No Regrets: What I Should Have Said | Nathan Lawson

Music.

Amen. Well, we are in the final run for back to school. Supplies have been purchased.

Classrooms are being set up. Medications are being refilled.

I'll leave you to fill in the blank if that's teachers or students,

but they are getting ready.

And for parents who send their kids to school, this is like leading up to Christmas.

You can just feel the excitement in the air that like the end of the summer is almost here.

And in the spirit of that, here is a riddle for to take back into your classrooms

or environments or if you have neighbors or relatives that are going back. Here it is for you.

What do you sit on, sleep on, and brush your teeth with? If you haven't heard

that, turn to the person next to you, take a stab at it.

What do you sit on, sleep on, and brush your teeth with it? I'll give you about

15, 20 seconds. Give it a swing.

Not as much talking either. You guys already know it or you're stumped from the get-go.

Are you ready for it? What do you sit on, sleep on, and brush your teeth with?

The answer is a chair, a bed, and your toothbrush. That's the answer for that one.

You know, have you ever found though that like sometimes like lessons are so

obvious that you just miss it?

Like, I mean, everyone should already know this, but like, I don't know,

maybe the family you grew up with did things differently or your friends did

things differently, but we're going to be going really for the next four weeks through Proverbs.

And as part of that, we're kind of have as our theme, no regrets.

You can't change the past, but you can avoid repeating it.

Now, I know there was a time when tattoos were a sign of rebellion, right?

Nothing could send a suburban mom into tears more than her child coming in with

a wayward mark saying that they were on a downward descent or destruction.

But that year has passed, right?

Like at this point, tattoos are as common as emotional support animals and unnecessarily

large hydration bottles that people carry around with. I mean,

there's all over the place.

And some of them, I mean, carry really important lessons that people have learned,

something that they really value, a verse or maybe a lesson or an idea that

they had from a parent or from a season of their life.

Sometimes it'll have a date where something very important happened that they don't want to forget.

I have one on my arm from Hebrew from a time I first preached through Exodus

and what God taught me and that they're very meaningful. And other tattoos are.

Are not as meaningful as that other category a friend

of my brothers and mine we were in college together and

and she at the time got a tattoo of of dolphins going around to ying yang and

for those of you that don't remember the late 90s early 2000s this was top cool

i mean this was like fat phat cool like this was all about it and it was great

and uh and it's it's not it's not as cool now.

She said recently that, you know, a couple of decades and a couple of children

later, no one told me it was going to look like a pod of manatees going around

a beach ball at this point in my life.

Like, unfortunately that, I mean, I think a lot of us would kind of look through

and that you have, whether you've ever been to a tattoo parlor,

the truth is you have lessons that are kind of permanently etched on who you are.

That at some point along the way, some good and some bad, some about how to

save money and be careful, others about maybe that people aren't meant to be trusted.

And some of you could have tattoos that you've picked up. And if you were able

to kind of look, you would see that right there in that heart,

you would see a person who has picked up some lessons.

Like if you want respect, you have to take it and be careful about people who

don't give you enough room to exercise your authority and your power.

You don't know where you picked it up, but it's a lesson you gathered along the way.

And at least for some of us as we're thinking back on these lessons,

it's because there's stuff that you have been through that did not go according

to plan, to put it lightly, right?

The friendship that blew up, the relationship that fell apart,

the dream job that was not a dream, but turned into more of a nightmare.

And at least as you've learned, right, that some of you have realized that that

old adage, experience is the best teacher, is not entirely accurate on its own.

Some of you know people or you are the person that they've had 20 years of experience

repeating the same mistakes over and over again, that they leave one relationship

saying, I don't want that to happen again.

And they go into another one and then it happens again.

It's the same pain with a different face on it.

As they kind of look back, they start to say, this is so weird,

but like the last three bosses I've had have all been mean and conniving and selfish.

And it almost seems like it's happening again and again because experience by

itself doesn't teach us anything, right?

And you want to put it this way, experience may be the best teacher,

but only if we're taking notes.

Only if you're taking enough time in your life to stop and reflect with the

right group of people saying, wait a minute, what just happened?

Like, what did I learn from this? How did I contribute to it?

Or to use a phrase that will repeat through this series.

It's not what you go through that makes you wise. It's what you think through.

That we're gonna, as we embark for the next four weeks, kind of examining Proverbs

and what does God really tell us about wisdom and how that affects the life

of people who have decided to follow Jesus and live into the life God calls

us to, we're gonna talk about wisdom.

