How Do I Navigate Relationships? | Ways of the Wise

Who are the people and voices influencing your life—and are they leading you toward wisdom or away from it? Proverbs 13:20 reminds us that “whoever walks with the wise becomes wise,” challenging us to take a closer look at the relationships, influences, and environments shaping us.

This message explores how Proverbs calls us to respond wisely to the wicked, our enemies, and fools, while also challenging us to examine our own hearts. True wisdom includes surrounding ourselves with people who will speak truth, sharpen us, and point us toward God. And ultimately, we find the perfect friend in Jesus, who knows us completely and never leaves us.


This sermon was recorded at a Sunday morning gathering at Church of the Lookout in Longmont, Colorado.

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Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast. The Church of the Lookout is the Holy Colorado, and our vision is Jesus, abiding in his presence, growing in its family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love. Visit us online at theLookout.church. Alright, friends, let's take a seat. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Anastasia. No, no, no, no. You sure? Okay. Alright. If you change your mind, let me know. Hey friends. What's up? Alright, so we're gonna do a pop quiz this morning. Welcome to the lookout. Pop quiz before we hit the sermon. We don't do many pop quizzes around here. But this is gonna be a little game show we call real or fake wisdom. Okay? Real or fake wisdom. I'm gonna read a series of Proverbs, and you have to tell me if it's real or fake, okay? Or at least from the book of the Proverbs in the scriptures, all right? Okay, so we're gonna start with uh round number one. Round number one. Like a gold ring in a pig snout is a beautiful woman without discretion. True or false? Real or false? This one, my friends, is real. Proverbs 11, 22. Ladies without discretion, watch out. Alright? Okay, number two. A name spoken in an empty room remains a name even still. That one is fake. That one's fake. I hope you knew that was fake. It means nothing. Alright? It's wisdom that sounds wise, it means nothing. And I guarantee you go through 40 of those a day on Facebook. Just wisdom that sounds amazing and it means nothing. Alright. Third one. If you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it. Real or fake? Real? Any fake? Any fit? Anybody fake? No? Okay. Alright, you guys got it. Real. Proverbs 25, 16. Alright? So you honey eaters, watch out. You've got wisdom for you if you're into honey as a as a general food group. Okay. Next one. Bless your neighbor loudly early in the morning, and it will be counted to you. It's cursing. Real or fake? Okay, thumbs up. Alright. This one is real. And my wife is like, amen. That's the truest thing you've ever said. Proverbs 27:4. Alright. Next one. Roma. Two more, two more. Okay. Trust the process, unless the process cannot be trusted. That should be a resounding false. No good. I'm guaranteed there's somebody in the room that's like, wow, dude, that's good. Bro, that is so deep. I'm really gonna use that this week. Thank you. No, do not post that, alright? Don't post, don't take a screenshot and post that. You will be humiliated online, all right? Okay, last one. Make no friendship with a man given to anger lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself. Real, real, real, real, real. Proverbs 22, 24 through 25. All right. Who got all of them right? Okay, all right. You guys need to stay in the book of Proverbs. We're doubling the series. We're taking it all the way through the fall. No. Um, yeah, thank you for playing that game show with me. Um we are in a series on the Proverbs, but lest I forget, we have an awesome announcement. Shannon and John Mark are engaged. Come on. Woo! We've been waiting. We've been waiting for that one. So many fun things. Um, we have been in the Ways of the Wise series, going through the book of Proverbs together. Hopefully, you've enjoyed this last several weeks and we've been taking kind of different samples through the Proverbs. The Proverbs are so good for us. And if that exercise was no indication, we need to know the difference between good wisdom and false wisdom. There's a lot of good-sounding things that are kind of hollowed out in the middle in our particular culture, but um, but we're orienting our lives around the wisdom of God. Um it's what we need, it's what the world needs. And this last particular proverb I read talked about a friendship with a man given to anger. Make no friendship with the man given to anger lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself. It's this uh this proverb that has to do with the influence that others have on our lives. And that's what I want to talk about a little bit this morning about how do we navigate relationships and what is the wisdom as we choose how to navigate relationships? Because here's the truth the best indication of the person you are becoming is the kind of people you spend the most time with.

