Relationship Baggage Unpacked — Rich and DawnCheré Wilkerson

well today is valentine's day and so we thought we would take a little bit of a break from our study of the gospel of mark which we are committed to studying really the first half of this year but it's not every sunday that valentine's day lands on sunday so we wanted to stop today and we wanted to pause from our study of mark and we wanted to preach to you about relationships in fact we've titled today's message relationship baggage unpacked i want to go on a little bit of a journey with you if you will a relationship journey what goes in to a relationship well the answer is pretty simple whatever you bring the question today is is what have you packed into your bags you know i've got a bunch of bags sitting here with me today and just thinking about this concept of baggage everybody has baggage all relationships have some form of baggage and when i think about the illustration baggage in so many ways it represents events or or moments in our life that have shaped us hurts pains traumas it represents weaknesses it represents tendencies proclivities things that were we're drawn to it represents thought processes or paradigms we all have some sort of baggage and the truth of the matter is is that when it comes to this idea of these bags that we were carrying when you get into a relationship we've all packed these bags with with something and i just wondered if we can just kick off as we're starting this talk have you taken time to evaluate the bags in your life have you begun to evaluate that which you're carrying i noticed so often that so many people are carrying things that god never intended for them to carry some of us right now we are way down in life our destiny is being delayed because we have such excess baggage things that are holding us back from moving forward i wonder what's in your bag today in fact as we start to address what's in our bag how many know this is one of the reasons why jesus came i'm reminded of jesus's words matthew chapter 11 verse 28 one of my favorite passages of scripture if you've got a bible go there right now underline this what does jesus say he says come to me all you who are weary and heavy burdened and i will give you rest jesus is saying you don't need a vacation you need me you don't need a margarita and a beach you need me it says take my yoke upon you and learn from me for i am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls jesus is saying the rest that i have for you it doesn't just come from taking a longer nap the rest i have for you is on the soul level it's the real you the inside you why he says for my yoke is easy and my burden well my burden is light here's what i know i know that many people believe in jesus but just because they believe in jesus it doesn't mean that they've surrendered to jesus lord you can have my heart but i'm going to keep my bags just because you have faith it doesn't mean that you're actually living so we let jesus into our hearts but we keep packing our bags i don't know what's in your bags today i mean you start going through i got some of my stuff here you know like maybe there's pain in your bag right we put that in something happened to us and that pain it just instead of it teaching us it just it just stays on us um oh how about this this is i like this insensitivity right like i'm gonna bring that into a relationship like i just my instance insensitivity comes along with me what about oh this is i've never dealt with this the trousers of of passive aggression right like if we don't deal with that stuff that's gonna show up in our relationships oh this one's good come on look at this the pants of laziness i like that what if you walked around in your pants just said laziness on it i don't know are you carrying laziness today we can go through all sorts of things perfectionism how many of us today were carrying the weight of this trying to be perfect friends you can't be perfect life is not about perfection life is about progression it's about growing it's about getting better serious things like like trauma so many of us we went through through trauma and we just we never deal with it so what we do is we just put it into our our relationship bag and we think it's not going to show up but it's going to show up what about this this is serious self medicating so many of us the bags of life get so heavy that we uh we try to come up with other ways aside from jesus to to solve our problems to solve our baggage and so we we self-medicate and we find ourselves prone to addictions we drink more we take pills we we we experience with drugs we we find it in the arms of somebody who's not our spouse we think sex will will fix it but in all reality the bags just keep getting heavier and what i've learned is i've learned that people they're like yo i believe in god i believe in jesus i go to church just because you go to church doesn't mean that you've dealt with your your baggage and just because you're headed towards heaven doesn't mean that you're not living way down here on earth and so i watch so many christians they meet jesus they pray the prayer of forgiveness and then they start out on their on their journey on their relationship journey but they don't realize that they've got all this this baggage they're they're carrying all this stuff and they kind of just go all right let me just start my journey i've i've got my gear i've got my stuff here and let me just uh begin the journey and all right yep i can manage all this i can carry this this is enough for my hands and you know it's not that bad i've kind of gotten used to it isn't it amazing how we can get used to toxicity how we can get use to unnecessary weight and the longer i carry the weight the more comfortable i get with the weight so we head out on the journey and it's like yeah this is great let me just start doing life and one day we're on the journey we got all of our bags and we don't know but we come up with a journey and then wow we run into that special someone who catches our eye well hello how are you i'm good how are you my goodness you know i i was reading the book of numbers and i noticed i don't think i have your number what's your name dc my name is rich and you would make me a lot richer if you would go on a date with me you want to go out sometime sure no i think i like you i like you i think i'm in love with you i love you will you marry me yes oh this is the best day ever for richer or poor in sickness and health i do i do oh my goodness we are now husband and wife i love you this is the best day ever the best day ever you want to buy a house sure well welcome home babe yes yes