The Grievances God Wants You To Let Go Of - #010

Forgiveness is the one thing Christians should understand a lot, but it's actually one of the things we struggle with the most. 
In this latest stand-alone episode, Mike teaches from Colossians 3 about the importance of being in a Biblical community, and how that can help you walk out what you believe. As you listen to this, ask God to help you with this, either by asking Him to forgive you or by asking Him to help you forgive others. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Welcome back to Miking Disciples. This is another episode where we try to help men become disciples of Jesus. My name is Mike. I'm the ministry development pastor here at High Point Church, and want to say thank you to all of you that continue to listen to each episode, whether it's a um teaching through a series or having a guest on where I interview them about the kind of man they are and how Jesus has helped them become the man that they're becoming. That's kind of the whole focus of this. But you you keep tuning in and people keep telling me about this. So I'm really thankful for that. I want to thank you for listening. Would love to hear back from you if you have comments or questions, or maybe there's a topic. You you would love to find out my thoughts about this, or you want some help as a man uh or helping your man in a certain area. So would love to hear from about you, about that from you. So reach out to me. You can um do that but uh through various ways. We'll go over that at the end of this episode. But today I'm I'm just kind of switching gears a little bit. We're gonna do um kind of a solo episode and I'm gonna talk with you about some things. You know, like I said, the same goal applies. Miking disciples is about helping men become disciples of Jesus. But today, I want to tell you a story, a tale of two sisters. Years ago, I had a part-time job. I was working security overnight at a nearby university. Was never boring, no matter what I um thought the night was gonna go like, there was always some crazy things that happened. But this one night I pull up and and part of the job was to um, we had to, you know, drive around and walk around campus, make sure everything is as it should be. Doors needed to be locked, we'd walk through dorms, we'd do all of these things. Uh, if lights were on, we would take note of that. If uh, you know, just making sure that everything goes smoothly while we patrolled the campus. And as I walked, um, I was driving in close to one of our dorms, and I saw two young women uh outside, and they were up in each other's face, screaming it at you at each other. And I mean, it it's not going well. They're about to throw hands, it's about to be WWE right there in the parking lot. And so I realized I got to do something about this. That's kind of my responsibility. And I walk up and neither one of them acknowledges me. I'm standing right there next to them, kind of in the middle of them, and they're both just screaming at each other for several minutes. And I wait and I wait and I wait and I wait, and neither one of them stops long enough to acknowledge my presence or uh even explain what's going on, and finally I just yell, hey, what's going on? And both of these ladies look at me like I was the crazy one at that point. Uh and so that I said, Tell me what is going on to have you screaming at each other like this. And so they started telling a story that one of them was a student there, the other one was her older sister, and they had gone home for the weekend, and uh their their mom had asked the one student uh what her grades were like, and she went off on her mom, screamed at her, you don't need to worry about that, I'm taking care of me, all these things. Well, what I didn't know, and what the other sister starts telling me is she follows her for over an hour from the house to campus because of how she disrespected her mom over this conversation. And what you came to find out as we talked more was the other sister, the one that was mad, and the mom both worked two different jobs so that the sister who was a student could finish college. And so I said to her, Wait a minute, you are are upset because you're working hard to put her through college, and your mom asked about her grades and she didn't uh like that. Yes, that's exactly right. Uh, and she said it in a different way, but that's part of what she said. And then the student, I'm asking her to explain that. And she's saying, Well, they're always in my business, they're always, you know, asking me these questions. And I said, Well, wait a minute, you're here in college because they're helping you pay for it. So don't you owe them some sense of respect, some sense of decency to explain how things are going? I understand that you want to be on your own and you're uh becoming an adult and all these things. So I'm able to just talk with both of these sisters at this point, and um it comes to a conclusion where they they both kind of calm down a little bit. They're both um re more reasonable and and willing to listen to what I'm saying. And the last thing I say is, now hug each other, your sisters for crying out loud. Now, guys, I don't know what I would have done if they didn't listen to me, and I sure don't know what I would have done if it would became two against one and these two ladies turned on me. Thankfully, they didn't. And I don't recogni uh recommend that you get in the middle of arguments very often and scream back at the people who are screaming at each other, but that's what I did that day to kind of reach it, you know, get on their level and then hopefully diffuse the situation. And I'm I'm really thankful that it didn't turn out differently for me. I'm glad that that uh that brought about some some resolution there. And I just got to tell you, if you're around people that you love, the chances are at some point you're going to run into conflict with them. And if you don't know how to handle that conflict in a way that resolves it and brings healing and reconciliation and hopefully restoration, you're