One Another | Part One | How to use your words to build someone up

[Music] [Applause] [Music] you see my victory when all i see [Music] your is surrounds me [Music] there's nothing to fear now more i am [Music] with my hands lifted high oh [Applause] [Music] do you oh that this morning for jesus [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] nothing can stand against the power of our god you shine in the shadows [Music] nothing can stand against the power [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Music] see that was good great you may be seated for just a moment this is justin warner and i'll tell you why justin's up here just a minute hey uh welcome everybody james that was amazing so good hey again welcome back if this is your first time we hope it is not your last time and before you leave today we'd love for you to drop by connections if you're over here with me if you just go out those doors and take a right it says connections if you're over in the west if you exit stitch to the left of the stage some of our staff are there they'd love to answer any questions we've gotten pretty good about how about making a big church feel like your church and we would love to um again just answer any questions you have get to know you and if you don't know anything else about our church um we have a very simple mission is to inspire people to follow jesus because following jesus we're convinced will make your life better it'll make you better at life anyway this is justin warner justin's been on our staff for almost 10 years almost but he has a brand new responsibility i'm excited to tell you about bill you're already clapping two students i'm so excited oh god thank you bill justin is our new inside out director so we're excited about that and uh for those of you don't know inside out is our ministry to high school students and justin wants to tell you something exciting so first i'm very excited to step in this role thank you in advance for all you parents who trust us with your high school students i'm excited to jump back in high school's the best five years of my life okay a little more awake than i am that's great but yeah in true high school fashion i thought it'd be appropriate to ask you parents for something you know and so here's what i'm asking you to do i'm asking you to prioritize one week in july july 19th through the 23rd is when we have our summer camp we're calling inside out daytona here's why i'm asking you to prioritize it okay in in high school you know time flies by and we're busy we've got all kinds of stuff summer camp is really the one time we can get our students away from their normal routines and be able to be tactical in how we approach their faith now you just finished a series about the five catalysts that grow your faith and in that one of them was providential relationships we really prioritize and structure our ministry around small groups and so all of your high school students will have incredible small group leaders of which they get about 30 minutes a week on a sunday afternoon with their small group leader camp is like an entire year's worth of small group time packed into one week so it is super crucial in solidifying those relationships so i'm going to ask you to go to insideoutstudents.org daytona do that today register your student for this week and tomorrow i got to tell you is a price increase so you're going to want to do that today insideoutstudents.org daytona we are excited to partner with all you parents yep and again we didn't we weren't able to do camp last year because of covet so this is a super exciting and we got all of our churches together for one week so it's gonna be massive also if you're a parent something you need to know about today we launch our digital parent summit what is a digital parent summit you ask a digital parent summit instead of did you did you sense the energy in the room when i said that the digital parent summit really you have that so what we do instead of inviting you to come to the building to talk about parenting we put it all online and so it opens today registrations today and basically here's what we do it's about seven or eight seven to 15 minute little short videos we bring in experts and in this summit we're talking about your students or your children's social emotional and spiritual milestones at different ages stages of life they're just a social development emotional development spiritual development it's absolutely free you just go to i think we have the website yeah northpoint.org parent summit um and again you tell your friends about this if you're in other parts of the country um obviously you're welcome to participate as well you just register and then you view these videos at your own pace and talk about them with your small group or with friends or you can do it by yourself but that opens up today so then last but not least yes we partner with north fulton charities here is our local cherry organization that we love to partner with they're doing great things in our community and you'll see in your seat this card right here which represents our food drive which will take place next week now here's the thing if you're like me you go to the grocery store and if your wife didn't give you a list you come home with the essentials the cookies the desserts the sodas and things like that but they have provided a list for us to know what their needs are as kids are home for the summertime a lot of them are lacking healthy meals to eat so north fulton charities are great at making sure parents and families have what they need and we saw the generosity with the bike drive and said hey this is a group that will stock the pantry as they do every year a lot of my friends in ministry andy are like how do you get your people to be so generous i don't know they're just a special bunch and so thank you for your incredible generosity through the years if you're not going to be here next week to bring your food donations you can go to northpoint.org food drive and you can donate there yep it's uh and again wherever you are in the country and a lot of you we've become your home church and we love it when you participate we had some people from all over the country send us bicycles for the bicycle drive which is so cool all right so um any