i'm telling you what i know i know i know i know i kind of splurged it's amazing i know it's two and a half baths i told you the picket fence i'm that guy well what do i what do i do with all my bags ah just throw them under the bed come on let's move in this is great how do you like it i picked all this stuff out i'm telling you what you're amazing love it it's perfect i knew you would love it i knew you would love it honestly the best what can i say i'm rich i'm rich it's not just my name it's i'm rich in spirit rich and faithful i know rich in love you want to have kids sure let's have another one yes too should we go for three yes absolutely four let's pray about it five no oh and they lived happily ever after but do they i mean do do they really live happily ever after just because they fell in love just because it started off so strong with an explosion of emotions does that really equal happily ever after don't expect romance to remove the baggage that only jesus can only jesus can actually remove the baggage that we bring into our lives you know the truth is in any relationship relationships can start and be ignited with feelings but feelings they lie to you i mean one moment you are on cloud nine because he said this but the next moment oh you're questioning whether you should even be together because he did this feelings send you on a roller coaster they have really high highs that can be addicting but man they can bring you to lows that can completely destroy your relationship and so many couples base the path of their relationship on their feelings but feelings are not facts feelings and facts are two completely different things and sometimes we can be so caught up in that feeling of love of oh i wanna experience romance i wanna fall head over heels that we are unwilling to face the truth about our relationship we've got hearts in our eyes but we are blinded to the red flags around us we've got butterflies in our stomach but man we are fully unaware of the bees ready to sing and so what do we do we act like everything is okay and we start to cover up baggage that we should actually be honest about and choose instead of covering to uncover so what do we do well we start to play a child's game my two-year-old pretends but there are a lot of adults today that are pretending in their relationship because they don't want to face the facts and they just want to be led by their feelings and so you pretend that everything is okay in your relationship you pretend that you're happy you pretend that there's not miscommunication in your home you pretend that the silence doesn't mean anything you pretend that you aren't going in two different directions you pretend that you don't notice your hearts straying you pretend that the anger and the bitterness isn't building and you pretend and you pretend and you pretend until what until one day you hit a problem that problem is so big that you're pretending is no match you see real problems they destroy your pretending and just like a soda that's been shaken and the pot flies off and everything goes everywhere it doesn't even have to be a big trigger when you've been hiding baggage in your heart and in your home and in your relationship for so long oh it can be the smallest thing that suddenly happens and it erupts in a tornado of emotion and anger of words that you never meant to say and there's that trigger that you weren't even expecting you never thought it was gonna be that day but man all of that baggage had built up and you never know when it's gonna explode hey rich i thought you were gonna clean up our room hey babe i'm sorry i forgot to clean up the room you always do this okay chill out i don't always always do what you always you don't help you always say you will and then you never follow through hold on never follow through in the things that you commit i don't oh i don't follow through i got you this house what do you mean i don't follow that's just the beginning simpson you haven't done anything else the things that you say you know i'm so sick and tired of it sick and tired babe i'm kind of confused right now i'm sitting here on the bed enjoying myself you're just walking you're enjoying yourself you don't see all the things that i'm doing every day the things that i'm contributing the things that i'm caring why can't you just step in okay number one you need to chill out this is what you are this is this is this is what you do by the way you know that right you flip out you take something really small and you make the biggest thing never care okay time out i always do this and i never that you're full of it bro you say the craziest stuff now you're calling me crazy why are you so dramatic okay hold on dramatic true happy this is this isn't gonna work i'm dramatic yes i want i'm dramatic i'm not dramatic that's you no that's you no no you are dramatic you come in here ever since i'm telling you what ever since we moved into this place you got married you always said things that you didn't follow through so now we're talking about when we were teenagers you have lost your mind no i can see clearer than ever see you know what here's the deal here's the deal you know what enjoy yours i'm i'm out of here i'm done whatever bro whatever i wonder today um if if this on valentine's day might be a better depiction of where you're at in your relationship i mean that little moment right there something so small it unlocks so much big stuff and before you know it this little thing the cap comes off the shaking takes place and before you know it all of the baggage begins to explode as i look at this bed right here this bed for so many people that are watching this is a picture of what your relationship looks like your relationship is a mess and maybe you're tuning in today on valentine's day i know this is a day to to evoke romance and maybe you came to church and you're going bro can you encourage me i didn't mean to have church be a trigger for me i didn't mean for church to unearth the hurt and pain in my life but i'm just wanting to get to your heart today that so many of us were playing pretend and we fall back into all of the feelings and all of the love and we let the emotions drive all of our decisions and all it does is continue to make us hide what's really going on and then it's a little bit of conflict it's a little bit of disagreement it's just a little bit of problem and the explosion takes place we say things we shouldn't say we speak in a way that we should never speak we hurt one another deeply and what's left is a mess a mess of baggage a mess of trauma a mess of the past interrupting the future i believe that god has a great plan for