Define The Relationship // Earl & Oneka McClellan

happy Sunday shoreline city how's everybody feeling today it's gonna be an amazing wonderful day I got the most beautiful woman in the entire world on my right your left my wife whom I loved so much you look amazing she just celebrated her birthday I'm not gonna tell you how old she is but y'all were getting up there but black don't crack okay she looks like she's 24 years old it's so so glad all of you are with us today we are one Church in four locations let's welcome we got North Dallas bishop arts Oakland we got this white rock we got Antigua everybody clapping for everybody one family it has been beautiful to see what God is doing can't wait to see the future all that's going to happen hey we're continuing our relationship series today this is the final installment of the relationship series have you had a good time with it honey awesome I've been doing it I've enjoyed I pray your heart's a bit encouraged as well so Nick and I are gonna be up here together today and just talk through some things so hey go ahead and grab your Bible or go grab your notebook or pen or whatever so we can make sure we dig into the scriptures and learn and grow now honey today is our daughter's birthday you know this she's four years old today our youngest and we had our birthday party yesterday and it was an amazing experience during the party then afterwards he were during the party it was terrible okay it was terrible yeah she cried too much sugar you know when you just give a child too much sugar in the moment you're like you can have whatever you want but then the drive home she had a meltdown upon meltdowns like we had to pull over that kind of meltdown this the sugar made her crazy mm-hmm literally literally yeah it took because we just poured it out for her this 4-year old party it was practically a bridal shower my only girl and so the boys they get like pizza and nerf guns guns but L we just we just do it up mm-hmm target y'all best party secrets ever whip that said so we just poured it out for her and then the drive home she has a legitimate breakdown meltdown and it was it took the joy away yep so I burned all of her toys all of them I'm not laughing y'all I burned all of it with it actually can't do that parents don't we want to every now and then come on don't leave me up here by myself every now and then you're like you know what burn all your stuff why you and make you watch it but but you don't do it because you go to jail for stuff like that okay so you don't actually do that I'm the adult I'm the adult here I'm in charge I'm in charge we have to say to our four-year-old because she thinks she's in charge and so it does remind her yeah we created this donut no way we created it hey we got to get into some relationship stuff here we just were getting healing ourselves while we're up here talking write this down write this down if you're taking notes the embarrassment barrier the embarrassment bury and I want to just say something real quick which is this talk isn't just about if you're dating if you're married these relationships crews that we've been and this is the last chapter of it this week but it's navigating relationships in life like co-workers team members classmates family so just apply it to whatever season you're in but it's some gold so the embarrassment barrier on the other side of your embarrassment in mind at all of our location on the other side of your embarrassment in mind is your freedom okay your freedom lies on the other side of that and here's a really really simple way for you to understand the truth around this embarrassment barrier if you don't tell us what's actually going on then we don't know how to help okay if you don't tell us what's actually taking place which are actually struggling with what you're actually dealing with then we don't know how to help and the we I'm talking about here it's not like we the church quote-on-quote I'm meaning we the community that God has brought you if people don't really know what's going on then people don't know how to don't know how to help and push you forward so I want to read this passive scripture here and let's see if we can make sense out of this mark chapter 8 we're gonna begin reading in verse number 22 it says they came to Bethsaida and some people brought a blind man begged Jesus to touch him he took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village when he had spit on the man's eyes interesting and put his hands on him Jesus asked do you see anything he looked up and said I see people they looked like trees walking around once more Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes then his eyes were opened his sight was restored and he saw everything clearly okay so this is a couple of years into Jesus ministry okay he started that when he was around thirty years old and now he's a thirty-two ish or so and so Fame his name has has got out there and people understand that God is using him he's a prophet he's this leader so these friends at least how I read it these friends bring their blind friend to Jesus and they bring them and they begin to beg Jesus please heal our friend heal our friend heal or hit friend please help him help him help him just you know this is what we do for our friends right we go to God on their behalf and we ask the God of heaven to move and he actually loves to do this we see that Jesus reaches out his hand toward this blind man leads him outside the village then they get out there