questions about any of that did you see everyone writing down all those websites that was amazing they were just punching in anyway all that stuff's available on our website uh we're gonna sing a little bit uh before that jamie dickens is launching a three-part series today jamie is the lead pastor at east cop church our newest church and um justin and i sat on the front row for the nine o'clock service and you are in for a one heck of a good sermon i even turned to justin i said i'm so glad i'm not preaching next week it's it's it's it's phenomenal um and jamie jamie's gonna preach but john mccullough who's been with us several weeks john come on up here john is actually the music director service programming director at east cobb church he's going to lead us in this first song one i love so if you would stand say hey to somebody do an elbow bump whatever you want to do and we will sing together here we go [Music] darkness tries [Music] oh [Music] she no longer i am not captive to the lies i'm not afraid to leave [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] doesn't stand a chance [Music] is is [Music] [Music] [Music] my feet [Music] [Applause] [Music] when i'm standing [Music] i won't be overwhelmed give me vision to see things like you do god i look to you you're where my help comes from give me wisdom you know just what to do [Applause] [Music] jesus yes i will love you [Music] hallelujah [Music] [Applause] [Music] hallelujah [Applause] is [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] uh [Music] i am [Music] in [Music] you surrendered [Music] is [Music] i am [Applause] [Music] i am [Music] yours let's pray together father thank you so much for what you did for us through jesus for giving us life [Music] and today as i as we're saying and we could just see hands raising all of the room it's kind of this moment of surrender saying you know what i choose to lay my life down and surrender to you god but it's not my will but yours be done and like we sang just a second ago god our prayer is that you would give us vision and wisdom to see things like you do and how different our lives would look if we would do that so father speak to us today give us vision give us wisdom we pray this in jesus name amen thanks for singing with us you can have a seat [Music] well no matter who you are you have one of these you have a one another in your life you have a friend a roommate or a neighbor you have a co-worker a boss or an employee and perhaps you even have a spouse or a boyfriend or a girlfriend or maybe some children or some adoptive children some step children some foster children or some grandchildren you got your parents or your step parents your adoptive parents or your grandparents you got all your extended family and all the different shapes and sizes that they come in and then you got all the rest of the people in the world you got the person in the drive-through line or the attendant on your flight and all the other people that are on the other side of your social media you have one and others regardless of your situation it's just true whether you like it or not or whether you even want it or not we all have the task every single day of one anothering interacting with the people that are in our lives and evidently it doesn't always go so perfectly evidently we all need a little bit of help because the amount of money that we collectively spend on marriage books and parenting resources and dating apps and leadership and management books and workplace culture secrets and conflict resolution and all things like that it is staggering and this last season of pandemic and everything that we went through surely didn't help right chances are during this last year you were isolated from many of your one another's while simultaneously being brought into constant close quarters with some other one another's when the presidential election came along chances are you found yourself in disagreement with or perhaps open conflict with someone in others and now that things are opening back up and life's kind of returning to normal perhaps you have found that in your isolation you kind of forgot how to one another like uh what was i supposed to do with my hands i forgot you know hello friend um and regardless of who you are we all have one another's and we're all trying to figure out how to do it well and it may surprise you to know that one anothering is actually a specialty of the church something the church is supposed to be known for like even a market leader and if you will and not because i say so but because its founder jesus famously said so he said these words right here we talk about this verse all the time around our church a new command i give you love one another as i have loved you he was about to die on a cross for the sins of the world and we believe rise from the dead to offer us eternal life as i have loved you so you must love one another by this by this all people will know that you are my disciples by how you love one another couldn't have made it more clear jesus says the church is supposed to be known for how we love one another it's what we're supposed to be famous for it's how you're supposed to be able to tell that there's a local church in the area that there's this group of people or if it's big enough there's this organization who's distinguishing mark whose main export whose reputation in the community is that they one another really really well in fact this is one of the things that initially drew so many people to christianity they just treated you so well like no matter who you were no matter your race or your gender or your socio-economic class or what category you were in they just treated you like like you were in the family like they just treated you so well and not only that if you spend enough time with them and you started trying some of these tactics of these christians it made your relationships better it made you better at one another like it made family and worker relationships better it made the community better it made public discourse and conflict better it was kind of the church's secret sauce to which if you're not a christian i know some of you might be going wait a minute do my christian family members know about this what does my christian boss know this verse are those