your relationship i believe god has a great plan for your marriage for your spouse but today you must go on the journey of unpacking your relationship baggage or it is always going to weigh you down and it's always gonna take you backwards god wants to move you forward your relationship is meant to sharpen you it's not meant to hurt you today god wants to speak to us here's what i know everyone don cherie and myself we all have relationship baggage i just hope that all of us can find a partner that loves us enough dontre that will go on the journey of helping us unpack it yeah we got a mess here today dc yeah and i i think today we need to kind of look at god's word to figure out how are we going to clean up this mess how do we begin to unpack all of these bags and all of this past and all of these emotions and all of these feelings that we've gathered on our journey that we've brought in to our relationships i believe there is hope but i believe there's some work to do i know there's hope for you for us all of us together through the love of jesus we can unpack our relational bag action the first thing that we have to understand if we're serious about unpacking this baggage is that in order to assess you have to address there are so many things in our relationships that we're unwilling to be honest about you know scriptures say that two will become one in marriage well when two people come into a relationship carrying their own bags well that baggage what happens it's compounded it doesn't suddenly disappear marriage is not a facade no marriage only multiplies your problems you have to be honest with the fact that it's no longer just your issues but it's your spouse's issues also and in order for you to assess it you have to actually come face to face with it you have to address it what is assessment simply means to evaluate to evaluate the nature the ability the quality when was the last time you evaluated the health of your heart when was the last time you took an honest look at the baggage that maybe you've been carrying since you were a child the baggage that you've been carrying and it's affecting every part of your life what is really actually going on with you not on the outside not pretending any longer what's going on with your heart because we don't want to deal with the symptoms any longer we want to deal with the root issue i'll never forget when rick and i we moved into our first home here in miami and we noticed a few years in that the the wooden floor started to look a little funny and then over the next few months all of a sudden the wooden floor actually started to deteriorate you already know what i'm about to say termites termites had invaded our home and had completely destroyed our beautiful wooden floors that we had invested and thankfully i had a skilled friend who came over and helped me pull up some of the wood and you know what he found as he assessed the damage he found that we had a crack in the foundation of our home and that the termites had easily gained access to our home because there was a crack in the foundation now if i hadn't assessed the issue properly i could have replaced the wooden floor i could have gotten the nicest wooden floor i could have gotten the coolest wooden floor i could have bought the strongest wooden floor but no matter how many times i would have replaced the wooden floor those floors would have deteriorated why because the problem wasn't the floor the problem was the foundation and so many times in our lives we're just putting band-aids on things that actually need a surgeon that actually need the hands of the healer to touch what have you been hiding what have you been shoving under the bed of your heart what have you been unwilling to evaluate to assess and to address because the walk of a christ follower is not one of pretending like everything is okay the walk of a christ follower is knowing that you're in the safest hands when you're in your most broken state that there is nothing that you can show to god the father that will make him turn his back on you and run and as you step into a relationship if you want an authentic relationship well you have to be willing to assess so that you can actually address the things that are actually going on you know if we're honest on our relationships sometimes the baggage is safety for us sometimes we find ourselves unwilling to step into the season that god has called us to ahead and so we hold on to that baggage because it's all we've ever known i've only ever known my trauma i've only ever known my bitterness i've only ever known the character flaws that that have stuck to me i don't want to remove them because who am i without them and so we hide in the baggage we see a picture in the old testament of the very first king of israel king saul and as he was chosen to be the king as god was calling him out to a new place of leadership a place that was not of hiding but there was a place of responsibility we see him hide let's read in first samuel 10 chapter 21 it says then he brought forward the tribe of benjamin clan by clan and the matrix clan was chosen finally saul the son of kish was chosen but when they looked for him he was not to be found so they inquired further of the lord has this man come here yet and the lord said yes he has hidden himself among the baggage they ran and brought him out and as he stood among the people he was a head taller than any of the others samuel said to all the people do you see the man the lord has chosen there is no one like him among all the people then the people shouted long live the king you see god himself called saul out of the baggage and today you may be holding on to your past you may be holding on to your pain like a security blanket but i want to speak life over you and i don't want you to just hear my words but i want you to hear the words of a loving father in heaven who calls you by name and he calls you out of hiding just like he did gideon he calls you out of the wilderness just like he did moses and he knows your name and he knows your pain and he doesn't want you to stay in hiding he wants to call you out into a place of wholeness a place of healing a place where you can authentically stand before god and those that love you and know that i don't have to hide any longer i can walk in honesty and through my honesty and my transparency i can find healing we have to be willing to assess the things in our life we have to be willing to come to our partner and open up the bags of our life and be honest about what's going on because honestly all of us deal with the baggage in our life differently i mean we span the spectrum in relationship rich and i