Relational Success (Stewarding a Relational Revolution Pt. 2) | 07-26-26

So we're we're continuing our series.

I believe it's probably one of the most important series, one of the most important messages that I've ever taught and probably will ever teach.

And it's a series called Relational Success.

This is part two of Relational Success.

We'll continue with this series on into the fall.

We'll close out summer on into the fall before we start a new one.

So relational success, stewarding a relational revolution.

So our scriptures, Matthew 22, verse 36.

Matthew 22:36

Father, we pray before we approach your word and we say, open our minds.

We've been singing to open our eyes and to show us, to give us revelation of who you are.

We want to see you.

And we say, God, open our minds and give us revelation of your word.

We want to know you through your word, your revealed word.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Teacher, the man approached Jesus and said, Which is the great commandment in the law?

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, as yourself.

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

So the man asked Jesus to sum up the whole law of God and the prophets.

That's most of the Old Testament that we have here, which is most of your Bible.

And so as we look at that and go, man, that's a lot.

How many of you have ever read the whole Old Testament?

I hope you have.

That's a lot.

And what he's saying here is on this short statement that in our Bible is contained within three verses of Scripture, really two verses of Scripture.

He says, On this hang all the law and the prophets.

In other words, this sums up the point and the goal of the entire law and the prophets, and what they wrote, and what we have as the old covenant.

That's a big reduction and summarization.

And so it's important to pay attention to this because what Jesus is saying here is that great quality of relationship with God and great quality of relationship with others and yourself is the whole goal of the Bible, essentially.

What Jesus came under the new covenant to make possible was the fulfillment of the goal of the old covenant.

And it's that right there.

So we believe that true success is relational success, great relationship with God, and great relationship with people.

Truth is, as we all know, you can have all the success that this life has to offer, but if you don't have relational success, you will have failed at life.

So have a great quality of relationship with God, with people, and with yourself.

And if we do this, we will have accomplished the whole goal of the Bible, and consequently, we'll have achieved ultimate success in life.

That's why I've titled this series Relational Success.

And so another thing that we see in this scripture, our springboard scripture for the series that we just read, is what I call the order of love.

I'm a pastor and I'm also a licensed clinical Christian counselor, and so I do a lot of counseling.

And essentially, all that is, is you know, I say all the time, I'm not engineer-minded.

That's not how my mind works, you know, to know how mechanical and engineer, to know how how mechanical stuff works.

Don't build stuff.

I mean, I can do like minor stuff, but I'm I'm gonna have to get some help from one of you who are engineer-minded to do anything substantial.

Um, and but what I do know is the way God wired me is to be a relational engineer.

So I have that, I have that kind of engineering.

I have the ability to help people sort out and figure out complex relational dynamics for the goal of relational health, which is ultimate success in life.

How many of you know a healthy relationship with God is a complex thing?

And a healthy relationship with people is a complex thing.

One of the ways that I help people sort out and figure out the complexity of relationships is what I call this scripture that gives us what I call the order of love.

Love has an order.

It's not just love.

There's an order to love, there's a way in which we have to love God, love others, and love ourselves.

And if we get it out of order, there's disorder.

Let me say it like this.

If your love gets out of order, your life will get out of order.

And it's usually then when people come to counseling and say, we need help.

Things are out of order, things aren't working well, something's not right.

And a lot of times there is love for God, and there is love for others, and there is love of self, but they get out of order.

And if your love gets out of order, your life gets out of order.

Remember that.

Love the Lord your God with all.

It's the only one that says that.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength.

Then it says next to that is love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Didn't say love them with all.

It didn't say give them all your heart, all your strength, all your mind.

That that belongs all belongs to God.

God gets all.

He's first and all.

And like it, it says, liken unto it, in other words, it's only second in order, not importance, is loving your neighbor.

Now it's interesting that loving your neighbor is said there because it's it's implied that you would love your family.

It's implied that you would love your household, right?

Like your spouse and your children, your grandchildren.

That's implied.

So it's not saying you don't love them, that you love your neighbor more than you love them.

No, it's any what I believe he's saying is is love God with all and love people outside your household.

Have a love for people outside of your household.

Don't have the us for and no more uh mentality, like as long as everything's good here in this nucleus, this nuclear family, then everything's good.

No, because we have that, we have Jesus saying the greatest commandment, your purpose is to love the Lord your God with all, and love your neighbor, someone outside your family.

