Adult Sunday School - Four More Rules Of Communication

Yeah, I should have warned you about that. All right, well, we're gonna be continuing our study on communication and conflict resolution.

And the primary passage that we've been thinking through related to this topic in general is

Ephesians 4, 25 through 32. Over the past couple weeks, we've talked about four different rules of communication that come from Ephesians 4, 25 through 32.

And these are just common rules that I've probably slightly rephrased just for the sake of my own crankiness,

I suppose, that most biblical counselors will teach as it relates to the topic of communication and conflict resolution.

So I'll go ahead and read that. Today, we're gonna be branching out from Ephesians 4 a little bit, but I do wanna remind you of where we've been so far so that you can think about some of the broader categories of communication that we've talked about so far.

So Ephesians 4, 25 says, therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.

Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil.

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

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

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you. Just by way of reminder, we talked about these rules in Ephesians as not just rules that need to be abstracted out of the book and given to believers and unbelievers alike.

There's obviously a foundation for our ethics as Christians. When you think about what happens in Ephesians 4 and on, you're dealing with the second section, major section of the book of Ephesians.

So the first few chapters of Ephesians are gonna tell you who you are in Christ and what God has done for you in Christ.

And then the second half of the book is application -focused, so it's gonna tell you what it means to walk worthy of the calling with which you've been called.

So our ethics as Christians is based primarily on the foundation of the work of Christ and what he's done for us and blessings that he's given us.

We talked about over the last couple weeks these four rules of communication. We talked about speaking the truth, keeping current, dealing with today's problems today, in other words, the importance of edifying with our communication and the different forms that edification can take.

There's obviously no one -size -fits -all approach to edification. You have to think about what the situation requires the moment that you're in.

And then finally, we talked about speaking kindly, and that's another way of putting, like, have a forgiving posture that's eager and ready and looking for reconciliation.

So those are the four rules that we talked about in Ephesians 4, and what I'd like to do is talk about four more rules, and these are not gonna be primarily grounded in Ephesians 4, but they are going to be principles that the

Bible teaches in a wide variety of ways, and some of which I've already talked about before, but I'm gonna remind you. It's no burden to me to remind you of the same things, and so I would like to do that for the sake of those who didn't catch the

Sunday school a few months ago. So four more rules. First one is refuse to apologize, quote -unquote, ever.

And that may seem counterintuitive. That may seem counterintuitive, and I don't mean it quite as strongly as all that, but I do mean it pretty strongly, so take it for what it is.

As Christians, we are somewhat addicted to the concept of apologizing. We apologize for everything.

Like, there's certain people who are pretty insecure, and they'll just constantly apologize for everything. They'll apologize for things that they don't need to apologize for.

Frequently in counseling, when I have someone like that, I'm trying to help them to realize that everything that they have done is not some kind of mortal evil that must be repented of or something along those lines.

For many people, apologizing is a way of expressing their deep insecurity with themselves and their relationship with God, and they do it over and over and over again.

But as I say, when you think about the nature of apologizing in general, one of the things to realize is the

Bible never teaches us to apologize. This is not a concept that you're gonna find in the Bible, the concept of apology.

It's not there. The Bible tells us how to deal with our problems in the scriptures.

Like, we're given instructions, and my fear with apologizing is that it's become an unbiblical substitute for repentance.

So when you think about the language that the Bible uses related to moral wrongs that we commit, particularly against other people,

Bible doesn't teach us to say sorry. Bible teaches us to ask forgiveness. And it's, you know, honestly, it's very rare to interact with Christian couple, non -Christian couple.

They don't have any foundation for this, but it's very rare to interact with a Christian couple, like, period, this has just been my experience, so you take it for what it is.

It's very rare to interact with a Christian couple where they have a regular pattern of coming to each other and saying, will you forgive me, saying that, right?

That's very rare, and that shouldn't be the case at all. Now, we may flip out sorry on occasion.

You know, pride is a danger that we all face, obviously. Basic nature of our problem is that we're proud, and we don't see ourself as we ought to.

We have great capacity to justify our actions, to put them in the best possible light, and then also to put the actions of others in the worst possible light.

But as I said, I mean, it's very rare to see examples of Christians who will actually ask forgiveness.

We more naturally will flip out a hey, I'm sorry, and then at the end of it, no one really feels like anything necessarily happened.

They're not really sure what to do with that, because that can mean a variety of different things, and this isn't really a wonderful example of how to deal with problems that are real.

Now, I mean, in terms of, if you're looking for me to give you a passage in the Bible which says don't apologize, then, well,

I'm gonna have a very difficult time doing that because the Bible never teaches us to apologize. You understand?

So there's not that kind of thing. So I can't give you an example of a passage that says don't do this.

What I can do is give you a lot of examples of passages which actually tell us what to do. So Exodus 10, 17 would be an example of such a thing.

Exodus 10, 17 says, now, therefore, forgive my sin, please, only this once, and plead with the

Lord your God only to remove this death from me. I mean, now, examples like this can be multiplied because, as Christians, forgiveness is at the foundation of our faith, right?