couldn't be more different we deal with things differently and you know maybe some people on one side of the spectrum that you are just so good at being self-righteous that you know every single thing that is in your partner's bag rich i see that in you i see that issue you need to change that you need to work on that you've taken too long improving that and you can be so good at knowing what your partner holds in their baggage but so self-righteous about your own so easy on yourself so quick to understand your motivation so quick to give yourself the benefit of the doubt friends first peter chapter 4 verse 8 says love covers a multitude of sins and god is calling you to share the same grace that you receive for yourself with the one that you love but then it spans the opposite side of the spectrum and maybe instead of pointing out every single thing that your partner does being so aware of their baggage maybe you're unwilling to confront what is actually going on in your relationship and so you see the baggage but you're not gonna say anything and you see the red flags and you see the destruction of your relationship but there's an unwillingness maybe it's a fear to confront what is really going on in your relationship but that's not authentic relationship authentic relationship is being able to come to the table and talk about what is really going on being able to assess being able to address i'm reminded of galatians chapter 6 it says brothers even if anyone is caught in a trespass you don't know how to let go of that baggage that baggage is ruling your life it says you who are spiritual restore such a one i want to speak to the person who's having trouble you're having trouble with confrontation you're having trouble bringing the real issues of your relationship to the table you are a restorer not an ignorer don't turn a blind eye to what god wants to touch with his healing hands don't act like you don't see it because god wants to illuminate it with his light if you'll be willing to step into it you'll be willing to partner with his healing hands god is able to do anything but we have to be willing to assess and we have to be willing to address i think that's really key for god to do what he wants to do in our relationship i love it because we're talking about unpacking the baggage yeah we just want to keep saying over and over again that we all have we all have the bag just because you started following jesus yeah doesn't mean that you don't need to go on the journey of being sanctified no that's such a lie to think that from the moment you give your life to jesus that everything is gonna be perfect it's a journey home is a journey always and he's telling us come to me all you are we're heavy but i will be the one who will give you the rest but we've got to go on the journey in as couples to to unpack this stuff and listen here's what i know until i address it until i actually get it out in the open yes we'll never assess it we'll never ever evaluate always stay hidden and the thing with evaluation is that evaluation is how you grow i love that idea that if i can't measure it i can't manage it wow and so many of us we're not able to manage our relationships because we're not measuring the growth we're not measuring the progress we're not actually identifying the things that have been hidden they just show up in these outbursts and what i want to say to everybody out there today is that many times the reason why you're always going to an outburst is because you don't have an outlet the truth of the matter is that you want to create a home you want to create a safe place yes i want to create a safe environment for dawn tree for her to address her baggage and she needs to create a safe place for me to address my baggage so that together now we can have the compound effect of a solution to assess it together to evaluate together once we create a safe place and have an outlet the outbursts they they tend to decrease they tend to they tend to go away they don't tend not to happen so much and so point number one to unpacking it is that listen until you address it you'll never be able to assess it but number two don't you i think this is really important that we see this if we're gonna unpack all this relationship baggage we must remember that lack of boundaries create lack of respect man this is something that i don't think is taught nearly enough and we could do an entire collection on this concept around this thought of boundaries we have to set up boundaries you know that little um argument that dawn tree and i just dramatized to you about 10 minutes ago i i want to encourage you we don't fight like that in our house but when i talk to people in our church and when i talk to my friends sometimes that's the type of stuff that i hear that there's these massive outbursts where our voice is raised where there's name calling where there's threats i'll tell you what i'm leaving hey i'll tell you what i want a divorce can i just encourage all the all the married people out there i just want to pass you for a moment listen you do not want to be a self-fulfilling prophecy do not let the words divorce utter out of your mouth because the moment you let them out of your mouth you give the enemy a foothold in your relationship my parents they've been married for over 40 years and they used to always joke hey uh we have never considered divorce murder we've thought about a couple times it just always makes me laugh what they're trying to say is they're trying to say hey we have problems we have baggage we have challenges but we're gonna make sure that we have a boundary we're gonna have a boundary around our tongue we were in small group this past week with some of our friends and i love our vu crew and i won't say any names just to make sure that they continue to have the confidentiality that they have but they were making us laugh because they were telling us stories about first year of marriage and one couple told a story that in their first year of marriage um they got into a fight and uh one of them began to really raise their voice let the volume really you know get louder that's the way that uh many times she thought was appropriate when you had a romantic argument that you would just let your passion out and you would let your voice out she she's a preacher really is what she is and she was shouting and the husband stopped and just looked at her removed the emotion and said hey we're not going to speak that way to each other ever under this roof and he walked away from the conversation to let it deflate and she was sharing the story and she just said honestly it was a pivotal life-changing moment for me because