Now, for just four weeks, we're not gonna cover everything Proverbs has to say.

In fact, we're gonna kind of pick four topics that I think cover some bigger

areas where people quickly accumulate regrets.

But if this is gonna help you, perhaps, if you're not that familiar with the

Bible or you've never read through Proverbs, what are we supposed to do with it?

I mean, what is its value for us? and we'll continue to unpack that now and in the weeks ahead.

So one of the things that we want to talk about is this idea about learning

from experience as you move forward to reflect on in a way that has the humility

to say, what am I going to do different next time?

Now, Proverbs chapter eight, where wisdom is going to speak in the first person.

It's going to be like an analogy or a metaphor.

And in there's chapter eight, it says that wisdom is a woman.

Now, I don't know why God picked a woman, but there's probably some of you that

say, that makes some pretty good sense when you think about it.

But for whatever reason, God's gonna have wisdom speaking as a woman.

And I'm gonna read for you from the message translation. It's more of a paraphrase,

so it's not gonna be on the screen, but it's going to say this.

Proverbs chapter eight, verse one is going to say, can't you hear lady wisdom calling?

Madam Insight is out there screaming at the top of her lungs.

She's standing on the corner of 1st and Main Street, right?

It's going to say she shouts on the top of her voice where the traffic is the thickest.

Hey, idiots, are you not paying attention?

I'm telling you how to live. It's time to wise up. Hey, blockheads,

you need to shape up. And the chapter goes on.

What I love about the way the Bible describes wisdom, or at least the kind of

wisdom we'll talk about in Proverbs,

is this isn't the kind of wisdom that you get because you climbed up a mountain

in Nepal in the dead of winter and you sat at a temple and you hummed to yourself

for a decade and now you've unlocked secrets of the universe.

It's not the kind of wisdom you get from going on a corporate retreat where

there's incense and they crank the room to 120 degrees to help you have some kind of epiphany.

And you certainly do not need to wander through a swamp to find a very wrinkly

green Muppet that speaks backwards for no reason.

Oh, come on. That's a pretty good Star Wars joke. Let's hang together here, people.

This is the kind of wisdom that it says it's calling out on the corner of First and Main Street.

This is like where the traffic happens. This means that what it's saying is

like, you want to know where wisdom is?

Wisdom's in the carpool line, right? You're going to see people who are losing

their marbles and others who are enhancing their relationship with their kids.

You want to know where wisdom's talking?

It's in your next staff meeting when you're at work and you have people gathering

around. Wisdom is all over the place.

I mean, you're going to see it. And she says, look, I'm pulling my hair out.

If you were, I'm all over here. You could pick it up right around you right now.

It's the kind of wisdom that invades your life. If you're listening,

it's right there at Starbucks when the wifi goes down or a lady is losing her

mind because they've run out of oat milk for her latte.

And you're sitting there if you have the ears to hear it.

That one of the things that wisdom is gonna teach us is we see it in the book

of Proverbs is that wisdom is not something we need to try that hard to find.

It's around your life right now if we have the humility to listen and to understand.

Because while we cannot change the past, there are things that when you stop

and you reflect on the lessons that God is teaching you, that you listen to

the lessons as they're laid out in Proverbs,

it can help you avoid from making more mistakes.

Most of us would love to have as our life creed, no regrets.

But more often than not, it ends up, well, like a misspelled tattoo.

One more oops on the list.

We're going to look today at one particular topic. We'll kind of unfold it,

and we'll be doing some others the weeks ahead.

And the first one, at least for me, as somebody that is relatively quick on

their feet, I consider myself to be relatively witty.

And that also means that I have stuck my foot in my mouth on more occasions

that I could possibly, you could possibly understand.

That I have made jokes that I've realized were grossly inappropriate.

I've pushed for things that I shouldn't in all kinds of ways.

And I wish that there was a rewind button, right?

Right as you say something, you can see it going out saying,

that was probably not the right thing to say right here and right now.

And Proverbs has quite a bit to say about the words that we use.

Let's pull up this one in Proverbs chapter 21, verse 23.

Proverbs 21:23

It says, those who guard their mouths and their tongues, keep themselves from calamity.

That those that put a little gate right here and don't just let anything come

out. Those that put a little caution right here, keep themselves from all kinds of regrets.

Because as we're going to say in this message, right, that talking that restraint prevents regrets.