We are sinners who stand as objects of wrath against a holy God, and what we need is we need

God to forgive us our iniquities and to cleanse us from our sin. So when we approach

God, the way we get forgiveness from God is not to say, hey, sorry, right? Oops.

You know, what we do when we approach God is we say, Lord, will you please forgive me? I sinned against you, and when you look at what happens in the

Bible, you'll see this language of forgiveness, and the language of forgiveness in the Bible is very specific, and it means something.

It has a response that's required, like you're asking for something very specific, whereas sorry can be very vague, and no one really knows what that means.

You think about what you're doing when you apologize. As I said, it can be very unclear what's happening, right?

So if a husband were to look at his wife and say, hey, sorry, like, I'm sorry, right?

No one really, like, she may not know what he means by that. Sorry for what, right, would be a natural question.

Sorry for what? So you can imagine, like, a couple who spent the last 10 minutes fighting, and then the husband looks at the wife, and he flips out,

I'm sorry, and she's like, well, for what? Like, there's a bunch of stuff that just happened here. I don't know what you're asking for.

That was insufficient. Yes? Yeah, now,

I think that there are a variety of ways in which sorry can be appropriately used.

I'm basically, in a dramatic way, trying to get your attention. But no,

I think there's a variety of ways that can be appropriately used, but then not as a substitute for asking forgiveness, because we need people to forgive us in order to be actually reconciled.

And so I would say that there's a, there could be a situation where a person says, hey,

I'm sorry, and what they mean is, will you forgive me, and everyone understands that, and maybe reconciliation can happen in those moments, but it's not the most natural byproduct of using the wrong words, right?

So you're making a lot of assumptions there, and it'd be better just to speak the clear language of scripture so that everyone knows what's expected, because what happens is we, as in any relationship, we sin a lot against each other, and we almost never really feel reconciled at the end of it.

We go through the motions, we try to do things to get the problem to go away, we flip out words like I'm sorry, but then most people that I've counseled, they don't feel like they're reconciled with the person.

They feel like they go through the motions of reconciliation, they don't know why, and I'm suggesting that part of it would be helped if we would use clear language, essentially.

So yeah, I mean, you can imagine a situation where a husband has been sinning against his wife for the past 10 minutes, he says

I'm sorry. Well, that's very vague, no one knows what he means.

I mean, he could be accepting fault there, but it's not entirely clear that he's accepting fault, right?

So in our society right now, if someone gets their feelings hurt or whatever, you're told just to say sorry in order to appease them and get them to move on, right?

So you're told to kind of accept responsibility for their feelings and just say hey, I'm sorry. But what do you mean by that?

Do you mean I'm sorry that you were so petty and thin -skinned that you got offended by what I did? Like, is that what you mean?

Like, we'll say like I'm sorry you were upset, right? Is that accepting any ownership of what happened there?

I'm sorry you were upset, and it's like, cool. Thanks for that, you know? I'm sorry

I was upset too, yeah. But it may not be clear what's actually happening when you say that, so I'm sorry you're upset.

I'm sorry you were offended, right? Yeah, basically when you're saying

I'm sorry, it can be very generic too, right? Like I'm expressing sorrow, like that's what

I'm sorry means. You're simply expressing sorrow, but there's no clear reason being communicated why you have sorrow.

Is your sorrow the result of the fact that you perceive that you've done something morally wrong or not?

Is it your sorrow over my reaction, you know? Is it your actions, what specific actions are leading to that?

Now, I mean, you could modify it by saying, hey, I'm sorry for X, Y, Z, and at least that would be more specific, right?

I'm sorry I did X, Y, Z. I'm sorry I yelled at you, and I'm sorry I screamed at you, right?

And misrepresented what you did, and raised my voice, and slammed the door, and that would all be a lot more specific, but at the end of the day, you're still, still sorry is willfully inadequate because even if you're accepting responsibility for it, the problem is sorry doesn't ask anything of the other person, do you understand?

When you say I'm sorry, you're not asking them to do anything with that other than just hear it, right?

Now, so when you think about the biblical response of asking forgiveness, when we ask

God to forgive us, and by extension, when we ask other people to forgive us, we're asking for a response.

Sorry is not asking for a response, you understand? At least not clearly within the word itself, it's just expressing sorrow.

When you ask forgiveness, you're asking someone to do something. So why do you think when you say sorry, you don't ever really feel reconciled with that?

Well, the reason why is because you don't, you're not asking for anything, and the other person is not committing to anything, right?

So if I look at you and I say, hey, I'm sorry, or I've asked nothing of you, and you have told me nothing from it, right?

Like most of the time when people say sorry, you're just like, oh yeah, no big deal, don't worry about it, whatever, you know, whatever, move on. But when

I say, will you forgive me, I'm asking you to release the debt. So when

I, forgiveness, like when I speak the language of forgiveness, I'm asking you to make a threefold commitment, and this is a threefold commitment that's based on what

God does for us. So first of all, I'm asking you to release the debt, right?

So not bring, I'm asking you to not bring the matter up to me in a harmful way again. Right? So basically, not hold this over my head, right?

Like not just keep a record of wrongdoings that you're gonna beat me over the head with for the next 10 years.

