Married Like Jesus -- Managing Conflict

Thank you, Dex. Thanks for leading us in prayer. Certainly there's a lot going on in our world right now, and I feel like we show up every Sunday with heavy hearts. We appreciate the opportunity to come before the Lord together in prayer.

We're in a series on marriage, and as I've said before, this series is really not just for married people. There's only one of these sermons that's actually going to be totally for and about married people.

My family loves the movie Megamind. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it—it's from 2010. The main protagonist is a villain named Megamind, who has a giant blue head and is played by Will Ferrell. He's got a sidekick named Minion, and Megamind quickly gets rid of the superhero and finds life in a world where he's the villain without any superheroes to fight, which is really boring. The movie follows him and Minion, who's kind of like part piranha in a little fishbowl.

But my favorite line from this movie, which my kids have been quoting a lot, is when Megamind and Minion get into a conflict. Megamind has a hard time admitting he's wrong, and he says: "You were right. I was less right, Minion." I love that line because it so captures the human heart in conflict. And it apparently captures the big-headed blue alien too. It's so hard for us to admit that we are wrong. It's so hard for us to deal with conflict, and yet conflict is a normal part of every relationship that has any proximity or closeness to it.

Now, what I said right there may be really hard for some of you to hear: conflict is normal. Americans in particular think that conflict in any relationship is a sign that the relationship is somehow doomed. We're also famously really uncomfortable with negative emotions like sadness, anger, and fear. We run from those emotions. So while it's common for us to view conflict as a sign that the relationship is doomed and to run away from it, nothing could be further from the truth in the Bible.

Conflict in the Bible is not an obstacle to the health of our relationships. It's not a sign that the relationship is dying. It's rather an opportunity. Conflict in the Bible is an opportunity for us to learn to love. So conflict itself is not the issue—it's really what you do with it that matters.

I want you to think this morning about two porcupines. Have you ever thought about this before? Where do baby porcupines come from? They're mammals, so in order for there to be baby porcupines, mommy and daddy porcupines have to mate. And you think about it—this has got to be very delicate business because there are spines and quills all over. This has got to be really careful; somebody's going to get hurt. That's life in this fallen world.

What a great picture this is for human relationships. We are sinners, people who are sinners and sufferers, and we come into this world broken. It's like being covered in quills. And when we try to get close to somebody else in relationship, we've got to be really careful. Somebody's going to get hurt. That's life in this fallen world. Again, conflict itself is not an obstacle. It doesn't mean a relationship's doomed, but it's an opportunity to love.

Scripture Reading

So let's read this passage together that's about conflict in our relationships. We're in Ephesians chapter four, verses twenty-five to thirty-one.

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each of you speak truth with his neighbor. For we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. — Ephesians 4:25-31

Would you join me in prayer? Father, we pray that you take these words—your words—and drive them deep into our hearts. Lord, I pray that as we come together today around your word, we would see Jesus. Lord, I pray you hide me behind the cross. Lord, that we would see Jesus and desire him and love him more for our time together in your word this morning.

In Jesus' name, amen. So there's a story about a young Jewish rabbi who comes to study under an older Jewish rabbi. Now, the older Jewish rabbi is famous for his marriage counseling. This guy is so good at helping couples through problems. And so this young rabbi is really eager to sit under his tutelage and the first day he shows up, the rabbi has a couple that are waiting to meet with him, Mr. and Mrs. Goldstein.

So first he brings in Mrs. Goldstein. And he says, "Now what seems to be the problem?" And she goes on for about twenty minutes about all of her complaints and the bitterness in her marriage and how hard things are. And after twenty minutes, he stops and he says, "I think you're completely right. You know, it's unbelievable what you have to put up with this man, and yet you keep giving and giving. I just have tremendous admiration for you."

Mrs. Goldstein says, "Oh, Rabbi, thank you so much for listening to me. I feel so much better," and she goes out. So the rabbi then calls in Mr. Goldstein. And Mr. Goldstein comes in and he says, "Just tell me what seems to be the problem," and Mr. Goldstein goes on and on with all his complaints and bitterness about what he's had to endure over all these years in his marriage. And after about twenty minutes, the rabbi stops him and says, "Oh, Mr. Goldstein, I think you're completely right. It's unbelievable what you've had to put up with that woman, and yet you keep giving and giving. I have tremendous admiration for you."

