Same Team with Sherri Richard

Welcome to the Medichurch podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at Medicurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life.

God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Well, hey y'all, I'm excited to be here with you today.

And so the message I want to bring today is called Same Team.

And it is all about God's design and desire for the relationships in our lives.

Now, most of the time when I dive into a topic like this, this is one of my favorite topics to talk about.

I like to kind of pick a scripture and go really deep into it.

But I decided to do something a little bit different with you guys today.

And instead of going kind of deep into one biblical truth, I wanted us to jump between several where we could get a bigger view of God's design and desire for our relationships.

So I'm excited to jump in.

We're gonna move fast, but it's gonna be a lot of fun.

So let me pray with us before we get started.

And so, God, we just thank you for who you are, God, and we thank you that you are a relational God that designed us to be fulfilled, God, and to experience your love through the relationships in our lives with one another, God.

And so we just pray that you would open our minds and our eyes and our hearts right now to what it is that you have for us in the relationships in our lives.

And it's in your name that we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

And so I don't have to convince you that relationships are important.

They are an important part of every single one of our lives.

In fact, when we jump back to the beginning, all the way to Genesis, we see that the very first tension that ever happens is because man was alone.

If we look back in the beginning, we discover that God created everything the light and darkness, land, sea, animals, plants.

He created all the things.

He created a man.

And he looks, and every time he creates something, he says that it is good.

But the first time we see that God says something isn't good is when he looks at the man and sees that he's alone.

This is in Genesis 2.18.

It says, the Lord God said, it is not good for the man to be alone.

And the same is true for you and for me.

It's not good for us to be alone.

Relationships are so incredibly important.

We want great relationships, but we don't always know how to do it.

We're not really great at them all the time.

50% of our marriages end in divorce.

40% of us have experienced a major family estrangement.

We've been separated from those that we're meant to be closest with.

80% of us have had relationships or friendships that can clearly and definitively be defined as toxic.

85% of us are dealing with some kind of relational conflict in our workplace.

We want great relationships.

We don't always know how to make that happen.

And so my husband Wes and I, we've been married for almost 12 years.

12 years actually a week from today.

And we have two young kids.

Our son is eight years old, our daughter is six years old.

And we knew from the very beginning that we wanted to have a great relationship.

Nobody like gets married and is like, sign me up for a mediocre marriage.

Like, that's not how this works.

We all want to have great relationships, we just don't know how to go about it.

And we were so fortunate that we had great relationships modeled for us in our homes, but we didn't know what it looked like for us.

I do doesn't come with a manual.

And so about two years into our marriage, we found ourselves having an ongoing conflict.

And it was kind of silly, but it started getting really serious for me.

And so what would happen is each night we would get into bed and we would realize that the overhead light was still on.

This is really serious, don't laugh.

And so we would realize the light was on, and so what we would do is we would start arguing about who had gotten into bed second.

The logic being, if you got into bed second, then you should be the one who has to get up to turn the light off.

And if I had gotten into bed second, I would get up and turn the light off.

Because I am a decent human being.

But if Wes got into bed second, sometimes he would get up and go turn the light off, but other times he'd just kind of shrug his shoulders and say something dumb like, I can sleep with the lights on.

Knowing that I absolutely would not be able to stand it, and eventually I would get up and turn the lights off.

And the more that I would get up to turn the lights off, the more he would refuse to do so.

And it started as a really silly thing, but eventually I found myself getting legitimately like frustrated and resentful.

All right, I would even get pre-mad before it would even happen.

Y'all know about pre-mad, right?

All right, don't have to explain it.

All right, so I was getting pre-mad before it would even happen.

And so one evening I'm sitting there, I've gotten into bed first, over there pre-madding, and Wes gets into bed and doesn't turn the light off.

And so I very sweetly, angelically, evenly look over at my husband and say, Wesley, you need to turn the light off.

And he gets this dumb grin on his face, and I lose my ever-loving mind.

I say, Wes, you do this every single night.

You get into bed second, you need to get up and turn the light off.

And he just starts laughing and he goes, Why does it bother you so much?

And I go, because you need to turn the light off.

