- So, today is part one
of a two part series entitled, "Mean people and
what to do about them." Mean people and what
to do about them. I thought about
entitling this series "Bad people and what
to do about them" but we hesitate to
call anybody bad. We say things like these, "He's really not a bad person." And this is what we say, "He's really not a bad person. He just bad things, a lot." Which I think that's what
it means to be a bad person. So, we're not going
to do bad person, we're gonna do mean person. We're gonna stick
with mean people. and specifically
what should we do about the mean
people in our lives. And by mean, I mean, mean. These are the unpleasant people, these are the deceptive people. These are the people that
control with time or money or with our children. These are the users.
They're just unkind. It may be that person that
when you see them coming, you just don't wanna
interact with them because well, there's just
no other way to say it. They're just mean. And to be clear, this isn't
to say we're not often mean. I mean, all of us have
been mean at some point. In fact, there's somebody
maybe who's going to see or hear this message (chuckles) and unfortunately, we're
going to come to mind. But generally, what we talk
about when we're together is how to live a
life in such a way and to live our
lives in such a way that we're not the mean people. So, we're not discounting the
fact that from time to time we can be mean and
certainly have the potential to be perhaps as mean as the
meanest person we've ever met. But these two messages
are gonna focus on how to respond to and how
to react to the mean people in our lives. Now, the reason this is
so important is this. If you don't have a plan
and if I don't have a plan, if we're not prepared and honestly we gonna see if
we're not somewhat proactive, here's what happens and
we've all experienced this. The mean people, the
mean people in our lives, ultimately they gain a measure
of control over our lives. And before we know it, we're
actually acting like they do and it feels in the moment
as if we have no choice. In fact if somebody
would hear your story or when you tell your story and you talk about how you've
reacted to or responded to the person that
is mean to you, the person hears
your stories like, "Well, who could blame you?" It's almost like
you have no choice. And the reason it feels like
we have no choice is this. That mean people... And we don't think
in these terms when we're in the relationship. But mean people,
without even meaning to, they just keep us off balance. We're just always all balanced. We don't know what
we're walking into and we don't know
how to respond. They kind of lean left
and we kind of lean right because when we're off
balance, what happens? We're forced to compensate. This is why in
these relationships, you feel like you're
not even yourself. In fact, somebody
may have said to you "When you're around him,
when you're around her, when you're together, I feel like you're
not even yourself." Why? Because when we're
around these kinds of people, we are forced to compensate. If somebody walks up and
pushes you off balance, everything in you,
you compensate to
regain your balance. But the problem with the mean
person is it is impossible. It is virtually
impossible to maintain and keep your balance. I'll give you a
quick illustration that actually is a
long illustration I'm gonna try to keep short. When my mom who died
when she was 82, when my mom was in
her late thirties, she met a young woman
in her late twenties that she helped her out and
they became lifelong friends. Her name was Alice. And Alice actually used to
stay with my sister and me when my parents
would go out of town. So, I've known Alice
basically my whole life. So, then when my mom
was in her seventies and basically she
couldn't drive anymore and she really had
needed some help at home, Alice would actually drive
45 minutes from her home. Now, Alice is in
her late sixties. She would drive from her home
45 minutes to my mom's home every single week to go
through my mom's mail, pay my mom's bills,
balance my mom's checkbook and just answer any questions and just spend time with my mom, which I was so grateful for. So, my mom invested in her,
now she's investing in my mom. And again, it took so
much pressure off of me, so extraordinarily grateful. So, as my mom neared
the end of her life, and as she was less and less
able to take care of herself, Alice began to lose her sight. And before long, she
couldn't drive any longer and she was basically
shut-in in her own home. And then Sandra, my wife
began doing for Alice what Alice had done for my mom. She would drive over
every single week,
go through the mail, pay the bills,
balance the checkbook, and just answer any
questions that she had. And so, she was
kind of giving back based on what Alice had so
graciously done for my mom. So, as time goes by,