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It's one of the it's I tell my kids all the time you choose your friends, you choose your future. The best indication of the person you are becoming is the kind of people you spend your time with. Now, I grew up in Indiana. In Indiana, there's a few things that are true. Number one, a lot of people aren't locking their front doors, all right? People, uh and and there's there's kind of a friendliness in the Midwest, all right? People just stop by your house unannounced. Neighbors, cousins, somebody's kid you never met, they're just in your house, all right? It's an open door policy. But now you move to Colorado, it changed a little bit. I don't know about you, but uh, you know, over 20 years later, if somebody shows up to my door unannounced, I'm I'm probably gonna call the police, all right? That's probably gonna happen. I love you guys, but call first, all right? It's just a change in a change in in uh in philosophy out here in Colorado. So another thing in Indiana, dinner came out of a crock pot at least a few days a week, all right? Um, casseroles, something with the cream of mushroom soup in it, right? It's just a standard staple item. And nobody was hiking in Indiana. The only person, the only people hiking in Indiana was uh people whose car just broke down. That's when you're hiking. All right? Uh it's it doesn't make even a category. There's no REI in Fort Wayne. Are you kidding me? Um and so I moved here and you know you quickly found out in Colorado fitness isn't just a hobby, it's an expectation, right? And uh and you know, some of you did a 14 this morning and then just showed up to church. That's what you do, or you're leaving church to go on a hike later in the smoky, you know, air, and it's like that's what you do. And uh it didn't take long for me to adopt the Colorado mindset. In fact, I remember this kind of culture shock moment when years and years and years ago we had welcomed a new staff member onto our team, and this person came from Texas. God bless his heart, God bless his soul. He came from Texas to Colorado. Great guy. Uh but at his first staff meeting, he was trying to kind of build a bridge and you know, um make peace with everybody, and he wanted to bless us. So he brought us a treat from Texas, uh, a dessert, and let me give you a hint: it was not gluten-free, it was not vegan, it did, it was not oatmeal raisin cookies, all right? Deep fried Twinkies. Deep fried twinkies, and I kid you not, he opened up his his uh he opened up his Tupperware and started kind of offering it around the room. One person took him up because they felt bad, right? Because they're a bunch of Christians who felt bad, and this person, I think, went home 30 minutes later sick, all right. Now, uh now, if it was 19-year-old me that was in the room, I would ate three or four of those and then ask for more, but not that not the mature Luke, all right? I know better than that. So now I'm older and wiser, I live in Boulder County, I don't eat deep fried Twinkies. But it's amazing how things change over time, right? And depending on where you grew up, you know the same kind of thing. You change a lot of times, it's very unconscious, but we adjust values, we adjust habits, we adjust expectations based on environments that we spend our time in. And it happens from our family of origin to your your new situation, it happens in workplace environments. The people around us have a tremendous effect on our life. And if you don't think that's true, then you are very naive because the Proverbs talks all about this, the type of people who are in our life. And so let me just say something very plainly. You are being formed into a certain kind of person. It is how it's not if you are being you are, it's just a plain fact, you are right now being formed into a certain kind of person, whether you signed up for it or not, and it's a lot of that, a huge majority of who you're becoming has to do with the kind of people that are in your life. Are you guys with me? So Proverbs 13, 20. We've we've read this before, and I'm gonna read it again, and kind of, you know, we're gonna emphasize the second part of this. Proverbs 13.20 says, Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companions of fools will suffer harm. Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but a companion of fools suffer harm. And so it's it's a pretty clear proverb that if you spend time with those who are walking in wisdom, there will be a substance of that that will become a quality of your life. And this and the same is true of those who companion fools. There's a harmful effect that happens when we surround ourselves with foolish thinking. And so the question that I'm just want to pose and I want you to just ask here today when you think about and you do a quick audit of your life, um, and if you're honest, just be very honest with that. Who are you actually walking with? Not just in a person or people, but in your digital influences too. In fact, I think for some of you, the most influential voices in your life are digital influences. There's the podcasts and Instagram follows and YouTube videos and all the stuff that you are consuming, but the voices that you scroll are still your companions. Okay? That's something we have to kind of acknowledge in 2026. So who are you actually spending time with? And because the Proverbs introduces to three different kinds of characters that it really tells us to watch out for. And those three different kinds of characters are the wicked, the enemy, and the