Listen when he says, as you love yourself.

And if you if you dig into that a little bit, it literally would be interpreted, at least as much as you love yourself.

So remember that.

So next to love the Lord your God with all, next to that, love people at least as much as you love yourself.

That's gonna be important in future messages in this series.

But listen to me, love of self can never exceed the love you have for God or the love you have for others.

Right?

So you want to love God with all.

You want to love others at least as much as you love yourself.

You can love others more than you love yourself, but you need to love yourself.

It's not, it's not the love of self, it's love for yourself, right?

It's healthy kind of self-love.

I think you should have a good relationship with yourself.

I think that is important.

It's a healthy relationship with God, healthy relationship with others, healthy relationship for yourself.

How many of you know people get out of order when they have a bad relationship with themselves?

And so if you love yourself more than your spouse or your family, it creates disorder.

If you love yourself more than you love God, it creates disorder.

So if you love yourself more than you love your spouse or your family, let me back up.

If you love love of self can never exceed the love you have for God or others.

Love yourself, yes, but if you love yourself more than you love God, listen, you create disorder, and your relationship with God deteriorates.

It doesn't work like that.

If you love yourself more than you love your spouse or your family, it creates disorder, and your relationship with your family will deteriorate.

This is God's order, or listen, it's his terms for relational health.

It's his relational infrastructure, if you will.

Unhealthy people, so I want you to hear this, I'll say this again in the future as well, because I use this principle a lot.

Unhealthy people live by their own unhealthy terms.

Dysfunctional people live by their own dysfunctional terms.

Therefore, you can never help an unhealthy or dysfunctional person on their own terms.

That's good.

And that's important, especially if you have a heart to help others.

You want to make sure if God's called you to help others, he's given you a heart to help others, you need to make sure you're actually helping them.

Because if you're helping dysfunctional and unhealthy people, people that are their life is out of order, if you're helping them on their terms, guess what you're doing?

You're empowering them to continue in chaos and disorder.

So you can never help an unhealthy or dysfunctional person on their own terms.

You have to get them off of their terms and you have to get them on God's terms.

You have to get them on healthy terms, the terms that lead to order.

And so one of the things that happens in life, the reason order of love is so important, it's so vital, is because you have these scenarios where I'll just use uh scenarios that I've seen uh so often.

And let's say you have uh this is one that I knew of recently, not here, it was somewhere else, but you have a scenario where a spouse has been unfaithful.

And the situation I'm thinking of is actually the wife.

And there's kids involved, and there's marriage involved, and it's so complex and so heartbreaking and just hard, hard, hard, right?

And you have this woman who loves God, who worships him, who is a believer.

And and then you have this man, and then you have these kids, and and they're Christians, and they're just how could this happen?

And oh my gosh, and how could you, you know, how could you do this to our family?

How could you do this to me?

Uh it's just devastation, just total wreckage.

And I've sat in front of people like this over and over and over, and I've looked into their desperate, heartbroken eyes.

And it's the same story every time.

You look at someone, and this the betrayed spouse is going, I thought you loved God.

You don't love God.

I thought you loved me, you don't love me, or you wouldn't do this.

What about our kids?

Don't you love our kids?

Why would you do this?

If you loved us, you wouldn't do this.

And I've had to carefully, cautiously correct them and say, No, no, no, no.

It's not that.

I believe with all my heart that that they love God.

I know they love God.

I know them.

I know they love God.

I know they love you.

They love you as their spouse.

They love you and they love and adore their kids.

And the answer then, the question then is, well, how could they do this then?

I said, they've gotten the order of love out of whack.

There's disorder.

But the problem is they love themselves more than they love God.

They love themselves more than they love you, and they love themselves more than they love the kids.

And what's going to happen when you get the order of love out of order is disorder and destruction.

And so that's why when Jesus gives his invitation to anyone who wants to be his follower, he starts it by saying, What?

Deny yourself.

If anyone wants to be my follower, the only way this is gonna work, it starts with you denying yourself, picking up your cross and following me.

And so if you love yourself more than you love your spouse or family, it creates disorder and your relationships will deteriorate.

So we've got to get the order of love right.

That's part of this series, that's part of this message today is evaluating the order of love that we're operating in, making sure that we're doing it God's way because that's his relational infrastructure.

Okay, Hebrews 6.10.

Hebrews 6.10, for God is not unjust.

