Typical Problems: General Principles of Communication

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Lesson: Typical Problems-General Principles of Communication Date: Sept. 15, 2024 Teacher: Pastor Tim Mullet

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All right, well, good morning. Am I on? Okay, I am on.
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All right, well, when I was here last, we were doing a series of lessons on communication and conflict resolution.
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And I didn't really finish what I wanted to do on that. And unfortunately, I have too much to say on that, which may be a problem considering some of the things that we're gonna be talking about today.
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But when words are many, transgression is unavoidable. But this is a topic that is of great interest to me.
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And what I wanna do over the next few weeks is I want to do, well, it'll be more than a few weeks.
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It'll be a while. I wanna do a series of typical problems, okay? So we're gonna address this series of typical problems that most people struggle with.
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And one of the main ones is communication. And in fact, when you think about the nature of the way communication works, if you can't communicate with another individual, you can't really solve any problem, right?
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So if you can't talk, you're stuck. You're at a stalemate. There's nothing you can do. So in some ways, getting biblical communication right is the key to resolving any of the other problems.
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And I'm not trying to say that I'm gonna provide you techniques that a believer or an unbeliever can use irrespective of their salvation status and come to success.
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The key is obviously, again, the gospel and the Christ and regeneration and the power of the Holy Spirit at work inside of you.
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But what God does when he changes your heart is he teaches you to walk differently.
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And what I am trying to say is communication is very important. Learning how to talk to each other, learning the problems, like learning to identify the problems that many people face in communicating is very important in order to deal with most of the other common problems that people will face in this life.
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And so this is certainly important subject matter that we have to think through. And the Bible doesn't spare words in describing the nature of the difference between good communication and bad communication.
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I mean, you can just read through the book of Proverbs. You're gonna see that a significant portion of the book of Proverbs is dedicated to sins of the tongue.
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Okay? So these are just important issues that we should be talking about. Now, this is gonna be largely a topical study, meaning
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I'm going to be appealing to many different passages of scripture, not just one particular one.
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But then I do wanna start out our time here today by reading a passage of scripture that we're going to be going through in our discussion on communication in general as like a primary launching point, so to speak, for what we're doing.
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I won't be referencing it so much today, but it is good to think through what it has to say. And that passage is
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Ephesians 4, 25 through 32. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.
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Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil.
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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.
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Let no corrupting talk come from your mouth, but only such as good for building up as it fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear.
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And do not grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed on the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.
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Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.
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Now, growing up, I looked around the world that I was living in, and one of the things
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I realized is it was very, very difficult to know how to communicate with basically anyone about anything of importance, right?
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So I think most of my childhood, I would say that I felt significantly misunderstood in certain ways, and part of that was because I had different kinds of concerns than most of my classmates seemed to have, and so most of my classmates, growing up,
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I went to public school, so most of my classmates were mostly, they mostly seemed to be entertaining, you know, thoughts about entertainment and everything else, and I was concerned with a lot of things that were more substantial in my own mind, and one of the things
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I realized is I just had no ability to talk to them about anything significant whatsoever, and communication was difficult.
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I would say communication was very difficult for me in particular for a variety of reasons, but one of the things
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I've realized is communication is just hard in general. Growing up, one of the things
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I realized was that most people seem to jump to very quick conclusions about why
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I would make a particular action, right? So I would do something, and they would jump to very quick conclusions about that, that it was interesting to me because I wasn't emotionally invested in their misunderstanding, but if you,
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I was emotionally distant from it, but I could look at it objectively and say, something off is going here, right?
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There's something off. There's a disconnect that's happening. I'm saying something, and they're assuming I'm saying something else, and then what
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I found was there's almost no way to figure out how to correct those misunderstandings.
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Do you understand? Like, meaning, like, there's, like, I'm communicating to people, and what
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I noticed was that they're jumping to wild conclusions about what I'm trying to say, and I don't know if it's a me problem,
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I'm communicating poorly, or if it's a human problem. At the time, I don't really know what was happening, but what
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I would notice is they would jump to these conclusions, and then I would have no ability to step in and try to give them a little more information and try to help them understand what was actually going on, right?
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But then one of the things I've noticed over the course of counseling, one of the things I've noticed over the course of life in general is that this is just the way people are.
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Like, people, like, we're very poor listeners, okay? Like, we're very poor listeners. We jump to conclusions very quickly.
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We very easily make very poor assumptions about other people, thinking that we know what's in their heart when we don't, right?
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We're often very uncharitable in our reading of other people, and all that shows up in communication, so we're very quick to violate almost everything the
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Bible has to say about communication, and we don't often realize it. And, you know, when you encounter a relationship that's beginning to go off the rails, one of the things you'll realize is that basically all the things we're gonna talk about today are being violated in a wide variety of ways.
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Reflexively, like, not just, I'm not just saying that there's sporadic violations.
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Like, what's symptomatic of those kind of relationships is that there are deep problems at the level of communication that have gone unaddressed for a long time, and there are certain patterns of communicating that have just been ingrained in the individuals to where that's normal for them, right?
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And so, sometimes, like, when you walk into a relationship like that, which are, you know, dysfunctional, or whatever, to use a euphemism, you'll notice that what's normal to them is very bizarre to you, because maybe you've adopted, like, different patterns of communicating, but they have no sense of awareness that this is actually deeply destructive in the way that they're communicating.
