Get It Together

Yeah, hey, so we've been in a series. Y'all remember what we called it: it's a marriage series, but it's not just about marriages, it's about relationships. And again, like I said every week, I couldn't think of a name, so I've got to describe this whole long context as to how we chose a marriage series, but it's not really a marriage Series. So, anyways, this our last week of it.

We go start in something new next week.

But what we've been doing is I've been trying to take kind of a topical approach to discussing relationships. The Gman method, if you will, is what my wife has been teaching me for the past 12 years of our marriage. John and Julie gotman, they're marriage therapists and they've discovered that over the years there are certain things that predict successful marriages, certain things that predict divorcing, and separation in marriages, and so I've actually looked at a lot of their scientific study in order to come up with our points. But I need you to know every single bit of this that is good comes directly from the Lord and it is in God's word.

So we've been covering scientific and pragmatic tools through the lens of what God's word says about how we can ultimately excel in our relationships.

So if you felt like this is different than the Jonah Series, where we spent 10 weeks going straight through the word of God, it is different. This is a topical series because I want to be pragmatic for each of those who: maybe you're in a marriage relationship, you're dating, you're living together, but you're not married. Or you have friends, employers, employees. That's what this series was for, because every single one of us needs to grow in our relationships and the Goins narrow down to about four activities or habits that we have in relationships that cause problems.

The first was criticism, the second was defensiveness.

The third, contempt. We covered that last week and today's is going to be called stonewalling. But before I jump into it, I want to read God's word, and we'll be in Ephesians 4, beginning in verse 4, 14. You can turn there, but I'm going to read it.

I promise I'm going to come back to it later.

Anyways, this is where Paul, writing to the church at Ephesus, says this: then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth and love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him, who is the head that is Christ. From him, the whole body, joined in, held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. Now, when God brought me to this text, I struggled at first because the way this text reads it doesn't specifically relate to marriage relationships.

It doesn't immediately conjure up feelings of how I need to treat my spouse or the people around me.

It talks specifically about the church and how we interact with various mindsets that exist in the world. And it really took me me a second to recognize how this applies to stonewalling specifically, but to the marriage series overall. And God blew my mind when he helped me recognize this truth that we are all stuck in mindsets, in Winds of teaching- to use Paul's language- that take us away from the truth of God and into chaotic relationships, into negative, unproductive conversations with spouses and other people that we desire to be close to. It's these Winds of teaching that teach us that it's okay to seek our own self-interest rather than the interest of others, but that takes humility.

The world tells us: hey, dude, just shake the dust off, not in the Jesus way, but Shake the Dust off if they don't accept you for who you are.

We claim in this world to be pushing people to be confident and accepting and tolerant. But what it tends to create is a culture of intolerance for people who have a different opinion than we hold. And so when people get into close relationships, like marriages, they have this impression that if the other person doesn't perfectly fulfill their desires, doesn't love them the way that they desire to be loved to the specificity in their own minds. If that person is different than me, if that person goes through a phase that is not as great as when I first met them, then it's okay.

Okay for me to toss them aside and be justified in me seeking my own self-interest.

That's why marriages don't last in this culture. That's why friendships don't last in this culture. That's why what's happening in Buckeye is a toxic place to be sometimes. That's why Facebook, Instagram, social media is a struggle bust for each of us who participate in it.

That's why you've been searching for church after church, after church, after church, after church after church, and you still haven't found a church is because we live in this culture in a wind of teaching that tells us we've got to seek our own.

But the Bible and the culture that that would initiate in our lives tells us the opposite. In fact, the greatest commandment is this: love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength, and then to love your neighbor as yourself. It's just like the first one. It says it's a different mindset.

Look at your neighbor and say: you got to change it up, you got to change your culture.

It's, it's, it's an adjustment. And so when I was reading this text, it doesn't apply specifically to marriages, it applies to relationships in general, and what it tells us, and I hope to communicate to you, is that as we shift our culture and revolve everything around Jesus, he will put us into a place where he can actually accomplish his purposes in the world through us. But I got to get there, I got to build up, I got to finish this series. We talked about criticism, defensiveness and contempt.

