©1998 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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2/22/98
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Tools for Freedom
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So what do we do
with the difficult people in our lives?
Are there actions
or approaches we can take
in those difficult relationships
that can make things better?
Teaching a series like this
has frustrations to it
that not all series have.
Chief among those frustrations
is having to resist the urge
to continually reteach the principles
we have already covered,
knowing that without those principles in place
what comes after will be of no value.
For example,
today we are going to look
at some of the practical tools our Lord offers us
for bringing greater health
to our troubled relationships.
But, unless the attitude we talked about three weeks ago
is a living reality in our lives,
teaching these tools will be a waste of time.
If you were with us 3 weeks ago
you will remember that crucial starting place
from which all healing must begin.
There can be no movement toward health in a troubled relationship
until we are willing to exchange
our agenda for the one our Lord calls us to accept.
As long as we are determined to win,
to get what we want,
or to prove they are wrong,
or to make them suffer,
or to prove we are right,
or to protect our image,
in other words,
as long as we are determined
to defeat them in some way,
there will be no healing in the relationship.
All healing begins
at the point where we can say to our God
and to ourselves
"Lord, I will make the healing of this relationship
more important than enforcing my rights,
or proving I’m right,
more important than my possessions or my ideas,
more important than winning."
And with every one of us
there will be at least one relationship in our lives
where only God can bring us to that point,
some relationship where we know
we were right,
and they were wrong,
some relationship in which
we were the victim
and they were the aggressor,
the perpetrator,
the vicious, sinful enemy.
Scripture has a special term
for those kinds of feelings within us.
The author of the book of Hebrews calls it a root of bitterness...
Heb. 12:15 See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled;
It’s interesting imagery, isn’t it?
He creates a mental picture for us
of a hideous weed
with roots that run deep into our personalities,
then, once those roots are firmly established,
all of the sudden it springs into the open,
affecting our actions,
our speech,
our relationships with a wide spectrum of people,
and in the process defiles everyone who comes in contact with it.
This, of course, is the opposite
of what our Lord seeks to bring
to the troubled relationships in our lives,
but it is typical of where we end up
without His intervention.
And, of course, there is always a reason,
there is always a justification,
there is always a clear explanation we can offer for our actions.
Our Lord is certainly not telling us
we should just try to pretend
we weren’t injured
or falsely accused
or deeply wounded by the other person’s actions.
His instructions to us are rooted in the assumption
that we have been injured,
we have been wounded,
we have been falsely accused or attacked.
And then, given that assumption,
He guides us through the process
that will free us
from the power that those who have wronged us are exerting in our lives.
Now, there are 3 specific tools
given to us in Scripture
for dealing with the difficult people in our lives,
3 tools that have the ability
to disarm the power
our enemies are exerting over us.
And, before we look at those 3 tools,
I want to try to make a distinction
between control and power.
You see, many people throughout our lives
will exert CONTROL over us -
they will act toward us
in a way that controls what happens to us,
or what influences or situations come into our lives.
But even though many people
will at certain times exert control over us,
yet WE are the only ones
who can really allow them
to have POWER in our lives.
Let me give an example
to help explain what I’m trying to say.
A number of years ago,
in fact, before our church even existed,
I worked for a man
who exerted tremendous control in my life.
We were living in Texas at the time,
our daughter, Joni, was only 4 years old.
(The man was a very vocal, professing Christian, by the way.)
I was installing modular office furniture,
panel systems that created dozens,
or even hundreds of private work stations in high-rise office buildings.
The first thing he did was to put me on salary so that he didn’t have to be concerned
about how many hours I worked each week.
We always had to be at the warehouse at 8:00 a.m.,
but then he began to schedule me
for jobs that would run well into the evening,
and on Saturdays,
and Sundays.
I remember one huge job we were on
where I did some mental math
and suddenly realized that,
because of the number of hours
I had already worked that month,
the day laborers we had hired
to unload the truck at the dock,
were making far more per hour
than I was.
I’ve shared with you in the past
an incident during that year
when I came dragging home late one evening,
and my little girl met me at the door,
and, as soon as I came in,
she grabbed my finger
in her little 4 year old hand,
and pulled me into her room,
then ran behind me and slammed the door.
Somehow she wanted to capture her daddy,
and keep him from going away
again,
and again,
and again.
Now, that man had tremendous control over my life
and my time during the year I worked for him.
That was a problem,
and one that I actively sought to correct
through looking for a better employment situation.
But there was a second,
and even more destructive problem.
My boss had control over my life,
but he also had POWER in my life,
a power I had chosen to give him
through allowing a tremendous anger
and bitterness to take root within me towards him.
Through that bitterness
I allowed him to completely dominate my life at certain times during that year.
Even when I wasn’t at work
he was still with me,
exerting tremendous power over me
as I would get into huge mental battles with him,
arguing with him,
fighting against him,
attacking his brand of Christianity,
carefully working out
over and over again
what I’d really like to say to him.
