Well good morning everybody! It’s good to see you. Welcome to ‘40 Days of Community’!

Now, during ‘40 Days of Community,’ we are doing two things: Deepening our relationships within our church and extending our relationships around our church;

And so, during ‘40 Days,’ We’re teaching six messages on how to deepen our relationships.

We’re reading through the book ‘Better Together,’ a chapter a day for 40 days. Today we’re up to day 15 <ppt> – and if you’ve missed previous days, don’t worry or feel guilty about it, just pick up the story at day 15.

You can buy a book at the bookshop in the Welcome Centre, And in small groups we’re studying and discussing those six videos about how to deepen our relationships.

 

Today’s teaching that paves the way for your chapters during the week and your small group discussion is the simple statement “We’re chosen to fellowship together”

God chose each of us to be in genuine relationships with other people – both inside and outside the church

In fact he wired us up for relationships. It’s the way God has made us! We’re made to go through life together. We’re formed for a family. The Bible says this, the top verse on your outline,

Rom 12:5 In Christ we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others. <ppt>

Will you underline that word ‘belongs’?

That word implies a deep connectedness, a connectedness without which something is lost or missing.

• Your left leg belongs to you! <ppt: slow entry leg graphic> you wouldn’t be able to function anywhere near as well as you do if it was missing (as a result of some illness or trauma.)

In the same way we belong to each other in the church.

<ppt: family group abstract>

The church wouldn’t be able to function anywhere near as well as it does without your input, your prayers, your sacrificial giving, without your love without YOU.

Here’s the snag: It’s easy to get disconnected in relationships.

It’s very easy to get disconnected from your children, from your parents, from your brothers and sisters, your friends, your family, your husband and wife if you’re married. It’s easy to get disconnected from your church, from your small group.

And so, today we’re going to look at some causes for that. Why do relationships fall apart? Why do relationships go bad? What destroys relationships and how do you rebuild? Or how do you build new ones? Or how do you prevent relationships from going bad?

I want to look at relationship busters (the things that weaken or even destroy relationships) and relationship builders (those things that make relationships thrive)

 

 

And I’m excited about what I’m going to share because it has applications in so many areas of your life.

You can apply it with your friends.

You can apply it with your marriage if you’re married.

You can apply it in your work and in your career in relating to others.

You can apply it in your small group.

And what I’m going to share with you today, will save you thousands of pounds in counselling. So just make out the check to Dr. White, okay? Actually, just give it to the poor, that’d be better if you did that.

 

Most relational problems boil down to one of a small collection of negative attitudes.

These are the relationship busters.

and most relationship thrive when some relationship builders are in place

Selfishness <ppt>

Number one fellowship buster: Selfishness. SELFISHNESS destroys relationships.

This is the number one enemy.

• It is the number one cause of conflict, the number one cause of arguments, the number one cause of divorce. It is the number one cause of war.

<ppt> James 4 verses 1 and 2 say this, “What causes fights and quarrels, don’t they come from your desires that battle within you. You want something but you don’t get it.”

Now it’s very easy for selfishness to creep into a relationship. You know when you start a relationship, you work real hard at being selfless or being unselfish, like in dating and “Oh here, please, you go first.” You know? And you are very unselfish at the start of a relationship, but then as time goes on, selfishness begins to creep in. Would you agree we put more energy into building than into maintaining relationships? Yeah, we do.

The five stages of a married cold. [Excerpted from “The Seven Stages of a Married Cold”, from Staying Close by Dennis & Barbara Rainey, Used With Permission, Word Publishing, 1989]

• The first year: “Baby darling, I’m worried about that sniffle. So I’ve called the paramedics to rush you to the DGH Hospital for a checkup and a week of rest. And I know you don’t like hospital food, so I’m having gourmet meals brought in for you.” That’s the first year.
• Second year of a marriage: “Sweetheart, I don’t like the sound of that cough. I’ve arranged for Dr. Knotts to make a house call. Let me tuck you in bed.”
• Third year of a marriage: “You look like you’ve got a fever. Why don’t you drive yourself over to Boots get some medicine, I’ll look after the children.” You know, very magnanimous.
• Fourth year: “Look, be sensible. After you’ve fed and bathed the kids, washed the dishes, you really ought to go to bed.”
• Fifth year: “For goodness sake, do you have to cough so loud? I can’t hear the TV. Would you mind going in the other room while this show is on? You sound like a barking dog.”

