[0:00]Happiness isn't finding the right person. Happiness is being the right person. If you find the right person and you are not the right person, what do you think you're going to do to that poor right person? Now, I'm not suggesting, please, I'm not suggesting that if you're not married or something like that it's because you're not ready yet because the only thing we have to do to disprove that stupid theory is to look at some of the people who are married. So, married doesn't equal ready, okay? I can offer you many examples of that, starting with myself. But what I am saying is that it is important to God, it is important to God that you have the right people in your life. But the only way you're going to have the right people in your life is if you will be the right person in your heart. That's the only way you're going to, that's the only way you're even going to attract them to begin with and that's the only thing you can control. I can't always control whether this person comes into my life but I can control the kind of person that I am. You know how you have little memories from your childhood that are so random that you wonder how they're still up there from all these years? And you kind of wish you could delete them because honestly you need that space for more important things, like your children's names and stuff that you forget sometimes. But I have a memory, I don't know why, I remember in sixth grade they gave us the Berkeley County writing test. I remember the prompt of the Berkeley County writing test when I was in the sixth grade, almost word for word. Pretend that you are on an adventure or they called it a journey with your friends. And on this adventure, you find, you come across a valuable, unusual object. Describe the object. A couple weeks later the teacher walked in with all of our writing tests and made an announcement. She said, I've never had this happen before in however many years of teaching. But every single one of you failed the Berkeley County writing test. We laughed. She said, it's not a joke. She said, you wrote beautiful essays. You went into great detail elaborating on the journey with your friends but that was not the writing prompt. The writing prompt was not to describe the journey. The writing prompt was to describe the object. All of you wrote essays about walking through the woods with your friends. Some of you traveled across the seas with your friends, some of you flew through space with your friends. It was highly entertaining. But none of you described the object.
[2:35]The object of relationship, the object of love is not that somebody else would complete you. I'm sorry, Renée Zellweger, but you got it wrong. Your line was touching, it just wasn't true. Jerry didn't complete you. Touch your neighbor, say, you can't complete me. See, we teach this stuff. No wonder single people act like they're ready to fight me when I want to preach about marriage because the way we preach it and teach it, we teach it like until you get married, your life hasn't started. I only got one question to ask you. If that's true, how can you worship Jesus?
[3:21]We worship a guy who stayed single till they killed him.
[3:31]Now, I'm not saying you have to stay single and be like Jesus. I'm a hypocrite to say that, but I'm saying, I'm saying if Paul would have waited to fulfill his purpose until he had somebody to complete him, we wouldn't have 23% of the New Testament.
[3:48]And we teach it wrong. We teach it wrong, we teach it wrong. In the book of Genesis, God's describing marriage, and he's talking about Adam and Eve and he says that, you know, the man shall leave his father and mother and go be with his wife and he says that the two will become one. Let me tell you what it doesn't say. It doesn't say the halves will become whole. But yet we teach it and we treat it and we expect it, like the halves are going to become whole. But I found out if you go into a marriage half, the two halves are going to make hell, not whole. Let me show you what the devil wants to do in your relationship because God said that the two shall become one. This is exactly what the enemy wants. So every battle you're going to fight, every argument about the dishes, really, it's a, it's the enemy's, the enemy's agenda is destruction.
[4:44]And so his strategy is division. And and the enemy, I don't know if you believe in the devil or not, but the enemy is definitely not going to be happy until he sees you like this. And what I just showed you, the Bible says that marriage is even a picture of Christ and the church so what he wants to do to them, he wants to do to this whole church. And what he wants to do to them, he wants to do to you and your teenager, what he wants to do to them and, and so his, his agenda is destruction, he comes to kill, steal and destroy.
[5:22]His strategy is offense. Satan has an offensive strategy. Because if he walked up to you, I don't know how I forgot your name already, tell me one more time. Dan. Dan, the man. Come on, this is Dan, the man, everybody. And if the devil were not subtle, Dan wouldn't stand for his schemes. But the enemy is very strategic. And Jesus is giving us, really in Matthew chapter five, kind of a playbook of how the enemy wants to work in your relationship and I know Dan's not going to let him. But he's going to try now he he won't make an announcement. Hey, I'm coming to kill and steal and destroy. You know, because right now you just spend all those money on the flowers and the dresses and all the groomsmen and all that stuff. And I know it's been a couple years and that's good because what, what you see in those first couple of years is you see that the enemy will usually start in a small way. Because if he announced, I've come to divide, Dan the man wouldn't stand for that if the devil came in to divide. Come on, stick your chest out, Dan. Dan ain't having it. But if the enemy can just, what he'll do, he'll just use the littlest offense. And what Jesus is doing in Matthew chapter five, he's showing us how to deal with the offense so we can keep the devil on defense. How many want to keep the devil on defense in your life and in your family. Come on, church. So, you guys, if you sit back down, I'll bring you back in a minute but I don't want you to have to stand up here the whole time. But just stay ready, okay? Okay. All right, we're going to come back to here. Last week when I was preaching, I don't know if you remember. How many of you were here last week? Make some noise. If the person next to you isn't making noise, touch them and say, you really missed it, you really missed it. I ended remember talking about, you got this plank in your eye and you're so concerned about the little speck in my eye. Meanwhile, you're walking around you're big old plank just whack, whacking them on the head, just causing distraction, division and all this stuff. And it's the contrast between the small things and the big things. And there are times that a big offense. I mean, I, there's not a week that goes by. Holly, would you agree that somebody doesn't call me for counsel that's going through a a marriage situation like a divorce or a separation? But this is true, it's not a week that goes by. It'll be another pastor or maybe a situation in the church. And I get to talking to them about what happened. And if you can go back far enough, you find that every plank is made up of a lot of specs.
