Jimmy Evans – Disarming Anger & Resolving Conflicts – The Four Laws of Love

so I'm going to finish this series that I've been doing on the four laws of love I hope you've gotten something out of this that has helped you in some way and I love I love teaching on marriage and in helping people to understand these very basic truths but there are four laws of love that God has created in marriage in these laws create love and they protect love and they promote love the we won the first week I talked to you about the law priority marriage has to be first it doesn't work in second place it has to be before your kids before work before church before sports anything marriage only works in first place number two is the law of pursuit it's worth you have to spend energy serving each other talk to you about the servant rules the energy that we spend in marriage that creates love is serving each other in meeting each other's needs I can't meet my own needs if I could have met my own needs i wouldn't we got married and we swear fidelity to one another so we're at the mercy of our spouse to meet our needs so serving two servants in love is the greatest marriage on earth the third week last week was the law of partnership marriage is about sharing it's about growing together and sharing our lives together this week is the law of purity I want to talk to you about the fourth law of marriage Genesis 2:25 it says the man is wife were both naked and they were unashamed the word naked there is the word aroma it just means to be exposed so God created marriage to be the most intimate relationship on earth and intimacy is only possible when there's unhindered access okay and so the nakedness that Adam and Eve had was mental emotional spiritual and physical and I don't believe they had a pornographic physical nakedness I believe the glory of God covered their bodies before they sinned and so Adam and Eve were able to completely open their minds their emotions their dreams their spirits and their bodies to each other without any shame or fear whatsoever so they can have intimacy and that was true until sin came into the garden and when sin came into the Garden of Eden immediately they began to hide themselves from God in each other and this wonderful nakedness that they had before this exposure on every level that they had before now they didn't have because intimacy is not possible in a sinful environment when you're not safe for me when you're sinning against me with your words and actions now remember when Adam and Eve sinned and God came to Adam and said what is this that you've done Adam said that woman that she you gave me a bad woman I'm it have been fainted ever since yeah he wasn't just accusing Eve he was accusing God you gave me a bad woman and then he went to even so what is this that you've done is she said the devil made me do it neither one of them took responsibility for their behavior so they couldn't trust each other the trust was out the window and so I want to I want to talk to you about purity you can only be intimate in an environment of carefulness when people are careful about their behavior and take responsibility let me tell you how you fell in love you fell in love because you were careful when you went out for the 1st 2nd 3rd 4th time with your perspective spouse you were very careful in what you said you were very careful in what you did I remember I was a 16 year old you know kid when I picked up Karen the first time in my 1964 dynamic 88 Oz mobile watch out now and one entire side of the car had been wrecked my mother wrecked both my have two older brothers Damon and Lucifer she she wrecked the first car gave it to Mike my brother she wrecked the second car gave it to Randy my brother she wrecked the third car and gave it to me and one entire side of that car was wiped out so I picked up Karen and and so the doors didn't open on the right side and so I always picked Karen up on the good side she did not know there was a bad side to my car for years and I would just repeat we go to a restaurant wherever we went we got a so I picked her up and I remember how careful I was when I was driving you know and I would just hit a little bit bump are you okay you're sorry five years later I'm throwing out the window yeah you know how it is and so you're careful you fall in love and when you do something wrong you take responsibility for it you fall out of love because you don't care you begin to say and do things that are careless that are hurtful and so I've got to protect myself from you this is the holy of holies I simply can't share thoughts with you that I'm afraid are gonna come back to me later on herping I can't share feelings with you when you're unsafe I can't open up and be intimate with you when I feel as though that maybe you're my enemy and that you're gonna hurt me later on this is the Holy of Holies and I just can't open it up in an unsafe environment and so I'll tell you our story more hearings just a little bit but I want to talk about anger and conflict resolution if you're going to deal if you're going to keep your relationship pure you've got to be able to deal with conflict and anger it see in good marriages you fight there can be conflict in good marriages a good marriage is not a marriage where you never fight and by the way if you never fight it could be because someone's dominating