it becomes clear to us that Alice can't stay
in her house any longer because technically
she was living alone. We'll come back to
that in just a minute. And so, Sandra convinced Alice that she needed to move
to assisted living. Now, if any one ear
has ever moved a parent or a spouse's parents
who assisted living, it is so complicated. But it's even more complicated when trying to move somebody
who is not a family member. So, Sandra got an attorney, she became Alice's official
legal power of attorney and then she got another
friend of Alice's to become Alice's medical
power of attorney. So, there's kind of team Alice but because Alice had never
married, she had no kids, she'd pretty much outlived
almost all of her friends and certainly her parents
and her brother and sister. And so, she's alone in the world and so we're gonna
take care of Alice. So, about nine months
before the process began to get her into assisted living, the goal was get her
in assisted living. And in fact, Sandra found a
place two miles from our house because we're committed to
Alice for the rest of her life. She found this place and
Alice could almost afford it based with her pension and
with her social security but there was gonna be a gap. So, the goal is get her
out, clean out her house, sell the stuff, sell the
house, a little bit of equity, put the money in the bank
and we'll just go from there. So, that's the plan,
very complicated especially when you're
not related to the person. Well, anyway, about
eight or nine months before that process began, an old friend of Alice's
showed up at her front door, a gentleman in his late sixties,
keeping all this straight. And he said, "Alice,
I'm destitute. I don't have a place to live. I've been living in my
car, it's getting cold. Would it be okay if
I moved in with you for just a few months?" Now, Alice had been warned and later we were warned that
this guy's name is Roger. That if you let Roger move in, you're gonna have a
difficult time getting Roger to move out. She had been told that, and
she'd known him for a while. And somebody told us that
when we heard about Roger moving in but she allowed him to move into one of
her spare bedrooms. And actually, honestly,
he was pretty helpful because he could drive and he could take her
to her doctor's visits, he would bring us
the mail sometimes, he seemed like the nicest guy and I couldn't imagine
this was gonna be a problem besides he knew we're
gonna sell her house and so, if we sell her house, you'll probably have to move
out by that point, right. So, I felt like there was
kind of a built-in deadline, this wouldn't be a problem. So, sure enough, he
was pretty helpful. Sandra did, I wouldn't
say estate sale. It was more of garage
sale than estate sale if you know what I mean. There wasn't a lot to sell
but we had an estate sale or a garage sale. Roger was actually helpful. He actually even bought
some of her stuff to put in his storage
unit that he said he had, which was great. Now, he wasn't paying any
rent, wasn't paying any bills, wasn't buying any groceries. I mean, there was
no cash outlet. He was living for free
for all these months. And so, we finally
have to get Alice move to this assisted living
place close to us, that was an event. We get the house cleaned out,
we do this big garage sale. Sandra put signs out that the
house is gonna go for sale and the real estate market
right now is so hot. So, she starts getting calls and now she's gotta
show the house but now the house
is completely empty. I mean, she sold everything and then threw everything else
away and just mammoth tasks if you've ever done
that for someone. And so Sandra is riding
point on this whole process. And then, we got
to show the house but the problem is there's,
"Come see this house, it's completely empty except
don't go in that bedroom. There's a air mattress with
some clothes in the closet and a computer on the floor. don't mind the guy
camping out in the house." It's gonna be kind of hard
to show this house, right. Well, so she started
showing the house and so we're like,
"Roger, okay." (clapping) "Thank you, you got to go." And he just ignores us. So, Sandra gives him a deadline. Gives him three weeks. By this day, he agreed that,
"On that Monday, I'll be gone." Monday comes, Monday
goes, he's still there. And it becomes apparent
he's not moving out. In fact, because Alex isn't
living in a house right now, Sandra shut off all the
unnecessary utilities including the television service and she gets a bill from
the television provider. She calls us and "No,
I canceled that." And the person on the
other end of the line said, "Well, somebody called and
had it turned back on." And Roger had called
the television provider and had the television
service turned back on and Sandra left the internet on because he said he
needed internet. So, this begins to escalate