[8:16]And to me that's the heart of Jesus teaching. I I really didn't read you the whole passage because I want to break it down and and show you how it happens. He said, it could be something as small as a word. Now, write this down. The closer the relationship, the greater the opportunity. And that goes both ways.
[8:39]The closer the relationship, the greater the opportunity for intimacy. However, the closer the relationship, the greater the opportunity for offense. That's why nobody can make you really mad like somebody that you really love. Really. Nobody can hurt you like somebody that you've given your heart to. Nobody. And I've asked the question a lot of times of of people and really in my own mind, I've seen people that were so loyal to each other and if you would have asked me 10 years ago, who is most likely to ever have kind of a a an enemy relationship? Or who's most likely to be a divorce or who's most likely to not be speaking to each other? And some of those very same people just in the last year of my life, even I've watched some things happen that surprised me. You kind of every time you see it, you ask the question. How did we get here? Do you see how big Dan was smiling over Stephanie? Now, they're going to have a great marriage and all of that and it's going to be awesome but yes, the question, how could somebody who had that same hope, that same smile, barely stand to be in the room with somebody two kids later? And it happens and there's all kinds of ways that it happens. I know there's compatibility and I know that it's not always something that you can fix because it it takes one to forgive but it takes two to be reconciled. I guess I want you to know that my goal today isn't to so much do an autopsy of anybody's mistakes but just to show you something that happens. It it always happens one offense at a time. Usually when I see something in someone else that makes me angry, offended, it's because it represents something that's in me. I told you there were two tools and there are when it comes to the relationships that matter the most. And when it comes to the things that offend us in other people, because everybody has issues and most of us have a subscription. You know what a great dating conversation would be? What kind of crazy are you? Because I can't tell from this distance, but if I get close to you, but you know, all these issues, you got to decide, am I going to focus on theirs or mine?
[11:14]Because I think the key to this thing of loving the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind and with all our strength and loving our neighbor as ourselves. Sometimes you got to put down this and pick up this.
[11:34]And just ask God, So Lord, what is it that you're trying to teach me or what is it that I can change because I tried changing Charlie and Charlie won't change? So here I am, Lord, and in the words of the king of pop, if you want to make the world a better place. Where are you going to start? Sometimes you've got to start with your own self and God says, you can't even help the people that you love. When you're infected with the very issue that you're trying to solve. So it's love the Lord your God, that's one half. But it's also love your neighbor as yourself, that's the other half. You can't have this half right and not have this half right. You can't treat people like garbage and worship God at the same time. You can't, you can't get this right though until you get this right. You can't treat people well if you don't know God loves you and you can't love God until you have received his love freely. God has given us another way to deal with offense. If only we could find an example of somebody who had every right to be offended.
[13:04]Of somebody who had every right to hold it against us. Of somebody who had every right to stand in a distance. But opened his arms and said, this is the way of relationship. And the Lord gave me a real specific word for somebody who needs reconciliation in your relationship. It's very simple what they have to do if they're going to stay like they started. If we're going to get back to where we were, we're going to have to learn, watch this, this is very, this is very profound, this deep. You're going to miss it. This is what you're going to have to learn.
[13:53]You got to learn to drop it. You got to learn to drop it. And I don't mean suppress it. I don't mean you don't deal with things after they happen, but after you've had the conversation, Dan, I like pancakes on my birthday, then drop it. Touch somebody, say, drop it. I mean the moment the offense because you can't always control what's handed to you, but you can control what you do with this. So what are you going to do with the offense? Come on, Dan, you can't, you can't choose anybody else's actions. The enemy wants you to drive it down deep. You know, he wants you to think about it and miss all the reasons that the person has has worked their way into your life and miss all the things they've done for you and he wants to drive it, but God says, drop it. I believe that there are some things that we need to drop tonight. In fact, Jesus said, this is so important that if you are in church at the altar offering a gift and a sacrifice, but the primary relationships in your life are dysfunctional and need reconciliation, you can't even properly connect with God unless you drop it.
[15:47]Hey, thanks for stopping by my YouTube channel. I hope you were blessed today. If you were, share this with somebody. Like and subscribe and leave me a comment. Let me know where you're watching from, what we can pray for you about. I hope to see you back here again really soon.
