Reflecting God's Love: The Profound Impact of Relationships on Our Spiritual Journey

All right, good to see you.

Thank you for being here today.

My name is Randy, by the way.

I want to greet all of you out there, as Bert did earlier.

Thank you for watching online and thank you for being in the room.

I meet almost every week someone who will come up and say we've been watching online for quite a while and we're here today for the first time, and so, for you out there, that's encouragement to you if you're local and and you're not prohibited medically from being here.

Man, there's some great people here I'd love to introduce you to, so, and some great groups to be a part of too.

So we'll be having a little invitation time at the end of this, like we always do.

Right after I talk, eddie will come up and lead us.

We get the awesome privilege to worship again as we close today out, and if you have a next step decision that you're ready to make Regarding any part of your spiritual life or you just would like prayer, we would love to have that awesome opportunity to do that.

And out there, same thing.

Just let us know how we can help.

You do want to give a shout out real quick to one of our own church family Sherry, stephan, her son, trip.

She's with him.

Trip is a brave man and he's fighting a brave battle medically and that's been going on a while and it's gonna go on a while.

And so a lot of you know that situation.

A lot of you are praying, trip.

They're praying for you constantly and, sherry, just know you're not alone in this and I think mr Stephan was out, was in the choir earlier.

I can't.

Where are you?

Oh, there, you on fourth row, so praying for you to brother.

How about the Colossians?

Turn to Colossians, chapter 3.

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

We're continuing part 8 of a series that all through the summer, from the book of Colossians one of the best discipling books ever written, and my opinion and and many others, but we'll be.

In verses 12 through 17, read about a Son who woke up.

He was awakened one Sunday morning by his mom and she said hey, it's Sunday, gotta get up and get ready, go church.

He rolled over and he said I'm not going.

She said yeah, you got to go.

He said I give you two reasons why I'm not going today.

I Don't like the people down there at that church and they don't like me much.

She said well, I'll give you two reasons why you are going.

Number one you're 51 years old.

Number two you're the pastor.

He, he doesn't pastor this church, okay, but I Say that to say how many times have you possibly, or people in your family, said I love what I do, I love my work, I love my hobbies, I love, I love it?

It's the people that I have a hard time with you ever said that?

I Bet you have.

We probably most of us at some point, have they.

Just how many ever?

Ever said they this if they would just leave me alone and let me do my job, man, I'd be fantastic.

Well, we don't always have that luxury, because relations, relationships, are how we are wired for and what we are in essence created for by our creator.

That's why he puts us, day one, into family units.

That's why he puts us into church families.

We can't do either solo.

We can't be really really good at the calling he has for our entire lives If we just want to be by ourselves, isolated from all people, because that's why we're here.

But I'll say this too, and many of you know this, to the enemy that's an HVT, a high value target.

If he can target our relationships, even more so our close relationships.

If he can drive a wedge or create Discord in the closest relationships that we have, oh my goodness, he has a leg up on doing greater damage and blowing up a lot of things, and that's what he does.

So Paul is a master in all of his letters, basically of the relational part of here's.

Here's the standards of the Scripture, but here's what you and I got to do to live it out in application, because that's the harder part.

We cannot live in isolation.

We should not live in isolation.

We should always be looking to connect with other people, nonbelievers and believers.

So here's my big point for today how you are with people Will be related to how you are with God.

If we treat others with dignity and respect and we try to love our neighbor, that's a pretty good testimony to the rest of the world of how our relationship to God is.

But if we give lip service to those things and we're arrogant and we're standoffish and we're judgmental and we're harsh and we're cruel and we're vindictive and all those things, we've got a miss there and the power of God is not able to flow through you.

So I believe this is incredibly important Verse 13, bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances.

So we'll get into that in a moment.

Paul is writing this section.

Oh and, by the way, those of you who are married, this is a great little marriage discussion or paragraph.

He didn't intend it to be, but it is, and I think if you study it verse 12 through 17, you can pull out some great gems to apply to your marriage.

I do think that there's a great thing there.

He's writing this section sort of taken for granted, that I'm writing to the offended and not the offenders.