Remember that thing you did? Yeah, you're still in the doghouse of that and everything else. What a horrible expression.

But think about it, like when I'm asking you to forgive me, I'm asking you to release that debt, right?

You're not gonna beat me over the head with it, so you're not gonna bring the matter up to me anymore in a harmful way.

That may not be, I mean, we may like need to discuss what happened and how things went off the rails, right?

But sure, yeah, that's what I'm asking you to do, not keep a record of wrong that you're gonna beat me over the head with. I'm also asking you to not bring the matter up to yourself.

So I'm asking you to do what God does, cast it into a sea of forgetfulness and choose to remember it no more.

That's what God does. When we confess our sin, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins, right? He casts them into the depths of the sea.

He remembers them no more. That means that he's committing to push them out of his mind as it were.

That's what you're asking people to do. You're not asking, like when you say sorry, you're not, like there's no transaction that's happened.

There's nothing you've asked of them. They can presumably say, yeah, okay. And then sit there and stew on it in their mind indefinitely, bring it up to you over and over and over again because there's no transaction that's been had, right?

So threefold commitment, I'm asking you to not bring it up to me in a harmful way, not keep on ruminating over it in your mind, like developing bitterness.

I'm asking you not to gossip about it, right? Bring it up to other people. That's what forgiveness is, is like you're releasing the debt.

It's done, right? We're fine, we're reconciled. I'm asking you to restore us to a posture of closeness, right, that's what

I'm asking you to do. I'm saying take this offense, cast it away, the depths of receipt, remember it no more.

And so this is the language that we need to speak, you understand, like so we need to speak this language when we're talking to people.

This is the way the Bible instructs us to speak. It's clear language. There's no reason to, like, modify our language at that point.

Now you may accuse, you may like include in your asking forgiveness the phrase,

I'm sorry I did X, right, Y, Z, A, B, C, one, two, three, what, all that.

Like you may include, I'm sorry I did that. I can understand how you could be reasonably upset by that.

I mean, it was a real jerk thing for me to do, and you know, you can include that language in your asking forgiveness, but at the end of that, what you need to do if you're gonna be pursuing biblical reconciliation is include the phrase, will you forgive me?

And then as a Christian, you have to understand that there's a, God expects you to forgive others just as he has forgiven you, and to be the unforgiving servant who refuses to forgive the sins of others against you when you have thousands and thousands of times more serious sin against God would be fundamentally an act of wickedness.

So any questions about that, refusing to apologize? There may be situations where you include,

I'm sorry into it. You may, one more thought, and I'll get, yeah. One more, you may, if you step on someone's toe on accident, that may be a good time to say, hey,

I'm sorry for that. You're not saying I've sinned against a thrice holy God, and I have sinned against you.

My sin is great and reaches up to heaven. Please forgive me of my accidental footstepping. Then you may say, hey,

I'm sorry for that, and quickly move on, but it would be helpful to reserve,

I'm sorry for non -moral things in general, and will you forgive me for moral things? Yes, ma 'am, sure.

Amen, yes, yeah. So yeah, all

I'm trying to communicate here is that expressing that you feel sad is not sufficient to produce reconciliation.

So feeling, like you wanna have the right kind of sorrow, and when you just say,

I'm sorry, no one knows if that's godly sorrow or worldly sorrow, and it's not demanding any specific response.

So like, I'm sorry might mean, as I said before, I'm sorry you're offended. Like, I'm sorry this is really unpleasant.

Like, yeah, it doesn't necessarily mean I've done anything wrong. So if we can use, I mean, it is deeply meaningful like, there's a distortion, what

I'm saying, the opposite direction, where a person will spend 20 minutes sinning against someone, and then at the end of it say, all right, will you forgive me?

Well, that didn't do it either, right? That, I mean, you used the right phrase, but it didn't necessarily help anything because it didn't feel like, you know, and I'm using emotional language here, but it didn't seem, it didn't seem like you were genuinely repentant about what you did.

So I think including some statement of remorse in the process of asking forgiveness can be pretty helpful, show that you acknowledge how serious what you did actually was, and destructive to the relationship, but.

I have a question on that, or a comment. When we say you should never apologize,

I think that maybe that was, so I think I hear you saying this, expressions of regret, but the same saying of,

I'm sorry doesn't go far enough for actual genuine reconciliation. Well, I would say that apologizing has a standalone mechanism.

When you understand, what does it mean to, people demand, hey, you did something wrong, so apologize for it.

What they're meaning by that specific way of formulating what they said is say sorry, right?

Well, they want to see sincere, they want to see heart change.

Right, right. Heart change and fear, basically as you've done something. Yeah, so there's ways that you can load into apologize biblical concepts of reconciliation, but then as a standalone concept, it falls short of what reconciliation should be, essentially.

Falls short, but certainly important. Well, yeah, yeah,

I think expressing godly sorrow, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, you can apologize in a worldly sorrow way and you can apologize in a godly sorrow way.

I guess not necessarily within the concept. But I think you said we had to be really clear.

Sure, sure. You really misapplied the term. You're not actually sorry. Sorrow in a biblical context drives a change in your heart posture.