And the first advice that Proverbs is giving us really is that restraint is

going to help you prevent regrets.

Because you see, words are powerful.

I mean, words can do a lot more than sometimes we at least are thinking when

we're going to speak or tell people our opinion on something.

We think about it very casually, but words have a lot of weight to them.

Now, when it comes to words that people have spoken to you, I think this is relatively obvious.

You remember things your teacher said to you. You remember harsh words your

teacher said to you. Remember things your coach said to you or harsh words your coach said to you.

You remember things from those teachers, what they put on a paper,

even though most of them, I mean, just throwing this out there,

most of them do not actually remember your name. Yet we still remember what they said.

We remember words from our parents and our siblings.

And not just what they said, but for some of them, it's what they didn't say.

There's whole, your trajectory of your life could have gone in a lot of different

directions depending on what was said or not said.

You have met people or know people or have experienced the weight of wanting

to hear something from a father or a mother or a brother, a chance to reconcile

and find forgiveness to hear somebody say that they're proud of you and that they love you.

And because you didn't have that, there's this huge thing that has made a massive

difference in the kinds of relationships you can have going forward.

You don't need a degree from college to raise your hand and say,

are the words that have been said to you important?

And do they have an impact on your life?

But at the same time, we're not always as aware of the fact that our words have

that same weight with other people.

That even though we're very aware of every time someone left something unsaid

to us, we're not always as keen, not always as aware. I was just talking.

I'm just one of those people that's blunt. I just speak my mind.

We don't think about it. we can use them casually and casually used words can

lead to all kinds of heartache.

I wasn't meaning to not be encouraging. I just, you know, I just didn't, I don't know.

I didn't, I didn't think about it. And when we leave a word unsaid,

we rarely give it a second thought because we know what we intended.

But when words were never said to us, we know the damage that they cause.

Restraint is going to help us prevent us from making all kinds of mistakes.

Even more importantly, if you're like me, and I suspect many of you are,

is that the people that you are in closest relationship with and the topics

you are most passionate about are the ones that get you riled up the easiest, right?

You know, I don't get that riled up about changes in lacrosse rules.

I guess probably not going to do it for me at this point in my life. I'm not uninterested.

Like a curling and who's going to be in curling in the Olympics?

Never had a knockdown drag out fight over that, I bet.

I bet you've never left your Thanksgiving family dinner because of disagreements

on curling strategy for the Olympics.

But I bet you on the topics that matter most, there've been moments where anger

or feeling attacked began to raise up in you things where you began to feel more and more intense.

And if you're like most of us, as you feel more intense, the ability for you

to think clearly goes down.

My friends from the medical community will refer to this as fight,

flight, or freeze response.

It's that amygdala at the base of our brain when we're under threat that can

have a moment where the moments where we need reason and to think through something,

it's hard to see because we feel so strongly about it.

I know at least for me, when I was leading a church in South Carolina.

And I was super excited about this midweek program, put a lot of thought into

it. I was passionate about it. I was excited.

I show up at the meeting and I go from like, from zero to a hundred miles an

hour in about 10 seconds.

Like I'm just ready for it. And I'm just overriding this meeting such that,

that everyone else in the room eventually just like, it sounds like you already

know what you want to do. That's great. That's great. And it was really good.

The three people that showed up through that summer for that program were really blessed.

It did not go how I thought it was going to. And everyone else in that room

would later say, yeah, I didn't know if that was going to work.

It's like, why didn't you say something?

And it's like, well, you seem really, you know, like intense about it.

We were trying to say it, but my mind wasn't really listening.

That there are moments as your emotion begins to go up, that your own ability

to think clearly gets a little cloudy because you're angry, but it's because

you care so much that you don't think so well.

This is not a defect of the human brain or you specifically.

It's the way you were design because it has serious and necessary benefits.

If one of you has a kid who falls into Lake Gaston, that's not the time for

your brain to go, this is a good example why we need to do more teaching on water safety.

We don't really do enough to make sure the kids are properly securing those life jackets.

If you use the part of your brain that was thinking, right, that kid's in trouble

because your brain is designed that when you're in a panic situation, you jump in the pool.

You don't even think about whether or not you got a phone in your pocket and

it's probably not as waterproof as the manufacturer claimed.

You don't even care because everything in says, I wasn't thinking about consequences. I just jumped.