and escalate and escalate. And it's all we're thinking about and talking about
everyday I come home I'm like, "Have you heard from Roger? Have you talked to Roger? Has Roger moved out?" And we've got all
these other people that are like, we've
got to get Roger out but it's kind of resting on us. So, we're sitting on the
couch late one afternoon, Sandra calls, Roger. I said, "Put it
on speaker phone." And of course I'm trying
not to get involved because Sandra throughout
the processes is that, "Andy, you cannot get involved because I wanted
to get involved." (crowd laughing) And I only had one tool. I wanna use my tool and she's like, "You
can't use your tool." So, they have this
conversation on speakerphone and he is so rude, I've never heard anyone
speak to my wife this way. I was so angry and she's
kind of leaning this way and I'm reaching for the phone. I just want to take
the phone and say... And she's like, "No, no, no." And he's saying,
"I'm gonna sue you. You can't kick me out. The law doesn't allow you
to kick out a renter." I'm like, "Renter?" That assumes rent. I mean, this guy's paid nothing. He's taken advantage of
an 80 year old woman. We're trying to close her house
and we put money in the bank because there's a monthly gap
between her pension source of security to stay in
this assisted living place and he is so rude to Sandra. Okay, this is how bad it gets. So, we get a
contract on a house. It's full price offer
plus no contingencies. It's perfect, it's more money than we thought we could
give for Alice's house and she so desperately
needs this money. And so, Roger, you're gonna
think I'm making this up. Roger finds out who the
purchaser's agent is and goes to the office of the
purchasing agent, the person representing the
family buying the house. Goes in and says,
"I need you to know this is gonna be a
fraudulent closing. Yes, the one then who claims
to have power of attorney over this old person has
manipulated the old person to get power of the attorney and she has no legal
right to do this and I'm not moving out and
you need to be careful." And it's gonna ruin this closing that Sandra has worked so hard
to get us to the finish line. We're almost there. So, of course the purchasing
agent calls the seller's agent, Alice's agent and all of a
sudden we're about to lose this whole deal. Now, how do you think we
responded to all this? What's our response? Well, you can imagine because
you can imagine your response. You know what we did and
this is kind of embarrassing and I'm not even gonna
give you the details. It's so embarrassing. We sat around day after
day, night after night coming up the most
devious, manipulative ways you can imagine to get
Roger out of the house, I'm telling you. There were times we just
listened to each other and say, "Who are we?
Who have we become?" We had a pesticide option,
I won't even go into it. (congregation laughing) No lie. Then I said, you know what? I know some kind of
other crazy people. We should just invite
some other people to live in the house, live
in Alice's house with Roger until he finally gets
fed up and moves on. There was to turn off the
electricity and the water option which we could have done because Alice is
paying bills for him. I mean, there are others
I won't even go into. But we realized
what was happening. We're starting to
become like Roger. We're becoming like him,
we don't even like him. It was all we talked about
to the point honestly. It was as if Roger
had moved in with us because it so focused our
attention every single day. How do we get Roger out of
the house before this closing? We couldn't even
believe somebody would
give us a contract and give Alice a
contract on the house because they'd never
seen the house empty, because there's a guy camping
out in one of the bedrooms. Now, in part two, I'm going to come back and tell
you how that story resolved. So, yeah, I know. Okay, sorry to do that. But the point is simply
this, and you know this. It is so difficult
to be good to people who just aren't good, right. No matter what kind of faith
you have in the moment, it is so difficult
to be kind to people who just seems like in their
heart they're just unkind or sensitive to people
who are insensitive. The golden rule just
doesn't seem to apply. You know the golden rule? Do unto others as you would
have others do on to you. And this is great until
somebody mistreats you. And it's great until
somebody mistreats me or mistreat somebody
that I love. And for me in this
particular story, it's a double-edged sword because I loved Alice and
I wanted us to help Alice but I was watching my wife be
mistreated at the same time and I'm supposed
to do unto Roger as I would have
Roger do under me and suddenly the golden
rule is out the window. Now it's the iron rule. I just made this up but you
understand the iron rule. It's do unto others as they