gonna have to know how to do that. You're gonna need some help, some pointers. And I'm gonna tell you, don't get in the middle of two people arguing more more most times. Instead, here's some things that I want to share with you. Because we I know lots of men in my life that need to learn from this. And really, honestly, if I'm telling the whole truth, I still need help in this area sometimes myself. That's because people can frustrate me, they can annoy me, they can just make me stark raving mad sometimes. I don't know about you. Hopefully that happens in your life. It happens in our family life, it happens at work, it happens when my buddy says something I don't like, when my kids move me from disappointed to irate to just angry because of what they did or because of what they didn't do. It happens when you're in traffic, it happens no matter where you go, what you do, you can scream at an umpire, you can be upset with an official, you can get mad at a manager in a store when you get bad customer service, whatever the case may be. By the way, those are all personal examples. Um, and I just want you to understand that as men, we're really good at getting mad. I mean, our culture kind of tells us that to be a man, you got to be strong and you got to not let anybody run over you and all those things. And some of that's important, but we we can get really good at getting being mad. We're just not great at getting over it. And so that's what I want to share with you today. I I've I've been thinking through this for a while and some things I want to share with you. In the letter of Colossians, uh, which you find that Paul wrote, he talks about this very thing. The city of Colossa had once been a great city, but later it became a second-rate town. It was like the radiator springs of its day. If you've ever seen Cars, the uh Pixar movie, uh, where its city was once great and now it's fallen down. That's that's an example of what Colossa was like. And um, I think it's just something for us to think about. Uh, an idea that popped in my head is, you know, as men, we can be great, and then things can happen where people get upset with us and move on from us, and we're no longer gr as great as we used to be. And so we've got to make time and take steps to stay where we're at. That's kind of the whole goal of this. And as Paul is writing this letter to these believers, he's giving them some rules for Christian living, kind of in that second half of the letter. And it really didn't take long to start dealing with relationships within the body of Christ. Now he's writing to people in chapter three who who have been raised with Christ. These are guys that have been saved, these are people that have setting their heart on things above and on the right hand of God. They're changing their mind, the things that they used to think about, the things that they used to do, all of these things. And he says, For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ. So that old man that you used to be, the person that you used to be before Jesus, is dead now. And you're you've got a new life. And so, as this, he's he's trying to help you understand that and giving you some different ways to live. And so when Paul talks about this in Colossians, he's really helping us understand that there there are some things that need to be put to death in our life. He spends time talking about them. And when he says put them to death, understand what he's telling us and what he's telling us to not do. He's not saying, hey, these things that that used to trip you up, these things that you used to build your life around, these things that you used to try to find satisfaction and enjoyment and fulfillment in, don't just set them aside for a little while. Don't just try not to engage in them. And if you just look away, they'll they'll go away. He's saying, no, you've got to put them to death. You've got to put them aside to where you will not wrestle with them again, where you will not struggle with them. You've got to be diligent in these matters. You've got to let them lay them aside and try to never pick them up again through the help of the Holy Spirit. And it's a pretty specific list here. He says, put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature. So we have a nature. When we were born into this world, the Bible says we've got this nature within us, this thing in us that makes us behave in a way that is not godly. And we don't have to learn that, we don't have to work hard at that. It's just something that comes natural to us. That's why we need supernatural help that comes from God to help us live a different way of life. And as a result of that, he gives us a list of those. He says things like sexual immorality. You need to put that to death. So, what does that mean? What would can you explain sexual immorality? Yep, I sure can. It's anything that happens outside the confines of marriage. So when you get married to a woman, man, uh when you do that, anything that happens within the bedroom, within you between you and your wife, that's good. Um, but when you start bringing other people in or other thoughts in or anything else, that's sexual immorality. It also means that if you're not married to the person that you are engaging in sex with, that's immoral and you should stop doing that. You should put that to death. Uh, there's also impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed. He also goes on. He he doesn't just stop there. He says, Don't lie to each other. Uh, rid yourselves of things like anger and rage and malice and slander and filthy language. There's a list for men that we need to think about putting to death in our lives, right? Things like anger. How many men do you know that just get angry, that fly off the handle without anything uh really causing that? Um, how many men do you know that rage? I used to to befriend a guy that would just go into fits of rage, and it was really scary. Um, he never did that towards me, but I saw him do it all the while he's claiming to be godly and and wanting to live a certain way. What he needed to do