Unhealthy Relationships | Leslie Vernick

so so so so so so so so do so so well good morning gt church and wherever you are come on would you join us for a time of worship this morning as we get god praise rise my soul remember this he took my sin and he buried no longer i could live now jesus come my is is foreign come on of this for your glory come on you got it all we see how jesus lives in me for i was dead oh come on come on church can we give him praise this morning come on can you sing with me the weapon may be far but it won't prosper when the darkness falls it won't freeze this right here cause they god i sir knows only how to trial oh my god he will never a victory about yeah there's power in the mighty name of jesus every war he wages he will come on it's a declaration that i'm not backing down from any giant foreign foreign foreign come on every battle we sing today come on that should encourage you today you take what the you take what the enemy meant for evil and you turn foreign if you lost here you know foreign foreign foreign for you alone are are good of my prayers come on let's sing of that hope this morning that is jesus christ come on don't you love to worship there is a song i know my soul is my confidence in you come on if you don't know it it's easy to pick up his name is jesus my savior's cry i said this sinner free hope hasn't it his name is jesus oh christ be free i have been salvation flame christ undefeated trampled the grave is is still be a day my whole comfy now hold me in glory your face i'll see my pain no more my fear will see i bow my i fix my cries my key oh cry my is my savior's cross come on hope has an egg and his name is jesus christ oh christ be praised oh christ be praying i have been glory so jesus this morning we recognize that you are our only hope our true savior my jesus my lord my king god we come to you this morning expecting god expecting you to blow through everything to reach us and here we are though fully surrendered to you fully surrendered to this moment quieting down all the noises of this world and saying lord we need you we want more of you we long to be with you so would you meet us in this moment lord in your name we pray amen and amen hey church family welcome to gt i hope you have all had a great week you're in for a treat today we have a special guest with us and you won't want to miss a single second so grab your coffee and settle in if this is your first time worshiping with us welcome you chose a great day to join us and if you've been around for a while we are so glad that you're back please take a quick second to fill out the connect card on our gt app or by clicking the link below it's a great way to make sure that we have your most up-to-date contact information so you don't miss a single thing you know our kids and student ministries teams have been working extra hard harder than ever really to provide families with some incredible resources to grow together in your faith at home it's always been our mission to partner with parents because we've always believed that you are the number one spiritual influence in your child's life so i hope that you're getting our weekly emails and following our gt kids facebook group so that you have access to everything that you need to have church at home and so that your kids can connect to a virtual small group hangout on zoom and for those of you with 6th through 12th graders i hope your students are connecting to virtual group small group hangouts as well and joining pastor scott naugle for our student ministry services on sundays at 9 00 and 11 a.m on our gt church youtube channel these are just a few ways for your kids to stay connected make some new friends and grow in their faith in jesus another great way for you to get connected here at gt and learn more about what we believe is to join our holy spirit class that starts this wednesday night pastor scott kramer will be teaching us who the holy spirit is and what the role of the holy spirit is in our lives the six week class including q a with our pastors is taking place online every wednesday night at 7 pm you can learn more and register for the class on our website so next week we're starting a new series called poured out you know when jesus gave his disciples the great commission to go and make disciples of all nations it wasn't just a mission for them it's a mission that he is still calling each of us to be a part of today this mission includes our neighborhoods and communities but all this also goes far beyond that god wants the whole world to know him and follow him in this series we're going to hear from some of my favorite missionaries and we'll explore what it means to be poured out for christ and how to play our part in fulfilling the great commission both across the street and around the world so i'm excited for this upcoming series because it will serve as a great reminder that the church is not a building it's us it's you and me being the hands and feet of jesus as we share the good news with people everywhere you'll also be inspired as you learn about all of the local and global projects we've been able to accomplish due to your faithful generosity we are a part of a church that loves our community and the world well so as we prepare to receive and pray for this morning's offering i want to read to you one of my favorite scriptures from the old testament in the book of isaiah chapter 52 verse 7. it says how beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the messengers who bring good news the good news of peace and salvation the news that the god of israel reigns so let's pray as we receive this morning's offering heavenly father we are so thankful that you have chosen us to be your messengers of the good news of peace and salvation through jesus christ this world needs that more than ever right now help us to live up to the calling that you have given to each of us help us to bring your supernatural peace and unconditional love into this world help us to clothe ourselves in humility and kindness father we ask you to bless and multiply this offering so that your salvation will continue to reach people to all the ends of the earth in jesus name we pray amen friends i don't think he'll disagree with me that life is hard right now and people are on edge we are in the midst of crisis and things are stressful due to the circumstances surrounding the pandemic the political climate in our country racial tensions and injustices and all of these things are causing unbelievable tensions in our relationships the reality is that loneliness depression anxiety suicide and domestic violence are at an all-time high so today's message on maintaining and repairing relationships is both timely and practical and comes to us by a leading expert in the field of emotional and relational health leslie vernick is a popular speaker she's an author a licensed clinical social worker and relationship coach she's the author of seven books including the best selling the emotionally destructive relationship seeing it stopping it surviving it leslie's been a featured