the relationship so the lack of conflict doesn't always mean something Goods going on but there's nothing wrong with anger there's nothing wrong with conflict but you have to be able to process it without damaging each other that's the main thing that you have to do in marriage and most of us did not have a good role model growing up on how to resolve conflict now in the home that I grew up in we we didn't know how to deal with conflict and we never did the we just didn't look at each other so there was never a time in my family growing up where I ever saw some say hey I'm really upset and you did something that bothered me and could we sit down and talk about it we just didn't look at each other and so four days at a time and so you knew that someone was angry because they wouldn't look at you and you knew they were over it because they looked at you okay so that's the family rep so Karen's family now to me they were crazy okay so but they were very much more healthy than my family because they would yell they'd be mad they would yell at each other then they would cry and make up and I just thought you people need to be normal and just don't look at each other what's wrong with you so Karen and I we were dating and I was in college and Karen worked at a bank and she lived in a duplex and I went to college and I was playing in the side played golf all the time worked playoff one school and so Karen said I want to make you dinner tell me which nights good for you don't want to make you dinner and I said well fry that's good she said come over six o'clock gonna make you a big special learn I love meatloaf so she was making me meatloaf and mashed potatoes and all this favorite stuff so I Friday afternoon I went to play golf with my friends I was supposed to be at Karen's house at 6:00 and I looked down I was 30 miles away at a golf course and I looked down at my watch at 5:30 and I had three more holes to go and I thought well I should go get in my car and I should drive as fast as I can to Karen's house and I may get there you know close to being on time well I didn't I went ahead and finished the golf match and now this is before cell phones we didn't have cell phones so you didn't know you didn't know where people work so I wouldn't in fate finish the golf match jumped in the car drove Karen's house and I got 37 and she had cooked this incredible incredible meal so I walk in she didn't know where I was she didn't know if I was it forgot died them so I walked in the door and I can see she's in the kitchen and she's upset and so I walked in and she gave me that look like every woman and here understands what Karen was going through and so I walked in so the table was sat Nina and I walked in to sit down at the table this land and it Karin I could hear kind of knocking dishes around and stuff you know she's taking stuff out of the oven she kept warm so she puts this plate in from he's just beautiful play the you know meatloaf Mac stays all this beautiful stuff here rolls everything and then she gets her plate and she says stand in front and we've not spoken since I walked the house and I haven't showered I'm stinky I've just played golf myself so I sit there for a minute and we're quiet just very awkward and I said these weren't words I said what's your problem and about a second later I was wearing meatloaf she took her plate threw it in my face but let me say now the part that hit my mouth was delicious she threw it in my face like that she ran out the door well she had a Volkswagen Super Beetle I had her blocked in the driveway she drove through the backyard well that was our first fight so we have some friends in Houston they are maybe the most dysfunctional couple I've ever heard of now they have a marriage ministry now they're wonderful people but so they got in a fight one day and she was kind of mouthy and he was kind of quiet so they got in a fight one day and she was yeah yeah yeah like that so he is quietly he said he was a builder he just quietly walked out the door walked out to his truck got his nail gun nailed all the doors and windows shut and left she couldn't get out of the house I hope I didn't give you about any ideas so let me say me talk about the four don'ts of anger let's talk about anger and conflict resolution this is Ephesians 4 be angry and do not sin do not let the Sun go down on your wrath nor give place to the devil be angry but don't sin don't don't let the Sun go down you're on you're at what don't give place to the devil so here's the number 1 don't don't deny your anger there's nothing wrong thing God gets angry don't denied being angry Jesus got angry and cleansed the temple twice Hank anchorman that human beings experience it's there's nothing wrong with it you never become so spiritual that you don't get angry for the rest of your life regardless of your level of spiritual maturity or emotional maturity you're gonna have some anger now children of divorce have a lot harder time with anger and I want to read you an excerpt from a book called the unexpected legacy of divorce by Jews wallerstein as sandra Blakesley and i'm reading now because children of divorce don't know how to negotiate conflict well many reach for the worst solutions when trouble strikes for example some will sit on their feelings not mentioning complaints or differences until they're suppressed