was put these things to death. He needed to rid themselves, he needed to get rid of them. Malice, slander, filthy language. When we see people that that want to um that that get be where we want to go, it's really easy to slander them and and try to tear them down. Or we'll use filthy language because that's why we learn, that's how we learn, and we think that that as a man we should talk a certain way. When I was in college, I played college baseball, and when you're around the ballpark, you hear a lot of language. And um I remember coming home one summer after college and realizing I had a really bad problem with filthy language. And I remember praying over that summer and asking God to change that about me and asking him to help me to stop cussing. And I remember there was a it was a big deal for me because I I got to the end of the day one day and realized I had only said four cuss words in one day. And then I thought, wow, that's a big deal that I cut it down to four. I don't even know what the number was that I cut it down from to four, but it was a lot. Uh a lot. And and so, you know, those are things that you've got to rid yourselves of. These are things that you can only do if God is working in you as a man, if he's helping you take off the old self and put on the new self, uh, if he's really doing a work inside your heart and life. And so all of these things are going on. Paul is wanting us to understand that, that as men, these are some things that we really need to be working on. These are really some things that we need to be laying aside and not picking up again. Now, if you're gonna do that, if you're gonna get rid of some of these things, if you're going to um put to death some of these things, then you're going to have to replace them with other things. And so Paul goes on then to give us some things that we should do, things that we should learn, words that we should memorize, and things that we should set out to live by. He so I want to read this passage to you in Colossians 3. He says, Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Might not sound that manly to you, but it is. Stick with me. He says, Bear with each other and forgive one another. If any one of you has a grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you, and over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. So what he's saying here is he's saying if you're going to replace your life with and get rid of things like filthy language and slander and sexual immorality, then you better replace it with some other things. And so he says you're because of this, therefore, everything that he's talked about up to this point about getting rid of things and putting things to death, now he's saying, as God's chosen people. So because there's a relationship that you have with God now, because he chose you, because he loves you, because he sent his son to die for you, now there's some things that you should do because of who he is and what he's doing in your life. You need to know that you should be holy and dearly loved. This is all about how God feels about you. So act differently because of that. Dress differently, put on a new self, wear things like he says, close yourselves with compassion and kindness and humility and gentleness and patience. I want to tell you that a man that does those things really is a man that stands out in front of other people. People take notice of that because he's not like other men, because he's kind and he's gentle and he's patient and he's compassionate and he's humble. A lot of times we think we become a man when we can be strong and talk strong and not need any help and all of these things. But what he's saying is there's a completely different way that you should live as a Christian man. That because of what Jesus has done in your life, you ought to be doing these things. You need to understand how he feels about you. My life changed at the age of 40 when I was going through some counseling and realized, wow, I needed to see myself the way God sees me. And the day I did that, the day I committed to that, things changed for me dramatically. He started changing me and making me into a new man almost immediately, instantly. Now he continues to work on me. It wasn't just all at once, but he started that process right then, and I'll never forget it. And he can do that in you as well. Paul then goes on to say how he feels uh how we should feel about other people. He says here in verse 13, bear with each other and forgive each other if we have a grievance against each other. So bear with each other means no, don't be bears to each other, don't uh be gruff and mean and loud and strong and scary. What he's saying is you got to bear with each other, you got to work with each other here, you got to be patient with each other. Um, and if you know, if if you've hurt someone, forgiveness has to happen. And I want to talk about that for a few minutes because we we don't talk about that a lot in our world nowadays, but we need to forgive each other. And Paul says to do this as the Lord forgave you. So if you're going to do this, if you're gonna be a man that forgives others, if you're gonna be a man that bears with others, then you're going to need to understand what it was that Jesus did for you on the cross by forgiving you of your sins. And when you ask him to forgive you of those sins and you're pledging to follow him for the rest of your life, all of a sudden it's a lot easier to move away from that old way of life and start embracing the new one. It's a lot easier to become a new man where you overcome things that you used to battle. You used to give in to these temptations and sins, and now through his help, you're able to not do them. You're able to say no to them, you're able to put them to death. And so he's really getting at that. But it all starts with us understanding what we need from him, that we need his salvation, we need his forgiveness. And then as we're dealing with other people who, by the way, need the same kind of forgiveness, it makes it a lot easier. If I realize that I'm a sinful man that also