And he's like, You just don't like it when I win.

Go, no, I don't.

He says, Why?

Because when you win, I lose.

The conversation may have been longer and louder, but you get the point.

When you win, I lose.

It's such a simple statement, right?

Because that's how competition works.

One person wins and one person loses.

But this daily ritual was making me a loser ever over and over again at a game that I don't know I had agreed to play.

Why are we competing?

We're married.

Aren't we supposed to be on the same team?

I tell you this story for two important reasons.

The first, this is the first moment that this same team language came into our relationship.

And the second reason I tell you this story, and the most important one, is because I'm the good guy in this one.

That's not always the case.

And so this is the first moment this same team language came into our relationship.

And as we dug deeper into this, we began to realize that all of our relational tensions that we experienced could be boiled down to this simple concept.

All of the conflict in our relationship was happening when we weren't on the same team, when we weren't behaving and functioning like a team.

I have the opportunity to talk to folks about relationships all the time.

It's part of what I do, whether it's couples that I'm counseling, marriages that I'm officiating, my own marriage, the marriages and relationships of other people in my life, I have the opportunity to talk about relationships a lot.

And after Wes and I had this realization in our own relationship, it was shocking to me how often this same team idea would apply to the relational tensions that were being described to me by other couples.

And it became even more evident that there was something to this when it seemed to help the relationships around me too.

Whether big or small, significant or minor, it all came down to being on the same team.

There was something about this pinpoint language that seemed to be able to dissect almost any tension that occurred.

And I didn't know why it worked.

I just knew that getting folks to function as a team seemed to make a difference.

It seemed to be incredibly effective.

And in this season, while I was reading scripture, some words jumped off the page for me in Genesis.

And I began to realize that this idea of being on the same team was not just a novel idea, but rather God's design and desire for the relationships in our lives.

And the longer Wes and I have sat with this idea and applied it to our own relationship, the more God has continued to expand this idea out in our lives to every element of all of our relationships.

And today I want to share just a few of those with you.

I want to share with you how to get on the same team, how to work together and how to win together as a team, and how to stay together as a team.

So let's start with how to get on the same team.

And so we're gonna jump back to the very beginning of human relationships, back to the verse that we just looked at a moment ago.

And this is out of Genesis 2.18.

Then the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone.

I will make a helper who is just right for him.

All right, that word helper here is the Hebrew word etzer.

And it's a very simple word.

It really does mean help or helper or helped, right?

Like it gets used often, like you fell down, I helped you up.

Very simple word.

But when we're digging into scripture, sometimes we need to not only look at the definition of the word, but how else and where else that word is used elsewhere in scripture.

And when you look into this word etzer, what you will discover is that sometimes it's used in very plain terms, but very often it's used to describe God.

God is a helper.

And when we consider this, we will quickly recognize that this word helper here is not a subservient word.

This word is not an equipment manager word.

This word is a teammate-level word.

God desires for you to have a teammate.

But what kind of teammate?

And so, God, right, he sees that it's not good for the man to be alone.

And so what he does is he brings all the animals to Adam.

And as he goes through them, he realizes that there is not a helper that is just right for him.

And so, God, he takes one of Adam's ribs and he makes a woman and he takes her to Adam.

And this is what he says.

When Adam sees her, he says, At last, the man exclaimed, This one is bone from my bone and flesh from my flesh.

She will be called woman because she was taken from man.

Right?

This is isn't this how we feel when we find our person or when we find our people, right?

Like, great, at last, someone who is the same kind of weird as me, or bare minimum, tolerates my kind of weird.

At last.

This is how we should this is how we should feel when we find people that we can genuinely connect with.

Have you lost that in your relationships?

Next verse, let's look at Genesis 2, 24.

This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.

The one here in the Hebrew, you may know, means one flesh.

If you are married, your team is made up of two people who are one flesh, bonded both spiritually and physically.

And if you are one flesh, you need to be you need to be functioning as a team.

You need to be on the same team.

And this is why being on the same team is so incredibly important.

This is why it has made such a massive difference in my relationship, in many relationships around me.

It's because from the get-go, God designed us to function as a team.