fool. The wicked, the enemy, and the fool. Okay, we're gonna we're gonna dig into that together because Proverb, in the book of Proverbs, Solomon spends a lot of time parsing these out, these different kinds of characters in our life, and the effect that they have on us and what happens when we make inward room for these types of individuals in our life. Okay? Are you guys with me? So, Jesus, thank you. Let's just stop and pray for a second. Jesus, we thank you today as we read your word that you would find us. We thank you that you know us. You know our hearts, you know our ways. And Holy Spirit, we welcome you to investigate our lives, to search us out, examine us from the inside out. We thank you, Father, to form us into your likeness and your image. And we'll give you this space in this time in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. So Solomon he really gives a lot of stage time to the wicked. In fact, the majority of the references to the wicked in the New Testament are going to be happening in the book of Proverbs. And and he he equates a lot of wise living to an awareness of wickedness. Okay, so here's a couple things he says. Proverbs 4, 14. Do not enter the path of the wicked, do not walk in the way of the evil. Avoid it, do not go on it, turn away from it and pass on, for they cannot keep, they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong. They are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble. Okay? So when was the last time you interacted with somebody that you would actually call wicked? Okay? It's it's I know for me that's not a term that I reserve for a lot of people. Like, even if you're thinking about your boss, you're like, it's ah, it's a bad boss. I don't know. I very meet very, very few people who come to me like, my boss is straight up wicked, you know? Like that just it's not even like a term we use, right? Unless you're from Boston, then everything is wicked awesome, right? Wicked awesome, right? But that's what we're talking. We're not talking about wicked awesome, we're talking about just straight wickedness. It's not even a word we use because here's my here's my theory. In a modern lens, we tend to minimize labeling anything as wicked because we're afraid of being perceived as judgmental or intolerant. Yet, Proverbs is not squeamish about calling wicked things wicked or wicked people wicked. Are you guys with me here today? It is, it is actually a thing. Proverbs 6.16 says this there are six things the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers. Okay. So this word in Hebrew is this word rasha, and it's courtroom language. It means that the guilty or the wrong, the party the judge condemns. Um it's not just an ordin a catch-all word for bad, that's just raw, R-A, and it covers everything from bad decisions to rotten figs. That's raw. Um but Proverbs says this word rasha for the person whose settled the operating system of their life is bent towards evil, desires, plans, they they are they are oriented towards uh uh toward towards evil things. And it's not just, just to be clear, it's not somebody who did a bad thing. That's not who they're calling wicked. It's somebody who's organized their life around injustice. Okay, and so in Solomon's world, when he's calling people wicked, there's a few different kinds of people that he's really he that he has in mind as he's elevating. It was people who were operating a system of rigged scales at the market, where the poor always missed out. It was moving a widow's boundary stone, and a boundary stone was a land title, so it's not a petty theft. It was, you know, when you moved a boundary stone, you're stealing generations of a family's future. Well, she has no way to fight back. It was buying a witness at the city gate, which was the courthouse. And so the wicked in the Proverbs were not just street thugs. Okay, they're not just like these down and out guys, like, you know, that's it's usually in the in Proverbs, the wicked are usually people in society that would be considered respectable or even prosperous, working the system from the inside out in their favor. Um, and in the short run, the wickedness actually works. And that's what Solomon's saying. Like, listen, there's wicked people that are actually operating in certain ways, but you want to be very careful of them. And so, what does that look like in our world? It could be unethical business dealings, it could be people who take advantage of the elderly or the vulnerable because they can't they can't think you know because they're they're they're not able to think through the the issues in the same way as they used to. Um it could be those who legislate injustice. That's wickedness. It's the person who makes promises they never intend to keep to keep. Wickedness is those who are chronically manipulative, divisive, deceitful. They stir up chaos wherever they go. Okay. And and and what Solomon would say is like, listen, you have to know where wickedness is and you have to be careful how you associate with them. Not that you won't associate with them, but you have to be very careful not to follow in their path. And it's a very easy thing to do, especially in a marketplace setting. Or so there's certain settings where wickedness is more normalized. And uh, and it takes shrewdness, it takes wisdom to know where uh where wickedness is at place, injustice is being normalized, and and people and it has a huge cost to it. And and Solomon's saying, like, don't you need to be aware, don't just recognize the people, you need to stay away from the wicked. Do