have done unto you, right. And this doesn't
only feel natural. It doesn't only
just feel natural to treat people the
way they've treated us. In the moment, it just seems
right, it just seems fair. And in fact, if I
were to go into detail about some of these crazy ideas, we had to get Roger
out of the house after hearing just the part
of the story I've told you. You would be like, "Yeah." Me, "Why wouldn't
you do all that?" It just seems right,
it seems fair, it seems just, it seems even. And then, there's this, and maybe this is a
little close to home because maybe this is
maybe part of your story or maybe part of
your story growing up or maybe it's part of the
story of your first marriage. When we're mistreated
in a relationship and we powerless to
do anything about it, again, we're off
balance, we compensate. But sometimes we compensate not in the relationship
with the person that threw us off balanced. You've seen this happen. We compensate in
another relationship. We compensate somewhere
with somebody else. I'll take it out on you because
I can't take it out on him. I can't take it out on her. I can't get back at them. I can't go back into the office and take it out on the people
that mistreated me at work but I've got all this
energy, I'm off balance. And then, it's doing to others. It's doing others as someone
else has done unto you. So, round and round and round
it goes and you know what? We've all been
there at some level. Maybe not a big level but at some level we've all
been a part of this dynamic. So, here's the question. Here's what talking about. What do we do? I mean, what do you do
about the mean people? Maybe it was your ex,
maybe it's a neighbor, maybe it's a boss, a
sister, a sister-in-law, and there's just no way
to extricate yourself from the relationship because the nature
of the relationship but they're just mean. And it's fun, I'll admit it. It's fun to daydream
about getting even but the problem of course
is, and you know this. It's that getting
even makes us even. Getting even makes us even with someone that
we don't even like, it makes us like
someone that we dislike. So, what do we do? We can't ignore them, right. That's impossible. And if you ignore them, you
know what they do, right. They just keep chipping away,
chipping away, chipping away and eventually we built
break and we react and it's like we've given
them even more power over us. So, ignoring them
isn't the way forward and getting even
isn't the way forward. Unfortunately, there's
a third option. There's a third option
that it's not intuitive. It's a third option that actually decreases
their power over us. And honestly, it's
the third option that allows us to guard
and protect our hearts. And it positions us when
this is said and done to tell a much better story. Of course, the way forward is
taught and modeled by Jesus but it's also modeled
in the Old Testament by a relatively
unknown individual whose life intersects
with the life of David. Now, many of us, if you grow
up around church or in church are familiar with
who king David was but this event
doesn't take place when he's King David or
even shepherd boy David, this event takes place
when he is fugitive David. After David as a young as
a teenager killed Goliath, remember that story. He becomes a national hero
in Israel, in ancient Israel. And so, King Saul, the king
at the time draws him in close because David's a leader,
he's a national hero, you wanna keep
your friends close, you wanna keep your
potential rivals even closer. And then King Saul gets
word that some rogue prophet has gone to David's
home as a little boy and anointed David to be
the next king of Israel. Now, this is a real problem
if you're already the king because not only do you want
to finish out your years as king, you want your
son, in this case, Jonathan to become the next king. Now this is messing
with his dynasty. So, King Saul tries
to kill David. David escapes, he
becomes a fugitive, he's living out
in the wilderness, he's had to leave
his family over time because he's a leader. He attracts other men like him, other angry, mistreated
outlaws before long, he has his own little
miniature army of about 600 men plus their wives
and all their stuff and they're outcast
from society, they have no place to call
home and they're all angry because each of them
have their own story of being mistreated and the injustice that had
happened under King Saul. And David's got all this
anger and all this frustration of course like any of us, he's looking for a place
to sort of take it out. Somebody to take it
out on because king
Saul is untouchable. And in this story, he
finally finds a victim and that's where
the story picks up. So, I'll read part of the story and then we're gonna
stop in the middle, pick it up next time. Here's what happens. "A certain man..." This is the 1 Samuel 25. And Samuel is essentially