But the same gift that allows you to help in a situation that needs it,

in the conversations where you begin to feel intense, that disregard for consequences,

that hard to see this as anything other than black and white is the very thing

that causes you to hard to have the kinds of conversations you need to.

It's because you care so much that we think the least clearly.

So we're going to have three things that we're going to remember as we talk.

What does it mean to guard your heart, particularly in those conversations that

are the most intense or sensitive or get you riled up?

And the three things we're going to have are notice, name, and navigate.

You know, it's alliteration show. You know, it's like from a preacher.

You're going to remember it that way. We're going to remember notice, name, and navigate.

I'd love for you to be able to notice first. when I start to feel threatened,

when I start to feel angry in a conversation.

Fill in the blank. What have you noticed? Take a few moments to say,

what does it feel like? Does my, do my cheeks get hot?

Do I become sarcastic? Do I go into lawyer mode?

Do I start to withdraw from the conversation? Passive aggressive.

I'm going to say it. If you didn't see it, then I'm not going to talk anymore.

Do you, what do you do when you

start to feel like you, everything's going intense? What is your response?

Noticing what's happening and giving it a name. I think I'm starting to,

this is what I do when I start to feel attacked.

This is what I do when I start to feel angry. Just giving it a name and noticing

it gives you the capacity to navigate, to say, oof, I'm getting a little riled

up on this. We're just picking out what we're going to go out to eat on Friday.

And I'm like, I'm feeling pretty intense right now. I got to take a step back

and think, what in the world is going on? Why am I acting attacked on this one?

You never pick where you go out to eat. You never pick out. Well,

I would pick if you said something and now it's suddenly turned into a giant argument.

And noticing that before it gets out of hand gives you a chance to guard your

mouth and say, I need to take a step back.

I got to stop talking because this is getting intense.

Even more importantly, to begin to notice, name, and navigate with the people

in your household, close relationships with you have, siblings,

parents, children, and spouse.

When my wife feels unsafe, she fills in the blank.

When my kids and teens start to feel attacked, they what? They withdraw?

They start staring at the floor. And so what happens if you don't begin to notice

it is, is one person is responding by saying, this is very serious.

And the other one is feeling threatened.

And so they respond the way they do quiet withdrawal. And the parent says, ah.

So you're not even going to take this seriously, huh? Doesn't even matter to

you? I mean, this is all, this is exactly what I'm talking about.

No responsibility around here.

You're just going higher. And they're, of course, going more withdrawn.

So you go even more intense and going, I just don't even know why.

I don't even know why I try with you. And you stomp out.

When you begin to notice and name, begin to say, whoa, he's withdrawing right

now. I feel like I may be coming on a little strong.

I know him or her or them well enough to know that this is what they do when they feel threatened.

And that's my cue to take a step back.

When we name and notice, it allows us to navigate better saying,

you know what, let's just pause for a second and remember that we both care about each other.

Let's schedule this argument for another time.

We're going to look at this one. The first one is just that restraint,

just that pause before you say anything else, saying I need to put some brakes on my conversations.

None of us is emotionally immune from messing up our conversations we feel intense

about. So all of us need a flag in our mind saying, when I feel my cheeks getting

really hot, that is a flag to slow down and take a breath.

When I see this other person responding and when they're getting very sarcastic,

I know them well enough to know they're feeling hurt.

We need to pause and to slow down.

Those who guard their mouths and their tongues, those who just learn to go slower

when the situation calls for it, keep themselves from all kinds of calamity.

The next thing we're gonna see from Proverbs, And again, in our study guide,

as you go on your way out or in the app, we're going to ask you to look at,

there's actually many verses on speech in the book of Proverbs.

We're only picking a few this morning to walk through how we wrestle with the

wisdom the Bible offers.

It says this, the words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of

the wise brings healing.

That we all recognize, of course, there's the power that words have,

as we said in the last movement, but we also want to recognize that there's

great potential if we're careful to make sure that we're choosing words of healing,

for words can heal or harm, and so we have the capacity to choose healing.

We just have to be careful.

In the beginning, God said, let there be light, and there was light.

He said, let there be trees, and there was trees.

He said, let there be a hundred different species of mosquitoes in Virginia.

And I don't know why he said that, but there was, and now there's mosquitoes we all get to enjoy.

I don't know how that worked, but when God spoke, reality changed around it.

And while when I speak, I don't speak like that.

Become coffee is still water. Like it doesn't work. I mean, reality doesn't

change just because I want it.