and Jesus something unique spits on him okay don't try this unless the Lord like is really leading you in a moment and you better be sure - you better be sure I felt the Lord told me to do that that's just dumb so anyway he spits on him and then he lays hands on the man in verse 24 he asks the man a question do you see anything here is the moment of truth okay because all of us just read this we know we know that the man did not receive his total and complete and the fulfilment of his healing in this first moment we know that the man ended up seeing people and they look kind of like trees but Jesus asks him the question what do you see do you see anything and this man is willing to go beyond his embarrassment of it didn't quite work the way I think you wanted it to work and he says what is actually going on and because he says was actually going on Jesus then goes ahead and completes the work that he began many of us Jesus is asking us do you see anything is there anything going on your accountability partners your friends are asking you is there anything going on how are your finances how is your heart how is your marriage how is your job how is your single life and you and I choose in this critical moment to just pretend like we see everything perfectly and that's the reason many of us are not walking in our freedom right now is because we weren't willing to be honest with what we actually saw are you willing are you willing to move beyond the embarrassment because if you're willing to move beyond the embarrassment and say this is what is actually happening I can't get my money together I can't get my thought life together I'm struggling at my job I'm having a hard time in this marriage and I know on Instagram it looks perfect but in reality I'm struggling in this thing right here if you're willing to be honest that's where your freedom is on the other side of that honesty accountability is only as good as your transparency okay so if you're not willing to actually be transparent don't tell me you have an accountability partner that's good alone people like oh yeah we got accountability couple okay oh we got these mentors we got these mentors in our life okay business leaders oh I got these business leaders they're mentoring me okay great are you honest with them because if you're not honest then either God's gonna have to reveal it to them or you're gonna have to tell them what's actually going on and I want us to be a church that is willing to push beyond that embarrassment barrier so we can actually get the healing and the freedom that God designed for us so we can reflect His goodness in his glory everywhere we go so that that was the first one now my wife got something honey you got to share this I'm so excited about it I will talk a little bit about hiding behind our pain we all have pain we all deal with pain it's a regular part of life that we can't run away from that we can't avoid but sometimes what happens is we hide behind it instead of stepping out from in front of it to gain healthy perspective I think about our little girl we have this tradition as a family on Christmas Eve we play hide and seek so we hide in different parts of the house and when she's hiding we all see her but she thinks she's hiding but we see her clear is day and that same thing happens with our pain when we hide behind it we think we're covered we think no one can see it but everyone sees that we're hiding behind it and so this morning I'm praying that we would find freedom and just stepping out in truth in honesty being vulnerable being authentic taking the filters off because sometimes we try to put filters like the kind on Instagram on our pain and thinking is just blending in but if you zoom in close enough you can see it and so I think that there's freedom found when you step out from it and so many times whatever has happened to us sometimes we glorify and magnify either what we're going through or what happened to us in the past or we spiral and create pain that we haven't even stepped into yet ever done that where you have one that leads to another thought that leads to another thought and before you know it you're upset about something that hasn't even happened yet yeah y'all are with me you know we're not we don't have it all together in here and that's what we do with our pain but God says in Exodus 20 verse 3 you shall have no other gods before me and so we have to take pain off the altar of our lives because we bow down to pain and we worship our pain many times but God is saying take it off the altar only I belong on the throne and when you worship me when you trust me it gives you perspective while walking through the pain could be physical pain could be emotional pain not I'm not saying to skip around and act like you're not in pain that's not what we're saying at all but what I'm saying is make sure that pain is not on the throne and even that simple act of God I'm in real pain right now but I want you to be on the throne of my heart I want you to be first in my life not this pain it gives you the grace to walk through and navigate the pain life is filled with people disappointing us people letting us down people hurting us people telling us something that they're gonna do then not doing it being a Christian doesn't mean that we get a pain discount we just don't and I think that that's why we get anxiety sometimes that's why we get depressed sometimes some of the times is because we're not we're hiding behind our pain and we're trying to put