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[SERMON] Choosing Relationship Over Offense | Culture of Honor

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In a world filled with division, offense, and broken relationships, how do we as followers of Christ stand apart? In this powerful sermon, Pastor Cyle Young unpacks what it means to build a "Culture of Honor"—a community where we value relationships above arguments, choose forgiveness over bitterness, and honor others even when we disagree.

Drawing from Romans 12 and practical, real-life examples, Pastor Cyle shares five key principles for living out honor in our families, workplaces, and communities. Discover how to care about what others care about, assume the best in people, release bitterness, restore relationships gently, and prioritize love over simply being right.

If you’ve ever struggled with offense, broken relationships, or want to see God transform your heart and community, this message is for you. Join us as we learn to live differently and reflect the love and honor of Jesus in every area of our lives.

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 We are here. I'm Cyle. Uh, I'm glad you're here today. So I hope you have your name tags on. I've got mine on. So it's name tag Sunday. And, uh, we're excited that you're here. Uh, we just finished a series called Pray More, worry Less. We did four weeks talking about prayer and worry and why we need to worry less and pray more.

And I hope that has been helping you in your life. And so this week and next week we're gonna really talk about things that. Matter here from a, a kind of a leadership vision standpoint of our church, kind of who we are, why we do what we do, because we are in 2025, but we have a vision 2025 that we started all the way back in 2020.

And so we are finishing that vision. So next week we're gonna talk about kind of how that's been going, and really we are launching a new vision next Sunday night, uh, at our meal. So those of you who come to our meal. Uh, to hear about our vision for, for 2030 and beyond. What does that look like? Uh, what's that?

Does that mean for our building, for this space here? How are we gonna renovate it? How are we gonna add on those type of things? That all will be next night, night. And so we'll be talking about that in the next few weeks. 'cause we're excited about where we're going because we do believe like a church or a people without a vision perish.

'cause that's what the Bible says. And so that's kind of what we're, we're getting into. And so today I wanna talk about another aspect of who we are as a church, but I wanna ask you a question first. Has anyone said anything or done anything that ever ruffles your feathers? Every day? Every, every day.

Every day. Okay. Um, if you don't know what ruffles your feathers means because you're not old, uh, what about makes you mad? Right? Makes you mad. Anyone who here has ever been offended or frustrated by someone, by something they've done or said, ever. Okay. Anyone wanna say? Nope. No one's ever said anything that's bothered me in my entire life.

Yeah. Okay. And as a result of that, sometimes we say things like this, you are dead to me. He is dead to me. She is dead to me. Anyone ever wanna admit they've said that before? Yeah. Okay. You've got some liars in here. Are you Okay? I mean, I worked as a youth pastor for a long time. I know I was a middle school student.

I was a high school student. This is something that people say, wow, that person talked about me in the bathroom at school, and, ah, no, they're dead to me. Right? Like, this is what happens. Or my coworkers, they, they, uh, they, they spoke about me and talked about me. They're dead to me. I'm, they're dead to me. Or that person parked their boat too close to my dock and they're dead to me.

Right. Because we live in a lake community. And that's where some of the drama is, right? Like, all right. It is. Uh, who here, like, just think about this. Do you have, in your life, do you have a track record of broken or hostile relationships? Think about your life. Do you like, man, I've got so many people that I just don't like, I try to avoid.

Do you go to the grocery store in a different area Because you don't wanna see certain people? Anyone one ever met. You've done that before you went to a different store? Yes. Like. That's the reality that people do, right? I'll go shopping somewhere else. I don't have to run into people I don't wanna see.

Like, the truth is, you have to ask yourself a question. If I have a track record of broken and hostile relationships, is it me? Is it my perspective of the world? Because as we live in this world, that is struggling, right? People are at odds right now, today, uh, there's a memorial service today, today's gonna be, um.

A rough day in our country. There's gonna be a lot of horrible things said on the internet, on the news. And my best advice. Turn it all off. Turn it all off. 'cause it'll be awful. It's been an awful two weeks since the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It's been an awful two weeks. Just seeing people say horrible things that can never be unsaid.