Right, sure. Yeah, but yeah, I think trying to distinguish that, whether it's legit or not, from biblical forgiveness, like forgiveness is more than that.

So just an apology is insufficient. That's kind of the point. So I'm saying don't apologize.

Like when you sin against someone, I'm saying that's a, I do think that's a substitute for biblical reconciliation.

And biblical reconciliation is gonna be, asking forgiveness is gonna be more. When you say substitute, that indicates that they're usually exclusive.

I'm saying that I think it's based on scripture. You see, going back to John the

Baptist, he called for repentance, right? And that's a confession of a change in your heart towards God in that case.

Yeah, so as it's commonly used, no one,

I mean think about all the apologies that happen in the world right now. They're not biblical. Biblical reconciliation is not happening.

I'd say those are false apologies. Well, they're not, they're not just false apologies. Like an apology as a standalone mechanism is not asking forgiveness.

So there's no, like when you apologize, you're not asking forgiveness. No one understands that to be a necessary component of an apology.

Some expression of sorrow is a necessary component of asking forgiveness, and that's kind of what

I'm saying. Yeah, so yeah, some expression of sorrow. So you want to include some expression of sorrow that could take different forms.

It may not take the form, like the specific apology form of I'm sorry, right?

I mean, you could say I sinned against heaven. My sin was great. It was wrong, you know.

I see the damage that it's caused our relationship. I see how it's affected everyone, and I'm wrong for that.

But you can say I'm full of sorrow, right? Was that, yeah. So I mean,

I think what I said right there was not a formal apology, but it is an expression of remorse.

So I'm basically saying if we understand, it would be more helpful not to think in terms of the language of apology, but then to think in terms of the language of forgiveness, and then because the language of apology is insufficient to deal with reconciliation.

The language of forgiveness has all the right categories. It may or may not include the specific phrase

I'm sorry, like the apology form, but it should include an expression of sorrow, basically, if that makes sense.

Yes, sir. Reconciliation and restoration.

How would you describe the difference? Yeah, yeah,

I don't really understand them to be different, but that may just be a semantic, like a distinction.

It may just be just a different way of understanding terminology at that point. Like meaning.

Someone does say they're going to reconcile. Well, yeah,

I think you can forgive them. I would talk about what you're saying in the language of forgiveness, and then

I would say that reconciliation, restoration is, yeah, trust has not been built yet kind of thing.

So I would, yeah, I would describe it like that way. I would make the distinction between forgiveness and reconciliation.

I'm running against that. But I understand the concept that you're saying.

Yeah, like for sure, yeah. Without full and complete reconciliation, like all that biblical reconciliation entails,

I'm sure that, yeah. So for instance, yeah, there's some sense in marriage that you can release the debt against the other person, but fellowship may not be restored because they're so severe in that way.

So there may not be like a true kind of reconciliation at that point, but yeah.

Okay, all right, so apologizing. It would be more helpful to use, the point here is to say it's more helpful to restrict apologies as a standalone concept that is not commonly include language of forgiveness for non -moral kind of things.

So I step on your toes, I say I'm sorry. Like I should say I'm sorry, I'm not.

That we should, most people are not gonna understand that to be asking forgiveness, but we should use the language of forgiveness, certainly when we sin against each other.

So that's something to think through here. Two, take responsibility for your feelings.

So you talk about the language of, there we're talking about four more rules of communication.

Take responsibility for your feelings. Don't emotionally manipulate others or allow yourself to be emotionally manipulated.

I've done enough counseling to know that we live in a world where people basically take no responsibility for their feelings right now.

In fact, we define ourself by our feelings. So we think that if we feel something, we can't really help the way we feel.

So we'll say that over and over and over again. I can't help the way I feel. We're governed more by the priorities of authenticity, meaning we feel like there's some demand to express our feelings even, right?

And define ourself by it. So a lot of the sexual confusion that's happening in the world right now is happening on the basis of individuals who have certain feelings and they feel like there's a moral obligation to define themselves by those feelings, okay?

Like this is who I am because I had it and then there's no responsibility taken for those feelings.

So my emotions are mine, right? I can't help it. I can't help the emotions that I have.

And I have no responsibility whatsoever for my emotions. They're just there. They just happen.

So that's the world that we live in. And if you believe that, right?

If you believe that, then any time someone has a negative feeling in response to something you said, then presumably you're in the wrong, right?

Because you caused that. And that's kind of the world that you live in right now. So if I say something you don't like and you get mad about it, then you'll say, hey, you made me angry, right?

And then what we expect is you should apologize for that, right? You should apologize for making me angry.

And then if you refuse to apologize for making someone angry because you don't accept the premise that I did anything wrong here, then you're kind of a jerk, right?

You're kind of a jerk, you're kind of a mean person and like how dare you and I can't believe that you wouldn't accept the sovereignty of my claim over your actions here.

So I've been in numerous counseling situations where, for instance, the wife is, and most often it goes this way and the husband kind of goes along with it.

So these are generalities, but this is often how it goes. So I'm not gonna pretend it's typically the other way because it's not.

