Rooted In Relationships

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Good morning, church.

It is great to be back here today.

We're going to be looking at uh Colossians chapter 3.

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

So if you want to be turning there in your Bible, you can put your finger or your bookmark there and flip over to Ephesians chapter 5.

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

I want to give a few disclaimers while you're looking those verses up.

First of all, several of you have asked, and I do go to church here.

I'm not a guest speaker that they brought in.

I've been out of town a couple weeks, but if you're here for your third time, you may not know who I am.

So I'm Dave, and I work here at CCW.

It's good to have you.

The children's building is open since I've been gone.

There are more of you than there were when I left, so that's amazing too.

Today we're going to talk about relationships.

And Pastor Rick back in the fall took about eight weeks and talked about relationships in the Family Matters series.

Pastor Joe with the youth just got done with about four or five weeks of relationships.

You could go find a weekend or a week-long conference on relationships.

There have been books and series and volumes that have been written on relationships.

And so Pastor Rick said, Dave, would you give about 40 minutes on this topic?

So we're not going to get every little thing that's ever been said about relationships today, but I hope to give us a picture and maybe get all of us a little more thirsty to go find out more about our horizontal relationships with each other.

The Bible has some verses about that.

Before we get into it, though, let's just go to the Lord.

Go to the Lord in prayer.

Heavenly Father, I come to you today and I thank you for the honor and the privilege to be here in your house.

God, I thank you that we can come to you with our prayer request.

I thank you that you give us your word that's alive and powerful, that gives us instruction and teaching and lifts us up and gives us correction where we need it.

God, I just thank you that you're a God who speaks to us.

And God, you've spoken to us here.

I pray that you hide me behind your cross.

Let everyone here hear your words and not my words today.

Prepare our hearts and minds so that we may leave here changed.

In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen.

The first thing you need to know about Colossians chapter 3, we're going to be looking at verses 18 through Colossians 4.1.

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

I don't know why they didn't put 4.1 on up in chapter 3.

It's just the way that it worked.

So Colossians 3.18 through 4.1 is our text.

Before we get into that, you need to know that Colossians chapter 3 at the very beginning of the chapter says, if then you've been raised with Christ.

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

So if then you have not been raised with Christ, this isn't going to make a whole lot of sense to you.

This is Christian relationships in Christian homes.

And if you haven't been raised with Christ, we're going to talk about that more later.

The Bible tells us that Jesus died for our sins and raised again so that we might live forever and have salvation.

That can be you today.

If you haven't been raised with Christ and you want to be, don't let this day pass by without it you coming to know Jesus.

He's here, he's died, he's rose again for everyone.

What we're talking about here today, though, is for those who have been raised with Christ, those new men.

And to get a good understanding of where we're at on this, you have to have that first.

The second thing that you have to know is that Colossians 3.18 through 4.1 is bookended by Colossians 3.16 and 17 and 4.2.

And let me just tell you a little bit about what Colossians 3.16 and 17 and 4.2 say.

It says, Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, sing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

And whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

And then 4-2 says, continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving.

So let's just break these bookends down that are on either side of these human relationships verses that we have.

If you have Christ's word dwelling richly in you, and you are teaching and admonishing people in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, if you're singing with grace in your heart to the Lord, and everything you do, you commit to doing in the name of the Lord Jesus, and you pray vigilantly and with thanksgiving, your vertical relationship's gonna be so good that you're not gonna have to worry a whole lot about these horizontal relationships that we have here on this earth.

You're going to be so keyed in on pleasing God that when we start talking about wives and husbands and bosses and employees and children, that's gonna be easy.

If you get the vertical relationship right with those bookends, you're gonna be alright.

If you don't, the rest of this is gonna fall apart.

It's just what I believe.

So with that being said, let's move in to Colossians 3.18.

Very famous verse.

Wives submit to your husbands as is fitting to the Lord.

So, this could be offensive to some people sometimes.

Wives submit to your husbands as is fitting to the Lord.

I want to tell you what the verse does not say.

It doesn't say women submit to men.

It doesn't say girls submit to your boyfriends.