i stood there with all of these emotions but my husband he clarified what the foundation and what the tone what the culture of this home is going to look like that when we disagree this is not how we will behave it was called a boundary moment it was a line in the sand one of the other couples shared a story just made me laugh that in the first year of marriage that the husband brought his wife a book i don't know if this is smart or not and the book was titled humility that that that to me is a savage move i don't know if i can recommend that to anyone to give your spouse a book that says humility that that's really daring i don't know if i can recommend that as a counselor but either which way both of these moments are are boundary moments i think sometimes in our relationships when we hear the boundary word we get really really frustrated we get really upset because we think the boundary is to keep us out meaning when dontre sets up a boundary hey this is what i'll tolerate this is what i won't tolerate sometimes i can feel like maybe she's pushing me away or that she's trying to keep me out it's actually quite the opposite she's not trying to keep me out she's trying to keep me in a boundary is a defense mechanism a boundary is for your protection it's to keep the bad things out and the reason why so many relationships and the reason why so many individuals get attacked and get destroyed and get hurt is because they've never created healthy boundaries you see we forget as we go on the journey of relationships that healthy relationships are made up of healthy individuals and i meet so many individuals who have never set up a boundary in their entire life i just want to help you today that a lack of boundary will create a lack of respect in the home some of you you're watching right now and as i'm preaching on this valentine's day you're just rehearsing in your mind all the things that your spouse keeps on doing here's what i want to encourage you when you start thinking boundaries stop asking why they keep doing it start asking yourself why do you keep allowing it you get what you allow can i speak to all the couples that are dating right now first year in a relationship yo i want to give people room to grow i'm so thankful that dawn tree gave me a lot of room to grow i have grown a whole lot amen don tree hey man i've grown a whole lot well there she goes that's that's a healthy spouse right there now she's saying that she's grown but i'm saying i have had to grow i've had to become i want to make sure that people get room to grow yeah but at the very same time i want everyone to hear what you were saying earlier that when we get married it's not just my baggage it's it's the compound effect marriage doesn't solve your problems it magnifies your problem so some of you that are in dating relationships right now this is the season to set up boundaries this is the season right now as you're dating someone to say yo this is what i'll tolerate this is what i won't tolerate this is a line in the sand can i let me just say it this way no is a complete sentence oh i need to hear you in the chat someone just put that word no in the chat just once again we get so driven by our emotions that we find ourselves lowering our standards all along on the journey and so after dating and lowering our standards by the time we get married we have brand new standards and they are way beneath the ones that we had ever sought out for our life you have to learn the power of no no we're not going to talk this way no we're not going to behave this way no we're not going to put god second no we're not going to live our life simply for a prophet we're going to live our life for a purpose you have to learn the power of no it is a complete sentence and so many of the areas of our of our relationship have grown is by simply saying no maybe you're watching right now but go and if i say no yo my boyfriend is going to get so upset listen if someone gets upset that you set a boundary it's more evidence that you need the boundary if you're dating someone right now especially those of you that are about to get married like setting boundaries is healthy setting boundaries is you valuing yourself and it's saying i'm going to set the culture of my home and we could do an entire collection and i could talk to you very practically about different boundaries we need to set up and that we should set up but one i just want to try to really really hit on right now is simply this this boundary of your tongue you know i love what james says james chapter three verse five james says see how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire watch this and the tongue is a fire your tongue is a fire according to the brother of jesus james the very world of iniquity the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body and sets on fire the course of our life and it is set on fire by hell i mean this is strong language james is saying yo your tongue has the same fire of hell in it so how are you using that fire if i could create one boundary for couples today on this valentine's sunday it's to put a boundary it's to put a muzzle on your tongue don't just say everything that comes to mind don't just speak out every feeling that you have feelings come and go you're not a person of emotion you're a person of devotion you must begin to realize that you're going to feel this way for a moment you're going to feel another way for another moment butterflies they come and they go they fly in and they fly out if you can learn to put a boundary on your tongue you will start to have the right fire in your relationship instead of the wrong fire in your relationship i think it's valentine's day and everyone's like yo i wanna i wanna get that special fire back by the way what are our plans tonight what do you got we go you tell me oh my goodness we got to move some of this luggage first girl hey we want the fire of a relationship we want the romantic fire we do want the feelings we do want the romance right we just want to make sure we don't have the wrong fire right the wrong fire is set with your tongue it's name-calling it's volume it's hurtful things little kids grow up saying sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me how big of a lie is that so many of us the baggage we're carrying is from our childhood and it's from the words that we heard someone name calling someone labeling us listen to me your spouse your partner is to be the opposite your spouse your partner they're supposed to be your encourager they're supposed to believe in you and inspire you and you have to decide how will you use this weapon because the scripture says