Relationships | 3ABN Today Live (TDYL210030)

[Music] as you're well aware we're living in unprecedented times join us now for today's special program i want to spend my life [Music] removing pain lord let my words [Music] broken people hello and welcome to 3abn live we are so excited about tonight's wonderful program and i can tell you in advance it's going to be wonderful because we have some anointed guests and they're going to be talking about something they put a lot of effort into and that is relationships you know i'm shelley quinn jd quinn ought to give him i ought to give him a chance to get a word in edgewise but you know what the problem is with the christian world today there's too much religion and not enough christianity christianity is all about relationship our god is a god of covenant relationship it's not only though about our relationship with the lord it is about how he expects us to interact with the covenant community and with those who don't know his name so tonight we will be talking about relationships it's so important and let me go ahead and introduce our special guests who are part of the family now and we're so excited about that we have pastor james rafferty and you are the three abn director of discipleship wow that's a lot it's a privilege it's a blessing you know what such a blessing to be here and we have been breaking in him in right today he's already done we've done three programs today and now he's on the live next week we're going to do 13 sabbath school programs in four days so you're hitting the ground running after that we will have camp meeting and you're doing form there what did you think about bible q a and trying to answer a question in two minutes i didn't realize how intense it was going to be until we got on the set and then i realized well i'm not going to be able to read these notes there's no way i'm going to be able to go through this in two minutes i'm just going to have to summarize as best i can and highlight the main text it was fun i'll tell you that much it was really fun because as we talked about the nature of the program it became really clear to me that this is a needed emphasis you know this quick answering of a lot of questions that people are just hungry to understand yeah it was fun yeah it but it is a challenge sometimes i feel like i'm an auctioneer i try to talk that back and also with this is another new member of the three abn family and that is the never aging beautiful bride of pastor james and that's reecey rafferty reecey you are the three with three avian health ministries and we broke you in right too tell us how many programs you did your first week of recording yeah we filmed 48 one and a half minute segments through the eyes of a foodie is what the series is called so when people see that that's what we'll be doing those little quick fillers in between programs so you know what when people think a one and a half minutes say compared to developing a 50-minute sermon sometimes those little short ones are the most difficult to distill a thought that has an impact and put that all in but anyway we're just so glad you're here tonight and we're glad that you have put so much effort into learning about relationships but also with us just for the beginning of the program because he's got a special announcement is our pastor pastor john lo mccain whom we dearly love a man who is anointed as a teacher of the bible but also a music minister and we've got something special coming up this sabbath you want to hear about it you want to write this down john tell us about america what's next wow well thank you shelley thank you jd and thank you both of you good to have the raffities on staff good to have two healthy looking people that are very gifted so glad to have you part of our family and i think they've been here before me but just not permanently you were here part of 3abn before i got here and then i came permanently and now you're part of our family good to have you here but america what's next is in fact something the lord put on my heart about 2019 march of 2019 i was awakened in the morning i know what the bible prophets mean when it says and in my night visions oh i was troubled upon my bed and i just couldn't sleep and i could sleep at the drop of a head i could be the busiest person in the world everything taken place and when i hit the pillow i'm gone until the next morning about four o'clock in the morning i woke up and i reached to my bedside and picked up my phone and the lord impressed me opened the book christ object lessons chapter 18 well i wasn't even reading christ object lessons at all during the week or any recent time for any specific focus but he said read that chapter and i was impressed as i was reading down in the chapter uh the highlight was about the three calls that christ extended first to the jews and to the jewish leaders then to the to the broad community he said go into the highways and hedges and one guy said i have a cow i need to try it out i've been married i can't i bought a piece of property and then ellen white said that in the last days the first call should go to men in high positions of society teachers uh politicians lawyers doctors uh educators scientists and she says and and when you reach one they will reach thousands that's good and i highlighted that on my phone and that stuck in my mind so the next day i was just fired up and i went to jail i said joe we have to do an evangelistic series for our community well you know how hard it is to just stick an evangelistic series in a network the next month she said well sure we'll do that but let's try next year well next year was 2020 and we all know the rest of that story the lord put an urgency in my heart and i said so i heard the lord said no you do it and i thought okay so i rented the benton civic center and i chose three sermons by the lord leading me said do not do sermons that can be heard in just any church something native to our church so i preached on the second coming of christ entitled its coming the second was america in prophecy and the third one was the fall of babylon how's that for not hearing revelation at all well the second night a pastor came in who was there the first night he walked and he came to hear lanny wolfe he wasn't concerned about the message but when i did america in prophecy after the sermon he said to me we don't know that sermon and i said and we we who and he introduced himself he told me he was a pastor for 40 years and he said evangelical pastor and he said we don't know this message and this is what we need never heard it but when he came in he didn't register when he left he took six great controversies all of the lessons a stack of three angels messages in some reason and he and his wife said pastor i want to tell you something i know you're disappointed because all the flies didn't go out for the advertising but the lord knew who needed to be here amen and we were here and we have heard and pretty soon everyone else is going to hear the next friday i was invited to marion illinois to a large evangelical gathering all these pastors and this pastor introduced my wife and i as uh meet pastor john loman king my good friend well i just met him about a week and two days earlier and he said the lord put this man in my life for a reason and i'm gonna hang around long enough to find out why well the third night sermon was the fall of babylon at the end of that this pastor said the state senator wants to meet you and i thought is he is he here he said no he he heard the sermon i said well how do you hear it he said when you began your sermon i made a phone call and i let him listen for the whole sermon and he wants to meet you and i met him that friday night at marion civic center and almost every wednesday from october 2019 to the present we have met for bible studies and prayer praise god when this thought came to my mind i had already had a six-hour bible study with the pastor and much of revelation in daniel we talked about and god was opening some amazing doors but i said what do you think about this idea to commemorate 9 11. this is the 20th year and for our church is happening on saturday senator said pin me and i'll be there the pastor said i'll be there and then they both lent their support i could give you a list of politicians to invite the senator said and the pastor said i could give you a list of 249 pastors to invite and the next day they sent me that list we sent the list out we don't know who's going to respond but god got us urgent i pulled a committee together in our church some of the people that work here at 3abn the fire was a lit like nehemiah telling the people of israel what god had told him to do and the people had a mind to work amen so america what's next are graphic designers or animators uh people that are good with uh websites and i mean uh facebook advertising all this diff they got together and just worked hard and so this saturday september 11th we put a website together and we'll just talk about that in a moment uh the devil tried his best to stop it shelly i mean you know when you start something i've always said if you're not doing anything that's worthy of the devil's notice he'll leave it alone well we began to make it a public event and uh when covert resurfaced his ugly head administration said stop the advertising stop the advertising on channel 7 news stop the advertising on facebook don't send out any more flyers we don't want anybody in the community in our building to increase the covet i was crushed and i said lord what's that all about because the week before there was no issue like that but i i prayed and i was still in my pajamas editing i called my team i said sent out an email quickly to my team and the church board the lord poured visions in their head and one said pastor that's not a bad idea at all let's not decrease our advertising let's increase it but let's not make it a local event let's make it a global event let's not make it a walk in the building let's make it a live stream because 3abn said you could have the church members and if anybody else was already invited let them come also but don't invite anybody else and one of my members bob eads bob called me and said if i don't if i don't talk to you right now i'm going to explode on the parking lot he said because pastor you planned a cherry bomb event god planned an atomic blast event amen so as of now as i'm speaking to you uh this has been advertised far and wide on abc affiliate right here and i don't tell all the details there 14 days in a row we had a 30-second ad and right now i'm going to ask production if they have that ad i'm going to go ahead and let them run that ad right now and let them see and i give ricky carter kudos the man is gifted but he understands the message of communicating and listen to that right now america what's next it's been 20 years since the 9 11 tragedy that struck our nation america what's next is a look back on what we've learned and how we can prepare for what's next how has america become such an influential nation in less than 300 years what is her secret and what can we learn about america's future for the answers join us september 11th at 11am central for this live streaming event as we look back on the lessons of 9 11 and examine how revelation reveals america's future you won't want to miss it america what's next dot com that ad went viral people went to the website i had people registering from afghanistan valley the philippines france germany all over america they just inundated the website and then we'll just show you a website here and we'll tell you how you can get involved how you can share that with your community it is going to be a live streaming event our church members will be present and anybody else that was already that was already invited but you can share this link and if you could bring the link up or just a slate of the website and i'll tell you how to go there and what to do americawhatsnext.com is the website where you can go and share that website that's a slate there is the web address right below that go to that website and you'll find out more about the information and share that with your church family it's going to be sabbath