christian people that i interact with on twitter like are they aware of this and i i understand i get it i get it if there's anything that centuries of doing church has taught us it's that this command of jesus this distinctive of loving one another is something that's easy to lose i mean sometimes it's just easier for christians to make church about our our services and our theology rather than our one another sometimes it's easy it's just easier to make this one of those verses we smile and nod at like oh that's nice and rather than actually apply because one anothering is hard and like every one of you sometimes i just want to be mean sometimes i just want to be petty or impatient or selfish or whatever and so yeah sometimes the secret sauce does get lost in the mix and this last season didn't help at all did it this last season was known for anything but good one another we as a culture have spent the last year practicing a whole lot of different ways to not love one another well and i think that our one another muscles have taken a beating in this past season or at best they've gotten a little bit atrophied from all of the isolation and if you're anything like me you might need a little bit of a refresher course and that's what this series is this series is a call back to the basics it's a call back to one anothering the way jesus commanded us to one another and it's not just for jesus followers we're gonna talk about three practices that were we to start resume or accelerate doing them they would immediately make our lives better our relationships healthier our workplaces more productive our reputations more positive our influence as leaders and parents and coaches deeper our dialogue more constructive and i believe our community is an even nicer place to live so this is for everyone but for those of us in the in who are jesus followers here's why this is doubly important for us this is what we are supposed to be famous for in our city this is what we are supposed to be known for in our city what you're supposed to be known for wherever it is that you are watching this right now and if we are not careful if we don't tune in in this season i believe that we are going to risk losing our distinctive as christians and we are going to risk missing out on an amazing opportunity to make jesus famous for what he wants to be famous for i think we got to get back to the basics like never before and so we're gonna spend a couple of weeks directly addressing where we found ourselves on the other side of what has probably been the toughest year in most of our lives and we're gonna see how jesus's command to love one another as he has loved us on an impact and i believe completely change our words to one another our conflicts with one another and the narratives we tell about one another and today we're going to talk about our words now most of you in the room can probably remember a time when our exchange of words looked very very very different than it does today many of you if not most of you in the room you can remember a time when there was no internet hello a time when uh snail mail like mailbox mail was your only option for correspondence you remember a time when telephones were boxes on the wall with a long cord that you had to like you know wrap around and get out of the way of maybe even a rotary dial and if you wanted to have a face-to-face conversation what'd you have to do go to their house yeah some of you most of you probably remember a time when your main source of news was when someone physically threw a paper i mean newspaper in your driveway you remember those times if you're sitting next to somebody from gen z just put your hand on their shoulder they're probably having a panic attack but uh no no obviously those days are long gone and everything has completely changed everything has completely changed in fact two things are true of our culture today number one we are using and consuming more words than ever before than ever before buy a lot check out some of these statistics it's estimated that in 2020 on average people across the world glug the globe sent on average 306 billion emails 4.5 trillion text messages 500 million tweets and watched 520 million hours of youtube per day yeah per day in 2020 around the globe in fact it's estimated that in 2020 humans created almost 2.5 quintillion bytes of data that's 2.5 times 10 to the 18 per day the same article that i found this statistic and they said they estimate that it's been growing exponentially every single year for many years that in fact you could take any year since the birth of social media and in that year humans communicated more words than all the previous years of human history combined we're using more words than ever before and number two we're thinking less about them than ever before you already know that's true we're thinking less about them than ever before when words were harder to communicate and the process took longer and the interaction was more personal we spent a little more time formulating them like we spent more time thinking about them i mean just think about the difference between writing a letter and sending a text message or the difference between a face-to-face conversation and the facebook comment section right uh and it's nobody's fault it's inevitable it's just natural when our society and our culture is this way we can send words out into the world with very little effort and almost no direct accountability and feedback and it's happening all the time every single day and so we don't feel the weight of our words like we used to which is why by the way you and i both have said things in an email that we would not have said face to face it's why we uh you have seen people talk to each other on social media particularly in the comments section or on news networks in ways you couldn't imagine them doing if they were actually sitting in a living room together we're using more words than ever before and we're thinking less about them than ever before to which you might be responding or thinking sitting there okay jamie i mean that's interesting but so what you know like what i don't see them what's the problem with that that's fascinating but not necessarily concerning uh why are you spending a whole sunday talking about our words well here's