guest on focus on the family radio family life today with dennis rainey and moody midday connection just to name a few so we are honored to have her with us today but i think the thing that makes her extra qualified to speak on the topic of healthy relationships is that she's been married to her husband howard for 43 years listen at the end of her message we knew that you'd be wanting more so we invite you to join leslie and i tonight at 6 p.m where leslie will discuss some controversial topics regarding relationships including what to do and not to do and how to help if you or someone you know is in an emotionally destructive or physically abusive relationship so i really hope to see you back here tonight at 6 pm well hello i wish i could be there in person with all of you i used to live in allentown for over 30 years and i was really looking forward to coming back for a visit especially because i miss philadelphia cheesecake sandwiches we can't get them here in phoenix although i don't miss the gray skies the cold and the snow phoenix is sunny 95 of the time and although it's hot it's about 115 today i'll take the sun and the heat any day over the cold and the snow and the gray anyway today i want to talk with you about relationships our culture is experiencing an unprecedented change we're full of chaos and uncertainty politically things are scary and with the coven 19 virus we're just not sure about what's going to happen in the next few weeks few months as we move forward things are hard and life for many people is different than it's ever been before we feel more isolated more scared more uncertain and maybe even more crabby than we usually do and our relationship sometimes especially our marriage and our family relationships can feel the stress and the strain of all this uncertainty whether it's in our finances whether it's in our job our kids not going back to school our nation's infrastructure and maybe even not being able to visit people we love because they're sick and we can't get into the nursing home or we can't travel and maybe we're also getting a little tired of being together with the people in our home as much and we can't seem to get out so today what i want to talk with you about is relationships not just marriage but about all relationships because believe it or not the quality of your relationships and the ability for you to make and maintain relationships is absolutely essential to your long-term happiness and well-being the longest study that was ever done was conducted by harvard university on what makes people happy they studied the graduating class from 1938 to 1940 for over 75 years each year they would survey these graduates to ask them what made you happy and they found something astounding it wasn't those who made the most money who had the most career accolades whether phd's or nobel peace prizes or books written it was those who were able to make and maintain lasting loving relationships over their lifespan those were the people that were the happiest not the richest they were all smart not the most successful but those who had good loving connections with one another so they found out that there were two important elements to that first you had to know how to make relationships most people could do that pretty easily but the second is that they had to learn how to keep relationships because there are a lot of things that we do that mess our relationships up because even if you're from harvard you are smart but you're not perfect there are no perfect people there are no perfect moms or dads there are no perfect men or women there are no perfect husbands or wives or children we mess up our relationships and so what do we do so that we don't get in our own way and wreck the very things that harvard says brings life happiness health and well-being to your life you know the bible tells us that we're fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of almighty god but we're also broken since the sin of adam and eve entered into our world we don't function like god originally designed us to and because we're broken and sinful and immature at times we sometimes do and say things that mess our relationships up it started right from the beginning with adam and eve moved on to cain and abel and deteriorated ever since so we also in our relationships have to learn not just how to love but how to admit our mistakes how to deal with our pain our emotions like our anger and our hurt as well as our temptations in a way that doesn't push love away or hurt people that we love now since having healthy and happy relationships is the most important thing that you can learn to do in order to have a life well lived you're in the right place right now and so by the end of our time together i want to make you two promises first you'll know what you need to do to have a healthy long-term relationship with someone and second you'll know what to do to fix that relationship when you might do something stupid or sinful that messes that relationship up now the bible confirms to us how important loving connections are in ecclesiastes he says this if one falls down his friend can help him up but pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up also if two lie down together they will keep warm but how can one keep warm alone god's plan for human beings is all about loving connection jesus tells that all of the ten commandments can be boiled unto two love god and love others so today what i want to teach you are the essential qualities the personal qualities that you need to have in order for you to maintain and repair loving connections now imagine with me that you or maybe you and your wife or you and your husband if you're married you have this opportunity to build this dream house maybe three thousand to four thousand square feet big beautiful windows hardwood floors throughout three tiled bathrooms double sinks and top of the line garage with a workshop inside a beautiful kitchen with great appliances granite countertops just a perfect house anything that you could want is in that house you also live in a large yard with gardens and grass and trees can you picture it imagine what it would feel like if you were able to have that house if you were able to live in that house if you were gifted that house what does it feel like i imagine you'd feel proud and happy peaceful safe and secure and let's say from the first day that you moved in you made a gigantic assumption a fatal assumption you assumed that this wonderful feeling that you have right now in this house would last forever without you having to do any more work in fact you're saying to yourself heck i've worked for six months building this house i don't have to do anything more it's finished it's great it's beautiful i'm done right wrong so let's use our imagination again so you've moved into this beautiful house and after a few months maybe about four to six months you start taking it for granted and you stop washing the dirty dishes at night and now they've piled up all over your beautiful quartz countertops you don't wipe down the stove every