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And so, what I'm gonna do today is today, we're gonna talk about communication, as I said, among a list of typical problems.
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And today, this isn't really going to be providing you an outline on how to fix these problems, right?
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This is just going to be a general overview of communication problems that happen, okay?
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So, this is, like, you may come away from this encounter thinking, man, what a mess. I don't know how to fix it.
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And that's fine, just come back next week, and we'll talk about it, right? So, that's what we're gonna do. So, today is just gonna be largely descriptive, like, descriptive of the nature of certain problems that happen, and it will provide a little hope there, as well, but that's what's going to happen, just to set your expectations in the right kind of way.
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But one of the things to realize, as I've already said, communication is very difficult. And the
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Bible acknowledges this over and over again. This is not just an observation that people make that communication's hard.
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Particularly, it's hard for members of the opposite sex to communicate with one another. There's all sorts of landmines that can happen with that.
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But the Bible is very straightforward and upfront about the fact that communication is hard. James 3, 2, and 8 says, for we all stumble in many ways, and if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.
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But no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, it is full of deadly poison, right?
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So, that's about as strong a statement as I can possibly think of to describe the reality that communication can be hard, right?
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There, no human being can tame the tongue. Proverbs 10, 19, you may be more familiar with this.
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When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is wise.
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You know, as you read the Proverbs, often the solution to avoiding sinning by speaking is just simply not to speak. And that's kind of funny when you think about it.
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I mean, there are times, obviously, to speak. There's ways you can sin by failing to say what you should say, but the more you speak, the more you open yourself up to transgression.
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That's a continual message of Proverbs. Ecclesiastes 5, 2 says, be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God.
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For God is in heaven, you are on earth. Therefore, let your words be few. There's many passages that are similar to this.
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And so, I mean, there's a wide variety of reasons why communication can be difficult in the best of circumstances. It can be difficult because we all have sinful hearts.
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We're all selfish. We all typically want what we want when we want it.
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We all wake up in the morning thinking about our own priorities. We all wake up in the morning thinking about our own values, the things that we wanna do.
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We naturally try to care for ourself and take care of our basic needs. If you just kinda go on autopilot, one of the things that you'll realize is that you are typically the center of your thoughts.
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Now, for mothers who are breastfeeding or something like that, you may find that you don't have time to think about yourself because there's other people screaming at you, asking you to do things.
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But generally speaking, the way it works in life is that we do naturally think about ourself first.
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There's an interesting phenomenon that people have to where,
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I don't know if you guys experienced this temptation, but many people experience the temptation to view the people around them as if they're like NPCs.
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They're the main character in their story and everyone else is an NPC. And there's a technical term for this and I forgot what it is, but where suddenly it kind of dawns on you that the person that you're interacting with is the main character in their own story who has a life that's just as complex and everything else is you, where you just have a moment of awareness that this is not just like a projection of my imagination, this is like a real person here.
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And they think of me as the NPC. But that's naturally the way that we are tempted to think at many times.
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And so, I mean, because of things like that, it means that communication can be difficult because we're naturally oriented towards ourself.
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We have a sinful heart. We need God's help to actually help us to communicate in a way that honors
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Him. And I would say that it's also difficult because there's a lot the Bible has to say about communication. And quite frankly, it's not simple to put it all together and to do the right thing in the right moment.
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Now, I'm not trying to say it's impossible. I'm just trying to say it takes some work, it takes some thought, it takes some discipline to know what situation you're in in order to communicate in a way that glorifies
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God. Now, as I said, I mean, this is largely gonna be negative today, so we're gonna talk about some ways in which we violate
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God's commands. And so, the overarching heading that you should be thinking about is this, there are many ways to demonstrate yourself to be a fool in conversation, okay?
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There are many, many ways. Proverbs frequently uses the word fool to describe people who make the kind of errors of communication that we're gonna be talking about today.
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And part of the problem is that we so frequently violate all of these things, right?
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And yet the Bible doesn't mince words about the nature of what that makes us. Do you understand? Like, so as you're thinking about the nature of these errors that we're making, you ought to, you ought not to say, hey, this is normal.
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Like, therefore, it's kind of understandable. Therefore, it's kind of okay. Like, the
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Bible uses very strong language to describe these kinds of errors, and that should cause you to pause and think,
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I don't wanna be that. Does that make sense? Not in some self -righteous way where you're trying to earn merit before God or something along those lines, but one of the things that we should do when we're thinking about certain problems that we experience is we shouldn't treat them as if they're normal, and then therefore expected, and therefore kind of respectable and okay.
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What I want you to have is I want you to have a sense that I don't wanna be characterized by these things, and God will describe these in pretty strong language because it does not honor
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Him. It doesn't honor the Lord when we give ourself over to very foolish manners of communication.
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It's very destructive to our own personal relationships. It's dishonoring to Him. We should want to, with our whole self, distance ourself from these practices and habits.
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So as I said, there are many ways to demonstrate yourself to be a fool during communication, and one of them,
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I would say, is probably one of the most common ones that we do, and that is to give an answer before you hear.
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So Proverbs 18, 13 says, "'If one gives an answer before he hears, "'it is folly in shame.'"
