Relational Success: Make Allowance for Faults (Stewarding a Relational Revolution Pt. 6) | 09-06-26

Well, we are continuing our series Relational Success.

This is part six.

We have one more message in this series that we'll get to in a few weeks.

Because next Sunday, Pastor Melody is preaching.

Come on, somebody.

Y'all get ready.

Y'all get ready.

And then the week after that, Pastor Denny and Deonza Duran will be here ministering to us.

And then I'll be back the week after that.

We'll finish up this series.

I think.

I think.

Always be led by the Spirit.

Amen.

Matthew 22, 37, our springboard text for this entire series.

Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

We've talked extantly about that scripture and what it means.

We'll continue to talk about that.

But then we have the other one, which is Galatians 5 22.

But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives, say controls.

When the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce in us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

There is no law against these things.

So very similar, these two passages end in a very similar truth, which is on all, on these hang all the law and the prophets.

That means the whole thing can be summed up in those, in that one command, which is two parts of one command.

In the same way, what he's saying here is when you submit control of your life to the Holy Spirit, he is going to, by his power and his strength, he's going to produce these fruits of your life, and it trumps every law that there is.

It is guaranteed.

If they're not there, you know why they're not there.

And if they are there, you know why they are there.

And there's no exceptions.

There is no law against those things.

So we've been in light of the fact that the fruit of the Spirit is what makes healthy relationships possible.

Without it, you can't have healthy relationships.

And without healthy relationships, what we've been talking about is you fail in life.

Healthy relationships are what relational success looks like.

Success, true success, is relational success.

And in light of that truth, we've been talking about that now for six weeks.

The biblical principles that govern relational success and relational health have to be some of the most important principles that we can know and learn and apply to our life, right?

And they're all in here.

God doesn't leave it up to us to figure it out.

He gives us the test and then he gives us the answers.

Don't you like that kind of a teacher?

I love that kind of a teacher.

And so the first thing that we talked about was taking relational responsibility.

How your relational health is your responsibility.

There's no victims.

You are fully empowered to make sure that you conduct your life in a way that prioritizes building healthy relationships and robust community.

If you end up isolated and alone and you don't have people to celebrate with you, to grieve with you, to support you in your time of need, that is your fault.

Period.

Nobody else is to blame for that.

The second thing we talked about is number two, to forgive and apologize often.

The necessity of humbling ourselves and forgiving people who have offended us, forgiving people who have hurt us, and apologizing when, not if, when we offend somebody, when we hurt somebody, we humble ourselves and we apologize.

And listen, we forgive and we apologize often.

You have to do it often because it's happening often.

Come on, you've been alive long enough to know that.

Now, we talked about, and this is important because we're going to continue some of these conversations, but we talked about how the word forgive and the word blessing are actually parallel in the Greek.

They're synonymous with each other.

They go together.

And so when you are forgiving people of their sins and forgiving people of their offenses against you, you're forgiving people, you're actually aligning yourself with blessing.

You're aligning yourself with blessing.

And when you harbor offense, the word offense parallels the word curse.

Okay?

So when we when we live a life of being offended and being hurt and hurt feelings and all and we turn our hearts away from people because we get offended, we actually align ourselves with the curse that is not what God wants on our life.

There's blessing and there's curse.

There's blessings and there's curses, right?

We want to be blessed, not cursed.

And so it's very important that we release offenses and that we forgive people and that we make it easy for them to release offenses that they have against us so that we can be blessed, so that we can all move forward together following Jesus.

Amen.

Number three was put trust in the gap.

Put trust in the gap.

That was last week.

We talked about gaps are just areas of an important relationship that have to be intentionally steward to preserve the health and longevity of the relationship.

Talking about how you can either put suspicion in the gap or you can put trust in the gap.

Okay, those are the categories.

You can put negative things in the gap, you can put positive things in the gap.

If you put assumptions in the gap, that's going to create the atmosphere of that relationship.

Okay?

They're mad at me.

They must not like me.