Goldstein says, "Oh, Rabbi, thank you so much for listening to me. I feel so much better," and he leaves. Now at this point, the young assistant is really puzzled and he turns to the master rabbi and he says, "I don't understand what you do here."

"Why not?" says the old rabbi.

The assistant says, "Well, you said that Mrs. Goldstein was completely right."

"Yes," answered the old rabbi.

"And then you said Mr. Goldstein was completely right."

"Yes," answered the master.

"Well, they can't both be completely right."

"You're absolutely right," said the master.

Now, do you get it? When there's conflict in any relationship, there are two parties, two perspectives that both think they are right. Both of them have a perception of what is going on, a perspective on what's happening in the relationship. It's not like these are two people debating about some kind of scientific law or mathematical formula. They're not debating whether gravity is real. They're debating what's happening in the relationship, and both people have a perspective that is in some way valid because it's their own.

When we think about conflict and relationships, one of the things that makes conflict hard is when we view it as win-lose. Somebody's got to resolve the conflict, which usually means in resolving the conflict, we need to figure out who was more right. "I was right. You were less right." Like, we gotta figure out who's right, and when you do that, you've already in some ways lost.

Because in conflict, both parties have to matter. If you're going to have conflict in a way that actually works toward health in a relationship, it's got to be in a way where both people feel like they can walk away and say, "I matter and you matter." Not just "you matter" and not just "I matter."

And that's why I want to use the word "manage conflict" this morning. And here's my outline if you take notes: First, we're going to talk about unmanaged conflict. Then we're going to talk about managing conflict. And then my last point is going to be "under new management."

Unmanaged Conflict

So first, unmanaged conflict. Look here at verse 31.

Bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, along with all malice. — Ephesians 4:31

It's like the dreaded list of all the ways that anger and conflict is destructive in our relationships. You can think of these unmanaged conflicts in sort of two different categories. You can think of them as visible and invisible, those that are seen and unseen, and also noisy and quiet.

There are visible manifestations like the word "wrath" here, which means punishing anger, or invisible manifestations. Think about bitterness—bitterness is internal. Or malice—malice means wanting to hurt another person in your heart. Those are visible versus invisible. You can think about them as the quiet ones and the noisy ones. The quiet manifestations are like slander—that's gossip, right, it's behind someone's back. The noisy ones, the word here for "clamor" just means shouting. Some of you grew up in homes that have noisy conflict, some have quiet conflict.

Some have visible conflict, it's all out in the open, some have invisible conflict. It's going on, we're just not talking about it. These are a lot of the ways that conflict manifests itself.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

One marriage expert named John Gottman, who I cited last week, breaks conflict down into four categories. He calls them the four horsemen of the apocalypse—not the literal ones from the book of Revelation, but four types of conflict that are destructive.

Criticism is describing the problem in your relationship as a flaw in the personality of the other person. It's not just complaint; it's complaint taken to the next level. A lot of criticism begins with "you" statements: "You're so lazy." "You always" or "you never." Both of those statements imply criticism—like there's a problem with your personality, with who you are as a person. Sometimes this is irritability and complaints that aren't ever addressed in a relationship, and so they escalate. The other person won't acknowledge them, and it amps up in the relationship.

Defensiveness is an attempt to protect yourself—think Wonder Woman's bracelets of steel—to defend your innocence, to ward off an attack. This could be done by making excuses, deflecting, pushing away responsibility. Sometimes it's by counter attacking, or whining, taking on the innocent victim status. The antidote to defensiveness is actually accepting responsibility, but defensiveness is tasty. We're all pretty good at that.

Contempt is to put somebody down and take a higher plane. It has a view of superiority. It's a position of "I'm better, I'm smarter, I'm kinder, I would never do that." It's a better-than orientation. There's a mindset which undergirds contempt—a negative habit of mind where you're always scanning the other person for what they're doing wrong and never celebrating or noticing the good things that they contribute in a relationship.

I think it's interesting that doctors have found there's a correlation between the life expectancy of a wife and the amount of contempt in a marriage. A husband's contempt predicts a wife's number of infectious diseases over the next four years. That's powerful, and contempt is one of the single greatest causes of divorce.

