One Another: Bear With One Another

So one another, that phrase is used 100 times in 94 verses in the New Testament, 47 of them are given as instructions to us from Jesus in 60 percent of them are from Paul.

So I just want to put that out there because this is why we're doing this series.

There's a lot of instructions about how we're to treat one another.

There's a lot of instructions because I believe that relationships are one of the most important things that we can have and the one of the hardest things that we can do.

Relationships are one of the most important things that we can have.

When you go through a hard time, when you, when the rubber hits the road and your life, what do you need?

You need relationships.

You need people who are there for you in thick and thin.

People are there for you to pray for you, to support you, to strengthen you, but if you don't spend time nurturing those relationships, investing in those relationships, when those hard times come, will anybody be there?

Will anybody be?

They're connected close enough to you, close enough to your, your life and your heart to really make a difference.

And so today I want to be talking about, you know, Jasmine talked about encouragement.

Today I want to talk about some of the less exciting, more difficult parts of relationships, but we think relationships are so important here at city light.

Our vision is seek love and care for people.

A Jesus does so you know that are Sikh is about being a church where anybody can come in any day, no matter their religious background or lack thereof and feel welcomed, understand what's happening and feel like they're a part of what's going on here.

Seek love.

Love is kind of what we're talking about this month.

Love is creating a community.

See, this is not.

This is not community, just sitting in seats in rows, looking up front for an hour and a half each.

Sunday is not community.

Now this is a good place to start.

It's a vision casting place.

It's a place to connect with Jesus through singing and through listening to the word, but it's not the community that we hope for everyone in this room.

The community we hope for is what happens in the next six days after Sunday.

See, community happens in circles, and I say this all the time, that circles are better than rows and I didn't make that up.

I stole it from Andy Stanley.

Whether you liked them or not.

It's a good saying, alright, circles are better than rows and this is where community happens in my hope for each of us.

My hope for each of you is that you find community here at city light.

There's no way we can find true community with all 150 adults sitting in this room right now.

We can't, but we can find community with a group of that group and we all need it.

I want everyone who comes to simulate, to feel like there's a group they could text.

When life gets hard, they can reach out to that.

There are people who would call them when life gets difficult and this is why we're teaching this one another series as we head into the fall because in the fall, you know, we kick off small groups and I don't know about you, but I have missed my small group.

We don't do small groups in the summer.

I cannot wait to have small group in the fall.

My small group kind of pittered out.

We had 20 people there the first week of the spring semester and by the third week nobody showed up and Mandy and I and the kids had to eat all the food we had prepared.

So like that is the goal for small groups.

I will not be leading the small group training for leaders by the way, but I can't wait.

I can't wait to get back into service.

I can't wait to see people on a regular basis.

Now.

We've been having community this summer in kind of the other way, like the two legs of community as small groups and serving together.

Right.

And then there's partnering.

So three legs.

I don't know how you could figure that out kind of animal that is, but um, we've been serving together and that's, I believe in that I believe in serving together, tying us together in ways that are sitting in circles doesn't do so all of this one, another thing we're doing, we're going to run into some things that are going to rub us the wrong way.

There's no way we can sit in circles every week and serve the community together every week and serve on partner teams here at city ballet every week and get real about life and not run into problems.

So how are we going to navigate those problems?

How are we going to navigate when we rub each other the wrong way?

And this starts on such a, an elemental level, like it starts in your families.

It starts with your mom and dad starts with their siblings.

That starts with your kids, with your spouse.

Then it moves onto your friends and your coworkers and then it moves onto community.

And how we as a church relate to community and see the writers of the New Testament understood this.

We'll get some of these, so if you broke all of those one anothers down into three groups, a third of them, so 33 percent of all the one and others have to deal with getting along.

The writers that are testament understood that if we're going to call you to authentic community, if we're going to call you to live life together, you're going to need to get a get along and be at peace.

You're not going to grumble.

You're going to have a same mind.

You're going to accept each other right there.

We can work on that one for a long time.

Couldn't we accepting one another as we are waiting for one another before beginning the Eucharist.

I mean, who doesn't struggle with that?

I know everyone in here is like, why will other people get in line for communion?

I've been waiting forever.

By the way.

Eucharist is fancy word for communion.

Don't bite each other.

I mean, this is like simple stuff that you learn in kindergarten, but we're still working on it.

Don't fight each other.

Now.

I don't know that this is really in the Bible.

Don't challenge each other.

I feel like a part of my calling is to challenge people a gently and patiently tolerate one another.