It doesn't say fiancés, submit to your fiancés, and it doesn't say for domestic partners to submit to your significant others.

It says, wives submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord.

There's a special relationship in the Bible between a man and a woman, and it's called marriage.

It started all the way back in Genesis chapter 2, verse 24.

Genesis 2:24

Genesis 2, 24, the Bible tells us, therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined with his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Now, some people may say that's Old Testament, and it is Old Testament, but Jesus brought it into the New Testament in Mark chapter 10, verse 6, and he didn't just quote it, he added to it, listen to this.

Mark 10:6

But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.

Now, whoever would have thought that we needed that in the Bible.

But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, so then they are no longer two but one flesh.

Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate.

There is a relationship that ladies and men enter called marriage, and the Bible tells us if you are in a marriage and you have been raised with Christ, and you've put off all the stuff Pastor Rick told us to put off, and you've put on all that stuff he told us last week when he brought his closet out here, then you're supposed to submit it to your husband.

So that word submit, the Greek word is hypotaceth.

I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, but that essentially means to arrange forces under the guidance of a leader.

Okay?

A voluntary attitude of cooperating under leadership, kind of like almost in the military.

As is fitting to the Lord, I interpret that to mean that this is how God has it put together.

This is the way the puzzle pieces are supposed to fit, as is fitting to the Lord.

It's what God created.

Now, Ephesians, if you go to Ephesians chapter 5, we're going to be quoting Ephesians parallel with Colossians today.

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

The way I understand it, Paul was in prison.

He wrote a letter to the church at Ephesus and a letter to the church at Colossi, right around the same time.

Colossi, I don't know how to say that word either.

But these two letters kind of have the same thing.

Ephesians chapter 5, verse 22 through 24.

Ephesians 5:22–24

Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.

For the husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church, and he's the savior of the body.

Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let wives be to their own husbands in everything.

This tells us that you're supposed to submit to your husband as to the Lord.

And it also goes on and says that the husband is the head of the wife.

Now, Christ is head of the church, husband's head of the wife.

And I don't know, but I think that a lot of times if this breaks down in our society, it breaks down because the husband is not being the head of the wife.

I really believe that if God tells ladies who are married, wives, to submit to their husbands, he's gonna key them to submit to their husbands.

But if the husbands aren't leading and leading well, I believe the wives kind of take the leadership position and don't submit sometimes.

We make jokes about it.

You can probably find a sitcom on TV about it where there's a strong woman in the house and the man just kind of submits.

That's not as is fitting to the Lord in my mind.

So if your wife isn't submitting, husband, are you leading well?

I haven't always been the very best leader, but I used to be a lot worse than I am right now.

And some of that started to change when Amanda forcefully submitted to me.

Now, forceful submission is a term that probably demands a story.

And I have one for you.

Let's step into the Wayback Machine round about December of 2014.

In December of 2014, Ella was six, Luke was four, Amanda had a job working in software.

I had my own business up in Bessemer.

We had a house.

It wasn't the biggest, best, nicest house, but thanks to the Lord and Dave Ramsey, we didn't owe anything on the house.

We didn't have the biggest, nicest cars, but they were paid for.

Everything that you want to be checked off in the American dream, I about had checked off.

I got my business to the point that I could work in the morning and it wasn't the biggest, nicest golf course, but I was there three or four days a week by noon.

And I was absolutely miserable.

See, we went to church and we taught Sunday school and we did all those things through the week.

And sometimes when we were teaching Sunday school, we would come across these verses in the Bible.

One of them is the Great Commission, where Jesus tells the disciples to go.

Matthew 28.

We see Abram, God told him to go to the place that I'm gonna show you.

God told Moses to go.

There aren't many people in the Bible that God didn't tell to go.

So every once in a while, I would look at Amanda and say, maybe we're supposed to go to Africa.

Because that's where you go, right?

That's where all the mission work in the world is done.

Africa.

And she would recut her eyes and shake her head, say no without saying no, how ladies do.

Well, one day in December of 2014, on a particularly dreary and frustrating day, I looked at Amanda and I said, Maybe we should just go to Africa.

And she did not act right.

She looked me in the face and said, Maybe we should.