Okay, all those negative assumptions, the tormentor comes and he comes to the gaps in our relationships where there's distance, where there's attitudes, where there's disappointment, where there's all these different things, unmet expectations, whatever it is, he comes to that gap and he puts all kinds of suspicious negative uh thoughts and opinions and assumptions in there.

Why?

Because he wants to destroy the relationship.

And if you let that tape play in your head, you will never have healthy relationships.

You have to shut that off.

Say, shut up, devil.

I'm not gonna think that way.

I'm gonna believe the best about that person.

They don't hate me, they're not being rude to me, they're not rejecting me, and you fight, that's warfare.

We're gonna get into more of that in our next series, but there's warfare involved in the invisible realm of our thought life.

We got to put trust in the gap.

We gotta put grace in the gap.

We gotta put love in the gap and assume the best and give the benefit of the doubt and all of those things.

You'll usually not be wrong when you do that.

And when you put suspicion in the gap, you're usually always wrong.

Now, here's what we're talking about today.

The fourth thing, there's five.

This is number four.

Make allowance for faults.

Make allowance for faults.

Now, this is different than taking relational responsibility.

I think taking relational responsibility includes all the things.

It includes forgiving and apologizing, it includes putting trust in the gap, it includes making allowance for faults, but it's different than forgiving and apologizing.

It's different than putting trust in the gap.

And let me actually say this because I didn't start this series because I just thought, man, that's something that I know a lot about.

I'm really good at teaching.

I have a lot of content on this series.

I've I've preached and taught it for years and years and years.

Let's just do that.

That'll be a good one.

Let's just do that for the summertime leading into the fall.

That's not how I decide what I'm going to be preaching and teaching in the church, okay?

You better be glad for that.

I pray and I seek the Lord and I submit to Him and I say, God, what do we need to hear from you as a church?

I believe this is a real-time word for our church.

And the more I sit down with people and talk and talk through challenges and talk through issues and talk through problems and talk through the tensions of life, the more I'm realizing these are prophetic, powerful words for our church.

And I want to encourage you, if you've missed one of these, go back and listen to it because it is imperative.

I do believe that the Lord is taking the basket off of the lamp of our church and that we're going to begin to grow.

And I know that God set us apart in this first year and kind of hid us on purpose.

And this is some of the reason why.

Before He sends new people here, especially before he sends lost people here, he's got to make sure that we're getting this stuff right.

I'm not saying that's the condition of our church.

What I'm saying is this is his will for our church.

This is his will for our life, that we are operating in these things aggressively, continually operating in these principles.

Then I believe God will say, okay, I can send people to this church.

They're going to help people untangle the chaos of their relational life and their relational lack of health.

I believe it's at the center of God's heart.

So make allowance for people's faults.

The other thing I would say about this message is you've probably never heard this preached in your entire life.

And I understand that these messages are a little bit different, and they're in the nature of how practical they are.

How practical they are.

And that's, I think, the point.

So Colossians 3.13 says, make allowance for each other's faults.

Now, this is one of those scriptures that doesn't need interpretation.

It doesn't need exegesis at all.

Make allowance for each other's faults and forgive anyone who offends you.

Remember the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.

Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony.

What's the goal?

Unity.

How do we get there?

Making allowance for each other's faults, forgiving anyone who offends you, right?

Keeping things in perspective, and clothing ourselves with love, which creates unity.

Ephesians 4, verse 2.

Ephesians 4:2

Always be humble and gentle.

Be patient with each other.

Listen, making allowance for each other's faults because of your love.

Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace.

It's pretty obvious as you read the New Testament writings, the New Covenant writings, the foundational scriptures of the church.

It was a focus, it was central to who they were and what they were doing, that you get along with each other, that you love each other, that you live your lives together, that we love and serve and give and forgive and be patient and we unify and we forgive and we allow faults and we are gracious and merciful.

He wants us to love one another.

And I believe he has called us to love one another as he said himself in John and as he prayed to the Father that he wants us to love each other the way he has loved us.

What did he do to show his love for us?

