Unstuck: Friction | Part 5

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

We're in a series called Unstuck, where we're just wrestling, asking, like, how do we get unstuck in the significant areas of life?

What is God's wisdom for us?

And we're spending two weeks right now just on how do you get unstuck relationally.

And here's the truth for all of us is we all long to have an intimate, life-giving, character-shaping relationship with someone that has a rugged commitment to one another.

Whether you're introverted or extroverted, we all desperately long for that deep, soul-refreshing, life-giving, intimate, encouraging person in our life.

Now, one of the great threats or opportunities for that is this area or this issue of conflict.

How we deal with conflict will either make or break our relationships, won't it?

And we've all experienced it.

We've all dealt with it poorly and have had it break relationships, and there's times where we've seen it, or maybe we've heard about where it's worked well, and you saw someone who got even deeper and more connected as a result of conflict.

And so here's what we want to do with our time today is how do we navigate conflict well?

And we want to discover what is God's wisdom and how to do this well.

And secondly, how do we lean in with love when there's relational friction?

In fact, the sermon title today is friction.

Go ahead and say to your neighbor friction.

And then maybe just say it with a gritted teeth, friction, you know?

Because that's kind of how we feel.

It's like, oh, friction.

Here's what I want to do.

I want to give just kind of three big observations about conflict, uh, why conflict is so difficult, and then what's some practical ways of how we can resolve conflict well.

Uh, first, three observations about conflict.

The first one uh is conflict's unavoidable, isn't it?

It's just unavoidable.

Uh and there's lots of reasons for this.

I don't want to spend all the time we live in a fallen world.

Sometimes it's just personality, sometimes it's our sin nature, but it's unavoidable.

No matter how good or godly you are, you know, or in a relationship, you will experience friction.

You will experience conflict.

So begin to just embrace the reality we need to learn how to deal with and resolve conflict.

Well, the second thing is conflict's difficult, isn't it?

It's just difficult.

There's a reason we're not good at it.

And in fact, I want to give you four reasons why it's difficult.

Uh, but it is, let's just let's just acknowledge it right at the outset.

Man, it's hard.

Huh.

And finally, conflict, we said this, we closed last week, is an opportunity to grow.

It actually is an opportunity, or perhaps even better, a doorway towards intimacy when done well, and not a slam door in our face, which it often feels like when it's not done well.

And here is where we get our memory verse.

Yes, we're doing a memory verse together as a church.

If you're new, there's a three by five card.

I am old school that way.

Would love for you to write it down on it.

And it's uh Proverbs 27, 17.

It says, as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.

Can you say that with me?

As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.

Here's what the Proverbs telling us is that people are put in your life to refine you, to mature you, to grow you, to sharpen you.

And here's the other part of it.

Um, I I don't know if this is legal or not.

Um I brought knives to school.

Um says as iron, this is my this is my set right here, sharpens iron, and so you got one of these, you know, you heard that yeah.

Sharpens iron, right?

So one person sharpens another.

Uh and in fact, actually, what's interesting is uh I learned this this week.

I love to cook, actually, but uh did you know uh a sharpening still doesn't actually sharpen, it just takes off the curve on the very front, so you get this little curve on your blade.

But what actually sharpens best is what's known as a whetstone right here.

In fact, you'll soak this stone and then you'll begin to just drag it.

How's that sound?

You like that sound?

Hang on.

To take the rough edges, and some of you are like, Ryan, a knife was a bad thing for a conflict.

Aren't you supposed to put those away during a conflict?

To take off the rough edges of your life, we actually need one another, and friction is required.

Sparks happen.

That's actually part of our maturing process.

And so when we lean away from it, it's like what happened uh with when we were first married, uh, we got a knife set.

I knew nothing about knives, what to do.

It was a wedding gift.

We had it for years.

Eventually, I'm like, this thing doesn't work anymore.

It's dull.

And so what do we do?

We threw it away and got a new knife set.

Isn't that what we do relationally?

We just hang in there for I'm gonna stop walking around with the knife.

I'm making some of some of you nervous.

But that's what we do relationally, isn't it true?

We have a relationship, we hit a conflict, we don't deal with it, or we deal with it poorly, and we just kind of eek through, and then eventually we just trade for another relationship.