not enter the same path as the wicked. Now, for a lot of us, you hear something like that, and the an immediate question that comes up is, well, but hold on a second, didn't even didn't Jesus eat with sinners? Like, didn't he with didn't he spend his time with people who were didn't have it all together? And uh and and the truth is, yes, he spent time with sinners. He he would spend time with tax collectors like Zacchaeus, but a lot of times what happened was as he was spending time with these individuals who were, quote, far from God, something was turning in their heart, they were leaning into him, and even someone like Zacchaeus says, like, listen, I'm gonna pay back everything I've cheated four times over. And the person was moving towards Jesus. But to those who were determined to do harm, there's multiple times that Jesus said, Depart from me. Jesus separated goats, sheep, and goats. Jesus separated evildoers or the self-righteous from from the rest. And he had very specific words to say. So he didn't just even Jesus wasn't in anything goes, even while he was walking, even with the ethic of love as a standing operating system, even Jesus had a placeholder for those who were evildoers. Um the New Testament, in the New Testament, Paul would even say bad company ruins good morals or good character, right? So, yes, we befriend people who are far from God. We should have a wide reach of relationships and not just Christians, by the way. We are living on mission to be bridge builders outside of this room. Um, but don't be so naive to think that you are immune from being influenced by evildoers and wickedness in this world. We're all susceptible to that. So, what I'm saying here, this is not cancel culture. I'm not saying we cancel people just because they don't say or do the right things. It's about being mindful of the environments that you are steeped in because those are the ones that are shaping you from the inside out, sometimes without you even knowing. You guys hear me? All right. So the wicked, the wicked stay away. But there's another category called the enemy. And those who live in direct opposition to God, his ways, and his people. Now, our instinct with those we would consider enemies, if you consider anybody your enemy, is to fight, to gloat, to prove them wrong, to win the culture war. We're gonna go bring these people down. But what's really interesting is in the Proverbs, Solomon, he has a different posture towards those we would consider an enemy. So Proverbs 24, 17 says, Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles, lest the Lord see it and be displeased and turn away his anger from them. Did you guys hear that? Do not rejoice when your enemy falls. Man, this is a word we need. This is a word we need in 2026. Okay? So anytime our enemy falls or stumbles, and our first response is, oh man, they had it coming. Or I I can't wait for them to fall on their face. What what Proverbs is saying is that is not wisdom from God. That's foolishness. It's something else. It's not from the heart of God to see an enemy fall. Proverbs 25, 21 says this if your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink, for you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you. Now, a couple of nuances to this. There's a few different kinds of ways to read this. Obviously, um heaping burning coals on your enemy's head does not sound like a kind thing to do. But there's some things, there's some scholars who would argue contextually that to heap coals is actually to give them warm coals that they could take back to a fire to use on their own. It wasn't about throwing coals on their head, but to actually gather coals up for them to help them with a fire. So uh Jesus, Jesus would double down on this kind of wisdom, countercultural wisdom, and he would go further with this by saying, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. And it could rightfully be said that the most countercultural thing that would mark the way of Jesus and the entire flourishing and explosion of Christianity from the early church on was the central idea of enemy love. Enemy love. What he did on the cross, Father, forgive them for they knew not what they do. That that would be the central thing that would mark Christians for thousands of years, is the way that we treat our enemies. But again, the problem with us, I think uh I should say the challenge for us, especially those of us who come. From a New Testament point of view, is we downplay the whole category of enemy because we say, Oh, I don't really have enemies, that's just a trouble human being. Um, you know, because after all, we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, so that's not my real enemy, it's somebody else. And that's that's a true thing. That might be true, but that doesn't mean you don't have enemies in your life that you actually have to deal with. And if if you don't have any enemies, then it means nothing when Jesus says, Love your enemies. You have nobody to love. So, in order to love your enemies, you have to know who they are, okay? And again, it's not a bad thing to be able to name your enemies. We'll talk about that here in a second. Let me give you a few ideas of who this could be. Who is your enemy? The person who took something from you refuses to acknowledge it and likely will never apologize. Okay? Or it's the person on the other side of the political aisle that you were convinced is bad for the world. It's a family member who tells a version of your story that isn't true and they tell it every single Thanksgiving. It's