He gave up his life for us, he sacrificed stuff for us, he endured suffering and hardship for us.

He expects us to do the same for each other.

Okay, so make allowance for faults.

That word allowance is provision, right?

If you uh give your kids an allowance, did you ever get an allowance when you were a kid?

I don't do an allowance, I let my kids live.

That's what I do.

I let them live.

That's their allowance.

You can live and breathe.

That's what you can do.

There's your allowance.

But an allowance is provision.

What he's literally saying here is put a deposit.

Make provision for the faults of others.

Make room for people to have faults.

It's a command.

So what is a fault?

A fault is defined as a defect or an imperfection, a character weakness or a mild offense, to make a mistake or to error.

It also means to pin blame on for a mistake, right?

Whose fault was that?

We love doing that.

We love trying to find out whose fault when something goes wrong, whose fault was that?

But a fault is just something about me that at some point as we walk in relationship together, as we build a friendship, it's something about me that is going to negatively impact you.

Something about me that's going to negatively impact you.

Something about me that's going to make it challenging to be my friend.

It's something that could make being friends with me or being under my leadership difficult at times.

It's something about you that negatively affects the people in your life who you are in relationship with.

Now listen, this is vital to the existence and the health of the important relationships that God intends for us to form in order to grow you and I into the people He has called us to be.

And I want to make a note here that it doesn't say make allowance for the sins of others.

It says make allowance for each other's faults.

A fault is something that might cause frustration, a fault is something that might hurt, a fault is something that might bother you.

It's going to negatively impact you, but it's not necessarily a sin.

Sins have to be repented of and forgiven, not allowed.

Allowing sin is not a biblical construct.

Allowing faults is a biblical construct.

And a fault is something about someone that negatively impacts you and may never change.

How many of you have been married for a little while?

You understand what I'm talking about.

Despite how hard you've tried, it remains.

Amen.

It may be a personal weakness or an area of their life that they're not as healthy as they need to be.

It could be a bad habit.

It could be a part of their personality or temperament that rubs against your personality and temperament the wrong way.

It could be how they were raised, the family construct that they were raised in.

It could be something from the family culture that they were raised in.

It could be idiosyncrasies and habits that annoy you.

You know, I've been a part of a lot of uh job interviews over the years where I was hiring someone or I was on a panel of people that were tasked with helping someone make a good hire.

And I always used what's called the five C's of hiring.

As I'm interviewing them and as uh they're talking and answering questions, I'm always looking for these five things, and I'll write them down on my notes, and as they're talking, I'll make notes on these five things.

And number one is communication, number two is competency.

Number three is character, number four is chemistry, and number five is cost.

Cost.

Not talking about their salary.

How many of you know an employee costs you more than money?

And a friend will cost you more in different areas as well.

One thing you have to understand when hiring someone is no matter how incredible they are, they can hit every mark that you're looking for, but make no mistake about it, they will cost you something.

They will cost you something.

There's a price to pay for every person that you bring into the organization.

Sometimes you don't know what that cost is until you get further down the road in the relationship with them, but at some point you have to decide if you can afford to pay the price that that relationship requires.

In the same way, every relationship you choose will uh to be in, it will cost you something.

The question you have to answer with each relationship is are you willing to pay what it will cost to be friends with that person?

The more unhealthy they are, the more it will cost you.

But you can be sure that even healthy people will cost you something because everyone has faults.

To have a fault simply means to not be perfect.

Now listen, I'm not advocating here for staying in toxic, abusive, manipulative relationships.

Those things are sin.

Uh sin always leads to death.

You you cannot have someone who is living by their flesh, who is willfully, habitually sinning against you, and and at some point you gotta go, okay, I'm forgiving them, but I've got to put some boundaries in place, or maybe even cut this thing completely off.

But I'm not advocating for staying in those types of relationships.

There are sins and unhealthy behaviors that you will have to lovingly confront that you cannot simply make allowance for, okay?

And you'll know if you're supposed to continue in relationships with that person based on how they handle conversations like that.