morning september 11th beginning at 11 a.m central time that's important and lastly after this event is done we're just getting started amen we are republishing a website with the same look and breaking it down and james i'm going to reach into your pocket too we're going to set up three areas one on prophecy alone and you've done a lot on that another one on knowing christ and a third one on teachings like the sabbath the state of the dead testing truths and we'll connect videos from different teachers and information solid information to begin to proliferate this around the world so we can get serious about harvesting those who have been in the field that god has sown through three abia at least for the last 35 years i'm so excited and so proud of you for your dedication and especially in working and doing these bible studies and training these pastors and senators it's it's really exciting and you may have noticed i don't know if the camera caught it but we also have something else special on the set tonight and it is this beautiful cross stitch work says god bless america it has the ten commandments and this was done as a memorial for 9 11. that was the origination of the thought in jerry austin's mind and jerry that's a g-e-r-r-i a beautiful woman from maine and what it took her one year to the day to finish she actually finished this on september the 11th of 2000 2002 and so she sent this to us and it's been hanging in our hallways for a long time but she sent it with this beautiful little letter that she just sent another letter here and she said my prayer is may god continue blessing you and your team as you continue to share the undiluted three angels message around the world oh the joys that come to me as i watch all the miracles that happen at 3 a.m as the message goes forth and it's it is you know i remember the first time have you ever done any cross-stitching racy when i was young yeah so we know how time-consuming that is but i remember seeing you see the little on the right to the left of the uh commandments you see those little footsteps it's walking in the candle walking in the light so we want to thank jerry austin and we're just we're so blessed by our many many three abn family members our extended family and we just want to thank all of you for your prayers and your financial support of three abn now we know you like music you bet one last thing just before we go yeah because i didn't say anything about the message the message is going to be culminating in uh america what's next about america in bible prophecy we're gonna have a lot of music and we'll give you also links where you can download some of the material that will be presented that saturday wonderful all right thank you thank you jd and now we just want to take a time we've also got some additional church members that's going to be having our music tonight celestine and pharah and they're going to be singing and playing the savior is waiting [Music] this savior is waiting to enter your heart why don't you let him come in and there's nothing in this world to keep you up hard what is your answer to him time after time he has waited before and now he is waiting again to see if you're willing to open [Music] how he wants to come in [Music] if you'll take one step toward the savior my friend you'll find his arms open wide receive him and all of your darkness will land within your heart hill all by time after time he has waited before and now he is waiting again to see if you're willing to door oh how he wants to come in [Music] to see if you're willing to open that door [Music] how he wants to in [Music] and that absolutely fantastic i also want to mention that's mother and daughter just so gifted so gifted and mama looks like a sister it looks like two sisters well if you're just joining us tonight our special guests part of the three abian family are james and reecey rafferty and we're going to be talking about relationships let me tell you you guys know a lot about this you've studied a lot you're actually what are you doing this weekend for trinidad tobacco well trinidad and tobago actually asked us if we would do a marriage and family sermon which we're going to do together zoom they're going through the biblical 28 fundamentals and they're on number 23 and we got here and jill passed on to us this request and we said you know we can do that because our minds and hearts right now are on relationships especially since we just had our 32nd anniversary yes she saved you again some people think he's my daughter but yeah right so so it's going to be uh we're going to do it on zoom and it's going to be aired on the youtube channel for the mirabella um seventh-day adventist church in trinidad and tobago so that's the maribella sda church youtube channel it'll be live i believe uh sabbath morning at east bill marabella m-a-r-a-b-e-l-l-a okay arabella uh sabbath morning wonderful morning wonderful i know that rodney reynolds he kind of heads up the that's the guy yeah and i think he does a fantastic job just a shout out to rodney he's a man of god yes he is okay we're ready to get started and what i forgot to tell you this is a live program and we are taking your questions and we we're going to put them on the hot seat in the second hour so if you have a question you can text it at 618-228-3975 at 618-228-3970 or you can email us at live at 3abn.tv and we will try to get to those questions in the second hour but we've got a lot to cover reecey i'm going to just throw it to you okay [Laughter] so we we actually didn't choose this topic 3abn said let's do a live on relationships and when we were given that topic i was studying matthew 24 and to me what a chapter that i've never really seen is prioritizing relationships that's what kind of started popping out matthew 24 25 we think of the end time in terms of events but not so much in terms of our relationships and i think that our relationships with each other as well as with god are defining of who we really are and i saw jesus was expressing that as well through parables and stories that he told in these chapters amen amen any particular place you want to go you had mentioned starting off with verse 42 well we're going to go let's just start in matthew chapter 7 just to highlight this one key point right so we're going to look primarily matthew 24 and 25 but in matthew chapter 7 um this this it reveals a key principle we're going to be looking at verses 21-23 and when we look at these verses we're going to realize the significance of relationships in the christian experience as it relates to us in our relationships but also our relationships with others so matthew chapter 7 starting with verse 21 not everyone jesus is speaking here that says unto me lord lord shall enter into the kingdom of heaven but he that doeth the will of my father which is in heaven many will say to me in that day lord lord have we not prophesied in thy name now i just want to hold on for just a second there prophecy is what we're known for as a church prophecy is what we're known for have we not prophesied in thy name predicted shown told the world about what's coming and in thy name that's in the name of christ who are christians have cast out devils and in thy name have done many wonderful works these people are christians who've done a lot of sharing prophecy and a lot of other wonderful works as christians in the name of jesus christ professed christians right okay all right professed christians but professed christians they have a lot of stuff coming you know they're doing stuff they're not just they're doing stuff and then jesus says to them then i will then and then will i profess unto them i never knew you depart from me ye that work iniquity and so we thought this was a great place to start because this really emphasizes the importance of relationships beyond prophecy beyond the many wonderful works that we can do behind all the things because really what these people are saying is hey we deserve heaven look at all the stuff we've done of course that's righteousness by works and we as adventists are probably tend more to that than any other church simply because of all the prophecy we know of all the things that we do or a worldwide church we have a lot of stuff going for us and so as richie and i were talking about this we thought you know relationships are key in this verse are they also key in matthew 24 and 25. and before you go to matthew you know what thought just occurred to me is mark 12 30 that is just repeating from deuteronomy 6 that what jesus said when asked what's the most important commandment he said hear o israel the lord our god is one you shall love the lord your god with all of your heart soul mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself so we see that doing the father's will is being motivated by love to walk in obedience but it's it's to do it is all about relationship that's who god is god is love loving relationships i love angry life what does that look like let's go you know it it's kind of interesting there you know and following that perhaps he probably recognized you but he really wasn't acquainted with you he knew he were he knows who he knows who we are yeah but that relationship was gone amen amen okay so matthew 24 matthew 24 and we see here in verse 45 that jesus is talking about his servants so just like the verse you just shared right we're going to be talking about god's servants but he describes them he puts them in two different categories and one is faithful and the other are evil faithful and the evil servants who then is a faithful and wise servant who him his master made ruler over his household blessed is the servant whom his master when he comes will find so doing and i to give them food and due season assuredly i say to you that he will make him ruler over all his goods but if the evil servant says in his heart my master is delaying his coming and begins to beat his fellow servants and i'm just going to stop there because that's the part that's talking about the distinction and how these two groups probably do relationships here we see that these evil servants are turning against the the faithful their fellow servants how are they treating their fellow servants they're smiting them that's what the bible uses that word and i found this verse in psalm 141 5 that says let the righteous smite me and it shall be a kindness and let him reprove me and it shall be an excellent oil so there's a smiting that we would say is actually a blessing to me and that may be maybe when james gently reproves me or says hey i think you might want to think twice about that decision or you know how you're coming across or whatever it is that would be a blessing to me um but you had a thought about the word smiting that makes it different than just a reproof this is actually a pattern a way of relating to people yeah in the greek the word is uh indicates a pattern a repeated pattern of abuse so you know how we are sometimes we slip up we make a mistake we say i'm sorry or whatever and that is something that we're all guilty of as couples in relationships with people etc but this servant has a pattern of abuse a pattern of smiting it's a habit in other words and that's the place where we need to be aware of the kind of character we're developing and how do we become aware of that well what's really cool is matthew 24 is talking about the signs of the times that bring us into crisis and you know what crisis does crisis reveals our character it reveals who we are it's a revelation so we can thank the lord for this present crisis that we're going through right now this present crisis is actually a blessing why because this present crisis reveals our character this present crisis brings us brings it up to the top and helps us to see who we really are you know in jeremiah chapter 12 or 6 old memory clicking in there it says there if you've walked with the footmen yes and they have weary thee how will you contend with the horses if in a day of peace a land of peace you you're you're worn out you're over how you can contend in the flooding of the water so we are living right now in a time when i think god is allowing us to see what we would do in a crisis situation how