And I said, What?

Now I'm not one to have my bluff called.

So what we did was start looking for places that we might be willing to go in Africa.

Right then, like December, like immediately.

And we came across a place in Senegal in West Africa, Dakar Academy.

It is a school for missionary kids.

We didn't want to go out and reach the unreached, but we thought maybe we could take care of the kids in what seemed to be pretty much a safe place while their parents were out doing the mission work.

We emailed Dakar Academy, and they emailed back.

And we started having communications with these people, and we went and talked to our pastor in January.

And in January, our pastor told us two things.

He said, I think you need to turn in an application with the International Mission Board.

And he also said, I think you should have the mindset that if the door doesn't close, we're just gonna go on through it.

You guys hold on to that.

It's going to be important.

So we filled out an application with the International Mission Board.

Never mind that we had never been on a short-term mission trip, never pastored a church, never been to Africa, and didn't even have a passport.

We were all in.

This was gonna happen.

Before too long, the International Mission Board had a Skype with us, and we talked to this man on Skype, and we were ready.

Like, whatever, Lord, we're here.

In February, we talked to a man from the International Mission Board, and he was one of these guys that they put in place to kind of weed out all the weirdos who say they want to be missionaries.

So we talked to him for about an hour, and at the end of the conversation, I asked him this question.

I said, uh, I see you have something in here about BMI.

That's body mass index.

The IMB has a BMI requirement.

To be a missionary, you have to have a BMI of 30 or less.

Now, that's like the military.

I'm gonna tell you guys, I stand here today like 5'8 and about 78 or so.

And I weighed last time 252.

And that puts me a couple of biscuits from morbidly obese.

To have a BMI of 30, I need to weigh 197 pounds.

And the last time I weighed 197 pounds was the summer between fifth and sixth grade.

I've been in the 200-pound club ever since.

The man told me that he could not waive the BMI requirement.

It was strict, it was completely exclude you because they couldn't insure you, and the door slammed shut, and we weren't going to Africa.

He said something, something, we'll keep your application and this.

I haven't heard from him since.

Senegal quit emailing us, and I got back to my job, and I had a renewed sense of purpose.

All right?

I stepped out, Lord, you told me to step out, you shut the door, done.

It was over.

But you know what?

It wasn't over.

Because that spring it rained and rained and rained and rained, and I couldn't go to the golf course, and so I played on the internet.

And when I was playing on the internet, I looked at a website called houseparent.net.

And on houseparent.net, there was a job opening in Chelsea, Alabama, at Kings Home for house parents.

And I sent an email, I don't know why still, and said that we might be interested in being house parents at King's Home in Chelsea, Alabama.

Not having any expectation.

I was too fat to be a house parent in Africa.

There's no way that they're going to have me be a house parent in Chelsea.

The lady emailed me back, and then the next day I was on the phone with her.

And then before I knew what was happening in my life, we were filling out an application to be house parents at King's Home.

And we had an interview to be house parents at King's Home.

If you know anything about my wife, you know that she will research things and research things.

And by the time we went for this interview, she knew everything there was to know about being a house parent.

She knew everything about King's Home, and she had a suitcase in the car, I believe, ready to go that day.

I wasn't ready to go that day.

I went into the interview with the Human Resources Director and the Executive Director of the organization.

And I know that you aren't going to believe this, but I promise you it's true.

I went into the room and I told them our story about Africa, and I told them that we were kind of under a command to go through open doors, and I needed them to shut this door because I didn't want to come work there.

And before I know it, we're at the house where they want us to work, meeting the kids they want us to work with, talking to people that we're going to be working with at King's home.

And the lady said, Do we need to continue the process?

And I said, What do you mean?

And she said, Well, we have to do background checks.

And I said, Well, I can't tell you no if the door is open.

So they're doing background checks, and we're coming in for another interview, and the date is important in my life.

That day was Friday, April 17th, 2015.

We went to an interview, and this time it wasn't just the HR lady and the executive director.

We met with some people, were house parents.

The president of the organization was there.

A couple of counselors were there.

They had a lady who had retired.