And God says, I've actually put people in your life on purpose, and I want to use them to refine you and shape you, and vice versa, for you to refine and shape them.

Conflict is an opportunity to grow, and yet we use it as an opportunity to go.

And so let's talk about why is conflict so very difficult, and then what do we do?

How do we resolve it?

Well, first, why is conflict difficult?

Uh the first reason is we lack personal objectivity.

And here's the problem is when we're mad and in conflict, we think we have perfect objectivity, right?

But we lack it.

In fact, uh Proverbs 26 uh 14, 12 says, there's a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.

There's a way that looks right, and isn't that so true?

That we get into conflicts and we're like, we know exactly what the problem was, we know the issue, and go into it, and then the reality is it only brought pain and heartache or fracture to the relationship.

Uh, one of the great books, if you want to dive deeper on this, is a book called Crucial Conversation.

Not a Christian book, but I think one of the best books on how to have these types of tough conversations.

In it, he talks about mastering your story, that we all tell each ourselves a story, and it's actually that story from an event that produces these strong emotions, and we got to be careful of the story we're telling ourselves.

Uh, the first story that so often we tell ourselves is the victim story.

It's not my fault.

It makes us an innocent sufferer.

The other person is bad, wrong, or dumb, and we're good, right, or brilliant.

It's not my fault.

And I'll say this probably twice, but I love this adage.

It's kind of an old kind of Texas saying.

No matter how flat a pancake, there's always two sides.

And this victim story says, I am not at fault in any way, and you're completely out of fault, and you're the worst, and I'm the best.

The victim story.

The second then builds into that the villain's story.

It's all their fault.

It exaggerates our own innocence while you know overemphasizing the other person's guilt.

Uh, we then impute bad motives.

And that's so powerful.

When we begin to say, and this is why you're doing these things, and we build these stories out and impute bad motives, uh, we often then uh begin to label they're just an idiot.

They always do this.

And we gotta watch out when for double standards, because what happens is because we give them bad motives, we always judge them poorly, but then we judge our motives as purely, don't we?

And like, well, you know, I I was this because, and we begin to excuse our behavior.

The victim story, the villain story, and then the helpless story.

Well, there's nothing else I can do.

We make ourselves to be powerless to do anything healthy or helpful.

We I can't do anything.

We turn the other behavior into an unchangeable, uh, fixed trait.

This is the way they always are.

If I speak up, they're gonna respond this way.

And we gotta realize these are stories that keep us stuck.

Uh, why conflict's so difficult?

First, we lack personal objectivity.

We buy into these stories.

Victim, villain, help, help us.

Secondly, we choose the wrong moment, don't we?

You know, we're doing this um finance series together in our small groups called Freed Up.

And you might, if you're a couple, you might have already experienced a little bit of friction as you begin to talk about finances.

And in fact, um, we were, Jenny and I were about to talk about, and I said, let's do this after I talk on conflict.

Because inevitably, when you preach on conflict, what happens is you get in a fight as a married couple.

We're like, let's try to delay this.

Uh, Proverbs 15, 23 says, a person finds joy in giving an apt reply, and how good is a timely word.

And you know when the wrong time is to talk about finances?

When you're stressed and pressed in it.

And when do we begin to talk about it?

Well, you shouldn't have done that, and well, we shouldn't have spent that, and all of a sudden it just blows up.

We have the wrong uh time or the wrong moment.

Uh often we might jump into something, we feel like we have to address it right away, and uh we don't have enough time to actually talk about it.

Uh we lack personal objectivity, we choose the wrong moment, uh, we have the wrong emotion.

Proverbs 15, 18 says, a hot-tempered person stirs up conflict, but the one who is patient calms a quarrel.

Anger.

Reacting in anger.

Now, here's one of the things that's in really important because I think we all have a different relationship with anger.

Um, anger is not bad in and of itself.

And we actually we gotta become more comfortable.

In fact, the Bible says, be angry and yet do not sin.

Like their anger is an important emotion.

The purpose of anger is that you have a problem to solve.

Anxiety tells us to move away from something, anger tells you to move towards it.

Irritation, frustration, impatience, exasperation, maybe even building to rage.

Anger, though, always is a secondary emotion.

So you're feeling that anger, you have to wrestle with, why am I angry?