would we respond in a crisis situation and one of the key factors that we're seeing not just in the world but in the church is how we're relating to differences we have about certain issues right that were are you talking about smiting somebody with the fruit of your lips we are uh there's what is psalm 143 i think that it talks about the tongue the sharp tongue of the serpent and they've got the poison of asps on their lips and you know i'm just shocked we see it in the world we see people yelling we see them fighting when they're verbally abusive toward one another but you know what it's happening in the churches as well it's really frightening it is and that's what we're talking about and that's what's happening here in matthew 24 and matthew 25. so i love that thought that god is revealing our character in this crisis because we got some growing to do and while there's still opportunity for that growth to take place amen differing is normal to a relationship yeah you know to have different opinion or different perspective that's normal but how do we process how do we communicate through those differences is crucial i think to identifying are we using our tongue to smite each other in a wicked way or is it gentle and loving and then there's those people just really quite happy where they are you know they're just satisfied they're just fat and sassy and full and so kind of let us in they're very loyal to sin and you know jd i've met um couples before um where the husband said to me oh my wife and i we never argue and you know initially i was like oh man i'm i'm in the presence of two really holy people you know first i'm just in awe but um as time has gone on i end up feeling sorry for one of them like oh which one of you doesn't have the opportunity to express their own opinion that's different than yours or do does she have to think your exact thoughts you know that's just not natural that's not the way god made us he designed for diversity and for unity to be experienced in diversity but how again do we handle those differences is crucial and there's a godly way and there's probably an ungodly way as well yeah i just did a sermon in a in this sermon i wanted to read these two scriptures proverbs 24 26 says he who gives a right answer kisses the lips and a kiss on the lips back in ancient times wasn't always romantic it was showing sincere affection it was respect and so a right answer can only be led by the holy spirit but then when our words are inflicting insult and injury which that's all we've seen nowadays is people who are insulting others and injuring and people who are posting rants on the internet you know what the holy spirit's not the author of those words that's where psalm 140 verse 3 comes in and it says they sharpen their tongues like a serpent the poison of asps is under their lips so our words reveal who is directing our conversation and you know when we talk about relationships i believe conversation is the relationship you know even with god if we're not praying uh i have a friend that is so dear to my heart now i didn't know her all that well till i went through my surgeries and my recoveries and we just started talking every day and now she's just the most precious friend on earth to me because conversation i haven't seen her because of covet but conversation is the relationship that's how we develop [Music] you know we had a situation where when we moved to california we moved into this house and the well was on another piece of property our neighbor's property and we went over there with the realtor to meet the people and everything and it didn't go well we didn't actually we weren't actually part of the encounter the meet and greet but we're at a distance but the neighbors weren't happy that we went over there without asking permission all these people came over we went to our well before we went to their house and that told them we were coming over long story short it didn't go well and so we bought the home anyway the the well was over there on this property and we were a little bit nervous about the relationship we were going to have with this person that we never met but saw this going on and so um but we were just kind of putting it off and putting off and then finally we ran out of water now the reason we ran out of water was very minor we found out but it caused me to have to go over there and knock on the door and introduce myself etc and i was very nervous and i asked reecey to pray i was very nervous because you know you don't communicate you've moved in months gone by there's no communication so we went over there and knocked on the door and they opened the door and the first thing they mentioned was that whole incident that happened and they were just so apologetic and sorry that that happened and it was you know something with the realtor or whatever whatever and then they went on to just i mean we are they watch our house they're watering our plants we love them yeah we just love them and ken he was born the same year i was a day apart he's irish i'm irish you know a lot in common so you're right communication is so important and when communication breaks down and one of the ways communication breakdown i found is the the faithful servants are feeding they're giving food they're opposite of the smiting one of the ways communications break down is that we get a little bit nervous about communicating difficult things many times we talk to others about situations that we ought to be talking with this person about you covered today in matthew matthew 18. yeah the faithful servant feed they give food to the flock we want to feed we want to feed on each other and to each feed each other nurture one another encourage one another not peck and dismantle and criticize which is what we do outside of those relationships what the the evil servant is what i have what i have found out that if you do get into some communication normally you have more things in common than you disagree on but you never but if you don't take that step of faith and step out there and start this conversation well then you're never going to learn that but you know we see you're right that people uh there's there's just things that come up that require sometimes we have to address negative situations and a lot of people aren't comfortable they don't like conflict so what they do is they avoid the issue and then guess what happens the longer you avoid it the more emotionally charged it becomes but if a husband and a wife and i hope you don't mind me when we first got back when we first got married he'd say something and i'd say really well i see it this way and he'd say why are you always arguing but he grew up in a home where people use there was one opinion and nobody ever expressed at least in front of that person their opinion so it is something that culturally we can be have an avoidance syndrome we don't want conflict but if you're never having a disagreement one of you is probably always zipping their lips yeah and i think it's important i think there's a reason why people avoid conflict and that is because we maybe don't know how to do constructive conflict very well and so they're tools and we've had to learn them and i think that it's very important that we realize marriage is a school there are so many qualities and ways of relating to each other that you know we didn't learn growing up we grew up in single family homes and so we felt disadvantaged in some ways because we didn't see maybe how things were worked out etc but but marriage is a school and it's a school from which we don't graduate and the home is such an incredible opportunity to learn so many vital lessons because that's where love reigns so in the context of love ah can i flub up and can i learn and i think that's environment is where we learn best so how do we do constructive conflict and i think one of the most important things that we initially establish is that hey we're on the same team and there's a problem and that problem isn't you do you know what i'm saying it's not or it's not me it's not a personal thing but there's a problem it might be a character quality or something you said or an event or whatever but if we can get to the point where we're looking at it where i'm willing to step beside him and see the issue from his through his lenses and he's willing to see them through my lenses and we have a united front then that can be so powerfully initially helpful so you attack the problem not the person not the person right you're looking at a behavior and and what i've found in in working with children particularly and it works with everybody is that if you are giving a word of correction to somebody or you're working something out if you focus on future behavior if it's all about behavior and the person doesn't feel like you're beating them up for the past it's about setting boundaries and and going forward yeah something else that i think is really crucial to um especially men helping men being willing to do conflict and that is can we control our emotions and probably men the same way women don't like conflict if the man's angry or yelling you know that's really uncomfortable that's destructive that's damaging it's wrong so i don't think there's a place for yelling and arguing in an argument i think that it can be done really maturely and calmly but emotions are usually intense right when when there's a difference so that's where i think we need to take a moment to say how can i calm down so that i can rationally talk about this and when we were first married you know i would be crying and and james would roll over in bed and you know and it it hurt me even worse because i was like oh it feels like um more abandonment type of thing but in reality he's thinking i have no idea how to process or handle her you know there's just so much emotion and so i've learned you know marriage as a school i've learned uh james give me a minute i'm emotional right now and when i get over some of this emotionality i'm going to be able to communicate with you about you know the topic much more effectively and the same thing with anger go chop some wood run around the block you know what i'm saying whatever it does so that that emotion can kind of dissipate and then you can approach the topic yeah yeah we're a man we just want to go find a cave and hide in you know and just uh just sit and stew over the water in the morning right yeah right exactly right for for risi i was raised in an environment i was raised in a home where raising your voice was just the thing you did you just did that you just raised your voice you just you talk live everyone talk loud i mean i was afraid to take her to my mom's house my mom and my sister because she was going to be traumatized and for me it was just normal that's just the way this irish family interacted right for me so for her that was like oh man don't talk to me like that for me the hard thing was when she started crying my mom never cried my sister never cried they were tough and so she says the emotional thing was to me what my raising my voice was to her that's what i'm saying i didn't know how to deal with it she knew how to deal with my raising my voice i didn't know how to deal with her emotions so we had to analyze and just as we have done in other things like for example for me my background my my childhood i'm sensitive to neglect whereas my wife is sensitive to abandonment so those are triggers and when those things come in when we react in ways that you know i'm perceived as abandoning and she's perceived as neglecting those things push buttons and it may not even be the issue that's significant it's the buttons that's been pushed to past you know issues that we need to work through or talk about or and that is huge but you know if you get the silent treatment that does feel like abandonment if you're trying that's it exactly you're trying to talk to somebody about something it's i don't want to talk about this leave me alone that is you feel totally emotionally abandoned right time and can i i just want to real quickly say in ephesians 4 29-32 paul's telling us don't let any corrupt word come out of her mouth but then he tells us there's five sins that were to put away bitterness