Last Sunday, we started a new series called Better. Just that one word, better. And the goal for this is really simple. We want you to have a better life. God desires better for you than you often desire for yourself. That's something I have to remember all the time. Like whose standards are higher for me, my standards or God's. Like God's got higher standards for my life than even I have. So God desires better, and God actually knows better. He desires better for your life, He knows better, which means that if you make it your life's mission to discover and discern what God's better looks like, and that's what you're going for in life, you are going to have a better life. You're going to have a better life. Now, the challenge with having a better life is that to have better, we have to choose better. And oftentimes we don't actually know what better is. We might have a couple of choices in front of us, a couple of directions we could take in life, and we're not certain which choice is the better choice. And thankfully, God's word comes in and it shows us what better looks like very often. So, for example, over the next few weeks we're going to be going through scriptures like Proverbs 16, 16, which says, How much better to get wisdom than gold and good judgment than silver. Proverbs 27, 6, wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy. 1 Samuel 15, 22, obedience is better than sacrifice. Last Sunday we looked at Acts 20, 35. You should remember the words of the Lord Jesus. It is better to give than to receive. In Proverbs 17, 1, better a dry crust eaten in peace than a house filled with feasting and conflict. That's what we're talking about today. Better a dry crust eaten in peace than a house filled with feasting and conflict. Life's greatest blessings are wasted when we don't have peace. And conflict and drama, whether it's drama at work, whether it's friend drama, Facebook friend drama, family drama, relationship drama, romance drama, you name it, drama, conflict, those aspects of life are inevitable. And if we want to have a better life, then we better learn how to handle and deal with the conflict and the drama that's gonna come our way. It's that simple. And so our goal today is really simple for us to be better equipped to handle the inevitable conflict and stress that comes with life. Can't avoid it, but we've got to figure this out because it's better to eat a dry crust in peace than have a feast filled with conflict. I love that Solomon, the author of this proverb, used that analogy because it's the perfect analogy. It's the like we've all been in an experience where we've had objectively an amazing meal in front of us. Like the food that we're eating is good, but because of the company we're in, and because of maybe the situation and the tension and the awkwardness, it didn't matter how good the food was, the meal was awful. I remember when I was in college, I waited tables for several years uh at Chili's. It was great, good times. And uh and I had this one experience, one of the most awkward experiences of my life. And if you know me well, you know that it's very hard to make me feel awkward. But but I felt super awkward in this one experience that I had. I was the waiter for a couple that was obviously breaking up at my table during the meal that I was serving them. And it was like obvious to the point where everyone in the restaurant knew they weren't screaming at each other, but they were like whisper fighting. But their emotions were so on display and their gestures were so intense that like everyone in the restaurant was aware of this couple. I mean, they're going through a breakup, and I have to be the server. So I have to like come up every few minutes and be like, how's it going? Um, would you guys, would you like me to get you a refill? Can I get you anything else? And they would kind of like stop and you know, awkwardly look at me and be like, it's it's we're we're great. You know, like we're we're great. And I would go away and I would come back and and and I remember at the end of the night, normally I would go up to a table and be like, so have we made room for dessert? But I was like, nah, not even gonna, I'm not even gonna go there, not even gonna offer dessert. This needs to end. And I was in the back going, should I separate the checks? Because that seems to be the way that this meal has gone. But uh I went ahead and I just gave it to the guy because it seemed like it was mostly his fault. Um, I figured, like, let's just go that direction. But it was it was it was super awkward to to be there as they're in the midst of this conflict. And the truth is it didn't matter to them how good the food was. If you had asked them afterwards, how was your meal, they would have said, Oh, it was amazing. You know, it was per cooked perfectly. It was horrible, it was one of the worst experiences of my life. Because good food with strife, it's it's worthless. Now, Solomon, he's the man who wrote Proverbs, most of the Proverbs anyway, he would have he would have known this, this statement of his. This isn't just an observation, it's not just wisdom coming out of him. This would have been from experience. Because you want to talk about like family drama and having feasts filled with conflict. Solomon, his life, it would have made soap operas jealous in terms of the kind of family drama. Like when he wrote, better to have a dry crust in peace