Rick Warren - How To Reconcile A Relationship—Part Four

Hello, and welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope with Rick Warren.

We are so glad you're here with us. Today we're

going to continue our series called The Keys to a

Blessed Life, and in these messages, Rick walks through Jesus'

Sermon on the Mount and shows us how to live

a truly hopeful and purpose filled life. And now the

final part of how to Reconcile a relationship.

Yesterday, I was abducted by a group of young men

in our church who took me to San Diego to

Comic Con, and it was a blast. I wanted to

go as Batman, but Kay wouldn't let me. And everybody

there were one hundred thousand people at Comic Con, and

I mean everybody's there. I mean all of the superheroes

are there, and all the great TV shows and all

the science fiction and all the Lord of the Rings

trilogy and Star Wars and Star Trek, and one hundred

thousand people are at this place, and about ten percent

of them are dressed up.

And it was just a lot of fun.

But as one hundred thousand people are going into the

convention center in San Diego, there are two guys obviously

Christians standing there with giant yellow signs with frowns on

their faces, clearly not enjoying it, not saying a word

to anybody, just standing there looking angry. And they were

what I call turn or burn, you'll die and fry

while we go to the sky signs.

Okay.

One of them said, repent is something like repent or

go to hell, you know, something like that, and the

other one said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and

you'll be saved.

Now.

The fact is both of those are true, but they

were not speaking the truth and love. It's true I

do need to repent, and it is true I do

need to accept what Jesus Christ did for me on

the cross. I guarantee you nobody got saved yesterday from

those signs, not one single person. Why because they were

speaking the truth, but they were not speaking the truth

in love.

Does this make sense?

It's not just what you say, it's how you say it.

Sometimes you watch these preachers on TV, and you know

they got an anger management issue, and they're they're out

of whack with their wife at home, and then they're

angry at their wife, and then they're coming to church

every weekend and spiritually.

Vomiting on everybody.

Else bh, and they feel really good, but everybody else

goes home feel a little sticky, you know, just gotta ugh.

I mean, you take the truth of God's word, but

you wrap it in love. For instance, the Bible, as

in Romans three twenty three, all of sinned and falling

short of the glory of God. Now, I could teach

that truth to you two different ways, all of us.

I could shout it to you in anger. I could

say it like this, all of sin and all have

come short of the glory of God, and you'd go home.

Go Rick yelled at me, I don't like that, okay.

Is that the way Jesus would quote Romans three twenty three,

shouting like you was happy.

Like we're all going to hell in a handbag? It's true?

Or I don't think so.

I think Jesus would say it like this kind of

matter of factly. I think he'd said with a broken heart.

I think he would look out at the world and go,

all of sind You know, everybody's blown it, everybody's messed up,

nobody backs a thousand, We've all sinned, everybody comes short

of the glory of God. I don't measure up to

my own standard as much as God's. I think that's

the way to say it. You see the difference. See

the difference in that it's the same truth. It's the

way it is shared. And if you say it offensively,

it will be received defensively. Now, the Bible says in

Ephesians four twenty nine, do not use harmful words, but

only helpful words, the kind that build up and provide

what is needed. That's one of the greatest verses on

parenting you can ever learn, or in marriage or in friendship.

Don't use harmful words. Fact, in your marriage to your sinner,

your spouse is a center. Two imperfect people cannot make

a perfect relationship. So you're gonna have conflict. You are

gonna fight, you're gonna argue, You're gonna have conflict the

rest of your marriage. Now the question is are you

gonna fight fair or not?

And what you.

Need to do is you need to establish some ground

rules so you don't destroy yourselves in the inevitable conflict

of life. And you need to take some words that

are inflammatory and say, sorry, these are off limits. We're

just not going to use these words. There are certain

words that you can use that trigger your.

Spouse and enrage them.

And there's certain words your spouse uses on you that

can trigger you into rage or depression.

They need to not use.

You need to take them off and say, fighting fair.

We're not gonna use these words in our marriage.

One of them is the threat of divorce. You're not

gonna say, well, then we'll get a divorce. You need

to take that one off the table.

You need to.

Close the escape patch of your marriage. You need to

lock it with the key and throw the keyed away

and say we're gonna make this marriage work. If it

kills us, okay, it may, but it will keep.

You going further. During the Cold War between.

The communist East and the capitalist West, between the Soviet

Union and its allies and the United States and its allies.