wrath anger clamor and malice and what some people don't realize is clamor means yelling and so it is not i had a young lady who told me years ago she said can you tell me what i can do to make sabbath better at my home and i said well what's going on honey and she said my parents argue and holler all the way to church we sit through church and then she said the rest of the day they're yelling at each other all day long well it's a horrible thing for two people to interact like that but then it was damaging the kids as well so my deal i don't ever holler but what i do and boy the lord stopped me short i was on the phone with him i called him at the office the other day and he said well we just got this we've never gotten it before and i said what do you mean we've never gotten it before i get that little you know and i said of course we have we used it and i hung up and the lord told me did you hear your tone a voice and i called him right back and i said it was no big deal to me where that tone of voice came from i don't know but we don't always understand that a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a framework of silver so the way we speak is really important and god you know i've noticed recently and i i don't remember ever having done this before i don't know if it's happened as i've been recovering but i've noticed myself recently where i get that little pitch to my voice i'm not talking loud but it's it's condensation yes that's what it is yeah yeah yeah you know i mentioned how uh marriage is a school and james and i realized that we had a lot to learn and so we've read different books throughout our marriage some of them together some of them you know i read a book for myself he read a book and it's kind of funny because some of those books were really life changing for us when james read um understanding the mind standing the mind of a woman yeah i was like thank god for that book it was just so noticeably different it was incredible you know the man taking responsibility in the home for um not just paying the bills and making sure the lawns mowed etc but even for the tenor of the relationship right that was so cool because i felt like he was much more invested and then i wrote i read one entitled i read one entitled um the proper care and feeding of your husband oh yes and he said tell me how you felt like when i was reading that book can you read it again what is it called the proper care and feeding of your husband and he said he felt like a king you know i mean because but i was learning i was learning this is how men think relates is what they need what they want etc um it's pretty simple so you start implementing those things and you get results and i think at the end of the day for a couple to realize that we want the result and the result is a closer tighter more meaningful relationship how do we achieve that even though this thing is really annoying or making me angry or making me feel so painful how can we unitedly work to achieve that so we mentioned some of the dysfunctional ways that we argue right we can silent treatment i call it hard boiling hard balling where you know i throw something hard at you and you throw it back and we're just you know that's those are ineffective ways of arguing but one of the books we read was on difficult conversations and was that the title of it how do you find it and it taught us ear e-a-r and do you remember what the acronym stood for yeah empathy assertiveness and respect that's empathy assertiveness and respect you put those three ingredients it's called feeling good together the secret to making troubled relationships warped ah that was it yeah feeling good together i'm writing good together of making troubled relations work assertiveness and the book gives practical illustrations of how to use those three guiding principles in a in a conversation with someone that you really differ with and the book isn't just about marriage um you know the time we were using it for various relationships that we had how would we communicate about this and um but we have definitely implemented it into our home just last sabbath we were talking we had a difference before we went to church it seems like the enemy wants to you know on sabbath morning um but it was so cool james was like let's talk about it right now and i'm thinking we got to get to church and but and this was an amazing thing james is the one that's saying no let's talk um and so this has been growth and progress which i think every marriage if we're not growing then something's wrong right because stagnant pools get exactly right i'm healthy so the context of ephesians chapter 4 is verse 26 yes that's the key verse and the only way we can overcome this clamoring and this anger and this bitterness is if we follow the council in verse 26 be angry and sin not don't let the sun go down in your mouth so i said risi let's talk about this that's good whereas before i would have said well i'll talk about it tomorrow you know and meanwhile i'm boiling or meanwhile i'm stuffing it or whatever and that's what i've done all my life as a man so that's why those buttons are being pushed that's why i'm feeling not really what reese's doing to me but i'm feeling the history that i've stuffed that i've never processed that i've never been angry about you know someone asked me not long ago about a trial i was going through in life and they said are you angry there's an old friend and there was silence and she said you think it's wrong to be angry don't you you're a pastor and that's why i told her i said well i'm a preacher i don't think i should be angry right i shouldn't be angry i'm a preacher right and she went on to explain to me she said look up in the bible the word angry anger and see how many times it's used in relationship to god yeah god is angry that's part of who he is what is he angry at he's angry at sin he's angry at injustice he's angry evil he's angry at everything that is wrong that is that is happening that is hurting his creation now how he processed that anger is a completely different story right right but the anger is there and so how we process it is got to be in harmony with the way that god processes it and one of the things that god does is he processes it so one of the things that we see in the bible god doing a lot and i tell we see this now like on sabbath whatever i say let's i tell her something how i felt about something that she did i wait a few minutes or an hour and i say i felt this way about this that you did earlier and but see that's a good you're using a nice statement it's a good thing like i felt so that doesn't it's not i feel you did such it's an i feel statement and it's and it's processing so when you read the bible you read god is talking a lot he says a lot of stuff in there about how he feels about sin and about and job was a man after i mean god said this man is perfect he's you know job did the same thing yeah said i'm not happy right now i'm not happy with god i'm not happy with life i'm not happy with my friends i'm not happy with a lot of stuff that's going on and he vocalized this he talked about it be angry and sin not because if you stuff it if you don't process it if you don't actually communicate you're going to sin it's going to lead to sin so you communicate and don't wait a long time do it before the sun goes down and then you'll get rid of bitterness and clamor and anger and all these other things will be going out of your vocabulary because you're processing and what's going to happen is those roots are just going to continue to grow and get bigger and bigger and then you're going to become more bitter or angry and then you wake up one day and where's mama yeah but you know the it is true that sometimes you'll see somebody who'll get angry and you're like what are you mad at and they won't talk about it and it's just like you're you're it it breeds insecurity it breeds the abandonment issue again and so it is important to just learn how to i have to to express these emotions one of my pet peeve i'm just going to say it out loud is there is like a positivity wave among christians and it's like they somehow feel it is not christian to say anything negative or if you're grieving there's something wrong and so what people do is they invalidate others you know like somebody says something to them and then it's kind of like well what's wrong with you it could be worse count your blessings we did we're dismissive of others but then even people invalidate their own feelings they'll say you know like i have some friends going through some rough stuff and i'll ask them well be honest be transparent and so they finally come out with it and then as soon as they do it's like oh but i know i'm blessed oh yeah and we all do that but the worst thing is when people use scripture as a weapon you know when somebody counted all joy or hurting yeah or or you know saying well god won't put more on you than handle you can handle did you know in second corinthians 1 8 9 paul said hey we were burdened beyond measure we had the sentence of death in our hearts god definitely had more on him than he could humanly bear but what happened is paul said he allowed this to happen so that we would learn to lean on and trust in him instead of in ourselves so we we need to quit trying to silence others when they're expressing their thank you i'm so glad you used the word invalidate because they're i think that's one of the reasons why we don't express why do people bottle up it up and without expressing themselves and i think it's very painful when you are experiencing something that's so dear or emotionally you know ignited in within you that if you did express it it would be invalidated that it wouldn't be really heard and that's part of the ear that um that we work on all the time it's not just me communicating with empathy and assertiveness and respect to you it's am i truly listening to you am i really hearing your heart and that is more of a skill than we realize it's not just oh my ears are open and because james will often say well can you say it back to me so i'll say back to him yeah and i'll say back to him what i heard and often no you missed this or often i didn't truly hear everything that he was saying and hearing is also uh this hour is just now sorry yeah we lost track of the time back i was so into this it will be right there [Music] boy you can tell that i was really getting into our conversation because i wasn't even watching the clock we're so glad that you have joined us for the second hour of 3abn live we are talking with james and reecey rafferty about relationships about how to learn to communicate and i i guarantee you conversation communication is the relationship if you have poor communication skills and and by the way what's the most important communication skill listening listening god designed us with two ears and one mouth we need to learn how to listen and we'll get back because what you were just saying before is about reflective listening where you're repeating back but i do want to remind you this is live and hopefully we're going to have time for a few questions if you want to text us your question text to 618-228-3975 or you can email us at live at 3abn.tv but we've got another beautiful song this is one of my favorite of all time songs i just absolutely love it and celestine and pharaoh are going to be singing and playing fill my cup lord like the woman i was seeking for things that could not satisfy and then i heard my savior speaking draw from my will that never shall run dry fill my cup lord i lift it up lord come and quench this thirsting of my soul bread of heaven tell me till i want no more [Music] there are millions in this world who are seeking for pleasures earthly things have fought but none can match the wondrous treasure that i find in jesus christ my lord [Music] so my children if that things this world gave you live hungers that won't pass our way my blessed lord will come and save you if you need to heal my humbly pray fill my cup lord i lift it up lord come and quench this thirsting of my soul bread of heaven feed me till i want no more [Music] feel my cup fill it up and make me [Music] peel my cup he lit up and