.

Help us, Lord, in our marriages, in our families and in our church. Lord, help us to be at one with You and with one another in love. For it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.