He will not forget how hard you have worked for him, listen, and how you have shown your love to him by caring for other believers as you still do.

Our great desire is that you would keep on loving others as long as life lasts, in order to make certain that what you hope for will come true.

That's an interesting correlation there.

How many of you know all the promises of God are if then?

Right?

If you do this, then you will receive this.

In order to make sure that what you hope for will come true, what does it say you need to do?

Love others.

Love others.

And then now listen to this.

Verse 12.

Then, so after you have kept on loving others as long as life lasts, then you will not become spiritually dull and indifferent.

Instead, you will follow the example of those who are going to inherit God's promises because of their faith and endurance.

Their love for God, their love for others.

This is the central theme of the entire Bible, and especially the central theme of the early church and the early church writings that we have as scripture today.

I think that's amazing that it tells us one of the ways that you can show your love to God is by caring for other people, for other believers specifically, is what it's talking about.

1 Thessalonians 2, 8.

I love this.

Paul is saying to the church there, we loved you so much.

Listen to what it listen to to what he's saying.

How did we show our love?

We loved you so much that we shared with you not only God's good news, but our own lives too.

Not only God's good news, but our own lives.

So we didn't just share the gospel with you.

We didn't just preach.

We didn't just come and prophesy and see you baptized and baptized in the Holy Spirit, and we didn't just come to do all the spiritual stuff.

We shared our own lives with you as well.

It wasn't just Sunday, it was Monday.

It was the Monday kind of church, the Tuesday kind of church, the Wednesday kind of church, the Thursday kind of church, the Saturday, whatever he's saying, look, this isn't about us just preaching to you.

It's more than that.

This isn't about us just worshiping together.

It's more than that.

We loved you so much that we shared not only God's good news, that's important, but our own lives too.

Listen, and you know that we treated each of you as a, listen, the language as a father treats his own children.

That's family language.

Because that's what the ecclesia is.

It's a family.

We pleaded, listen how he's saying, this is how he loved them.

We pleaded with you.

We encouraged you.

We urged you to live your lives in a way that God would consider worthy, for he called you to share in his kingdom and his glory.

Amen.

That's ministry, that's relational success right there.

Love isn't just sharing spiritual things, it's sharing your natural earthly lives with other people.

Now, where does this come from?

I think I believe it comes from God.

God is spiritual and relational.

We unpacked this in uh past sermons.

He is spiritual and relational, and he created us in his image, spiritual and relational.

We're created in the image of God.

He exists as a family.

He exists as a family.

And the only way for us to be proper image bearers of God is to be both spiritual and relational.

If the family of the Trinity in heaven was complete, we wouldn't have angels, earth, or human beings.

Think about that.

If it was complete, I'm not saying it's not perfect, it's not holy.

I'm just saying if it was complete, God's household, right, then we wouldn't have angels.

We wouldn't have earth or human beings.

God created all of those things because he is relational at his core.

And it's not just him, and it's not just the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

No.

Just like when he looked at Adam and all this stuff in the garden was good, this was good, this was good, this was good.

He looked at Adam and Adam was alone.

He said, It's not good that you're alone, but Adam wasn't alone.

He was there with God.

But God knew, how did God know that it wasn't good that Adam was alone?

Because God knew it wasn't good that he was alone.

So he created all these things looking for companions, looking for relationship.

It's interesting, God even created animals looking for a companion for Adam.

And found none of those were suitable.

They're not suitable companions.

So he created woe man.

And then gave them the ability to what?

Multiply.

Multiply.

What for the sake of what?

Relationship.

Relationship.

The advancement of the family in the earth.

To a lot of people, godliness is more about having everything taken care of spiritually.

And so they will hyperfocus on knowledge and understanding, studying, fasting, prayer, even teaching the word and ministering in the gifts of the Spirit.

Some people, that's their focus.

They're hyper focused on that.

That's the goal, that's the mission, that's the calling, that's what it is, right?

So it's standing up on one of these and just and just doing that, right?

Let's fast, let's pray, let's preach, let's minister, let's operate in the gifts.

All of those things are wonderful, but as Paul said, we didn't just, we loved you so much that we didn't just bring the gospel.

We didn't just bring those things.

We shared our own lives too.

I think that's so powerful.

I think it's easy to pass over that and brush that a little too quickly.

So you have a lot of people who are, because of that, who are overdeveloped spiritually and underdeveloped relationally.