this facade that we have it all together because I'm a Christian and I can't tell you that I'm really hurting because then you'll think that I'm not reading my scriptures or having a quiet time but the reality is when you pulled all that up on the inside of you it makes you sick and so let's not hide let's step out let's recognize it even this weekend when I was praying and preparing to talk with all of us today I said God have free reign in my heart whatever hurt that I might be holding on to from someone who disappointed me who said that they were something that they weren't all the things come I want to come out from that and I just want to release it because once I release that having authority in my life I give God permission to invade my life and to bring me healing yeah let's stop hiding because people see it anyways comes out in your comments on your Instagram post comes out and your facial expressions when nobody's looking it's it's coming out people see it smiles will just recognize it and say god you're on the throne of my heart man that is so life-giving thank you for sharing that well you guys also wrote in a bunch of questions okay so at all of our locations Bishop Hartzell cliff and North Dallas and White Rock everybody wrote in all of these questions and we can't obviously get to all of them but we've kind of lumped them into some themes first theme that seemed to come up a lot and if you have if there are parents at any of our locations give earmuffs to your kids for just a second earmuffs your mom giving you time for earmuffs right now giving you time for earmuffs sex y'all want to ask about sex a lot okay so praise God for a healthy church praying it's in the context of marriage so we all didn't laugh as much as you need it to people are getting uptight at all of our locations right now oh my gosh oh my god he's looking at me right now so here's the question here's a question advice for remaining abstinent in a dating relationship and setting healthy boundaries how do you wanna go first you want me to go I think you should go what you shared okay okay I'll tell you this I'll tell you this in the Garden of Eden okay Jeff in the book of Genesis we see that there's Adam and Eve okay and God has made them in his likeness then the enemy comes in the serpent comes in and says hey God doesn't want you to eat that because he knows you're gonna be like him God had already promised them and made them in his likeness now the enemy is actually offering something that God has already given but this other twist that the enemy was putting on it was this you can really be your own God you can run things yourself why do you need to come under the authority of God and this is the question that every one of us and every one of our locations has to wrestle with who is going to be in charge of your life is it going to be you or is it going to be God and you get to make that choice now they're parts of the Bible and thinking even the book of Joshua it's like hey choose this day whom you're gonna serve you get to choose do you want it to be your own finite self and your own limited understanding or do you want it to be the God of heaven who it has no beginning and has no end it is more for you than your for yourself we've been talking a lot about you know L today and why not let's do it one more time she's four years old and she thinks she knows what's best for her and she's convinced of it she's so convinced sometimes she will fall on the floor and do an interpretive dance that's really a tantrum yeah great way of putting it's like oh your daughter's doing another interpretive dance honey here you better cut that interpretive dance out right now before you never mind you we before I give you a timeout so you you have to understand in her mind she thinks she knows what's best we are her parents we know what's best for her and you and I are looking at God going God come on I need this God you know you don't want me you don't want me to be you know stifling this area of my life come on God I got to make sure we're gonna be compatible when we get married come on God I want and just you know everything's gonna be fine there okay the other thing is you need to be concerned about our character and honesty and integrity and their love for Jesus there's a lot of other things to be thinking about that other stuff is gonna work just fine what we need to do is make sure we come under the authority of God and this I know this is not popular I know in our day and age this is sounding so archaic it's not like what are you talking about it is 2019 but I'm just telling you the Scriptures aren't changing based on culture the Scriptures are the scriptures so that God can be our guide and help us become who he destined for us to be because he's more for us than we're for ourselves so good so good and I think any of it's all boils down to self-control it really does and I think that we think well once you get married temptation goes away I'm not gonna need to practice self-control because I'm now married and I have access to whatever I need but self-control can be learned while dating because the bottom line is there's gonna be someone more handsome than you someone prettier than you someone who's just seems appealing in that moment and so if you practice self-control while dating or just in life in general it helps you when you have your weekdays I have so many I know so many Christians who struggle in that area even that are married and so I think sometimes we believe this