Okay, so if there's if there's sin and there's things that's like, okay.

We got to talk about this.

Um, you have to be able to have healthy conversations.

We talked about this in um taking relational responsibility.

We talked about initiate, reciprocate, communicate, evaluate, right?

So clear communication is the key to healthy relationships.

And if there's issues, they have to be talked about.

Now, I firmly believe, firmly believe, with great conviction, that there is no relationship issue or problem that cannot be talked through.

No matter how bad, if two people are willing to talk and they want to preserve the relationship, they want to improve the relationship, there is no issue or problem that cannot be talked through.

Any relational issue can be resolved with simple, honest conversation and a little bit of humility.

Amen.

So if you're in a relationship where there are issues and one or more parties is not willing to talk rationally about the issues and recognize their part in that relationship that is stuck, their or you know, their contribution to the challenge in that relationship, uh, sadly, that relationship will probably never change.

Two people have to be willing.

This is with marriage counseling, with friendships, with partnerships.

It takes two people bringing humility and saying, hey, let's talk about this and let's work this out.

If one of them is not, that relationship will not change.

It will be stuck.

You can stay in it and you can, you know, navigate that, but you got you have to decide what that's gonna look like.

So we'll talk actually more about that in uh the last sermon of this series.

So while closely connected, this is different than forgiving and apologizing.

It's different than putting trust in the gap.

What we are exhorted by Scripture to do is simply allow people to have thoughts, to make room for the things in the relationship that negatively affect you.

Let me just say this Do you have a friend that negatively affects you?

Yeah?

Do you have a spouse that negatively affects you?

Don't raise your hand.

Don't raise your hand.

You raise your hand.

Cameron raise his hand.

All right, listen, listen.

Every one of us do, okay?

A hundred percent, a hundred percent of the time.

So then if that's true and it is, would this one principle applied to your life change your life?

Would it change your marriage?

Would it change your relationships?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Psalms 19, verse 12, the psalmist here makes a very human cry of the heart.

Psalms 19:12

In verse 12, he says, But who can discern their own errors?

Forgive my hidden faults.

Keep your servant also from willful sins.

May they not rule over me.

Then I will be blameless, innocent of great transgression.

See, it delineates a difference between hidden faults and willful sins.

So listen to me.

Stop trying to find the perfect friend who isn't going to negatively impact you.

They don't exist.

I'll even say it like this.

If you can't make allowance for faults, you won't have any friends.

You won't have any friends.

Your standards are too high.

So here's some freedom built into this principle.

Stop trying to change people that have faults.

Stop trying to change them.

It doesn't say identify their faults and change them.

It says allow them.

Allow them.

Make room.

Make provision.

Have a budget for the faults of others.

Now, we're going to shift a little here because I believe that it can be dangerous.

This whole concept of faults and not allowing people to have faults can get dangerous and actually becomes a strategy of the enemy.

Realistically, the enemy knows that the people whose lives are sinful and chronic, you're not going to stay in relationships with those people.

Okay.

You're going to find an off-ramp somewhere.

You're going to not be available when they want to hang out and stuff like that.

And that's good.

That's not a bad thing.

So really the danger, the way that the enemy can divide relationships isn't from willful sins, it's from hidden faults.

It's from hidden faults.

And I want to talk just a second about John the Baptist and Jesus.

I think we get a little bit of a picture here into some of this.

Now, like a lot of our relationships, John, so context for John the Baptist and Jesus, probably everybody is pretty familiar with that.

But John the Baptist was Jesus' older cousin, and he had a ministry call on his life because his father was a priest, but he broke the path of the religious path of being a priest, and he launched a new ministry because he had a different call on his life.

And the Bible says that he had the spirit of Elijah.

Jesus actually said John the Baptist had the spirit of Elijah.

And it was a spirit to make straight the way of the Lord.

His ministry was to get people to repent and change what they believed to be true about God so that it would make a path for them to receive the Messiah when the Messiah would come.

Now, what they believed the Messiah would be and do is another story.