And then responding. Oh, I, I'll one up. You with what you said, right? Or I'll cut you out. I know people who have said, my family's dead to me in the last two weeks. Or, that person's dead to me, or I want nothing to do with them. Like we, we live in a culture that's, that's struggling society that's broken, right?

The world is sinful, the world is broken. And because of we're living in a broken world, there's broken people. And broken people do things that are hurtful and hurt people. Hurt people. That's a thing. And so people are at odds right now. We have Facebook warriors or people want to get Facebook, TikTok, Instagram.

I wanna get on there. I'm gonna tell you what I have to say about this thing. Like I, I've seen offensive things by people. I have no idea who they are on planet Earth. 'cause I'm just scrolling through Twitter. I'm like, oh, that's that. That's really offensive. And like you don't have to say something back.

That's just the thing. I know that the social media people who get rich off your comments and likes and whatever, think that you should say something back, but you don't have to. All right. What about your neighbors talk? Speaking of of our our lake, our lake thing. Like if you live on a, who lives on a lake and knows somebody that's got drama at the lake, right?

Oh, right. That's the first people, first service people or a bunch of lake people. Then, all right, so you know, there's lake drama and you talk to somebody long enough about lake, you're hearing about lawsuit that someone's in at the lake with somebody's dock or property or boat. It's just the reality of it.

That's why I live in the river. The only thing I have to worry about is something to eat my ducks, and now it's been the neighbor's dogs. That's my new drama. Right? Like but your neighbors, your actual neighbors can cause you to be offended and frustrated and they do or say things that hurt you. What about coworkers?

Everybody just loves all their coworkers all the time, and they live in a perfect harmony. I mean, I've had some instances where like. Ever since COVID, like when you go to the drive up places like Taco Bell or McDonald's, it always seems that, I get it when they're all fighting inside, like they're fighting.

They're like throwing the bat to each other. Like, and I'm like, man, they just do not like their jobs. Right. Or each other like, and what about families? Do you ever have family members who say or do things that that. Frustrates you, ruffle your feathers, make you mad. You ever said like, oh, my sister's dead to me now.

Right. Or my cousin, like I love my family, I love my extended family, but we are diametric opposed to some things in the world and I love them from afar. Right. I don't cut them off or cut them out, I don't think they're all dead to me. But some people that's what they do. You're dead to me. You did something I didn't like.

You said something I didn't like, so you are dead to me. That's not honoring, that's not loving, that's not kind. You see as, as a church, we, we value honor here. That's one of our, uh, that's one of the keys to who we are and our vision is that we value honor. We have a culture of honor. And, and when we look at scripture, honor values the relationship above the argument or above the offense.

Above the situation. We wanna be a people of honor. We're told to love God, love people. The Bible also tells us to honor God. And honor people. That's part of love. You cannot love and dishonor people. That's not a thing. I love you, but I'm gonna dishonor everything that you say or do, right? That's, but I love your soul, right?

That's not love. And so we're told to be a people that honor each other and honor God as we do that. And so we have to value the relationship above the argument. And we go to Romans 12, and this is a verse we love here. Remember the yours is the yellow part to read out loud. It says this love one another with brotherly affection.

Outdo one another in showing honor. We're we're, we're told to do this. It doesn't say love one another and only the people, family, friends that you actually like or haven't offended you lately with brotherly affection and it doesn't say outdo one another and only the people that you like or haven't defended you lately in showing on honor, it's everyone.

That means those people who are on the other side of the politic aisle. Show them honor. That's hard. That's hard, right? Big news this morning on Twitter. 'cause I, I'm old enough. I like Twitter. So, um, so, uh, van Jones, uh, this political commentary guy on the left side of of politics, okay. Charlie Kirk, we know was on the right side.

Conservative politics. Those two guys didn't like each other. At all. If you follow along with any of this, if you know what they would, they would say things back and forth on social media all the time. Here's what Van Jones is saying today, as, as Charlie Kirk is being remembered today. Van Jones is saying, I have in my inbox a DM from Charlie Kirk and he's just weeping online.

These were enemies, like if you follow this enemies, they really disliked each other, but Charlie Kirk sent him a DM direct message for those of you not in the lingo, right? Yeah, no problem. And it was on Twitter and uh, or ex it was on that. And it says, Hey, why don't you come onto my show? He is inviting Van Jos on the show.