why because this is true right here the tongue has the power of life and death those who love it will eat its fruit that's king solomon king solomon of israel was considered to be the wisest man to have ever lived because god according to the scriptures had granted him extraordinary wisdom and he recorded his insights about the world in proverbs that he wrote for his children and i believe this observation is so poignant he's saying the tongue metaphorically talking about our words the tongue has the power of life and death in other words children hey don't forget words don't just have content words have power they don't just have content words have power your words have power for isn't it true that you can speak and in a moment fill someone's heart or crush it isn't it true that you can speak and in just a few sentence bolster someone with confidence or crippled them with insecurity isn't it true that you can speak and with mere words you can give someone an incredible sense of worth and value or plant planting them shame and worthlessness isn't it true that with your words with just words you can draw someone close or push them away you can bestow dignity or bestow degradation you can surround somebody in support or you can isolate them with opposition yeah that's true why because your words have the power of life and death and that's not random by the way just a theological side note because i'm a bible nerd uh our words have power because god's words have power in fact you remember the creation account in genesis chapter one you remember what happens when god speaks yeah creation light land creatures or hey do you remember in john chapter 1 when the apostle john says that the word of god became flesh and walked among us and do you remember what happened when jesus walked among us yeah miracles healings revelations supernatural salvation though god's word god's word has power like when god speaks existence bends around him and you are made in his image so when you speak it has power which is why which is why many of our best moments and most cherished memories are words like when you or somebody else spoke words of love or commitment or affirmation or belief and it's why many of our biggest regrets and our deepest wounds are words like when you or somebody else spoke in anger or spoken harshness or spoken carelessness because though our words may not have power to create galaxies our words do have power to create all kinds of wonderful and terrible things in those to whom we speak and that's why for most of us in the room you may not be able to remember what somebody said to you five minutes what you said to somebody five minutes ago but you can remember what someone said to you five years ago and that right cause what they said had such life-giving or life-taking power that it is still with you to this day and solomon is saying your words have the power of life and death and then he gives us this warning those who love it will eat its fruit those who love it will eat its fruit and my friends we love the tongue more than any culture of any generation that has ever walked the face of the earth we are using more words than ever before and we are thinking less about them than ever before and i humbly believe that we urgently need to tune in because we have allowed ourselves to develop a dangerous habit a habit that has the potential to undermine our ability to one another well the way we want to one another and consequently has the potential to undermine our ability as a church to be known for what we're supposed to be known for and it's this habit right here several years ago the harvard business review published an article that reported on several different studies that people had done about our words uh several different groups they had studied the ratio of our positive words to our negative words or to quote solomon the ratio of our life-giving words to our life taking words and they were looking for a correlation between that ratio and the health and the productivity of our work and our personal relationships and this subject matter became a fad for a minute and it spawned a whole bunch of studies and articles and you can find those on google but the results are fascinating one psychologist john gottman he famously studied a sample of marriages and he tracked their ratio of positive words to negative words and he determined that there was a strong correlation between the ratio of a couple and the success of their marriage and he determined that the ideal ratio he published this huge book and read it's hard to get through but it's really good stuff um he determined that the ideal ratio for a successful marriage was five positive words for every one negative word five life giving words to every one life-taking word and this is crazy he predicted with 94 accuracy whether a marriage would stay together or not solely based on this ratio then another group came along and they studied workplace teams tracked their ratios as well and they also concluded that there was a strong correlation between the ratio on a team and the success of the team and they published that the most successful work teams had in common on average a ratio of about five positive words to one negative word i believe technically the average was 5.67 then child specialists jumped into the mix and started looking at it from a parenting perspective and they you know wrote articles and stuff that you can find and they said you know what gottman nailed it if you wanted to pick a ratio that was gonna maximize a child's motivation and self-esteem and their growth it's not just three to one it's not just four to one no it is five to one you gotta have the one like the one is massively important you gotta have correction and discipline and coaching and boundaries and all that absolutely but a child needs to grow up in a climate of life-giving words and and by the way they weren't making a moral point none of them were like you ought to do this there was no faith element or religious element in it whatsoever they were just simply observing that we function best in this environment that if if you were to pick a ratio fine-tuned for human growth and productivity evidently it's this right here five life-giving words for every one life-taking word and that's fascinating