And it's actually easier to study the Bible and to pursue spiritual health than it is to study relational health and pursue people, isn't it?

The happiest and most effective people create a healthy balance of both spiritual health and relational health.

Say that again.

The happiest and most effective people create a healthy balance of both spiritual health and relational health.

We have to understand that the health of these two things together are imperative.

I really honestly believe.

They can't even exist alone.

It's not either or, it's both and.

It's spiritual health and relational health.

And you can't have one without the other.

You can't say you're spiritually healthy, but you're not relationally healthy.

You know why?

Because God is both spiritual and relational.

You can't really separate them.

You can't pick and choose because one's a little bit harder and people get on your nerves and all that kind of stuff, right?

People betray you, hurt you, let you down.

Maybe the past wounds are keeping you from really sharing your own lives too with people because you're in protection mode, trying not to get hurt, trying not to be rejected again, all those things, but you can't have one without the other.

So if you don't have relational health, you really don't have spiritual health.

And if you don't have spiritual health, you really can't have relational health.

It's a both and conversation.

It's kind of like, you know, they work together to produce a life that images forth God for flourishing and thriving.

Spiritual health, relational health, they work together to image forth God.

We're image bearers of God.

We carry his image.

We want to carry his image to and show people what God looks like.

He looks like spiritual health and relational health.

That's what he looks like.

It's like salvation without discipleship.

Salvation without discipleship.

So the spiritual without the relational, it's like a wedding without a marriage.

How many of you know a lot of people prepare more for their wedding than they do their marriage?

Salvation without discipleship is like a wedding without a marriage.

And like that, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, spiritual part, without the fruit of the Spirit, relational part, is like a car with no wheels.

It's got power, but it ain't going nowhere.

It's both and it's the left hand and the right hand.

I think we all understand the importance of spiritual health, but I really do feel like people are not in tune really with the importance of relational health.

There are so many obstacles and challenges.

I think people just get discouraged and give up.

One thing that's helped me over the years is the revelation of how important people are to God and how focused God is on people.

Like they are the main thing to him in his story.

They are the main thing.

And so there was this deal in studying years ago.

I ran across this study in 1970 that a market group did, and it was a study to find the most powerful and persuasive words in the English language.

You can look this up.

It's amazing.

I'm not going to go through, but they they they did this study.

They found the most powerful and persuasive words in the English language, and they came up with 12 of them, and they actually marketed it as 12 words for guaranteed marketing magic.

If you look that up, you'll see this study.

12 words for guaranteed marketing magic.

And uh the number one, I'm not going to talk about the other 11, but the number one word that they came up with that they said, we believe this is the most powerful and persuasive word in the English language is the word you.

It's the word you.

In my study, I ran across this guy who came up with these pictures.

And uh he he, the artist of these, the guy that created these pictures.

And basically, that is all of the words that Jesus spoke in his earthly ministry that we have documented.

He took every word that Jesus spoke and he used them to make a picture of, you know, a uh a face of Jesus, right?

It's not uh Jesus look like, but we you know what I'm talking about.

And so um, and then what he did was show that other one.

I actually have this one as the screensaver on my iPad.

It's been on there for all years and years and years.

But so check that out.

All the words that Jesus spoke in his early ministry make up to make up this image.

And then what he did is the size of the words were basically the ones he used the most, and the smallest ones were the words he used the least.

Okay.

So what is the biggest word on that picture?

Think about this.

So the most used word of Jesus, the word he repeated more than any other word in his ministry, was the word you.

I don't even know how that's possible.

Not it and so, like, you know, you know what I'm saying?

Like, how is it even possible, grammatically possible, that someone who taught for years and years and years and all their teachings are recorded in in scripture, not all of them, but the ones that are recorded in scripture, and the word he used the most was you.

And I love how even the author in both pictures put it right in the center of the forehead of Jesus.

The most frequently used word of Jesus was the word you.

And listen to me, that was not an accident, that was not a coincidence.

This was incredibly strategic.

And here's why.

Because you are what's most important to him.

You are what's most important to him.

People matter to God.

And if there is a lack of priority, a lack of importance, a lack of commitment to building and having healthy relationships and loving people and caring about people, it's because there's a lack of that revelation right there.

Is that you are annoyed by people and you just don't believe that they're the most important thing to God.

And if we believed it, we would structure our life around it.