One man said, “You know, in the first year of marriage, my wife used to bring me my slippers and the dog came barking. Now my dog brings me slippers…”

You know, we just stop making the effort. It’s easy to slide into selfishness. I’ve always said if there was more courting in marriage, there would be fewer marriages in court.

The problem is, it is part of our fallen human nature to be selfish.

• To think about me, my needs, my interests, my hurts. How do I look? How do I feel? Who’s hurt me? And you don’t think about me, you think about yourself more than anybody else. You think about yourself all the time. It is natural to be selfish.

Now it’s interesting that a lot of people say, “You know, if there is a God, why is there evil in the world?”

• I don’t have a problem with that one. It’s because we’re all selfish and when I want what I want and you want what you want, it causes conflict, wars and a lot of other stuff. I want to do what I want to do, and that hurts people. I don’t have a problem with why there is evil in the world.
• The real issue is, the bigger issue is: Why is there good in the world? There is only one reason there is good in the world: Because of God. Without God, there would be no good because by nature, I am not altruistic. By nature, I think of me first, not you, and so do all of us.

Selflessness <ppt>

Now if selfishness destroys relationships, then SELFLESSNESS builds them. Selflessness builds relationships, being unselfish.

Now what does selflessness look like?

• It means a little bit less of me, and a little bit more of you.
• It means I think a little bit less of myself, and I just think a little bit more of you.

Paul in Philippians

Phil 2:4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

That’s selflessness. Selflessness brings out the best in others. You know, it builds relationships. In fact, if you start acting selfless in a relationship, it forces the other person to change because you’re not the same person anymore, and they have to relate to you in a different way.

In the 2011 blockbuster thriller Contagion, a virus infects and kills 26 million people around the world.

• But even those who evade the virus are infected with something else: crippling fear.
• To contain the outbreak, the military imposes a quarantine. People stay indoors, refusing to interact with anyone outside their families. Touching anyone or anything becomes a risk, because the virus lingers everywhere.
• Ants however do things differently. When a deadly fungus infects an ant colony, the healthy insects do not necessarily ostracise their sick nest mates. Instead, they welcome the contagious with open arms—or, rather, open mouths—often licking their neighbours to remove the fungal spores before the pathogens sprout and grow.
• Apparently, such grooming dilutes the infection, spreading it thinly across the colony. Instead of leaving their infected peers to deal with the infection on their own and die, healthy ants share the burden, deliberately infecting everyone in the colony with a tiny dose of fungus that each individual’s immune system can clear on its own. Such “social immunization” also primes the immune systems of healthy ants to battle the infection.
• ‘Bear one another’s burdens’

So next time you see a swarm of ants, they’re probably licking each other’s bugs away!

And so selflessness not only transforms a relationship, it also transforms the person who is selfless. I’ve actually seen it many, many, many, many, many times. I’ve seen some of the most unlovable, unlikable people, you know irascible cranky people that nobody wants to be around.

And when Christians start being selfless towards them, God just seems to melt away barriers!

Now God’s favorite place to teach you selflessness is in:

First: In your home – especially in your family, and second: Your small group. Why?

• Because those are the people who get closest to you, up close on a regular basis. It’s very easy to be selfless in a crowd because nobody is demanding anything. It’s when you’re in close proximity with other people that you have the give and take of learning to get along with people who are different from you, different personalities and backgrounds. That’s where you have to learn to be selfless.