I mean, isn't that setting the bar low?

Right?

Listen, if you can't like each other, at least tolerate being around.

I mean, wouldn't you want your spouse to say that, honey, I just tolerate you.

I tolerate you so much and and gently tolerate them.

Seated nice and gentle.

Seek the good of one another.

Don't complain.

Again, we can do a whole teaching on not complaining, a whole teaching on confessing sins to one another, but I would just want to give you the overarching view.

The picture from a thousand feet up is that there's 100 versus about one another in each other and 30 percent of them are about how to get along.

Why do you think that is?

Do you think anything has changed from getting along 2000 years ago when the Bible was put together, nothing has changed.

You know why?

Because they're still humans.

You and I are still here and we're still having the same problems that they were having 2000 years ago and that is really the thrust of what I want to talk about today.

So this week we're on vacation and it was glorious and we loved it, but it was not without conflict.

And whenever you decide to, well, I can't drink that very easily.

Whenever you decide to give a teacher on conflict, you kind of just wait and you're like, man, I really hope that the conflict I experienced in preparation for this teaching is not in my marriage.

That was my actual prayer.

I was like, on vacation.

I don't want to have a fight with Mandy.

So I didn't.

Instead I heard one of my kids' feelings really badly.

So I heard one of my kids' feelings and um, and you know, I'm not going to go into great detail about it because I forgot to ask their permission, but suffice it to say that they confronted me in and I'm going to say they didn't confront me in the healthiest way.

It kind of came out sideways, but that's all right.

We're all not everyone can be as emotionally stable as I am.

Um, and I tried to lead this child through, you know, what a proper or conflict resolution would feel like, um, which is not totally true.

Okay.

So when I figured out that there was a problem and that the problem was me, what's your initial reaction?

Anybody?

Anybody have an initial reaction of defensiveness?

Does anybody goes straight to know?

Oh, I don't think so.

I mean it's like, it's like, you know, we're high of, you know, intellectually high functioning people, but when we get challenged we, we become late with the lowest basis for them.

We're like, no, you know, we just get down ready to fight.

I don't know why.

I guess I felt like a sumo wrestler, but got.

I know, right.

That's what we do.

And I think that's what happens on the inside.

It's not like, let me listen to your complaint.

I am humble and gentle and I went up bite, you know, it's letting me devour you and consume you before you even finish.

I did not know.

I didn't.

You heard it wrong.

I'm sorry you took it that way.

You like that one?

It's your fault.

I'm sorry you feel that way, but.

Oh, you know what?

I tell my kids, there's no buts and I'm sorry.

I'm sorry that all of that stuff just negated what you're saying is I'm not sorry you're the problem.

I'm not sorry.

You're the problem.

Not Me.

Never.

And, and I watched myself, you know, and was there so she officiated, which was good and I think that's a hard place for her to be in because you know, she is my wife and I feel there needs to be a little bit of loyalty, some home field advantage, but at the same time she is trying to show our kids like impartiality.

So we worked it out, but I watched myself do the very opposite of all of these verses.

I've watched myself get immediately go on the attack.

See, what I tend to do is I either take the easy way out and I'll tell you like I either fight or flight.

I mean that's what I do when I'm challenged.

When there's conflict, I either want to ignore it and run or I want to just like destroy it.

There's no happy medium for me and neither of those are good, but they're both easy.

The hard way is to actually sit down in the moment with the person and work it out.

It's way easier to avoid it.

Ignore it, right?

The person off, you know, cancel out.

It's way easier to talk behind their back.

It's way easier to gossip about them, to tell someone else how you feel instead of going to them and telling them how you feel.

It's way easier to just argue with them and call them names and yell at them.

It's way easier to give them the silent treatment.

It's hard to actually work it out, so I want to look at ourselves a little bit today.

What do you do?

What do you do when you read facebook and someone writes something on facebook to just boils your blood, right?

You get into sumo mode and you're like, I've got to show them.

First of all, has anyone ever changed their mind on facebook?

No.

I'm just going to put this out here and I don't want to offend anybody, but like I get that it's like a maybe becomes sort of like a forum for.

I should be careful here discussion, but I don't know.

I don't, I don't ever see anybody changing their mind anyway.

I'm just saying we get.

Have you read stuff?

I've read stuff written by believers in Jesus that makes me ashamed.

It's like, how can you talk, talk to each other like that in public.

I mean, I think there's like this invisible barrier that we think if we do it on facebook, no one to really know what you know.