night like you used to or take the fingerprints off the fridge you know you've stopped cooking dinner because it's unappealing to go into your kitchen anymore it's kind of stinky and dirty and unbearable sometimes you haven't mopped the floors for over three months and you've never cleaned the windows the last six months and you've sometimes forgotten to take out the garbage on garbage days so it's piling up in the garage that beautiful garage that had a workshop in it but you don't want to go in it now because it smells kind of stinky and you've been really busy this summer so you haven't been able to water your lawn or weed your garden and you realized two weeks after you moved into this new house that you had a roof leak but you never got around to fixing it so now you have water damage all over the second floor on your beautiful wood floors imagine just one year later after moving into this beautiful house that you haven't maintained or repaired very well what would it feel like to live there for you would it feel happy secure safe peaceful or would it feel chaotic messy dirty maybe kind of stinky and maybe inside you'd feel irritated frustrated stressed out and unhappy and maybe you're thinking to yourself i want to move out i want to find a new house but friend the problem isn't the house it was great at one time the problem is you you've made a gigantic assumption that's wrong and if you don't change this mindset that you have getting a new house will only postpone what will happen again you see there's a law of nature that says this what we don't maintain deteriorates even if it starts out wonderful if we don't maintain something it always gets worse without maintenance everything deteriorates including our relationships imagine if you bought a new car and you maintained it really well and it looks beautiful after one year but look at this amazing car it's an old car but it still looks great because it was well maintained but what about this car who would want to drive in that car because it hasn't been maintained which one would you rather have good long-term relationships don't just happen any more than a clean house just happens or a good marriage just happens it takes work and much of that work is regular maintenance work and repairing things when they break down in a timely way so that things don't get worse so let's start with maintenance how would your body look if you never showered or shaved your legs or your face for a few days or weeks what was your hair like when we couldn't get into the salons couldn't get it colored you couldn't get it cut and we looked pretty ragged didn't we what if you skipped brushing your teeth for a few days or didn't put deodorant on you see no matter how lovely something starts out it doesn't stay that way whether it's a new house a new haircut a clean body a new marriage a new friendship if you don't tend to it over time it will start to lose its loveliness when i lived in orefield i had three acres and we had beautiful gardens perennial gardens and one summer i was so busy trying to meet a deadline for a book i never got out back i never ever went out back my whole summer to look at this one perennial garden in the back i just figured i'd get to it when i got to it well labor day we were gonna have a labor day picnic and so i went out to see what i needed to do and i couldn't believe it the weeds won they were taller than i was and i could barely see any flowers through the entire bed of weeds the weeds won in just six weeks of missing maintenance the weeds won and they threatened to destroy the garden so what i want to do right now is share with you five personal qualities that you must have or develop if you want to know how to maintain as well as repair good relationships now in the church we don't often talk about personal qualities because we make a gigantic another assumption that if someone's a christian they have these qualities but let me just tell you as a christian counselor and relationship coach many people do not have these qualities and so i want you to know what they are so that if you're missing some of them maybe that will help you understand why your relationships aren't working as well as they could god has you here this morning so he can show you what you need to learn in order for you to have good relationships because they are essential to your happiness your maturity and your long-term well-being so the first quality is healthy self-awareness just like you won't maintain your own body as an adult if you don't have some healthy self-awareness that you stink or that you need a shower or that your teeth are dirty or they're decayed and you need some maintenance or repairs you won't be able to have good relationships if you don't have some healthy self-awareness now self-awareness is not unhealthy navel gazing it's not self-absorption it's not thinking more highly of yourself than you should it's not spending all of your time looking at yourself on the inside or the outside that's self-absorption and it can be very unhealthy but let me define for you what healthy self-awareness is first you know who you are you know what you feel what you think what you stand for what you like what you don't like what you stand against you know what your personal values are what you're willing to live for maybe even what you're willing to die for you also know what your strengths are and your weaknesses what you're good at what you're not so good at even the apostle paul tells us that we're to be self-aware before we take communion because if there's something in between our relationship with god before we take communion an unworthy way we need to make things right and so in order to do that he says examine yourself and why is this important for good relationships well first you can't let someone else know you if you don't know you one of the blessings of a good loving relationship whether it's friendship or marriage is that someone knows the real you and they still love you warts and all right and if you don't express who you really are but you're actually lying and pretending about who you really are then you can't possibly have good relationships you see unhealthy and damaging relationships come about when you're pretending to be someone that you're not you're pretending to be spiritual when you have no interest in that or pretending you like something that you don't like or that you don't like something that you really do like you say yes to things that you really want to say no to and you're not honest either with yourself or with other people another way relationships get damaged is when you're one way in public and you're another way at home and that doesn't make for a good home life because the one who's at home is seeing you be a whole different person outside of the home and they're not sure who the real is you and they're not sure who the real you is and trust gets broken you're not honest with them and maybe you're not even honest with yourself so let's press pause and just ask yourself some personal questions do you know you do you know what you think do you