Repairing Relationships

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info visit us at thrive-fl.org. Let's start in Proverbs chapter 10. The one who conceals hatred has lying lips, and whoever utters slander is a fool. Whoever belittles his neighbor lacks sense, but a man of understanding remains silent. Whoever goes out about slandering reveals secrets, but he who is trustworthy in spirit keeps the thing covered. A dishonest man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends. Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends. Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles. Lest the Lord see it and be displeased, and turn away his anger from him. What your eyes have seen, do not hastily bring into court, for what will you do in the end when your neighbor puts you to shame? Argue your case with your neighbor himself, and do not reveal another secret, lest he who hears you bring shame upon you, and your ill repute have no end. Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, profuse are the kisses of an enemy. Relationships are messy. Do you agree? Yeah, they can be very difficult, but they're even more important as a result of all the messiness they're in. We say at Thrive that relationships are everything. That was one of our taglines at the beginning, and we're here for you to thrive in your relationship with Jesus Christ and others, and we're here to bless and disciple people along those lines. That's what we're all about, because that's what life is about. But it's difficult, and it can be tough. We were made to be in relationships in our marriages, in our families, with friends, with neighbors, and as a community, and yet, boy, there are so many ways things get divided up, chopped up, and difficult in life. And a wise person understands both the necessity and the need for relationships, as well as how difficult they can be. And so we're going to explore these three points from the Proverbs that we have listed. The fact that a wise person knows the need for relationship repair, how to repair those relationships, and why, in the first place, relationships can be repaired. But first, we start with the need. I think it's kind of evident, self-evident. I'm not actually telling you anything you don't know. I'm just kind of describing the way things are, and then kind of we're going to kind of take away some of the layers to understand why it's difficult and why we have this need. Anne Lamont puts it this way, everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared. Even the people who seem to have it more or less together, they are much more like you than you would believe. Do you agree with that statement? Yeah. Yeah, I don't think there's...and that includes the person up here in front of you right now. Sometimes it's very difficult to preach, not because I don't like to get in front of people if you can't tell. I have no problem with that. But sometimes sermons are a lot like, whoa, this is like really impacting me. This is kind of tough to preach because like I feel very awkward talking to you about something that I'm also struggling with, right? But that's the way it is. It's kind of supposed to be that way. We don't find heroes in the Bible outside of Jesus. Everybody else is pretty well like Anne Lamont says. And if you read the Bible with that understanding, and then you can see Moses and Abraham and Deborah and Barak and you name it, Peter, and you know, all of those characters, boy, they're just like us. And we're just like them. In fact, our next sermon series is going to be on that, the story of us, which is about all these different biblical characters and how we are just like them. Okay? But right now, Proverbs puts it this way, and this might seem a little odd, but let me explain this proverb after I share it. It's the first one we read. The one who conceals hatred has lying lips, and whoever utters slander is a fool. Concealing hatred. You might think, hatred? I don't have hatred. Well, the Bible doesn't really use the word hatred for just, you know, that volcanic rage that we can see on all of our highways these days, or that volcanic rage we can see coming across on social media, or in all sorts of situations. That hatred here in Proverbs is just having ill will toward somebody else. That's all it is. Proverbs is saying hatred is often disguised. Ill will kind of hides behind. Anger doesn't come across as anger. We don't look angry when we have it. I conceal my anger often from myself as well as everyone else, because I don't want to really call it what it is. And I feel some, so how do I know I have it? When I feel some satisfaction when somebody else is going through a tough time. There's a German phrase, you might have heard it before, schadenfreude. Have you ever heard it? Germans make up these wonderful little phrases. It means being happ...