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Okay? Now, I mean, there's one of the most frustrating things,
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I think, about getting advice from other people, and I'm sure that you've probably been in many scenarios like this where someone is trying to give you advice or trying to give you suggestions, but then they're doing so in a way that doesn't fit the situation.
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I've often found myself in this kind of situation where I want advice from people.
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I'm actually, I mean, there's been times where I'm just coming to them for advice, and what I'm realizing is they're not asking any questions, right?
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They're not trying to understand the situation at all. They're not gathering any data.
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They're basically just taking whatever thing worked for them in their situation, and then they're telling me authoritatively,
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I need to do it, and I mean, I've been in plenty of situations like that where I actually wanna hear what they have to say, but then
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I'm realizing that they're missing some major details, and if they could just figure out how to understand, then they may switch the nature of what they're saying and actually have something helpful to give me, right?
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But then they don't, and so what they're doing is they're essentially giving an answer before they hear, and I mean, as I say, this is just a common temptation.
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It's a temptation that you'll face. I'm sure that our default in general as it relates to communication is just to offer suggestions and offer advice, and typically what we do is we assume that everyone is the same as us and thinks the same as us and goes through the same things in the same way as us, so we assume that their situation is probably comparable to ours, and then we think about, well, what would
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I do in that situation? But then we don't ask enough questions to try to figure out if we're even understanding what's happening, and really, if you do wanna help people, and you should, because God's put you in their life to help them, one of the things to realize is that you're not gonna be able to really help them unless you first understand them, understand who they are, the nature of their problem.
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When I'm doing counseling, I often try to ask about two hours worth of questions before I give any advice, and that's just typically what
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I do. I'll try to ask about two hours worth of questions, and that's like questions all over the place. There's different types of questions that you can ask, like you can ask very general questions and very specific questions, like in the counseling language, sometimes we describe general questions as like shotgun questions because they're very general, they spread out.
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Tell me about your life. Tell me about your background. Tell me about your relationship with your family. Tell me about your work.
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Those are very general kind of questions, and then there's like maybe like a sniper rifle kind of questions that are very specific and very direct and very pointed.
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Where were you when you did X, right? What time was it? You know, that kind of thing, like those can be very specific, but the issue is if you don't ask questions, what you're going to do is you're going to assume like you're going to take whatever you see happening from the individual, and you're going to fill in the context and the details and everything else.
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You're going to fill it all in with things that are related to you, right?
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And part of the problem is that people are like, you know, the Bible says no temptations overtaking you, but what's common to man.
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There's a commonality to all of our experience, and yet at the same time, like we can have some very, very different experiences.
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One of the things I've noticed in being married to Elizabeth is that our upbringing was very, very different in a lot of ways.
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Like our background was very, very different. When you get married, one of the things you notice,
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I mean, like a big problem, there's three major problems that people, maybe four, people have when they come to counseling.
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One is sex, one is money, right? Others, in -laws, like how to deal with in -laws.
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In -laws is a big deal. I won't give you the whole list, but like the issue is we have very different backgrounds, and there's so many, over the course of,
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I guess, 14 years of marriage now, we've discovered that our impulses are very, very different in a wide variety of situations because we have very different backgrounds, very different upbringings.
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You know, our understandings about what we need to do at holidays are very different.
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Birthdays are very different. My parents, very frugal in certain ways, and so I'm thinking, give the kid 10 bucks, that'll be fine, right?
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You know, the birthday present, happy birthday. You save it up all year, you'll get something, because that's kind of what we did.
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But then her family, there was, killed a fatted calf or whatever, and even if you can't afford it, whatever, just, you know, their understanding of an appropriate birthday present maybe is like 100 bucks or 200 bucks or something, and it's like, and I'm thinking, man, what could
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I have done with 200 bucks as a kid? You know, so it's very different, you know? But what
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I'm trying to say is that every single point, we just have different backgrounds, different experiences, and those kind of things are feeding into misunderstanding, and then
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I can look at her, and I can look at her, and she's engaging in a particular action.
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I read it through the lens of my background, my experience, my temperament, you know, everything else. I could just come to some pretty bad conclusions, and I often do.
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So what I'm trying to say is there's many ways to demonstrate yourself to be a fool during communication. One of those is to give an answer before you hear, and I would say that this is a very, very common problem.
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We don't ask enough questions, we don't get enough information, we make a bunch of assumptions, and we give people advice often that really does not fit their situation at all.
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Second way, talk too much, and as I said, the Proverbs seems to mention this over and over and over and over and over again.
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So Proverbs 10, 19, when words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.
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You know, a lot of these things seem to build off of each other, in the sense that if you give an answer before you hear, it's following shame, but then, like, one of the things, one of the barriers that keeps you from asking the questions that you should be asking, getting the information that you should be asking, is the temptation just to talk too much, so,
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I mean, people can talk too much for a variety of different reasons, and sometimes people just talk a lot because they're nervous.
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When I'm, I have a brother who will remain nameless, and I won't tell you which one,
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I have several brothers, but one of my brothers, whenever I'm in the car with him, he seems to be allergic to silence or something like that.
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And so, I'm good, I'm good, I can just sit there and I can chill, I don't have to say anything, you know, but then he'll look over at me, if I'm not saying anything, it's like, are you mad at me?
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It's like, no, what are you talking about? I'm fine, you know, it's like, well, you're not saying anything, it's like, what is there to say, you know, do you want to talk about something?