I don't know why she was there, but she was eight people were there with us, and I told them the very same thing.

I don't want to come work here, but I might have to if you hire me, and I need you to shut this door.

And we went back and forth in this interview, and they would not say that they wouldn't hire us, and I would not say that I would take that job.

And finally, after about two hours, they told us to go home and pray about it and let us know, let them know what we thought.

I promise I'm going somewhere with this.

So, Friday night we have one of these conversations that you may have with your wife sometimes.

And all day Saturday, we're arguing, we're fighting.

Sunday morning, we get up, I gotta go teach Sunday school.

We go into service, and in my mind, I'm hearing surrender.

Surrender.

Surrender.

I sit in service with my fingers clenched, mad.

Amanda right beside me, I'm mad at her.

I'm mad at everything.

Headache from the pressure.

We go to an old school Southern Baptist church, we have an invitation, and that invitation on that particular day, uh, you can sing it if you know it.

All to Jesus I surrender.

All to Him I freely give.

I surrender all.

It was the invitation.

And so I grabbed right hold of that wood pew in front of me, and I stood right there and I did not surrender.

And we went home and we fought all the rest of Sunday afternoon.

And Amanda finally got the kids to bed in the evening, and then she disappeared for a while.

And after about an hour, she came and found me in the kitchen.

And she said, listen, we can't do this because you're our leader and you're not ready.

You want to talk about soul crushing.

If she had kept fighting, I would have kept fighting.

But she told me those words, and what she told me was this, she said, I will let you lead me, even if it's out of what I believe to be the will God has for my life.

And the next morning I went to my job and I said, I can't do this anymore.

And I called Amanda and apologized.

And I called Kings home and told him if I hadn't screwed up everything, that we would come work there.

And that ball started rolling.

This critical point in our life made possible by her submitting.

And what I found out later is that hour she disappeared, she had been in the bathroom crying and praying and doing business with God.

And God had given her a word, and that word was submit to your husband.

So, wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.

Forcefully, if you have to.

The Ephesians verse to go with this is Ephesians 5.25.

It says, Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her.

So, wives, you're called to submit.

Husbands, you're called to love your wife and give yourself for her as Christ gave himself for the church.

We all know that Christ died and rose again for the church.

He gave his whole life.

And we're supposed to do that, husbands, for our wives.

But even before Christ died and rose again for his bride, the church, he came to earth to be with her.

Now, bitterness, bitterness to me comes from when I'm not leading well.

Because if Amanda steps in and takes my role, I am dissatisfied.

So my key against bitterness is to lead well, and then I don't get bitter.

When I set the values, communicate what we're going to do, kind of set the course of action in our house, I don't get bitter.

If I don't do it, she's gonna step up and then I get mad.

So if you don't want to be bitter, be a good leader.

And also give yourself as Christ gave himself for the church.

I don't know if you guys remember much about COVID in 2020, but I was here.

On March the 8th, and I kind of live in a bubble, and I wasn't paying any attention.

We had soccer that afternoon.

We had the Iwana boxcar derby coming up.

We had a lot of things going on.

I had a couples event that Friday night.

Long about March the 10th, I had a buddy that was going crazy on Facebook, and we started looking, and I was like, should I pay attention to this?

Seriously.

And then by March the 12th, they canceled the NCAA basketball tournament.

And I said, wow, they're canceling the NCAA college basketball tournament.

This must be serious.

Let me show you this picture that we have here.

I think.

This is Pastor Jack Eccles.

He's a 93-year-old pastor in North Carolina in March of 2020.

That's his wife Jerry there beside him.

Jack had a routine every day.

He got up and he went to the nursing home to see Jerry, where she was on the memory care unit for dementia.

And every day he would go to the nursing home.

He would sit with her, he would feed her, he would make sure she had her water, make sure she had everything that she needed.

And then he would go home and he would come back the next day.

Well, on March the 12th, 2020, Pastor Jack went to the nursing home and they said, you can't come in because of COVID.

You know what he did?

He went home, he got his Bible, he packed a suitcase, and he went back to the nursing home.

And even though he didn't need the care, he checked himself in so he could be with his bride, so he could make sure that she got fed, so he could make sure she had the water she needed, so he could make sure she had the care that she needed.