the coworker who is depending on your failure so they can advance in their career, and likely they speak poorly about you in rooms that you are not in. It's the former business partner who took something and has never made it right. It's someone on the other side of the legal thing that you're in right now when the goal is really to take something from you. It's the person online who decided who you are and is not shy to comment about it. Okay? Those are some good examples of enemies. Okay. Now, years ago, I had an enemy, and I hate to say this, but it there was another pastor in town. I learned that he was publicly opposing both me and the church, partly for theological differences, but also partly for uh for lacking context and specific things that we were walking through. And he'd make some public comments, he made some public comments, but he had never reached out, he had never asked a clarifying question. And so eventually he messaged me and he and he and he and and he tried to be very friendly. He said, Hey buddy, just want to know let you know I'm you know I'm with you. And but like I was able to see right through it, and he was acting like nothing was wrong. But I was like, for me, I was like, itch I was immediately just angry and I was frustrated, and I was like, how could like how could you even call me buddy? So I knew the only right decision at that point in time was to buy him lunch. And so shortly after that, we sat down for lunch, and I kindly but directly said, Hey man, like listen, I you know, these things that you did, I you just need to know you don't know what you're talking about. And so I had to be very clear with him, but he also was able to give me some context of the situation he was in and where he's coming from. And over the course of the lunch, it actually turned out to be a really great conversation. We didn't land in all the same places, but there was more understanding, the air was cleared, and over time, here's the miracle, I was able to forgive him for what he did. And to this day, even though we're polar opposites on a lot of theological matters, like if he was here in this room, we would hug each other, we would high-five each other, and still to this day when we see each other, we pray for each other. Because the standard of Jesus when somebody becomes an enemy is not to move away from them, but to move towards them, to pray for those who persecute you. When you are misunderstood, when you were full of shame, when you were accused unrightfully, the posture of your heart is not to cut off, it's to move towards your enemy. It's a different than the wicked, for your enemy you move towards. Now, uh uh Eugene Peterson, he he words this brilliantly. He's he was asked once by some pastors, author Eugene Peterson, he wrote the message paraphrase of the Bible. He was asked by some pastors how he handled people who oppose him. He said, I had to name them as my enemy so I could treat them in the way that Jesus said to treat my enemies. So the way he says it, naming isn't hate, it's clarity because the moment you name somebody's enemy, you're bound to something: kindness, dignity, respect, prayer. The alternative is kind of a squishy niceness where nobody ever is ever anything and nobody ever actually loves anybody, okay? So he wrote about this in his book, Answering God, and he he expands on this a little bit more. He said, The Psalms were full of unsettling enemy talk. God is the primary subject in the Psalms, but enemies are established in solid second place. Why should this be? Shouldn't an overpowering sense of God's presence, his power, and salvation shrink human difficulties into insignificance? I know what he would call in other places a cheery nicefulness. Uh when we take the Psalms as our guide, we find that people who pray have a lot of enemies and that they spend a lot of their time or a lot of their praying time dealing with them. It's not wrong to acknowledge when somebody is against you, because it actually gives you a new measure of how you were to treat them, that you were to treat them as Jesus said, to pray for those who persecute, to bless your enemies, to care for their needs. And so, 2026, the reason why this is so important is because some of us, we you do have real enemies in your life, or maybe even metaphorical enemies, or people you think you're enemies. But the the idea is this Christians, we don't get to be soft, we also don't get to be savage. Listen, we name enemies honestly and we treat them supernaturally. We name our enemies honestly, we treat them supernaturally. So with our enemies, we hold them in the presence of God and we say, God, give me the strength to treat them as you would have me treat them, as you treated your own enemies. You guys liked that one, didn't you? Some of you need that word. Some of you have been gloating over your enemies. And it's because you're hurt. And that's okay to be hurt. Things have been done to you that are not right. Okay? And we need to acknowledge that. We're not saying that that doesn't matter. What I'm saying, though, is as you come closer to the wisdom of God, he is going to, by revelation, give you new eyes to see the people that you want to be against. This matters in a political season. It matters in your relationship circle, it matters at work. Ask God to do the internal work to give you eyes to see the way he sees. Amen, Luke. That's great. So the wicked, the enemy, the fool. So that with the fool, we stay alert. There's two kinds of fools in the Proverbs. Number one, the immature and unformed. These are young, in