And so when we react in anger at the outset, we may not actually be addressing the real thing because you actually you might be angry because you're afraid.

I had this in a parenting moment uh not too long ago where uh there was stuff going on with uh one of my teenagers, nothing bad, just normal teenage stuff, but I was I was just reacting to it.

And I realized, oh, that anger actually had more to do not with anything that they were doing, it was all me.

It was fears that I had.

So you always ask, why am I angry?

Take a moment.

Pause.

What is the emotion underneath that?

Objectivity, moment, emotion, and then finally, we use the wrong approach, don't we?

And we're gonna talk a lot about this.

Proverbs 15, 1 says, a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

What is your natural response to a conflict?

I'll give you three kind of typical ones.

One is you're maybe you're a stuffer, you're passive, you're the pressure cooker, which is dangerous because eventually you do explode, but it takes a long time.

Give the silent treatment, withdraw quietly.

Uh instead of communicating honestly, you secretly harbor maybe some bitterness and pain.

You're a stuffer.

You hold it in.

Maybe you're a spewer.

That's more me.

Aggressive.

Controller, uh, you uh you just bulldoze over people, maybe explode, words come quickly right away.

You have to be right, you love winning.

Or maybe that's just me.

I was just reflecting on me.

Stuffer, spewer, leaker.

This is one of the most dangerous of them.

It's the passive aggressive.

You have veiled criticism, indirect comments, uh, backhanded compliments, procrastination, sarcasm, victimization, feigned innocence.

Um you just kind of hint at things.

You never really address, you just kind of drip.

You just drip it in, and it's nonstop and it's destructive.

Um, I love Proverbs 15:1.

Proverbs 15:1

It's one of my go-to verses that we just said.

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

And my natural, I think you gotta ask, what is your natural response?

Because if you're aggressive, you actually need to slow down.

If you're passive, you actually need to speak up.

If you're passive, aggressive, well, that's a whole nother thing.

We'll talk about that.

But I'm I I tend to be the spewer.

We were at a keys years ago, my kids were small, uh, and it was a Sunday afternoon, and there was a group of about 15 uh 20-something year olds, and they'd been there for a while.

And they had enjoyed probably several key industrial strength, margaritas.

And they were quite loud, obnoxiously loud, yelling, and they were quite grotesque in their language.

And there's a little bit of this, you know, that I'm just my kids are little, uh, you know, I think my youngest was maybe in the baby age and toddler.

And I'm like, how much is it just letting them kind of experience, and this is just life, to the point where it got um, it was like, wow, this is bad.

And so I'm like, my natural would be like, hey, shut up, and that's not gonna help anything uh because a gent uh harsh word what stirs up conflict, and so I'm like, okay, a gentle answer.

What's my natural now?

How am I gonna adjust this?

And I mean, I'm like, I felt like it came to where I needed to do something, and so I go, like, hey guys, I love this, and they kind of all stop and look at me.

And I told them what I loved.

I'm like, clearly, you guys are great friends and hanging together.

That's amazing.

How cool is that?

I'm like, you just it's it's amazing that you have this strength of friendship and relationship and hanging out.

Now, here's the deal.

I I just have these small kids, and you know, their conversation was kind of lewd and not good.

Um, and all they did was turn and their face went.

And one dude's like, I am so sorry, I had no idea.

I have a nephew, I would never talk like that, you know, in front of him.

He just felt so poorly, and they're like, Oh my goodness.

And I'm like, No, no, no, no, no problem.

I totally get it, you didn't get it, understand?

And they're like, Oh, we're gonna be so much better.

Can I buy you a margarita?

I said, No, I'm I'm fine, I'm fine.

Uh I go sit down, and it's funny, people, other people sitting on the patio came up and thanked me for that.

And then the guy did actually just bring me a margarita too, anyways.

So you never know uh what happens when you deal with it, but we use the wrong approach.

Why is it difficult?

We lack up objectivity, we choose the wrong moment, the wrong emotion, or even the wrong approach.

Well, how do we resolve conflict healthily?

Let me give you just kind of four big ideas to help us navigate this well.

First, uh, we have to define the problem on our own.

Before we go to someone else, define the problem on your own.

First, examine your heart and part.

Remember, I said, no matter how flat a pancake, there's always two sides.

We have to examine our heart.