David's biographer in a sense. "A certain man and Moan, who had property there in
Carmel was very wealthy. He had a thousand goats." You read this in ancient
times, it's like. (panting) For us it's like,
"What would you do with the thousand goats?" So, he had a thousand goats. He had garages full of
cars, think of it that way. "He had 3000 sheep, which
he was shearing in Carmel, and his name was Nabal." Now, sheep shearing
season in ancient times, this is when wealthy people
found out how much wealthier they had just become. This was like a
financial report, an annual financial report. He's about to find
out how much wealthier he just became based on how
many sheep were actually alive to be sheared and the
product they had as a result that they could then sell. So, this is a good day. This is a great day for him. The rich just get richer. He's about to find out
how much profit he turned. So, the story continues. "His name was Nabal and his
wife's name was Abigail. She was an intelligent
and beautiful woman but her husband was harsh
and mean in his dealings." In fact, his name
actually means heavy. In this Hebrew word here
actually means heavy. He was basically a
pain to deal with. He was a burden to deal with. In fact the text tells us
he was just a mean person. Text continues. "While David and his men
were in the wilderness, he heard that Nepal
was shearing sheep." So, he was like,
"Hey, this rich guy is about to get richer." So, he sent 10 of his young
men and he said to them, "I want you to give
Nabal a message. Go up to Nepal at Caramel
and greet him in my name. So, when you show up,
let everybody know you're coming in David's
name and say to him, Greet him this way, say,
'Long life to you Nabal, good health to you
and your household and good health to
all that is yours.'" This was a formal ancient
greeting that basically said, "I come in peace." And then make sure you
give him the message. And here's the message. "When your shepherds were with
us, we did not mistreat them. The whole time they
were at Carmel, nothing of theirs went missing." In other words, while your
shepherds were out watching over their flocks by night,
night after night after night during that season, our
men were all around them all the time and we
never stole anything. So, there's a sense in which
your profit is due in part to our protection. Not only do we not allow our
men to steal anything from you, we didn't allow the other
rogues in the area to steal anything from you as well. And he said, "And if you
don't take my word for it..." this message continues this way. "Ask your own servants
and they'll tell you. Therefore, be
favorable toward my men since we come festive time. And please, if you would. Please give your servants
and your son, David whatever you can find for them." In other words, you're
gonna have extra. We kind of helped you
create that extra. If you wouldn't mind sharing
with us, that would be great. So, "When David's men
arrived, they went to Carmel. When they arrived, they
gave Nabal this message in David's name and
then they waited and they waited
and they waited." Because the ball was
making them wait. Now, while they're
waiting on Nabal, I just wanna say a
word about David. And this is gonna be
difficult for some of us again based on our view of David
growing up in Sunday school or church but when you
read his biography, David was a very violent man. He was not someone
to be trifled with. When he lived in the
land of the Philistines, he regularly raided
Philistine villages and would murder every
single person in the village so there would be no one
left to tell the tale. In fact, his biographer
describes it this way. "Whenever David
attacked an area, he did not leave a
man or a woman alive but took sheep and
cattle, donkeys, and camels and
all the clothing." So, he was a dangerous
and violent man even by ancient standards. So, Nabal should
have known better because certainly he knew
the reputation of David, the warrior. So anyway, he keeps them waiting but eventually Nabal
sends his answer or perhaps he comes out and
gives the answer himself, it's not clear. Nabal answered. Here's what he said. "Nabal answered
David's servants, 'Who is this David? You come in David's
name, who is David? Who is this son of Jesse?'" So, he knew who David was
but he's like, you know what? "Yeah, We've heard of David and you think he's
such a big deal. He's not such a big
deal. Who is this guy? Hey, come on. He's just one of many. Many servants are breaking
away from their masters these days, you're a
master is a nobody. Your master is an outlaw. I didn't ask for his help. I didn't need his help. I don't owe him anything. So, No. I'm not gonna share with David
and his band of married men. You are dismissed." He says, "Why should I
take my bread and water and the meat I have
slaughtered for my shearers and give it men coming from... Where did you come from again? So, no. You're dismissed." "So, David's men turned