or at least i found it fascinating i mean it's helpful to know but you don't want to know what the gut punch for me was five to one this is the ideal these are the highest performing teams these are the best marriages you want to know what most of us actually do how most of us actually speak well according to the data and i had to look into this and do a little math myself because it wasn't the point of the article but from what i can tell most of us end up living in this zone right here one positive word for every three negative words this is average this is the majority most of us end up in the zone of a one to three negative ratio five to one is ideal we get the best out of people and the best for them here but the data indicates that most of us have developed a habit of something quite different and i know this sounds kind of bad but when i saw that i was kind of relieved made me feel a little better uh because five to one i mean that's neat and congratulations to those marriages and those work teams but that is not what my last year has looked like just being honest with you like it's not what my home has sounded like that's not how i parented through the pandemic you know just it just isn't in fact a lot of days maybe even most days it felt just like this right here some days you know it felt more like that like this isn't what it felt like when i picked up my phone you know and opened social media or turned on the news you know you open twitter and it's like somebody backs a dump truck up to it you open the next door and they're like howdy neighbor let's talk about your dog we're gonna get to your trash cans that's a different post you're gonna love the comments uh some of y'all know what i'm talking about um but evidently evidently most of us live with a habit of and then a climate of a one to three negative ratio and this data came out well before way before the pandemic well before we all stayed home and stacked family and work on top of each other and then added a health crisis and a racial crisis and a election and financial uncertainty on top just to name a few and by all indications the ratio got even worse in fact just show a hands we can participate here uh who in the room has noticed an uptick or even a surge in life-taking words in the past year of of your life looking out at our culture anybody notice that yeah a ton of hands in the room we spent the last year kind of getting a crash course and talking to one another with life-taking words this kind of ratio one to three or perhaps even worse has in some respects been normalized and my friends that is a problem that's a problem we have normalized a way of talking to each other that is going to keep us all from thriving we've normalized a way of speaking to one another that is going to keep us mediocre in our marriages going to keep us mediocre in our work teams going to keep us mediocre in our friendships a ratio that's going to ensure that we have more insecurity than confidence more hurt than healing more regret than fond memories and a more divided than unified community and that's that's a problem and church it's a double big problem for us an extra big problem for us and here's why because it is impossible not not just difficult it is impossible to love one another as jesus has loved us while talking like this and we are never going to be known for what we're supposed to be known for as long as we just blend in and go with the flow maybe we need to wake up and shake off the slumber of isolation warm up some muscles maybe we haven't used in a minute and forge a different path and in light of that i would like to encourage us all me included i would like to encourage us to consider and put into practice starting today and approach to our words given to us by the apostle paul whether you are religious or not if you will start doing what i'm about to read to you it will instantly make your life and your relationships and our community better if you are a christian chances are you have heard these words before but if you're anything like me perhaps you dismiss them as ideal as pie in the sky yeah yeah yeah that sounds nice and sounds real jesusy but that's just not practical and if that's the case i'd love to invite you today to make it practical i'd love to invite you today to feel called to this verse like never before to start putting it into practice as if life and death actually are at stake because they in fact are and it's found in paul's letter to the ephesians when he says and he writes these words he says do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs that it may benefit those who listen this is part one of three of how i'd like to encourage us to be famous for loving one another to be known as those jesus people who take his command seriously i would love for us to become known by this verse to be different from culture because we ruthlessly practice this verse to be delightfully distinct from the trends because we normalize this verse wherever we happen to be do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs that it may benefit those who listen let's unpack that verse a little bit more uh and and kind of examine some of the parts first for starters in general paul is addressing the quality of the talk that comes out of your mouth in my mouth and there's two kinds of talk that he identifies the first is this unwholesome talk that word on wholesome isn't just like you know a bad word here or there or whatever what that word literally in the greek it means decaying or putrified these are dead words dead talk don't let dead talk come out of your mouth and he contrasts dead talk with words that fall into this category building others up that's a construction word it's like you're building up you're building up somebody's life hopes dreams future self-esteem confidence whatever and oddly enough what you see in this verse is that paul is talking about your personal ratio he's talking about your personal ratio of life giving words that build up and life taking words they're dead words and he says don't let the unwholesome talk come out and i love how real that is like this isn't just church talk like just just love everyone and and just never let a negative word even come into your mind like no paul is saying unholstered words are absolutely