hype that oh just when you get married you've no longer have temptation that's not the truth and so if we can learn self-control before we get married or this can be a fresh start and we can say I didn't know any of this stuff like when I was growing up I knew none of what he is talking about I knew none of it and it wasn't until I fully surrendered my life to Christ and said God every area that I have every desire that I have all of it it belongs to you and I'm gonna need your help with it but I'm so grateful that someone shared it with me so we're sharing with you we submit it to you but I trust you it will be a game-changer in how you approach your life yeah that's so good so so good now again there's no shame no guilt we we are not mad at you God's not even mad at you he's so ridiculously for you and today can be a fresh start and every single one of our lives okay so as Omega sharing she didn't know this stuff when she was growing up I've recognized a lot of us at all of our locations might not know this but we want to still train you and teach you because we know is on the other side of your obedience oh my goodness your mind is going to be blown at all that God is gonna do in you and through you okay honey let's go to this next one what should a friendship look like when one is following Christ and the other isn't yeah I was able to be a beneficiary of that actually because the way that I came to know Jesus was through a friendship one of my co-workers befriended me we became best friends and she was passionately in love with Jesus surrendered life just live just amazing young girl and I was a hot mess I was partying and just didn't go to church didn't know who I was in Christ but she pursued me as a friend and it was actually her friendship that made me want to fall in love with Jesus and made me want to go to church I just watched her life she didn't quote scriptures to me she didn't write scriptures on my mirror when she'd come over and just leave them she was just normal but her life ID inspired me to want to do something different because what I was doing wasn't working anyways and so she wasn't perfect she let me see her mistakes her flaws but she was in pursuit of Christ and it compelled me to want to come to church with her but she would invite me all the time all the time I'd always say no until that one Sunday when my heart was ready and I have never looked back my life has never been the same so I say all that to say I love we have all of us have friends that don't know Christ but the problem is when we dumb ourselves down because we want to be relatable and we don't want them to feel judged so then we water ourselves down and then before we know it then you become not strong anymore and so be who you are be fully leaned in but be praying under your breath at every interaction because you never know when their hearts are gonna be ready I'm sure she was praying for me constantly I've even know she was praying for me but at that right moment I said I'm gonna come to church with you changed my life know when yeah thank you so much for sharing that when Onika first gave her heart to Jesus she was all-in right so she had all of her girlfriends they were running around and all their stuff that those girls used to do and the meal would come and she would tell all of our friends stop you can't eat yet we got a prey we got a frame we had I just cuz here's this kind of got aggressive she got aggressive I'm unbalanced now but but I needed to swing the whole other way cuz the way I was swinging was not healthy so I needed to swing the whole other side of the spectrum and then I leveled out so I could even think about my friends I go back I'm like man I kind of came on real hard I was like hey why are you watching that movie would Jesus be watching that movie if he was sitting there next to you he would not be pleased if you got hit by a car right now are you when you're gonna go to heaven or hell you tell me right now and it came from a sincere place but it just was like oh okay no I'm just gonna play ball okay we're just going to hoop for a second Jesus attracted sinners he attracted him why authentic love still spoke truth born authentic love you don't have to change or save anyone but you and I do need to be utterly surrendered to God and allow him to flow through us and speak through us and as we keep following in his footsteps as a spirit gives us every ounce of grace that we need you will be shocked at the things that you don't even realize are speaking to those who are in your world but let us not as Omega said dumb ourselves down and we begin to water ourselves down so much so we don't become offensive don't worry about not being offensive just think about living a life in love with Jesus and watch how that spills off and spills off onto everyone else around you I want to say one thing with that too and don't wait til you feel like you're perfect to invite them invite them in your brokenness because God's the one who's gonna handle their heart anyways so invite them in your brokenness and if you're at just real talk if you're out drunk with a frame but you know you're coming to church the next day bring them with you God can handle that that isn't afraid that hasn't upset him you said that I'll see somebody sleeping right now they're going I love this church number three number three number three number three okay how do you this is a question to you and I honey how do you keep a healthy marriage while raising a family and running