process, and there's really no shame in it. Okay? It's just we start as fools and we're fools most of our lives in some one way or the other. Just because we're ignorant in some way, in one way or the other. We're all kind of ignorant. You know, it's really interesting because even the word sophomore, and some of you are not going to like this. Any sophomores in the room? No? Any sophomores in the room? Okay. The word sophomore actually means wise moron. Sophomore. It actually means wise moron. It's true. It's like because you're you you're you know enough to think that you know everything. That's what happens. Like when you know enough to think it's this it's a person who listens to one like YouTube video and they want to teach a masterclass on this particular subject, and they want to lecture you on one thing that they watched online. That's a sophomore. It's a wise moron. It's like somebody who knows enough to think they know everything. No, that's okay. That's not actually super dangerous, it's just reality, okay? The the dangerous kind of foolishness is the one who refuses wisdom. So Proverbs 1.7 says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. Um, Proverbs 28, 26 also says, whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool. And at least 16 times, Proverbs connects folly with speech. Okay, so Proverbs 18.2 says, a fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion. This was before social media. Woo, this was happening like two, three thousand years ago, guys. I mean, fools were still talking. They've always been talking, they're always talking. And so, how does Proverbs say to handle it? Number one, moderate your time. The companions of fools suffers harm. So when you're around fools, man, you got a boundary that people who are refusing instruction, they refuse to learn, they refuse to be curious, they refuse to be corrected. You gotta you gotta moderate your time that you spend with fools, all right? You don't waste your words with fools. Proverbs 23.9 says he'll despise the good sense of what you have to say. So when you when you spend time trying to argue a fool out of being foolish, there's a there's a there's a threshold there where you're you become the foolish one. There's a threshold there where it's like you have to know what you're doing and who you're talking to. Doesn't mean you write them off, but it has to do with wise boundaries, all right? Don't expect resolution from an argument with a fool. Fools are not interested in resolution. Fools are not interested in seeing your side of things or seeing a broader picture. They're not interested. They're interested in one particular way forward. So you have to just, you have to understand when you're in an argument with a fool, you're at risk of becoming foolish yourself. Which is why just be careful the way you conduct yourself online. There's only so much you can do for point, counterpoint, point, counterpoint until it's like, okay, this is now, everybody's a fool here. This is folly, all right? Parenting is largely this work. Folly is bound up in the heart of a child. And so Proverbs says training your child towards wisdom, which means curating the influences with our children, all right? And so foolishness is something that we're always dealing with, but we have to really watch out for those who are foolish out of a sense of resistance towards wisdom. And you know who those are. No, those three categories, the wicked, the enemy, and the fool. Just to summarize, we stay away from the wicked, we stay kind to our enemies, we stay alert around fools. But the real key question here is this who am I in the story? It's the temptation anytime you listen to a sermon like this, you're auditing your life trying to locate all the wick the wicked people, the enemies, and the fools. It's like Scar from the Lion King when he finally concludes, I am surrounded by idiots, right? But let me just caution you, you're not automatically the hero in the story. This is why Jesus would come and he would say in Luke chapter 6, he said, Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? And he was kind of making a joke, but he was like, Listen, if you're spending all of your time evaluating everybody else, but you're you're unwilling to see where there is any error or wrongdoing in your own life, then that makes you a hypocrite. And it you'd be better to deal with the log in your own eye before you deal with the speck in your brother's eye. It's hard to see people clearly when you cannot see yourself clearly. Um and so can I just suggest something? It's possible that some of us in the room fall in the category of wicked or somebody's enemy or a fool. Okay? And that's for God to show you, not for us to point to each other. But here's how Jesus deals with that. Jesus rebukes evildoers, he forgives his enemies, and he's comically patient towards his foolish disciples. All right? It's amazing how patient he is towards their foolish disciples. But who is he hardest on? He's hardest on the self-righteous every time. He's always hardest on the self-righteous, those who are not willing to acknowledge their own foolishness, their own wrongdoing, the wicked ways of our own hearts. And so that's why that's why David, even in the old even in the Psalms, that's why David knew this, and he sung it out very early on in Psalm 139. He turned it into a prayer. He said, Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. And so it's a good question that you might even just sit with now. Where have I been the enemy in somebody else's story? It's probably not