Stonewalling means one person withdraws while staying in the room. You know what this is? Stop talking. Cross arms. Look away. All the signs that say "I'm here but I'm not here anymore. I'm not part of this."

Now, I want to ask: do you see any of these in yourself? You gotta be honest. I know sometimes church is a place where people are least honest. But here's the thing. If we're really honest with ourselves, we're all in this list in at least a couple places. Let me just tell you about me: I am really good at defensive discontent. Not amateur level—semi-pro, actually. And I think some of you could also find yourselves in this list—the dreaded list of slander, malice, clamor, all these ways that stuff comes out of us. Sometimes we're even surprised by it. You ever been surprised by yourself and your reaction? "Oh, I didn't know that was even in there till it comes out in a conflict." That's unmanaged conflict. We see it all the time. We're people living in a world with unmanaged conflict all around us and in all our close relationships. Porcupines, remember?

Managing Conflict

What about managing conflict? Paul's point in this passage is not just to point out what's wrong but to help us actually take steps toward managing conflict in our relationships. All of this grows out of the section that we read a couple weeks ago here.

See this in verse 25:

Therefore... — Ephesians 4:25

This means it connects to what came right before this in the passage and grows out of what we read in verses 20 to 24. Paul had told them, "I want you to take off what doesn't match a life in Jesus and put on what matches a life in Jesus." Now he's applying that to their relationships. "I want you to take off what doesn't match a life in Jesus in your relationships with one another and put on what matches a life in Jesus with each other."

We're going to see these four applications of how you live out resurrection identity in your closest relationships.

Manage Conflict Honestly

And again, this applies to marriage, but it also applies to parent-child relationships, sibling relationships, best friend relationships, coworker relationships. How do we manage conflict? How do we live resurrection life toward one another on a horizontal level? Paul shows us four things here. I want you to write this down.

First, manage conflict honestly. Look at verse 25:

Speak the truth with your neighbor. Why? Because we are members of one another. — Ephesians 4:25

I think a lot of us have trouble speaking the truth with each other. We have a hard time being truly honest. Maybe it doesn't feel kind. Maybe we think we should just always turn the other cheek. Maybe you've heard that the way to be a Christian in relationships is always to take one for the team.

But I want you to think about the context within which Jesus tells people to turn the other cheek. In the Sermon on the Mount, he's talking about that in the context of being in a society ruled by Rome—an oppressive government regime. He's not talking about interpersonal relationships. We take this and skip over lots of other teaching in the New Testament. There's lots of teaching about if your brother sins against you, you go show him his fault. If you sin against your brother, you go to him. There's teaching in James, in Ephesians, in Matthew—all over the New Testament—about actually dealing with conflict truthfully and not just taking one for the team. We sometimes misapply that.

There are couples who, when Susan and I have done a lot of premarital counseling, we've sat down with couples before and asked, "Tell us about one of your recent conflicts." And they say, "Oh, we've never had any conflict." Really? Because I know that one of you knows that you've had conflict, but the other one doesn't. There's been a constant pattern in this relationship of one person just subjugating themselves and not speaking up and not saying what's true.

Now, there are wrong ways to tell the truth. We just talked about criticism—criticism is death by a thousand cuts. It's "you always, you never." We're not talking about that. But healthy relationships tell the truth. Both people can say, "This is what I feel. This is painful to me. I'm concerned about this." Both people can tell the truth.

And here's the best way to tell the truth: I statements, not you statements. Let me try out a couple of these. I'm going to ask you a question—healthy or unhealthy? Test time this morning. You ready?

"You're always so insensitive."

Is that healthy truth telling? Unhealthy. Right. Let's try again:

"I need you to know why that hurt me."

Healthy or unhealthy? Healthy. Right. Try another one:

"You never listen to me. Everything I say you just ignore."

Healthy truth telling or unhealthy? Let's try that again:

"I feel like when I share things with you, you sometimes don't listen very well."

Healthy or unhealthy? Good, right.

I think what I see in our context, what I see in our church—and I'm going to step on some toes—but we have a tendency to treat relationships and sin in our relationships like somebody handling a pair of binoculars. When I was a kid, I got this pair of binoculars from my grandfather. If you look through binoculars the right way, they make things that are far away seem close-up. But you ever turn the binoculars around backwards? What happens? They make things that are close-up look very far away and small.

