Evo DK #299 - Driving Adoption Of A Design System

So let me welcome all of our Atlanta area churches who are joining us today and those of you who are joining us online, wherever you are in the world, more and more churches all over the world and people all over the world are becoming a part of this growing network of Christians who understand it's not simply what you believe, it's what you do with what you believe and that is the hallmark of Christianity and more and more it's becoming what characterizes our churches and I just love that. From time to time I mentioned I kind of dropped into conversations or sermons the fact that Sandra and I were foster parents for 10 years and I do that intentionally because we love the foster care community and anytime we can be an advocate for that amazing community we want to be. But anyway, during those active foster years a young lady came to live with us, she was 10 years old, that little girl and she was with us about four or five months or maybe six months and then she moved on to different situation and then five years later when she was 15 she came back into our home and she had quite the journey, she ended up in a group home and Sandra and I, we stayed in touch with her throughout those five years and so we visited her in the group home and so I think it was our second visit, Sandra and I were driving home from the group home and we were just being real quiet and I can't remember which one of us said it probably Sandra, she turned to me and I'll give her credit and said do we even need to pray about this? We weren't even talking, do we even need to pray about this? Seriously, so we contacted the folks, we needed to contact and we went back and picked her up and brought her home to live with us until she could age out of foster care. We warned her, we said by this time our kids were out of the house so it was just me and Sandra and her, she's 15 and we warned her this is going to be really boring and she wasn't surprised because even when she was 10 she thought we were boring, okay and was very transparent about that. So we brought her, we got all her stuff, brought her home, Sandra had a room, all fixed up, had her name spelled out, some little blocks and everything and it was wonderful so we allowed her to let her alone up in the room and again she'd been in our family before and during those six months when she was with us before when she was 10 all of our kids were there so she knew how we operated so she came down the stairs after a few minutes we can settle in two rooms, she said down to the kitchen counter and you know crossed her arms and she said and I quote so what are the rules? Because she laughed when she was 10, she was 15, you know, different seasons of life so what are the rules and we knew she was not asking what are the rules so she could keep the rules, she was asking what are the rules so that she could navigate around the rules, a skill she had perfected which was part of why those five years were the five years that they were and by the way she's 25 years old now and if she were here I would tell this story the exact same way. So anyway so I said to her Stacy which is not her name her real name which was confusing to her of course when I said that. I said Stacy you know she's lived in her home before you know for a long time that's not how we do things we don't have a bunch of rules I said wait right here so I went in my office got a three by five card and it wrote one word on the three by five card, brought it in, pushed it across the kitchen counter, she looked at it and I said this is how we do things in our home she looked at it and rolled her eyes and went upstairs and so it began. Anyway today's part three of our series that way I can keep you interested at least within the message. Today's part three of our series if you've missed any of it three ingredients for relationships that go the distance you need to catch up because these kind of build this is a series for anybody who has any kind of relationships at work or home marriage engaged dating hope to be dating you know any any kind of relationships people with the neighborhood and these three ingredients come straight out of the New Testament all three are actually applications or a way to participate with this big idea that the apostle Paul lays out and a letter he wrote in the first century to Christians living in Philippi and in that letter he made this statement this is amazing he said to them these were all Jesus followers he was writing to he said in your relationships and he doesn't delineate between types of relationships he said there's all your relationships with one another have the same mindset that is try to capture the mind of the perspective of the attitude of the approach to relationships capture the have the same mindset as King Jesus or in your English New Testament it says Christ Jesus he said that the way Jesus did relationships should govern how we do our relationships and the truth is the thing we all have in common we all take our relationship cues from somebody and most of us probably all of us took our initial relationship cues from our families of origin right the way our parents did relationships the way that you know that our family did relationship and by the way in case you misunderstand the family you grew up and may have applied the things we're talking about in this series perfectly not because they heard the series or even because they were Christians but they were just mature relationally so this might be review this may be the way you grew up like well done as an everybody do that but the family you grew up and or the grew up with may have not done relationships this way but either way if you're a Christian or you claim to be a Jesus follower as Jesus followers we are to take our cues from our King and what Jesus modeled in terms of relationships may be may very well be what you saw modeled in your home