Today we're going to talk about stonewalling.

This is one of those things in a relationship. Whereas maybe contempt brings conflict into a relationship, I would say stonewalling cuts off Connection in a relationship. Stonewalling- and I'll describe it to you in a second- is mostly employed by the men in a marriage relationship. Studies show that 85% of men tend to Stonewall and only 15% of women.

What is interesting about that statistic is that the 5% of 5% of those women who do Stonewall-, sorry, the W- when a woman does stone wall, they are much more likely predictors of divorce.

If a woman stonewalls but men tend to Stonewall, that's probably a good thing. Cuz, we're just stubborn and stand there and give the silent treatment. That's what we do. But stonewalling looks different in different people.

In general, it's men who typically practice that, but depending on the Rel relationship- for example, my relationship with my wife Hannah- which one stonewalls more in our relationship?

Me or you- okay, you got to say it louder so that they seem confident. You seem confident, and so they don't go home and think Matt called her out and she didn't want to say it, but no, she's confident about this. She's not going to get mad at me. I might buy her something, but other than that we're good.

She tends to be the one that stonewalls in our relationship.

So it's different for each couple, and here's what I'll also say: all of you do it. All of you were critical. All all of you are defensive, all of you have contempt in certain areas and all of you stonewall. One person does one more than the other, but you all do it.

So I think this will be helpful for you.

And if you're not in a marriage relationship or a relationship that is close like that, and you just got friends, family members, employees, employers, just random people that you interact with on the street, this still works. This is still crucial and still helpful. But before I jump into what stonewalling looks like, I want to give you my title. I titled this message based on the Scripture, but I think it's helpful: get it together.

Get it together.

Look at your neighbor, say: get it together together. If that's your spouse, you're talking to yourself and them at the same time. Just let them know you're not just talking bad to them. Get it together from the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work.

It's crucial for us to get it together internally so that we can get at it together as a church, as a couple, in our relationship externally.

So get it together. What does stonewalling even look like, though? The first, first way you can identify stonewalling is it's shutting down or the silent treatment. Now, what I don't want to assume is that the person who's stonewalling is doing something intentionally to frustrate the other person.

So let's just leave that on the table.

We're going to assume that they have good intent in this conversation. So they shut down or they present with the sil treatment, probably because they're overwhelmed. Most of the time when someone Stonewall is in any type of relationship, it's because they got overwhelmed. They got so emotional they're, they're feeling everything that's happening so viscerally that the next thing that they're going to say could be not the right thing to say.

You know what I'm saying could be not the right thing.

So what they do is they shut down those of us who have contempt and criticize a lot. We don't shut down, we just say the thing not good either. But the people who Stonewall that they're, they're, they're shutting down or they might even give the silent treatment. The next thing they do is they withdraw emotionally.

They withdraw emotionally, for example, when I'm stonewalling, if I get frustrated, maybe it's that I'm just flooded emotionally and I don't know what I'm about to say next.

It could be- and this is just the truth. Hannah knows this, so I'm not saying anything surprising. When we've had a conversation that's lasted 45 minutes to two hours, or two days or whatever, and, everything I say seems to be going in the wrong direction. What I will do in order to be productive and save some time is I will just like emotionally disengage from it and say what I need to say in order to do it.

You see, I say that and all of you- a lot of you men in here especially- will connect with that.

But that's not the right thing to do. It's not, but that's what it tends to look like. Maybe emotionally withdrawing that cuts off connection. When you emotionally withdraw, it makes your partner think that you don't care.

I'm not saying you don't when I do it, it's not that I don't care, it's that I'm trying trying to be productive, but the way it comes across is as if I'm ignoring or avoiding something that the other person thinks is important.

The next one is the nonverbals, and here's how you can identify it: you might avoid eye contact. So if you're in an argument with somebody and they start avoiding eye contact with you, it could be just a social skill issue, but it could also be that they're stonewalling, they're feeling emotionally, frustrated, or they're building up and flooding emotionally within their system, and so they're avoiding eye contact, cuz when they look at you, it's going to take them over the edge. You might see their posture is turning away, and here's something that will really really help you identify when someone's either about to explode or implode into stonewalling. It's rapid, deep breathing.