I think this is what we do all the time in our relationships. We are always picking up the binoculars the right way, and everything about the other person looks really magnified—their sins, their problems, their annoying habits. That looks big. Then we're like, "Hey, I want you to look at me through the backwards binoculars. Look at me. My problems are teeny. My contributions to the conflicts in our relationship are very, very small."

But I think Jesus has some words to say about that, doesn't he? Didn't he say something about a log and a speck? It seems like he's calling us to have the right view of ourselves in our relationships. To take an honest view of our own hearts, the way we operate. If we're going to magnify anything, we should magnify our own hearts so we really see what's going on inside of us.

Why should we speak honestly with one another? Paul tells us: because we are members of one another. I belong to you and you belong to me.

This is very, very true in a marriage relationship. This is also so true in the body of Christ. I belong to Kevin and Kevin belongs to me. We are members of one another. This call for us to take seriously, to manage conflict in honest ways—we've got to hear this. This is so important. Our world is being completely torn apart by conflict. The body of Christ doesn't know how to manage it. It's time to talk. Honest talk.

Managing Conflict Purposefully and Timely

Alright, second: managing conflict purposefully, in a timely manner. Look at verse 26:

Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. — Ephesians 4:26

Do you understand why we're called to deal with something in a timely way? Here's why: there's a lie going around that says time heals all wounds. That is a lie straight from the pit of hell. Time doesn't heal all wounds. Let's say you're in your backyard and you pick up something heavy and you happen to cut your arm and it's dirty. You don't clean it, you don't wash it, and you just let it be like that. What's going to happen to that cut? It's going to get infected. It's going to ooze pus. It's going to be nasty. Time is not making that better. Time may actually mean that it gets really, really sick and you're going to have to take extreme action to deal with that.

The same is true in our relationships. Some of us think: if I just pretend, it'll go away. If I don't pay attention or engage, this will just go away. Are you kidding me? If you don't manage conflict, it will manage you. If you don't run after and deal with your conflicts, they will ruin your life. Time does not heal all wounds. I don't care what enneagram number you are. There are some people like, "Well, I'm an enneagram this-and-that, and that means I have a personality thing where I don't really deal with conflict very well." You know what? In the New Testament, God doesn't flavor different conflict strategies based on personality types. He calls all of us to deal with things in a timely way, to deal with them purposefully.

Managing Conflict Gently

Third: manage conflict gently. Verse 29, what does Paul say here?

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. — Ephesians 4:29

Let me be super clear. Outbursts of cursing, yelling, and name calling have zero business in our relationships. Those are always wrong. It's never justified.

Now, that doesn't mean that all anger is always wrong. There are things worth being angry about. There's such a thing as righteous anger. Otherwise, we wouldn't have Paul's statement:

Be angry and do not sin. — Ephesians 4:26

There are things in this world worth being angry about. We see Jesus being angry—Him flipping over the tables. There's a righteous anger. But don't hear me say that anger is wrong in all cases. Righteous anger is never belittling or yelling or name calling. Righteous anger is incredibly focused. It's in control. It's gentle because it's so powerful.

Do you ever think about that? The skill of a surgeon is powerful because it's so gentle and yet focused. Corrupting talk tears down. Love builds up. Paul says, build each other up. There's a way to communicate deep hurt and anger and frustration, fears, even confronting sin in a way that's like the surgeon—gentle, powerful, in control, maybe even fiercely, but still building each other up.

When someone does that in your life, that's a kind of grace. You're giving grace to another person by dealing with them in that kind of surgical cut, rather than a hatchet. That's surgical.

I'll talk about my family. My wife Susan is like Avatar: The Last Airbender. When it comes to dealing with conflict in a gentle way, she does so by asking me good questions. You notice how Jesus asked a lot of good questions? Sometimes she can ask me a question that I'm like, "Hey, I don't know how to answer that." A very good pointed question is a way of dealing with conflict that holds up a mirror and allows a person to be self-reflective. Anger is honestly most powerful when it's gentle, under control, and it's a source of grace for me in my marriage.

Managing Conflict Sensitively

Finally: manage conflict sensitively. Look at verse 30. Paul warns us to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit:

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit. — Ephesians 4:30

Now, that may not make much sense to you. So let's also pick up the other verse here about the thief. Did you notice that random verse here about the thief?