Let's have a respectful conversation about our differences. It was a very appropriate, we'll, we'll just, we'll treat each other well and like this is why Van Jones, who this is his mortal enemy, has this message that he just found. After the, like the day of, of the assassination, he saw this message after it was in his inbox.

He didn't see it, his team was talking about, and so Van Jones is releasing, this is what I'm telling everybody, like my heart is broken. 'cause my enemy was trying to respectfully sit down with me and be my friend in honor. Like how powerful and profound is, I'm like working on this this morning. This is all happening like live this morning going on in the world.

Like while we're sitting here, like we have to outdo one another and showing on. Are, I'm not telling you which side of the political aisle or divide you have to be on. What I'm saying is, no matter where you're at, honor each other, how you view this is, this goes from politics to religion to sports. You don't have to, like Michigan football, I do.

Right? You can like whoever, but you could still honor me. You don't have to text me 10 minutes after Michigan loses or the moment they lose, right? The game. You don't have to do that. Wait some time, right? Um, it's just the way it's so, um. But like, that's never happened before, ever. So, um, but it is honor. We, we have to do better than the broken world around us.

We live in a culture of dishonor, a culture of I'm gonna destroy you when I can because you're gonna destroy me when you can. And that's not loving, that's not honor. And so we have a culture of honor here. There's five things in the culture of honor. It's a way we. We encourage each other to live. It's how we try to live as a staff in relation to each other, in relation to you, in relation to God.

We encourage you to try to apply this in your life. There's nothing magical about the culture of honor, but if you do, if you honor, you're going to be happier, have more joy, live more like Jesus Christ as you're kind of better relationships and less broken relationships. I, I promise you. Yeah. And so the culture of honor, we wanna share this with you 'cause it's big for us as we embrace the culture of honor in our current vision, is that number one, you care about what the people you care about, care about.

This matters. It doesn't mean because they like something you have to like it to, or because they believe a certain way or they're on a political spectrum a certain way that you have to agree that's okay. It just means that you take who they are, what they like, how they live into account. Before you speak, before you act like I wanna get to know the people that I care about.

If I care about you, I need to know you. And it should inform how I. Interact with you. What I say, what I do, I may still do the thing that I feel like I should do, but at least I have perspective about who you are and what you believe and what you think and will ruffle your feathers or not. And so care about what people care about.

It's hard, right? It's hard because you have to take time to learn people. To get to know people. You have to actually sacrifice your time, your energy to invest in getting to know people and love them. And so, lemme give you an example. Like, today in our life, my life care about what the people you care about.

Care about. Jared. Jared, uh, Jared's back today, as you know. And so Jared is wearing a hat today. Alright. Now I know as the pastor of this church, there will be people that will be here. They'll be very offended that Jerry's wearing a hat on stage. Some of you might think, why does that matter? There are people that does matter for.

All right? And so we had a conversation about this because I know as the pastor, I care about those people. I know those people will send me a message telling me how much they didn't like that hat. And so Jared and I, we had a conversation about it and he says, Hey. Like I'm wearing the hat because, oh. And I'm like, oh yeah,

you should wear the hat. So, right. You shouldn't. And I know how much Jared likes to have his hair looking good and it doesn't look good. So let's, he trusted me enough to show me, and so I'm like, you know what? I know that there might be some people get offended. We'll just tell. You can just tell people that I'm wearing a hat.

We've been traveling and like, because I care about him enough to care about what he cares about, and it didn't, it did change my decision and I know that that might end up hurt, uh, bothering or frustrate somebody else. But the truth is you have to wade through all these things. We literally had a full conversation this morning about the hat situation, like before church.

Thinking like, oh, I was like, listen, if I get the cards, comment cards, I'll deal with it. It's fine. Because like, what is the greater good honoring someone who would stand up here, feel like everybody was staring at his hair, right? Like, and like you would've, so, and all of you watching at home would've got a zoomed in version of it.

So like, yeah. Um, we have to think about these things. And yes, this is a funnier example, but there's more significant, real examples that you live in every day where it's not as fun. And it's hard to love people. You see, there's a study that's been done and this study is how perceptions of political polarization affect American study.