And really practically, something you can do starting today, I won't make you do it right now, I won't embarrass you, but the simplest thing and the way to start doing this is just to tell each other, same team.

Even if it's in the middle of a conflict, going, whoa, same team, because it is just a tangible and very tactical reminder that you are for one another, that you do not want to compete against one another.

You want to be unified, you want to be one together.

And if you don't think this matters, I'm gonna tell you something that I see happen all the time that might be unbelievable to you.

I very often get to sit across from couples who are dealing with incredible crises, often on the edge of divorce.

And a question that I have learned to ask is simple: Do you want to be married to each other?

Do you want to be together?

And oftentimes one of them will say yes, and the other one will look at them like they are absolutely shocked.

They had no idea.

And in turn, the other person looks back and goes, How do you not know this?

They didn't know that they wanted to be on each other's team.

Like you're still in this, you still want me, you still want to make this work.

Your teammate may not know that you want to be on their team.

Whether you're in a terrible place or you're in a great place, it is so very significant that your teammate knows that you are with them, and it starts as simple as just looking in them and saying it.

Same team.

And so I unapologetically will say that most of the time, this when we talk about the same team idea, it's about marriages, it's about the marriage relationship, but this is applicable to all of the relationships in your life.

Maybe that's the team you need to kind of relate with today.

Parents, your kids need to know that you are on their team, that you are with them, and that you are for them.

Co-parents, y'all, I don't know the details.

I don't want to make light of the details, but what I do know is that you need to figure out how to be on the same team for the sake of your children.

There is something so significant to being on the same team and the key relationships in our lives.

Michael Jordan said this.

He said that talent wins games, but teamwork wins championships.

I don't know about you, but I absolutely want championship level relationships in my life.

More than I want to be right, more than I want to get my own way.

I want championship-level relationships.

I want a championship-level marriage.

Talent wins games, teamwork wins championships.

Alright, so we're moving fast, but this is the foundation that we are going to start with right here.

And that's that we need to be on the same team, specifically in our marriages and with those closest with us.

So now that we're on the same team, what is the goal of every team?

No matter what the sport, no matter what's going on, what's the goal?

To win.

The goal of every team is to win together.

And this should be the goal of our relational teams, too.

And some days it's really easy to win together, right?

It's a solid high five.

You're making contact, all you're firing on all cylinders, everything's going.

But as we all know, too, not every day is a hit.

We have lots of days that are amiss.

Like when awkward high five, when you stare at the floor and you act like it didn't happen.

Some days are amiss.

It would be really great if every day we made contact, but that's just not how relationships or how life works.

I could tell you a hundred stories of days that were misses in my marriage, but one that stands out because I think this is was early on, kind of helped us solidify this concept.

Was one morning we had two little kids in our house.

We had like a baby and a toddler.

And we were supposed to be somewhere.

I can't even remember where it was now looking back, but we were supposed to be somewhere with the kids, and I wanted to be on time.

And so I am ripping through the house like a tornado, right?

I'm I'm thinking, I have all the mental lists.

Who are my mental lists, people, right?

Like, I gotta make the list, I gotta check off the boxes.

All right, so that's what I'm doing.

You gotta have the bottle and the sippy cup and the change of clothes and the change of clothes for me when for the when the baby inevitably throws up on me.

All the things.

And so I'm just charging through my list.

And Wes, my husband, is leaning on the counter, just sipping his coffee, kind of chatting about whatever.

And so I do what any mature person would do.

I start getting ready louder.

And so, after however many cabinets and all this, my husband looks at me very lovingly and says, Why are you so high strung?

And so I start going into the list and just telling him all the millions of things that need to get done.

And he goes, Well, how on earth was I supposed to know that?

And I said, Dude, are you new here?

And then he said something so significant.

He said, Sherry, I didn't know what your goal was.

I didn't know what your expectations were.

How can I be on your same team when I don't even know what we're aiming for right now?

And y'all, there is nothing more infuriating than somebody coming in making sense when you're trying to be mad.

But he was absolutely right.

How are we gonna win together if we don't know what the goal is?

We have to know what we're aiming for.

