Wednesday Night Service | Pastor Josh Needham and Audrie Needham

Ephesians 4:2-3 AMP

“with all humility [forsaking self-righteousness], and gentleness [maintaining self-control], with patience, bearing with one another in [unselfish] love. Make every effort to keep the oneness of the Spirit in the bond of peace [each individual working together to make the whole successful].”

Strong Relationships are built on love, grow with patience, deepen through forgiveness, and are sustained by humility.

We’ll be sharing from our own experience today how these principles have played out, the perspective of a married couple (18 years) raising 3 daughters. Of course these principles don’t only apply to that situation, whether or not you are married, or raising kids, or are in another season or situation. These principles will help you develop strong relationships.

Also, we can be a little weird.

(Tell story of weird friends card)

If we get a little weird up here tonight just give us a signal and we’ll try to tone that down a little bit.

1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,a but have not love, I gain nothing.

4Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;b 6it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8Love never ends.

Love is the foundation that all strong relationships are built on. So any wisdom we share tonight must ultimately find at its core, Love. Love is revealed to us in Jesus and experienced most in partnership with the Holy Spirit.

Navigating our differences.

We all have differences and navigating those can be difficult especially when we assume our way is the only right way to see things. Pride can make us blind to other perspectives rather than see them as valuable and unique. Patience is willing to collaborate and work together and rely on the strengths of others. When we are patient with each other, we allow room for those strengths to develop and add value to the relationship.

Male/Female

Thinkers vs. Feelers

Different Gifts of the Spirit

Personality types

Communication styles

Parenting styles and roles

Love Languages

Our differences are an opportunity for God to bring beautiful synergy into our relationship. (Rowing a boat)

Walking out our differences in spiritual gifts and leaning on each other rather than competing with each other.

Hailstorm story (how we respond to emergency situations)

Leaning on one another’s strengths when parenting. (Mom voice vs. Dad voice)

Deep healthy relationships take time to develop, they grow slowly over time, they aren’t microwaveable.

Our culture wants everything to happen right away, instant gratification.

Marriage, parenting, these are life-long commitments to put each other’s needs before our own and that takes time to learn.

Expectations vs reality. Dealing with disappointment.

(Branson hotel room story)

When you encounter disappointment, the temptation is to just accept it, give it to God and move on. And in some cases that’s the only way to deal with it if it’s completely out of your control. But when our spouse or kids disappoint us, if we don’t actually talk to them about those feelings and just carry them along unresolved in our hearts, that can harden our hearts over time and we start expecting them to disappoint us.

When we expect our spouse to anticipate and meet needs or expectations that go unspoken, we set ourselves up for disappointment and set them up to be a cause of frustration and sadness.

Audrie is aware of what she wants, but since she processes things internally, she will withhold that information and hope/expect me to reach the same conclusion without her speaking to me.

In partnership with the Holy Spirit we can gain insight and wisdom to help meet these unspoken needs, but when we expect our spouse to meet needs that only God can, we’re being unfair to them and actually committing idolatry.

So it’s important to create safe environments where we can deal with disappointment in conversation with one another. We have an opportunity to deepen the relationship through forgiveness.

We must remain tender-hearted towards each other.

-(Remember how much we’ve been forgiven and be quick to forgive)

– We have to be VERY careful when someone opens their heart to us, if we don’t handle it well it might be a long time before they try again.

– Recognize our tendency to judge ourselves according to our intentions, but others by their actions.

– We must guard our hearts against becoming hard

– Proverbs 4:23 (NLT) Guard your heart above all else,

for it determines the course of your life.

Unaddressed grievances, even small ones, if they aren’t properly dealt with can begin to stack up and create barriers to intimacy and erode trust and confidence over time.

The picture that the Holy Spirit showed Audrie at XO conference.

They could tell something was wrong Friday night. What did they do? They gave us homework lol. They said we needed a date night.

The kids recognizing the tension between us. They asked if we were okay. We said we weren’t but we would be. Even though there was tension both us and kids knew we’d work it out. Ellie actually assigned us some homework (that she learned from us) to list off the things we were thankful for about each other. Why did we need our kids to teach us in that moment. Something we’ve taught them many times? It’s the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

Pride. Self-centeredness. Ego.

The temptation to protect yourself and your feelings is strong, but refusing to humble yourself and admit when you are wrong actually hurts intimacy and causes the relationship to stay surface-level and shallow.

It’s on the other side of repentance and forgiveness that intimacy and trust is deepened.

This is a reflection of our relationship with Jesus, when we withhold things from Jesus, we place limits on Him and the intimacy and freedom we can experience with Him.

“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” – 1 Peter 5:5

3 levels of listening – Listening to respond

– Listening to understand

– Listening to connect

What does shallow listening look/feel like?

What does active/deep listening look/feel like?

– The temptation is to withdraw from community, or to wear a mask and pretend all is well.

– Pride would make us withdraw or pretend, Humility means we stay engaged in community and bring those things to the Lord. We don’t have to over-share or air our dirty laundry to everyone but we can humbly acknowledge our need for God and each other.

Stories:

Josh withholding feelings of fear, anxiety, worry because of an attempt to “protect” Audrie from those feelings as well. Even if intentions are “noble” it can harm intimacy in the relationship because I’m not being honest about what I’m feeling. In order to cope with those bad feelings I don’t turn toward Audrie, I would try to numb those feelings with distractions or busy-ness.

When we are emotionally immature, we cause pain to one another and create an environment of instability that our kids cannot thrive in.