But I'm telling you, that study was just a uh almost for fun.

I was just doing that for fun, but the revelation that you find when you read scripture, you don't have to go to a study on that.

It's all here.

All you have to do is read and study the Word of God, and a supernatural love for people should be the fruit of the gospel, the fruit of a relationship with God.

People are what matter most to God.

His purpose and mission in life was relational restoration.

Listen, and he gives us that very same purpose and mission.

We are called to be messengers of reconciliation.

What are we reconciling?

We're reconciling people to God and people to people.

So another fun thing that kind of happened as a result was that I was like, well, if you was the most used word of Jesus, then I looked at some of the other most used words of Jesus and some of the other words that he used most in conjunction with the word you, okay?

Tracking with me?

And I came up with what I call Jesus mantra, the mantra of Jesus.

You like to have a mantra?

Do you have a mantra?

I love mantras.

It's a phrase or a word that you repeat over and over and over, and it's uh it's important to you.

Jesus mantra is this you can, you are, you will, you have, you must.

You can.

You can.

That's what Jesus said all the time.

You can, you can, you can, you can, you can.

And then he said this, you are.

He speaks to identity.

You are, you are, you are, you are.

You will.

You will do greater things than I.

You will see the kingdom of God.

You have, and you must.

I love that.

You can, you are, you will, you have, you must.

Enemy.

So I believe God's number one strategy is for healthy relationship with God, healthy relationship with people.

So then you look at the enemy's number one strategy in our lives.

What's it going to be against?

It's going to be against you having a healthy relationship with God and against you having a healthy relationship with people.

That will be the primary focus of all of the enemy's attacks and activity against your life and in your life.

And the only reason that the enemy strategically leads you into sin is because he knows that sin is the most effective thing to destroy and contaminate relationships.

And the social, you know, uh, oh, sorry, back up.

So God's answer is reconciliation.

But before he can do reconciliation, what does he have to do?

Because he tried that in the old covenant over and over and over.

He tried relationship, relationship, forgiveness of sin, removing sin, right?

All of that stuff.

And it just kept failing.

It kept failing.

Broken relationship with God, idolatry, sin, forgetting God.

All of those things, pride.

And so he goes, okay, reconciliation and healthy relationships have to happen.

So what is it that I need to do to make sure that that's possible?

Oh, righteousness.

So righteousness has to precede reconciliation, relational reconciliation with God, and relational reconciliation with people.

And so he takes care of that.

He sends us Jesus, that's the gospel.

Jesus came to live the life we could never live, to die in our place for our sins for the purpose of reconciling us into relationship with God.

And so then unrighteousness, sin, is always present when important relationships are damaged or destroyed.

The enemy knows the most effective way to destroy or contaminate relationships is sin.

And so righteousness is imperative.

Living in a way that's pleasing to God, not in our own strength, but understanding that we've received imputed righteousness from Jesus for our relationship with God.

Right?

There's forgiveness of sin where there's repentance of sin.

Is it then different?

Is it something different that we need for relational reconciliation with people?

Like, is there a different kind of righteousness for that?

Or is Jesus' righteousness enough for that too?

If let me say it like this if the imputed righteousness of Jesus is enough to reconcile us to relationship with God, the imputed righteousness of Jesus should be enough to reconcile us with other people.

And the imputed righteousness of Jesus is received where there is repentance, not perfection, repentance.

Amen.

And so one clarification I want to make before we move on is in the social media age that we're living in, I want to clarify that I'm not talking about being social.

Social success is a fruitless trap that can result in a wasted life.

Um, it's really just social veneer.

It's the appearance that you have all these meaningful relationships.

But if you really inspect them, they're more of a pretty flower than a mighty oak.

Flowers are pretty, but they're fragile and they're short-lived.

Mature oak trees are not that pretty, but they're there for a long time.

They're there for the long term.

Amen.

They endure the storms and the test of time.

And so I'm not talking about being social.

I'm talking about being relational.

And by that I mean interconnected personally with deep, meaningful relationships.

You can be incredibly social and be relationally deficient at the same time.

Sometimes an overactive presence on social media is an overcompensation for a lack of deep, meaningful relationships in life.

The people who have the deepest, most meaningful relationships in life, sometimes they're not even on social media.

They don't need to be.

Let me say it like this.

For um, I don't want to get ahead of myself.

For ministry, if you want to have healthy ministry, you have to have what?