It's long, uh, shows that when people think society is polarized, their trust in others drops. So when you think there are people on the opposite side of you that you polar opposites, then you don't trust anybody that's. We have the right and we have the left in our country, we know because we have right news channels and we have left news channels, and they all hate each other badly.

Right? And all their commentators, they hate each other and they talk about all the time, and then they make us hate each other. That's just what they do. But when you think that's the world you are suspicious of everybody. Right. You're, you're just, everybody's suspicious. Now, the person at the grocery store who walks up and just wants to ask you a question as you're going down the aisle, why are you talking to me?

Right? Why are you even looking at me? Right? And they probably just want you to move, right? So, like, whatever it may be, we don't trust people. We don't trust anyone. We don't trust family. We don't trust friends. What if someone sends you a text and they haven't text you in a long time? Oh man. Somebody must, somebody must, I must be in trouble.

I must have done something. I can't trust that this is just a normal text. What if I show up at your house and knock on your door and you're like, peeking out the windows. Why is the pastor here? Right? That does happen. I don't randomly show up to your house. It's not a reason. So no, we randomly show up.

That's right. You guys randomly show up my house. Then it's me. Hear. It's not me. I love it. It's my wife. Why are they here, Cyle? It is. It's true. That is true. A hundred percent. She'll agree. That's true. Um, so this study means that debates and arguments, even if respectful, are interpreted through suspicion.

That is, that's our society, that's our world. No matter what we're talking about, what we're debating, what we're working through, or what we're arguing their suspicion at the core, because that's our society now, we don't trust. And so the question is, are you one of those people that's suspicious of people?

What are their, what's their motive? What's their intent? Or just trust people? What about with, with strangers? Are you suspicious strangers? Are you suspicious of enemies? People that are, are definitely, you're not friendly with. They're your enemies. What about your friends? Are you suspicious of your friends?

Are you suspicious of family? Are you just suspicious in general, because the societies made us all suspicious. I'll say that probably the more majority of us are suspicious at times about someone or something. Because we've been made to be by our broken society. See relationships that cross political, religious, or social divides, IE, this will be friendships, workplaces and mixed families act as buffers.

People who regularly interact with the other side tend to have less hostility toward them. Isn't that amazing? The more you talk to people and interact with people who are different than you, the more that you're less hostile. But I would say the more that you're honoring. The more you spend time getting to know, to know people that are different than you, the more you care about what the people you care about, care about, the more you tend to be honoring towards people like that in your life.

It's amazing how God's word works. And so when you care about what others care about, you more likely sustain the relat. Across differences. You can be friends with people who don't agree with your politics. You can be friends with people who don't agree with your religion. You can be friends with people who don't agree with your hairstyle or your whatever you can.

I do it all the time. Like I went and played football with people from all over the country, from all different lifestyles, and when we got into a room with 125 of us, we were very different from all each other. Our views. I see my, my teammates posting things. I'm like, Ooh, they, I don't agree with that person at all.

But when we, we go back to reunions, we go and have fun with what we connect in. And we don't have to be enemies. We don't have to fight. You can have relationships across differences. You can, you just have to choose it. And so it starts with caring about what people you care about, care about honoring people.

And then number two, for us. Once we, we, we care about people, then we have to start being less suspicious and assuming the best in each other. Really? When you're suspicious, you're just assuming the worst. That's what suspicion is. I'm assuming you're up to something, right? That's the worst case scenario.

When you assume the best. That's godly. That's honor. We, we should assume the best. Proverbs 1819 says this, A brother offended is more un unyielding than a strong city. Right. We need people, be people who assume the best. Instead of building like these walls up where we're so easily offended by what people are doing, we need to assume that they're not trying to offend us.

We're not some castle with our gate up that protects ourselves from all the people and all their suspicion and all the things they're up to. We need to not be unyielding. See, offense is what happens to you. There are, uh, there's a fence in the world there. You get on social media, you watch the news, there's a fence.

You interact with people. You go to the grocery store, you go watch football games, you go whatever. There is offense. It exists in a broken society. People offend all the time, and that's offense. But offense is what happens to you. Being offended or taking offense is what you choose to do with it. You do not have to be offended at an offense.