I mean, right?

No, there's this detachment that lets us talk in a way that we would never talk in person.

The all caps.

Do you ever talk in all caps?

I mean, come on, right?

We just blew that person up.

Who's next blue that person up, right?

I mean, is that.

Can you imagine Jesus doing that on facebook?

You know what happens when you're at work and there's that coworker that everyone's talking about, you know, do you jump into that conversation and start talking about them too?

It's really, really difficult to not isn't it?

You want to be in.

I say this a lot, but we're dealing with the same issues we were dealing with 20 years ago, guys like when we were eight years old.

It's the same stuff when you're 48 and I'm away far away from 48.

I'm really young, but in seven years I'll know what that feels like, but you know, it's just the same stuff.

We want to be liked.

We want to be accepted.

We want to be part of the conversation.

It's almost impossible to walk away from a conversation that you can see is heading towards the place you know is wrong, but you just.

It's so hard to walk away from that.

You know, what do you do in your family?

What do you do in your marriage?

What do you do in your marriage when your spouse says something is just hurts her feelings or rubs you the wrong way?

You know, how do you handle that?

Do you go to the fight where you're like, let me, let me remind you of all the things you've ever done wrong.

You know you ever do that, you always, you never.

Those are both really bad things to say.

By the way in marriage I've learned, you know already you, or do you do flight?

Do you just ignore it and just go simmer.

Just going to let that simmer to an inappropriate moment when I will explode at a later date.

That's my.

That's what I do, and then for something totally inconsequential, it's like, could you hand me the butter?

It just blows up out of nowhere.

How do you handle these things and what is, what does God give us to handle these things because we're all dealing with it.

So I want to look at one section of Collagen's.

It's a book that Paul wrote.

Paul's one of the early followers of Jesus and he wrote much of what we call the New Testament, and this is a letter that he wrote.

He gives them instructions to a church that he started in a city called Kllauss, say or tie.

Colossians is the name of the book, so we're going to read this together.

Here what he's talking about is people who follow Jesus.

Here, there is no gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian,[inaudible], slave or free.

Isn't that seem so relevant to today?

None of those make any sense to us.

Okay, but really what he's.

These are huge social cultural divides of his time.

Jew and gentile did not associate.

This was a huge earth shattering statement for Paul to make here in the body of Christ here and the followers of Jesus, the family of Jesus.

There is no Jew or gentile for the Jewish people who had fought become followers of Jesus that would have been turning the world upside down.

They'd been taught in the day they were born, that the Jews are the chosen people and they were the ones who inherited the promises of God and the gentiles were dirty and unclean, and if you touched on them, you had to go to this special ceremonial cleansing.

No, in Christ we're one.

It's crazy.

Circumcise Uncircumcised, let's not go into that.

Alright, barbarian, skinny, and we've got some barbarians here.

I've seen you walking around slave or free.

Can you imagine this slave, masters and free.

Now he was saying freedom and where people have been been freed from slavery plus their masters.

All, all three of those.

I mean the church is not a location, right?

The church is.

The people of God were a movement.

We're not a place in the movement of Jesus.

We're all.

How relevant is this to today?

There is no, you know, black or white, right?

There is no race.

There's no ethnicity that should divide us.

Listen, just because we're different doesn't mean we're divided.

He didn't say, we're not gonna.

We're not gonna.

Have these differences.

We said we're are.

We are going to have these differences and yet our common thing is that we all have Christ.

I might not have the same socioeconomic statuses.

You, I might not have been raised in the same neighborhood as you.

I might not have the same skin color as you.

I might not be the same gender as you might have.

The same education as you, but if we bought that Jesus or one,

the church should be the one place on earth where people of different colors and ethnicities and backgrounds and you know the rich and the poor, male and female, we should be standing on equal ground.

I heard somebody say once that there were no levels at the foot of the cross.

We all come to Jesus.

We're all equally undeserving and equally accepted by Jesus.

I don't care if you've been going to church for 600 years or this is your first time here.

We're all one.

Do you get it?

That doesn't.

Just because we're different doesn't mean we're divided and see what the church has done wrong over the last, I don't know how many years is created walls and created in and out when all along we were supposed to be with open arms.

Okay, but here's where he goes next.

He says, listen, that's not going to be easy, so I know I'm telling you to get along.

I know I'm telling you that because we have Jesus.

Let's all just get along and he knows it's not.

It says, therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, I'm going to give you some very important advice.

Right?

Real quick.

I want to just do a side note though.