know what you feel not what you're supposed to think not what you're supposed to feel or what other people expect you to think or feel but do you know what you think and feel even if you don't like what you think and feel do you know what they are do you know what you want when your good friend your spouse asks you what are you feeling do you know can you express can you communicate with words what that is can you recognize and own your own strengths and your own weaknesses do you know what you're good at and what you're not so good at as a parent as a spouse as an employee and if you don't know and someone like your spouse or your boss or even a good friend should point them out to you can you hear them can you receive that feedback you see much like a mirror helps us become more self-aware oh my face is all dirty you're i've got something in my teeth our spouses and our friends people who are close to us can help us become more self-aware by pointing out things to us that maybe we haven't noticed so the question is do you listen or do you get defensive and angry shut down here's something important for you to learn god has put particular people in your life i call them truth tellers it's your spouse for sure it's also your children maybe your boss your best friend your pastor your sister your mother your counselor your coach he's put these people in your life to help you to mature and have greater self-awareness because we don't always see ourselves accurately the bible tells us the heart is deceitful above all else and desperately wicked sometimes we don't see our good points often we don't see our weaknesses and our blind spots we don't see how we come across to other people and when they try to tell us hey i think you're being rude or i don't think you're hearing my side of the story you keep interrupting me do we listen can we receive that feedback or do we ignore it you see when someone gives us feedback these are often maintenance warnings our relationship needs maintenance you need some maintenance and if you heard some bumping noises in your car today if you were driving to the store perhaps the oil light came on flashing check oil your car is giving you some feedback hey owner we need some maintenance if you don't tend to me we're going to have a problem what would you do would you pay attention or would you ignore it my daughter amanda went to kutztown university and we had a little car for her to go back and forth and her oil light came on check oil check oil check oil but she figured to herself hey the car is running pretty smooth i don't need to really do this until i go home and my dad can do it for me unfortunately the car couldn't wait and the engine froze so she tried to put oil in it too late when you ignore maintenance things break down i see couples doing this all the time in my experience it's often the female the wife who's usually a more accurate gauge of the status of the relationship and if she's screaming to you guys we need maintenance we need maintenance we need maintenance let me give you a piece of really valuable advice it is a whole lot cheaper and easier to do maintenance than it is to do repair work on a relationship or a car or a house an oil change would have cost amanda maybe 50 a new engine was 500 often in a moment of crisis a frantic husband or wife will give me a telephone call and say they're gone they've left and i'll say well is this the first time you've become aware that there's a problem in your relationship no but i i didn't really think they meant it i didn't really see them as being serious about it they were screaming maintenance maintenance maintenance maintenance and now the marriage is broken and all of a sudden you want to do maintenance and maintenance doesn't work anymore when you put oil in a car where an engine is frozen it's too late for maintenance and when you ignore maintenance and now you have repair work that's much harder and much more costly to repair so if you let your marriage or other important relationship deteriorate or you do things that break the safety or foundations of trust in that marriage for example you lie to someone over and over again you cheat you have addictions that damage trust and safety abusive actions that hurt people that you say you love you need some repair work in your relationships understand that you need some self-awareness and some repair work in your relationship and repair work takes a long time and it doesn't always work to repair the relationship like would have been had you not let it deteriorate to this point self-awareness who i am how do i come across to other people is an important personal quality if you want to have healthy relationships daniel goldman a social psychologist writes this he says the range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice and because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there's little we can do to change until we notice how our failing to notice shapes our thoughts and our deeds so if you're failing to notice something and your spouse is trying to point it out to you that's helping you become more self-aware which is critical to having good relationships the second person of quality is the ability to control yourself now let's be real here how many of you in a moment of anger or frustration or temptation have done something you truly regret either personally or professionally losing control of yourself can be very damaging to your reputation to your career and your relationships especially those at home your marriage your kids you can lose your temper and lose your job you can give into temptation and have an affair or watch porn and lose your relationship break trust in a moment of foolishness you can do something terribly damaging to the people that you say you love you can let your anger control you and say ugly horrible things to your children to your parents to your spouse and now what you've done damage and you have a mess to clean up the bible reminds us that reckless words pierce like a sword and with their words the godless destroy their friends this is your friends not your enemy when someone in your life your child your spouse your boss your employee your neighbor is not doing what you think they should do or what you want them to do how do you handle that can you control the words that come out of your mouth and the tone in which you say things when you're hurt angry frustrated or disappointed or do you just flip out and say cruel things and then expect everything to go away because you're sorry or maybe you withdraw and sulk or avoid but you seethe with resentment inside what effect do you think these reactions will have on your relationships long term the bible tells us life and death is in the power of our tongue and so if we don't recognize and have self-awareness and control ourselves in that self-awareness i'm really angry right now we cannot maintain or keep good relationships the third ingredient is empathy empathy means when someone we love gets hurt or feels hurt or any other emotion we pay attention we don't ignore it we don't invalidate