But the truth is your words have the power to create reality that you can choose

at work by the questions you're asking to keep a conversation as an acquaintance

or to begin to open up and be more open and honest with that person.

If you feel like you could begin to say, by the words I'm choosing to say,

I want to know more about what you're going through.

Tell me more about this. You could go from an acquaintance to a friend.

Your marriages can drift closer together only by changing the words that they say.

Marriages can drift further apart by the words that you say.

You can create reality by what you're choosing to say.

And I think we need to remember that, that that is a reflection of the way God made you.

And so you need to use that power to heal and not to harm.

Or think about it another way. Do not write checks with your mouth that your

future self does not want to cash.

I'm just gonna say it. I'm sorry. Someone just needs to say it.

And the future you is going, I don't know, I can't believe I have to cash this.

Now there's no one left here. No one's listening to me or people are upset or

now we're trying to put things back together again.

We just live in a time where it seems that a lot of people struggle with the

positive capacity that their words have to heal.

And so I'm gonna offer a second movement here about what that looks like in conversation.

And it's this piece of advice, that because words of the wise have the power

to heal, when you find yourself getting in a riled up conversation,

a disagreement over politics, life, what you're doing for vacation,

whether or not goat milk really should be a latte, whatever it is,

when you find yourself in that situation, rather than trying to out-talk the other person.

Try to competitively out-listen the other person.

Try to out-listen them. I'm gonna listen so hard, I'm gonna be a professional.

I'm gonna go pro in listening because most of us, when we're in intense conversation,

I need to go harder so that you understand what I'm saying.

I'm gonna repeat it. I'm gonna say it more extreme. I'm gonna give you some

examples to show you what an idiot you're being. We just want to say and keep talking.

And what we're going to see here is for the words of the wise to bring healing more often than not.

It involves the discipline of aggressively listening.

Taking a moment to begin to ask other questions because curiosity disarms defensiveness.

If you found yourself in a number of things and a little bit like our opening,

the experience, you keep saying, I don't know why people get so stressed in

conversations with me. I don't know why it doesn't seem to be going deeper.

I don't know why we never talk about anything sensitive in my family.

It doesn't make any sense to me.

And then perhaps what you need to consider is that not just that experience,

but reflecting on that experience and saying, yeah, but how much am I really

listening when I'm in a conversation?

An acronym that you'll have heard me use before for active listening is AMP,

which means to first we start by asking questions, just asking lots of questions.

The moment we're finding resistance or friction or somebody struggling,

we move from a posture of talking at somebody to asking and listening for their response.

We begin to mirror, mirror meaning we say things that we're noticing in the other person.

You know, I noticed you got real quiet when we started to talk about planning for Christmas.

I noticed you got real quiet when we brought this up. And what that comment

says to somebody else is while you were talking or while you were here,

I was giving you my attention, not just coming up with my response.

That AMP, ask, mirror, paraphrase. Paraphrase is where you repeat back what somebody just said.

So you're worried about, what is it?

You're worried that if we don't have a budget that it's creating all this stress

over our finances? Is that what the issue is? Are you worried that?

And you repeat back what they say before you move on and begin to answer it.

In any of the arguments that you're having, that moment to paraphrase rather

than respond shows the other person, I really want to understand how you're

seeing things and where you're coming from.

And to prime, which is the last P in our AMP acronym, is to begin to say to

somebody else something that they may be struggling to say.

Like, it seems to me like you're really nervous about school starts.

It seems to me that like, I'm just throwing this out there. Is it possible that

you're really worried about and begin to offer up some possibilities?

Were you, did you have your feelings hurt that I didn't invite you as well or fill in the blank?

That by trying to outlisten to other people, you are saying,

I'm going to use my words carefully, but before I speak, I need to make sure

I understand the issues at question.

I can't even tell you how many times in church I've been there where the issue

that people think is the issue is not the actual issue.

That although on the surface, somebody's complaining about the temperature in

the room or they're complaining about this song, but underneath it is that feeling

that nobody really cares about me.

And as you begin to talk about it, no amount of adjusting the temperature,

this is why we're doing it right, and this is why the music is right,

are not going to solve the problem.

There's something about listening actively in a world that simply has become very poor at it.

Tell me the YouTube influencer that's most known, not for what they say,

but for listening like a pro.

I don't know any pundits on any political platform that are best known not for

putting their opinion out there and saying it in a provocative way.

I don't know anybody out there who's a major influencer, whose major influence

is listening well to other people, but we can be.