And I wish that all of our misses in our relationship, those awkward high five days, were as simple as this one, as simple as a diaper bag and a cup of coffee, but we all know that that's not the case.

All right, married folks, it's those recurring arguments that keep coming up about finances and priorities and time, where you spend your time and how you spend your time.

You keep missing.

Co-parents, whether you're together or not, disagreements about schools and sports and discipline, these things that keep coming back up and you keep missing.

All right, friends.

This one can get so complicated because as life progresses and seasons change, sometimes you're not on the same page about what your relationship should look like as life continues to change and you keep missing.

Families, all right, these disagreements that keep coming up on priorities and lifestyle and relationships.

You're missing.

You're not making contact.

And in the face of disagreement, typically what we want is we want to be right.

Often at the expense of our teammates.

And when we believe that we are right, we double down.

We're not likely to try to see someone else's perspective.

It's not necessarily in our nature, but when we're trying to win independently of one another, we're aiming at different goals, we're competing against each other, we're trying to win individually at the expense of our team.

Our team can't win if we're trying to win independently.

And so, if you've already decided you want to be on the same team, no takebacks, by the way, let's see what scripture can teach us about how to win together as a team.

And so, in the passage we're gonna jump into, Paul is writing to a church in Philippi.

And this group of folks is one that has experienced a great deal of persecution and hardship.

And we all know that when stressors are in our lives, it causes tension, right?

We're kind of heightened to tension.

And so this was a group of people who agreed that they were on the same team.

They were at church, they knew they should be functioning on the team, but they were struggling because they all had different views about how they should be handling the circumstances surrounding them.

There was a lot of postures, excuse me, a lot of posturing going on and insisting on their own way.

And so Paul writes to address this.

And he begins by asking a set of rhetorical questions.

And this is what he asks.

He says, There is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ?

Any comfort in his love?

Any fellowship together in the spirit?

Are your hearts tender and compassionate?

All right, the Philippians would have all agreed here.

Yes, right?

Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ?

Yes, is there comfort in his love?

Yes, any fellowship together in the spirit?

Yes, are your hearts tender and compassionate?

Maybe.

Basically, he's saying, hey, we're on the same team, right?

Like we can all agree on this, right?

And Paul here is doing something brilliant, something that we definitely need to pay attention to.

Is Paul, the Okay, this is it, this is a letter, so the questions are rhetorical.

But what we know for sure is that the Philippians had been writing to Paul, describing the tensions that are happening.

All right, Paul could have jumped right into the weeds of this.

All right, Paul addresses conflict really directly lots of times in scripture.

But instead of jumping into where they disagree, he backs out and he starts the conversation where they do agree.

He backs out to where he knows they're on the same team.

And then he sucker punches them.

Alright, so we're on the same page about this, right?

Is what Paul's saying.

And then he jumps into this.

Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together in one mind and purpose.

Alright, here's a visual representation of what Paul is saying here.

If I'm the Philippians right now and I've been writing to Paul about all of these tensions, what I am expecting to receive in return is an itemized list.

All right, who's right, who's wrong, whose side are you on?

Because in conflict, that's what we want to know, right?

Who's right, who's wrong, whose side are you on?

Who is the winner?

But Paul doesn't do that.

Instead, Paul rolls in making sense, and there is nothing more infuriating than someone trying to make sense when you are trying to be mad.

He's not writing to declare a winner, he's writing to change their perspective.

Because here's the thing when we try to win by ourselves, when we strive to be right, to win the fight, we're losing.

Because if we make our teammate or our teammates lose, our team is losing.

Now I've given you the shortest possible version of this story, but the clear truth is evident here.

And this is what it is.

If we want to be on the same team and we want to stop missing, if we want to start winning together, then we need to do what Paul has asked us to do back here in verse 2-2, which is to agree with one another, to love one another, and to work together.

And so let's start with agreeing together.

All right, what this doesn't mean is taking everything your teammate says and immediately agreeing with it.

Like, hey, let's get a pony.

Like, no, let's not.

All right, let's talk about this.

All right, agreement doesn't just mean blindly agreeing.

What it means here is getting behind a common goal.