out of the heart the mouth speaks and the tongue has the power of life and death i don't want to speak death over my relationship i want to speak life and life more abundantly i don't want to set the wrong fire fire from hell i want the right fire romance i want all the feels all the emotions but it begins when i create a boundary on this tongue and as i create a boundary on this tongue respect begins to be set in motion lack of boundaries will always create a lack of respect doncheri and when it comes to all of this baggage as we're unpacking it yeah i got to address it so i can assess it and evaluate it but i'm going to need a healthy outlet maybe it's a therapist by the way just so you know your pastors engage in therapy like i think that's yeah let's remove the stigma from that because it's a healthy outlet to to remove the outburst yes but then don tree it's this idea of boundaries and setting culture and setting no that's not who we are that's not what we're going to tolerate we're not going to be that way any longer and as we set the boundary respect begins to set into motion but that's not the only thing there's there's really one more thing that's very important today right i think boundaries then allow you to make the decisions that you need to make with clarity and the last thing that we wanted to touch on today when it comes to unpacking that relational baggage is that in order for you to actually unpack it and for it to stay gone is that you need to forgive to heal and you need to let go to grow forgive to heal let go to grow this isn't just a one-time decision this is a daily decision this isn't when i wake up in the morning decision this is this week next week 20 years from now i'll still have the decision to forgive in order to experience more healing you may have been on a journey of therapy you may have been on a journey of healing but i want to speak in faith to you that there's even more healing that awaits you more than you could ever imagine as you choose daily to live and surrender saying god i choose to forgive you know there's a scripture that i really think encapsulates what a healthy marriage looks like i think if we adhered to this instruction well our our marriages would go the distance and that scripture is ephesians chapter 4 verse 31 it says this let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice and it goes on to say this be kind to one another tenderhearted forgiving each other just as god in christ has always forgiven you i want to remind you today that if you're waiting for your spouse to take the first step because they need to apologize i want to let you know the first step has already been taken because jesus decided to initiate relationship with you and he decided to forgive you so that you could respond with forgiveness towards those around you because he took the first step it frees you up every single time to cross the chasm of miscommunication of bitterness of hurt and to actually be a peacemaker to not believe your feelings to step out in faith to say instead of standing on the foundation of my feelings which is a lie i'll stand on the foundation of forgiveness the forgiveness that was paid for on calvary two thousand years ago that i never deserved his love that he gave it and because i've received his love now my spirit is actually able and empowered to show supernatural love to those around me it's so crazy how in life often the people that we're the most familiar with we treat them the worst we treat them like we wouldn't treat a complete stranger we say things to them that we wouldn't say to someone that we had just met because we're familiar and we're comfortable but god wants to change us from the inside out he wants that change to flow from a place of deep forgiveness where we choose to forgive i want to ask you when was the last time you made a decision a conscious decision that god i'm forgiving i am i am letting go of the baggage that i've carried doesn't mean that person deserves it doesn't mean they've earned it doesn't even mean that they have apologized all it means is that you have the power and the authority because of jesus in you to release the baggage that has weighed you down for so long and to find an oasis in his presence it's good it whispers to your heart the journey's not over there's more in front of you and as i release the baggage all of a sudden i'm able to fill that empty void where the bitterness and the toxicity once lie and i can fill it with things like peace i can fill it with love first you gotta let it go you know in my house in our home i have a basket and it's not a trash bag something temporary that i just pull out from time to time no it's permanent it stays right there in our room and this basket is my giveaway basket because i want to be in a permanent habit of letting go of things that i don't need any longer and i think we come to a place in maturity in christ where we go to the baggage of our life and and we're honest just like ephesians said and we look at that bitterness and we say you know what this doesn't belong here anymore i have to let it go and we give it away we have to we have to move to the things like i love that word ephesians says clamor maybe you don't use that word very often clamor means a high-pitched enthusiastic oh distracting conversation you are you are shouting you you are it's it's interrupting the normal flow of your life maybe you need to put away clamor that high-pitched antagonistic disruptive conversation maybe you need to say it's done i'm getting rid of it i'm getting it out of my house no longer will i hide it and pull it out when i think i need it i'm actually gonna get rid of it i'm going to replace it with the things that are of god i think that this promise of god this instruction of the scriptures that tells us to put these things away that are hurting us and then to instead walk in peace in love and in forgiveness just as christ forgave us well i believe it is the secret to us going the distance in our relationships not being weighed down by the baggage of yesterday but actually allowing ourselves to heal and as we let go what happens you have room to grow you know when i buy my son's shoes they're two and one years old i always buy the shoes with a little space my mom used to always say i'm getting it with the room to grow i get their clothes just a little big because i know i have full expectation and faith that it is god's plan for their life that they are going to grow that they're not gonna stay the same as they are today and in relationships you can get really stagnant quick when you expect your partner to be the same person that they've always been let's