anger blows sky-high others burst into tears and are immobilized or retreat in themselves or the next room and close the door but the most common tendency is to run away at the first serious disagreement and wrestle with unconscious demons this is because from the perspective of a childhood a divorce any argument can be the first step in an inevitable chain of conflict that will destroy the marriage and so if you're a child of divorce or if you're married to one you've got to really take this issue seriously and so the steps that I'm going through are in my book okay so this is one of the chapters in my book you need to read it every day you need to become a master of this some of the people that I know who were the worst in dealing with anger are now experts in dealing with anger and the first step is just saying I don't know how to do it I didn't have good role models growing up and most of us didn't have good role models growing up but if you're a child of divorce really really pay attention listen there's nothing wrong with anger don't fear anger just because it ended your parents marriage doesn't mean it needs to end yours if you learn how to deal with your anger it's fine don't feel guilty about your anger there's nothing wrong now when we get angry we're not saying that our anger is necessarily right I can be angry because someone legitimately violated me but I also be angry because I'm ignorant a lot of my anger early in our marriage was because I didn't understand women Karen was a normal woman and I think I thought she's beautiful I'm very attractive physically but she's the strangest person I've ever met that's what I thought I really did but she was normal but in my ignorance you know I got angry misunderstanding immaturity we get we get angry because we're immature unrealistic expectations cause anger stress causes anger so I'm not saying that my anger is right I'm just saying it's real and I want to be able to process it in our home listen the hallmark of dysfunction is not allowing emotions to come out silence in dysfunctional families you can't be real you can't feel and you can't talk in a functional family we just saw our feelings with we talk we express things it doesn't mean again that we worship our emotions are we do it in a healthy way but we're able to talk there's nothing wrong with it okay see if you by the way if you don't deal with your anger causes health problems emotional problems and all kinds of problems so you when you bottle up anger it doesn't go away it just begins to cause all kinds of problems you also have to cultivate an atmosphere of honesty in your in your home in your marriage you have to cultivate an atmosphere of honesty here's what I say you have to tell your spouse I want you to be honest with me and you will not pay a price I may not disagree with you but you won't pay a price for being honest because in many cases when we're doing marriage counseling people can't be honest with each other because they go ballistic let me talk about customer relations counter your papers stores in my papers stores have customer relations counters and the best stores have the best customer relations counter now they're great stores but they still have problems the best store saw a problem and they know they have they're gonna have problems so they have a customer relations counter and so there's a store that I love dealing with it's a clothing store you would know the name of it and I bought a leather jacket there 10-15 years ago and after a couple of years the the shoulder went out on it and I took it in and I set it on the counter really in the area where they sold the jackets any young lady was at the counter and I said yeah I just if y'all would fix that I'd really do appreciate it and she said well what went wrong with it that's not her no I said you just kind of blew up you know and she looked that she sold sure did didn't she said how long have you had that jacket and I said Oh a couple of years and she said well mr. Evans why don't you just go over there and get you another one I said no I don't want to buy another one I said I'll just fix that that's great she said no no go get go get another we'll give you another one just go get another one I said you want me to go over there and get another one she says she's gonna shine one we'll give you another one and I said well so I went over there and picked out room it was a little bit more expensive than that one and and I brought it back over and and I said well here honey this I like this Shack but bet it's more expensive than this one and she said she scanned the deal and she said Thank You mr. Evans goodbye I love the store I love her oh well you know it doesn't make you feel good it just makes you feel good that you can take something back and they're not going to shame you and hassle you and stuff like that well someone gave me a shirt one day for birthday and it it was sized it was a 16 and a half 36 shirt my side and so I Karen was doing some ironing I said Karen would you press this thing I wanna wear this shirt so I put it on it didn't fit it was an Italian cut and so so I took it to the store to get back store put it back in the box took of the store and went up to the counter and this guy behind the counter and I said hey someone gave me this shirt from a birthday or whatever and I said it doesn't fit