needs forgiveness, that also needs patience and kindness and gentleness and compassion and humility, if I remember that, it makes it a lot easier to bear with that person and forgive them. So how do I do that? How do I forgive someone? Well, if someone has hurt you, I think the Bible's pretty clear on that. You need to go to them and talk with them face to face and explain how they have hurt you. Now, on the flip side, it's possible that you've been the one that caused hurt in someone else. Guess what you have to do? You have to go to them and talk with them face to face and explain that you know you hurt them and ask for their forgiveness. It's a powerful thing when we learn to forgive each other and when we ask for that and we um are granted that, or when we ask someone um when we tell them that they hurt us and they ask for our forgiveness. When that happens, it really can change things, it can alter the course of of every area of your life. And I really hope you understand that. You know, um when I uh years ago too, I had a job uh where we it was a state office and we helped people find jobs. And in that process, when I worked with a new client, uh every time we had to have certain documentation that they would have to fill out in order to receive the benefits that we were giving them to help them find jobs. One of them was we had to get a grievance form signed by them. Because this was a state office, there was this whole grievance process in place where you were given the steps to take. So if you didn't like how something turned out, you had to first of all try to resolve it yourself with that client. Or if they didn't like how things came out, they could talk with you first. And if they didn't like that, then they could go above your head, they could get others involved. And the Bible is the same way that when we have conflict with other people, first we go to try to resolve it with them. And then if that doesn't work, we can get other people to sit with us. Uh, Matthew 18 talks about taking two or three people with you to sit down to help mediate this situation. I've been in those situations where as a pastor, I've mediated. I've also been in those situations where I've been the person on the other side of the mediation, where I had to do some soul searching and really ask for forgiveness and really change some things about my life. And so this grievance process, when Paul talks about this, whenever you have a grievance against someone, we need to make that right. I also want to help you understand that there are times when people sin against us or when we sin against them, and that's where forgiveness takes place. Now, when we do that and when forgiveness happens, it doesn't mean that we go right back to the way things were. It might, sometimes that has to happen with your spouse. You really need to work at restoring that and building things back up when trust is broken. Uh, if it's someone that, you know, it's not it's better off for you to not be around them anymore, you can still forgive them and not spend time with them anymore. You can put some healthy boundaries in place in your life, or they can with you. Either of those cases can work. But what you've got to do is you've got to first try to resolve it with them. And then if that doesn't work, you can get others involved. Uh, what you cannot do as a godly man is do nothing and stay mad and stay silent and stay alone. If we're going to be the kind of men that leads this world and those that are in our life closer to Jesus, then we've got to be the ones that lead the charge to work through conflict. That means we've got to be willing and man enough to sit down with people. You really are a strong man when you sit down with someone and try to work through conflict with them. And then afterwards, like I said, you determine what those boundaries need to be. So Paul has talked about how God feels about you, and he's talked about how you should feel about others, but then in verse 14, he talks about how we can stay together. Uh at one point a few years ago, I had hurt my hip while I was running and um had to go to physical therapy, and they talked about how this muscle group works with that muscle group, and these ones on your hips are really stabilizing the rest of your legs. And so I want you to understand this that the way that you love people is directly connected to. How God works through you. And so we've got to understand that. You know, somehow over the years, we as men have become convinced that we don't need other people. We can be a lone ranger. We can make it through this world without anybody else. But in the body of Christ, you don't get a choice because everybody in the body is somebody. And there's somebody that we need around us and that they need around them. And so when we spend time with other people within the body of Christ, when we spend time with people in our family, when we spend time with those that we love and that God calls us to love, there are times that we've just got to work through stuff with them. They're going to do something to you. You're going to do something to them. And so you just have to work through stuff. You can't get around it, you can't get over it. You can't ignore it. You just have to work through it. And that starts with you working through your own stuff first. If you're going to be the man that God wants you to be, there's some things that you probably got to work through. Maybe the upbringing that you had, or maybe the first marriage that you had that failed, or maybe the way that you wish you had spent more time with your kids and now they're grown. Whatever that is, you got to work through that a little bit. You can be a strong man by working through that. You don't become a strong man by ignoring it. And so work through your own stuff. Whatever it is, whatever baggage, whatever things you have in your past or that are holding you back from becoming the man God wants you to be. Start asking him to help you work through that. And to do so, you may need some other people around you. You may need some other men in a men's