What a picture of what Jesus did for us.

We couldn't go to where he was.

Sin put a separation up between us and God.

And when we couldn't do anything about it like Miss Jerry, Jesus loved us enough to come here and be with us here on this earth.

Men, love your wife and give yourself that much to her.

Do not leave her.

Go to where she is, like Pastor Jack Eccles.

Colossians 3.20 about the kids.

Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord.

And all the parents say.

So I had to come to terms with this verse at King's Home, teaching the Bible to foster kids, many who had parents who should not be obeyed.

I had to wrestle with this a lot.

And I landed on Ephesians chapter 6, and it says, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

So in my mind, I came to the conclusion this applies to Christian homes.

Children who are in Christian homes, who have parents who are in the Lord, you are supposed to obey.

If your parents are not Christians and tell you to do things that would make Jesus sad or sin, I don't think that you have to obey those commands.

And we had to teach this to kids who had parents who didn't need to be obeyed.

So, to obey, I asked a child expert what this means, and her name is Ella, and Ella tells me to obey means to like do it right away.

Going on to say, and also like to do it with the right attitude.

So, children, you should obey by doing it right away and doing it with the right attitude if your parents are in the Lord.

Now, parents, if you're demanding that your kids obey, are you letting the word of Christ dwell richly in you with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing everybody in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual psalms?

That's your bookend of this verse right here for children obedience.

The Ephesians verse goes on to say, honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, that it may be well and you may live long on the earth.

I've got to tell you this.

This is a commandment all the way back in Exodus, and I don't think it just applies to little children.

I think this applies to adult children.

You're supposed to honor your father and mother.

To honor means to respect, admire, hold in a place of recognition.

When I was a kid, maybe 10 or 11 years old, there was one place on earth that was idyllic.

It was like as close to the Garden of Eden as you could get.

I couldn't fathom how anything could ever go wrong in this particular place.

And that place was Oakland, California.

And the reason that I, it's okay, you can lie.

Okay.

Um the reason that I loved Oakland, California so much is because they had a baseball team called the Oakland A's.

And it wasn't like it is now.

You couldn't just turn on TV and watch whoever you wanted to watch.

I might have gotten to see like three A's games a year.

It was Braves and Cubs, and Braves and Cubs.

I still can't stand it.

The Braves and the Cubs.

I just wanted to see the A's.

I had little statues of Mark McGuire.

I had baseball cards over a hundred.

I had my room was painted yellow with green curtains and betting.

I mean, I was in it.

Nothing could ever be wrong in Oakland.

And Mark Maguire, when he came into the league, his first year hit 49 home runs.

He was awesome.

He was 6'5 and stood 215 pounds.

12 years later, in 1998, Mark McGuire broke the record for the most home runs in a single season.

The record was 61.

And he was a cardinal at this time, and he hit 70 home runs.

He didn't just break the record, he obliterated it.

And at that time, Mark weighed about 265.

Now he wasn't fat, he was a monster.

And he had arms kind of like your calves, maybe, or maybe even your thighs, depending on how big you are.

Like this was a dude.

And I still loved it.

And a few years later, Mark Maguire admitted that he had used steroids.

And I was done.

I tell you all that to tell you this.

Sometimes the less you know, the easier it is to honor and admire and respect someone.

Sometimes it's a little bit easier to keep people up on that pedestal if you're not standing right underneath it.

See, I had to struggle with this verse too as an adult with my dad.

We didn't have the best relationship.

And I finally came to the terms that I could honor him better with a little bit of distance.

A little distance made the heart grow fonder.

A little bit of space made it easier to honor him.

And especially, guys, when there's a divorce.

How are the kids going to learn to honor their parents if their parents don't honor each other?

It's hard stuff.

We're not going to resolve it today.

But the words are in the book.

We're commanded to honor our parents.

So do the best you can.

And parents, help the kids out.

Moving on.

To what the fathers are supposed to do.

Do I need water?

Okay.

Sorry.

I need water too.

That must mean I'm going too fast, but this says I have till twelve.