if I could just exchange it and he opened the box and looked at it and said this shirts been worn and pushed it back at me we don't take back his merchandise and I said no it actually hadn't been war and I said my wife pressed it but I didn't wear it I said it just he just said in pet I just want to know when I push it back at him he said no it's been warranty pushed it back to me I just kind of stared at him and I said knowing it had no warrant I want to get numb and so he went got his manager well his manager came back and his manager came back and never looked at me never acknowledged my presence so the manager walks up and so this guy saying behind the counter says this guy wants to bring this shirt back but it's been worn I said no one had been worn but the manager never looked at me so the manager took the shirt out of the box and he held it up to the light like this and then he started sniffing the armpits and I just thought you guys really need to be thankful I know Jesus and I'm just thinking I've never been back to that store I don't work I don't want to be hassled like that well let me say whether you realize it or not if you're married you have a customer relations counter and here's the kind of customer relations counter you need to have for your spouse baby I want to be your department store love [Applause] and I'm trying to put everything in my store that I think you'll like but I am imperfect but if you ever have a complaint you just come right here and see me I'm gonna give you another one oh yes I will or you can have this kind of a customer relations generator but you have a customer relations counter and so in marriage we should have a customer relations counter and anger is legal in our family anger is Angles angers are normal okay normal thing anger is legal number two don't of anger don't justify sin because you're angry be angry don't sin that's what Paul says don't justify a lot of people do the wrong thing in response to what their spouse is doing and wonder why something good doesn't happen you can only defeat a spirit with the opposite spirit and when you're responding fire with fires fight with spite or hatefulness with hatefulness you're never going to solve the problem so be angry but don't sin don't let the Sun go down this is the third don't don't let the Sun go down there's nothing wrong with today's hangry okay but yesterday's anger is the problem that's where destructive anger comes from it is yesterday's anchor so one of the best habits that you make as a married couple is we're not going to go to bed angry we're going to process our anger today number 4 don't is don't give a place to the devil be angry don't sin don't go to bed on your anger or you'll give a foothold to the devil so when you go to bed on anger you open a door to diabolo that's the word for devil Diablos which means slander here's what it means today's anger is manageable today there's nothing wrong with today's anger we're going to be able to talk about it the devil does not have access to today's anger but when I go to bed on anger he slithers in he stealth it he doesn't tell you to your anger gave him an open door to come in and to slander your spouse to you and all night long you're laying in bed and thoughts are in your mind that didn't originate with God or you they came from the devil you wake up the next morning thing you're enlightened you're actually deceived and now you begin to look at your spouse to the devil's eyes with deeply held beliefs that are deceived because you went to bed on anger and the devil began to access that anger how do I know because I did it for three years for the first three years of our marriage we fought constantly remember I was the silent type this was this was my iniquity that I went to bed on anger constantly hundreds of times so I went to bed angry Karen and so I believe that Karen was the problem and I believe that I've married the wrong woman I had I believe those two things the night that the Lord saved our marriage and I know Karen had been praying a lot is that I was in the living room and that's when I had read that morning John sixteen the Holy Spirit will lead you in all truth I had told Karen to get out of the house she was in the bedroom crying I was in the living room and I said the first ounce of humility I've ever shown in our marriage I said Holy Spirit teach me how to be a husband and the deception of three years fell off of mines and I saw myself I was an arrogant man and I thought that I was wonderful and Karen was all the problems the next instant after I prayed that prayer I saw my wife is the precious gift of God that she was and I saw myself for the idiot I was God saved me the Holy Spirit brought truth in my life listen I had been looking at Karen through the devil's eyes now I was looking at her through God's eyes if you go to bed on anger you give a foothold to Diablos and he will slander your spouse to you and if you've done that you need to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to break that deception off you have deeply held beliefs about your spouse that are wrong because you left it you gave up the hell so don't do it anymore don't go to bed on anger begin to process your anger and healthy way let me go through conflict resolution here real quick here are the four steps of conflict resolution the number one is