around and they went back and when they arrived,
they repeated every word. And then David said to his men, 'Oh, well it was worth a try.'" No, "David actually
said to his men, 'Each of you strap
on your sword.' So they did.'" And then an interesting
detail in the text. "And David strapped
his on as well." In other words, you mess
with me and you will see. You mess with me
and you will pay. Now, there's a reason I think why the
author highlights David arming himself
with his sword because David's sword
was like no other sword. David's sword was
actually a reminder that he did not need to
return evil for evil. David's sword was
actually a reminder that he did not need to take
matters into his own hands. In fact, I'm just curious. Do you know where
David got his sword? Anybody? - [Woman] Goliath. - Goliath, that's right. He got a sword from Goliath. So, Goliath's sword is a
visual aid of God's promise of protection and
provision to David. God had chosen him. God had raised him
up as a teenager. God had anointed him as king. He did not need to take
matters into his own hands. Of anybody on the
planet at that time, David was the one person who
could turn to God for help and God would in fact
intervene on his behalf but David is hurt. David's angry and he
can't see any of that. To him, it's just
an oversize sword. The story that goes
with the sword, he's forgotten the story. He's forgotten God's provision
because he's so angry and he's so hurt. And he redirects his
frustration with King Saul, who is that touchable
toward Nabal. So, about 400 men.
This is amazing. About 400 men went up
with David 400 men. Okay, this was an overreaction
of epic proportion. This was going to be a massacre. You've heard. We've all heard
they hurt people. This is a case of hunted people. Hunt people. So he sets out. And it's so interesting because the biographer once
again lets us get inside David's head. He begins in internally to
build up a head of steam, to build his case. He's gonna build
a case to justify what he's not a
hundred percent sure he should be doing. Ever do that? You're kind of driving home and you're kind of
building up ahead of steam. You're practicing your script
or you're driving to work, or you're thinking
about that afternoon when you see him or you see her. We had those imaginary
conversations. At least I do. In my imaginary conversations, I think I've told
you this before. When I have an imaginary
conversation with people, they're spectators
listening to me. Give this person
a piece of my mind and then I have this
incredible one-liner and the person who's my enemy they're like, "Oh, you're right, you're logic is unassailable." And they just kind of melt
off into the distance. And everybody's like, "Andy" and it's not quite like that. But anyway, you have those
conversations in your head where you're just gonna
say just the right thing and then you're gonna win. "Hey Andy, I got an idea." I think this was Sandra's idea. "Hey, let's go into the
house when Roger's not there and slice his mattress, fold
it up, put it on the street with his clothes and his
computer and change the locks." It might've been my idea. Anyway, you just visualize what can we do to get
back at this person that has done so much to us? In fact, here's
the biographer says that David had just said to
his guys, "it's been useless. All my watching over
this fellow's property." He's kind of
building up his case. "In the wilderness so that
nothing of his was missing. All this I've done for him, think of all the things
I've done for him. Think of all of the
nights we stayed up. Think of all the things
we could have stolen. Think of how wealthy
we could already be. But what has he done? He has paid. He is paid
me back evil for good." Then he invites God
into the equation. "May God deal with me,
be it ever so severely. If by morning I leave one male of all who belonged
to him alive." In other words, I'm
gonna murder him, I'm gonna kill his male servant and I'm going to kill his sons." That'll teach him to
treat me this way. So, we're going to
pause the story there but here's what we have so far. We've got two characters. We have two responses and
we have no hero, right. I mean, we have Nabal, we
had David, evil for good. David did good, he
responded with evil. David who's about
to do evil for evil. Nabal is somewhat maniacal and David is about
to be predictable. I mean, who could blame him
for what he's about to do? And sometimes again, it just seems like evil for
evil is the only option. It turns out as I said
earlier, it's not. There's a third option and we're going to talk
about that in part two. But here's what I want you to
do between now and part two. I wanna give you four
questions to think about. And again, I would
prefer you not to think about these through the
filter of other people but just through what's going