Even in the height of the Cold War from the

nineteen fifties on about when the Berlin Wall fell, and

I think it was eighty nine, even in the worst

moments of the Cold War, both sides agreed that some

weapons were off limits. We called them WMD's weapons of

mass destruction, and we said we may fight, we may argue,

we may have conflict, but we're not gonna use the

big one. Neither side is gonna drop the atomic bomb

because of what was called mad m AD mutually assured destruction,

and both the.

Soviet Union and America and our.

Allies all knew that if one atomic bomb was dropped,

it was over for the world.

This was going to destroy the whole place.

You need to ban the weapons of mass destruction from

your marriage. There are certain words you just need to

those are off limits. We're not going to use them,

and you need to make a list of them. And

you need to agree and say, we may be so

mad and so upset, but we're just not going to

use these words. Do not use harmful words. You need

to learn to fight fair. Now that leads me to

the sixth step. Write this down.

Fix the problem, not the blame.

This is the sixth key to resolving conflict and restoring

a relationship. And like I said, this is worth thousands.

Of dollars of counseling. I'm giving you.

Fix the problem, not the blame. You need to learn

to attack the issue, not each other. You need to

realize that you're both on the same team. Anytime you're

busy fixing the blame, you are wasting energy not fixing

the problem. If you want to exhibit a of this,

look at Washington, DC. The President blames the Congress for

everything that's going wrong, and the Congress blames the White

House for everything that's going wrong, and nothing is getting done.

Why Because, as I've said many times, you spell blame,

be lame, and right now everybody in DC is being lame.

They're blaming each other. And as long as you're busy

fixing the blame, you are not fixing the problem. As

long as you're attacking each other, you're not attacking the issues. Now,

God is very very specific out the kind of words

that are out of bounce. And you don't say, but

you did this, but you did that, but you did this,

but you did that, but you did this, but you

did that. That blame game is a waste of time.

Stop fixing the blame and start fixing the problem. You

got a problem with sex in your marriage, you got

a problem with finances in your marriage, you got a

problem with in laws in your marriage, you got a

problem with children in your marriage, you got a problem

with work schedule.

In your marriage.

Stop fixing the blame and start fixing the problem. Now,

God is very specific about the kind of words that

are out of bounce. Colossians three eight is just one example.

I could give you dozens. I don't have time to

do this. Let me just give you one. You must

rid yourself of these WMDs, these weapons of mass destruction,

of all such things as these angry rage, malice, slander,

and filthy language from your lips. Okay, he says, in

your marriage and in your relationships, no angry rage. In

other words, you should never try to intimidate anybody with anger.

You never make threats. That doesn't work. You don't intimidate

with anger and threats. Malice means you say things that

are intentionally designed to hurt, like you're just like your mother,

or you're just like or labeling or belittling or psychologizing.

Well, now I know why you did that. No, you don't.

You can't even figure out your own motivation. How in

the world would you figure out the motivation of anybody else.

There's no way you can know anybody else's motivations because

you don't even know your own half the time. And

then no slander that means no insults, no insults, no belittling,

no labeling.

Fix the problem. Not the blame.

Finally, number seven, the seventh step is folk on reconciliation,

not resolution. Focus on reconciliation not resolution. There's a big difference.

Reconciliation means re establishing the relationship. That's what it means,

re establishing the relationship.

We bury the hatchet.

Doesn't mean we remarry if you're with an ex, it

just means we're at peace with each other. I'm not

holding on to any hurt. You're not holding an hurt.

It's we bury the hatchet. Reconciliation, re establish relationship. Resolution

means we resolve every disagreement, and that ain't gonna happen

because the truth is, there's some things in your marriage

and some things in your friendship and with other people

you're just never going to agree on because we're all difference.

But you can disagree without being disagreeable. That's called maturity,

that's called with the that's called Christ's likeness. Being like Christ.

To disagree without being disagreeable. We can have unity without uniformity.

We can walk hand in hand together without seeing eye

to eye. Can and I don't see ey eye on

a lot of different things, but we walk hand in

hand and we're now coming up this next year will

be our fortieth year of marriage. All right, you can

have reconciliation without resolution. And here's what I've learned from

counseling marriages. If you focus on restoring the relationship, oftentimes

the issue becomes insignificant. How many of your biggest arguments

were over the smallest things and they weren't really about that.