You might know this about yourself.

When you get to a point and the person's talking to you, when they won't let up. My brother and I used to be like this. He would keep talking, talking, talking, talking, say something that was offensive and frustrating. Now I start breathing really, really deeply and what I'm about to do is either get out the car or punch him because he's my brother, he's, he's my brother and I- I was.

I was barely saved at that point.

I was still maturing in Christ Jesus. I was being tossed around to and fro by the wind of Doctrine, of books like Wild at Heart. That said, I could punch people when I was frustrated. So he- this is, that was me at the time, but he kept going, and so what I've learned about myself as an adult with a wife who you can't just well off and punch is when you start deep breathing, rap.

You can't, you can't do that, you shouldn't do that, all right.

So I'm just deep breathing, rapidly frustrated, and if she continues to go because she's frustrated at something, what happens in me is I'm, and some of you who aren't married yet, you don't know what I'm talking about because because the worst you got is your mother, father, maybe brother, sister, but when you get married, that's the most important person in the world and when they're saying things to you that that, like, are stressing you out to your core, you don't know what to do. And this is when the buildup comes. You're rapidly breathing and you don't know what you're going to do next. So you break down into a ston wall, you disconnect emotionally and you literally shut down.

Here's what that might look like, and I gave you a specific example of how it occurs sometimes in very unhealthy portions of our relationship over the last 12 years- not last week, okay, cool.

Hannah is uncomfortable with conflict and feels internally overwhelmed with an emotion. While trying to listen to what I'm saying, when I'm being probably critical, I can tell Hannah is uncomfortable and I start asking questions like: what's wrong? What's going on? You don't look like you're okay.

Tell me what you're thinking.

Talk to me, please. Hannah doesn't know what to say and every answer that she comes up with in her mind seems wrong or like it's going to make things worse. So she doesn't talk. I get tired of the silence and, rather than thinking she's getting overloaded, I think she's ignoring me.

So I keep knocking, I keep asking, I keep talking, I keep continuing.

Hannah feels even more panic in fear of saying or doing the wrong thing, to the point where she becomes paralyzed. I feel disrespected and alone that I either keep at it, saying things like: this is on you, since you won't talk. If you cared about this, you'd have the conversation right now, as opposed to ignoring me. Here we go again, not finishing the conversation cuz you can't keep your stuff together.

Let's meet your needs now, and ultimately she stonewalls because she doesn't know what to do in this scenario, and then she either can get it together, she takes a break, maybe I continue to go at it in the wrong way, or I then start Stone Walling and ignoring her because she's ignoring me, and then we are like propagating this cycle that prevents us from connection.

That's what happens. I mean you can think what you want about me and my wife, but this is what happens. As a pastor, I see it over and over and over again, not just in marriages, but in relationships. I've seen it with people on this team.

I've seen with people at every church that I've been a part of.

I see it on the road. I see it on Facebook. Got these people who decided they wanted to jump into the comment section and thought it was going to get them somewhere positive. Then they just keep going and going and going and eventually they just start ignoring the person.

It's like: aren't you going to have a conversation?

Yeah, it's not productive to get to that point. This is what happens for all of us. So that's what stonewalling really looks like, and you can probably see how this manifests itself in more than just a deep, close relationship. Why do people Stonewall?

Ultimately, it's because they feel overwhelmed.

Maybe they want to avoid conflict and ultimately, it's a defensive mechanism. This, this, is helpful for people who you just thought they were giving you the silent treatment, because they hate you, they don't like you, they're emotional and they can't get their stuff together. Most of the time when people Stonewall, it's because they are overwhelmed, which means that they care, not that they don't care. Now I want to be clear.

This doesn't make you right, but for the other people who are the ones who bear the burden of seeing someone get stonewalled, you should know it's not that they don't care.

If they're getting that emotional that they're stonewalling, it's because they care deeply. Sometimes a person tends to be conflict avoidant. You find that introverts tend to be ston wallers more than maybe you're extroverts. For me, I'm the extrovert in the relationship, so I just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.