I just wanted to just him one more time.

Say this at city light, we don't believe that church is a place you can't go to church.

Now.

I know in American like rhetoric, that's what we say.

We go to church like you came to church this morning, but that's not that word is actually not in the Bible.

Okay.

The, the.

It's a German word.

Kireka, which was used hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years ago and now we just use it and we say church, but it's not in the Bible.

The word in the Bible for us is we are a movement or a people.

We're not a place.

We're not building.

We're not as an establishment.

We're not something where you have to join and become a member and pay membership.

Dues notes were a movement of lighthearted, likeminded, light spirited people who are on mission together.

We're more like a team than a than a membership of country club.

God's chosen people, so listen, if you're here and it's your first time you belong, you're a part of what we're doing.

If hearing that your 10th time you belong, you don't even have to believe before you belong here.

Do you know how many of God's followers Jesus has followers didn't believe and yet followed him?

Some of his believers.

We're still figuring it out.

It says, when Jesus, after he had died and rose from the dead, he gave one more.

He talked to tons of people for a long, long time, and then his last talk, he gave a little talk.

He said, go forth into all the world and make disciples of all people, right?

Baptizing them my name and then he ascended into heaven and it says, and some doubted, which is amazing to me because I'd be like pretty sure I would be in, but even at that point people were not sure.

So if you're not sure what you think about Jesus, if you're not sure, you're a believer.

If you're checking things out, if you're a skeptic, if you're someone who has walked away from the faith, probably for a good reason, you've along here.

First of all, you belong in God's family.

Second, while you belong at city light, and I hope you're here and I hope that you hear that you can bring those friends here.

Do you hear that?

Your friends belong here.

You're skeptic friends, your friend who got hurt by the church, your friend who walked away from, from the faith when they graduated high school, you're a friend who walked away from community and then therefore walked away from faith.

Your friend who's a pastor, a youth pastor did this or that, or they belong here and they don't have to dot all the i's and cross all the t's before they're allowed to walk in here.

Okay?

Do you hear me?

Thanks.

Therefore, so here's how we're going to do community member and he's saying, look, we're different, but we're one.

Therefore, clothe yourselves with these things you're gonna need.

You're gonna.

Need something, right?

These are like family rules.

Does your family have rules?

When I, when I started dating Mandy, I've found out about some family rules, right?

There's some rules in the window family that are not in my family.

Here's one of them.

No matter what time you show up at the house, you must eat a bowl of ice cream.

That's true.

It's a role that her grandmother had for years and that's why I gained 15 pounds when I first started dating her.

You come over at 10:00 in the morning bowl, ice cream, big one.

Like with stuff on top, like a Sunday.

You come over at 3:00 in the afternoon, bowl of ice cream.

If you've already had dessert and you come over at 11:00 at night, bowl of ice cream.

It's like it's in there.

Another one of their family rules is that don't ask tricky to help you do any job Sharky's or dad because you will end up doing all the work.

That is another one in their failures was I didn't know and I've done many, many jobs, were Charkhi has stood here and said yes, you need to scrape more off of that.

Yes, but I can't see anything scrape, scrape more.

I mean, that's literally hours and hours of my relationship with her father.

Uh, there's some rules in my family that she needed to learn.

One of those rules was don't ever eat anything in my dad's fridge.

Just, it's just a safe rule because, well, when she, when we first started dating, we found some mayonnaise in there that was seven years old.

And that's not an exaggeration.

My Dad just doesn't care.

He just eats it.

He's got the stomach of a, of A.

I don't know what he's saying.

He's got an iron stomach.

The stomach of an iron.

Don't know what that means, but he's got one.

Alright.

Um, you know, another one, another one of them, uh, I should do a good one for each family.

Right?

Um, I think that one of the rules that in my family that the duns is that my, my parents, my mom and dad and mom, when she was still alive and my dad, they would make every effort to support our kids in any way they could.

It was just such an amazing thing.

And what I would say about her, her, her dad and Laurie Sharkey and Laurie Day, um, there are some of the most generous people.

And so you have to be careful.

One of the rules of the Wendell household is don't say you want something because it'll show up at your house the next day.

I've literally, I've said, man, someday I'm going to get a vis.

And Sharkey heard it.

I'm like, oh no.

And you can't stop him.

He'll just bring it over.

So there's like rules to the family.

These are rules to the family of Jesus.

Be Compassionate.

Be Kind, be humble.

Do you?

Do you see what he's getting at here?

Like, listen, it's going to be hard.