and it may very well not be what you saw modeled in your home but here's the thing if you're not a Christian or you're from a different faith tradition I would just suggest that even if you don't buy into who we believe Jesus is what the New Testament I'm telling you what the New Testament teaches about relationships is phenomenal because everything the New Testament teaches about relationships are taken from what Jesus did relationally and how Jesus behaved relationally when he was on planet earth and then James the brother of Jesus as we talked about in week one James the brother of Jesus and then Peter Jesus most famous his famous fisherman disciple and then Paul who was a Pharisee who hated Christians and became one those three people in particular their writings in the New Testament kind of tease out or flesh out what Jesus taught and modeled about relationships so all of this ties back together and here's the thing Jesus was so clear about and here's one of the things that breaks my heart and think it probably breaks your heart to about the Christian faith and about Christianity Jesus was so clear about this the apostle Paul doubled and tripled down on this that our relationships the nature of our relationships is the signifier it's our jersey that the crosses that we wear and I'm all for people wearing crosses the crosses we wear are not the primary thing that demarcates this Christian it is supposed to be the tone the posture the approach the quality and the health and the maturity of our relationships because we're to take our relational cues from the master of relationships who created us and knows best how we work and how we're supposed to work together and the other thing and if you're new to the faith or you're curious curious or maybe you left years ago and you're thinking about coming back please hear this and and regardless of your experience with the church please hear this Christianity just read the New Testament Christianity is as horizontal as it is vertical on earth as it is in heaven that if Jesus was clear about anything it was this that our love for God that our love for God is authenticated not by church attendance our often our love for God isn't authenticated by our prayers our love for God is authenticated by our love for others on earth as it is in heaven anyway so back to the series so these three ingredients I outlined in this way a confession a posture and a rule week one we talked about the confession a confession that we should make internally anytime we're in the middle of an argument or we're driving on anticipating or driving to work anticipating any kind of conflict or maybe if you're brave to declare this make this confession out loud in the middle of a conflict and the confession is hey the real problem is the real problem is part of the problem is I'm not getting what I want because whenever you're arguing whenever you're quarreling whenever you're at odds with someone there's something you want and you're not getting it and when we acknowledge that it has the potential to bring down the temperature and recenter us and to be able to see the other person differently then we talked about a posture last time we were together the posture this is an essential posture at work at home at school wherever you might be and we refer to it as mutual submission mutual submission when it comes to relationships that go the distance that is these are people that you want to go the distance with mutual submission is I'm here for you and you're here for me Paul said it this way he said you're to submit yourself you're to place yourself under one another out of reverence for Christ that because Christ did that for us where to do that for one another it's just another version of the law of Christ the law of Christ I call it the platinum rule it's better than the golden rule the the Platinum Rule is due for others as Jesus has done for you. And here's the good news, you don't have to die for anyone. But from time to time, we have to die to ourselves for the sake of other people. And the submit to one another is simply, I'm gonna get up under your burden and I'm gonna ask you this question, what can I do to help? What can I do to help? That question in a professional environment or a family environment or any environment is the key to saying that people around you. Hey, we're in different seasons of life, we're in different seasons of life. different places economically, where different places in terms of influence and leverage within an organization, but doesn't matter. I'm bringing all of me to bear on what I can do to help you. That's a catalytic question. So today, we're coming to the third part, last part, a rule. So I want to begin with some common ground, kind of get us all on the same page, something we all have in common, and that's this. And this would include our foster daughter that I just talked about. Nobody likes rules. Second thing is, everybody expects everybody else to obey the rules, which means everybody is a hypocrite. So just we're all on the same, it's like, I don't want to obey the rules, but I want you to obey the rules, and I expect you to so that I have the leverage not to, anyway, not personally, I would never do that. So, here, with that in mind, here's some really good news, and if depending on the church you grew up in or your approach to faith, this may be new information. I hope not, I hope this is just review. But the good news is that Jesus, clearly, was really, really, really big on relationships, but he was not big on rules. And the reason he was not big on rules, even they think, well, Christianity and Jesus, it's all about rules and commandments. No, read the New Testament. The reason he was not big on rules is because he was so big on relationships and healthy relationships are not rule-based. And you experience this all the time. When you think about your easiest relationships, the people that you love to