We can practice selflessness in 40DOC in our small groups

• by turning up. You know, I have to admit I don’t always want to go to small group. I’ve been in a very wide collection of groups for years, but I need it and other people need it. Going there for the sake of others is a selfless act
• Number Two: By accepting new people in your group. That’s another way you can do it. By not being a clique. You know, “Us four, no more.” And you’re not resentful when somebody says, “Well, let’s bring somebody else in.” That is an act of selflessness.
• Another way is by really listening to people in your group. Do you know that listening is one of the greatest gifts you can give others? Because you’re giving them your time, and that is your life. So when you give somebody your attention and you give them your ear, you are actually giving them a part of your life. And that is selfless.
• By offering people your help and helping your abilities in the group, that is selflessness. By being a host, those of you who are hosts, you are opening up your home, you are being selfless. You know by not hiding the best snacks, that’s being selfless. You don’t hold back the good stuff.

Now look at this next verse, Galatians 6, 7 and 8 says this, “The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others and ignoring God, harvests a crop of weeds. All he’ll have to show for it in his life is weeds. But the one who plants in response to God, letting God’s spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life and eternal life.”

 

Look at Phil 1:7

7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me.

And think of what Paul could have been

trained thinker

university education

highly connected

highly respected

probably not short of a bob or two

but he gave all that up for the sake of the gospel

 

Phil 1:21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

That’s selflessness for you!

 

 

I’ve spent a good bit of our time on that because I believe it’s the number one cause of breakdown and the nuimber one method of recovery = but there are many more and here are some of them.

Pride busts relationships <ppt>

 

Prov 13:10 |Pride only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who take advice.

Now pride shows up in a lot of different ways: It shows up first in criticism.

• If you are critical of other people, if you tend to be judgemental of other people, you tend to look down at other people, you tend to be a picky, picky perfectionist. Very often the reason people are critical is because there is pride lurking in the shadows.
• If you tend to be competitive and you’re always comparing, “Oh look at her dress, compared to my dress.” Or, “Look at his car compared to my car.” there may be pride lurking in the shadows.
• Or you’re always comparing salaries or you’re comparing husbands or you’re comparing children or you’re comparing titles or jobs or anything… you know what? there may be pride lurking in the shadows. That comparing spirit, of always looking at everybody else and comparing and judging, that is a pride problem.
• If you have a stubbornness, if you find it difficult to say, “I’m sorry.” If you find it difficult, you choke on your apologizes, you cannot ever admit it when you’re wrong. there may be pride lurking in the shadows.

And I use those four because I know I can slip into all of them!

The problem with pride is it’s self-deceiving. Everybody else can see it but we can’t. When I’m full of pride, I can’t always see it in my life. Everybody else can see it but I can’t.

So the Bible says this in Proverbs 16:18, “Pride will destroy a person. A proud attitude leads to ruin.” And I love this verse and the message paraphrased: First pride then the crash, the bigger the ego, the harder the fall. You had a hard fall? Well that just shows how big your ego was.

 

So what’s the antidote? Pride destroys relationships. HUMILITY builds them. That’s the antidote to pride: Humility. Humility builds relationships. Listen to these five things that build relationships in

1 Pet 3:8

8 Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble.

(NIV)

This is really a pretty good model for small groups. If you take a look at these five things, it’s what we all want to be doing in our families and our groups and our relationships. We want to live in harmony and be sympathetic, love each other. We want to have compassion and be humble.

 

I want you to notice that first one particularly, “Live in harmony.” That’s what God wants in relationships. He doesn’t want this unison where we’re all the same. He wants the harmony of us all being different. Why be in a relationship if we weren’t different from the other people?

Humility is a strange quality because as soon as you think you’ve got it, you’ve lost it!