Let the thief no longer steal but let him labor doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. — Ephesians 4:28

What these verses show us is God is calling us to be sensitive to one another and sensitive to the Holy Spirit. A thief steals things from another person because he's only thinking about number one, right? He's only thinking about self. This is what we do in lots of our conflicts. We're not thinking about how can I contribute to the good of another person or build them up? We're thinking about me, me, me. Right? Like self. We end up stealing from another person. We end up taking from other people and grieving the spirit.

You know, we have no ears to hear the convicting voice of the spirit saying to you, what are you doing? We're all about self. Remember, being sensitive in your relationships means that both people have to matter. You matter and I matter. If I matter and you don't matter, I'm stealing from you. Right? What being about managing conflict is being sensitive to the spirit's prompting and sensitive to the needs of the other person. You matter to me. What you're upset about, it matters to me even though I'm upset too.

The Twenty-Minute Time Out

So, here's my tool. I told you, every time we do one of these sermons, I'm given a practical tool for dealing with conflict, dealing with our relationships, dealing with forgiveness. So, this week, the twenty minute time out.

In conflict, your body physiologically moves into what's called diffuse physiological arousal, or DPA for short. In situations that are perceived as dangerous, your body moves into fight or flight. Here's what's happening on the inside. The vagus nerve is inhibited, which releases a parasympathetic break on your heart. So what happens to your heart rate? It goes up, right? When your heart rate goes past a hundred beats per minute, the body starts secreting adrenaline. Adrenaline makes you jump. Blood flow to your gut and your kidneys are shut down, the peripheral arteries constrict and blood is drawn from the periphery of the body to the trunk of your body to minimize potential damage to your internal organs.

The kidneys activate the renin angiotensin system, which increases blood pressure. Your pituitary adrenal axis is aggravated and the adrenal cortex secretes cortisol. Your body begins getting fluids into the bloodstream from the liver, converting glycogen to glucose, so you can fight really fast or run. Blood flow to the brain is maintained, but mostly to the bottom of the brain, the brain stem, which some people call your reptile brain, right? They're like, I'm ready to attack. Fight or flight patterns of behavior get activated. So, you go into tunnel vision and tunnel hearing.

All this means is what you already know. When I'm angry, when I'm upset, when there's a conflict going on, I am not my best self. I'm not my most rational self, I'm not my most in control self. I am scary self. I feel out of control.

See, when there's a conflict, when the DPA is in full effect, the best thing you can do often is time out. And here's why: the body takes twenty minutes or more to recover from that DPA response. Your body physiologically takes that long.

For those twenty minutes, it doesn't mean you go back into your room and rehearse all the ways that you're hurt or angry. You're stoking the fire, you're trying to let the fire die down, right? So, you listen to calming music. You go for a walk. You breathe, right? You try to calm yourself down physically. You distract yourself.

It might be really good for you to have a mutually agreed upon hand signal, a nice one, right, that you agree on beforehand. This means, no matter what happens, you don't get to follow me around and keep having a conflict. You're actually going to separate and you're going to do this for an agreed upon amount of time. Maybe thirty minutes. Okay, thirty minutes. You're going to come back together. It means we are going to deal with this. We're not going to never deal with this, but we're going to just give each other a break.

And this is because, as Doctor John Cox says, the best responses to conflict are golf responses, not tennis responses.

Now, Cox came here a couple years ago and he's done some stuff for us on marriage and parenting. If you want resources in that, I'm happy to connect you. But I love his illustration of this.

He said, if you've ever watched a pro golf tournament, when the ball comes on the green, the golfer is not just running up and hitting it, right? He lines up, looks at how it's breaking, maybe picks up some grass and drops it to see which way the wind's going and spends time setting up the shot, even practices it a couple times before they step up to the ball. There's time for pausing and thinking before you take the shot.

Now, tennis is what most of us do in conflict. Balls coming at you 90 miles an hour over the net. You're like, I need to get this thing back. It's just hit it as hard as you can, as fast as you can, and hope it goes on the court. That's me playing tennis, right? So tennis responses is what we normally do in conflict. And this twenty-minute time out is like, can we play golf for a little bit? Maybe we should slow down and play golf here.