So one day John's baptizing his disciples in the river, and Jesus walks in, and uh the Holy Spirit descends on him like a dove.

And that was a sign to John because God had spoken to John and said, Whom you see the Spirit descend on like a dove is the chosen one.

And you're to announce that person.

And so that happened twice.

It wasn't just when he was baptized and he came out of the water that the spirit descended on like a dove.

John saw it before he even baptized him.

And so he says, This, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, right?

And then his sentiment was now you need to follow him.

I must become less and less, and he must become greater and greater.

And John wasn't wrong.

But like a lot of relationships, John starts off really clear about who Jesus was.

And what we see is somewhere something crept in, and John begins to think differently about who, uh about Jesus, who he once had such clear revelation from God about.

Okay.

So he had clear revelation about who Jesus was and how I'm supposed to relate to him and who he is in my life, right?

And then over time, something crept in and it changed the way that John felt a little bit about Jesus.

How many of you had a relationship?

Do that?

Started off excitement.

This is God.

It's so clear.

God's given us revelation of who you are in our life.

You're who we've been praying for.

You're a blessing.

We're gonna do life together.

We're covenant friends, right?

And then time goes on.

Faults start rubbing, offenses, hurt feelings start happening.

All of a sudden, God changed his mind, apparently, about this relationship.

And I'm gonna turn my heart away from this person.

And listen to this Matthew 11, verse 2.

Matthew 11:2

And when John had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said to him, to Jesus, Are you the coming one, or do we need to look for another?

Jesus answered and said to them, Go and tell John the things which you hear and see.

The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are clean, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.

And blessed is he who is not offended because of me.

Now, what Jesus was actually doing here was quoting Isaiah 35 to John's disciples, and he knew that John knows what Isaiah 35 says about the promised one.

So he's basically pointing him back to what God said.

He's pointing him back to Scripture, not what he thought the Messiah was going to look like.

So there was a gap, a misunderstanding, a disappointment, an unmet expectation in John somewhere where he said, This is the promised one, this is the Messiah, but what was his definition and expectation of the Messiah?

Because most of the Jews, their definition of the Messiah, and we know John got one thing right, uh, he was uh a beast at like demolishing a religious spirit, and that that was a good thing, but I think he still had an expectation of the Messiah as a political ruler and and not what Jesus was walking in.

And so what what Jesus does is he takes John back to Scripture and says, What does the word say?

And what's interesting is when you look back at what he told his disciples to go and tell John this, the blind see, the lame walk, leopards, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, dead are raised, right?

He adds something that wasn't in Isaiah 35.

Blessed is he who is not offended in me, who is not offended by me.

Right?

Remember what lines up with each other?

Blessing and forgiveness.

Right?

Here he puts those together here.

Blessed is he who is not offended.

In other words, flip it around.

Cursed is he who is offended by me.

And so here you have this situation with these cousins where there were some things, right?

There were some faults.

John, John obviously got disillusioned and got confused because of how Jesus, what Jesus was doing and what Jesus wasn't doing.

Somewhere it it there was a gap.

And John was faulting Jesus for that.

And so he sends his disciples and says, hey, and here's something else that's interesting.

Um that after John announced Jesus, John did not become a follower of Jesus.

You ever notice that?

Did you ever thought about that?

John kept baptizing his own disciples, but he pointed people toward Jesus.

He did that.

He did what he did what the Spirit of Elijah was on him to do.

He made a way for the Lord.

And he pointed people, and many, all almost all of the disciples of Jesus were actually disciples of John first, who had been baptized by John, and then they then they followed Jesus.

But John also kept baptizing people and making disciples.

Merit said that, oh, someone heard that Jesus is baptizing more disciples than John now.

And I don't know why that is.

Maybe that was always God's God's plan for John and he was doing what he was supposed to do.

But I always thought it was interesting that John didn't become a follow.

I mean, I would think, I don't know what I would do, but I'd like to think that I would have folded up my little baptismal ministry and said, I'm following Jesus now.