give each other room to grow let's actually look at our spouse and speak life over them of what they could become why don't we allow them to walk through changes why don't we allow them to evolve and who the holy spirit has created them to be i believe that in our relationships it's not just about healing from the past but it's about creating a room to grow i'm not the same person i was when we got married at 22 thank god i'm a different person rich is a different person if i met him today he would be a complete stranger that's how different we both are but so often we want to box each other in we want to limit one another no create some room to grow today speak some faith make some room and watch god as he expands your relationship so good so good relationship baggage unpacked it it has all these different functions and we could talk really for days and days because it's not just a simple concept it's a big one that we go on this journey and i'm thinking about the fact that you're stepping into your second trimester being pregnant and even i think just today as we wake up it's going oh man i'm feeling some new pain yes and the new pains are a symptom of the fact that there is life growing on the inside of you yeah growing has pains attached to it doing the work to get healthy can be painful at times but as we learn the art of forgiveness forgiveness really isn't about the other person forgiveness is always about me the idea that jesus forgave us that hurt him deeply yes he went to the cross his forgiveness wasn't just a sentence or a statement there was pain attached to it yes so i understand today that when don cheri chooses to forgive me that that means that she's willing to absolve the pain of the moment to walk through it but she's letting it go in order to grow some of us right now we're watching you don't have any room for peace you don't have any room for joy you don't have any room for self-control you don't have any room for new passion you don't have any room for a dream you don't have any room for a vision it's because you got so much baggage wearing on you sometimes it's amazing how things that are so complicated and so difficult yes can go back to something so simple as i'm sorry i didn't clean the house um i made a mistake sometimes sometimes uh my procrastination and my perfectionism gets the best of me and i didn't have enough time and so i'm sorry don't you would you forgive me yeah i forgive you and i'm sorry for accusing you of things and pulling up stuff from the past that we let go of a long time ago i shouldn't have brought it back we'd already dealt with that i want to move forward in everything that god had i i want to move forward as well you know we we we're addressing this stuff and i got other stuff that i want to talk to you about and i'm working on it but i i don't think it belongs here because i'm addressing it and so now we can talk about it it's out in the open i'm not hiding this from you right um you're not hiding it for me i'm not let's put a boundary i this stuff doesn't belong in our bedroom it doesn't belong on our bed this is our place of intimacy this is our life yeah this is where we're where everything's flowing from the scripture says above all else guard your heart for it's the wellspring of life i think you could say the same thing about a relationship guard your intimacy guard your space because everything's going to flow out of it and so let's put a boundary this stuff doesn't belong under the bed and hitting it we should hang it up don't share with me okay let's let's hang up some of these hurts and let's let's get these bags not being under the bed anymore let's bring them out into the opening yes let's put them somewhere else you see sometimes we think in life that as i follow jesus and as i go to church that somehow all of my baggage just disappears don't get me wrong there are some things that do not belong in your life there are some things that you have to refuse to tolerate there are some things that are going to destroy you if you don't get rid of them but not all baggage is this thing that is going to destroy you overnight some baggage well it's going to be our journey it's going to be our journey of fighting back against the weakness it's going to always be a temptation but i'm telling you what if it's in hiding i'm never going to be able to grow if it's in hiding i can never address it and fix it and so what i do is i bring it out into the open and i recognize where it is you know we travel a lot and dodge tree knows about me i hate packing anybody out there hate packing like when i pack it takes me three days to pack but if i'm being honest when i come back from a trip that three days of packing well it takes me 30 days to unpack it come on anyone out there like that right take all this time to pack but really the long part is to unpack it so many times i've always got a bag just in the closet full of stuff and i can't find it where's that thing at where where'd i put that dontre will come to me and say yo it's it's in your travel bag in the closet that you never ever unpacked what i want to bring hope to some people today is that just because you got some issues and just because you have some problems it doesn't mean that you don't love god enough doesn't mean that you're disqualified no there's there's things called struggles and there's things called challenges and i think there's this thing called sanctification that following jesus it is a journey and we're getting better and we're getting healthier but i i start with coming into the light and i start with saying you know what this stuff i can't keep it hidden anymore i got to start to unpack it as i unpack it i put a boundary yeah so don tree she comes back to the bedroom now and she comes back to the bed and she's in our place of intimacy and she is in this space that our relationship is flowing now all of a sudden we're here in this place and it's not so messy it's not that we don't have any problems it's not that we don't have any mess we just know where that stuff is right we just know that there's a boundary that it's in the closet it belongs where it's at it's not it's not hiding anymore we're dealing with it yes and as we begin to deal with it certain things on the journey we say all right i can't stay any longer can't i'm getting rid of that i'm i'm i'm moving that out once and for all i'm gonna forgive i'm gonna choose to forgive yes there's always gonna be some level of baggage there's always gonna be some new journey and some new challenge but i wonder today can you have the strength on this valentine's sunday as a couple and as a relationship to reach under the bed to pull