make me [Music] i think that you can agree with me that is absolutely beautiful that is a prayer set to music and he looks beautiful well in our first hour we've been talking about relationships about communication and we left with a cliffhanger that when james has asked you something and then he says did you hear me repeat it back to me that's called reflective listening tell us about that yeah in the book they call it uh empathy okay so the ear the ear so the empathy is you're you're you're listening you're hearing what i'm saying you're taking the time to listen and you're taking the time to hear me and that is proved by you repeating back to me what i just said yeah and i got to say this point right now because you know validation when we talk about invalidation what validation is validation is simply saying i hear you i care about how you feel you can validate a person without validating whatever the foundation of if they've got wrong thinking but we still need to listen for their feelings because i confess my personality is a fixer and i remember once when i was talking to a friend from england and she was telling me something that her daughter did and she was like whoa is me and i started saying well but maybe she meant this or maybe and i'm trying to help her paint a rosy picture and she said to me this was years ago but she said you don't care about my feelings you're taking my daughter's side so to validate somebody is to be empathetic and understand what they're feeling and when that happens when i'm saying back to risi what she just said to me or she's saying back to me what i just said to her that also gives an opportunity to correct a miscommunication yeah okay so i may be so emotional that i've miscommunicated or i may be communicating in such a way that reese's hearing something that i'm not actually meaning to say so when she says it back to me i'm going to say actually that one point i did say that but that's not what i mean i can see how you took that and i can see why you took it that way but that's not what i meant it really helps to make the communication clear now i've just got to ask this question there's probably some men at home just going this sounds more of something that might appeal to a woman but how long did it take you all to get into this pattern and is it have you found the the rewards of doing this the benefits to be worth the effort 32 years 32 years we're still learning is the point right but you know but you clarified that at first you know hey this is a school you know sometimes school lasts a long time right sometimes you're slow learners and sometimes you forget what you're learning of course but i do think that it's fantastic to sit and repeat back yes you know because that does bring some clarity into it and this isn't what we're talking about here is not just for marriages this is for relationships in the church relationships in the family relationships at work we all this is something that god just keeps laying on my heart is that you look around at our world we entertain obscene communication and we just seem to indulge this and people are getting in each other's faces they they take you know nobody even is given the right to have a differing opinion nowadays having a different opinion doesn't mean that you're enemies with somebody but it's becoming that okay so oh i was just going to say real quick that i think it takes us less time to go through something that we're differ on because we've communicated about it it's done it's wrapped up whereas before it might have lasted like he said for the whole day or the to the next you know so um for those men who are like oh man that sounds like a lot of work anything you do in life that's really worth you know having and accomplishing is work that's not a bad word but it's it makes it concise it's efficient i think it's much more efficient what what i found talking about men and women and then we're bringing in the whole everyone is that we are on the opposite end of the charts the way men learn the way women learn from being you know what's from an emotional standpoint what's important to men is not they're at the bottom of the women right and vice versa and so if you care about any relationship much well your mate who you choose to spend your life this is something that you might listen and you might just try it doesn't mean i mean if you're slow it could take a little while okay but there's nothing wrong with that and and shelley was saying well this is not just for marriage the book of job yes is a perfect illustration of this whole process now we're talking about empathy that's the first step empathy is where you're hearing what the other person is saying and you're hearing it in such a way that you're speaking into it you won't find that in the book of job when it comes to job and his three friends it's not there no it's just joke validation poured out his heart and they didn't hear a word he said and they went a completely different direction they came at job as if they knew what his problem was they knew what he was the deal the issue was they were trying to prove that he was doing or having a relationship with god that was the thing that was according to what they felt and their evidence was what was happening to him yeah you must be a sinner there must be you must be a hypocrite there must be something wrong with your relationship with god because this wouldn't happen to a person who is righteous and job said but no but no but no and he said it over and over again and they never heard it now one single time that they hear until finally job says you know what you guys are worthless physicians right you're miserable comforters and if you would just be quiet in the conversation end of conversation that would be comfort enough for me yeah so the book of job now the reason why i bring this up is because we're talking about communication we're talking about ear we're talking about the process we've only started with the first one it is very possible for religious people to not be able to get past that first step and let's say here is empathy assertiveness and respect and i wasn't sure we carried but we've only gotten to empathy and when you don't get past empathy you're not going to have assertiveness and you're not going to have respect and and your best friend really doesn't know whether you even heard what she said right this is such a good example you know what's really interesting is in the book of job is that job loved and prayed for his miserable comforter worthless physician friends even though and this is the point i'd like to make in our world today in societies today and in marriages today there are going to be times when we're not going to be able to get past empathy we're not going to be able to get into this reflective you know conversation where we're empathizing with somebody else but it doesn't mean we stop loving them we can still love people and we need to love people job was captive potentially to bitter thoughts until he prayed for his friends amen and even though he couldn't communicate with them and what he had to do was he had to reject what they were telling him he was he had to reject their projection of who he was and that's something we're going to be dealing with at the end of time the whole world we're told in matthew 24 verse 9 is going to hate god's people for his name's sake the name of god is going to be the centerpiece of the hatred of the world against god's people and we're going to have to reject how we are being labeled by the world right we're going to reject that but at the same time we're going to be loving the world right we're going to love the world the way that christ loved the world and job shows us how to do this he he disagreed with his friends he didn't accept their label he didn't accept the way they labeled him but at the same time he loved them and he prayed for them we can do that all relationships can end in love no matter where we stand with the individuals with the with the people i just have to comment on miserable comforters guys i'm going to give most men are fixers and this advice doesn't just apply to men it's to women as well but if somebody comes to you and they're wanting to talk empathy is to listen to understand their feelings but a lot of men i hear women say this all the time it's like i can't talk to my husband because as soon as i bring something up he said well this is what you need to do in blah blah and the woman feels shut down so here's what i do with a lot of people call me for counsel and i have one lady that's kind of a chicken little everything that happens oh the sky is falling you know it's it's that's her personality and there's times when people are hurting or when they're confused you know what they want they want to be heard so i've learned to say do you want my help on this problem men listen to what i'm saying your wife comes to you with the problem say do you want my help on this problem if she says no just focus on listening okay comfort enough yes so shall we move on to matthew 25 in matthew 25 jesus again is talking about his people but he likens them to virgins and there are wise and there are foolish virgins and the distinction between them is that the foolish don't have something that they need right that's that's the oil so they don't have something that they need and who do they initially turn to to provide what they need their fellow right the other virgins so i think it's so easy for us to turn to each other and to have false expectations your job is to provide for me everything i need no that's not that wasn't what we signed up for right no one can truly provide everything i need but jesus christ and i think that that at least especially initially in our marriage that was a verse that eventually became very meaningful to me and that is the verse that says oh my expectation is of thee you are the one that can fully satisfy and fulfill these needs that i have that i keep looking to another human being to provide for me and i think that's a that in and of itself is going to become dangerous in a relationship in terms of achieving true intimacy so it's a beautiful picture here when you think about it because not a beautiful picture in in the sense of what's happening but in the sense of what we're seeing here because it helps us to prepare for this crisis you know someone people have um done sermons on the virgin the 10 virgins and said it's an oil cry they titled this from an oil crisis you know and that's what it is and that oil represents holy spirit character the and the extra measure is that extra measure of holy spirit character and so right now we can look at this our our viewers can look at this they can say you know what my present crisis whatever it is is reminding me that i can't trust in the government i can't trust in my community i can't trust in my church i can't trust in my church leaders i can't trust in my wife in my husband in my family my trust my expectation must come from the lord he's the only one that can give me that holy spirit character and if we have that holy spirit character guess what we can go through anything great peace have they that love thy law and nothing shall offend them we can go through anything look at the disciples look at the early church look what they went through after they were filled with the holy spirit yes nothing else mattered by exalting jesus christ and this is the picture we're seeing in matthew and now matthew 25 it starts with the 10 versions it goes to the talents both of these parallel parables are expressing this uh relational experience that god wants us to have with him and to take our relationship off people the the negative of the five foolish virgins is it it's revealed in the way they respond to this crisis give us of your oil they're dependent on people they're dependent on others and they're not dependent on god they don't have that relationship with god but you know taking it from the other side i remember i used to read this and when these people would i mean when the five wise virgins said hey go by your own i thought they wouldn't share well you can't share the holy spirit right but i've had to learn that molly used to tell me that there were