Like that's what I'm called to do.

And so somewhere there was a somewhere there was a gap, somewhere the faults of Jesus.

Now, if John was offended at Jesus, was it because Jesus sinned against him?

Well, of course not.

We know that's not possible.

Jesus was sinless.

Yet Jesus was pointing out the fact that John was offended.

So it wasn't a sin.

Maybe it was a fault.

You think Jesus might have had some faults?

Some character things, some shortcomings as a human being.

I believe that he did.

And I certainly believe that the way he was carrying out obedience to the Father didn't line up with what John thought it was supposed to look like, and that created a gap.

And John faulted Jesus for that, right?

Are you the one?

Or should we look for another because stuff's not lining up here?

Thankfully, Jesus points him back to the word and back to not being offended.

So he had expectations of the Messiah that Jesus didn't live up to.

Jesus was at fault for not living up to John's expectations, and John had a choice to make be offended or surrender his opinions and expectations.

And your friendships work the same way, especially friendships with leaders and spiritual leaders.

The number one strategy of the enemy against your destiny is to get you closed off to specific people, especially spiritual leadership, by finding faults in their lives.

Then, when needed, using those faults to discredit their voice, the importance of their relationship to you, and the authority that they have, and you dismiss how they challenge areas of weakness and compromise.

And we use the faults of people to discredit their voice to give us an out, to give us a loophole in the accountability that God's called us to have with those leaders and those friends.

I believe a good friend should provide accountability just like a good leader.

Here's the reality: you desperately, I desperately need leadership and accountability.

It's absolutely vital in order for you and I to be and do everything that God's called us to be and do.

That's why I believe the number one attack of the enemy against you will always be to bring division in your relationships.

Always.

Especially, especially the relationships that exist to help you grow spiritually and develop into the person that Christ Jesus laid hold of you to develop into.

You're not going to become that person without people.

All he needs for you, the enemy needs for you, is to get offended and to get your feelings hurt, and then he can sabotage every relationship needed for you and your family to flourish and thrive, and he doesn't have to use sinful people to do it.

Just imperfect ones, just flawed ones.

Just like you and I.

The enemy will influence you to get into a situation where you have no leaders in your life.

And if he cannot keep you from having them, he will keep you from actually connecting and submitting to them so that it's just pseudo-leadership.

It's just the appearance of covering and discipleship.

So here's how God's divine, here's how God's authority works.

Great book, undercover, John Bevere, read it.

It will change your life.

God's so first level of authority, you have God's divine authority.

Everybody is submitted to God's divine authority.

Then you have civil authority.

God establishes civil authority.

That could be our political leaders, police, fire, anybody in civil uh positions of civil authority.

Schools, teachers, coaches, uh, you know, even bosses and stuff like that in work.

Those are things that are needed, those levels of authority civilly are needed for society to work.

Then there is delegated authority.

So God's divine authority, civil authority, delegated authority.

Delegated authority are leaders, friends, and disciples.

Leaders, friends, and disciples.

Leaders would include your parents, people like that in your life, who are elders to you, who are leaders to you.

That would include anybody that's ever a leader in any way, including teachers, coaches, bosses, um, you know, spiritual leaders like like that.

And then there are friends, so leaders would be people that help you grow.

Let me say it like people that help you grow.

People that have the ability to hold you accountable.

And then there are friends, and then there are disciples, or you could say it like this: people you help grow.

Mentees, disciples.

I like Bible language, so I use that.

Leaders, friends, disciples.

Okay, those are the relationships that are imperative, all of which are going to have faults.

And hear me out.

Satan will anoint you to be a fault finder.

He will cause you to find faults in people and then use that for you to justify why you shouldn't initiate with them and have accountability with them.

And how many of you know we don't need much help with that?

We don't even need his anointing.

We can't do that pretty well on our own, but he will anoint it.

I believe God will anoint you to make allowance for them if you'll let them.

Allow them the command of scripture, the ordinance of scripture.

Allow them, allow them, allow them, permit them.