it out sort through it to say you know what i like that i like that netflix show this doesn't spark joy yeah it doesn't spark joy and it's not normal you know when i think about all the things that the world says is normal they say there's a place in your heart for bitterness there's a place in your heart for jealousy that that's just normal but friends normal only leads to brokenness you don't want normal god's got extraordinary for you but we have to be willing to assess to address to set boundaries to forgive and to give room to grow and all of a sudden we start to look back at our life and it's not perfect but it's cleaning up it's not that we don't have messes it's just that we're learning how to manage the mess yeah we're learning that god takes mess he does greatness he takes our messes and honestly he gives us a message so much of our journey dc and i we're just committed to growing we're committed to going on the journey we don't have a perfect marriage but we're committed to having a great marriage yes he said but rich where do i start well you start with jesus because jesus said come to me all you who are weary and heavy burdened and i will give you rest some of us today we have faith but we're not walking free some of us we've given jesus our heart but this is a great sunday on valentine's sunday to give him all of your baggage to expose it to be honest with it to bring it into the light if you don't deal with it now it's just going to have a compound effect on the ones that you love you know we could have added to the illustration we can have our kids here it's funny hey kids carry my baggage they're going to carry it until you deal with it i travel a lot these days when you go to the airport have you noticed they put all these extra fees for checked bags that's gonna cost you this and that's gonna cost you that these days when you try to travel you try to put everything into one little carry-on bag i think a lot of us today we think that all of this baggage that we have that's somehow giving it to jesus is gonna cost us so much it's the opposite with jesus check bags are always free today he's inviting you check your luggage with me check your weight with me check your baggage with me i will carry it hang up your hang-ups on the cross hang up your hurts on jesus cast all your anxiety on him for he cares for you i don't know who's watching this listen the center of our relationship in the center of your relationship needs to be jesus he's a firm foundation he's the one who gives us strength to expose our shame he's the one who gives us guidelines who gives us rules who gives us a picture and a vision of what the boundaries should even begin to look like in our relationship and he is the one that when i don't feel like forgiving always gives me the strength and the endurance to forgive again you want to ask me what the greatest piece of advice i could say to you after 14 years of marriage and close to 20 years of hanging out with the same girl this year it's 20 years i'll tell you what it is it's this one word forgive forgive forgive you got to forgive you got to let go to grow you got to endure and walk through it together and you'll never have that type of capacity forgiveness if you haven't first received jesus so today wherever you're at on this valentine's sunday i hope you got plans we got some good plans i hope you got something romantic planned if you're married if you're single and ready to mingle i hope someone's asking you out or if you're single you got no one to ask you out i hope that you're taking this talk today and you're evaluating where's the baggage in your life we all got some work to do but before we get to any of that i just wonder if you're watching and you don't know jesus if you don't know jesus this just becomes a self-help talk but the moment you know jesus this becomes well this becomes fuel for your future this becomes this becomes the ability to fight back against the baggage you've been carrying for so long and so with your head bad and your eyes closed i just wonder do you know him today do you know jesus today it's really simple he just says come and i'll give you rest can you lay your bags down once and for all at the foot of the cross hang up your hang-ups at the cross of jesus christ the scripture says believe in your heart confess with your mouth and you shall be saved today jesus i'm praying for all my friends that are watching anyone that doesn't know you i pray that right now god you've given the strength to surrender surrender lord may we not just believe in you may we surrender our lives over to you i pray for every couple in every relationship every marriage lord all the families that are part of who church that today lord you give them strength god to put their trust in you lord for anybody who doesn't know you today i pray that they would just pray this simple prayer pray they say dear jesus today i surrender i give you my life i give you all of my excess baggage forgive me lord i receive your love i receive your lesson i believe you are who you said that you are today i'm putting my trust in you i love you lord i love you lord in jesus name jesus name amen amen amen come on can we put our hands together can we thank god for everybody who's just now praying that prayer surrounding their life to jesus we pray for every couple right now that's getting new vision new stamina new endurance how do you build a healthy church you're building off a healthy family we believe in your relationship we believe in your marriages we believe in your future if you just pray that prayer for the first time i want you to text the word decided right now to 786-755 don tree and i want to send you an email i want to send you some resources to help you on your journey of faith we believe in you yeah we believe the best really is yet to come we love your church yes we believe god's got great things in store for your relationship happy valentine's day the best is yet to come god bless hey rich wilkerson here i want to say a big thank you for watching today's content believing and trusting that it impacted you and if it did help you or and encourage in any way i would love for you to like it and share it with some other people make sure to subscribe to the vu church youtube page where you can get more content just like this and while you're there go peruse the gallery as they say and see past talks and pass content that i believe is going to help you i love you best yet to come

Channel: VOUS Church

Views: 51,636

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Id: R7mURiAfNlc

Length: 57min 48sec (3468 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 14 2021