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It's like, never mind, you know. But, I mean, there is a temptation just to talk too much, so sometimes people just have a need to fill every single empty word with, every empty space with words.
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A lot of times people who talk too much are doing so because they're bragging about themself and about their accomplishments and about their achievements.
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I mean, you can listen to people who, like, that's all they do, they just brag about themself over and over and over again.
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There's a list of all of our accomplishments, and then you can do that with your children too, like a list of all your children's accomplishments. And so, getting together with them involves you listening to them basically tell you all of, like, the wonderful things that they're doing and their family is doing.
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So, I mean, it can be occasion for pride. I mean, it can be an occasion just to express your opinion, right?
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A lot of people just, they desperately want to be understood.
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And when conflict starts to happen, what you do in order to try to be understood is you ramp up the words. And that's often not helpful because if you're not dealing with someone who wants to listen, you can throw a thousand words at it and it's not gonna help, right?
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So, ways to demonstrate yourself to be a fool. Give an answer before you hear.
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Talk too much. Are you guys aware of the joke about the Supreme Court justices right now?
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Have you seen the word comparison between Katonji Brown -Jackson and Clarence Thomas along those lines?
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I think Clarence, of all the Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas has the fewest words, right?
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And then by a power of, I don't know if it's like six or 10 or something like that, you have Katonji Brown -Jackson trying to show herself to be in charge and capable and everything else.
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But that's just a dramatic example of the kind of thing that we're talking about here, right?
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More words is not necessarily better and then the need to talk more often demonstrates yourself to be a fool.
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Make no effort to understand. Number three. So, the proverb says, a fool takes no pleasure in understanding but only in expressing his opinion, right?
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So, the fool takes no pleasure in understanding but only in expressing his opinion.
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I mean, that's kind of like a radical way of redefining the nature of what you're even doing in communication for many people.
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Like many people think the way that you communicate, the thing that you should, your goal in communication is to express yourself, right?
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And that's certainly what society is teaching you is the importance of expressing yourself, right? But then, biblically speaking, it's way more important to understand other people than it is to express yourself.
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And we would do better to make the goal of our communication to be primarily centered on trying to understand rather than to be understood.
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And you understand that you're at a vicious stalemate when you have two people who are viewing communication as an opportunity to be understood.
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What happens is they just go back and forth trying to be understood and no one understands anything, right?
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Do you understand what I'm saying? Like if two people are competing over being understood and no one is trying to listen, then all you get is two people yapping at each other, right?
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And that's certainly a significant problem. And certainly, yeah, I mean, in your classic example of an argument,
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I mean, argument is a neutral word that can be used in a wide variety of ways. I mean, argument, like you can say, I'm presenting my argument, right?
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Which is just my opinion backed by reasons for a particular proposition.
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But then typically, when you think of an argument, you think about an angry disagreement, which is noisy and unpleasant.
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And in that stereotypical argument, what you have is you have two people who take no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing their own opinion, right?
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That's what you have. So you have two people fighting to be understood while no one is trying to actually understand.
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D, forward D, whatever, ignore wise counsel. This is one of my favorite verses in the
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Bible. And not just because it's funny, but I do like it.
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But Proverbs 12, one, whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid. So, you know,
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I really recommend that you be the kind of person who makes a habit of going to other people and asking for advice.
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I really recommend that you make that as a habit. Not just like, I mean, a lot of people are so afraid of asking for advice.
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It's just not like a natural part of their personality, right? And so they treat, they're afraid to ask for advice.
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And part of the reason why they're afraid to ask for advice is because they're proud, right? And they're proud, and then they don't want people to know that they don't have it all together.
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And a lot of times in churches, what you have is you have a bunch of people who are getting together, trying to collectively pretend like everything is all right, right?
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So they're trying to collectively pretend where everything is all right. We all have it all together. We don't need any help.
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We're okay, you know? We don't want you to know. And then, you know, when they get desperate, then they finally get around to maybe asking for help.
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But then they're not used to asking for help. So, but they know they need help, but they're not used to it.
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And so because they don't have a pattern of actually trying to get advice, then they can get really resistant to anything that anyone will actually tell them in that moment, right?
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And so what I'm trying to say is, the Bible says, whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.
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The Bible over and over again tells you that other people are put here to see things that you can't see.
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And a lot of that's just like a biological reality due to the nature of the positioning of your eyes and your head.
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Do you understand? Like, think about the way your eyes are placed in your head. They point outward.
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What does that mean? I can't see myself. I can't see my facial expressions. I can't see my mannerisms. I can't see how
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I appear. I can't see how I come across. But, but I can see very clearly how you appear, right?
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I can see very clearly how you come across. I can do that. And so, you know, what do people do in relationships?
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Well, they very naturally and easily see all the faults in other people and none of the faults in themselves, right?
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You know, so some of that, I'm trying to say, it's like a biological reality that it's harder to see yourself.
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I mean, you know, throughout the history of the world, mirrors weren't even invented, right? We didn't have mirrors throughout the history of the world where you can see yourself clearly everywhere you go or something along those lines.
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Some people don't even know what they look like. You know, they see their reflection in the water and then they get shocked at what they see, right?
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Oh, that's me. But then that's what everyone else sees. And so the point there is just to say that we should be cultivating the kind of character, the kind of character that is quickly and eagerly asking other people for help.