Listen, he didn't say ignore them.

So this is how I want to kind of land this message, and then we'll have a minute to go back into worship just to reflect and let the Holy Spirit minister and speak to us.

But he didn't say ignore them, he said allow them.

Track with me here.

Take a deep breath.

Dial in.

It's okay to recognize them.

You can't allow them if you don't know what they are.

You need to know the faults of your leaders.

You need to know the faults of your friends, you need to know the faults of the people that you are called to be in relationship with.

You're going to have to recognize them and you're going to have to talk about them.

You're going to have to figure out how to allow the faults.

You will have to be strategic and creative, especially depending on who you're dealing with.

You're going to have to be really strategic if you're friends with me.

You can't act like they don't exist and you can't not talk about them because some insecure leader told you that that was gossip.

So what are their faults?

That's one of the questions you need to ask about your friends, about your spouse, about your kids, about your leaders.

You need to know what their faults are because you're going to have to come up with a plan on how you're going to allow them.

What the dynamics are going to look like in order to allow those things?

How do you position yourself and operate according to their faults for the preservation of the relationship?

Another question is in what ways do they negatively impact me?

Here's another question What are things about them that cause frustration?

You need to talk about it.

As a leader in your life, I give you permission to talk bad about me behind my back.

I love saying that, by the way, because I've said that for years to people, and they're just like, the devil.

I give you permission to talk bad about me behind my back.

I give you permission to strategically talk about my faults and shortcomings with other people.

You know what that is?

That's empowering.

That's the heart and the attitude that we should all have with our friends and with our family and with our leaders.

Now I know that's a shocking statement, so let me clarify.

Obviously, not in a malicious, gossiping way, but you have to be able to talk to trusted friends about challenges with leadership and friendships.

You have to.

Number one, with a heart of intercession, strengthens, with uh with a heart of intercession that strengthens unity, or a heart of accusation which chips away at unity and brings division.

It's the only two ways that can happen.

The conversation is the same, the heart is what is different.

The heart is what makes it a positive, unifying conversation, or a negative, divisive conversation.

How many of you know the Pharisees always wanted Jesus to make it get particular and get all specific about the action and what was Jesus always doing?

No, no, no, no.

It's the heart.

It's about the heart.

It's not about the action, it's about the heart.

The heart is what makes it a positive unifying conversation or a negative divisive conversation.

So here's some more questions that you can ask yourself.

Are you trying, if you want to be careful, because I do believe you have to be careful with this, okay?

Because there is a thin line in your heart that can take this conversation the wrong way, that could take this grace that I'm extending you the wrong way.

Are you trying to figure out how you can submit to and work with leadership in light of their faults?

Or why you shouldn't have to submit to or work with leadership because of their faults?

See the difference there?

Here's a similar statement pertaining to just friendships.

Are you trying to discuss how you can work together to be a friend to someone in light of their faults?

Or are you figuring out how to justify pushing them out of the relationship because of their faults?

That's divisive.

Are you building a case against them to justify not listening to them?

Or are you building a case for them to find the right way to be under their leadership?

Here's another question.

Are you seeking to esteem their voice or dismiss it?

Are you seeking to validify the friendship or dismiss the friendship?

How many of you know?

We all need accountability.

And we need people that know who God's called us to be and what God's called us to do, questioning us and helping us stay the course.

Okay, so this is how we're gonna end this conversation.

Let's talk a little bit about gossip.

We love to talk about gossip.

We love to gossip about gossip.

Gossip is a very misunderstood uh biblical thing.

We know that the Bible condemns gossip, it speaks against gossip.

It is a sin that has to be repented of.

So, how is it that what I'm telling you to do isn't gossip?

Because you've probably been told that talking negatively about somebody that's not in the room is gossip.

And that's not gossip, not even close.

So when you study what gossip is in the Greek and in the Hebrew, because it is a concept that is all throughout Scripture, gossip is, you won't even find the word gossip in the King James, for instance.

It's the word whisperer.

It's the word whisperer.