What it means here is backing out and getting behind a common goal.

And this means that you may need to say your goal, actually, not may, this means that you need to say your goals out loud.

We have to practice continuing to say them out loud because you might be shocked that your teammate wants to get behind your goal.

You just never said it out loud.

You have to communicate it.

Now I know some of you are already thinking, so I'm just gonna say it now.

You're thinking in your head, what if my teammate's goal is dumb?

It might be.

It's okay.

All right, what if they what if I don't agree?

Or what if we're already in the middle of the weeds?

What if we're already in the middle of the conflict?

I know it's complicated, but this is certainly not impossible.

In these situations and real in our relationships, the trick to agreeing is to do exactly what Paul did.

Don't start in the middle of the disagreement.

Start where you agree.

Back out however many steps it takes till you can find the place where you can agree.

All right, really overly simple examples, right?

You don't agree the color that you should paint your house, but you both agree that you want a home that is beautiful, start there.

You don't agree on what activities your kids should be involved in, but you know that you want your kids to have a well-rounded childhood.

Start there.

Friends, you don't agree with what your relationship should look like as phases of life change, but you know you want to have an ongoing and thriving relationship with one another.

Start there.

We have to start where we agree, not where we disagree.

It doesn't matter what relationship it is, it doesn't matter what size the tension is, big or small, don't start where you disagree.

Start where you agree.

Don't start in the fight, don't start in the weeds, start on the same team.

It may be one step back, it may be 50 steps back.

It may be backing out all the way till the only thing that you can agree on is the fact that you want to be on the same team, that you want to stay together, and that you want to figure this out.

Back out to where you agree.

Do not settle for agreeing to disagree.

It is a cheap way out.

Find where you agree.

The next thing that Paul said, right?

He said to agree with each other.

And then he said to love each other.

All right, once you have agreed on what your goal is, you have to move forward in love.

And this is more difficult than it sounds because it is incredibly easy to slip back into wanting our own way.

To slip back into wanting to be right, to slip back into our own goals and what we want, what we think is best.

There are so many incredible verses that talk about what love is in Scripture, but the one that stands out here is when Jesus says that there is no greater love than when someone lays down their life for a friend.

We are not often called to lay down our life, but we can certainly lay down our pride.

We can lay down wanting our own way, we can lay down our need to be right for the sake of the key relationships in our lives.

You're on the same team.

Start where you agree and have the integrity to follow through in love.

And last, work together with one mind and purpose.

You're on the same team, you've defined the goal, and now it's time to make it happen.

All right, sometimes that's as simple as executing a very simple goal, like a weekend plan, lunch with friends, finding activities that both parents agree with for kids, making an appointment with a counselor, making a budget, right?

Work together with one mind and purpose.

This means putting it into action.

Win together.

For Wes and I, learning to get on the same team and have shared goals, it started very small.

But after working this muscle for a long time, it allowed us to get really intentional about what matters most to us.

And I'm gonna give you an incredibly personal example for me.

Is that as we learned to get intentional about this idea of winning together and setting these goals out in advance, a goal that we have set for our lives and for our family is that we desire to have children who want to be around us when we're adults, when they're adults.

We desire to have children that want to come home, to bring their families to see us.

We want them to leave first, but then we want them to want to come back.

And so with this goal in mind, we talk about it often.

It changes how we parent in real time.

It's something that we remind each other of consistently in the monotony and the difficulty of daily life with young kids.

This is the goal, and it gives us perspective on how we live now.

It gives us perspectives on how we want to be on the same team.

It defines what the win is for us.

The win is not getting through the day with an appeased child.

The end is raising two children who desire to be around their parents when they're adults.

It changes your perspective, and it gives us the opportunity to know what it looks like to win together.

And so, at this point, right, we've agreed that we want to be on the same team, and we're starting to understand what it looks like to win together.

And so now I want us to talk about just one more thing.

I want us to talk about what it looks like to stay on the same team.

Big picture what it looks like to stay together.

And so just a moment ago, we looked at a letter from Paul to a group of folks in Philippi who were struggling to win together.

Now I want us to look at a letter to a group of group of folks in Ephesus who were doing a good job winning together.