see coming and they love to see you coming, whether it's family or friends or neighborhood or at work, if someone were to stop the two of you and say, okay, so what are the rules? You just look at them like the rules. Yeah, I mean, obviously you get along so well, it's just so smooth, it's like a well-oiled machine. So what are the rules, you would say, well, we don't have any rules, right? Because the healthier the relationship, the less need there are for rules, right? And since Jesus was so about relationships, your relationship with your Heavenly Father and with each other, believe it or not, Jesus was not a big rule guy because here's what he knew. You may not think of it in these terms. Rules add a third party to the relationship. There's me and there's you and then there's the rules and where there are multiple rules, guess what you have. You have scorekeeping and you have scorekeepers. And perhaps, no raise of hands and no elbows, perhaps you were raised in a home with a score keeping parent and perhaps you accidentally married a scorekeeping spouse. And they had this ability to just mentally pull out a file drawer and it's like, "Ah, remember, January the 6th at 730, you said, it's like, how do you remember that?" Well, you also said, "Let's hold on, give me a, it's like they can just remember every wrong thing you've done and they bring it up, they're scorekeepers." And some of you are laughing and you're the scorekeeper. You do this and you say, "Oh no, no, I never do this." And the person sitting beside you are watching with you, they're like, "Oh Lord, please speak God, speak, speak, speak, if I never thought that this is going to, you know, because probably the reason you're scorekeepers, you were raised in a home where there was scorekeeping, right? And what does that do for the relationship? Everything good because you have a third party and healthy relationships, they don't keep score because there's no score to keep." Now here's a fascinating fact, this is why I know I said all the time, you should read the Bible but gosh, you should so read the New Testament, the words of Jesus and those that follow after Jesus. 2,000, this is amazing, 2,000 years ago. 2,000 years ago. The Apostle Paul writes a letter to Christian's living in Corinth and the 13th chapter, of course they didn't have chapters and verses, he didn't write like that but later they were put in there so we could find stuff, right? So 1 Corinthians 13 sometimes is called the love chapter. In fact, some of you had it or part of it read it, you're wedding. And in the love chapter, listen to what he said 2,000 years ago. 2,000 years ago, there were no file drawers but there were scorekeepers. He said, "Love is fascinating. Love, it keeps no records. Love, it keeps no records of wrongs." Or one translation says, "It keeps no record of wrongs done. Love doesn't keep score." And here's why, because where there's a score, the implication is there's a competition. There's a winner and there's a loser. You know, rhetorical question but you probably know the answer, what's the win in a relationship? It's the relationship. It's the win. We're a different way. Have you ever won, for those of you who are married, have you ever won an argument with your spouse? Would you win? I mean, have you ever won an argument with your spouse? No. I mean, you might have had the zinger, you know, that sort of, you know, you had the last say, you might have had the, "Oh my goodness, you know, and she walked off crying or he walked off crying or he walked off mad or she walked off mad and you felt like, you know, I won, and I made the point, right? What did you win? Nothing. In fact, many of us, me include, we have apologized for the argument we won because there's no win in a relationship, in a relationship, there's no win lose. It's win-win or it's lose-lose. So in relationships that go the distance and relationships that operate, are going to operate the way they're supposed to, there's just needs to be, if they're married, there has to be any rules, there just needs to be one rule. And it's an unwritten rule and it's a rule you see played out all the time in any healthy relationships you see or any relationships you have. So when our foster daughter, you know, came in and said, you know, you know, what are the rules? And I went in my office and I wrote down a word on the card. I literally, I promise I'm in church. I still have the card. I left it on the kitchen counter for a long time thinking maybe she would take interest and just, it would just move around as we're having breakfast and lunch at dinner on the, and I wrote on the card. And I wrote this one word, I wrote the word honor. I said Stacy. She says, that's not my name, she says Stacy. This is how we do it here. We don't have a bunch of rules. You hear when our kids were here. We just choose to honor one another. Now the problem with honor is it's hard to work around it. It's hard to find our loophole. It's like you said to be home at eight, but you didn't say eight p.m. Yeah, right. Just an example. Anyway, so, so in Paul, in 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter that I just said, listen to what he says. He says, love does not dishonor others. And of course, neither did Jesus. And then in his letter to Christians living in Rome and he'd never been to Rome yet, Paul states the same thing, but he says it in the affirmative. He writes this. He says, be devoted to one another in love and I'm just making this part up, but I think he wrote that and he thought, it's kind of soft, you know, be devoted, you know. So he appeals to their very competitive Greek and Roman nature. And he creates a unique and very difficult to translate Greek phrase. I'm going to show you the Greek, the clunky way he writes this because it, you know, translators were like, what exactly is he saying? But listen to these words. Here's how he put it together. He's making