Jesus would say, before you take the speck out of your brother or sister's eye, what are you what are you supposed to do?

Take the log out of your eye.

And we have to have the humility to realize maybe I'm not seeing this 100% clearly.

And maybe there's some part in this that I play.

Even if it's 1%, get clear on your 1%.

Examine your heart and part two.

This is powerful.

Move from thinking about them to praying for them.

Nothing will change and shape your heart more than praying for them.

And you're like, Ryan, I don't want to.

They made me so mad, or they treated my family so poorly, I'm so angry at them.

Jesus said.

Love your enemy, and what?

Pray for those who persecute you.

If you're a follower of Jesus, we don't have an option.

That wasn't like, hey, here's a nice suggestion.

I suggest that you love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you.

He said, No.

This is what Jesus followers do who live by an upside down kingdom, who do not go about life, the ways of this world.

What we're gonna do is we're gonna love our enemies and we're gonna pray for those who persecute you.

And so that person that you're in conflict with, one of the most powerful things you can do is move from thinking about them, which isn't it true?

What we do is we just begin to play that story over and over.

Uh, we're really good at arguments, or I am in my mind.

I win all those ones, you know?

And when you wake up at 1 a.m., 2 a.m., and you're just obsessing, thinking about them, you've lost your peace, you've only gained worry.

Pray for them.

Pray for them.

And you can pray repentance for them too.

And restoration.

Pray for them.

Examine your heart, move from thinking to praying.

This is, I think, one of the most powerful relational uh practices that I learned early on in our marriage.

I was at a marriage, um, just we were at a marriage night.

It was actually uh, and this is the I got this principle back then, I've used it as true for every single relationship, friendship, uh, coworkers.

Okay, move from thinking to praying about here it is.

Give a generous explanation for their behavior.

You've been around a while, you've heard me say this many, many times.

What's the most generous explanation for their behavior?

Remember, we tell stories, victim, villain, helpless.

We go down the worst explanation for their behavior, don't we?

Oh, they're only doing this, and we begin to assign motive to why they're doing it.

That person cut me off.

What a jerk.

What's the most generous explanation?

Oh, maybe they're pregnant and their water broke and they're on their way to the hospital.

I don't know.

What's the most generous explanation?

When Jenny and I were first married, um, we used to get in arguments uh over little things, you know.

We've grown and so we still get over arguments and little things.

Um but but this is one of those ones where um this was like a really big deal for a while, uh, for me at least.

Um I I I like to think of my organizational system as a uh a free organizer.

I freely organize my stuff around the house.

And so I used to just kind of drop my keys over here, my backpack over here, this over there.

Uh and then Jenny, I I described her organization as a pilot.

She would take all my freely organized stuff and then begin to pile it by my bedside table.

And I'm like, I hate, I hate piles.

They stress me out, they overwhelm me.

I can't see it.

It's all like I'm like, oh my gosh.

And I go, Ginny, I really hate piles.

And she's like, I really hate your free organizing.

And so and so we would have this friction.

And you know what I started to do?

I started to assume motive on why she would take my stuff and pile it.

She does that just to make me mad.

She knows I hate that, and yet she's still doing it.

We talked about this.

She doesn't even really love me anymore.

I bet you.

Oh, what an idiot.

Me, by the way, the idiot.

What's the most generous explanation for her behavior?

She's actually trying to create a home that's welcoming and a beautiful environment for everybody.

And my free organization actually wasn't helpful to that.

Begin to ask, process, before you ever meet with somebody, talk to somebody.

What's the most generous explanation for their behavior?

And then finally, seek outside wise counsel if necessary.

If necessary.

This is not getting somebody on your side.

This is not asking for prayer, but actually it's gossip.

Oh, please pray for Betty.

She's just been a jerk lately.

Right?

We do this in the church.

This is not building an alliance to get somebody on your team.

This is, I really need wisdom.

I'm stuck here.

Am I thinking about this well?

What are the areas where I need to see this better?

Actually, my wife is so good at this for me.

And we need people like this.

I remember there was an issue with somebody.

I came home, I'm so mad, da-da-da-da.

And she totally just said, actually, here's the flip side of that.

And I'm like, I want you on my team.

And she was 100% right.

And it's exactly what I needed here.

We need people who will speak the truth to us.