it why are you feeling that way that's stupid we don't minimize it empathy means that you show compassion when someone's in pain or has another emotion even if you don't understand why they're feeling what they're feeling you see when we say we care but we don't show we care what happens is you break the fundamental safety and trust in any relationship that's going to be long term that you care about me compassion for other people is one of the marks of love and empathy is the ability to walk in someone else's shoes and show compassion and care and that's a basic requirement for any healthy long-term relationship let me ask you a question where you're going to practice some self-awareness right now what would it be like for someone to be married to you would you like to be married to you would you like to be parented by someone like you or lives next door to someone like you or work with someone like you would you feel happy safe valued loved respected jesus tells us that we're to treat other people like we would like to be treated and so empathy puts yourself in someone else's shoes and treats that person like you would like to be treated if you were in those situations right now and when we regularly fail at empathy disconnection is a result and we can't maintain or repair our relationships the fourth important ingredient is some social skills and two essential ones that you have to have if you're going to keep a relationship going long term is one the ability to express your thoughts and your feelings in a constructive healthy way and the second one is your ability to resolve conflict and deal with tension and anger in a non-destructive way in your relationships now some people don't naturally possess good social skills perhaps you're beginning to see some of your own limitations right now you're becoming more self-aware that you never learned good social skills in your family of origin and maybe you might even feel a little embarrassed to admit that right now or ashamed that you don't know how to do these things however if you really agree with me and with god that loving relationships are absolutely crucial to your well-being then it's time to learn it's time for you to learn these things so that you can maintain and repair the relationships that god puts in your life and that's why this very last personal quality that i'm going to talk about this last element is absolutely crucial for you to maintain and repair your relationships especially in marriage and family life and that is humility the ability to admit you don't know the ability to admit that you might need help that you might not be right the ability to listen to other people's feedback requires some humility high performance sports coach todd herman says that high performers are not afraid to look at the replay every professional athlete looks at the replay of their football game of their basketball game other hockey game of their baseball game so they can see what they did right and they can also listen to the coach telling them what they did wrong or how they can improve what they did so they can be better so they can mature as an athlete what are the benefits of feedback it gives you great clarity and it keeps you from making the same mistake over and over and over again looking at the replays of a bad conversation or even a past bad relationship allows you to see your own patterns your own habits your own behaviors and thinking mindsets that didn't work and aren't working in your relationships my pillow founder mike lindell says and he himself is a former cocaine addict we don't learn anything if we don't learn from our mistakes if you watch the replay of painful incidents in past relationships and you listen to feedback from others especially people who are close to you who know you well it enhances your self-awareness remember the conclusion of the harvard study was twofold the first is you need to know how to find and have good relationships but the second is you have to have the humility the self-awareness to recognize the things that you do that mess those relationships up and know what you need to do to repair them hebrews warns us let us encourage one another day after day less any one of us become hardened self-deceived by the deceitfulness of sin we don't always see things as they really are we don't always see things that are true therefore if you've been in the habit of ignoring or minimizing or invalidating or devaluing other people's feedback especially those people right in your life right in your own home or in your own workplace or if you tend to blame others for your own poor coping skills or your failures or your mistakes and you blame it it's your fault i acted that way you're not seeing yourself truthfully and you will push love away you will not be able to keep or repair relationships and you will be the poor for it god has your most important people in your life to help you not only be happy but to learn to be holy healthy to grow and to mature and to self-correct when what you're doing is pushing those relationships away when your spouse or even your child gives you some constructive criticism or feedback and you refuse to listen then you can't grow and you can't change how many of you parents have heard your kids say you're yelling at me you're scaring me my kids used to say that to me once in a while and when they said that i'd listen i don't want to be a scary parent i want to be a good parent not a scary parent when your wife gives you feedback guys that your zipper's down aren't you grateful for that or gals when your husband gives you feedback that you've got lipstick in your teeth or even bad breath sure it hurts our egos to hear that but we're grateful because we know they have our back they don't want us to go out in public and make a fool of ourselves but in the same way in our relationships when someone gives you feedback they're not trying to harm you it might hurt your ego to hear it but they're trying to help you mature and be the best version of yourself the person that god calls you to be and when you refuse to listen you won't be able to maintain or repair your relationships because you'll never be able to see or admit that you were wrong now because so many of us grew up in unhealthy families including myself my parents divorced when i was eight years old over 50 years ago when single parents were rare and nobody i knew was divorced and i didn't grow up learning these skills i've had to learn them through the mature people in my life in my church and through the hard knocks of consequences and maybe you have to learn it that way too but if you can learn it through what i'm saying to you today and talk about it in your family you will be the richer for it but let me just take a minute to share with you just the basics of what a healthy marriage looks like because many of us grow up seeing unhealthy marriages a healthy marriage is a partnership not a slave master relationship not a dictator relationship it's a partnership where both have value and contribute together to make this relationship work conflict which