And in my wife's opinion, I'm fairly articulate when I talk about different things and so she's just like, like I can't win an argument.

So she naturally will shut down. And she's right, because I keep talking and if I keep, if she keeps, I don't, if she keeps talking, it's not going to stop. And so one of the things she does to correct is she just avoids the conflict. And then we have this in our biology, this fight, ORF, flight mentality, where when we feel like someone's attacking us, we either fight or like flight, we disconnect and disengage.

This is what happens for all of us.

It's our default mode. This is biological. It's not right, but it is natural. The Bible has a prescription with how we can deal with this.

It's not easy, and it's not this thing that when you read the Bible, it automatically shifts.

This is a process of shaping, of growing, of adjusting, of becoming what God's called us to be. The Bible has a solution, but it is very difficult. Now there are some practical steps that I'm going to give you, that I'm going to close off with, ultimately, what I think is helpful, which is a scriptural mindset. John and Julie gotman give us a few antidotes to stonewalling.

I think they're scriptural, so I like giving them.

I think it'll be helpful. Here are a few antidotes to stonewalling. First, you got to learn to recognize the patterns in the signs. Recognize the patterns in the signs.

If you were here last week, you recognize, something that I said last week and I pretty much said every single week is you got to look inward.

First, when I say recognize the patterns and signs, some of us automatically heard that and said, yep, I got to recognize when they're doing something crazy. I got to recognize when they're getting flooded. I've got to recognize when their facial expression shifts, so that when they, so that I don't lead them to blow up because it's always my fault. No, this is not an opportunity to increase your contempt for another person by staring or glaring at what they're doing and trying to adjust.

That's important.

That part is important. But more important is for you to inwardly assess. So I'm talking to you who have contempt and I'm talking to you who typically Stonewall. I'm talking to you who can't finish a conversation because you always need to meet your need first.

Get it together.

I know it's not easy when I'm in the middle of a conversation and I look at my wife and I say: come on, sweetie, get it together, let's finish this conversation. That never goes well, but none of us are arguing right now, so I want to tell you the truth: get it together. You've got to look inward. You've got to understand why you're doing something the way that you're doing it.

You've got to understand what build builds you up in a negative way, what builds you up in a positive way.

It's important for you to become self-aware that when you're breathing deeply, that's not a good thing in an argument. You got to recognize, when you're staring all the way around, that something's happening within your body that is going to cause you to blow up and say something like I hate you, or you always do this, or this is why your parents stink, or this is why I didn't want to marry you in the first place, or this is why I keep talking about divorce, or this is why we shouldn't be friends. This is why you never have any friends. This is why blah- that's the stuff you don't mean.

But when you don't understand and recognize the patterns within you, it builds up and then it explodes outward.

You've got to recognize inwardly what's happening in you because ultimately, your response is not their fault, their. Your response is your responsibility. I'm not saying they're right. I'm not saying you shouldn't.

You shouldn't put yourself in a position to be protected if there's something crazy wrong going on in your relationship.

Don't listen to this sermon from the Bible and say: well, there are exceptions. Of course there are exceptions when it comes to things like safety and crazy scenarios. I get it. But in general, if you can recognize the patterns within yourself that cause you to get to that point and start reducing them before they become a problem, that'll be very helpful for you.

One thing my wife does really really well is she says this: it doesn't always work because I'm a jerk.

But what she says is, Matt, I'm getting flooded, I can feel it, and later I'm going to say something that I regret. Now, on a bad day, I don't respond well to that. I'm like you: always get flooded, but on a good day I'm like, okay, this is not going to be productive if we continue. And so her identifying what's happening within her helps us.

It's the same with me.

Sometimes I'm able to tell her- because I'm constantly looking to be emotionally aware- say, hey, I'm breathing deeply, sweetie. You can tell I'm not looking at you because I'm struggling to look straight at you while hearing you talk, I'm struggling to even comprehend what's happening right now, sweetie, and in that conversation I'm self-identifying, what's going on in my body. You got to recognize the patterns and signs. But secondly, it is helpful for you to recognize the patterns and signs that are common in other people, just just because you, I mean you need to work on yourself, they need to work on themselves.