going to come you're going to think them you're going to feel them you're going to compose them and you're going to want to see them and they're going to be lined up like right here ready to rock and roll they're going to be in your throat going sammy save me save me save me save me type me type me type me post it post it you know and you gotta decide no i'm not gonna let him out i'm not gonna let him out not today not here not to him not to her not to then them i'm not gonna let dead words i'm not gonna let life-taking words come out of my mouth i'm gonna hold them in so that's one half of this and but there's the other half and the other half is that instead what is gonna make it out what is going to get pushed out what's going to make it past the security checkpoint if you will are only words that fall into this category the building others up well those words you're actively going to push out because isn't it true that just as there are times where we need to hold words in you know there are equally times when we need to actively push them out we need to like intentionally say life-giving words rather than staying silent that's the idea here that you're gonna hold in life-taking words and you're gonna push out life-giving words and if you start doing that at first there are some times where it's gonna feel unnatural and here's why i mean he says it because it's gonna it means that we're gonna have to change completely the way that we think about our words it means that you and i are gonna have to start speaking according to their needs that's not what i naturally do all the time most of the time when we speak we're thinking about whose needs yeah my needs think about what i want to say what my opinion is and did they laugh at me and was it was that i heard and uh what i believe and what point i want to make and how offended i am you know we're always thinking about our needs but this verse requires you and i to embrace the truth that our gift of speaking our power of speaking that we have from god has not been given to us for our needs it's been given to us for their needs and as long as you and i if you and i are only thinking about our needs when we're talking to when i'm talking to my kids or i'm talking to my wife or i'm talking to my coworkers or my neighbors or my friends or social media god through paul is saying you are not ready or qualified to speak in this moment you need to do less talking and more thinking because this command requires you to think more about your audience than about yourself that it may benefit those who listen here's another way that this is going to feel unnatural at first or at least at least for me because y'all i don't always want to benefit those who are listening sometimes the whole point of my words is to not benefit those who are listening and god through paul is saying if that's the case then you are not ready or qualified to speak in this moment you need to do less talking and you need to do more praying because if you're going to speak like your heavenly father speaks you got to be in the business of benefiting those who listen and that good and that's paul's point this point is that you have a ratio right now your family your friends the people on your social media could probably give you an accurate estimate of what your ratio is but you have a ratio and this one to three is what's gonna happen naturally without intervention without trying or without interviewing you and i um yeah personality dependent sure situationally dependent sure maturity and age all impacts this but in general without intervention you and i are going to live somewhere in the zone of one life-taking word to me life-giving word to three life-taking words and the apostle paul is simply saying you gotta intervene you gotta intervene you got to have a self-imposed filter on the words that come out of your mouth you got to start holding in the life-taking words and you got to start pushing out the light you got to yeah and start pushing out the life-giving words so that you can begin to change your ratio you got to start changing your ratio because work doesn't have to look like this home doesn't have to look like this your friend group doesn't have to look like this your marriage doesn't have to look like this your neighborhood doesn't have to look like this your social media account doesn't have to look like this our culture doesn't have to look like this it shouldn't look like this none of us want it to look like this this isn't the best for anybody and it doesn't bring the best out of anybody and if you're a jesus follower it can't look like this oh no there's just too much at stake this is not who we are why because it's not who he is you know this this isn't how the savior who loves you has talked to you jesus has spoken grace into your life jesus has spoken encouragement into your life he's spoken freedom into your life he's spoken hope into your life he's spoken restoration into your life he's spoken a future into your life jesus has spoken resurrection life into your life and that's exactly what he wants to speak into the lives of every single person you know and the apostle paul is urging us you got to change your ratio church you got to change your ratio you got to have a counter cultural filter over your mouth so that you can create a counter cultural result in your life and in the lives of others and get busy being famous for loving one another as jesus has loved you your words my words your words have the power of life and death so what do you say what do you say we tune in this morning and start changing our ratio for our families for our friends for our co-workers and for a community that really really really really needs it what do you say we change our ratio and love one another as jesus has loved us and real quick before we move on from that thought some of you might be sitting there thinking like okay hold on like i'm in i mean you got me with the idea but if we were to do this does this mean that i'm not going to tell the truth are you telling me not to be honest not to say it like it is and no i'm not saying that you should always speak the truth but just remember that jesus was full of both grace and truth endeavor to be the same it'll help you get past just making a point to actually making