You follow me Because that's why he says in verse 13, to forgive them, just as God forgave us.

He also is writing with the assumption that we all need each other, and that is true.

Now, if you're a guest recently being started a guest here, or you're like first time guest, can I share something with you?

Our philosophy here, based on the Scripture, is you're not here by accident, whether this is your first and only time ever in this building, or whether you've started coming and God's providence would have you stay here and become a key, key part of this church family.

Today is critically important.

You're supposed to be here today.

I don't know why.

You may not know why today, but one day you probably will know For those of you who've been part of this family for a long, long time you have a key role continuing in this place.

Don't take that for granted.

Don't assume anything.

Accept it, live it, embrace God with it and let him lead you day by day in your role here, because you are here for other people.

You are here for each other and if it has not arrived yet, that day will arrive.

You will need those people closest to you in this church family.

We will need each other and that's one reason I love being in a church family.

So we're going to talk about some barriers to avoid in the relational part of living out as Christ followers.

So if you've never had any issues with anybody, and you don't have anybody in your world right now that you could have a little difficulty with, if there's nobody in your world that it's hard to stay in the room with can I say it that way Then I don't know.

I got nothing for you today, I guess.

So let's just read a little bit.

We're going to look at some points to back up the fact of how you are with people.

It's going to be related to how you are with God.

Number one.

Let's read verses 12 through 14, because I think what he's saying here is love produces unity, and that's the bedrock of all of this.

Love produces unity.

Therefore, 12, as God's chosen people.

Where are they chosen from?

Look back at verse 11, that tells you pretty much everybody, because that's where he says there's no distinction between Jew and Gentile and all that Holy and dearly beloved.

Clothe yourselves with and here's the list compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievance is, as the Lord forgave you, and over all of these virtues, put on love, which binds them together in perfect unity.

So there's 14, our key part of this.

Now, that list of humility, gentleness, so on and so forth.

Of course, those are things to strive for.

Some of those are what are defined in Galatians as fruit of the Spirit.

But he's not trying to get us to rigidly have a checklist every day and say, was I a compassionate day, was I a humble day?

No, what he's saying is, above all, or with all over all, if you'll put love on this, love will put you in the league to live out those components.

That's what he's saying.

The word for love he uses here is agape.

That's that unconditional, sacrificing type of love.

It's the highest order of love that Jesus modeled so well.

He's saying forgive, because we're allthat's.

The only way you are going to have healthy relationships with people close to you or not close to you is you're going to need to forgive a lot and ask for forgiveness a lot.

The word here in the Greek comes from a root word.

That also is the word they use for grace, and I think that's an apt description.

To give somebody forgiveness when they have wronged you is to let it go.

That's not to minimize it or to excuse it or, you know, make it seem like they were innocent of it.

That's not it at all.

It means grace.

It's like oh, we know, we know that was wrong, but I'm going to let it go.

When you say I'm going to forgive and I'm going to let it go, what you're saying is I'm going to let God deal with that, because who's supposed to be the judge around here?

God is.

They.

Don't let me be the judge, so I'm going to give that to you, lord.

Sometimes with some more grievous stuff, it helps to think like David, and I've done this time or two in my life where I'm saying you know, probably won't happen, but I like to fantasize someday in heaven you know where David said the salt made the Lord judge between me and you.

You can picture standing in heaven one day with the person who's wronged you side, shoulder to shoulder, and God's standing there and you say, hey, will you judge between us?

Will you do that?

That's probably never gonna happen, but it's a good way of mentally and emotionally letting it go.

If you have a barrier with somebody close to you this morning, are you listening?

You've got a barrier with God Doesn't mean you're no longer a Christ follower.

It means there's a part of the fellowship with God, though that has been broken.

And and you married couples, you know exactly what I'm talking about you get in a spat with your spouse in the car on the way here.

You know no, you've all done it.

And then you put the smile on your face and you walk across the parking lot and you enter here like nothing's wrong.

Did you really sing with gusto?

Did you really worship God?

Did you really hear a word?

People like me said probably not.