But most often in counseling situations, you'll have a wife who's upset with her husband and because she's upset, she wants the husband to instantaneously acknowledge that he's done something wrong.

Break himself over the coals, say he's sorry and basically be at her mercy kind of indefinitely forever because she was offended, right?

And she can't help the way she feels. And so then what's generally happening after that is as a counselor, if I'm stepping in and saying, hey, this isn't really the way emotions work in the

Bible, this isn't the way feelings work in the Bible, this isn't really how we should respond to these kind of claims.

We need to evaluate them. And then I'm hurting her feelings and then I need to apologize too. And then on and on it goes.

Yes, sir. Right.

Yep. Right, so our rules of communication are, let's go back and return to our rules of communication.

Speak the truth, right? Keep current, edify, speak kindly.

So the issue is what's true. Like what matters is what's true in this scenario. And you should never apologize if you're not wrong.

You should never ask forgiveness if you're not wrong, if what you did was not wrong. So just because someone didn't like what you said, that doesn't mean that it wasn't right to say, right?

So just to give you an example of how this works in the Bible, there's several good examples of this that I don't know if we've thought through.

The first one that comes to mind is the example of Cain. So when God doesn't accept the sacrifice of Cain, what happens?

Anyone know? Yes. So Cain became angry and his face fell, right?

What does that mean? Like Cain started pouting, right? Yeah, he went into a spiral of self -pity.

Now was that God's fault that Cain was angry and sad? Obviously it wasn't

God's fault. But how does God respond to Cain?

Does anyone know? You can turn over and cheat if you want.

All right, so he warns him that Santa's crouching at the door, right? So we're in Genesis four, right?

What does God do in verse six, anyone? So God calls into question, like the point is that God calls into question the legitimacy of Cain's anger, right?

So God doesn't validate his anger. God doesn't take responsibility for Cain's anger. He calls into question the legitimacy of it.

He's basically telling him that this pouting that you're, I mean, anger can take two forms.

Anger can take the form of like a cold form of quiet, like pouting, right?

Face fallen, right? So what you're trained to do in this society is look at Cain and say, oh, poor baby, right?

I'm sorry you feel so bad. Yeah, I mean, you know, God secretly is, yeah,

I mean, maybe I was being a little bit unreasonable or something like that. That's kind of what you're supposed to do when you see people who are sad because you live in a victim society.

You see someone who is taking the posture of a victim, then you have to go and protect them, right? But God doesn't do that.

He doesn't own, he doesn't say, hey, I made you angry. I agree. He's not agreeing with it. He's calling into question the legitimacy of Cain's anger.

I mean, another passage related to this as well is Jonah. So Jonah, like over and over again, is angry.

In the story, right? He's angry at the story that God would save these wicked people. At some point,

God causes a plant to grow up. First, God sends a scorching east wind, right, to beat on Jonah's head.

Then he causes a plant to grow up in order to give him shade. And then he sends a worm, just because the whole book is dedicated to demonstrating

God's sovereignty over nature. So he sends a worm to eat the plant. So after he sends the worm to eat the plant, at that point, you're in Jonah 4, 9, and God said to Jonah, do you do well to be angry for the plant?

Notice that's the language of, that's moral language he's using. Do you do well to be angry at the plant?

And then, what does Jonah say? Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die, right?

Jonah is not getting the message here. But in both cases, notice how God responds to the anger, whether it's like hot anger or cold anger or whatever kind of anger it forms.

He looks at them, and he doesn't own it, right? He doesn't say, hey, this is my fault. Can't help the way you feel,

Jonah. Can't help the way you feel, Cain, right? I must have done something wrong, because your feelings are sovereign over the situation.

No, God says, do you do well to be angry, right? The implied answer is no, you do not do well to be angry.

So what we need to do is, the point here is just to say that we need to take responsibility for our feelings and communicate in such a way that communicates responsibility for our feelings.

Instead of saying things like, you're making me angry, or you hurt my feelings, right?

Like, those are manipulative statements. You're making me angry, you hurt my feelings.

Those are manipulative statements, because they're basically surrendering all responsibility for our feelings.

Like, what language does the Bible use related to this topic? You use the language of provocation, right? Can we provoke people to anger?

Sure. Do they have to get angry when we're provoking them to anger? No, right?

So the language of provocation is helpful language at this point. So I can provoke someone to anger, and then they get angry.

Is there some kind of, in some sense, some causal relationship between, you know, action, provoking, and the result?

Sure, at the end of the day, though, you don't have to get angry. When you are angry, if it could be the righteous anger or sinful anger, it's coming from you, right?

It's coming from your heart, and that's what the Bible teaches over and over again. So out of the heart come evil thoughts, death, murder.

Good man out of good treasure of good heart is gonna bring forth good. Evil man out of evil treasure of an evil heart is gonna bring forth evil.

This is coming from my heart. So when you do things I don't like, I have different options of how to respond, and I'm going to respond in a way that I train myself to respond.

Do you understand? So, like, meaning, you can have a person who has a consistent pattern of being rude to you and mean to you and taking you for granted and mistreating you.

That could be your life, really. That could be your life, where that's what happens on a routine basis every single day.