a specific point. He writes, the value or price, one another, esteem more highly. It's really, this is just the, it's just really three words. The value or the price, one another, the way you price one another, the way you value one another, esteem more highly. And here's what we get from that. It's honor one another above yourselves that you should value other people above the way you, above how you value yourself or put a price on people, not literally, obviously, price people with a more expensive price than you put on yourself. Specifically, honor one another, go first. That is go first to show honor to others. Try to out, if you're going to compete, if you're going to compete in the relationship, try to out honor one another. Then he kind of doubles down on this idea and teases that a little bit further in the letter that he wrote to Christians in Philippi that I quoted from a few minutes ago. Here's what he says there. This is so powerful and a little bit of a throwback from the week one. He says do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, here's the same word again. It's a financial term. Value others above yourselves. Consider them more valuable than you. Not because they are. They aren't. In fact, James says they, you know, there's not value in people. They're all equally valuable to God, made the image of God. Paul says that Jesus modeled that. But here's what they're getting at. They all say this. That we are to treat other people as if they were, in fact, more valuable than us. Why? Ready for this? Because we're Jesus followers. And that's what Jesus did for us. Listen, when Jesus went to the cross to pay for your sins, you know what He did for you, He elevated your status and He placed Himself under your burden and under the burden and under the weight of my sin and my guilt. And in doing so, He valued me. He valued you, valued you over Himself. When in fact, He was actually more valuable. more valuable than you. And he says this, he says, "Have this same attitude." Again, this is this whole idea that whatever we see in Jesus, we are to embrace as Jesus followers. Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus. We looked at this in week one, which was, he says this, "Jesus, who, being in very nature God, "that as Jesus was God, God in a body, "did not consider equality with God, "something to be seized, "something to be grabbed." In other words, he never used the fact that he was God to his own advantage. He didn't play the God card. He honored others. He honored us. And then he says to me, and he says to those of us who claim to be Jesus followers, he says, "Now I want you to do for others. "What I have done for you. "I want you to do for others, "what I've done for you." And here's kind of the inescapable issue or that there's no escape from this because he was actually more valuable than we ever will be. And yet he demonstrated his love by coming up under our burden, as I said, and took upon himself what he did not need to take upon himself because of his love for us. He says, "Now I just want you to do that for others. "I want you to treat them as if they are more valuable." So in relationships that go the distance. Again, some of you just do this naturally with certain people. And then they all do. This is the rule. Just honor one another. Now here's the thing. I don't know all of you, obviously. But you know how to do this. So this isn't like you need a class. Or you don't even need me to talk about it any further. You know how to do this. And the reason I know you know how to do this is this question, have you ever met someone important? Yes, you have. Have you ever met somebody famous or somebody that you had high esteem for, you know the president of the company or whatever it might be, have you ever met somebody important? That in a specific context, you would say, well in this context, they're definitely more important than me, not in the eyes of God, but in terms of, I mean, he's like the principal of the school. You know, he's the head coach or he owns the company or whoever it might be. We've all met people that we felt like in a specific context were, that just, you know, they're important. And here's the question that you all know the answer to is, how did you treat them? You treated them like they were more important than you. And nobody had to tell you how to do that. Nobody has to tell me how to do that. You just, you don't interrupt, right? You know, criticize, you, you, this is a word we don't use much, you deferred to them. You deferred to them, you honored them. Kind of a funny story that I, a couple of times I thought about sharing it and then I thought, "Ah, maybe I shouldn't." And now so much time has passed, maybe it doesn't matter. So many, many years ago when I was working for my dad, the president of the United States came to church. Not like, "Oh, I think the president's here." No, it may like two weeks before they let us know. The president of the United States is coming to your church. So of course there's all the security, there's no cell phones back then, there's not even any metal detector kind of things, but everybody had to wait outside and dogs sniffing everything. So it was a really, really big deal. President came to church, traditional kind of Baptist church with pews. So the president sat on the aisle in the middle section, you know, on the second row, second pew, with his wife, and then our family was there on the same row, Sandra was there. And my dad of course knew the president of the United States coming to church. So he prepared a message for the president of the United States like we would do. And he chose the passage, Joshua, Joshua 1.9. Joshua 1.9 says, "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid for the Lord your God is with you." And my dad prepared this fabulous message about Mr. President, be strong and courageous and do the right thing. The Lord your God is with