When you're suspicious of everyone, you do well. I was right. They were up to no good. They were trying to mess with me. So I take offense to your offense. Anyone ever said those words? I bet you have, right? Some degree or another you've said something like that. I get, I proved I was right about their offense, so I take offense.

So being offended is what you choose to do with it or not. You do not have to take offense, you do not have to be offended. That's not a thing. Right, but society makes us think it because social media, because television, news channels, everybody gets offended all the time and they, they take offense and then they shoot that offense right back out.

That's not what we're called to do in, in a culture of honor. We're called to love people. We're called to honor people. We're called to have dialogue in a way that's honoring and has great relationship. You see, I lemme tell you about a offense, so I have a secret admir right now. Uh, I, I love my secret admir.

So let me tell you my secret. This has happened three times. I've had three different secret admirers. They're all doing the exact same thing. It's, it's comical. Other pastors have a very similar secret admir in their life. So I have one right now and, uh, my secret admirer took about a month off and I was really kind of getting frustrated about it.

'cause I, I enjoyed getting my secret of my messages in the mail. So let me tell you about it. I get mail. Anonymous mail and let's just talk about anonymous. If you are doing something anonymous, you're probably sinning. I'm just gonna let you know you're probably doing something that goes against God's word.

That's why you don't put your name on it. 'cause you don't want people who know this center is. That's normally what it is. And so I get anonymous mail in the mail. So when I took over as the executive director of Somerset Beach. Uh, they were a couple hundred thousand dollars in the hole, and so we had a huge staff transition as we tried to get things money right, and all that stuff.

Because of that, people got offended that they weren't able to be there or whatever, and, uh, any longer, and it just, it was hard. Transition's hard. So someone connected to one of those people I believe sends. An anonymous letter, the start of the summer, and it's been great. And, uh, it is a guidepost, which is a Devo daily devotional book.

It's a guidepost or our daily bread, uh, devotional on something and they write my name on it and they just send it to me. This exact same thing happened when I came to this church and we made changes. I would get, uh, daily devotional, same way, just dropped off to me, or, or in the mail with, with just my name.

And it'd be like honesty or melody or integrity. It's just something. It's happened one at a time, team in ministry, and this happens to a lot of my pastor friends in different ways. This is actually mild compared to what other guys have to deal with, but I, I find it quite funny. And, uh, they, the person uses the same stamp every time, so I know when the envelope's coming and I'm like, I'm like, no one open that envelope.

That's for me. So, uh, you see the American flag, that's mine. So like, uh, and, uh, I, I really enjoy getting the mail. Because here's why. What is happening is the person intends it to be an offense. It's an affront. I wanna, I want to tell you what I wanna tell you and what I take it as is a pat in the back.

It's spiritual tech. We're doing a good thing. Great, amazing things are happening there. Uh, when, what's happening here, we were growing like crazy. Great things that were happening here. Lives are being changed and so it's just a pat on the back. The enemy is against. And so the enemy is gonna get people who want to do offensive things to work on the enemy's behalf to do those things.

It's just what happens in ministry. If you're not being offended as a pastor on a regular basis, you're probably not a very good pastor. Like that's just the way, it's like, that's you. You should be creating life-changing people that the enemy wants to go against. That's just the way it works. And the enemy was just people.

And so for me, I was kind of disappointed. We had a really great summer. I was like, oh man, maybe my, my person stopped admiring me so much. And then this week another admir letter came. So yeah, I, I almost brought it, I forgot to bring it. So, um, but it, it's just the way, you don't have to be offended by an offense.

You don't, it's your choice what you do with it. Because offense, it builds walls. When you get a fence, when fences, they build walls. Ah, I'm offended. Well, this is a wall. You don't come over near me now anymore 'cause you, I built a wall against you and you're a fence. The problem is, we are not supposed to be wall builders as Christians.

We're not supposed to just throw walls down for you and throw walls down for you and throw walls down. That is not who we're supposed to be. We're supposed to tear down the walls and build relationships with people so they can know the good news of Jesus Christ. Amen. Building walls to a fence, completely opposite of what we're supposed to do.