It's hard.

It's hard to commune with God if there is discord with somebody else.

There's a verse, john 13-1, where Jesus is preparing for what we call today the upper room.

Oh, by the way, we're gonna have Lord supper next week.

Hope you can be here with us for that.

And it says he, jesus, went to all the details to prepare it.

And he says For he loved those who had been given to him to the end.

He loved them to the very end, those 12 men who were walking in with him into that room that night.

He never backed up on his love one second, even the one who betrayed him a few hours later.

Our love for Christ and our love for each other has to be greater than our love for other things.

Jesus said, you know, matthew 6 can't have more than one master.

You'll love one, hate the other, but you know, sometimes I don't think it's necessarily a love, but a dependence.

We can't.

We have to love Christ more than we have a dependence on other things too.

Can I illustrate it from the scripture, mark 10, 21.

Along in there is the discussion with a rich young ruler, I Think he earnestly wants to know the truth and follow Jesus, possibly.

And he comes up and asks what should I do?

And Jesus, you know, keep the rules.

And he says man, I know all that, I do that.

And so Jesus then says, okay, sell everything and give it to the poor and follow me.

And then it says he walked off very sadly because he just he was dependent on His material stuff and his wealth.

But it also says Jesus looked at him and what he loved him.

Mark 10, 21.

Jesus looked at him, he loved him, knowing he's gonna walk away, choosing his dependence on material, worldly stuff over Jesus.

And Jesus does not chase him down, which is another story for another day.

He lets him walk.

It didn't stop Jesus from loving him full out, a hundred percent, but it did stop the rich young ruler from having his life Transformed forever and ever.

Hopefully, maybe it happened later on.

That's the love that the 12, the 11 who were remaining, learned after the Resurrection.

That's the love that the writer of this right, paul, had.

And if anybody didn't about face, it was him.

As you know, his story being a dependent guy on the law and the Torah and the rule To a tee, plus all the other man-made traditions.

That's what he depended on all of his adult life.

So how can we wrap up this?

Love produces unity.

How do I go about this day?

Let's get real here.

I Got a challenge for you in order to bless the rest one of our matos around here.

Let's start with the people that you need to love, and it's gonna be inconvenient for you.

It might even cost you a little bit Because, as you know, there's some people that you may know family, wise, work or something.

You reach out your hand to feed them and what do they do?

They bite the hand that feeds them.

Is there anybody in your world you've ever said that's it, that's it.

I'm just moving away.

And there are some people you do have to love from a distance, because it is destructive, it is so toxic.

But there's a lot of people that dance in and out to right.

What are we gonna do about them?

Love them.

That's gonna be kind of like inconvenient.

That's exactly the point, because if you're Jesus walking the earth, everybody you love.

It's inconvenient, right, because we've got a perfect guy and everybody else is horribly broken.

We're all horribly broken now.

So somebody's probably got us in mind with some other pastor today saying, yeah, I need to love him a little bit More because it is inconvenient.

Can I tell you a real quick story in my life Long time ago wasn't all that long out of the seminary.

I'm pastoring a church and it's good, good, great people.

Great people and good things were happening and we needed to as clear as a bell, we needed to kind of.

The church needed to pivot into a new direction to continue to be able to reach people.

The only issue was that church had never gone in that direction to reach people before and it was a little troubling to some.

We talked about it a lot.

I probably could have communicated it better.

We got her you know, keep people on board.

Long story short, one night in a business meeting At the church that's when we were gonna vote to take this approach and in the middle of that business meeting a gentleman stood up and and Objected very forcefully.

I Came up after him because of the question and tried to be fair to him.

But in the effort of trying to be fair to him, I confused probably a lot of people.

So the vote happened and the vote and I lost.

I Lost and some people who were in on the front end voted against it on the back end.

Well, you can imagine.

So after a sleepless night I go limping into the office at the church that next morning and I'm like, oh my goodness, where do we go from here?

But our later knock on the door and In walks, a gentleman who had just like two months earlier, been baptized as a new believer, 50 year old man.

He, he didn't know much of anything.