Moving on to what the fathers are commanded to do.

Colossians tells the fathers in verse 21, chapter 3.

Fathers do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.

The Ephesians verses 6, 4, it says, Fathers do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord.

So provoking means to exasperate, irritate, or annoy.

And sometimes I do this even just for sport.

I'm very good at exasperating, irritating, and annoying people and things.

And I'm commanded not to do it, but I don't always realize how much I'm doing it with my children.

So I have several things that I would like to tell you all.

There are nine of them, and they're not in your notes.

This is a list of things that I often get wrong that may exasperate my children and lead them to discouragement or maybe even anger and wrath.

Number one on my list of don'ts, don't find constant fault.

How often do your kids get it right?

Versus how often do your kids get it wrong?

How much do you tell your kids they got it right in relation to how much you tell them they got it wrong?

They're not all wrong all the time.

Number two, don't refuse to listen.

This doesn't mean that you have to change your mind.

It doesn't mean that you have to entertain arguments, but kids are people, and people need to be heard and need to be understood, and they need a chance to persuade and plead.

And if you got kids that you want to be lawyers when they grow up, they're gonna need this skill.

So don't refuse to listen.

Number three, don't permit too much.

Too many choices are not good.

I can't pick out anything to watch on TV.

I just look at all that I could watch.

I'm overwhelmed.

Too many choices aren't good.

We need and want boundaries.

Complete freedom, not good for me, certainly not good for the kids.

Number four, don't demand too much.

Have reasonable expectations for your children.

And those expectations may differ from child to child.

The one kid may not be able to do the thing that the other kid did.

Don't demand that you have this across the board expectation in this house.

Especially if you know it's not possible.

Some things, I get it, like you have to do certain things, but don't set expectations they can't meet.

Number five, don't change the standard.

Moving the bar higher and higher.

It's inconsistent.

Let good enough be good enough.

And if they hit the mark, tell them they hit the mark.

Don't show them what the next mark is immediately.

Number six, comparison.

The Brady Bunch.

Marsha, Marsha, Marsha, those of you who know what I'm talking about.

Don't compare your kids to each other.

See, God created all of us, even your children, with special gifts and abilities and talents and weaknesses.

And if you compare your child with other children, you may be sending the message that you're not satisfied with the way God created your child.

Don't do that.

Don't compare.

Trust me, they're already doing it enough.

Number seven, don't break promises.

Eight, don't chasten in public.

And number nine, don't show favoritism.

Those are things that can really discourage and provoke your kids.

And I need to work on for sure.

Bring them up in training and admonition of the Lord.

That sounds familiar.

That sounds like the bookend of the verse.

We're supposed to bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.

Admonition means we're supposed to warn and reprimand and advise and urge our kids.

And training means we're supposed to teach the Bible to the kids.

And we can teach the Bible to the kids by sending the kids to private school, and we can teach the Bible to the kids by sending the kids to church.

But the Bible says, fathers, teach the Bible to the kids.

You're supposed to do this at home as well.

It's your job.

And that's the way that you are supposed to go about it.

Let's go on to Colossians chapter 3, verse 22.

Colossians 3:22

Bond servants.

Obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service as men pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing God.

The word here is doulus, and doulus means slave.

In the Bible times there was an involuntary servitude system.

You could be a slave against your will by force.

Today in our country, we don't have that so much, but I'm going to tell you, I think we have often a voluntary servitude system.

There's research that's done by banks and financial people, and a stat came out in January that close to 45% of Americans can't come up with$1,000 for an emergency.

And if you can't do that, that's tough.

That means you got to go to work.

And you got to go see your master who'll give you the money to pay the things that you can't pay without your servitude.

That's pretty hardcore stuff.

So most people say that this verse of the Bible can be related to employees.

So if you're an employee and you have a job, then you're supposed to obey in all things your master according to the flesh, not with eye service as men pleasers, but in sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.

My boy Luke got his yearbook this year, and he was getting all kinds of signatures on the yearbook, and he wanted the teachers to sign his yearbook.

And he was trying to get the substitute teachers to sign his yearbook.

He's just, well, I don't know, seventh grade.