We're supposed to build bridges through forgiveness. That's different. So when people do things that are an offense to you, instead of taking offense, we're called to forgive. That's what the Bible tells us to do. We're called it forgive and forgiveness builds bridges to people on the other side, people who believe or say, or act differently.

It builds bridges. And those bridges, that's where the gospel can go across. That's where the light of Christ can shine, can't shine through the walls. That's what's hard. And so when we assume the best, we start building bridges as we forgive people in their offense. And then number three in our culture of honor is release bitterness.

The problem is when we get offended, we build walls, and then we take the fence. We don't deal with it. We don't go and confront people and walk through it, uh, peacefully, amicably like. Um, Charlie Kirk was trying to do with Van Jones on, on his show. We don't do that, right? We just ignore conversation. I'm offended.

I build my wall, I'm never gonna talk to you. And then we take all the bitterness that rolls up, all the frustration, and it's like t and t and we take it, we dig a hole in the ground. We stick in the ground, we cover it up. Well, that's my bitterness t and t. Uh, it's not gonna explode. I've covered it. I've moved on.

I got my wall to protect me from you. I'm gonna be fine now. And then we have another offense from someone else, another wall. We take our t and t of bitterness, we, we dig a hole, we bury in the ground, we cover it over. And all we have is all of this buried bitterness in our heart, in our life. Until one spark, one day set something off and it all explodes at the same time.

And the people are like, why are you freaking out? Right? What is wrong with you? Where did this come from? It's because I've never dealt with any of my bitterness and now it's exploding on whoever gets into the splash of it. Anyone ever have that happen? It's called marriage raising kids work, right? You name it.

But that's the truth in, in scripture, we're told to release that stuff, let it go. Don't keep that offense, let that bitterness go deal with it. And one of the ways you can release bitterness is to forgive, restore. And then we go into four Restore gently to release bitterness, you usually have to restore, and we do that gently.

We have one-to-one conversations with people. Say, Hey, this is what I heard. What did you mean? This is how I felt when this happened. What did you intend to have happen? And we walk through it. I will tell you when I am so amazed at at when our people get the culture of honor and they do the right thing.

It's like transformative. We've had some issues this summer where some things have happened and people had a reason to be offended by each other at church, and then they got together. They asked me for advice and I said, Hey, why don't you just go talk to each other? That's my usually my always advice.

Why don't you guys go talk together with love, with honor, with grace, and work through it? And then they came back to me like, oh man, we're. We cried together. It was wonderful. Like we, we forgave each other, we cried together. Now we're gonna go out and like get a meal together. And I'm like, oh, it's amazing what can happen when you do it.

Right, right. The complete opposite of what the world tells you. 'cause the world tells you, you go talk to each other, it's gonna be toxic and fight. You're gonna, you're gonna throw fist, whatever, I don't know. And then what the world tells you. But like we are to restore gently. The Bible actually gives us a recipe for this in Matthew 18.

It tells us how to do this. And Jesus actually speaks to this in Matthew five. It says, first be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. Jesus is saying, before you come to worship, if someone has a issue with you, you need to go to them first before you can go to worship. So that means for us as like modern day Christians, that means before you come to church on Sunday to glorify God and worship him, you should come with a cur, like a clean heart.

Like a pure heart. You should reconcile to your brother. That's hard. Because a lot of us are coming in here with a whole bunch of buried bitterness, T and t, right? Bitterness bombs, we'll call 'em. So, um, some of you, that's you on a Sunday, and then you wonder why I don't leave from Sunday, have transformed by worshiping God.

It's 'cause I'm not coming in the right place where he tells me to come. I can't actually offer myself as a gift because I'm not ready to. And this is Jesus telling his followers how to come to worship, ready to go. And so we have to restore those broken relationships. We have to tear down those walls. We have to build bridges.

We're like that giant castle wall, but some of us, we need to, we need to drop the the draw bridge so the bridge is down and we need to let people in. That's what we're told to do. 'cause reconciliation with people is greater than being Right. Some of us wanna be so right about our politics, so right about our religion, so right about our viewpoint, so right about whatever our team that we.