But you can help, and the way you help is by recognizing: hey, they're breathing pretty deeply.

They said something right now. That's not like crazy offensive to me, but they probably shouldn't have said it and if we keep going. It's going to get worse. Maybe I need to invite them.

I need to invite both of us to take a break and say, hey, can we come back in 10 minutes?

Maybe, since I'm the one who's got the emotional cool right now and I see it building up in them- I can make an adjustment on their behalf again. I refer to this all the time, just like Jesus didn't sit up in heaven and say hey, they're hostile to me, they're angry, they're talking mess about me. They're getting frustrated at me because I didn't do something for them in their prayer life that they asked for, but I was never going to give them in the first place. They asked me for a, a super, super nice Ferrari car.

I'm not going to give them a Ferrari car.

I could have given them something else, but they didn't ask me for it. So I'm not going to give them that either and I'm going to help them live life in such a way that they understand who I am. But they keep asking me for these things I'm not going to give them. And then I get frustrated at God because he didn't answer my prayer and then, all of a sudden, God could sit up in heaven.

Frustrated at me because I keep asking for unreasonable things and I can't get it together.

But he came off of his lofty Throne, came down to heaven and helped me get it together by dying on the cross for my sins, so that I could have forgiveness for those sins and then be raised to walk in a new life where I can be Sanctified and holy right. That's what Jesus did for me. So when I look at my spouse, when I look at other people, I can recognize patterns. When I see a pattern, I can put in place a plan to help them with their pattern.

It's important.

The second thing we can do is practice active listening. Practice active listening. You see how I put a little theit- well, not the alliteration, the acronym there- I. I Practice Act.

If you want a pal, practice active listening.

If you want to Pal this, even if you're not arguing, this is really helpful. For those of you like me who go out and just talk the whole time, this would be really helpful for you. Practice active listening. Uhhuh, that's great.

I really appreciate that.

It's really nice when I'm standing in front of a room and they're practicing active listening, because they don't look like it's helpful, right? Cuz I'm not saying y'all are bad, y'all are fine, y'all are doing great. But practice active listening. Practicing active listening does two things way more, but two main things.

First, it's like looking at a rock when you have a cramp, or for a rock when you have a cramp.

It takes your mind off of the things that are frustrating you, because you're practicing not what you're going to say, not what you're going to do, not how frustrated you are. You saying: how can I comprehend what, what they're thinking? Let me listen. And then, in order to actively listen, I'm using nonverbals: okay, okay, I got you, I hear that and they're going to feel better, they're going to say things nicer and then in that conversation, you're actually going to start self- soothing and feeling better because you practice listening.

This is why the Bible says: be quick, hear slow to speak and slow to anger.

This is helpful for each of us. Practice active listening. Those of you in relationships who you're always thinking about what you're going to say next, to continue the argument and further shutting down the other person. This would help you a lot, even if you're the one that's stonewalling.

This will help you because you're sitting here about to blow up or implode when you could be shifting Focus to the other and saying: what are they really saying?

Cuz I'm mad. They, they love me, they don't hate me, like. This is not a good conversation and they might be saying the wrong thing, but let me listen for what they're saying. Practice active listening.

If you want to Pal, practice active listening.

The next one is: use eye statements. I've said this every week: if you don't start practicing using eye statements, I don't- I don't know what to say, because I've said it four times in a row- practice that not. You did this. You're terrible at this.

You always you, you, you, most of the time.

You're a terrible person, right, like, don't not you. I feel not even. I feel like you. No, I feel like this conversation, you know is- is filled with some, some frustrated attitudes.

I feel like maybe we should take a break.

I feel like, you're mad at me, don't mad at you. That might be the response, but I feel like you're mad at me. That means you're practicing active listening. It means you're processing through how you're actually feeling, rather than requiring them to understand how you feel when you never told them.