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I mean, when I was a young single man, I would do this and I recommend that you do this if you're young and single, even if you're a woman.
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That's not the point. That was a unnecessary conclusion you jumped to right there.
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But no, I mean, I would go to older people and I'd ask them for advice and just see what they had, you know, so tell me about marriage.
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What are the biggest problems in your marriage? What are some of the challenges? You know, how have you learned to overcome them?
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What are some things that were helpful? What are some things that were difficult? And I would just ask people that.
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I would ask everyone that, that I came across. How did you find your spouse? What did you do, right?
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I wanted to figure out how to do this because it seemed like it was impossible to find a good woman. So how did you find your spouse?
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What do you think I should do? You know, a lot of single people don't even think to ask those kinds of questions. Isn't that weird?
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Like they don't even think to ask, like they wanna be married, they wanna be married. There's no one in sight.
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And then they don't go around asking people for help. And it's weird to me, right? I thought, well, why wouldn't
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I ask for help? I don't know any women. Where am I gonna find them? You know, it's not like I'm in the Bible times where I can just see a bunch of them dancing and go grab one or something, right?
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It's not that, it's not that kind of thing. So I need help. Someone's gonna have to introduce me because my prospects are grim at the moment, you know?
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So, but look, I mean, what does it say? Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge. He who hates reproof is stupid.
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We should be people who are asking for advice. We shouldn't be people who think we have it all together.
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You should be trying to look to godly people in your life. And you shouldn't expect perfection of that.
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You know, a lot of people say, hey, yeah, I'm open to getting advice from people, but I just don't know anyone I would actually trust to get advice from.
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It's like, it doesn't matter. Just ask people for advice and see what they give you. I mean, you're not duty -bound to do everything they say, but I mean, the thing is, if you ask 10 people for advice, you're gonna get 10 different suggestions and you're gonna have to filter through it, but at least you got information to work with and maybe some of it's good, right?
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So it doesn't matter, I mean, you shouldn't, there's no perfect people, none of us are perfect, but maybe you'll get some good stuff in there.
32:54
Okay, five, quickly angering and speaking in anger. This is a way to demonstrate yourself a fool in communication.
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Quickly angering and speaking in anger. James 1, 19 says, know this, my beloved brothers, that every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.
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Again, emphasizing the importance of understanding, right? I mean, the Bible over and over and over again repeats these same ideas in different ways, but this one is tied to anger, right?
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So anger is a thing that keeps people from being the listeners that they should be, right?
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So know this, my beloved brothers, that every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. Once you get mad, you know, your listening ability dramatically tanks at that point, right?
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So if you had any to begin with, when you get frustrated, it's gone. I mean, as a check in my life, typically in moments, because I know how blinding anger actually is,
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I'm often trying to, if I'm in a conversation that's unpleasant, I'm trying to ask myself, like, am
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I able to think clearly right now in this moment? You know, are my emotions stable?
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Am I calm? Because if I'm not, then
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I know that whatever ability I think I have to listen in that moment is probably not there, do you understand what
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I mean? But if I know that, like, internally I'm calm, and my head is clear, that often gives me a little more confidence in moments that are tense, to look at it a little more objectively, and to not necessarily just be my own personal accuser in those moments.
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But I mean, I assume that, in general, when I'm communicating, that there is going to be a lot of temptation that I'm going to have to wanna argue my own case, that there's gonna be a lot of temptation that I'm gonna have to not try to listen, not be trying to understand.
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But I also know that when I'm mad, my listening ability is gone. When I'm talking to someone who's mad, their listening ability is gone, it's over with, right?
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You know, at that point. And I mean, one of the best things you could do, probably, is just to internalize that and act on it.
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And I wish I would act on it like I should every time, but, like, the issue is, like, if you have two people who are mad, there's nothing probably good that's gonna come at that point, because neither one of them are quick to hear, so to speak, right?
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They're in the angry part, and at that point, the anger has blinded their eyes.
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But why do you get angry? You know, James tells you, where do wars and fights come from among you?
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This is James 4. Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that wage war on your members, right? You do not have, because you do not ask, you ask and you do not receive, because you ask and miss, to spend it on your passions.
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Like, the issue is, why do we get mad? Why do we fight with people? We fight with people because we're mad, because there's something we want really bad that we're not getting.
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And one of the things you can do when you're mad in conversation is to ask yourself, what do
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I want right now that I'm not getting? What is it that I want that I'm not getting? And even getting yourself to ask that question can help to cool down your emotions and help you to be more calm.
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And then what you need to do is give that to God. You know, so I wanna be understood. Well, God, you were misunderstood.
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When you were reviled, you didn't revile in return. If you want me to be understood, give it to me.
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You know, but right now I'm gonna focus on trying to understand. But yeah, when you think about communication that's significantly gone off the rails, what you have is you have a situation where you have two people, most often, who are very quick to anger, right?
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Very quick to speak, and very slow to listen. That's the problem, right? Very slow to listen, quick to speak, quick to give an answer before they hear, right?
37:16
Quick to anger. Six, speak without thinking.
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Proverbs 12, 18. There's one whose rash words are like sword thrust, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.
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You know, just saying everything. I'm gonna deal with these next two together for the sake of time. Venting, James 1, 19.