Don't reconcile with people who are, who are different, who have heard us. We don't. But Jesus is telling, reconciliation is more important and greater than you being right. And that moves us into five of our, our culture. Honor, we ask this ourselves this question, you might be right, but is it loving? The Bible says in one Corinthians eight, one, knowledge puffs up, which means knowledge is pride.

The more knowledge I have, how right I am and what I know that puffs me up so I can be prideful. But love builds, builds up, builds up when you love people more and don't worry so much about being right. That's what builds relationships. The more you care about being right all the time, you puff yourself up and you hurt people and you don't restore relationships, you might be right.

But is it loving? This one's the one that gets used the most at my house. My kids love this. They do. You might be right, dad, but is it loving? Yeah. The problem is when they're saying it, they're usually like catching me and I've gotta change. I'm like, you're right. It's not loving. Right? It happens to all of us because here's the thing, winning isn't everything.

Loving is woo-hoo. It is. We live in a society that tells us that winning is everything. I played football for a long time at a high level. It was great, and my coaches would tell you, winning is everything. My coaches also got huge bonuses for us winning. So winning was everything to them. But then I became an adult.

I had kids and I coached preschool sports. And I realized winning isn't always even possible. So it isn't, it isn't. Loving is also sometimes a struggle when you can't control the preschool kids on your flag football team, but like what? What? I really wanted them, my kids, when they were playing preschool sports, I just wanted to love the game, the sport, soccer, football, whatever.

I just wanted to love whatever they were doing because it wasn't about winning. It was about loving it. And if we had that kind of mindset with just people and life, life would be so much better. Amen. Have you ever seen kids play sports and have fun and they're like, dad, what was the score? Oh, we lost by 17 touchdowns.

But you had fun, right? What if that was your way through every day? Oh, the world's awful. And people are mean. But life is good. I mean, that's, people keep asking me about my car situation. I had three cars to get in the shop this week. It's a thing. Um. And then Tom's like, you should buy a tractor for the church today so we could plow the lawn.

Like, Tom, I shouldn't buy anything mechanical. Just saying, that was what I told him. I should never buy anything. He's like, that's right. So like when, when all of that chaos ensues, right? All of that stuff in your life, you have to recognize it doesn't matter. Maybe just loving that you're living and in relationship matters more than all of the stuff.

All the wedding, all the having, all of getting it right, maybe just getting through the day and just having joy is more important than all that. And for some of us it might mean get off the internet, shut your TV off and just go love the day. Because in the midst of all of it, my life, I literally, I have been living the case of Ross raw mentality.

Whatever will be, will be, I'm gonna get through every day and see how the day goes. It might be I'm going to the, the car shop three times with different cars in a day. That happened this week. And you know what? I'm still having a great day in the midst of it all because I choose the joy. I choose the offense.

I choose how I, I retaliate, I choose it. You can choose it too. And so what does all this mean for you? I think an offense is inevitable. There's gonna be a lot of offense today. Don't engage. Don't engage. Love people. Love people. Love people in an honoring way. And watch how God changes your heart. Will it change?

Does loving people change everything? No. I love people and they still scream and yell. They still send me secret admir letters. They still do. You know what? You can still choose. How do you respond? Because the person watching is God. That matters, not that a person. I'm responsible to God for how I respond, how I act, how I live my day.

That's what I'm responsible. The offense is inevitable. It is in our world. There's gonna be offense after offense, after offense after it's always gonna be coming. From different people. Sometimes people you don't expect, sometimes people do, sometimes family, sometimes friends, whoever. It's inevitable. But being offended, taking offense is always optional.

You do not have to take the bait. You don't have to be offended. You don't have to live that way. You don't have to let it destroy you. And I know that I've been doing this now as as a pastor, 27 years. So it's a lot easier for me. I get that it's a lot easier for me because the normal life of a pastor is being offended by people.

Who are mad about something all the time. That is just the life of pastor that is so, I've got a quarter of a century dealing with it. Not all of you do, so just start taking it one offense at a time. All right, Lord, I'm struggling. Help me to not get offended right now. And eventually, I'll be honest with you, the more you get used to doing it, the easier it is to just treat everything like a secret of my letter.

Alright? I'm doing a good job, God, the enemy's against me once again. Pat yourself in the back say, yay me. Because being offended is optional. Offense is guaranteed. Freedom from offense is optional. You can have freedom. You can choose freedom. That's an optional choice that you can make. Instead of being offended, offended, you can be free to not live in a fence.