You're going to run into each other.

You're different, but you don't need to be divided.

So you're going to have to be compassionate.

You're going to be kind to one another.

You don't want the good for each other because it'd be humble.

It can't all be about you.

You're going to be gentle.

Sometimes you're going to disagree and you're going to fight.

In fact, when you disagree, be gentle and you're going to have to have patience, but I love this illustration to clothe yourselves with this because clothing is something that you never accidentally walk out of the house without.

Right?

You're never liked doing it.

Oh my gosh.

You know, run back in the house.

We're very intentional about putting our clothing on, but see the clothing you put on matters now.

Sorry.

Hang Nail.

Alright, I've got a really bad hangnail.

Fortunately.

You guys ready for this?

I've got a medic backstage.

Gary, can you come help me with my hangnail?

Yes.

I've got a hangnail not.

They're definitely not there.

Don't move your neck.

Very good.

All right.

Just calm down.

Stay calm, sir.

You look a lot like the guy who played guitar this morning, you're going to make it okay.

But this.

Oh, this is going to hurt really bad.

Some of the things I do for teachings.

So what happens, you know, and when it hurts bad, it hurts.

Bad.

It hurts really bad and we're almost there.

I think my, I can't feel my stomach.

Oh No, please don't turn that off.

Thank you Jesus.

That hurts.

I got to give him one more crank.

Oh, very good.

Excellent.

Right.

Do you have a pulse left?

No.

No.

Paul.

Sorry sir.

You're going to live.

You're going to live.

Can you at least.

Can you just give me a bandaid or something?

All right, so Gary Center, because I wanted to make an illustration now who know me, I guess the computer again.

Right.

So if I had more time I would've had gary come out initially addresses the soccer coach because that's something else he does and he wouldn't have been able to do anything to help my hangnail right.

When you, if you have you ever been in a crisis situation and you've needed the paramedics, you want them to show up with gear, don't you?

Like, you don't want them to saunter up and like a bathing suit and flip flops and blows the problem, you know.

So he's like decked out.

Is he not.

I mean he's got a stethoscope.

He's got this and I assume in case you want to talk to somebody.

All right, it's good.

Why is you, you have another radio radio?

Same radio.

Oh, so you don't have to take it out.

All right.

He's got the tourniquet, which was really nice of him to show us.

He's got scissors and a knife and a flashlight.

What's that?

A marker?

No, that will be a needle that goes in your chest.

Whoa.

That was only in the movies.

They do that in every movie.

That's like the only thing that movie paramedics know.

They're like, you know, I've got a leg injury and the chest you're wearing, you know some armor, right?

Personal protection.

That's good.

So you guys get the analogy right?

Clothe yourselves, clothe yourselves for success.

He is.

Does he look good or what?

Right?

All right, those gloves are dirty now and you throw this away.

This is what Paul saying, Paul saying, relationships are riddled with danger.

You need to clothe yourselves.

You need to be ready.

You need to bear with each other.

You know what bear with means?

It doesn't mean get along.

It's closer to tolerate.

It means to endure.

Listen, relationships aren't easy, so let's take some advice from Paul.

Clothe yourselves with these things.

Choose to bear with each other to ensure each other, so come close with these things.

When it doesn't work, do your best to ensure each other and when that doesn't work, you're going to have to forgive each other and in other places we heard Jesus say, well, how many times should I forgive?

And he's like, there is no limit because you guys are just.

I mean, I've watched you says, Jesus, I've watched you for a couple of years.

You guys are bad at this stuff, right?

You're gonna.

You're gonna hurt each other.

You're going to accidentally run each other.

You're going to purposely hurt each other.

You're gonna say mean things.

You're gonna.

Say things at the wrong time.

Forgive one another.

If any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you, which sets the bar pretty high.

This is my point for today.

We've got to do the hard work of relationships.

Relationships aren't easy and you can't.

You and I can't expect to have true community here if we're not willing to do the hard work.

We can't have true community if we're not willing to do the hard work of relationship.

We want to take the easy way out and just ignore and just set aside and just forget about it or just fight and just come out with the claws out.

Every time we're going to bite and devour each other, I get really scared.

He's coming back.

I've heard I've heard something behind me like twice.

I think I have a little bit of ptsd is still from the accident.

I really think about that.

Who just gonna like little deep breathing up here.

I'm like, flashbacks.

I wish Gary was there.

Actually.

That would have been way easier.

So.

But we need to do the hard work of relationships.

Listen, we're supposed to be.

I'm going to.