For us to deal with conflict well, we've gotta take time. Now, this is not—to be honest, some of you might be saying, "Wait, I thought the Bible said right here, don't let the sun go down on your anger." Let's talk about what that means. That means to deal with anger in a timely way, but let's not be literalistic about that. I know some couples who start a conflict at 1 AM. Like, nobody is thinking great at 1 AM unless you're a college student, right? None of the rest of us are. We live in normal time and maybe it would actually be good for you to go to sleep and agree that you'll deal with it in the morning. A time out still means we're dealing with it in a timely way. It doesn't have to be immediately.

And finally, how do you do all this? This is hard for us. Dealing with conflict honestly and gently and sensitively—how are we going to do all that?

Under New Management

Well, here's the good news. Because you are, the Bible tells us here, under new management. Remember what Paul says here about new management? Look at verse 30.

You are sealed by the Spirit for the day of redemption. — Ephesians 4:30

This means that if you are a Christian, if you have ever said "Jesus, come into my life" in any way whatsoever, the Spirit is a permanent reality in your life. Now, you could grieve the Spirit. You don't have to listen to the Spirit. You could push the Spirit's counsel away and shut your ears to it. But the Spirit is a permanent resident in yourself.

This means, as Christians, you should be like the queen. You know how the queen never uses first-person pronouns? Never says "I," but "we," as in the royal we, right? This is how we should talk about ourselves as Christians, because if you are Christian, there's no longer a "you," there's a "y'all," right? The Spirit and you are resident in you.

And this Spirit is so important for us in thinking about dealing with conflict because there is nothing like conflict to make us feel alone. We feel like something's wrong with me. I'm the only one like this. No one understands me. Conflict makes us feel misunderstood, isolated, afraid, unknown, unloved.

But here's the thing: when you're in that twenty-minute time out, you're never alone. You may feel alone, but you say to yourself, "I'm not alone. I'm sealed by the Spirit. I'm not abandoned. I am not unloved. I'm sealed by the Spirit. I'm not isolated. I am sealed by the Spirit. I'm not misunderstood. I am sealed by the Spirit."

You have an every-moment companion in your life. You have an every-moment God with you. That is so true.

You are under new management. You ought to take that sign and put it over your bed: "Under new management," right? This means we don't have to let conflict manage us. In our relationships, we can manage conflict.

Hey, have you ever bought at the store either a toy for a kid or a gadget for your home or your car or something that's battery operated? You have to be really careful before you bring this thing home. You have to look really closely at the little print. What are you looking for, class? "Battery is not included," right? Because that's almost always on there and it's almost always in like six-point font, right? Little tiny eye-exam font like nobody can read this. Because otherwise you get home and you end up like a dad on Christmas morning, like, "Oh no, we don't have AA or nine volt or whatever." Right?

But here's the good news for you this morning: as a Christian, when we read these commands of Scripture, these things about how we deal with conflict, about how we deal with it with our closest relationships—this is the good news of the Bible.

Batteries are included, right? The spirit is given to you. God doesn't give you commands in the Bible without giving you the spirit to help you keep the commands. And if you're here this morning and you're sinning under conviction and you're like, man, I just got nailed to the wall or I feel really bad—am I feeling bad this morning? Like, one of the things that is good about feeling bad this morning is it means, guess what? It's working. The system's working. The spirit is alive inside of you.

If you feel conviction of the spirit this morning over ways that you have treated other people, ways you operate in your life and the spirit's like, the system's working and you can rejoice in that today and you can know that that same spirit that's working you to can bring you conviction, can help you. He is the helper in the places of our conflicts, the places where we need to grow.

Let's go to him now and ask for that.

Lord, we thank you for the always and abiding presence of the spirit. We're not—we know that some of us are here this morning filled with doubts about whether we're even Christians. Or we think we've so rejected you, we're so screwed up. Lord, surely you're done with us. We think we've conflicts in our relationships so much that surely you're done with us.

Lord, we thank you that the spirit isn't based on our feelings. The Lord, he is entered into us when we have moved toward you and said yes to you in the past. Lord, we pray, Father, that we would be people who learn more and more to listen to his convicting voice and draw on his power in our relationships. Father, so we might be people—what do we want to change? We want to see you work deeply in us. Father, we pray this for your glory and for our joy. In his name we pray. Amen.