the way you both do I was reading that thinking I guess somebody thinks are running how do we do it number one we do not have it all together we will never profess perfection we will never get up here and lie to you and tell you that everyday we're floating on a cloud singing Psalms over one another and that we live in perfect harmony at all times it's just not true and anybody who says it's true run but one thing that I do feel like we do well we've been married for 22 years now which is amazing by fast and to give you hope out there we both were raised by single moms so neither one of us have seen marriage done well and so it's a miracle like this is a straight-up miracle so there's hope for you no matter what you've seen growing up there's hope for you but one thing that we put to practice very regularly and you can put this to practice in your friendships if you lead a team if you lead a staff if you run a business um if you teach a class is just being honest in keeping short accounts and just not being a stuffer nobody wants to be around a stuffer because at the end of the day you end up exploding anyways cuz you're not meant to keep it all in and so we tell each other when you did this it made me feel this way I'm upset because you did this like we have those kinds of conversations regularly and that helps our relationship because we're not holding on to anything I'm not expecting Earl to guess how he offended me you should know you really loved me if you really if you were like you should just know I shouldn't have to tell you that I don't do that with him because he doesn't no you don't I mean you're amazing but you don't but the way you said that it just like I had a little some extra on it that's what I felt I felt like that was like you don't know that's what I felt like it is true I'm okay with that I'm okay I just didn't you're gonna say in front of everybody like that tell him something I do that gets on your nerves tell him like one of the five things okay I'll be honest so Earl if you're amazing and I love you lather shave leather but he is I feel he's a very disciplined person disciplined to a tee I think you should have probably been a missionary because he can just let go without just not need anything and just passionate and let's just change the world if I just have a bag of nuts and an airplane ticket I can just go lead people lead the law stick release he's just very bag of nuts in an airplane ticket it's true that is funny yeah but he doesn't require a lot he's very low maintenance disciplined person and it's kind of you to say that's a compliment it was true yeah you're very low maintenance but with that he's also can be very intense at times where I'm like let's just slow down let's just talk and have a conversation and let's just dream it is like there's a world dying out there people do it's just and so sometimes that intensity it um it's just not always nice to live with but I'm thankful for your passion yes yes okay yeah now let me share something so we she's perfect and wonderful in so many ways yes but to talk about being a stuffer many times I would not share what I'm actually feeling because I did not like the response that I was going to get and how I was gonna have to manage the response was going to get so I would say I would rather just deal with this myself I'll work through it I'll process through it I'll I'll digest it I'm not gonna bring it up because if I do then she's not gonna say apologize the way I'd like her to apologize or she's not gonna own it so she's not gonna own it and I'm getting it all out she's not gonna the safe place this is this is old this is years ago in our marriage I keep saying every now and then but not as much now for a long time little I would say something in Noriko would it try to explain why she did something to me okay so I did something to you like dramatic oh not dramatic I hurt my feelings hurt my feelings yeah she's explaining it right now honey just own it context context so she she would explain oh this is why I did what I did and I'm going I don't care why you did it you did it so if you could just apologize for it that would be great and she's like well if I explained it then why would I have to apologize because you know I didn't mean to do it so we round and around and around and around for the first 20 years of our marriage we kidding that is not even close to the truth that's an exaggeration so we we talked through this and eventually I realized even though I think I can manage it and stuff it in it would actually creating distance between my wife and I and I was drifting and I'm thinking I'm helping our marriage and in actuality I'm hurting it so I want to encourage all of us Bao cliff North Dallas every single one of us white rock I want to encourage all of us let's make sure we're very very intentional to have the courage to do the hard thing and ask God for the grace to do the hard thing ask God for the grace to do the thing that doesn't come easy and might not come natural but it is healthy and wise and it's good and will push us forward God is not just interested in helping you worship on Sunday this is also part of your worship thirty at night when you're dealing with a friend or a co-worker or his spouse on a Thursday night His grace is present in all of those things yeah you can clap your hands for short I actually want to invite up Ben in KC and invite up Eric and Gabby and other locations you guys can come to the platform and I'll have them close it out and