you. So my dad started the sermon the way he normally did. He said, "Today we're going to be reading out of the book of Joshua and immediately everybody, everybody gets their Bibles out, everybody brought their Bible to church." Aren't you glad I bring the Bible to church for you? Anyway, I selected pastors. Anyway, everybody had their Bibles out. And he said, "Turn in your Bible." And he said, "Turn in your Bibles." Is the book of Joshua, chapter 1, or you can hear all these pages fluttering. Well back then, maybe it's somewhat now, but back then I learned this in that environment, the President of the United States carries nothing. They don't carry a wall, they don't carry anything. Other people do that for them, sign of honor. Well, of course, the President didn't bring a Bible to church. So he reaches up, I'm sitting on the same view, reaches up, takes the Pew Bible. Some of you remember, like there's the hymnal and the Pew Bible. And then the envelope, in case you forgot one in a pencil. So you can bring a bell with some people. Yeah, or you can play tic-tac-toe, right, during the service, yeah. Thank you, Bill. Anyway. So anyway, so the President of the United States reaches up and takes the Pew Bible. And he starts going like this, and I'm sitting down here. You know, poor guy, everybody's watching him. You know, it's the President of the United States. We had this wrap-around balcony. So he's going, and all of a sudden he goes past Joshua. And I'm like, oh, go back, go back, go back, go back. Little I'm not making this. So he goes back to the other way. And me and my dad, it started to discern. And he's going back, oh, your ex is? Other way, right, right. So let me tell you what I didn't do. I did not reach across the first lady and take the Bible out of the President of the United States hand and go to Joshua like, grief. You know? [LAUGHTER] See, even as young as I was, I knew you don't do that, right? I mean, eventually, in the story, eventually, literally close the Bible. Let's put it back in the Pew rack. Just listen to the sermon. OK, but before you're critical, most of you couldn't find Joshua if your life depended on it. And if it wasn't your family Bible or Bible, you might take him in. OK, so the point is, you know how to do this. I know how to do this. If we just remember to do this, we know how to defer. We know how to show honor to other people, right? So Paul's point is simply this. What you already know how to do, you know how to show honor? Do that with everybody, not just famous bodies. But there's a twist. And again, this makes it difficult. In fact, some of you are arguing with me in your minds right now. I understand that. Here's why we're not inclined to do this. Here's one of the reasons we're not inclined to do this. And similar to what we said last week in part two, as Jesus followers, because the basis of all this is different than the average person or the way that we were brought up or what our intuition tells us to do. As Jesus followers, the honor we're talking about, show an honor, honor isn't contingent upon the behavior of the person receiving the honor. It's contingent upon the person showing or expressing the honor, which is us. If this wasn't the case, otherwise, Paul couldn't command it. He couldn't command it if it was contingent upon the person being honorable, he would have said this, he would have written this, honor the honorable, which is what we all do, which is what most people do. Paul is writing this to people. He doesn't know who's going to read it. He certainly didn't know 2,000 years later, we were going to be reading it. But he say, no, the basis of the honor you're demonstrating isn't the recipient. The basis of the honor you're expressing is the giver or the one showing honor based on how they have been honored, how we have been honored by our heavenly father. And so he says, this is what you do. You honor one another above yourself, practically speaking. Treat one another honorably. And don't treat one another dishonorably. So within the context of being a Jesus follower-- and let me just say this one quick-- if you're not a Christian, again, you're smart. You know, that would be a better way to live. That would be a better way to do family. You wish your boss thought that way. You're the people that report to you at work. They wish you thought that way. And yes, you already know how to do this. Because within this context, honor is not something that's earned. That's the difference. In this context, honor is a gift. A gift that we give others. We give it by the words that we choose, the tone that we use, the approach we take, how we say it, we say the positives publicly, we save the negatives for private conversation. Honor isn't soft. I mean, telling me what I need to hear, even if I don't want to hear it, that's honoring to me. Risking our relationship by telling me something I need to hear, ultimately, is honoring to me. So this isn't soft. This isn't easy. It's really considering the other person more important or more valuable than you, even though they're not actually more important or more valuable than you. The author of Proverbs kind of chimes in on this, we should come back to this verse someday. There's actually an English idiom that comes from the verse I'm about to tell you, but I'm not going to say it in church. Okay, here's what the writer of Proverbs says. "Wounds from a friend can be trusted." Oh, that hurt. But I know you have my best interest in mine. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, gosh. I didn't want to hear that, but I needed to hear that. Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy just multiplies kisses, right? So we honor with our words, and of course, obviously we honor with what we do with our actions, with our deeds. Again, it's that word, it's deferred. Deferred, deferred. It's others first. I've told you this before, but just for somebody who hadn't been here before or been here in a while of little kids, when our kids were young, the boys, we have three kids and the older two were boys, and you know, Sanders, and then the food starts coming to the plate and what are the boys do? They just sit down immediately and then constantly don't start eating before your mom gets here. Don't start, you know, just don't, you know, they're sitting there in front of the food, you know. So I wanted them to know how to honor their mom. So we set up an honor rule. I said, "At dinner, you stand behind your chair and so your mom is seated." And when she's seated, you can sit down and we eat. So we started doing that. And it was so fun when their friends would come over for dinner because the boys are standing behind the chair. The friends just sit down and they're like, "What are we doing?" So they could get up, stand behind their chairs, like, "What are we doing?" So the stand ladies, you know, you wait for Mrs. Stanley and they say, "What is it?" It's honors. So we tried to teach our kids honor. And what's so cool, Sandra will tell you, our boys do that now. They're in their 30s and they just, wherever we are, they just wait. It's a demonstration of honor. What we do, and just thinking about it and remembering it, makes such a huge difference. And as Christians, this is what we're called to do. And then maybe the most difficult area to show honor is our responses, which is kind of a combination or an application of one of these other two. But this is critical because our responses, our responses, say more about us than pretty much anything. The way we respond to difficult things, the way we respond to conflict, the way we respond to surprises. So a response is choosing to believe the best about a person, when there's a gap between what they've, you expect, and what you experience there's a gap, you choose what to put in that gap. That's a response. And to honor someone is to choose to believe the best. It's to fill that gap with a generous explanation. Well, you know what, I bet he got caught in traffic. You know, I bet something came up she wasn't expecting. I'm going to fill that gap with a generous explanation. That's honoring even when you're not in the presence of the other person again. You know all this. You've experienced all this. The question is, what if we embrace this as a lifestyle? Because this is what Jesus followers are called to do. It's Jesus followers. Come on. This should characterize us. We should be really good at this. We should be the best at this. We should be the most honoring people in our communities. The most honoring people in our families. The most honoring people in the country. Because we follow a king who did this for us in the most extreme way imaginable. So wrapping up, pulling it all together. Here they are. The three ingredients for relationships that go the distance. A confession. I'm not getting what I want. A posture of mutual submission. How can I help? And then a rule. To honor one another. To defer. To show respect regardless based on the fact that what God has done for us. Not to earn something from God. This is important. But in response to what God has already given us freely. He gave us. Himself. So here's wrap up question. I was tempted to say, so which one of these three do you think you need to work on? And we don't be. But that's an easy question. I want to ask a harder question. Okay. Of the three. Which one do you imagine the people closest to you wish you would work on? For example, if you hear, well, I guess you're never wrong. Well, I guess you're never wrong. And you think, well, I'm not. Is that a. Is that a complimenting me? Or. You should start here. Because for sure, for sure, one of the reasons you're arguing there's conflict, there's something you're not getting. So this is an easy confession. This might be an on ramp to confessing some other things. You might actually be wrong about some other things. Just saying. Okay. Number two, a posture of mutual submission. If the idea of making a significant part of your vocabulary is the question, what can I do to help? If there's something on the inside of you that's love. No, no, no, if I ask that they're going to give me something to do, this is what you need to work on. This is a way of being intentional about submitting yourself to the people in most cases you love. Maybe the people you work with. Maybe people in your neighborhood. That's where you need to plug in. And if there's something in you, I get this. There's something in you that resists the idea of demonstrating and showing honor to people who you don't think. To people who you don't think deserve it. And that's in all of us. You need to start here. And you don't start with the recipient. You start by remembering you are a recipient. Because while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And he says, "Now, I just want you to do for others what I so graciously did for you. Because that's what love requires of you. And that's what God through Christ has done for all of us." So let's do this. Let's pray that it characterizes our families and our communities, our nation. Maybe someday the whole world. Let's pray together. Father, thank you so much for preserving these ancient texts. Thank you for sending your son. Thank you for the fact that all these years later, we're still impacted by his teaching, by his life. And internally, we have his spirit that lives in us. That is, we listen to something like this. So Father, give us wisdom to know what to do with what we've just heard. And Father, I know there are some people listening or watching in the room with me today. There are some very complicated circumstances that I would not even begin to know what to tell them to do or how to apply this. Would you please make it clear to them and then give them the courage to step into it? And we pray all of these things in the name of our King Jesus. Amen.