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Know this, my beloved brothers, that everyone be quick to hear, so to speak. Oh no, I got the wrong verse.
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Venting, a fool gives full vent to their spirit, and I don't have the reference, but it's there, trust me.
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But the idea of speaking without thinking, saying everything that's on your mind to think, and these are compatible kind of ideas.
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People today, they think it's a virtue just to say whatever is on their mind. I think it's a virtue because they're being authentic, right?
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And you may, I don't know if you've heard people speak this way, but I hear people speak this way all the time, where they'll basically say that if someone's going through a trial, what they should do is just let
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God have it, right? Just give, God's a big God, He can handle it, and just tell them what's on your heart, right?
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Just, basically, what they're telling them to do is just give full vent to your spirit, right? We are living in a psychologized time, and so what people think is they think that it's healing to get all the words out, right?
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So if you don't, what's gonna happen? You tell me what's gonna happen if you hold your words in. What's gonna happen?
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Feel free to, what's that? All right, so you get really depressed if you hold it all in, what else?
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He said repress. What? Repress. Yeah, well, what happens if you repress your emotions, your thoughts, your feelings, what happens?
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So yeah, you'll go postal, right? Like, you'll probably just, so basically, if you don't give full vent to your spirit, you are psychologically damaging yourself, you understand that?
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You're psychologically damaging yourself because you'll probably end up getting really mad one day and shooting people, that's what's gonna happen.
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Like, and that's what people think. And so there's almost, in our society, a moral mandate to say whatever you're thinking and get it out.
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I mean, as long as it's about the approved narrative, so to speak, right? So as long as it's approved speech, you know?
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But just leave that aside for a moment. What you're supposed to do is you're supposed to just get it out, right? Speak without thinking, just say whatever's on your mind, whatever's on your heart.
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But I mean, the Bible talks about that as destructive, right? There's one whose rash words are like, sword thrust.
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I mean, just imagine a maniac with a sword swinging it around, random, I mean, like, if you've ever had kids, you may have a good mental picture of this kind of thing, where they find a toy sword and they're in the house swinging it around, like, having no self -awareness whatsoever of the fact that there's other people in the house and, you know, just, they're engaged in a battle.
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I mean, boys, I mean, they're engaged in some kind of battle in their mind with some imaginary fighter, you know? And then if you get in the way, you're gonna get damaged.
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I mean, but that's kind of like the picture of the person who has rash words. They just throw them out, right? They just throw them out and whoever's around is gonna get hit in the process.
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The Bible says, a fool gives full vent to their spirit. The Bible has very, and just because you're going through a trial and just because you're going through a difficult situation, that's no excuse to blaspheme
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God and just to say whatever's on your mind, right? And there's a lot of things that might be on your mind, that might be in your heart, that are just evil.
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You don't need to say. Just because it feels authentic doesn't mean it's worth saying, right?
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I just want you to know I hate you with every fiber of my being. I know that's not right. I know that's not right.
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I shouldn't think that way, but that's where I'm at right now, right? It's like, what good did that do? Was that good?
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Did that help anyone, you know? You got it out, you feel good. I can pat yourself on the back, you're authentic, but you know, that's not praiseworthy.
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That's like, the fool says everything that's on their mind. There are times to keep it to yourself, right?
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I mean, it's obviously very different to say, and this is a basic distinction
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I wish people would make. It's very different to say, right now I'm struggling with anger towards you, and I don't want to have it, right?
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And I need some help. I need some help to figure out how to not have this anger towards you. That's a very different thing just to say that, hey, just keeping it real, hate you, you know?
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Don't know what to do about that, you know? Just be different, and maybe it'll be better, you know?
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So, yeah, there's no value in authenticity. Like, our authentic self is corrupt and evil.
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You shouldn't trust your authentic self, and there's no virtue in expressing it, you know, just in an unfiltered way.
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Spread lies and deception, Proverbs 19 .1. Better a good person who walks in integrity than one who is crooked in speech and is a fool.
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Notice the continual fool language being described to all of these things. The Bible, obviously, isn't mincing words, but.
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Why do you think it's foolish to spread lies and deception? Destroys trust.
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You know, with gossip, one of the things that's funny about gossip is that when you, like, there's a pleasure that comes from gossiping about someone.
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It's like an evil pleasure, like evil. I'm not saying it's good. There's an evil kind of pleasure that comes from gossiping about someone, until it dawns on you that if you're talking to, if you're gossiping with someone, and they're gossiping with you about someone else, if they're the kind of person who would gossip about them, then they're also the kind of person who would gossip about you, right?
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And so, like, it's, this is obviously a very foolish way to speak, and it doesn't honor the
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Lord. But I mean, obviously, it's something that we excel at when you think about spreading lies and deception.
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We excel at this in a wide variety of ways. And we excel at this as a society, so much so that, like, we're almost at a point where it's impossible to know what's truth and what's false when you're on social media.
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Concrete definition of gossip, huh? Yeah, I mean, gossip is negative information shared in a tone of confidentiality, right?
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So, like, negative information shared in a tone of confidentiality. That's, like, an important qualification that, you know, how people will often say, would you say it to their face?
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As a check on that, that's related to that qualification. But, like, negative information told told in a tone of confidentiality that's designed to essentially make you think worse about the person, right?