You know.

But anyway, one of his teachers signs his yearbook and it says, Luke, you always do the right thing even when no one's watching.

And I know that I get on this kid a lot, but man, I know he's got a heart that's sincere and he fears the Lord.

And this teacher tells him you do the right thing when no one's watching.

Do you?

On your computer, at your job, when the boss ain't there, on your phone, do the right thing even when no one's watching.

Having a heart to fear the Lord, sincerely wanting to please him.

Colossians 3.23 goes on whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not unto men.

This is a landmark memory verse that you have.

You can probably quote it.

Whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not unto men.

We tell the kids this when it's time to go clean their room or time to go work in the yard.

Do it heartily now, as to the Lord and not unto men.

Well, let me tell you this, and I hesitate to stand here and say this.

Because we just opened up the children's building and we're about to start Sunday school, and we need teachers and soccer.

Yes, soccer registration starts in three weeks, and we need coaches and we need refs, and we have a wana that's starting in August, and we're gonna be doing VBS in July, and we're gonna be all trunk or treat will be here before we know it.

But hear me well, somebody needs to hear this.

It's okay to go Nancy Reagan and just say no.

It's okay.

In fact, you don't even have to say no.

There's a lady who goes to church here.

She had been coming a few months.

Joe was in charge of a wana at the time, and he asked this particular lady if she would be willing to work in the awana program.

And we asked Joe what the lady said, and he says, she said something about that wasn't her best yes or something.

I don't really understand what was going on.

So she told him, that's not my best yes.

Like, not no, but I'm not gonna be doing it.

And she didn't even say no.

I had to, I thought it was brilliant.

I had to go ask her about it.

And I said, Where did you get this?

And she said, There's a whole book about it.

Lisa Tucaro or somebody like that did a book called The Best Yes.

I read the book because I needed to hear about this.

And you can go say no without saying no just by saying it's not your best yes.

Well, let me tell you, it wasn't much longer after that that this lady whose name is Leah Leitner found her best yes.

And she took a hold of a ministry in this church that needed her there, and she's got it rolling, man.

And you know what?

She couldn't do what she does if she was working in the Iwana.

Whatever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men.

It's gonna show if you're doing it heartily.

And you may tell you what?

It's gonna show if you don't.

So it's okay sometimes to say no to things that you can't do with zest and gusto and holy and thoroughly.

If you can't do it at your job, you need to find a new job.

If you can't do it where you're working at church, you need to find a new place to serve at church.

Thoroughly, with all you have.

Bring your best effort, and we do need soccer coaches.

Colossians 3.23, as we start to kind of wrap this up a little bit, Colossians 3.24 and 3.25 tell us this.

3.24, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance.

For you serve the Lord Christ.

But he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done, and there is no partiality.

Romans 14, 12 tells us there's a day coming where we're going to give an account before God.

Jesus told us in Matthew chapter 12, verse 36, that we're going to give an account for the idle words that we say here on earth.

Matthew 12:36

2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 10 tells us that there's going to be a day where we sit before the judgment seat or stand before the judgment seat of Christ and receive what we've done in the body, good or bad.

2 Corinthians 5:10

The things that we're doing here today have eternal significance.

It's not just going to go away.

So, whatever you do, do it heartily.

I hope you guys are filling in notes.

I didn't really pay a lot of attention to those blanks.

But anyway, we're down to the last point about masters and their employees.

The Bible tells us, masters give your bondservants what is just and fair, knowing that you have a master in heaven.

So if you're in an ownership position, or if you're the boss or the team leader, or whatever they may call it, you're called on to give your people what is just and fair.

I tried to think of a picture of this, and Pastor Rick knows that I'm going to say what I'm going to say, so it's okay.

There's a movie that is quickly becoming an American classic.

Many of you may have seen it.

In the movie, the lead character spends his days working in a tall tower in Chicago making a non-nutritive, semi-permeable cereal varnish.

And by the end of the movie, you find out that this character has planned to put in a swimming pool with his Christmas bonus.

And the swimming pool has already had a deposit, but the boss cuts out the Christmas bonuses and doesn't tell anybody, instead, enrolling all of the employees in the Jelly of the Month club.