He knew.

He knew Jesus had changed his life and he knew something went wrong last night.

And he just sat down, he said, and he owned his own little business.

He didn't have time to be hugging on me, but he sat down he said you know what?

I hadn't had a chance spending time with you lately since all the good stuff happened.

He said let's talk sports, let's talk growing trees.

He was an arborist, I let's talk about you know, you going on vacation and all, and for about an hour we talked about everything, but what happened the night before?

So at the end of that hour he said I guess I do need to go to work.

And he got up and shook my hand and he hugged me and he walked off.

That changed my life because nothing he said was all that important.

It was his presence.

And the other thing I'm factoring even into my ignorance was this guy is a brand new believer and he I think it's the love of Christ understood.

My pastor must be hurting this morning and so I'm going to sacrifice a couple of hours of my work week and just go sit with him.

He went to be with the Lord about a year and a half ago and sometimes his widow watches us.

So if you're out there, I love you for a lot of reasons.

But who do we need to love?

That's going to be inconvenient because how you relate to people, it's going to be how you relate to God.

Second thing you ready Verse 15, let's read that.

Because we got to let some peace rule, let peace of Christ rule in you, in your hearts, since, as members of one body, you were called to peace and be thankful.

He says we're called to peace.

And he says, of course there's the unity part, the one body.

So here's how it goes.

You may want to write this down.

I'm sure it's not original with me, but if we're going to be Christ followers, whether it's corporate, whether it's at a civic group, a nonprofit church, neighborhood, hoa, your extended family, whatever the group is, the philosophy needs to be relationship first, okay.

Harmony or unity is second.

The project or the task has got to be third.

We start too often down at the other end with tasks.

Right, we got a problem, so I've got a task to do, and some people get steamroll, some people get left out, some people get sideways.

We don't know it or we do know it.

We go right on anyway.

But in this world, as a Christ follower, as best we can, we need to say in some way you know, the main thing today is my relationship to you, the individual, or you, the group.

That needs to be preserved at any cost, because that is what the peace of Christ is all about.

If we got that, we've got unity.

Check it out, even if we disagree on the course of action.

We can disagree, but we're going to disagree as Christ followers and everybody's going to hug up and shake hands.

We still love each other when we leave.

That's the way we're going.

I lost, but I lost.

Then we can attack or go with the task at hand.

If you do missions around here, you probably heard such as this too, and I think it's a great philosophy when you're doing a mission, whether it's locally or halfway around the world, the relationship comes first.

I know we've got a house to repair.

I know we've got a yard to fix it, whatever that is.

I know we've got all this going on, we've got a class to do, but relationship needs to come first.

If we don't get to the work, but we have built a solid relationship based on Christ, that's a win, that's a great mission trip.

So we've got to settle that first, because that's how you let peace rule that word rule, the verb in the Greek that Paul uses.

Actually, for you sports fans, that's a referee term.

Let peace be the arbitrator or the ruler.

Be the striped shirt, the little guy on the field running around in amongst the giants who when he blows his whistle, everybody stops.

And when he makes a ruling, whether you like it or not, what do you do?

You do what the little guy with the striped shirt says the referee.

If peace is going to be the referee or the ruler in our walks, then we don't get into as many things.

And he says you're called to that.

Isaiah accepts a call.

He has no clue what he's doing.

Isaiah six, who will go?

Who should I send?

He says send me.

And he says go instantly.

He doesn't say well, let's look at your resume or your bio.

Who shall I send?

Send me, go?

And that's how Isaiah leads out.

Can I make this a little more doable.

Let peace rule, because all of you is including me.

Have people in my brain right now Like whoa.

It's going to be a little bit hard to overcome that.

The reminder is from Ephesians two, 14, peace is a person.

His name is Jesus.

So I'll let you read Ephesians two, 14 later.

If I have Jesus, it's possible to be at peace even in the middle of a storm Casting crowns.

The song I'll praise you in this storm.

Y'all you know that song.

Oh, what a great song.

I will praise you in this storm, and we have so many good examples from the scripture of that.

This is when you do what is called resting in the Lord.