of course happens you're two different people but it involves solving a problem not attacking each other and damages if you're married for any length of time are going to happen just like if you live in a house for any length of time things are going to go wrong the toilet's going to break down the roof's going to leak you're going to have termites you fix them you don't ignore them and they're fixed in a timely way and they're repaired through confession and restitution and consistent change you see it's not just sin that damages relationships it's our lack of self-awareness of that sin it's our unwillingness to see it's our willingness to confess it's our lack of humility to see that we need to change some things unacknowledged and unrepentant sin god says separates us from him but it also separates us from one another god does call us to unconditional love he loves everyone it says but he does not call himself or his people to unconditional relationship when a friend or a spouse or a parent continues to harm us or we do that to them and there is no repentance or change they're not a friend anymore even if there's still a spouse or a parent or a child in our life they've become biblically our enemy which jesus still says love your enemy and do them good but the relationship itself is broken now i'm going to say some things right now about broken relationships some of you probably would rather not face it or hear it but i want to tell you the truth so you can be healthier and mature and become the person god's made you to be and it's tough to admit we're wrong we need that humility and to take a look at the damage that we've caused our marriage or our relationship with child or with our parent or with somebody in the congregation and it's hard to work to repair that damage and that relationship sometimes we refuse we'd rather not because of our pride and our stubbornness and our shame but as you already know i specialize in working with people in destructive relationships where relationship building and repairing has been tough work and trust has been broken down i want to help you know what the roadmap forward looks like because if you don't do the repair work i want you to know the relationship whatever relationship it is it will die even marriage even if you stay legally married the relationship as a living entity will die so let me give you a few steps forward if you find yourself in an ash heap of broken damaged relationships i was at a conference last year in downtown phoenix it was a secular conference and a man there began a conversation with me because he knew i was a therapist and a relationship coach and he said oh you know i just haven't found the right one i've been married four times but never the right one i'm just unlucky i guess i can't find the right one now this man after a few minutes of conversation was totally blind to himself as well as the way relationships really work he lacked self-awareness and he was missing an essential ingredient to keeping long-term relationships he had no trouble finding them obviously he was married four times but he had this mindset that if you found the right one it shouldn't require any maintenance or repairs just like if you build the right house or the right car it still needs maintenance and repairs he was unsuccessful at relationships not because he couldn't find love but he didn't know how to keep love he was living by a myth and a lie that is simply not true so if you don't know how to do maintenance or repair work okay first step you have to admit it you have to be humble enough to admit it and get some help to learn how if you had black mold in your house and you were concerned about the well-being of your family you probably would call someone to help repair it to make sure it was really fixed if you had a car you loved and it broke down you take it to the shop don't let your most important relationships stay broken if they're not repaired they won't get better by themselves so how do we repair broken relationships what are the steps that bring genuine healing and restoration well first i'm really going to quickly tell you what doesn't work because so many people try these approaches and oftentimes churches encourage these approaches and they don't really bring repair work so the first one is this has put the pass in the past let's forget what happened and move forward in other words clean slate theology or let's forgive and forget and not talk about it anymore so let me talk about briefly why that doesn't work first of all if somebody robbed your house and they told you maybe it was a neighbor who robbed your house and they told you well let's just put the pass in the past and let's forgive and forget and we're not going to talk about this anymore would that repair your relationship with that person and when you're living with someone and you're more intimate in a relationship with that person that doesn't work either why not well first of all because sometimes there's consequences of what you've done you've broken trust and i don't trust you to come back into my house if my neighbor did that or sometimes there's habit patterns that don't change just because we want the past to be the past how many of you've ever overeaten and felt horrible the next day and you said i am never going to eat that much again and then you ate that much again or maybe you screamed and yelled at your kid or you watched porn and you felt really guilty and said i'm never going to do that again and then you did that again we are creatures of habit and so the past doesn't stay the past when it's a pattern in our life it becomes the present we repeat over and over again what's yesterday comes into today and so you just don't forget the past not talk about it because the past now becomes a present and you have to talk about those habit patterns that are still wrecking the relationship we are creatures of habit and why shouldn't we just forgive and forget well first of all let me tell you if you've done some really bad things to another person why you shouldn't forget not forgetting helps you not repeat that when you have empathy for the pain you've caused someone else and you forget all about that you might cause that pain again when you remember i don't want to ever see that hurt on my child's face again i don't want to ever see that hurt on my child's face again i don't want to ever break my wife's heart that way again you don't do it again i remember working with a man in allentown who was an alcoholic for 25 years and he would go to four a.a meetings a week and he was sober for 25 years and i said why do you keep going so i don't forget that i'm just one drink away from ruining my life it was that important for him not to forget why is it also important for someone who's been sinned against not to forget so they don't keep putting their head in the snake's basket if a snake is bitten you once you can forgive the snake but you don't want to keep going back and getting bit again and again and again and so forgive and forget and clean slate theology doesn't work in terms of repairing