So, first, uh, before we uh do anything, define the problem on your own.

Second, set a time to talk, don't put it off.

Proverbs 14, 9 says, Fools mock at making amends for sin, but goodwill is found among the upright.

And this is one of the hardest parts of actually setting a time of going, you know what?

Hey, I need to just get some time with you.

There's some things that have been bugging me that uh we need to talk about.

Or you remember last night, that comment, I'd love to circle back on that.

And I love Brene Brown.

She talks about eight seconds of courage because we hate, you know, having this, we so shy away from this.

We choose like doing nothing.

Uh, and and I get that, uh, but doing nothing is not a plan.

Uh, and so she says, actually, the worst of it lasts about eight seconds.

And if you can lean in for eight seconds, it's like a bull ride.

You stay on the bull for eight seconds, you won.

Uh, you'll get through the toughest part of the emotional side of that.

Okay, so set up a time to talk.

And now listen, the harder the message, the more human the method.

The harder the message, the more human the method.

There's been a lot of research done on this, varying degrees, uh, but uh one researcher said 55% of communication is nonverbal, 38% is tonal, 7% is your words.

One of the things of taking the easy road out is if we send an email, if we send a text.

And what you did is you just cut off so much of the ways we communicate.

Because now, if it's just an email, the other person gets to read your tone and intent in it, right?

There's the the harder the message, the more human the method.

So listen, if I saw you and I said, good to see you, what would you assume?

Not good to see you.

Why?

Because my face was frowned and my tone was down.

Right?

It didn't matter the words that I just said, my body posture, my eye contact, my tone, all of that matters.

Great to see you, good to see you.

All of a sudden changes.

It means something completely different.

Set aside a time to talk and realize this has to be in person.

We have the beauty of, like sometimes there's relationships that are long distance we can't do in person, but we can do it, you know, whether it's FaceTime or Zoom or one of those.

That's that's the second best way.

And focus on one issue, not many issues.

Uh, this is not a time to pull out your laundry list of all the things that you said, oh my goodness, here's what we need to do.

Now, here's the other thing, and this is really for you spewers uh in the house, because um the the stuffers, like you need a little kick in the pants to actually have the conversation, right?

Uh and the leakers, you you realize I can just drip, drip, drip.

You need to take that time, write things really clear, and have a clear, honest conversation.

But us spewers, um, we have to recognize not everything needs to be addressed.

Uh Peter said, love covers a multitude of sins.

The proverb says uh that to overlook an offense is to one's glory.

And there is a space where we go, not everything needs to be addressed all the time.

I did that early on in our marriage.

You can only imagine I came from a family that was intense talkers, all leaders, everything was addressed, and my wife's like, this is exhausting.

And she was right, absolutely right.

And so, if this is going to skew the way you view someone, then it needs to be addressed.

If you're able to go, you know what, I can let that go, and it doesn't impact.

I'm not gonna go, they always, or that's just the way they are, I'm not gonna move down that labeling that it becomes a filter.

Man, let it go.

All right?

And then address the problem, don't attack the person.

Address the problem.

It's not about being right, it's not winning is the goal, restoration, reconciliation.

Uh first, lead with vulnerability.

That means with that conversation, you're important to me.

This relationship matters.

I really love you and care about you in our relationship.

Then speak the truth in love.

Using, and we've all heard this, but it's actually, I sometimes we don't like to use formulas because um they feel like oh, not honest.

It's so helpful.

Instead of blame language, or you always, I feel blank when you did this.

This is how it made me feel.

And then seek understanding.

Again, you gotta have the humility to recognize I don't have the full story.

I don't know your motives, and I don't know all that's going on.

Help me understand.

Before I actually, you know, I'm trying to be understood.

I'm gonna share, I'm gonna, this relationship matters, I'm gonna speak truth and love.

Here's how I felt when this happened.

Help me understand.

Give me more of the context.

And then make a plan and extend forgiveness.

We'll actually spend quite a bit of time talking about forgiveness in our next series.

We'll do a whole sermon series on this.

So don't, if I'm rushing past that part, you're like, I don't know how to do that.

Uh, we're gonna teach through Jesus' sayings from the cross.

It's gonna be a powerful series leading up to Easter.

And what was one of Jesus' sayings?