I've had people tell me that and I love that.

You know everything's up for grabs right now.

There's a lot of turmoil going on, but I'm resting in the Lord.

That means you're just relying on His presence to take care of you today, because you can only, you know do so much.

You all have a general calling of God to know Jesus.

Therefore, to know God, to serve Him, things like that, to be compassionate, gentle, loving, those are calls for all of us.

They're called general revelations, but they're specifics too, and some of you are in the middle of wrestling that out right now and it's incredibly fulfilling for me to watch you wrestle that out.

You feel like something's coming.

You feel like you're in a transition.

You may not even know what it is, but you have this holy discontent rumbling around and it may wake you up in the middle of the night and you're not getting exactly a direction.

But you're getting what?

Presence, the presence of peace, who happens to be a person.

His name is Jesus and what he is doing is saying this is how much I love you.

I love you so much I'm pulling you out, I'm going to fill you up with some stuff, I'm going to point you in a little different direction, and then I'm not going to leave you.

I'm going to get out ahead of you and I'm going to lead you.

That's what that calling, the specific calling, is all about.

Got in a little short conversation with a nurse a few weeks ago, visiting one of y'all in the hospital, and it had been a rough day, not just for a lot of reasons in her life.

I said, man, not anybody could do this, and she said, well, I can't do it, but I am called.

I am called, and some of you know exactly how that works.

I saw a great quote this week a true friend.

You know who a true friend is.

A true friend is someone who walks toward you when everybody else is walking away from you.

That's the Agape love type of friend, because how you are with people will determine how you are with God, and it's going to get ugly at times with people.

There's an old country music song that basically says our children are ugly because of you.

I think it was a hit back in this day.

Verse 16, we're going to lead with God's love.

Okay, I'm sorry, lead with God's Word.

Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs and gratitude in your hearts to the Lord.

Let's be thankful.

Like six times and only four chapters of Colossians.

It's a big deal with him and it should be.

He says let the Word dwell.

You know what?

When he says the Word of Christ dwell in you, he's thinking the words of Jesus.

He's thinking what we call today the gospel.

Now, he knew what we call the Old Testament, what he had of that.

He knew it front and back.

He knew it better than anybody in this room, especially me.

That's that ain't what he's talking about.

He's talking about Jesus Word.

That is the life type of Word.

And then he gives this song and don't spend too much time worrying about how to segment out psalm.

What's our psalm compared to him, compared to a spiritual song?

He's just covering all the bases.

These are applications of how the Word of God is great to sing His Word, it's great to pray His Word, it's great to recite His Word to other people and do all that.

That's what he's talking about.

Why is this so important in a relationship?

The Word because this gives you integrity.

Why?

Because it gives you consistency and moral fiber to one.

Those of you who are engineers are in production of different things.

You know this better than I do.

Steel, the metal, steel has integrity to it.

They actually have gauges and you can rate it through testing, because you want to test the strength, which is their way of saying integrity.

It's related to the purity of the metal, because if you have the right purity of the metal, then you have the right strength.

And if you have the right strength, you can build bridges with it, like the Ravenel Bridge and the people who are traveling over it.

Don't worry so much about it holding them up or not.

It's trustworthy.

If you are living by the Word and you're conducting your relationships best you can, by the standard of the Word, the people on the other end, who are your friends or relatives, can trust you.

You're trustworthy because they know, oh, bob, there's some things Bob Flatout will not do, and there's some things that Penny will do every single time, and that's why they value you and love you.

What a perspective.

We're going to do short term or long term.

If you're living in the short term, for today, you're going to be all over the place and you're not going to want to spend too much time in the Word, because it's going to violate that.

But if you're living for the long haul, to be a Christ follower, you have no other choice than to base it on becoming really, really fond of, and aware of, and a student of, god's Word.

That happened with the 12th and John 6.

There's this day when Jesus starts giving this speech of what he's doing.

He's separating out the curious and the nominal, the casual people from the serious people, and that's when he says well, let me tell you this unless you leave your family unless you drink my blood and eat myremember that.