We need to be the kind of people that, since our words have the potential to

heal, listening is perhaps one of your most important tools that you can use.

Tell me, like, you're not a Christian. Oh, you're not a Christian.

Well, let me tell you why you should be. But before we launch into our explanation,

we ask the question, why?

Did you grow up in the church and leave? Have you never considered it?

Have you gone somewhere else?

Tell me about that. Tell me about what you do believe. Tell me about where you're

coming from. We ask and we listen because curiosity, right, disarms defensiveness.

Learning to ask better.

If I could go back and tell my 20-year-old self anything to do with the mouth,

in addition to learning to put a pause at critical moments of intensity,

would be you need to become more curious in conversation.

The last one I want to look at is Proverbs 25, 11. It says, like apples of gold

and settings of silver is a ruling rightly given.

The word ruling here is another translation for a word, a word.

And it's a word correctly fit, aptly given is like, well, it's like an apple

of gold in a setting of silver.

It's like fine jewelry. It's incredibly valuable if you find the right way to

speak the right word at the right time.

Having the truth is not in and of itself enough because the truth spoken wisely is what builds trust.

Truth spoken wisely is what builds trust.

The truth can be a little bit like a fire. And in a fireplace, it's super valuable.

It can make the house warm, can make everybody go around and try to sing Christmas

carols that we can't actually hold the tune to, whatever it is in your household.

Fire is very comforting and we all like it, but that same fire...

In the living room, just six feet away, is an entirely different conversation.

Like, it's not pleasant at all. It's a 911 call.

It's a, we should have put the grate in front of the fire after all.

Like a fire in the wrong location causes all kinds of damage.

What we have to be careful is not only that we speak the truth,

but we ask ourselves a series of questions.

That we're going to go out into culture and we have, whether it's the gospel

or things that we're passionate about, ask ourselves first, is this the right time?

That when we're talking about using the power of our words, wise words at the

right time can make such an impact.

And if you are a parent listening to this, going back to school,

let me tell you, that time is almost never when you pick up your kids from school, almost never.

Like at the end where they have spent a huge amount of emotion,

a huge amount of energy, they've been on all day. They've had assignments up, down, high, low.

That is not the time to say, since you got you in the car, I want to talk about

you leaving your bicycle outside last weekend.

You know, it's not very responsible. Like that's not the right time for it.

It's just the wrong moment that people, when they're tired, are not listening.

What they need to hear as they're coming back in is, hey, what was the ups today?

What was the downs? How's it going?

You know, like we're out with we're now behind enemy lines a little bit here.

Tell me, like, how did it go? You're there to be an encouragement the right time.

I can't even say how many married couples I know that took there took that fight

to nuclear, mostly because it took place after 10 p.m. It was starting off as

where are we going to go for Christmas and ended with silence and the couch.

I don't even know how we got there. And part of it isn't that you're somehow

worse at marriage than anyone else.

It's that newsflash. When you're tired and hungry, you may not be your best self.

One of the things, the value of re-engage or some of our other programs about

marriage counseling or pre-marriage counseling is to teach you to fight like

a pro and pros schedule their fights. They don't just show up on the street at random.

They say Saturday, nine o'clock, coffee in hand, budget conversation.

Man, that's a pro move right there because you want to be both ready for it

and have the energy and kind of

emotionally ready for a very tough conversation. Is this the right time?

But the next thing to ask is, am I the right person though? Too often around

church, somebody has truth in hand and finds an unsuspecting person to unload it on.

I grew up around a church. I lived on her street too.

My street was called Morgan Court after Miss Morgan, who was at my church.

She taught grammar, which makes so much sense for her personality.

And although she was sweet in her own sort of kind of way, She also felt it

was her calling to inform young ladies whether or not their dress code were up to God's standards.

And she would find them and say, you know, I just think if you're going to come

here wearing that, you're not going to be able to honor God.

And she would be sure to point out the dress that was too short or the straps

that were too thin or this, that, or the other thing.

She just felt like God should do it. And I just need to tell them because they should know.

She would find young men who had baseball caps on and say, you know,

if you're just going to disgrace God like that. I don't know why you're going

to, why you even bother praying.

The problem is not that there wasn't some truth to what she was saying.

The problem is she wasn't the right person to give it. Am I in a relationship with that person?

Are they going to be able to hear this as anything other than a criticism and an attack?

Do I have any sense that that person has any sense that I care about them and

have shown over time that I want more from them than just to know that I am

right? I may not be the right person.