how did she put it but anyways people who just suck the spiritual life out of it spiritual leeches that's what she called them and she said you just have to love those people from a distance shelly and you know you can't be their fixer have you ever read the book boundaries no oh you got to read that book it's all it's almost all scripture but it's a good book and god is a boundary setting god when people come to us you're talking about you can't always count on your wife or count on the government when people come to us to do something that they should be going to god to do we need to set a boundary and point them in the right direction instead of trying to be their hero and that go ahead no and that is assertiveness so we're empathizing right now so we're listening to the person they're talking to us they're communicating to us we're hearing what they're saying but we also have have to have enough courage to be assertive ourselves and to share an opinion you know after we're all finished after they're all finished after we've heard them and we shared background so what i hear you saying shelley is um you know we also have to have these boundaries and there's a really good book that that you're recommending that we read on boundaries and it's all scriptural this book is scriptural and and we can listen to people but we also have to be careful that they don't suck the spiritual life out of us and i agree with all of that but i want to add to that one other thing you say i'm saying that's assertiveness i've listened to you i've spoken back to you and now i want to share with you something that i think might be helpful in the whole situation and i find that's my weakness so i'm i'm often have been in situations i'm a people pleaser so i've often been in situations where i'm listening i'm empathizing and over the top empathizing just you know so much so that i want to almost step into the situation yes and take everything that person's going through and i found myself in a sense being manipulated to do that at times and but being very uh scarce on assertiveness i'll go home and i'll tell reese about the whole situation well did you tell them this or did you tell them that or did you tell them your opinion or do you say anything did you just no i didn't i probably should have you know i had a specific assertiveness i had a situation very well very well put yeah and i had a situation where somebody kept bringing up a conversation that was over the top and just put me on you know i am a very i'm overly empathetic but this one was one of those things that i don't want to ever hear this again but you can't come right out and say that because you're going to hurt their feelings what i learned to say was this kind of conversation is not conducive to a good work relationship or you could say to your husband honey i feel that when you say such and such this isn't really beneficial to our love relationship so you know and you start you begin to put a boundary there as soon as i did it it went away now that's interesting but you have to do it with respect right absolutely um you know and with expectations i want to clarify that james and i have high expectations for ourselves and for each other and for our relationship we do and i think that pushes us to try to achieve for more you know when you set the bar high you know it's always like you know let's let's work towards it but there's a difference between those kind of expectations and having a false expectation and when you look at jesus christ and the people who rejected him they had false expectations of him and of who he was and who he was to be to them now you're supposed to give me freedom from the romans and feed me when i'm hungry and you know cure all the sick people and that's who you are to be to me and when jesus said ah this is who i am i'm the bread of life and and i'm going to lay down my life for you they rejected his uh who he was right for their own so those false expectations i think that we can enter into marriage with false expectations of what we want the other person to be rather than who they are which is why it's so important to really know your spouse before you get married or just to be willing to accept this is this is the man i married and i'm going to love him for who he is and not try to form him into what i want him to be my false expectations i think that you might need to repeat that because it's the second most important decision they will ever ever make but you know everybody wants to do things their way you know well i know best i know what i need and then you wake up and second most let me explain that because you kind of change thoughts the first the most important decision you'll ever make is accepting christ as your savior but the second most important decision you'll ever make is who you marry yes now let me understand that good but you can put that into practice false expectations are a relationship killer absolutely if if you want someone to be your everything like when people will say oh you complete me no we only are completed in christ but if you look to somebody for the wrong things you actually can it's pushing that person away because they can't meet your ex and this is really significant but again we want to bring it back to this biblical principle we talked about it with job also i think with jesus it's really powerful to recognize as reese shared that jesus did not conform to the expectations of his disciples of the nation of the government of the religious leaders he god gave him a mission he stuck to the mission but he loved his disciples under the end he loved the religious leaders he loved the romans and he prayed for them when they were crucifying him so just because love doesn't mean that you have to conform to people's expectations love doesn't mean that you have to people please you you don't have to but you can still love and what is happening in society today is this word love is being hijacked it's being kidnapped well you need to do this if you really love if you really love your neighbor you should do this if you really love me you're going to do this if you really love this country you're going to do this no we're going to do what god wants us to do we're not going to conform to your expectations and we're not going to people please we're going to do what god has called us to do but we're still going to love you we can actually still do that christians can still love even though they don't conform even they don't people please they can't it's within a loving relationship that we can retain our identity right in my individuality um in a in a relationship in which i want you to be who i want you to be there's manipulation there's coercion there's you know all kinds of dysfunctional ways of relating to the other person and the freedom is gone and that's that's miserable and that's revelation 13 revelation 14. it's the beast the dragon versus the gospel the everlasting gospel you know and the freedom that god gives us to worship or not worship him and those are the principles we're looking at in fact in revelation 13 they're there we're looking at a beast with lamb like horns those lamb like horns are lamb like christ-like principles you know that civil freedom that religious freedom and we see that here in the experiences of god's people in the bible i mean there's experience after experience chapter after chapter that brings out these same principles and all of them culminate in the book of revelation revelation 13 and 14 well matthew 24 happens to be a parallel to the book of revelation it's a last day of event parallel but matthew 25 it it it unpacks the relational dynamic that's actually happening behind the scenes this is really what it's all about you know to gather warmth from the coldness of others to gather courage from their cowardice to love the world as christ loved the world then for us his mission is accomplished to persevere to the end so that our love doesn't wax cold this is this is all relationship language we think it's about a doctrine we think it's about a day that is what brings the crisis but the crisis is about character amen it's about revealing and having it and the place that that happens not leaving single people out of this but you know god gives us uh partners wives husbands to smooth out our rough edges to grow us to mature us you know to to help us to get to that place you know to help me we need help meats i think that to me what's so important is and this is because and in your walk you are becoming more equally yoked all the time so now you got four uh you know got four eyes instead of two and you're looking the same direction and so i mean yeah i just have to somebody from mentone california has written and said how do you get someone to start communicating more when they are an admitted person of few words you see i'll let you take that question i would cherish the few words because at the end of the day you can't make someone who is a person a few words into someone with many words you can ask questions i'm in a comfortable environment where they don't feel like they're being attacked but again how can i truly cherish the man that i married who is a man of few words can i have those few words and they mean a lot to me can your few words be really well chosen and communicate to me some of the things that are really important maybe on this issue or you know expressing your love etc but i would have that open communication i want to accept you fully for who you are a man a few words but i desperately need those few words to count and to register them you know to me and those few words could lead to more words no just don't know you know sometimes we don't want to talk because we feel like we're going to say something that's just going to be used against us we're going to express our hearts we're going to communicate what's on our minds and it's just going to be turned you know as a weapon or whatever so now i'm a lot freer with reese than i used to be because i've gone through experiences like that in the past but this is my wife and i trust her and so now i'm just going to open up my heart and i'm going to tell her and of course the reason why i do that so quickly now is because if i wait it will come out in a burst of anger rather than in just this nice calm communication and i know her initial response might cause me to actually um and so if it comes out and i just said no greasy actually i'm fine i'm not upset you know and whereas before it would have been when i brought up something like this it was because i was upset now it's more like no it's because i want to process before i get to that place be angry sin not don't let the sun go down in your mouth is it wrong to be angry no it's not wrong to be angry why are you angry i'm angry because i felt like the way you just acted or the what you just did it was disrespectful or it was unloving so i'm talking to you about it anger is not something that is wrong if it's if it's against something you feel was unjust or or unloving right but then reecey might say well i didn't know that that you felt that way or i didn't mean to make you feel that way and it's oh okay honey i'm sorry i just yeah i just took it that way and i and so we reconcile that whole process helps us to reconcile whereas if i stuff it and it comes out and then i've got this whole retinue of stuff and she can't remember ten days ago what it was that she did that i you know what i'm saying so we just talk about it right away i try to do that more than i ever have please god i also want to say that um with child raising i remember reading this and when my our children were small and that was catch them doing something good and we're so wow we give a lot of attention to the poor behavior you know that um kind of accentuates it but when you catch someone doing good and you and you reward them for that in whatever way that they experience reward they're more likely to open up like james said or blossom and and so that might be another technique or you know you know that you can try well i don't know just monkey see monkey do they'll learn from that themselves i don't remember who the author was who talked about the love cup but every time if you think about