They were on the same team, they were working together with one mind and purpose, agreeing with one another, loving one another.

And so Paul writes to them to reveal to them how to stay together, how to continue working together as a team.

So we're gonna jump into Ephesians 4, 2, and 3.

This is what it says it says, always be humble and gentle, be patient with each other, making allowances for each other's faults because of your love.

Make every effort to keep yourself united in the spirit, binding yourselves together with peace.

All right, hey, you're on the same team.

All right, so let's stay on the same team together.

Let's keep ourselves united, binding each other together.

All right, and how do you do that?

All right, there's a deep theological truth that we need to see here, all right?

Basically, Paul is saying you need to be nice.

That's funny, y'all.

Just we'll catch up later.

All right, so that's it.

All right, you we need to be nice if we just boil it down.

We could spend hours and hours here just breaking down each of these attributes separately of one another.

But basically, at the end of the day, Paul is saying that our focus needs to be on keeping ourselves united.

And so he gives us this list of things that we need to do if we desire to stay united.

And now, what's really interesting here, and what we need to pay attention to in this verse, in the next one that we're gonna look at, is when Paul was talking to the Philippians, when he was telling them how to win together, all of the instructions that he gave to them were oriented towards the group.

Right?

He tells them to agree with one another, to love each other, to work together.

All right, these all require two sides.

But here, when he's addressing staying united, his instructions are one-sided.

Humility, gentleness, patience, making allowances.

These aren't group projects.

All right, you can't get an A because you just relied on the work of the smart kid.

It doesn't work like that.

If we want to be united, there are things that each of us have to do individually.

These are things that we each have to take ownership for, each that we need to strive for.

And so, Paul, he writes and he says, This is what I need you to do to stay united.

Now, Paul, often, you'll observe this in scripture.

Often, when he gives a list of something to do, he often gives a list of things not to do.

And if we continue reading down further, we find this.

This is Ephesians 4.31, and it says, Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior.

Once again, we could dig into each and every one of these separately and really break them down.

We will get so much out of it.

We don't have time to do that today.

But basically, Paul's saying, don't be a butthead.

Like, don't do it.

Try your best to be nice.

This is what I need you to do.

These are the things I need you not to do.

And then Paul brings it around full circle.

Once again, notice these are all oriented at the individual and not the group.

This is what I need you to do, and this is what I need you not to do.

And then Paul reveals why.

He brings it all together, and this is the most significant truth that we could ever learn to do when it comes to the relationships in our lives.

And this is what it says.

This is Ephesians 4.32.

He says, instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.

All right, forgiveness is the ultimate way to be a team player.

And as followers of Jesus, we are called to forgive because that is exactly what Jesus has done for us.

He laid down his life so that we could be forgiven, and in turn, we must learn to lay down our pride and lay down having our own way so that we too can learn to forgive.

And at the end of the day, forgiveness is how we stay on the same team.

It's very simple, but it is incredibly difficult to do.

We all kind of get defensive when it comes to talking about forgiveness.

Because it's not really fair, because forgiveness is something that it's something is done to us, and then the responsibility is on us to forgive.

And every time I have the opportunity to talk about this, somebody comes to me later and says, Oh man, Sherry, that was great.

Like forgiveness, I get it, that's awesome.

But can I tell you about my husband real quick?

Can I tell you about my wife, my mother-in-law, my daughter, whatever it is?

And so, for the sake of argument, so we can get it out of our system right now, I am on your side.

All right?

They are the worst, you are the best.

How dare they?

All the things.

And I'm not trying to make light of difficult circumstances because we have all experienced hurt in our lives.

And I'm certainly not trying to downplay the hurt that we have experienced.

You should respond to the things that are done to you in your life.

You should establish new boundaries and new expectations.

You should make adjustments.

You should not be a doormat that just takes whatever is thrown at you.

That's certainly not the case.

But for the sake of this conversation, there is only one question that matters.

Do you want to be on the same team?

Do you want to be on the same team?

Do you want to win together?

Do you want to work together?

Do you want to stay together?

Then you have to learn to forgive one another.