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

From the cross, Jesus declared forgiveness over those who were crucifying him.

It's powerful.

Forgiveness is powerful, and when we struggle or do not forgive, you know, one person said uh unforgiveness, and we've heard this before, is like drinking poison and hoping it kills the other person.

Right?

It's actually more harmful to our soul.

Forgiveness simply means to let go of my right for revenge, that I'm no longer gonna hold this over you.

And we'll talk more in that series.

How do you do that?

But make a plan, what's gonna change, and then learn and work to forgive from the heart.

I'm gonna let go of my right to defend.

All right, so how do we resolve conflict helpfully?

Define it on your own, set up a time to talk, address the problem, don't attack the person, and then if stuck, get outside help.

If stuck, get outside help.

Matthew 18 walks through this process.

If you see your brother or sister in sin, go to them privately and show it to them.

Have the conversation.

Then it says, if they will not listen to you, then bring two or three, and it says witnesses.

People that can see and understand the problem and the issue, not people who have just sided with you.

And this is talking about conflict within the church, Jesus is talking about.

He says, and if still it persists, then bring it to the leadership of the church.

But first, most of the time we go to other people, we don't ever go directly to the person.

We need to learn how we that is maturing, that is the sharpening for us.

That is how God wants to help us grow.

Because when we just go to around, you know what it is?

It's like doing this.

We're actually dulling ourselves.

When we're just going around people and we're talking about people behind their backs, or we're just building alliances, it's actually not growing us or them.

Um, okay, that scared me.

One of the most powerful things you will do is have the humility to recognize I need help.

One of the areas that will keep you stuck, especially relationally, is the pride that I know best, and I can make it all work on my own.

It was about maybe seven or eight years into our marriage, and any long-standing relationship, you develop well-worn grooves of communication and habits.

And we were just stuck in a rut or a cycle, and we just kept going around.

And it was like we both love Jesus, we're both, you know, really love each other, and yet we're we're we're both experiencing conflict that we just can't resolve on our own.

And it felt like instead of, you know, putting water on a fire, it's putting gas on a fire.

And every time we talked about it, it just felt like we just kept going in circles and stuck.

And finally, we got help.

We got outside help.

We talk about Sue, our counselor.

We've met with Sue like a decade now.

Like she's family.

Oh, Sue told us the other day, and you'll hear me sometimes talk about Sue.

It was really confusing because we used to have someone uh that served in our prayer ministry, her name was Sue, and everyone thought she was our counselor, and they're like, Oh, is it her?

No, no, no, no, it's Dr.

Sue.

Um, it was so hard for me to finally admit, need help.

I can't figure this out on my own.

And and the first moments of it were actually quite painful because all of a sudden you're starting to uncover and deal with stuff that you just haven't really dealt with in a long time.

I kind of use the illustration of it's like it's cleaning out the garage.

It gets worse before it gets better because you're taking everything out.

But I can't tell you how helpful and powerful it is to have an outside expert voice that is for both of us that has given us tools and then begins to speak in and help us hear from the other person because there's just times where you just can't hear what they're saying.

And so if you're stuck, and this isn't just a marriage thing, this is a friend thing, this is a roommate thing, this is a coworker thing.

You find yourself stuck.

Maybe it's not just that they're a bad person, but would you get outside help?

Get somebody that could come and help you navigate and get some clarity.

Conflict.

It's unavoidable.

Boy, is it difficult.

But it's an opportunity to grow as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.

Now let me ask you is there somebody in your life today that you need to actually begin to go through this process?

Someone that you go, like, you know what, I've just been putting it off, or I just put them completely out of my life?

And you just need to have an important, significant conversation with them.

Would you write that name down and begin praying about them, not just thinking about them?

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for today.

Thank you for your grace.

Thank you that even the thing that feels so awkward and hard and difficult, you actually longed to use that in our lives to mature us, to make us more like your son Jesus, to grow us.

And I pray uh for my friends, as the reality is all of us have stuff that's happening, whether it's in a friendship or a marriage.

Would you give us the wisdom to know what to do and the courage to do it, no matter how hard.

In Jesus' name, amen.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

Please subscribe to our podcast for access to every episode as they're uploaded.

And hey, we'd love to connect with you.

Take a next step by filling out our virtual connection card at awakeningchurch.com slash card.