How are you and I going to grow in humility? Because that’s a tall order. How does that happen in our lives? It happens by letting Jesus Christ begin to control our thoughts and hearts and attitudes and reactions. He has got to be a part of this. The Bible says over in Ephesians 4:23 and 24, this verse on your screen, “Let the spirit change your way of thinking, and make you into a new person.” How do I become a new person? How do I start to think in a different way?

insecurity busts relationships

Now on the back of your outline, there is a third struggle we all face, and that is the struggle of insecurity. INSECURITY destroys relationships.

Prov 29:25 Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is kept safe.

When I’m insecure, all I’ve got to think about is your opinion and what you think of me and that can be totally debilitating

Well when I’m afraid, it tends to cause us to try to control each other, and that destroys relationships. It’s always easier to recognize that better in others than in ourselves.

You know, it’s an amazing dilemma that as human beings we have. We long to be close, but we also fear being close. We want it, but we don’t want it. We long to have intimacy with others, but we are also scared to death of having intimacy with others. Would you write this down: Insecurity prevents intimacy. Insecurity prevents intimacy. You can’t get close to somebody if there is fear in the relationship, which is why living together doesn’t work in the long run because you never know when somebody is going to walk out. There’s no lifetime commitment, so I’m going to hold back because what if it doesn’t work? It’s only a situation where I’m saying, “I’m committed regardless of whether we get along or not. We’re going to make this thing work.” Then the fear vanishes, and then the intimacy, real intimacy, rises.

Now what do we fear in relationships? Well, we fear a couple of things.

• First, we fear exposure. We fear that someone is going to find out what we’re really like, and we fear that. So we hide ourselves, and we don’t want people to know what we’re really like. And this is man’s oldest fear, all the way back with Adam, the first man, in Genesis 3 verse 10, he says, “I was afraid because I was naked and so I hid.” “I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.” When we’re afraid, we hid ourselves. We cover up. We wear masks. We pretend to be people that we’re not.

 

But there is a fear even deeper than that, and it is the fear of rejection. And this may be the greatest fear in human beings: The fear of being rejected. We’ve all been rejected at some point, and we know how much that hurts. And so, we fear it and we close ourselves off and say, “I’ll never let anybody hurt me again,” and we build up walls.

 

But as your pastor, I would beg you, please, please, don’t let that harden your heart. Don’t build up a wall, a crust, put yourself in an egg shell. That’s a self-imposed prison that you don’t want to be in. And when you won’t let anybody get close to you because “I’ll never let anybody hurt me again,” you’re making a terrible mistake. You’re not living. You’re just existing, and it is my job as your pastor to help you and to encourage you and to say, “Take the risk. Have the courage to risk love again. Have the courage.” Because if you will do and you will open up your life and you will lower the barriers and you will let somebody have the potential to hurt you, you will come alive again in a way you have never ever experienced. Ask God for the courage to take that risk again, to be open, to be vulnerable.

 

Now let me talk to the guys for a minute because men, we’re the worst about this. As guys, we hold our cards close to us, and we don’t let our feelings be known. We don’t let people know what we’re really thinking or feeling. And I want to dare you to do a very courageous thing: To be openly honest about what you’re feeling. Now you don’t have to do it with everybody, but you need to do it with one person. You get in a group, and share it with a group. Or if that’s too hard, get one person. As Tom talked about, I firmly believe in having a spiritual partner in life. One person that you can level with, you can encourage, you can grow, you can support, you can share, and somebody that you tell what you’re really like to. And they tell back, and that’s a spiritual partner.

 

You know, I couldn’t count the number of times out on the patio after a service, somebody has come up to me in the last 25 years and said, “You know, Pastor Rick? I’ve never told this to anybody else what I’m about to tell you.” And when I hear that, there is something that wells up inside of me, a sense of hope and enthusiasm and joy because I know that person is about to have a breakthrough. They are about to experience freedom for the first time in their life. They are about to experience a liberation that is unlike anything else because for their entire life, they have carried this in their life and they’ve never told anybody. And they are about to open the door, and the boogieman is going to come out and it’s not as big as they thought he was. And they are about to experience real, legitimate freedom and new hope, and new joy and new power. And the love and the grace and the power of God can flood into their life.