I was recently speaking with a young woman who was really just this was like a week ago, teenage young woman who was really struggling to understand what forgiveness is because it's a really difficult thing to understand, to grasp, and to hold on to.

So I was trying to figure out how to explain it.

And what I told her is I said, you know, when we're hurt, when someone hurts us, it's like we're being handed something that we don't want to hold, that we never wanted to hold.

And she looks at me dead serious and says, like one of those naked cats.

And being a very deeply theological and serious person, I said, it is exactly like one of those naked cats.

All right, think about this.

All right, when we are wronged, when an offense is handed, it happens to us, it's like we're being handed something we never wanted to hold.

And the misconception about forgiveness is that we have to embrace whatever it is in order to forgive.

Like this is okay, it's fine, I'm not bothered.

Like it's good.

When reality, what forgiveness is, is it's taking whatever it is that's being handed to us and it's putting it down, but we don't like to do that because it feels like if we're to take an offense and put it down, it's like it's like the other person's not gonna be held responsible for it.

So we keep holding it and we hold on to it and we hold on to it, and then when we get in an argument, we like to bring it up now and again.

Like, look at this ugly cat you handed me.

We hold it up like Simba to show our friends and family.

Remember that time they gave me this ugly cat?

Like, put it down.

You don't even even have to do it gently, it'll land on its feet.

We're holding on to things that we never wanted to hold on to.

If we want to learn to stay together and to function as a team, we have to learn down to lay the offenses, lay down the offenses that have happened to us.

Because we have all seen and experienced relationships, significant relationships absolutely wrecked because of unforgiveness.

Marriages ruined, friendships gone, families fractured, estranged, left, right, and center, because someone was unwilling to lay down the hurt that they had experienced.

It's not easy, but it matters.

Because in the same way we've all seen relationships ruined by unforgiveness, I genuinely hope that you have seen relationships that have been radically redeemed because of forgiveness, because forgiveness can do this.

And it's okay if you're not there yet today, right?

This is a difficult muscle to work, or maybe you've never really walked through and seen what it looks like to forgive.

And I'm I'm confident that there's someone here who would love to help you with that.

If you're not there yet, that's okay.

But if we want to be on the same team, to work together, to win together, and to stay together, we do have to learn how to forgive one another, to take the offenses that we're holding and to put them down.

A need to forgive comes with the territory of being on the same team.

It's unfortunate, but it's true.

But it is absolutely the definitive key to staying together.

Thriving relationships are God's design and desire for us from the very beginning.

This is true for all relationships, but this is especially true for our marriages.

The story of Adam and Eve, married folks, is your story.

God looked at you and said, It is not good for you to be alone.

So I will find a helper, a partner, a teammate that is just right for you.

And that person comes into your life and you say, At last.

And now you're meant to be one, one flesh, same team.

And so let's learn how to be on the same team.

Let's learn to agree with each other wholeheartedly.

Let's learn to love each other more than we love being right.

Let's learn to work together with one mind and purpose and to forgive one another.

Talent wins games.

Teamwork wins championships.

I don't know about you, but I want championship-level relationships.

And I want a championship-level marriage.

And so let's get on the same team.

Will you guys pray with me?

So, God, I thank you for who you are and that you have created us, God, just with the capacity to love, God, that you've given us your love, that you've given us so much fulfillment from having others in our life, God.

And so right now I pray, first for the marriages in this room and for the marriages watching, God, I just pray that you would you would unify these couples, God, and you would just help them to see that they are meant to be on the same team, God.

I pray for relationships of parents and their children, for relationships of co-parents and families and siblings, God.

I pray that you would start to just clear the fog of the tensions, clear, clear the fog of the disagreements and of the past hurts, God, and that you would start to just bring clarity to the fact that you have designed us to be on the same team with one another, God, that you have designed us where relationships are what's most important here on this earth, God.

And so right now I pray that you would just soften hearts and that you would break chains so that we could learn, God, just to love one another, to be on the same team, to learn to win together and forgive one another, God, because that is your design and that is your desire for our relationships.

And so, God, we love you, and it is your name that we pray.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps, you can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

And I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.