How That's just so much more. So much more free that way. So here's my advice. Start each morning if you know this is a struggle for you. If you're just right there and you're like heart's tight, your chest is tight, like, this is me today, Lord, this one's for me. Start each morning with a prayer sim of this.

You don't have to have these exact words. You can take a pictures. If people did last service, I saw, Lord, help me not carry a fence today. Before your feet get outta bed. Wake up and say, Lord, help me not carry offense today. Take offense. Get offended, whatever your words wanna be. Keep my heart gentle and my love strong.

Help me keep focused on you and not other people and their stuff. Help me learn to turn social media off today like I'm warning you. Today's gonna be a horrible day in our country. It is. This is me telling you stay off of it. I'm gonna stay off of it today 'cause it's gonna get bad. Keep my heart Jim, my Lord, and my love.

Strong. Can you make that prayer and then stick out, stick with it through the day. And then when you're struggle today, go back to and say, Hey, Lord, I'm struggling right now. I know I prayed this earlier, but I'm struggling right now in this moment. Can you help me not get offended by this person, this thing, this thing.

They said, whatever happened. And can you keep my heart on you? Because showing honor and living honor is greater than being offended. It is. But we have to choose it. You can choose it. You can live it. Whatever relationship you have, workplace boss, whatever. You can do it. Choose honor, embrace the culture of honor.

Live it in your life. Watch it, transform your life. I think people ask us about our church and I think why, why do people keep coming to church? I think it's 'cause we're, we're trying to do things different than the broken world. We're trying to encourage people to live, honor and live it out. And when people do, it changes relationships, people reconcile and then they wanna know, well, how do I live like that too?

Right. We will come to our church and find out if you struggle with this, I encourage you. Don't keep struggling with it. If you've got that track record of broken relationships. I'm be honest, it's probably you because at the times of my life when I had a track record of broken relationships, it was me.

It was me being right all the time. It wasn't me like doing offensive things. I was just right and I knew it, so I would tell you. So that doesn't go so well. It doesn't. So if this is you, don't keep living that way. And if you need help, we can pray for you as church. This what we'll do if you grab your connection card on the back where the lines are, just write a fence on the front.

Put your name and what we'll do for you as a staff is we'll pray for you by name this week that God protects you from getting so easily offended. That's it. Not gonna call you, not gonna bug you. We'll just pray for you. We do this every week. We sit on a staff meeting, we pray over the names, you put your name out, we read your name, and we pray that specific prayer for you.

That God helps you with your struggle with offense and not taking offense. And if you want help with that, we will, we will pray along with you because you, you gotta make a change. If that's you and you know God's speaking today, make a change. Pray that prayer every day. Make a decision, not get so easily offended.

Change your mindset and choose joy and forgiveness and build bridges to people. And watch how God changes your whole life. Let's take a second. Okay. We're gonna rip these off together today on Calvary. 1, 2, 3. I struggled twice horribly. We're not gonna put, we're not gonna sit in the buckets, uh, down the aisles anymore, where changes the things as we, as we get ready for three services.

So these, you can put in the black boxes on the back wall for the black buckets are in the lobby, but we wanna be a church and we pray together for a fence that we be a church so we don't get offended. So let's pray together. As we close out and then we'll have a final song. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we pray that we are people who we honor first.

Lord, we choose to honor you and honor others as we love you and we love other people. Lord, we know that scripture makes it pretty clear that honor and love is not for the people that we just like. It's for everyone, and we pray that our hearts break for people. Our hearts become more like Jesus. And we learn how to have conversations that are difficult to restore and to love people.

But we do it with respect. We do it with honor, and we do it to learn more about who people are so we can more fully know them and understand them and be reconciled with them. And we pray that we can love each other and we can see Jesus move in our lives, our relationships as we try to restore. We try to forgive, we try to take less offense.

Our life. We pray, Lord, for those who are who know this is their thing this morning. They just empower them with your Holy Spirit to live better this week in a way that's honoring the way that doesn't take so easily to offense, and Lord has more joy and reconciles. We just pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.