And whisperer means to slander in secret or to tell people's secrets or private business to people that it doesn't concern.

Without permission, without empowerment.

Now, slander is a similar word, and it the Bible condemns slandering as well, and it's in the definition of gossip or whisperer.

So, what does slanderer mean?

Slander means to deceive by spreading falsehoods.

To deceive by spreading falsehoods.

So there's an element of gossiping that isn't just talking about someone negatively when they're not in the room, it's actually talking about them negatively with the intent to deceive somebody against that person.

Another word that is used synonymously with gossip, whisperer is tailbearer.

Tailbearer literally means tongue wagger.

It means to talk too much.

It literally means to travel around telling private and slanderous information about people, to travel around, to bounce around like that's your hobby, that's your entertainment, is to just bounce around from person to person to person, telling other people's stuff and spreading falsehoods that are meant to deceive and bring division, meant to cause people's commitment to wane from that relationship, meant to turn someone's heart away from a relationship.

That is sin.

Another word is backbiter.

Backbiter.

That means defamation, speaking evil of an innocent party.

So talking critically and maliciously about someone to someone else in an attempt to change how they see and relate to that person.

That is what gossip is.

Psalms 41, verse 6, David knew a thing about this.

Psalms 41:6

And he says, They visit me as if they were my friends, but all the while they gather gossip, and when they leave, they spread it everywhere.

That's gossip.

Someone who pretends to be your friend to try to get information from you, to bombard you with questions, to get information from you, to get stories and secrets, and then they leave and they spread it everywhere.

All who hate me whisper about me.

Imagining the worst.

Think about that.

Think about putting trust in the gap or suspicion in the gap, right?

So there you have kind of all the different definitions of gossip rolled up into just two verses.

But essentially what he's saying is these people hate me.

These people don't love me.

They're not for me.

And so that's the big difference between gossip and having constructive conversations with leadership.

If you're a business person, you understand that you have to sit down with other leaders in your company and discuss people's performance, their strengths, their weaknesses.

If you're not doing that, you're not a good business leader.

You have to sit down and talk about dynamics, strengths, weaknesses, character defects, faults.

You have to make sure that you have people in the right places based on those things.

You can't be ignorant of them.

You have to be aware of them and you have to figure out how to allow them and to order and structure teams in light of those things.

You have to have conversations about people in that way.

And it works the same way in relationships.

You will have to sit down and talk about the challenges of being friends with somebody and how to handle them so that you can move forward in unity and healthy relationship.

Amen.

So here's three more questions as I close.

Pastor Jamie, you guys can come back up.

We'll have a few minutes just to spend in the presence of God to ask the Holy Spirit what he's saying and doing.

And so here are the three questions that you can, three more questions you can ask.

Does this conversation about someone concern or affect you?

Right?

When you're talking about somebody, if you want to could to make sure you're not getting in the sin of tail bearing and gossiping and all of that, again, that's a divisive thing.

That's accusational.

But here's a question to keep purity of heart.

Does this conversation about someone concern or affect you directly?

If the answer is yes, you're gonna need to have those conversations.

If the answer is no, I would encourage you to close your mouth.

Is the heart of everyone involved in the conversation intercessory and promoting unity?

If the answer is yes, proceed with the conversation.

If the answer is no, find the quickest way out of that conversation.

You will be guilty by association.

Number three, are the things true and factual or just perceived and personal opinion?

Are the things true and factual or just perceived and personal opinion?

How many of you can think up some crazy stuff about people that isn't true?

It's true to you, but it's not actually true.

It's perceived, but it's not real.

It's assumed.

So you have to be careful that you're not assuming these things.

And I think if we have taken relational responsibility and we have forgiven and apologized, and we are putting trust in the gap, then it's just time to make allowance for faults.

It's time to have some strategic conversations about how we can preserve the heart and the unity and the longevity of this relationship.

Instead of allowing faults to turn our hearts away from people and to walk away from someone God has ordained for us to live in covenant with.

Amen.

Let's stand together.