More often than not, when I've been in church and there's a successful intervention

we need to make with somebody, We're going to find a friend or a community group

or a person who stands in that right relational position because being not just at the right time,

but the right person can make all the difference.

And the last question is to say, is this the right tone? Am I giving this the appropriate tone?

Am I coming at this from the right angle of what I really want to see or what's

important and why I think this matters to us?

And I don't want us to retreat in the other direction because as our culture

has gotten more intense, some of us have overreacted the other way.

And what we've basically said is, I don't want to say anything about anything.

Like, you just hang out. I don't want to fight about anything.

I don't know what's going on out there, but I can tell you this.

I don't want to be a part of it.

I mean, I was driving on Jefferson the other day, and there was these political signs going.

They were not like slogans to help you understand the situation.

Just profanity. Just the harshest

statements of knowing that nobody's going to be persuaded by this.

Either if you agree with it, you would already agree with it.

But just harsh and vindictive. And I'm worried, though, that there can be a

group of people who see that and think, well, I'm not going to do that.

And so I will respond by saying very little of substance to the people around me.

I'm just never going to point out to my brother that I think maybe he's having

too much to drink or I'm never going to point out to someone else.

I don't know if that's going to work.

You're going into parenting your kids as teenagers and it seems like you're

setting yourself up for some real friction.

There are times where we need to speak a tough word, but at the right time with

the right person and the right tone, we come at it with the heart where we genuinely

care about the other person.

We look through this, and I'm reminded of the words from Emily Dickens' that

says, tell all the truth, but tell it slant.

Tell all the truth, but not full on.

She goes, like lightning is eased. When you explain lightning to children,

you can ease it with explanation kind.

The truth must dazzle gradually, or each one of us would end up going blind.

Like, we have to be careful as we're trying to help somebody else,

that even though we might be passionate about something, to say,

I need to do this in a way that is in their interest, not just what I need to say.

Now, throughout this series, we do want to live a life where we have less regrets going forward.

But the reason that's possible is because of the meal we're about to share together.

Because without this, we would look at the damage that we had caused in the

past or that was done to us.

The opportunities that we missed as a parent, the opportunities that we missed

in an earlier and now broken relationship, we could look at all that and simply

just continue to live in regret this feeling of powerlessness,

knowing there's nothing we can do to change it,

but the guilt and the shame that comes from saying,

I can't believe I've gotten this old and I'm only now figuring out this truth.

Because as you gather around this table, it's the knowledge that God does not

desire any of us to live in guilt and shame.

That because of God sent his own son, Jesus, to die on the cross for you,

so that when we talk about living with less regrets in the future,

it's because we've been set free from our regrets in the past.

That God does not desire you to have shame. He's not just wanting you to go

back over the past, to like rake you over the coals a little bit.

It's because God desires you to walk toward life and toward.

And so we've got tables on the front and on the side. Daniel's going to be playing

some music in just a moment.

You don't have to be a member of this church. It's not our table, it's Christ's table.

And we are all here by his invitation to take this bread in our hand and knowing

no matter what lessons you are learning now or have learned, it is done from the space,

of knowing that God, your heavenly father has wrapped his arms around you and

say, I love you and you're forgiven.

That you're going to take that bread and you're going to remember the body that

was broken on the cross that makes forgiveness and ongoing reality in the life of his people.

And you'll take this cup and you'll remember that God desired not only to forgive

you, but to be the blood of a new covenant to invite you into relationship.

But it doesn't stop here.

It also means that because of that, it means we can take messages that God is

giving us in this place and go and live differently forward.

There are people that need to hear your words of forgiveness and your words of encouragement.

There are people who need your words of healing and our culture is desperate

for people who know how to talk about important things without it devolving

into arguments and provocation.

Then we're gonna also ask God for wisdom on the speech that we have over the

next four weeks. God, may my words speak life.

May my words call people closer to you. God, may I give hope in a time where

people desperately need it.

If you've never yet made that decision, if you're coming right to this point

in the service and you are filled with regret because you feel crippled by the

shame and the past and mistakes that were made, I'm gonna be down here at the front of this cross.

Mark's gonna be up here. We would love to pray with you or to talk with you

about taking that next or even that first step in your faith journey and baptism.

We've got everything set up back here.

So wherever you are this morning, we're going to ask God to bless and to move

in us as we move toward this time of communion. Would you pray with me?

Music.