And you can, you know, if you're like Christ, if you have the creator of the universe living inside of you, the Holy Spirit inside of you, you can respond to that not in a self -centered, woe is me,

I don't deserve to be treated this way, how dare they talk to me this way. I mean, you really can respond to that by thinking, man,

I'm so sad for them and what this says about their relationship with God. Like, they really need to get some things right.

There's something, like, they have a problem with their maker that they're taking out on me right now.

And Lord, please, you know, Father, forgive them so they don't know what they do. You can have that kind of posture, right?

They're not sovereign over your feelings, you understand? Your feelings are gonna express what you value in that moment.

So they're not making you angry. They're not provoking you. They're not hurting your feelings. They're not, none of that's happening.

I mean, they can be, like, actually very sinful towards you in that moment. And that doesn't mean that, like, sorrow over how you're being treated is an inappropriate response.

I'm not trying to say, well, you should never be sad when someone's, like, a persistent jerk to you forever and ever and ever, but just, the point here is just to say that you're responsible for your feelings and your feelings will reflect what you want in that situation.

And so it's good and right to grieve over sin in the right kind of proportion, but we shouldn't use language that is blaming others for feelings.

Does that make sense? Any thoughts, questions about that? Push back?

So, yeah, a long response just to say what's true in this, what's true in this situation, right?

If you said something true, I mean, I'm not trying to say that's the only filter. I don't know enough about the situation to know how you said whatever you said and everything else.

I'm just calling into question the project that if you said something true in the right kind of way, it can,

I mean, you could rack your mind at all the other ways in which you can say it and everything else, but I mean, if it was said truthfully, done in love, and the person utterly rejects it, if you just flip out a, hey,

I'm sorry that you're upset kind of thing, what you're doing is you're lying in that moment.

You know what I mean? I mean, saying, I'm sorry you're upset, you could say that and that would be truthful. I would wanna make it,

I would wanna say, hey, if you're gonna say that, say, I'm sorry you're upset, but I can't apologize for what's true.

Yeah, you hate what's true right now, and you're rejecting it, and you need to deal with that.

So, like, that's very different than, I'm not trying, intending to cause you, I'm not intending to provoke you to anger here,

I'm not trying to, anything like that, but I'm trying to tell you what you need to hear. Does that make sense?

Well, if it's possible, as much as it lies within you. Yeah, I mean, there's times where if there's a demand that's being made that you must admit you're wrong when you didn't do something wrong in order to have peace, then you don't give in to that demand.

And we need, so, I mean, you see that happen over and over and over again in society where a person does

X and stands on their convictions, everyone gets mad at them, then they give their apology, right, in order to make everyone go away, you know, and they talk about how they're gonna do some deep soul searching and their struggle sessions and all that, so, what's true about the situation?

What is true about it? Was it right? Was it good to say? If so, you can't control the other action.

Does that make sense? So, if it possible, and sometimes it's not, you know, but, yeah, you never want to ask forgiveness for something when what you did was not wrong.

And the fact that someone thinks it's wrong does not make it wrong.

But you should be humble enough to consider whether or not what they're saying may have some truth in it.

And certainly it's, you know, perfectly fine to, in those moments, basically pray.

I mean, there's been plenty of situations like that where someone says something that doesn't seem like it fits and then

I'll say, all right, well, thank you for bringing it up and I'll definitely pray about it.

And go through the conversation over and over again and ask the Lord if he can help me see some ways in which I mishandled that.

And if I could think about anything, then I will. You know, I'll ask forgiveness for that.

But at the moment, I can't think of anything. So, perhaps you could pray about it as well.

Right, perhaps you could pray about it as well and ask the Lord to help you to see if your offense about it is right.

Is it good offense? And I will pray about it the opposite direction and maybe we'll see what the

Lord does. So that's often something you could say in those moments too. But the point here is just to say, just because someone's offended doesn't mean that you've done something wrong.

People were offended over and over and over and over again by basically everything that Jesus said.

And you don't see him conceding the ground, right? Same thing with God. People are offended.

I mean, I gave you a couple examples of people who were offended by what God did and said. God doesn't make peace that way, right?

That's not the way to make peace. Peace is founded on truth. So, yep. So we need to, here's the point, we need to take responsibility for our feelings and not emotionally manipulate others or allow ourself to be emotionally manipulated.

God is encouraging Jonah to take responsibility for his feelings. Do you do well to be angry at the plant?

Same thing with Cain. It's not a foregone conclusion that just because a feeling is felt that it's not coming from a heart that is not in the right place.

So, but we can multiply examples at that point too if that's helpful. Any other thoughts related to that?

Yeah, it's a good, yeah, it's a good example. It's a good example, particularly because we think that just because someone is sorry, we think that, he says, if I cause you sorrow over this letter,

I don't repent of it. We think that if they have like a bad feeling, that's somehow bad.

But part of the problem is that we have, we're not as sad enough over the things that we should be sad about.

And then we're way too sad over the things that we shouldn't be sad about.

So, sadness is not like the good Christian, sadness is not the bad Christian emotion and happiness, the good

Christian emotion. We need to be happy over the right things and sad over the right things.