a maybe. It's probably happened at some point. Where have I been a fool and not longing for wisdom? Where have I actually trusted in my own thinking and actually acknowledged distanced myself from the ways of God just because it was the normalized right thing to do in the society that we live in? And so those are questions that we get to hold before God, and then as we consider those people in our life, let me just hear me on this. When we read these Proverbs, it's not permission to cut people off, it's just to be aware of who we're walking with and be careful because not everybody who is one of those things will always be that thing. People get to change as well. So somebody who once knew as a fool can grow in wisdom, somebody who is once an enemy can become a friend, somebody who is wicked can become a follower of Jesus and holy and righteous in him. So we don't write people off. We're using this to awareness of the influences in our life. Now, last thing here before we just kind of have some reflection questions, as we think about us and the story we're living, we're thinking about the people in our lives, the story that they're holding in our lives. Who did the Proverbs say we should stay close to? And the Proverbs elevate the role of a wise friend, not just somebody who's easy to be around, but something much more specific and even sometimes uncomfortable. Proverbs 27, 5 says, Better is an open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, profuse are the kisses of an enemy. And so in Proverbs, a wise friend, and this is what we ought to cultivate in the family of God, in the body of Christ, wise friendships. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. So friends aren't necessarily people who make you feel better all the time. They do have permission to correct you, they have permission to help you identify where God is trying to get your attention in your life. And hopefully that's done well and with kindness. And hopefully that's received. It's not to harm you, but to shape you and help you build your life. But to not be open to that. Sometimes we confuse good friends as enemies because they said something to us that we don't like. So some of this is like, are you willing to receive a correction from a friend? Who has permission to speak into your life to help you cooperate with the image of God inside of your life? Some of it are so isolated and protected, and we can get a safe life, but we'll never be able to grow in wisdom. If we live a life of isolation, you will stay safe, but you will never become wise. Because God surrounds us with a counsel all around us. Proverbs 27, 9. Oil and perfume make the heart glad, and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel. I'm thankful for the people in my life that are not afraid to tell me the truth. And say, hey, let's talk about that. Or hey, um, are you doing okay? Or hey, here's what God has to say. Here's what I think God might be wanting to say to you, right? Proverbs 27, 17 says this iron sharpens iron and one man sharpens another. That's like any men's group you ever go to, like men's ministry. We print that on t-shirts and the whole thing. But it doesn't sound comfortable, does it? Iron and iron? That doesn't sound in cra that's I don't want to be in that. Sharp, you know, like but the work of sharpening is like material that's like, that's like, you know, it's it's there's there's a resistance almost. It sounds intense, but part of the way of God, the God, the way that God uses us, the way he deepens love in our lives, is by bringing us a council of friends, wise godly people who call the best out of us and call us up into God's purposes. Amen. Okay. Last last thought here, and we're gonna just hold this place before Jesus today as we're kind of looking at the relationships God's given us. And this is a this is the gospel message for us today. As we look at all relationships, we look at who we are in the so you might feel like I'm I'm the bad guy in my relationships. Listen, there is grace and forgiveness for anybody who calls on the name of Jesus and anybody who confesses and repents. And God can do a miracle in all of our lives, and he has done a miracle in our lives. The good news here is this Proverbs 18, 24. A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Who is that friend? Who is that friend? It's Jesus. Jesus sticks closer than a brother. So if you are in the room here, and as I'm speaking, and you're becoming aware of unresolved relational things in your life, maybe. Maybe at work, maybe in your family, your mother-in-law, father-in-law, parents, brother, sister, whoever that is. And you've been holding a place of unresolved for a while, one of the beautiful gospel messages we get to hold on here today is that there is even for you a friend that clips that sticks closer than a brother. Guess what? God, you you might be praying the prayer, God search me and know me. Can I give you a hint? He already, he already knows you. He's not surprised. Like, oh my gosh, I can't. Until you prayed that prayer, I had no idea what was in you. I'm so illuminated now. You know, that's not what God is saying. Like God knows you. He knows your shadows, he knows your light, he knows the content of your life. And guess what? He says, You, I'm not going anywhere. I'm gonna sit closer to you than a brother. So maybe that's good news if you've been let down, if you have a list of people who are against you, or maybe uh not supportive of you, or you feel alone in that. I want to speak that to your heart, that there is a friend in