a difference in the lives of those around you after all has anybody actually changed your mind or your beliefs with life taking words i doubt it or hey does this mean that we're not going to evaluate like we're not going to discipline our kids or students or player you know coaches aren't going to discipline players no no no the scriptures say that god disciplines those he loves but he does it like a father always with an eye to building up through discipline right so this isn't a call to coddle your employees or hand out participation trophies no correction evaluation discipline feedback are an essential part of parenting leading coaching in whatever capacity that you're doing however if you translate that to a steady diet of life-taking words you're not giving anybody strength you're giving them weakness you're not bestowing toughness you're just bestowing insecurity or finally does this mean that we don't ever take a stand no you always stand up for yourself you should always stand for what is right and you should always stand against what is evil always use your words to do that but just master the art of standing with people too master that art of fighting for people not just with them you know what i mean like on social media don't just oppose people like fight for them believe in them or at a minimum at a minimum speak to them with the dignity that you would somebody made in the image of god and died for by the savior of the world like at a minimum do that so no there is totally room in this idea for speaking the truth giving evaluation and and taking a stand in fact the data indicates that if you will change your ratio you will become more effective at all three of those if effectiveness is what you're after so that's what i would love to invite us to do today i would love to invite you to join me this summer and lord knows i need to do this as much as anybody in the room i would love to invite you to join me this summer in picking one arena of your life and in that arena picking one relationship that needs it the most and start applying this verse in fact if you would i'd love for you to do it right where you're sitting right now in your mind would you be willing to do that right here right now i'd love to invite you just pick an arena of your life that you think you needed to hear this this morning for word friends pick an arena now in that arena pick one relationship that you think probably needs it the most you got it i'd love to challenge you to start right there i'd love to challenge you to start changing your ratio right there start holding in life taking words pushing out life-giving words does your ratio have to be five to one maybe maybe not i don't know but the scripture and the data both indicate that it should at least tip in the positive direction right and there are so many ways to do that so many tricks so many habits and we're going to be posting a lot of those online this week to help you figure out we're not going to go through all of them right here today you probably already have a lot of tools for doing that you probably already know what you need to start doing but we are going to give you one one tool one step to take and that is this every one of you is going to get a card on the way out and we've even stamped it for you look at that and i'd love for you to take like five minutes and write a note of life-giving words to somebody who really needs it and stick it in the mail one arena one relationship and start changing your ratio and here's why i want us to do this so bad here's why i think god wants us to tune into this so bad me included lord knows i need this more than anybody because remember this isn't just about you being a nice person that's not what today is about this is not oh let's just be nicer just be more christian-y no there's a whole lot more at stake than that remember what's at stake is that you that you and i would be great at doing this building others up your words have the power of life and death and you want to bless your kids with life you want to bless your spouse or your boyfriend or girlfriend with life you want to bless your friends with life your family members with life your coworkers with life your neighbors with life our community with life and i'm telling you if you will start changing your ratio you will instantly begin to see relational and professional dividends because this is not just what nice people look like this is not just what you know christian people look like this is evidently what great leaders look like what high-performing teams look like what great marriages look like what great parents whose kids like still go to them for advice when they're grown look like this is what lifelong friends look like this is what a healthy community looks like now that we don't disagree or have conflicts or evaluate or give feedback of course we do but we just tune into the power of our words and we choose to be life givers rather than life takers we choose to create an atmosphere that even the harvard business review says it's essential for our marriages our workplace teams and our ordinary everyday relationships to thrive and of course god wants that for you you want that for you but for those of us in the room who are jesus followers i'd like to just take it one step further because this isn't just about us being great at building others up this is also very importantly about us being great at pointing others up pointing others up because this isn't just what successful people look like this is what god looks like remember when god speaks things come alive when god spoke into your life you came alive and we're called to be like him and i hope we never forget that when it comes to your brothers and sisters in christ your words are meant to be an extension of god's to them like you know one of those little wi-fi extenders in your house when we speak to our children and our spouse and our brothers and sisters in christ and our church family our words are meant to be an extension of god's to them not that we don't shoot the breeze or talk about nothing most of the time but that like simultaneously we're called to speak truth and wisdom and grace and the gospel into one another god has spoken and we have an amazing opportunity to pass that on to one another church