a relationship with someone that you want to continue having a relationship with if it's a stranger it may be somebody that you never see again that may be a different story but when someone you're trying to still work on having that relationship and repairing that relationship you need to go deeper forgiveness surely needs to be given and sought but where forgiveness is there also needs to be some repentance and repairs if the relationship is going to be maintained and move forward you see part of repairing broken trust is talking about why the trust got broken in the beginning and the impact of what you've done to someone in the way that you've harmed them and what changes are you going to do to not do that again superficial changes like bringing flowers and being nice or buying a gift or going on a trip you know without dealing with the roots of the behavior of why you did what you did doesn't repair damage any more than putting curtains up or a new couch makes a house with termites repaired it might look better to have new curtains and a new couch in your house but if the termites are still there they're still doing the damage to the house forgiveness is important with your relationship with god and so if you've been harmed and hurt by someone in your life forgiveness is about you and god releasing that debt but forgiveness doesn't necessarily make the relationship horizontally with the other person better you see jesus forgave judas he forgave those who were sending him to the cross forgive them for they know not what they do but jesus didn't have any relationships with them those relationships weren't repaired and you can't repair and rebuild a relationship all by yourself even if you do extend forgiveness so what is the way forward real quickly first you can't fix something if you first don't admit it's broken proverbs 12 15 says the way of a fool is right in his own eyes but a wise man listens to advice this goes back to the centrality of listening to feedback listening to god listening to the holy spirit listening to your counselor listening to your friend listening to your spouse when they're telling you something's wrong with this relationship or something even is wrong in your character pay attention you can't repair a relationship if you don't first admit something's wrong and when you refuse to hear that person the relationship remains broken if an inspector came to your house and said you have termites and you refuse to listen you're not going to get repaired if you have cancer and the doctor says you need chemo you're not going to take chemo if you don't admit that you have cancer and accept that you first have to admit and accept that you have a problem you know jesus says something very powerful when someone sins against you go to them you're trying to repair the relationship and if they don't hear you what do you do then you can't reconcile you can't repair the relationship he says if they hear you then you can reconcile if they don't hear you you can't reconcile he said bring it to the church and if they still don't hear you the relationship itself isn't reconciled he says treat them as you would a pagan and a tax collector and every jew knew what that meant oh we don't trust pagans we don't hang out with tax collectors corrupt tax collectors this is someone we can't have a close relationship with so first you have to admit your stuff second you have to repent in heart and habit if you've damaged a relationship repentance means you have to do your work if your actions have damaged a relationship have broken trust or safety in a friendship in a marriage in a parent-child relationship i often tell church leaders chronic addictions chronic abuse and chronic adultery or other sin addictions are not marriage problems they cause marriage problems for sure but marriage counseling is not the first order of treatment plan these sins reside in the heart of the person who did the damage to the marriage and therefore those things need to be worked out individually within the heart of that person in repentance not only in heart but also inhabit and this requires some personal work on their part not just i'm sorry and everything's better so what is that personal work well it's going back to the first things we talked about self-awareness what did i do am i able to admit that i'm yelling i'm cheating i'm lying i'm hitting i'm belittling i'm disrespecting i'm badgering i'm controlling i'm threatening people i'm jealous what's going on with me self-reflection why am i doing this no blaming no excuses what's going on in my heart how am i immature how do i not know how to handle my emotions why am i doing what i'm doing that's hurting the people i say i love self-examination who is the person i am is this who i want to be what are my deepest values not just my temporary emotions am i living by my values what's important to me or am i just a slave to my emotions or my appetites self-control do i have it do i have the fruit of the spirit if i don't like what i'm doing how do i learn to say no to myself no to my emotions no to my anger no to my temptations versus blame everybody else for not having control of my own self and self-correction when i receive feedback about my actions either through words or painful consequences do i listen when i've had broken relationships repeated job losses financial problems do i listen and self-correct and if not why not anywhere in these five areas is great personal work for you to do if you've had a habit and a string of broken relationships in your life and if not you're doomed to repeat your past mistakes and for those of you who've been in a broken relationship in a damaged relationship how do you know whether someone's really sorry you only know through changed actions over time you see feeling sorry isn't necessarily repentance judas felt sorry peter felt sorry but judas didn't repent he just fell into self-pity and don't confuse the desire to change with the willingness to follow through how many of us desire to get in shape new year's resolutions go by the wayside every january 30th we have lots of desires to be different whether we actually do the work to be different is very different we have to work at being different not just say we want to be different and so words without consistent actions are meaningless to god and to the person that you've harmed john the baptist said it well to the pharisees when he said prove by the way that you live that you've repented of your sin and turned to god zacchaeus is a great example he was one of those corrupt tax collectors and when he came to jesus and repented what did he say no one had to tell him to do this he said i will give half my money to the poor and i will repay everybody i've cheated that was zacchaeus's way of saying i am repentant and you will see it by the way i handle my money and the way i treat people from now on so what would be some ways that someone would show that they're sorry with their actions they wouldn't be expecting amnesty they would be willing to make amends if you crashed into your neighbor's car this