our other services there give them a big round of applause there and for us here at White Rock again we've got other questions here and I think we'll just go through some of these on Instagram live tomorrow or on Tuesday or Facebook live or something like that and go through a bunch of these questions but we've taken this time out over the last few weeks to go through relationships because it's such an important part of all of our lives and I don't care if you're 12 or if you're 22 or if you're 72 all of us are in some relational dynamic where we were leading wisdom help insight strength and some tools to move forward and as we said at the very beginning of this we believe God wants every single one of our relationships to flourish we believe he wants to be in the middle of all of these things and if some things have been broken and out of place and out of balance in your life we pray over these last five weeks as we've walked through this series that your heart has been encouraged in some way and you've grabbed ahold of some truth that you would be willing to take a step of faith and say god I'll trust you with this hard thing anytime you want to grow expect opposition any time you want to be better expect for it to be hard any time you want to develop expect for there to be resistance it comes with the territory but it's the thing that helps you become and mature into who God is calling you to be so we are in your corner 110% that's why we have connect groups that's why we have serv teams that's why we're trying to be the most life-giving church we can possibly be because we know there are real people's lives on the other side of your yes honey I'm not sure I know you've been battling so many allergies and things but anything you want to say to close this out before I pray for all of us just that we sincerely love you we pray for you every single week we know that God is not done with any of us and we are honored to get to share part of our story with you we don't profess to have it figured out or to be perfect like I said but I'm praying that something that we said today you'll be able to apply when you get home today you'll be able to apply with your roommate with your coworker with this fellow student we're believing God that he's going to take this seed that we sowed into each of you and create a supernatural harvest yeah let's pray together on bow your heads friends balcony floor God we thank you so much for your grace that's here and we know many of us are walking through some brokenness and some difficulties and many of us have some luggage from our past and we've been carrying for quite some time but we know your grace is sufficient and your power is made perfect in weakness so where we feel we don't measure up where we feel we don't have it all together we thank you that you get to fill in that gap and God we lay our hearts and our lives down to you for those in here who have dealt with some traumatic abuse thank you that your healing is here for those here that have some terrible self-talk thank you that your healing is here those of us who cannot see you clearly thank you that your healing is here so would you touch her eyes would you touch her mind would you touch our hearts would you touch every part of us and help us become the men and women you call for us to be I speak life and restoration over all of our relationships in Jesus name if you wouldn't mind keep your heads bowed just for a moment my friends those of you who are followers of Jesus this is your moment to pray for those in the room who are and maybe even those who are watching online right now who aren't want you to know God's love for you is real there's nothing you can do to change it there's nothing you can do to erase it he's been pursuing you your entire life and he brought you to this moment right here to say he wants your entire heart your entire life in this moment I'm not asking do you believe in God I'm not asking do you own a Bible I'm not asking have you been confirmed or were you baptized I'm asking have you surrendered your heart and your life to Christ you may have been raised in church but you've never followed Jesus if that's you here today you've never given your heart and your life to Christ at one point in time you didn't you slipped away and today you want to surrender a risa render your life to serving him I'm going to ask you to do something simple but something incredibly bold on the count of three I literally want you to shoot your hand in the air and say yes that's me I want to give my heart in my life to Christ ready 1 2 3 just shoot your hand in the air you're saying yes that's me I wanna give my heart my life to Christ thank you so much friends thank you thank you so much for raising your hand thank you just lifted up high you're saying yes that's me it's you responding to the grace of God new life new hope fresh beginning I'm gonna ask everyone in this room and everyone even watching online do me a favor put your hand over your heart if you would not mind I'm asking all of us to repeat this prayer out loud after me say dear Jesus I ask you to forgive me of all my sins I admit I've made mistakes and today I give you my heart I give you my life give me the power to live for you in Jesus name Amen and amen it's up to our heads up clap our hands with enthusiasm come on Church family come on come on

Channel: Shoreline City Church

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Length: 36min 36sec (2196 seconds)

Published: Sun May 26 2019