I'm going to skip through a couple of slides here.

Hold on.

This is what Jesus said.

Everyone will know that you're my disciples, not by what you believe to hear that, not by what you know, not by how many Bible verses you memorized.

Those are all good things, but if you will love one another.

This is our greatest witness, if you will, our greatest advertisement, our greatest marketing tool.

Well, if you looked at the world right now, if you looked at America specifically, would you say they need some relational help?

Does our world need true community?

They need an example.

They need to see what it looks like to be different, but not divided.

That's what the movement, the family of Jesus.

We're supposed to be a healing community.

People are supposed to be able to come in here who have never had parents who loved them and be parented by fathers and mothers in the faith.

People are supposed to come in here who have never been accepted for who they are and be accepted for who they are loved.

Now listen, I'm not saying we all just come in here and we're all just accepted and we are not challenged.

We talked last week about encouraging one another and we've got other one another spur one another on right?

It's not like everybody's Anoka.

You're okay?

No.

In fact, the community of Jesus, a place where you call them as you are, but be changed by the love of Jesus, so we're, we're all moving towards Jesus together, but the problem is we don't start off on the right foot.

We've got to be a place where people coming in who have been broken, we've have been lied to then even hurt and abused over different horrible relationships can come and find healing and love and acceptance.

We're to be a healing community, but we'll never be there if you don't do the hard work.

So here's what I'm convinced of that shallow relationships come from easy work in deep relationships.

Come from hard work.

When you hit that crisis in your life and you wouldn't have people were there for you, you're going to have the people you've been through thick and thin with.

You're going to want the people who you've fought with, who you've disagreed with, and worked it out who you've heard each other's feelings and are forgiven.

Forgiveness is one of the most powerful things we can do in a relationship.

Let's just look at this one more time, so because we're going to be different but not divided.

We need to clothe ourselves with all of these

humble and kind of other oriented clothes and we need to have an attitude of bearing with each other.

Let's have the band come up as I finish bearing with each other in during one another, and if it goes so far, let us forgive one another.

So let me give you three practical things to do the hard work of relationships.

Listen to some of you today need to hear this.

You're in a marriage and you're wanting to give up.

You've been thinking, I've been trying and Christian you don't know my husband.

You don't know my wife, Christian.

You don't know how my kids are behaving lately.

You don't know how my friends.

You don't know what I read on facebook last night.

I do.

I know it all.

I know I don't, but listen, we've all been there in one way or the other.

This is what's great about being a community is you're not alone as followers of Jesus.

You are never alone.

Can I give you three things to work on?

Number one, check in.

What I mean is don't take the easy way out.

When you know that there's that thing, that relationship, that tweak in your heart, that hurt, feeling that thing that you don't, that you're struggling with, check into the game.

Get into that relationship, lean into the conflict in a loving way.

Lean into the things that hurt.

Don't avoid it and don't fight it.

Check into it.

Don't take the easy way out.

Don't be like me.

Don't take the easy way out.

Check in and then check yourself.

Before you walk into any sort of conflictual situation, make sure you're dressed like gary.

That's what you need to remember for the rest of your life.

I want you to remember, am I dressed for this?

If you're about to walk into a conflictual conversation and you're full of anger already, if you're wearing your defensive anger, I'm going to get you close.

You're going to fail.

You've got to step back and get dressed again.

You need to put on patients.

You need to put on compassion.

Your compassion sees the other person's side of the story, not just your own.

Get dressed and then check your pride.

We often want to just wait, wait til they come to me, right?

Be the first to move.

If we all did, all of these will be such a healthier place.

So the whole thing, right?

The whole point is we're, we're aiming at true community.

We want for everyone here to have true community that loves you and accepts you and support you through thick and thin.

We want you all to have that in some context, some circles somewhere in this church.

We want you to have that, but it's not going to come if you're not willing to do the hard work of relationships.

We all are called to do this.

So that's my message for today.

We're going to sing one more song during our response and reflection time.

Uh, we, we always end with one more song just to give you a chance to process what God's been saying to you through the whole meeting.

Okay?

So we're going to sing one more song.

What you can do is just sing or sit there and just listen, or you can go get prayer.

We had some really nice people over there who loved to pray for you.

You're going to have about five minutes, so you've got time to go.

You don't have to pray.

They just pray for you.

Say, listen, I'm having a relationship difficulty.

I need some healing from a past relationship or something else that you're struggling with or you're sick.

You want prayer for physical healing, head on over and let's stand together and sing this last song.