group, or you may need to talk with your spouse or some of your other buddies, or you may even need to go to counseling like I did. You're going to need some people to pray with you and pray for you and hold you accountable to decisions and steps that you're trying to take. You're going to have to find ways to work through your stuff first. And then when you do that, you can work through stuff with other people. And I think that's where the real growth happens, where we start to work through stuff with other people. Now, that may be, it may differ how you work through those things. You know, you may yell like those sisters. To this day, I will say to my two daughters, you guys are fighting like your sisters. And that just has a an image in my head of, you know, uh two girls screaming at each other, like those girls in the parking lot that night. When I was in college and we had a problem with our teammates, we had a mandatory um uh study hall where we would have to go in and only players were in there, no coaches, only captains and the rest of us players. And if you had a problem with someone on the team, you just said, we're gonna take care of this in the blood sport room. So when we went to study hall, there was a classroom next to us that uh we would move the desks out of the way, and those two guys would just wrestle on the carpet. I mean, they'd come up with rug burns and cuts and scrapes and you know, shirts ripped and things like that. Uh, but by the time they came up from wrestling in the blood sport room, they were good. They had gotten all that aggression out. Now you can't do that with everybody, but some people you might be needed to think about how do you work through stuff with them? Uh, you may need to take some time away from them and then come together later where you can say you're sorry and admit your mistakes. But either way, if you're gonna work through stuff with other people, you've got to find ways to do that. You've got to find ways to man up and be better. And that's what I really think that I wanted to share with you today is just that uh it's important for you to work through your stuff and then work through stuff with other people. Doing so is gonna help you in your marriage, it's gonna help you at your job, it's gonna help you with your neighbor when his bushes are are uh overgrown past your fence. It's gonna help you um with other people at your church, it's gonna help you when it with the people that you coach with or that you play pickleball against, whatever it is, whatever you do when you go fishing with guys and one guy won't stop talking and he's scaring all the fish away. That there's just ways that we've got to learn how to handle conflict with other people. And one of the best things that we can do is to understand how God has forgiven us and then use that to help us forgive other people. So those are just some things that I wanted to share with you today. I hope that that's helpful to you. I hope that it speaks to you. If not now, maybe some other time. The words that I've just shared are going to come to your mind and heart when you're in the middle of a conflict. And hopefully, by God's grace, something I've said is going to help you resolve that conflict. And hopefully you can do it without screaming at each other and walking away from each other. Hopefully, he can bring you back closer to that person that you're at odds with and help you work through this conflict in a biblical way. And hopefully, by doing so, you'll realize that God is making you into the man he wants you to be. Because that's the whole goal that we're after here. That's what he's after. He's wanting to do that work in your life. And you know what, guys? I'm just gonna pray for you now. I'm gonna pray that God would help you do just that, that he would help you find ways to resolve conflict, that he would help you find ways to see how he feels about you and how you should feel about other people and what steps you should take in order to do that. Lord, I just lift up any man that's listening to this or any woman that's going to be talking with a man about this. I'm praying that through these words that I've shared, that you would help them understand what work you're trying to do in their lives. I pray, like the day that it happened for me, that these people listening, whoever they are, wherever they are, would understand how you feel about them and it would change the course of their life. And I pray that because of that, it would help them understand how to deal with other people. Because sometimes people can just be hard to deal with, and we cannot control how other people respond. But Lord, we can ask you to control us, to change us, to make us into the men and women that you want us to be. And that's the whole goal that you're after. So do that in us today. If there's anything that you want to change about us today, I ask that you do that. Give us the courage to do that, and give us the courage and the strength and the wisdom to know how to do that when we're dealing with other people. I love you and I thank you. And as I pray for these people, I pray that you would work in their lives. And I ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, that's all the time we're gonna spend today talking about this. And I, like I said, I hope it's been helpful to you. And if if you have questions or comments, I would love to hear back from you. There's ways to do that. You can contact us on our YouTube channel here at High Point Church. You can um go to the link for for the show in the bio here, and uh, I would love to hear from you, and I would love to hear how this is helping you live your life as a godly man. Thanks so much for joining me today, and I'll talk with you again soon. Thanks for joining us today for this latest episode of Miking Disciples. If you have any comments or questions, I would love to get for you to go to the comments or questions link that's found in the description of the episode, and I really would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for joining us today. We'll talk to you later.