you a bank account let's just say you've got a bank account and this is every time you do something positive for someone you're depositing into their account a word of affirmation uh maybe a act of service for them when you're doing something for that person that bank account that emotional bank account starts filling up but i guarantee you one thing that i've really watched people can do good things and it's ka-ching you do something negative and man that takes away a fistful of stuff all at once it's like all those good things the negative is much more impactful and if somebody if like you were saying with your children if children are only criticized or condemned for their errors if you're not affirming them and if you're not doing something good for them kids get really rebellious it's they get to the point of i can't please mom and dad anyway who cares yeah so i'll just say this and that is i remember telling james that communication uh verbal communication is the best kind of foreplay yeah and so you know that can be uh for amanda understand how that's motivational yeah that's motivational it works right right and the other thing is it's are we done no yep yeah and the other thing is that it's really that risky has done that's been really significant for me is i'll open up which has been a hard thing for me to do over the years i do it more and more now but in the past no and she'll say thank you for sharing that with me even though maybe she was hard or she heard or whatever thank you for opening up and sharing with me and that reaffirms that this was the thing that was i needed to do it was a good thing so those those little things and you know it's really interesting uh jd and shelly how small how little those wedges you know those things that develop into arguments and disagreements how they how little it starts with just a small thing and how little things such a small thing can make such a huge difference in reconciling relationship you know we think it's the big things but many times it's just those little things so tell us about respect we've gone through empathy yes assertiveness yes and now respectfully we've got to get to the ear we want to get this full picture now yes so respect is the thing that breaks down in the course of empathy and assertiveness so let's just say i've been listening to you and you've been saying hey tell us about respect we want to get the full ear thing tell us about respect and i'm you know saying well i don't want to get to respect right now you know um well no tell us no i don't want to do that right i've got something else i want to do and i you know so the discourse my voice raises and then you say wait a minute that's i don't i want to idea no i don't want to do that it's kind of like you know when we argue about you know doctrinal things the voice is raised and we become disrespectful and disrespect is probably the ultimate revelation that the conversation has lacked empathy and assertiveness we actually start acting and talking and relating in ways that are dissing and hurting job and his friends did that and job got into it too he was disrespectful to his friends you know you call someone a worthless physician i mean they've gone to school for eight years they're not you know or you know miserable comforters you know they sat there with with you for a week and they said nothing they sat in silence with you you know so job was losing a little bit of you know his relational equity or um bank account with his friends and and he repented that when god came he's like yeah you know this and he started praying for his friends and that's one of the key things we can do um to get us back on track and start because you know it's hard to mistreat someone it's hard to be disrespectful to someone that you're praying for because you want to see those prayers answered so it starts right there i know that you know every once in a while so i'm gonna call and we'll we're coming from two different schools and obviously we're just at an impasse and so i find myself you know why don't we just agree to disagree that's respect why don't you pray for me and i'll pray for you and it's just it's amazing how that works now if they've got an attitude they're just calling you know because they got up on the wrong side of the bed they may just nope let's get right back in the middle of this you know but that rarely happens because most people they do want to come to some type of agreement even if we disagree yes nothing wrong with disagreeing i think that's what we're talking about here you know yeah definitely part of it what if when you had that conversation on the phone that you talked about where you were a little condescending um what if instead shelly had communicated to you something like oh jd i see what you're saying that you think that that would be a good decision well i can see why you would come to that conclusion have you considered this uh this is another thought you know instead she was like i can't that was not going to work you know that might be a little bit more respectful because she would be validating that you thought this through or you know your perspective and so when i when i try to see things from james's perspective rather than immediately defending myself or saying no that's not what happened you know then i'm entering in i think more to respectful because i'm validating his think his thought process and his experience and you're learning more about each other maybe how to approach this differently or you know maybe say it differently or and there's these are things we can all work on oh absolutely you know it just depends on how long we want to go to school jd jd has a great line that he has taught me and i'm using it when someone comes to him in an argumentative fashion and they they've got what they've got to say and they're or they're talking about someone or they want his opinion and a lot of times he'll say we just don't have enough information yet that just silences people because they realize yeah we don't have enough information and it's respectful you know if they're asking his opinion he'll say well i don't know we just don't have enough information yet and he just extracted them from this quicksand that they're trying to draw him into it's interesting yeah and i see that in are you going to say something i see that in in the book of daniel and here's another biblical i think example of you know how we can maintain the love in the relationship where we have maybe this potential for major breakout so daniel chapter one uh daniel's in babylon and he's been given a portion of the king's food and the king's drink and he purposes in his heart you know he can't do this it's conscientiously he can't do this he can't take this you know this nutrition from babylon and so uh he tells mel czar now melzar and daniel had a loving relationship yes they did they had a loving relationship but guess what they completely disagreed about this issue right completely disagreed and melzar reasons with daniel and he says daniel you're going to get sick if you don't eat this food it's going to make you sick right it's and not only that you're going to endanger my life before the king so my life's at risk here if you don't eat this food and you're gonna get sick and and but the loving relationship prevails it has the empathy they're listening to each other it has the assertiveness daniel says well how about try me for 10 days see daniel's and say oh i guess no try me for 10 days and by the way melsar says all your other friends aren't doing this look at all these other guys are eating this food everyone else is doing it you should do it too your whole church is doing this you should do it too and daniel says try me for 10 days that's the assertiveness and melzar comes back with this respect daniel respects melzar melzar respects daniel he gives him this test the reason i thought of this is because you said you know jd will sometimes say we don't have enough time yet we need nothing information yet let's see if this works so males are okay let's see if this works and so he gives testimonies and sure enough faces are fatter you know they're pleasure and it he proves himself he's following god he's he's completely surrendered to god his he wants to do things god's way and god's way and god blesses that and of course we know the rest of the story and that test came before any of the other tests you know to worship the image to go into the furnace whatever it was so a lot of times the way we relate do we have these loving relationships we know melzar was babylonian you know and complete wasn't even part of daniel's little church you know whatever completely out here the captain of the king's guard etc right so he's in a governmental position and he could have just come down on babel on daniel but he had this loving relationship with danny and vice versa daniel must have had a loving attitude toward melzar for that relationship to develop so just because we're from different cultures or different levels of you know government versus religion we can still have that loving relationship that can foster the ear the empathy the assertiveness and the respect and even if we're from different political parties and even if we're from difficult different political parts that's good okay so then the next point i think that we want to get to before our time runs out is it on the parable of the talents and here's another group of people that are differentiated those who have increased and improved their talents and those who didn't right and i think that that has a lot to say about relationships the talents reminded me of first corinthians 12 in which there are gifts of the spirit and how i was thinking how we're talking about expectations and that there are definitely people who have received more talents than another and there may be as women you know we have high expectations what we want in a husband maybe we want them to be smart and i'm educated a good provider and good-looking and athletic and adventuresome and romantic right so we want them to have all these talents in one um in one man and you would say yeah there are some five talent men out there and if that's if all of them are super important to you then you better marry a five talent man right um but within a relationship i was thinking how important it is that we bring our talents that talents used are talents that increase and that profit that's the word that's used in that parable and so if i want my and profit means increase or growth right and if i want to grow it's an investment so if i want to grow and experience increase in my relationship then i'm going to bring the talents that god's given me into into ministering to my husband you've heard of the cobblers you know children don't have shoes or the carpenter's home is never done because we're doing so good out there but what about in the home and what if i bring my best the best of my talents into ministering to that person or to my kids or whatever then there's going to be profit that's the promise you know as i and and mutual right and for then for james to value me for the talents that i do bring not the talents that i don't have and i think it's really easy for us to say ah i notice all those talents that he doesn't have kind of goes back to the um am i going to reward him for the good that he you know that i do see but we're so inclined to notice the deficiencies rather than no this is the man i married and these are his talents and he's using them in the relationship to minister to our in our home then i think there's going to be profit and growth and intimacy that's kind of the end goal and you know if if there's somebody out there and they will just listen to these tools they can certainly build on them oh yeah i mean how many years could they do something else positive if they just started off with this and then you also the the end result or one of the end results could be without following e-a-r they may never realize that they have a five-talent husband that's good i mean they're some of these gifts could be so well hidden because of the dysfunctionalism that we come from that i mean this is good stuff well let's take that into the parable so you