family i wonder what are we passing on to one another and do we need to change our ratio but it's not just that our words are an extension for those that don't know jesus and this is so important for those that don't know jesus i hope we never forget that our words are meant to be a preview of god's to them that those who don't know god that well and aren't really like tuned in to whatever he has to say they ought to be able to listen to you and i talk and get a preview of what god has to say to them to get a preview of his grace a preview of his wisdom a preview of his plan a preview of his his patience what preview are we giving the world of what god has to say to them and i wonder if we need to change our ratio and by the way if you're not a christian and just now you're like what are you talking about preview god's words this is what i'm talking about i believe that god wants to speak the good news of the death and resurrection of jesus christ the savior of the world into your life and i believe that when he does you're never going to be the same and i hope that any time you are around us we speak to you in a way that makes you want to know more not less that's what i'm talking about so for all of us your words have the power of life and death and here's the deal you have no idea what a word from you could do you have no idea what a word from you can do and you got examples of this and i got examples of this but i just like to close with one that came on my radar screen as i was preparing for this message i want to tell you about two conversations that i can't remember what happened in college years ago i was at the university of north carolina and i was going to fellowship with christian athletes for like one of their meetings and one of the times they asked me to give like a devotional that's christian talk for stand up in front of people and share for a minute and i did like five minutes and it was mediocre i didn't want to do it i'd never done it before it wasn't my thing and i was like fine well as we were leaving this girl whose name i can't remember i don't know if i even ever knew her name i think she was a senior i was a freshman she came up to me and she said hey i almost left without saying this but i just felt the holy spirit prompting me to tell you you need to do more of that you need to speak and tell people about jesus i just feel like god this is what god's created you to do i was like that's pretty forward i have neither a passion nor a talent for this it's not even on my radar screen but she said be that as it may i just i just feel like i'm supposed to tell you god created you to do that and i don't even know her name but i remember that conversation like it happened yesterday and god used that one conversation with a girl i can't even tell you her name that's part of a bigger process to completely change the trajectory trajectory of my life and lead me to this moment right here fast forward a whole bunch of years to another conversation a young man in one of our student ministries at one of our campuses where i was the student pastor regularly speaking telling people about jesus like she said all those years ago and uh this kid had a really dysfunctional home life and really struggled with self-confidence and hope and excitement for his future and it's really negative vibes and um evidently one time after i got done speaking like we knew each other he came up and he shared this with me and we had a conversation and evidently i said hey i'm really sorry to hear that but i just want you to know i believe in you and i'm excited about your life i'm excited about what god is going to do with you well this kid calls me a couple weeks ago now in his 20s and he called me caught up for a bit but he said hey you know i really called because i wanted to thank you you probably don't remember but we had this conversation back in high school and i didn't remember but he recounted that conversation to me and he said hey i wanted to thank you because in college i went through a long stretch where i really struggle with depression and i really struggle with wanting to commit suicide and and one of the things one of a handful of things that kept me going was the knowledge that someone in the world was excited about my life and i didn't want to let you down so thanks for saying that i don't even remember it so what is a conversation with a girl whose name i can't remember have to do with a conversation with a young man whose content i can't even remember your words have the power of life and death and you have no idea what a word from you could do you have no idea what a word from you could do so what do you say we start changing our ratio what do you say we start loving one another enough to change our ratio and see what happens see what god does let me pray for us as we close father i pray that you will draw our attention to our words perhaps like never before i pray that you will both excite and break our hearts for what could happen if we began to change our ratio and i pray that you would give us the wisdom to know how to apply this what arena and what relationship and you give us courage to do it and we do pray that you would begin to speak life in jesus name to our families our friends our co-workers and to this community that we love and that you love so so much help us do that in jesus name we pray amen [Music] the storm surrounding me let it break [Music] at your name jesus jesus you make the darkness true jesus jesus jesus you make the darkness trample jesus jesus [Music] breathe call these bones to live and call these lungs to sing once again you make the darkness tremble jesus jesus jesus you make the darkness [Music] is [Music] jesus you make the darkness [Music] jesus [Music] amen well thank you guys so much for being here with us this week we'll see you next week [Music] you

Channel: North Point Community Church

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Keywords: North Point Community Church, North Point, NorthPoint, North Point Atlanta, Andy Stanley, AndyStanley, Andy Stanley church, Andy Stanley message, Andy Stanley sermons, North Point church, NPCC, North Point youtube, Andy Stanley YouTube

Id: j6R1UjQRQec

Length: 67min 7sec (4027 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 07 2021