And you need to get back to focusing on the relationship.

Now let me wrap it up. Here's my challenge to you,

as your pastor who loves you. Our world is filled

with conflict. I mean it's just pick up the newspaper.

It's everywhere. And in a world where there is constant conflict, wars, division, argumentation,

stress between people, where there are prejudices and racism and clashes,

where we have everything from violence and tribalism and terrorism

and people getting in each other's face and partisanism and

people attacking each other constantly, and as a result, we

have broken relationships. We have a broken economy, we have

a broken government, we have broken marriages, and we have

broken lives and broken hearts. My challenge to you as

your pastor is that you you you will commit to

becoming an agent of reconciliation in a world filled with conflict,

That you will become a bridge builder, not a wall builder.

That you will look for ways to bring people together

rather than tear them up.

It is not by.

Accident that the first letter of Saddleback's Peace Plan P

stands for promote reconciliation and plant churches.

Because this is your ministry, let me show you what

the Bible says.

Last verse on the screen two Corinthians five eighteen to

twenty says this God has restored our relationship with him.

In other words, God made us his friends.

We were estranged, we were.

Unreconciled, and God has reconciled us to.

Him self through Christ.

Jesus died for our sins, and he says, and now

He has given us this ministry.

Of restoring relationships.

Your ministry, if you are a Christian, if you're a

follower of Christ, if you claim to be a man

of God, a woman of God, your ministry is the

ministry of restoring relationships. Your ministry is the ministry of reconciliation.

Your ministry is doing everything I just taught you how

to do. God was in Christ restoring his relationship with humanity.

He was reconciling us to himself.

He did not hold.

People's faults against them, and you shouldn't either, and He

has given us this message.

What is the message?

The message of restored relationships. To tell others, you know

what those guys a comic con should have had. They

should have had a sign that said God has forgiven

you and wants you to be his friend. Jesus Christ

loves you so much he'd rather die than live without you.

He has broken down the barrier and the wall, and

he wants you to be reconciled to him. God wants

a relationship with you, and then he wants to.

Give you that relationship.

To others, the message of restored relationships, to tell others,

we are Christ representatives. We beg you on behalf of

Christ to become reunited with God. That's what it means

to be a witness. It means to go od in

society and say, Amen, God's done everything to put you

back in fellowship with him. He's already paid for all

your sins. You don't have to be his enemy. He's

not mad at you. He's mad about you. Be reconciled

to God and be at peace with God. And then

spread that peace with everybody else. And if you do that,

the Bible says this, God blesses those. God blesses those

who are peacemakers. They will be called the children of God.

It's power heads. Do you need to plan a peace

conference this week? Do you need to pick up the

phone and a relationship that's been starved or strangled, or

strained or even deeply broken and take these steps? It

takes courage. Tell God, I want to be a peacemaker

this week. I want my prayers answered, I want happiness.

I want to be in fellowship with You. So I

want to restore the relationships that have been broken.

And God, I'm scared to death. Just tell them that

help me.

Do you need to make a peace plan for your

home and make a list of the WMDs you go

These are awful for us. We just let's agree that

we're never going to use these words again in our marriage.

Maybe you've never made peace with God. And if you're

at war with God and you've never received Jesus Christ

as your savior, you need the peace of God.

So you can have the peace of God.

Say in your heart, Jesus Christ, I admit that I've

made many mistakes and I need your forgiveness. And the

biggest mistake is I've tried to run my life without you.

I've tried to pretend like I was God. And I'm sorry,

and I humbly ask you, Jesus, to save me, and

I ask you to come into my life fill me

with your peace and your love so I can share

your peace and.

Love with others.

Father, as pastor, I pray for these people, these dear people,

that we would become agents of reconciliation in a world

of conflict and where there is strife, that we might

bring peace. And I pray this, giving you the glory

and asking for you to give us the courage and love.

I pray this blessing in the name of the Father

and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

You know, if you just prayed that prayer for the

very first time, or you just recommitted your life to

Jesus again today, would you let me know about it.

There's something real about sharing your commitment. So write me

Rick at pastor Rick dot com and say, Rick, I

prayed that prayer of commitment. I gave my life to Christ.

And I'll send you some material that will help you

on your journey with Jesus, and I'll also pray for you.

God bless you.

Hey, thanks for listening to Pastor Daily Hope. Right now,

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