And so, yeah, but that's a good example of not conceding the ground just because there was a sad feeling.

All right, so, don't apologize, rule number one, ask forgiveness.

Rule number two, take responsibility for your feelings. Don't emotionally manipulate others or allow yourself to be emotionally manipulated.

Care more to understand than to be understood. I mean, the Bible is replete with these kind of passages.

So, James 1 .19 says, know this, my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.

For the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Proverbs 18 .13, if one gives an answer before he hears, it is folly and shame, right?

I gave you a list a couple weeks ago of all the ways in which the

Bible, not all, but many of the ways in which the Bible makes this point that we should have in relationship to our communication, that we should be individuals who are quicker to listen, slower to speak.

I mean, there's very few things that are more frustrating in the Christian life than when you have individuals who are trying to fix a problem that they don't understand.

I mean, I don't know if you've been in scenarios like that, but I've been in scenarios like that a lot, where I feel like there's one,

I have someone coming to me trying to fix something, and there's just this massive, relevant piece of information that I wish they had that may change the entire perspective of this conversation.

But most often, when we're having conflict with other people, we get really bad at this.

We don't have natural impulses when we're angry to listen. Most of the time when you're sinfully angry, you're in tell -them -off mode, and so a lot of times when couples are fighting, you basically have two people who are waiting for their turn to give their prepared speech, and if that, like if there's any patience at all where they take turns at all, then it's just like one prepared speech followed by another prepared speech, followed by another prepared speech.

I mean, that's better than what generally happens. What generally happens is you have one sentence and a half followed by an interruption that gets out another sentence and a half followed by an interruption where you get maybe a couple sentences out, and then that's a fight, right?

That's a fight. And neither one has the goal to listen. Most of what's happening is you have a bunch of angry interruptions that are quick, quick to speak.

No one's goal is to listen in those moments. But when we do this, as I said a couple weeks ago, we're just kind of exposing ourselves to be a fool.

You can't really fix a problem that you don't understand if you're trying to help someone.

This is what I often say as it relates to counseling. I try to spend a couple hours asking questions before I'm giving answers because I don't know that I have enough information to really help.

I know that I have a great capacity when I'm talking to people to assume what

I think they're saying, right? So they give me some information and then I fill in my background, my experience, my patterns, my upbringings, and I jump to a conclusion that really doesn't fit their situation at all because they're different people.

I mean, the reality is, yeah, there's no temptations that's overtaking us, but what's common to man, we all have the same kind of experiences, but then those experiences are filtered by a variety of different things.

But the point here is just to say that when you think about what you're trying to do in conflict resolution and communication, you should have it as your goal that when we're having conflict, your instantaneous impulse is going to be to think, well,

I need to talk more, when it would be better if you would train yourself to think, I need to ask better questions because there's probably a breakdown that's happened here at some point.

And I don't know that I'm gonna be helpful in this situation unless I get more information.

But then when you get into information -gathering mode, it does have a way of helping you to calm down too because you're looking at the problem and trying to figure out where it went off the rails there.

But care more to understand to be understood. Any thoughts related to that?

We've talked about that at some length. That may be somewhat obvious. All right, take turns speaking, so follow the leader.

So particularly when you're talking about marriage problems, you do have a leader in the home.

A husband is the leader of the home. The wife is to be a follower in the home. There's different standards of communication for the husband and for the wife.

When there's conflict within a marriage, it's a husband's responsibility to lead the family out of that conflict.

And the problem is that men and women think very differently. They process things very differently. They have different manners of communication in general.

And so once a fight starts happening, a guy could have a very linear plan that he's trying to follow in dealing with the problem.

So he's trying to present his series of arguments. X happened and then you responded with Y and then here's what the

Bible says. And then go through the plan, but then often ladies don't think nearly as linear as men do.

I mean, I noticed this working at a bank. So I worked, when I was in early college, there was a bank job that I worked at as a teller.

And I'm almost all tellers of women. So I mean, I worked at this job because I made a ton of money and didn't have to work very long hours, so it was great.

But I would notice that female conversations would, they were funny compared to man conversations.

So the ladies would start out with a thought and it was just like subject change, subject change, subject change, subject change, subject change, like that.

So it was just like a few thoughts and then a subject change, a few thoughts and a subject change. And by the time I had something to contribute to the conversation, we were like four subject changes in.

And so I didn't really say much, I just let it go. I just didn't participate in this conversation. But the point here is just to say in marriage, there are marriage roles, right?

The Bible says wives be subject to your husbands. In 1 Peter, right, even if some do not obey the word, when

I'm over without a word as they observe your chase and respectful conduct. Husbands are leaders of our home and when there's significant conflict, these authority submission dynamics show up, right?

So these are meant to be applied to conversation. It's impossible to deal with problems if you can't talk about them, right?

If you can't talk about it, if everything just kind of goes off the rails. If you have two, and what's generally happening in conflict is you have two people, like in marriage conflicts, you have two people trying to lead the family out of the conflict and they have different impulses about how to do that.

And so it goes pretty poorly is the point. So if you have two people trying to lead the family out of conflict or deal with the conflict, then you're gonna have a breakdown because as you know, a two -headed animal is a monstrosity.