remember the servant that had one talent and what did you do with it nothing buried it okay so it was never discovered it was never used why did he bury it he buried it because he had a misunderstanding of god's character you're a hard person well if we come across that way in our relationships as a hard person we can cause people to bury their talents you see that so you know of course he had misunderstood god's character but we sometimes misrepresent god's character and sometimes the way that people see god is through us and therefore talents are buried because of the way that we're projecting the character of god we're we as christians have a huge obligation to this world to reveal what god is really like and to help people unearth those those talents that they're burying and use them and let them grow and be multiplied i i just have to say this i remember my sister came to visit us when we were living in texas and i heard her on the phone about the third night she was on the phone with her husband and she said ah you ought to hear them it's honey would you please honey this thank you this no darling and she said it's disgusting she said they are more polite to each other than they would be to a stranger so when she came out i said don't you think you ought to be you know isn't the home supposed to be the the place where you find the most comfort well a couple of nights later i heard her on the phone with her husband she said honey we ought to give this a try she said this is really pretty amazing but the point i'm making is that our homes should be a reflection of the love of the godhead i mean they aren't in this you know there's no competition among them they're not in some knockdown drag out and if i can't be more polite to my husband than i would be to a stranger something's wrong it's a it's a beautiful picture and it's a biblical picture we find it everywhere we even find it in the next parable was it a parable about the sheep and the goats yeah the sheep and the goats what are the qualities that separate the sheep from the goats matthew 25 matthew 25 what is jesus list as the qualities that differentiate a sheep he's just given now this is the third so you got the ten virgins then you've got the talents of the servants that are given and now you've got the sheep and the goats and and every time the theme is the same and all of this is building on matthew 24 which is good is talking about you know what's really going to count in the end of time when all these things happen we think what's going to count is knowing the signs of the times and look what's happening and this is fulfillment of prophecy but all of that is taking us to a revelation of what matthew 25 is talking about can i rewind real quick yes so um you were talking about what highlighted the um servants that didn't use the servant who didn't use his talent um but jesus also said he was lazy and so you know you were saying some men might be going like oh that sounds like too much work um well marriage is an investment you know before you make you're investing and it is work so that laziness can sometimes anyway i just saw the word lazy and i was like oh we got to highlight that right yeah there's a lot of lazy people out there now this is interesting because when you ask what separate the sheep and the goats i would never have thought to say this but what separates the sheep and the goats is jesus tells them i was hungry you gave me food i was thirsty you gave me drinks so the sheep are the ones who are helping to take care of the other right relationship with people they've got and the goats are those who are takers they're takers they're the the leeches they're sucking up all the spirit spiritual righteous they're not givers yeah well and i think that when jesus comes to them and they said ah you're blessed because you did all these things and they're like when did we do them because this was just how they did life yes this is who i am in my relationship it's not a oh it's our anniversary and so you know i mean this is how we do life i'm going to consistently minister to the people who i draw close to and i think that that jesus is asking of us to draw close to each other you know those who fulfill jesus prayer what an incredible um opportunity we have to actually answer jesus prayer for unity we're always asking him to answer our prayers you know please please please please but that we have an opportunity to answer his prayer for we would be one and how is that accomplished well if i'm daily consistently ministering to the needs of my fellow man and drawing close to them as i see those needs then it's how i do life it's not this some big random oh last year i went to the prison and it was you know i'm saying this was just i minister to people and i'm outward facing um in my in my relationship with my husband so it's not just about me myself and i and my needs and if he's outward facing and it's not just about him himself and his needs then we have this beautiful interchange and that doesn't mean we don't address our needs but you see what i'm saying it's good to me you're you're trying to improve your needs to me that's that's what i say i think it's being healthy and this is not natural this is not what we tend toward naturally as human beings we're broken we're fallen we're dysfunctional so we've been married for 32 years we just celebrated our 32nd wedding anniversary we've done programs on 3abn we did one program three beyond a relationship some years ago so you know a little bit of our journey and what we've gone through and it's not natural for us to forgive to reconcile to talk to give and take you know sometimes we get into a marriage relationship just like we get into a working relationship what can i get out of this how little can i give and how much can i get can't wait till i um you know retire can't wait till i but christian ministry is completely different isn't it jd i mean here you are right just working and giving and what what does it look like to stop doing that it looks like in the life like what would i do you know because that's the way we're built as christians that's the way christ was built so when reeci says they're just doing what they do that's what they do it's not like they're making this special significant effort but at times we have to make huge surrenders like giving to god whatever it is that is causing us and then as we do that there's a lot of times we get in the wrong area we're like we're focusing on what we need to do no we need to focus on the surrender to god and then once we do that then the fruit comes out then we see the result you know as you say over and over again we are surrendering to a covenant keeping god yeah he's the one keeping the covenant he's the one doing the work in us he's the one working this out our job is just to surrender to him i have to just quickly share god gave me i asked him for a new definition to surrender because so many people don't understand what surrender is and i tried for years to tell him what it was and it didn't really register so god gave me three steps number one we've got to know god you can't surrender to a god you don't know if you know him as a god of love but number two it is stop and submit stop resisting his love and submit to his authority that surrender means you're going to line up under the authority of of god and the third step is yield to the leading of the holy spirit surrender is not difficult you know we god fills us with the spirit if we follow the spirit i mean he's going to work in us to will and to do god's good pleasure but now real quick because we've only got a few minutes left let me ask you this question if you're reading these books you've got a list of books here that we've talked about do you sit down and read them together somebody out here is going hey i want my marriage to grow i want to make that investment how did you come to this do you sit down and read through a chapter together how did or read it apart what did you do well for me i need my own copy oh absolutely i gotta mark it up i gotta write you know so uh what works for us most of the time is that reese gets a copy and i get a copy but i i don't know how many we've worked together it's the one book but i think most of the time it's my copy and her copy and or you know like we've had one book at times where that i'm reading it i'm just sharing with reese where she's got a book and she's sharing with me but it depends on the couple but what i mean is do you do you even if you have your own copy do you sit down go chapter by chapter together or you just just read it separately and come together there's a book right now that we're reading together and we don't do it every night but we're like before we get in bed we're like hey you want to read a story and this one book someone sent to us and it was it's on um love is a verb i think something like that and it's just love stories of people who maybe had challenging experiences and how they manifested godly qualities and came out of it closer stronger more intimate and we've enjoyed that so we do that just before we go to bed we read that chapter and there's been times when we've been driving in cars like from california to oregon and we read the ear book doing that you know we just sat in the car and i'd be reading to him and so james and i aren't like formal in terms of oh it's always one way but we definitely find ways of reading it together sharing thoughts um discussing discussing it and what's what's to me the fruit because everybody wants that sweet fruit the fruit is now that you're getting to share what you've been studying to others and this will be a very blessed time to tobago sabbath i mean because you're going to get to go over some of this stuff and and uh to me it's good yeah i told reese because i was i wanted to share with her an outline and i said it's on the 23rd biblical fundamental belief and that's what we're going through we're going through the belief but i but she said well so do you want me there what are we because you know this is very i said no i want you to fill in i want you to connect the dots you know i want us to talk certainly freely about some of this stuff so that we can share the verses and then put some filler in there [Music] i can't believe it quick we've got one minute quick final thought go ahead you first i just think it's so important to remember that god is the author of marriage and that when we're looking for relationships and that when we're looking to grow or improve them that we turn to him he has everything we need to make it the beautiful thing that he designed for it to be and i was thinking about you know joseph and he went through some trauma you know just as a lot of us have done in our lives you know dysfunctional family situations and before his brothers ever came back into his presence he forgave them and so i don't think forgiveness and working through our past or our difficulties are is incumbent on the interrelationship with another person what i'm saying is is that god can heal us and god can cause us to forgive people even if they're not in our presence doesn't mean we don't necessarily test that relationship if it does come back joseph tested his brothers but we need this forgiveness and this reconciliation that comes directly from god toward other people even if they're not in our space oh james and reecey thank you for sharing from your hearts and your experience and the wonderful books that you read just remember for you at home were created in god's image god is love and he is trying the holy spirit romans 5 5 says he pours his love into our heart by the power of the holy spirit so that's why we need to surrender and follow our lord and then our relationships will be growing our prayer for you is the grace of our lord and savior jesus christ the love of the father and the fellowship of the holy spirit will be yours always god bless you [Music] you

Channel: Three Angels Broadcasting Network (3ABN)

Views: 10,389

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Keywords: Christian Relationships, relationship talks, 3abn, end-time events

Id: hJ6sLN5Dmco

Length: 115min 30sec (6930 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 10 2021