confront and loving and positive manner okay you begin always begin a conference again you're dealing with anger today so you know you may have to cool off for two or three hours that's fine okay but you're going to deal with it today you begin in confronted loving a positive manner proverbs 15:1 a soft answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up anger okay and so research proves that a conversation never rises above the level of the first three minutes what you do in the first three minutes of a conversation set that conversation up for success or failure so here's the way you need to start a conversation with your spouse how I love you I'm upset and I want to talk but I love you and we're on the same team and I'm glad I'm glad I married you I would choose you all over again but I'm upset I'm upset and I need at home okay so that's sweet that's great no problem or you can do it this way I'm mad you may be mad again and I've been on one our divorce calm and I just filled out all the forms and I'm ready to hit enter depending on how you respond so you try that start sleep a soft word turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up anger number two step in conflict resolution is complain and don't criticize there's a huge difference now when you give your spouse when you have a customer relations counter and you give your spouse the right to complain there's a huge difference between complaining and criticizing criticizing is about you complaining is about me so here's what you don't do when you're confronting your spouse you don't go you know you you you you did this you did this and here's what you meant by that I know what you meant by that you you you you you and by the way the judge and jury have met your sentence has been decided but we're gonna give you an opportunity to confess and ask for leniency go ahead well we hate that you've judged me you know you think you know everything you're not even asking for my input I hate that okay but here's complaining so complaining is I want to tell you how I feel something happened between us I don't know what you meant by it though let me tell you how I feel so let me give you two examples of this and so Karen says something to me that hurts my feelings and I come to Karen and I say to Karen hey Karen you said something just so long ago that hurt me and I think you're trying to pay me back for what happened yesterday because that's just kind of what you are well that conversation could go south in a hurry I'm judging her and I'm criticizing her okay here's complaining Karen you said something to me earlier and it bothered me I'm not saying that you meant to can I tell you how it made me feel and but I'm not saying I'm right I'm not in any way trying to interpret your behavior it made me feel like maybe you're trying to pay me back for yesterday but but I'm not saying you were I'm not judging you I'm not criticizing you I'm not attacking you and at that point Karen doesn't feel attacked as she says no Jimmy that's just not true at all I didn't mean anything by that you could you can complain all you want to because complaining is talking about me but criticizing is attacking the other person here's the third step in conflict resolution it's listen to your spouse listen to them now listen to me if you've gone to bed on anger you believe things about them that are wrong and when they begin to say things that don't line up with your beliefs you begin to argue with them but they're not wrong you're wrong but let me read your first Corinthians 13 love suffers long and is kind love does not envy does not parade itself is not puffed up does not behave rudely does not seek its own is not provoked thinks no evil does not rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in truth bears all things believes all things hopes all things and endures all things so if you're going to have successful conflict with your spouse you begin sweetly you complain but you don't criticize and then you listen and when you say Karen what did you mean by that and Karen says Jimmy I don't even remember making that statement and I don't even remember what you're talking about yesterday that I'm not mad and I'd say yeah you are Karen you just don't realize it well I'd say okay that's great here's the step number four forgive and let it go forgive let me say something about about anger in going to bed on anger now so let's just say that you have a fight and your spouse will not process it with you they won't sit down and talk to you about it you can devil proof your heart before you go to bed even if they won't talk about it and the way you do that is you forgive them before you go to bed and you say Lord I'm upset but I forgive them I love them I pray that you'll protect my heart okay so even if even if both sides aren't forgiving but at the end of a conversation let's just say that that one of you is 90 percent wrong the other person is 10 percent wrong you both need to repent and ask for forgiveness you both need to forget if I'm only 10 percent wrong I need to say to Karen I'm sorry you know I'm sorry for what I did I'm sorry for what I said will you free will you forgive me you care says yes to me I do forgive you and then the other person says the the most healing words in marriage are these words I'm so sorry will you please forgive me I was wrong and then