God's made marriage in such a way that it's a husband's job to help deal with conflict in a primary sense and a wife should be looking to her husband to do it.

And unfortunately, there's a lot of men who won't take up that role. They don't wanna talk about problems. They don't wanna deal with issues.

And so a woman can, I mean, in most marriages, you have the woman who's keenly aware of all the problems and the man who's just trying to pretend like they don't exist, right, and ignore them.

And I don't wanna talk about anything that's unpleasant. Let's just move on, right? So then you have the lady trying to drive the change, the man who's resistant to it and just kind of ignores it.

And I say that to the men, to a guy's shame. Like it's your job to lead your family out of conflict.

It's your job to deal with problems. It's your job. And in these moments where there are conflict, it's never gonna be resolved if you have two people butting heads trying to figure out, like trying to determine the direction it's gonna go.

It's your job in that moment, husband, to figure out how to fix the problems that you have.

And you're not gonna do that just by making uncharitable assumptions and just talking to your wife, like giving her 20 -minute speeches on all the things that she did wrong.

Like that's really not gonna be the way it works. You should be exercising your role as a leader who's supposed to be dealing with conflict and leading your family out of conflict by doing what we said before, caring more to understand to be understood.

There's obviously a place for speeches. So there should be some place to say, hey,

I have some things to say. I need you to listen to these things and process them.

But at the same time, a lot of the way you're gonna deal with conflict is to understand the situation better, understand the other person's concerns.

And what you're gonna find is that often in marriage conflict in general or relational conflict, you have two people who just have very different sets of priorities.

And what's happening often is not just that, like if a man has priority

A, a woman has priority B, a man can look at a woman and say, hey, you're monstrously evil because you're not appropriately appreciating priority

A. And she's looking at him saying you're monstrously evil because you're not appropriately appreciating priority

B. And what the truth is often in scenarios like that is that both priorities are important and each one has a different kind of priority.

And the real answer is probably gonna be trying to figure out how to accomplish both of the priorities, not just one to the neglect of others.

But I've found that in my own marriage that when we're having major conflict over things,

I'm not understanding why there's such resistance to something that seems so obvious to me.

I've often found that it's because she has a different priority that I'm completely ignoring that is also an important thing.

And I've found that my job is often to try to figure out how to make sure that we're accomplishing both and lead our family into accomplishing both priorities.

And that may involve a slightly different approach than my original thought process there. So here's the point.

God has given leadership in the home and there should be, like you're caring more to understand than be understood.

You should be following the leader in your conversation. There has to be someone who says, hey, here's the agenda for our communication.

And here's my plan to get out of it. And that shouldn't just be a self -centered plan. That should be a plan that's for the good of the family.

But any thoughts related to that? Questions?

Yep. Yeah, so. Yeah, we tell them that.

We just, we tell them to ask forgiveness for it, you know. So, and we teach them how to do that too.

But yeah. I think, I try to avoid the apology word even though I understand that.

Yeah, I understand. Yeah, I just think it's more helpful to make it very clear that you are asking for forgiveness.

So you need to, you need to go ask your brother's forgiveness for that.

But we didn't really talk, we weren't apologizing. Yeah. Well, a lot of biblical counselors bring that up.

So Jay Adams made a big point about that. Behind the etymology of the word apology is to make a defense.

And I mean, that is often what people are doing when they apologize is I'm sorry, but, right?

But I would think that obviously words change over time and I wouldn't want to commit the etymological fallacy or something along those lines to not acknowledge that the word.

Yeah, it's evolved over time. It started out as make a defense and now it's evolved to expressing sorrow, period, as a means of reconciliation.

And then I would say, yeah, I want to train my kids to think in terms of forgiveness, not think.

So I mean, I think we try on a regular basis to teach them what forgiveness means, like the threefold commitment of forgiveness.

I'm not gonna bring the matter up to myself. I'm not gonna bring the matter up to others. I'm not gonna bring the matter up, or I'm not gonna dwell, yeah,

I'm not gonna bring it myself. I'm not gonna bring it up to others and I'm not gonna bring it up to you. So we try to, on a regular basis, just teach them what that means.

And then why? I mean, so when you say sorry, you're not really connecting it to the gospel and what

Jesus has done, you know what I mean? Like you're not, this is a natural.

Why do we forgive, why do we ask forgiveness? Well, because Jesus forgave us, right? And so we want

Jesus' forgiveness kind of thing. Now, I mean, there's a whole believer, unbeliever kind of discussion you can have related to that, too.

But yeah, I think it provides a very natural segue into the gospel, for sure, with that.

Okay, all right, let's pray. Lord, we thank you for our time here today. Thank you for your word, which is life to us.

We thank you for what Jesus has done for us, dying on the cross for us, forgiving us our sins. We know that if you did not forgive our sins, we would be without hope in the world,

Lord. We would be, of all men, most to be pitied. We thank you for what you've done.

Thank you for sending Jesus to die for us in the grace and the mercy you've shown to us in the cross. Help us to be eager to extend that to other people who sin against us in ways that are far less severe than what we've done to you.