on right now in your life with the people that are
difficult to deal with. You may not consider
them mean people, that may not be in extreme
or it may be very extreme. But I want you to process these
questions through the filter of what's going on
right now in your life. And parents, I can't overstate
the importance of this. Parents, I think you need
to teach these or questions to your children because your children
are, have, or will face some very mean people and their natural reaction
like our natural reaction will be evil for evil or to allow that person to
continue to control them. And as a parent, this is
so difficult to watch. And sometimes as a parent,
it's to coach our kids to power up, to
return evil for evil because we will
feel better, right. So, these are four
questions for us. These are four
questions for our kids. Question number one is this. Do you wanna be even with
someone you don't even like? No, I already know the
answer to this question. No, we don't but our natural
response to mean people oftentimes is an attempt
to get even with people we don't even like
to be like someone that we would readily
admit that we dislike. And again, we think somehow
once we get even, that ends it but that doesn't end it, right. That doesn't end the cycle. It actually perpetuates it. Recently, I heard
Jamie Dekin say, "It's not evil for evil, it just becomes evil for evil
for evil for evil for evil for evil for evil. It just goes on and on and on." So, do you wanna be part or do I wanna be part of
perpetuating that cycle? The question number two. Wouldn't you rather be ahead? I mean, do you want to get even with someone you don't even like or wouldn't you rather be ahead? Wouldn't you prefer to
be unlike the person or the people that you dislike? And as I said earlier,
this is so not intuitive. But here's the thing. And when I say it,
you know it's true. Unlike any other arena of life, you actually
relationally pull ahead by refusing to get even. You actually pull ahead
by refusing to get even. And that leads to a third
question that we ask a lot around here within
several different contexts. It's simply this. In fact, this is third question. Don't miss next time
because this third question is a question that the character that we will introduce next
time actually baits David into asking about
his own future. And the third question is this, when this is nothing more
than a story you tell. What story do you wanna tell? When your response to
this current relationship is nothing more than
the story you tell, what story do you want to tell? Do you want to tell the
story that I ended up just like the person
that I dislike because I allowed them to
infuriate me into acting just like them? It's not a good story. It's not the story that
any of us wanna tell. And then the fourth question, the fourth question is the
on-ramp to the solution. The fourth question is the
on-ramp to pulling ahead. And the fourth
question sets us up and puts us in this
uncomfortable space that we know we probably
should step into. And if you're a Jesus
follower, if you're Christian, you know with certainty, you've
been called to step into it but it's so uncomfortable. The fourth question is this. What would it look like? And you don't have
to commit to this. You just have to have an
internal conversation. What would it look like
to return good for evil? Not just refuse to react
or to react in like kind, but to be kind. Not just refuse to be bad but to take seriously
the words of Jesus because he was so
direct about this. I mean, a lot of things Jesus said we have a
hard time figuring out this is too clear. He said, "I want you to do good
to those who mistreat you." Don't just put up with them. Don't just forgive them. Don't just ignore them. Don't just try not
to be like them. Jesus says, "Nope,
that's not enough." I want you to think
through how to do good to those who mistreat you because Jesus knew
that doing good to people who have
not been good to us is ultimately what frees
us but protects our heart. Getting even is natural. It's predictable. Jesus has invited us
to be unpredictable. Jesus has invited us to do
something extraordinary. It's as if He's saying, "Don't be predictable, don't
write a predictable story. Write a remarkable story, write that story
that's worth telling." And what will determine whether
or not that story is worth telling is not what
the other person does 'cause you have no
control over that. It is 100% right
here in our decision whether or not to respond
either in light kind or to be kind, to do good for
those who have mistreated us. Remarkable begins with an
honest answer to this question. What would it look like
to return good for evil? What would it look
like to do good to the person who
has mistreated you? Because you don't pull ahead
by attempting to get evil. And we will pick it up
right there next time in part two of mean people.