What power of the Holy Spirit do you have to have to have healthy ministry?

You have to have the gifts of the Spirit, right?

And so when it comes to ministry, we love the gifts of the Spirit.

All the gifts of the Spirit are amazing to help people grow spiritually, right?

To help them grow in their relationship with God, to help them grow spiritually.

Very important.

But for relationships, we need something else.

And so guess what the Holy Spirit gave us?

Galatians 5.22.

But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives, that's key.

Take a note of that, underline that, put a star by it, and highlight it.

All three.

When the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, here there is no conflict with Jewish laws.

It's kind of like what Jesus was saying.

On this hang all the law and the prophets, that's saying this is it, right?

Like this is what you gotta have.

I call these the relational servants of God.

Every fruit that the Holy Spirit wants to produce in your life serves only one purpose: that you are healthy and able to achieve and maintain high-quality, long-lasting relationships in your life.

Every one of those fruit, that is their purpose, to breed relational health.

And let me say it like this: the absence of those things breeds relational unhealth.

If there are relational struggles in your life, you will be able to track it back to sin or to the lack of those fruit or the opposite of those fruit.

They're the relational servants of God.

He knew we couldn't do this in our own power.

And so what does he ask us to do?

I want you to trade with me.

I want to take your power and I'm going to give you my power.

But it's a trade.

You can't have your power and his power at the same time.

That's why it says, who gets the fruit?

Who has the fruit of the Spirit produced by the Spirit?

It's when the Holy Spirit controls our life.

It's the person who has surrendered control.

They're the ones that have those fruit with their spouse and with their children and with their friends and with their coworkers and with their employees.

They're the relational servants or the relational powers of God.

And personal health is for the purpose of relational health.

A lot of people pursue health, but to what end?

We want to be healthy, want to be mentally healthy, emotionally healthy, want to be physically healthy, want to be healthy, but for what?

Have you ever asked that question?

To what end?

I believe it's all for relational health.

The presence of the fruit of the Spirit in your life, listen to me, guarantees that you will positively impact the people in your life.

The lack of it guarantees you will negatively impact the people in your life.

And pay attention to how that verse says we will bear the fruit.

Again, we already talked about that.

Only when our lives are controlled by the Holy Spirit will there be fruit.

If you, anyone else, or anything else is in control of your life, fear is in control of your life, if anxiety is in control of your life, if if money's in control of your life, if selfishness is in control of your life, whatever it is, whatever it is, if anything else is in control of your life, you won't have those fruit.

And sometimes the lack of it is evidence that you have not surrendered control of your life.

And everyone around you knows it.

If you don't know, just start asking the people around you.

So for our spiritual health, we have the gifts of the Spirit.

And for our relational health, we have the fruit of the Spirit.

Both of those things require surrendering control to the Spirit.

Surrendering control to the Spirit.

We talked about the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

We did a series, talked about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we talked about speaking in tongues.

And all that is, all speaking in tongues is, you remember, is a surrender.

It's a surrender of your mind and your mouth to the Lord.

That's it.

There's only two kinds of people who are baptized in the Holy Spirit.

There are those who are willing to speak in tongues and those who aren't willing.

And whatever reason they have, they're not willing to do it.

It's all it's all just control things.

It's it's belief things, it's control things.

It just is.

As people say, I'm just not I'm not surrendering at that level.

It's a level of surrender that not everybody's willing to walk in.

That and not every Christian, you can be a Christian, you can be a follower of Jesus and leave that on the table.

I hate that.

Because that's a gift of the Spirit that is incredibly vital to your spiritual growth.

But then the same thing is true about the fruit of the Spirit.

There are certain things people aren't willing to surrender control of.

And so they're just angry all the time.

They're just angry.

They're harsh.

They're mean.

They're judgmental.

They're critical.

They're negative.

What is that?

I'm in control.

If you know somebody who who's it fits that description, they're in control.

They're in control.

It doesn't mean they don't love God.

It doesn't mean they're not a Christian.

They're still going to heaven.

They're going to be not nicer when they get there, by the way.

But it doesn't affect their earthly life because they're in control of that.

And so it blocks the Holy Spirit's ability to give you love and peace and patience and gentleness and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and self control.

It blocks it.

And as soon as we release it, we the Holy Spirit starts producing that stuff.

Relationships start going back.

It's just amazing.

It's absolutely amazing.