you forgive I mean let me tell you a story and I'll close the Lord had healed our marriage and but we had a couple of issues that we talked about that that you know weren't fights but they were just kind of intense conversations and I got tired of I just wanted the conversation to be over with and Karen said to me one day she said Jimmy I wish I could record you and just show you play play back your voice to show you how harsh you are when you're talking to me on these issues and I said I'm not harsh caring I'm not hurt and so I was praying one morning I know Karen was praying for me and the Lord healed me with one scene he was sure to sing one little play so I was reading Ephesians 5 and it says Jesus washes his bride in the washing of water with work in the next instant I was the Bride of Christ I could see myself with a wedding gown on it was filthy it was completely filthy and Jesus was there and he was taking his hands and putting them in water a basin of water and putting it very gently over my head and what I realized was he had been doing that since the day I got saved and he was going to do it until the last day of my life but he what he wasn't in a hurry to get all the stuff off of me the next thing that I saw was Karen in a wedding dress and I had a fire hose and I was hosing her down and her veil was blown back her dress was blown back and I was just trying to get her fixed and what I realized was is that Jesus is just a lot more gracious than Jimmy and Jesus is a lot more gentle than Jimmy and where Jesus is so patient we're all messed up but isn't Jesus gentle he loves us just the way we are but he wants us to get better but he doesn't threaten and he's not rough with it and the next time I got you know we got in that conversation I gave Karen a kiss on the cheek and I said something to her real nice and I walked away I didn't try to escalate it at all and I did that for you know from then on I did heal me when the Lord did that it helped me instantly right then it was several days later that Karen came up to me I was in my office at home and she walked up to the door of my office and she looked in and she said now I notice what you're doing and that's what like why she said being on the program and she said I like it Jimmy thank you you know I like it too because it's hard being God it's a big job trying to fix everybody you know and here's what I decided we're gonna have problems for the rest of our married life and that's okay I don't have to fix you we both have issues and we're gonna we want to be the best fast we can be but we're still human beings Jesus can only relate to us based on grace because we're all messed up somebody say Amen and we can only relate to each other based on grace there's going to be have to be a lot of forgiveness that goes around if we're going to have a good marriage and be able to resolve our anger and so anger is normal we all experience it and in good marriages there's anger and there's conflict but the ability to handle our anger and not let the devil get into it and the ability to resolve our conflicts is a huge deal to get anger out of the relationship let me say let me tell you why God uses me I asked for one day I said Lord why why did you ever choose me to do this let me tell you the answer because if I can change anyone can change I'm not special in any way I'm just an example of what God can do with any ordinary person who's willing to change if your marriage is terrible like my friend who nailed his wife in the house they have a marriage ministry they're the most wonderful couple simply because they put their marriage in God's hands and let him do a miracle I want you to pray with me if you would thank you for the gift of marriage Lord thank you for the beautiful beautiful gift of marriage and thank you for the gift of our spouse in Lord we just pray if we've come out of a maybe a dysfunctional background or we don't know how to deal with anger maybe we're children or divorce help us Lord to begin to heal and to begin to talk and begin to process our anger and hurts in a right way and lord I really do pray for healing of hurts emotional hurts just things that are in us that are unhealthy wounds that are in us you can heal the inside of us like no one else heal marriages heal families break generations of dysfunction but I pray your blessing on every single person who wants a spouse I pray Lord that you'll bring them the spouse that you've chosen for them and fulfill their desire to be married any person divorced and brokenhearted I pray you'll heal their heart and give them hope for marriage but for every married couple I pray that you would touch their marriage and heal their marriage in a special way bless this congregation Lord every person with health with blessing with promotion with favor with protection with fertility bless them Lord in Jesus name Amen god bless you guys

Channel: gatewaychurchtv

Views: 264,737

Rating: 4.8894072 out of 5

Keywords: Jimmy Evans, Marriage Today, Demystifying Marriage, Laws of Love, how to have a successful marriage, principles of marriage, The Four Laws of Love, Biblical Marriage, biblical marriage sermon, christian marriage, jimmy evans marriage today, marriage help, Gateway church, robert morris

Id: o3X_gJ3ePGA

Length: 32min 45sec (1965 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 24 2020