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So it has no edifying function, essentially. But that'll get you somewhere in the right neighborhood of what gossip actually is.
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Now, I mean, that's very different than, that's very different than someone saying, we have a problem,
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I don't know how to resolve it, I need help, and I'm more than happy to have them there, but they're not willing to be there.
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But I still need to know what to do. But I'd love for you to have their side of the story, too, so you could better help me know how to resolve it.
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That's a very different thing. But most people don't wanna do that. They don't want the other person there.
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They're not, they're thinking that their side of the story is the right side of the story, like, completely right, and the other side is completely wrong, right?
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And so then it's just, I want you to tell, I wanna get this off my chest to you as a therapeutic exercise to help you feel better.
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And I want you to tell me that everything I'm thinking and feeling about it is right. I mean, that's basically how it works, right?
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So let me tell you all this negative stuff about this other person as a therapeutic exercise, and you can validate me and affirm me and tell me that everything
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I'm thinking and feeling is right, and that's what I want from you, right? So that's, that would be, that would be gossipy, right?
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Right, boasting about tomorrow, Proverbs 27, one, do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what day we'll bring.
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In our communication, there should be an acknowledgement that God is sovereign, he's in control, and he's numbered our days, and he has a plan.
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And there's many ways in which, in our communication, we can reveal that we're putting no fault into God's involvement in our situation and our affairs and his plans that he may have that may be very different than our own.
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You know, when you're talking to people, it's often helpful to remember that there's more, there's more people involved in that conversation than what you think, you know?
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So there's, like, if I'm having a conflict with you, then the issue is, like, that is probably related to the fact that I have a problem with God, and they have a problem with God, and God is there, he sees, and he's watching what's happening.
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We should acknowledge that he's there, that he sees, that he's watching, that he's involved in this, for sure.
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And then, finally, you know, closely related to that, rejecting God in our conversation, so Psalm 14, once, as the fool says in his heart, there is no
47:49
God, most of our problems are not just, like, horizontal problems, like, our problems with communication, it's not just a horizontal problem between me and this other person, there's another person involved,
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God is involved, he's there, and a lot of times, we're just trying to fix things on a human level and not fix things on a vertical level, right?
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So you sin against me, I need you to ask me forgiveness. That's right, you need to ask forgiveness because you sin against me, but you also need to ask
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God forgiveness because he's the one you primarily sin against and he's more important than me. And a lot of times, in our relationships, we're not thinking about the
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God word component to that, like, meaning, God's involved in this, and if you want their good more than you just want the problem to go away, then you want them to be sanctified in the midst of this.
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Like, that's what you want, you want them to be sanctified more than you want your difficulty to go away, right?
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So there's a lot more that can be said about that, but as I said, so communicate, what does the
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Bible say about communication? Like, some general principles. One, communication's difficult. Two, there's many different ways to prove yourself to be a fool in conversation.
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We've gone through a lot of those. Three, there's no one -size -fits -all standard of communication.
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That would be 1 Thessalonians 5 .14, we urge you, brothers, to admonish the idol, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, and be patient with them all.
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Like, you need to approach different situations in different ways, and what I want to talk about next week is some of what that looks like.
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But there's certainly no one -size -fits -all standard of communication. You should talk to a child who's standing in the road and the car is coming very differently, you know?
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Then you, then you would talk to your friend who you're having a normal conversation with.
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I mean, you should talk to false teachers very differently than you should talk to church members in certain ways.
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Part of the problem with big evangelicalism today is that you have a lot of church leaders who are demanding a one -size -fits -all standard of communication for every single situation that you can find yourself in.
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So meaning, like, they're, like our Christian influencers out there, you know, the influential people, the people who are the powers that be, what they've done is they've steadily brought heretics into the church, into all the big organizations, and then they demand that you treat them like Christian brothers and extend to them
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Christian charity, and talk to them, and, you know, in a winsome way, right?
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And so everything is about winsome and good faith. You have to be good faith. And so every conversation you have with a heretic must be filtered with the knowledge that we're all
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Christian brothers, and these are things that we can disagree about, and it's okay to disagree. And through that kind of strategy of demanding a one -size -fits -all approach to communication, a lot of error has been brought into the church instead of, you know, what needs to actually happen.
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So, I mean, there's not a one -size -fits -all standard. Different rules apply to different situations.
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And that's not situational ethics that I'm espousing. I'm not trying to say that the right thing is pragmatically determined based on the situation you're in.
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I'm just trying to say that God gives you different rules for different situations. I'm not talking about pragmatism, do what works.
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I'm saying God's given you different rules for different situations require different forms of communication.
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If Goliath is standing there, if Goliath is standing there in front of you and blaspheming the armies of the living
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God and blaspheming the living God, there's a certain standard of communication that is required of you in that moment that's very different than if you're sitting with a five -year -old girl in a counseling situation, right?
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It's just totally different. It's a totally different kind of thing. Goliath is not a five -year -old girl, right? You don't have to cuddle
51:47
Goliath's feelings, you know, and be sensitive towards him in that moment. Like, there's a different standard of communication. That's all
51:52
I'm trying to say. So there's no one -size -fits -all standard. And finally, Christ is our model for communication.
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Now, I mean, you can press this in a way that's kind of irrational, but I mean, generally speaking, I mean, think about it. Like, I'm not omniscient.