I feel not, you did, or you always the next one, and this will be helpful, because when you're stonewalling, that means most of the time you're flooded, and it's really difficult for you to control the next thing, and I can say: get it together all day, but I've seen in my own marriage, when we get flooded, it's hard to get it together, so you've got to have the goans, would say, a safe word to stop the conversation.

What I would simply say is this: you've got to determine what the break is going to look like. I would say predetermine in a lot of ways. What the break is going to look like. It says take break and not withdrawals.

Withdrawals are I'm going out of the house and you come back.

Whenever you come back 6 hours, 6 days later, that's Stone Welling. That's not helpful. That's a huge predictor of divorce, and all the other bad things in marriage. What you could do, though, is predetermine what your breaks look like when my wife and I start getting heated- one of us- usually me, and it doesn't work out as well when she's the one stonewalling and I'm being a jerk about it- but what'll happen is we get frustrated at each other.

One or both of us starts getting flooded, and one of us will say, hey, I think we need a break, and usually it's me.

I'll say: how long do you need a break? And when she's doing well, she's like 10 minutes, we can come back and talk about it. When it's real- real, like when it's real heated or we're flooded- she's like I don't know 3 hours, but that's reasonable too. She's telling me what she needs.

I know it doesn't take 3 hours because I know her well, but I know she just can't come up with a short time.

She do know that 5, 10 minutes is going to work. So in 20 minutes I'll call her back up or I like we'll, we'll chat and we'll resolve the conflict without as many emotions firing around. But you got to choose how to take a break and I clarify it every time CU someone texts me or talks to me about it every single week, when I'm talking about these things, I know I'm being vulnerable about my marriage. All I'm simply clarifying is that we're like every other marriage.

We have arguments, we have conversations that could get heated once in a while, but I think overall we have a very healthy marriage.

But we still struggle with these things and I think many of you do as well. Those are the antidotes: recognize the patterns, practice an active listening, use eye statements, take breaks and not withdrawals. But here's what all of those things require. They require you, as an autonomous human being, to take ownership and responsibility.

They require you in some sense, at some point, to get it together.

To get it together, and if you can't look Inward and start getting it together, you're going to struggle in all of your relationships. I'm not saying the other person doesn't need to help. I'm not saying that that's the best person that you could be living your life with. I'm not saying that those things around you that are frustrating you now are good.

What I'm saying is that we've got to listen to what the text says- and I'll read it again, starting in verse 14.

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people. In their deceitful, scheming pause there he says: this is Paul, Paul the Apostle, the guy that you would rather listen to than me up here. Paul the Apostle says: don't be like a child who's tossed to and fro by the wind and waves of weird teachings, or teachings that tell you that you're justified in your own personal opinion, that you're justifi? Ified to not make any adjustment for your spouse or the people around you, that you're Justified to seek your kingdom first rather than the Kingdom of Heaven.

That's what the mindset is in each of us that takes us into each of these activities.

We're critical, we're defensive, we're filled with contempt and we Stonewall because we are being tossed around by a mentality that doesn't help us. In fact it hinders us. The divorce rates are so high because of this wind of teaching. The reason that people are more today isolated than they ever have been is because of this wind of teaching.

And Paul says that when we are tossed around by the wind and waves of popular culture, by the wind and waves of even some of this pop psychology that is limited because it doesn't incorporate Scripture, when we are tossed around, he says, we're being like infants.

I don't want to talk mess to you. So I'm talking mess to me a lot of times. I'm acting like an, I'm listening to the wrong things without taking like like I'm an adult and taking every thought captive to The Obedience of Christ. One thing I tell my kid often is: I say: what do we do?

He said I be my body and make it my slave.

That's what Paul says. Paul says that I, I should have taught him something different, because I feel like that would be like awkward at school. If he ever does that, he's just like hitting himself in the back. Beat my body, beat my body, making I, I need to teach him something different.

But that's what Paul says.

He says I take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. That's something that comes with maturing in your faith. That's something that comes with pressing upward toward the calling of God in Christ Jesus. That's something that happens when I offer my whole body as a Living Sacrifice to God, which is my reasonable act of worship.