afternoon even by accident i hope you would want to make repairs and pay for them and not simply say well we go to the same church and we're both christians so i guess that's it forgive me and i'm on my way you wouldn't think that with a neighbor why would you think that in a marriage the past is a past we're not going to talk about it and what if you crash in their car again and again and again and again and again and you kept saying the same thing again and again again well jesus said 70 times seven you're supposed to forgive me i shouldn't have any consequences do you hear the craziness of that thinking it's not true it's not biblical and it doesn't work to repair relationships what do you also need to do you take ownership for the pain you've caused someone else accept full responsibility for your actions no excuses no blaming i crashed into your car whether i meant to or i didn't i did it i didn't know how to drive clearly i didn't look in my rear-view mirrors i don't know how to handle my emotions i don't know how to express myself constructively those are things that you need to learn okay good self-awareness willing to be accountable for the pain you've caused i do need to pay for the damages i do need to pay the repair bill you show compassion and empathy for the pain you've caused someone else do you need a rental car do you need me to drive you to work can i can i let you borrow my car while you're out of a car ways that you show someone you are sorry for the pain you've caused and if i don't know how to do that then i have to be willing to learn to do that if i want to have successful long-term relationships and willing to do the necessary work to repair broken trust and grateful for the opportunity to have it sometimes there are consequences to sin that are permanent if you drive recklessly texting or drinking and you kill someone no amount of repentance is bringing that dead person back to life sometimes consequences are serious and sometimes we have this idea in the christian community that forgiveness means no consequences but that's not true god often forgave people and there were still consequences when david sinned with bathsheba and the child died david was forgiven but the child still died there's a beautiful verse in proverbs 31 that describes a long-term happy marriage and it says this he trusts her to do him good not harm all the days of his life it's not enough to say you want to rebuild trust with someone you must actually do the work to rebuild that trust and if you are the one who's listening to this and has broken someone's trust whether it's safety trust they're afraid of you sexual fidelity trust you've been unfaithful honesty trust you've lied reliability trust you don't do what you're going to say you do carrying trust you've shown indifference financial trust you've mismanaged financial money with someone it's important that you do your work to rebuild that trust and even when it's slow work and even when it's discouraging don't give up especially if the other person isn't responding with like oh this is wonderful yet and they may never because sometimes the consequences are permanent but i want to encourage you if you're sitting there listening to me and you said i've made a mess of my relationships even if it gets old even if you feel tired and even if you think it'd just be easier to give up i want you to know something really important your main task is to learn to love god and learn to love others and to learn how to not let your own personal character flaws and sins and weaknesses push love away and this is your chance right here right now to learn these things in order for you to have better and loving relationships so are you going to learn or not even if this current relationship can't be rebuilt you can learn to be a healthier more loving person who doesn't continue to mess up relationships so i want you to think of your life as a story a storybook that you're writing and so i want you to ask yourself what kind of story are you writing what kind of story do you want to tell about your life one of broken promises broken trust deceit indifference betrayal worse do you want there to be a threat of redemption in this story victory over darkness triumph over failure god's glory over human failing pride weakness or sin you know we're not in control of the circumstances of our story we can't control the elections we can't control covet 19 we can't control what another person does but we are in charge of how we write our part of the story and how we write our chapters and how our character responds in the midst of the story of the life that god is giving us and the next generation is watching how you write your story and the generation after that will read about your story so what would you like them to learn from you about life about love about relationships about failure about recovery after failure do you want to be the villain in your story or do you want to be the victor what repair work do you need to work on so that you build stronger character and continue to love those who are in your life and become the hero with god's help over your failures every good story that we love the main character messes up every single one from gladiator to frozen they mess up and they learn and they grow and they become stronger because of it let that be as you write your story right now of redemption through failure not caving in to failure let's pray father god i thank you for each person who's here well you don't i don't know their circumstances lord but you do and you know what they need to hear whether it's they've been wounded in relationship and they need healing and they need to extend forgiveness even if they can't trust another person you don't want them to live in resentment and fear of being hurt their whole life or whether they've been a person who's been immature unaware self-deceived prideful and has never humbled themselves to learn how to do good relationships lord for either end of that spectrum i pray that you administer to them and help them to be the person that you want them to be in jesus name amen thanks for joining us today and a special thank you to leslie for such a powerful and insightful message if you're interested in continuing the conversation pastor christine sat down with leslie and they dived even further into some of the topics that were mentioned this morning you can tune into this conversation tonight at six o'clock on our facebook page and our youtube channel to learn more about the upcoming events here at gt church you can follow us on social media everywhere at gt church online i hope you have a great rest of your day and we'll see you back here again tonight with more conversation with leslie on facebook and youtube so so so you

Channel: GT Church Online

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Keywords: GT Church, Reading PA, Berks, Leslie Vernick, Christian Church, Unhealthy Relationships, Church Sermons

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Length: 85min 24sec (5124 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 25 2020