 

You don’t have to share it with everybody, but you need to tell somebody. You were never meant to go through life with secrets. In fact, you are as only sick as your secrets. You are only as sick as your secrets, and if you’re living in fear, you’re not really living. You want to open it up and let it go, just maybe to one other person. In the movie White Squall, there is a sailor who has been cheating all his way through everything to get on the boat and everything that he wanted to do, and his buddies finally confront him about his cheating. And then admits it’s because he can’t read, that’s the dark secret in his life. He can’t read. And these guys, instead of responding with ridicule, like real genuine friends say, “Well what’s the big deal? We’ll help you out. We’re going to work on this together.” And that’s what love, and that’s what relationships are all about. Watch this:

Love builds relationships

 

Phil 1:9-11

9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,

10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ,

11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ– to the glory and praise of God.

(NIV)

I know a man who was going out with a girl.

He’d had a few girlfriends in the past but all of them had come to nothing. This guy really wanted to please the Lord in his relationships and prayed about this current woman he was beinging to fall in love with. How could he disentangle his emotions from his will and discover God’s guidance without that being clouded by his own feelings

Was this of God or not? £64000 question!

He prayed and prayed – and to his surprise and delight a number of things that he was seeking the Lord about took place. But it still came down to this – Lord, I’m not sure that I’ve really heard from you about it – what does your word say to me.

He was just about to reject the whole idea of a long term relationship with her and he gave God one last chance.

That very evening he was reading his regular reading programme, not expecting very much, if he was honest and God brought him to this verse:

9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,

10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ,

11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ– to the glory and praise of God.

Suddenly the pennies dropped! Here was the Lord putting the final piece in the jigsaw of guidance he was desperately seeking.

From then on he told her he loved her, and a year later they were engaged

And I should know because that was me!

 

Love, knowledgeable love, insightful love builds relationships

 

resentment busts relationships

Now the fourth enemy of community is resentment, and this one is the other big one. These four things destroy relationships. RESENTMENT destroys relationships.

Phil 1:13

13 As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ.

(NIV)

Just think of what Paul could have been! He was

• well educated
• well connectedness

He had every right to be resentful!

But this letter overflows with joy and gratitude!

Now everybody blows it. We all make mistakes. We all, what the Bible calls, sin. I sin. You sin. The Pope sins. Everybody does. We are all sinners, that means “I’m not perfect. I don’t measure up to God’s standard. I don’t even measure up to my own standards. I disappoint myself a lot of the times.”

 

So because we’re all imperfect, you’re going to hurt other people and other people are going to hurt you in life, intentionally and unintentionally. So you’re going to be hurt. You’re going to be hurt in life, that’s a fact.

 

What’s more important is, what do you do with that hurt? What you do with it is more important than the hurt. Are you going to allow it to make you better? Or are you going to allow it to make you bitter, resentful, and carry a grudge?

 

Now the Bible tells us and history and personal experience tells us that opposites attract, opposites attract and then when they get married, opposites attack. What fascinates you now irritates you. This happens all the time. You see, when you are single and you look out there and you see somebody who is not like you, that is fascinating. You know, like a person who is kind of quiet says, “Look at that person, how boisterous! How loud! How full of life and vivacious they are,” and you find it attractive because it’s not like you.

 

Forgiveness builds relationships

Col 3:13

13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

(NIV)

 

 

pray

So pray this prayer, in your heart, “Dear Jesus, You’ve seen every relationship I’ve ever had, the good, the bad and the ugly. And you know how selfishness, and pride, and insecurity and resentment messes them up. I admit that I need your help, Jesus, in my life and in my relationships. So as much as I understand, I ask you Jesus to come into my life and live through me, and put your love through me. I want that fresh start that you offer. In your name I pray, Amen.”