Maturity comes when I allow myself to be set apart and Sanctified for God's purposes.

But when I'm young, when I'm an infant, it's easy to be carried away by teachings that are not helpful to me. Paul tells us that when we're to around, he says the result of that is we don't act like we should, and the illustration or metaphor that he gives is that of the church body. He says the result of you following your own way is that the body is disjointed. The result of stonewalling, which comes from this mentality that says I should seek my own needs above the person that I'm married to, my own needs above people around me.

That mentality that comes from the world, not from God's word, that separates each of us.

It disconnects me and my spouse. It disconnects you from other people. It's why churches can't get their stuff together. It's because we are all seeking our own way and we forgot what's meant by working out our salvation with fear and trembling and putting our faith together so that we can get our minds right and get it together with other people around us.

We've got to shift our mentality and Paul says the solution to that is by becoming more and more mature.

He says this in verse 15. Instead, This is what you should, should do instead, anytime you see, instead in Scripture he's saying: the thing before was bad, the thing next is good. Instead speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him, who is the head that is Christ. From him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love.

As each part does its work.

The only way your marriage and your relationships are going to work is if you do your part, and that's what you have to focus on- and you've got to trust that. The person you married- and I know, I know it's hard- I've already said that there are exceptions to the general things that I'm saying up here, like safety and crazy scenarios, but there are some people in this room who you're looking at- your spouse, or you're looking at the people in your family who aren't coming to church with you right now and you're, like man, I made the wrong decision to be with that person and so that's taking you, if you listen to what the world says. It's taking you to this place where you're willing to disconnect completely and separate yourself from those people that you have you've put within the closest Circles of your life. If you're married, you're saying I'm going to get divorced.

If you're with your family, you're saying I'm going to.

Since I'm offended, I'm just going to go, do my own thing. But what the Bible would say is: you work on yourself and, in Christ, right that. This is the crucial part when we have a relationship with God. He works on me and he works on you.

He works on my spouse and he works on me in that relationship, and as he does, that I grow and I'm getting it together and as I get it together, God's able to take them getting it together and me getting it together and work it together for his good, so that we can get at his mission together as the eklesia, the called out ones, the Sanctified ones, the church, the V, through which God decided in His Infinite Wisdom- though it seems crazy to me- to be the blessing to the world- that the church, the collective body of people who are all trying to get their stuff together.

He said I'm going to bind them together. He says I'm going to put them together like the UNH stones at the altar in the Old Testament. I'm going to try to get all these people with different preferences, different concerns, different thought processes, different sin struggles, all these different people, and as they subordinate their preferences to my greater purpose, I'm going to take those people, put them together into the church and I'm going to accomplish my mission in the world as, as we as individuals, seek Christ Jesus first, right, seek Him First kingdom of God and his righteousness and all other things will be added. As we seek him first, then he blinds us together with the people, maybe even in this room, and then then, then, when we come together as a body, body, each ligament, showing the support it's supposed to show, like it says in Scripture right here, with Christ at the head, as it says in Scripture right here, then we look like something special and unified in the community, full of Facebook groups and people who are acting, I mean sometimes.

I just want to quote scpt.

He says then will no longer be infants. And next in the text he actually says so I tell you this. Oh no, he says yes. So I tell you this: insist on it with the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.

I'm not saying you're better than anybody.

In fact, like Christ, helps us recognize that we all got to be humble. But there is a mentality that comes with trusting in Jesus and that mentality can make a difference in this community. That's why we came out here. That's why we started this church is so that the collective group of people who were all individually getting it together would help this community as a whole get it together in the areas where they need peace restored, where they need Redemption, where they need Christ.

And there's some people in here, in your closest relationships, all the way to how you participate in church or at your workplace.

You're struggling, . You're struggling to connect with other people or remain in relationship with them because, in the end, if you don't have Christ, some of these practical an adults are just Limited in their help. But with Christ, all things are possible and you can make a significant shift of your culture. Like I said at the beginning, and I told you to tell your neighbor, it's time to shift it.

It's time to shift your culture.

Christ Is How We Do It.