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I can't read people's hearts. I can't just look at you and tell you what is in man, you know, in that kind of way. So, I mean, there's certain elements of Christ omniscience that are not,
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Christ omniscience is not a communicable attribute, right? I can't carry that out, but Christ is our model for communication.
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And one of the things that's interesting about this topic, particularly as it relates to communication, is that so frequently what
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I find is people have a standard of communication that they have exalted in their mind that bears no relationship to the way
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Jesus actually communicated. I mean, this is related to evangelism, right? Like our evangelistic strategies.
52:54
You know, people think that the way Jesus evangelized was basically just to hang out with sexual perverts indefinitely forever, and just be their friend for years and years and years without ever calling them to repentance, because Jesus is all about relationships or something like that.
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Like people just haven't read the Gospels. They don't know Jesus. They think of him as just a meek, mild, timid guy who is always nice and always happy and always encouraging, right?
53:23
Right, and always there for you. And he's like a therapist who's just gonna validate your every feeling, and he's in a nonjudgmental way.
53:30
Like that's what he's gonna do, but that's not the Jesus of the Bible. Jesus shows the whole wide range of communication.
53:39
If you look at the way he communicates in the Gospel, you'll see that he doesn't approach every situation in the same kind of way.
53:46
Like in some situations, he's making a whip and cord and yelling at people, right, and driving them out.
53:52
In other situations, like he's having a nice, normal conversation, right? But I mean, there's, yeah,
54:00
I'm just trying to say that we should look to Christ for a model of communication. We should see how he handles different kinds of situations and try to follow him in that, because he's the perfect communicator.
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We're never gonna be the perfect communicator, but he's obviously the perfect communicator, and he hasn't left us without resources and without help.
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He's given us everything we need in his word for life and godliness. He's given us the Holy Spirit who can help us to communicate in a way that honors him, and our goal in communication should be the goal of honoring
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God, not just kind of fixing all the problems, but honoring him in the way that we communicate, irrespective of what happens.
54:36
I mean, but the good news is that you have two people who both have that goal of honoring God in their communication. It's very difficult to have a whole lot of conflict in those moments, if that makes sense.
54:45
But all right, that's a brief overview of some communication problems.
54:51
Yes? Like there's like this sense of like,
55:02
I guess like emotional masturbation, you know, in the sense that like, they ask advice almost as a proxy to continue, this sense of that thing, and.
55:12
The sense of what? That thing. Oh. Okay. Most of my experience with that kind of thing is with people who are pretending to ask for advice, but then what they're not, they're not actually asking for advice, or they're not really open to advice, basically.
55:40
So they'll come to you. Yeah, I mean, I know a lot of people who will vent.
55:46
They wanna continually share their story and share their struggles, but then they don't really want any help from it.
55:53
And so they're very, very resistant to help. Now, I mean, I guess I can imagine a scenario where someone is a little more sophisticated than all that, and actually asks for advice and never follows through with it.
56:07
But I mean, I do think at a certain point, if I'm encountering that kind of person who seems like they're really humble, open to advice, but they're just wanting to talk about it,
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I really am at that point going to direct them to being doers of the word and not just simply hearers only.
56:23
What are you gonna do with the information? You know, we've told you the same thing over and over and over and over again, but can you be more specific in what you're, you mean, does that connect with what you're saying, or you have something else in mind?
56:37
Yeah, no, that's exactly it. You know, it's nice when your friend asks you for advice and like, at a certain point, there's a sense of like,
56:52
I, yeah, I've been in situations like that before. And I mean, my,
56:57
I routinely, I mean, at some point
57:03
I'd be like, hey, you know, when are you gonna follow through with any of this? You know, like, when are you gonna follow through with any of this?
57:09
Because you ask me the same thing every week and I give you the same answer and then you don't do it.
57:14
Like, what, is there a disconnect? Have you tried it? You know, what are the, you know, so at that point, it's like, are there barriers to, like, what are the, what is, when you try to put this into practice, what is actually happening?
57:26
You know, so one of the things you might find is that, like, they really want advice, you're giving them advice, and maybe you're giving them advice that doesn't fit.
57:35
And so, because you haven't asked enough questions, right? And so then what's happening is they're trying to put it, like, charitably, they may be trying to put it into practice, but then it, the shoe doesn't fit, so to speak, and so you need more.
57:50
But, I mean, just asking a simple, well, what happens when you try to do this might help you figure out where things are, if they're sincere, right?
58:01
Like, now, if they're not sincere, then there is a time to say, hey, like, we both agree that this should happen.
58:11
What's getting in the way, you know? When are you gonna actually do it, you know? But a lot of times,
58:17
I mean, there are certain barriers in trying to identify what are the barriers that are keeping from, the application can be helpful.
58:24
Any other thoughts or questions? All right, answers next week.
58:34
The beginning of some answers next week. Thank you guys for your attention, I appreciate it. Let me pray, and we'll end our time here today.
58:42
Thank you, Lord, for your word, which is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. I pray that you help convict us about the areas that we've talked about today that are uniquely fitting to ourself.
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I pray that we don't just take this lesson and think about all the ways in which it applies to other people, but think about the ways in which it applies to ourself, and I pray that you help us to take our communication as seriously as you do,
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Lord. We know that life and death are on the power of the tongue, and I pray that you help us to use our words more wisely for your glory and for our good.