And every time I plunged into
another mental battle with him
I chose to give him more power in my life,
power he had no right to,
power he possesed
only because I was giving it to him.
I don’t know who’s at the top
of your "difficult people list" right now.
But I do want to ask you a question:
how much power
did you choose to give them in your life this past week?
How often did you allow them to consume your thinking?
How often did you allow them
to dominate your thought life?
I want you to know
that the only reason they had that power over you
is because you chose to give it to them.
The only reason they had the power
to dominate and control your thinking
is because you chose to give them that power.
Sometimes we can do nothing
about the control people have in our lives,
but we can always decide how much power we choose to let them have.
So, how do we break that power?
That’s where these 3 tools come in.
These are not in any specific order,
but, as you’ll see,
they actually work together as a single unit.
#1. And the first one we’ll put on the list is this:
Choose to forgive.
Eph. 4:32 Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.
Col. 3:13 bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.
Matt. 18:21 ¶ Then Peter came and said to Him, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?"
Matt. 18:22 Jesus *said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.
So how in the world do we do that?
Well, we begin with a choice.
We begin by choosing to forgive
the wrong they have done against us.
There are some things that help in this process.
1. It helps me to remind myself that
my refusing to forgive
is really choosing to give them continued power in my life.
2. It also helps when I remind myself
that there is nothing anyone has ever done to me
that my God cannot turn to good in my life
if I place it into His hands.
Ex. It was toward the end of that year in Texas,
working for that boss I told you about,
when I received a letter
from a small group of people
meeting for a Bible study
at John Davis’ home
in Soldotna, Alaska,
asking if I would consider returning to do the teaching for the group,
a group that we now call Peninsula Bible Fellowship.
I loved the kind of work I was doing
at that company in Texas,
and, if it hadn’t been for that boss,
I might have never returned.
Joseph said it really well
as he stood before his brothers
who had once sold him into slavery:
Gen. 50:20 "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.
#2. The second tool was given to us both by Christ Himself,
and by Paul.
Actively choose to do good to the one who is causing you problems.
Christ gave two specific instructions:
Luke 6:27 ¶ "But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
Luke 6:28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
Do good to them,
and pray for them.
And Paul picks up the same theme
and amplifies on it in Romans 12:18-21:
Rom. 12:18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.
Rom. 12:19 Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay," says the Lord.
Rom. 12:20 "But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head."
Rom. 12:21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
And it is essential that we stay with these passages long enough
to pry them out of the "platitude" mentality.
What we have being prescribed for us here
is among the most powerful healing tools we could ever have
for bringing mental and emotional freedom in our troubled relationships.
This is where
we cease to give others power in our lives.
I see two specific instructions being given to us by the Lord and by Paul:
a. We are to pray for the one who has done evil to us.
b. We are to actively seek some way to give to them,
to do good to them.
You see, God has designed the human mind in such a way
that it can only focus on one thing at a time.
Right now some of you are focused on what you’re going to have for dinner,
or that cute girl across the isle and two rows up,
or what’s going to happen
when your mate sees that charge on the VISA bill this month,
which means you’re NOT focused on what I’m saying.
Just as we cannot LOOK two directions at once,
so we cannot THINK two directions at once.
When our Lord calls us to pray for our enemies and do good to them,
He is revealing to us how forgiveness becomes a living reality in our lives.
He is saying,
"I know you have been using your mental and emotional energies
to plot against that person,
figuring out what you would say to them if you had the chance,
how you will defeat them,
how you’ll win,
how you reveal to the world
what scum they are.
But all you’re doing is creating
greater and greater bondage in your life, giving them more and more power over you.
I want you now to take that same energy
and turn it towards doing good
in that person’s life.
Pray for them... not AGAINST them, FOR them.
Pray they will know the depth of God’s love, and forgiveness, and kindness.
Pray they will know true freedom of spirit in Christ.
And find some way
of showing them kindness.
If they are hungry, feed them,
if they are thirsty, by them a Coke.
Choose to let go of your vengeance
and discover true freedom within yourself."
3. The final tool is given to us in Matt. 18:15:
Matt. 18:15 ¶ "If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.
The key here, though, is attitude.
There is only one correct motivation for going - to restore the relationship.
If we go to attack it will be destructive.
If we go to justify ourselves,
it will be destructive.
If we go to force them to admit they are wrong, it will be destructive.
And if we go to anyone else other than the one who has offended us
it will be highly destructive.
In my own experience,
I have never been ready to go to one who has offended me
until I have first reached the point
where I am able to actively pray
for them
and for healing in my relationship with them.
1. Forgive.
2. Focus on figuring out how you can do good to them.
3. Go and talk with them about the thing that troubles you.
Three powerful tools
for finding freedom
in the difficult relationships in our lives.