Jesus. He loves you, he's with you. And the degree that you receive his love, get this the great the degree that all of us here receive the love of God is the power source for us to be able to love and extend the love of God to all of the people that we just talked about. You cannot generate love. Love starts with God as the source, it passes through us to the people that God surrounds us with. So I would recommend to you the best thing that you can do to navigate relationships well is to start with being loved endlessly and unconditionally by your Father and Him. So just around the room today, let's just close our eyes for a moment. And I would encourage you, let's invite the Holy Spirit. Invite the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, I just want to ask for every single one of us here today, you would show us even just one person that we've held in our heart with a certain kind of frustration or contempt or unresolve. Bring them to mind, bring their face or their name to mind. Not to expose them, but because you want to teach us to love them. For some of us, that could be an ex-spouse. It could be your current spouse. It could be a friend that you thought was going to be there and wasn't there like you had expected. And as that person comes to mind, I just want to invite, let's just invite the Holy Spirit to show us. God, we ask that you show us how do you see this person, and how do you want me to pray for them. Just pray that prayer in your own words. How do you see this person? How do you want me to pray for them, to treat them, to posture myself towards them? Just pay attention to anything the Holy Spirit brings up in you. I think for some of us it's gonna start with forgiveness. Some of you know something's been taken from you, something's been done to you, and you feel like to forgive them would be letting them off the hook. I just believe that God will want to show you know to forgive them is to remember the degree that I forgave you. And they're not accountable to you, they're accountable to me. So you can forgive and release them of what you feel like they owe you. It may be the most powerful and supernatural thing that happens in your life today is to forgive. It may be a journey of forgiveness, and even if that's where you are today, just forgive again. 70 times seven, just keep going, just keep forgiving, release them and trust them to the Lord. And maybe here today, different than those in your life, maybe you're thinking here today of just those who might consider you an enemy. And if it's possible, you might even ask, God, would you show me if there's anything in me that I need to ask for forgiveness for? Or anything I need to make right, something I've done wrong. Maybe it has to do with business dealings or the way you relate to certain people in your life. This is for God to reveal to you. And there may be a way that you need to go make that right. So, Holy Spirit, would you show us anything that we need to ask for forgiveness for in the people in our lives? And I thank you for the power to do so. The courage. The courage to do so, God. We thank you. We thank you, God. I just encourage you to hold those spaces, and maybe even for you in this room, you're like, there's some stuff stirring up in you, and you just need someone to talk to and pray with about some a complex situation that's not just easily solvable. There's just a lot of questions. And what about this, and what about that, and what about this? That's you. Listen, you're not alone. We're all walking, we all have complex relationships. It's not even, it's not a one-size-fit-all thing. There's no silver bullet here. It's a life of walking with God. But listen, as we end the service though, we are gonna have our prayer ministry team and some people with badges around their neck. And these people you can trust to just pray. You can you don't even have to share the details of what you're walking through, but I'm telling you, it helps to pray with somebody and let them join you as you hold a situation before the Father in heaven, believing he wants to bring breakthrough and healing and restoration. He wants to provide supernatural grace to you for what you're walking through. This is the work though, guys. Walking in wisdom is about walking in a way with God that translates to how we walk with others. You cannot separate your relationship with God from the way that it's experienced by the people in your life. You cannot do it. Jesus won't let you do it. The writers of scripture won't let you do it. It matters to the heart of God that we get our relationships right. Amen. Let's stand together across the room. Put your hand on your chest. And God, we thank you today. All of this starts with us receiving your belovedness, the undeserved grace and favor of God in our lives. And I thank you that you love us right here in the core of our being. I just thank you for a baptism of love in this room. Father, give us the power of the Spirit. Thank you that we are covered in the blood of Jesus over all sin and wrongdoing as we call on your name. And you send us out in your grace and strength to go and do the same. And God, as we leave this place today, I thank you that we're leaving full of the love of God to go love the world that you've called us to. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. So may the Lord bless you and keep you, may He make his face to shine upon you. May He be gracious to you, lift up His countenance upon you, and give you rest. Amen. Love you guys. Go in the peace and the strength of Jesus. Bless you.