And as the movie ends with the boss being kidnapped and brought to Clark Griswold's house and the police there and everybody on the boss, Frank Shirley, Frank says this quote in a movie full of quotes.

He says, Sometimes things look good on paper, but lose their luster when you see how it affects real folks.

I guess a healthy bottom line doesn't mean much if you have to hurt the ones you depend on to get it.

It's people that make a difference.

If you're in a leadership position, keep that in mind.

It's your people that make the difference.

Communicate with them, be open and honest with them, give them what's just and fair.

They're people, and that's what makes the difference.

That's all we're talking about here today is how to relate with people.

What we're supposed to do with one another.

As I was preparing this message, thinking about the wife husband relationship, the child parent relationship, the boss employee relationship, I was reminded way back of a quote I heard, my second time ever at the church at Chelsea Westover.

And it was kind of like a formative moment for me when I heard this message from the pulpit in 2015 on Father's Day, eight years ago.

Only two months after that story I told you at the beginning, God put me here and He put this word on me.

And I've kind of tried to apply this to my life, and I think it fits.

If you're a wife trying to submit to your husband, a husband trying to lead your wife, children trying to obey, fathers trying not to provoke, employees trying to do your job heartily, and bosses trying to do what's just and fair.

This quote is fits at all.

If you just do this, I think you got it pretty good.

Now, I tried to find the quote on the internet because I want to make sure I can do it justice.

And I couldn't find it on the internet.

So I asked.

The only person I can think that was here that day was Benji.

I asked him, and he said, I don't really remember.

So I dug through the church archives.

This brought me to the altar.

My second service here.

Who comes to the altar your second time at the church?

I was gonna write it down and tell you.

But when I got to the church archives, I said, I think maybe I'll just let you guys see exactly what I saw.

Amen.

Just what God's laid, you asked what God's laid on your heart.

I'm gonna get down here and kneel.

I was uh thinking about this week.

There's, of course, every man in here that's a father knows how important that is.

And I was thinking about Benjamin.

This is first year, the father.

You may be here first time, and you've had your first child.

I was thinking about Pastor Danny.

He's charged us, constantly challenging us to get into God's word.

And I was thinking about this prayer that has so helped me, continues to help me, and I'm confident God's made up heart and help all of us, men.

It's a tough prayer.

But I want to state it, and then I want us to bow our heads, man, and then I'm gonna state it again and ask you, just in your heart, join me in this prayer.

It's called the Leader's Prayer.

God's called us to be leaders and lovers of our home.

And it goes like this.

God help me when I'm wrong to be willing to change.

Yes.

Help me when I'm right to be easy to live with.

And strengthen me so that the power of my example far exceeds the authority of my position.

Guys, dads, we have an awesome responsibility.

Pastor Danny and I were raised, he taught us this years ago.

Proverbs 22.

You guys stand to your feet.

This week we celebrated or commemorated.

Six years David Wilson's been gone.

But he reached into my life on that day, and since that time, I can tell you, the first part of that prayer is easy.

Father help me when I'm wrong to change.

But the second part, God help me when I'm right to be easy to live with.

And even harder, give me the strength so that the power of my example always far exceeds the authority of the position you've put me in.

You pray that over your family, over your kids, over your job.

You let the word of Christ dwell richly in you.

You're not gonna have to worry about these relationships.

What I want to do, I'm gonna pray.

We're gonna open this altar, and I pray that if you've been touched today, you'll come and make that commitment.

If you need to have a different relationship with your wife, if you need to have a different relationship with your husband, with your boss, with your employees, with your kids.

Come do business with the Lord right here, right now.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for giving us this word.

And God, I thank you that my wife submitted to me when nothing else would work.

God, I thank you for these words that you've given me to make me want to be a leader and to lead by the power of my example, not having anything to do with any authority that's in my position.

God, I thank you for the example of Jesus who came and gave himself for his bride the church.

Lord, I thank you for directions about how to properly parent, how to properly work at our jobs.

And I pray that you will just let this word dwell in us richly this week, God.

In Jesus' name I pray.

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