And it says people started leaving Him.

Why this is too hard.

We didn't know it was going to be hard.

You didn't tell us it's going to be like tough and people start leaving.

And after it's over, jesus turns to the 12th and he says how about all of you?

Where are you going?

Are you going to leave me too?

And I love Peter in this moment.

Chapter 6, I think it's verse 63.

He says where are we going to go?

Now?

Part of that is practical.

We've already quit our jobs.

You know we've done this.

I didn't extend the lease on my house.

So he's saying where are we going to go?

But then he says you have the words of life.

There's something different about you.

I've been in church all my life.

I've heard teaching from the Bible all my life.

You walk in and when you speak there's life in you.

I'm not going to find it anywhere else.

That is exactly why we have to lead with it Real quick.

How do I apply this?

How do I be a better lead by the Word person?

Watch your vocabulary and I'll give you an example.

We have a way of dressing up some things and we say them using terms that are softer.

A person with a strong sense of justice sometimes is just judgmental.

A person who's stoic is really uncaring, a person with salty language can we face it?

That's profane by the Word.

It's taking the Lord's name in vain.

I need to start with me, and maybe you need to start with you.

Where do I excuse, you know?

Am I strong-willed or am I just flat out obstinate?

Because if I call it what it is, the way the Bible calls it, I shouldn't be able to get away with living it, and if I don't want to live it anymore, I'm going to repent of it.

So this is a pretty good place to stop.

Let me just read verse 17,.

And whatever you do, whatever you do in Word or deed, do it in the name of the Lord, giving thanks to God, the Father, through Him.

First Corinthians 10-31 is almost the same rephrase of this Colossians 3-23 that we'll get into next week.

Lord willing is almost the same words.

I love it.

He makes it very simple but very powerful.

Whatever you do.

Why does he say this?

Because of verse 4.

Look back at chapter 3, verse 4.

See, the most important little word in that verse 4 is is See that we're Christ who is your life.

He doesn't want to be a big part of your life, he wants to be your life and if he is your life, you'll spend your life serving Him, following His lead.

See y'all back to verses 15 through 17.

Primarily, you will worship hard every day.

You'll worship Him at home when you're reading and praying.

You'll worship Him on the way to work.

Even some of your flat-out tasks you don't like Mowing the grass when it's 96 degrees can somehow be an act of worship.

And Sundays are a big deal, because we come here to celebrate what God has either done or what he's about to do.

Because we are future people we live for what A hope of glory.

And it hadn't happened yet.

It may not happen today, but tomorrow's a new day and as long as he's leading, we don't have to know all the details.

Can I just take one second to affirm a lot of you?

God has His hand on you.

You know who I'm talking to.

God has His hand on you.

There's still 1500 unanswered questions, but he is giving you a slow peace.

Is this peace in the middle of the storm?

Is this desire to love Him that you've not had lately.

He's waking you up in the middle of the night, just basically not to fill you up with answers, but to say I'm here, I'm here.

He's letting you know that generally, there's this future and things are not going to stay like they are.

If you're in the desert, you'll come out of the desert one day.

If you're not in the desert but you see one on the horizon, you're going to be there, but you won't be there alone, because He'll walk you through it, whatever you're facing.

That is filling you up with anxiety right now.

He's bigger, he has authority over that, but also over you, and he's not going to stop being God, because we have things in our life, our people in our life, that are hard to live with.

So our job is to just grasp as tightly as we can to His robe and say all right, you start walking and I'm going to follow you and I'm going to use your spirit and your word and my relationship with you and other people to be the bridge to get me there.

Eddie, why don't you come on up?

We get to worship one more time here.

So if we can help you with a decision, please let us know.

Guests, the only favor we ask of you is there's a contact card?

If you don't mind filling that out and take it to the tent, I'd give you a little gift there.

Now.

If you need to leave the room, I'm going to ask you to do it while I'm praying here in a second, because the most important part is about to happen.

Don't want to be distracting to all of them, so would you stand.

Let me pray for you and I'll see you down front.

Father, may your kingdom come and your will be done In Jesus' name, amen.