than a feast with conflict, he knew what he was talking about. See, Solomon was the son of a man named King David. And if you're familiar with Scripture, you know King David. If you're not familiar with Scripture, you're probably still somewhat familiar with David. He's one of the most famous people that's ever lived. You know, David killed Goliath. You know, you know those stories, you've heard those things. And so David was the king, which means Solomon grew up royalty, which means feasts would have been a normal part of his life. Solomon never had to worry about whether or not there was going to be enough food to eat. He had plenty. He's the son of a king, he's a prince. But conflict, oh my goodness, if you study history, you you learn that royal families typically have a lot of infighting, a lot of conflict. It's like serious scandal. And Solomon's life was scandal after scandal. He actually began in scandal, to be honest, because his mom was a woman named Bathsheba, and she was David's eighth wife. And not eighth wife, like he had had seven wives, and tragedy struck, and you know, then he's on his eighth wife. It was like, no, eight simultaneous wives. And here's the beauty of scripture: it records the good, the bad, and the ugly. And the reality is that was extremely common in all cultures on the earth 3,000 years ago when David lived. But even though it was common, it was still stupid, right? He had he had eight wives. And he had a lot of kids with those wives. And Bathsheba, who was Solomon's mom, the eighth wife, that whole situation got started because David saw Bathsheba, thought she was attractive, found out she was married, her husband was a soldier in David's army, and so David said, Well, I'll just move him to the front lines of battle, he'll die, and I've got an opening. And he did that. And that's how Bathsheba and he started. It was it was incredibly scandalous. And I'm leaving out some of the more scandalous details. Solomon had uh an older half-brother named Amnon, and Amnon assaulted Solomon's older half-sister Tamar. And when Tamar's full brother, another one of Solomon's half-brothers, Absalom was his name, when he found out what Amnon had done, he murdered Amnon in retaliation. And so then David finds out that that his son Absalom has murdered his son Amnon. So he has Absalom expelled and exiled from the kingdom. But Joab, who was uh David's uncle, so Solomon's great uncle, Absalom's great uncle, he comes and he says, David, this isn't good. You've got to bring Absalom back. There needs to be mercy and grace, and he's got to be restored. And so David says, fine, and he brings Absalom back, but then Absalom starts a coup, because you know how that happens. And uh and he takes a bunch of David's soldiers with him, and David and Solomon and his family, they have to flee, and there's a fight and a war between Absalom and David, and David tells Joab, who's the commander of the army, whatever you do, don't kill Absalom. But Joab's like, nah, and he kills him anyway. He kills his nephew. And so it's like just imagine that family dinner. Hey, what happened this week? Well, my uncle killed my brother. Uh, but in all fairness, my brother killed my other brother. Um, you know, it's like it's crazy. And so Solomon experienced feasts with more conflict than we could even imagine. So when he wrote, better to have dry crust and peace than to have a feast with conflict. He knew exactly what he was talking about. Life's blessings, life's greatest blessings, are wasted if you don't have peace. And we have to understand this. When the Bible talks of peace, it's not just the absence of conflict. Peace is not just a little bit of quiet, although peace and quiet go hand in hand very often, they're friends. When the Bible speaks of peace, what it ultimately talks about is you and I being in right relationship with God and right relationship with one another. If you don't have right relationship with God and right relationship with the people around you, it doesn't matter how much money you make, doesn't matter how good your grades are if you're a student, doesn't matter how much you enjoy your job, doesn't matter if you have a good romantic life, it doesn't matter what accomplishments you are accomplishing, if you don't have right relationship with God, if you don't have right relationship with the people around you, all of life's blessings are wasted. It's like a a meal where the food is good, but the meal is horrible. We have to have peace. And thankfully, God God shows us, models for us, teaches us through his word and all the things that he's done for us what living with peace looks like. And the hope for today is that we could explore some of what scripture tells us about how to have peace and be people. They can look at the conflict that we're going to encounter. You're going to encounter conflict in your life. If you have conflict in your life, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing it wrong. In fact, sometimes it means that you're doing it right. But you're going to have conflict. You've got to find a way through that conflict if you want to have peace. So I want to look at three very simple, very practical truths that show us how to be people who live at peace. Number one, God has made peace with us. God has made peace with us. That's where we have to start. It is impossible to be a person who experiences peace around you if you don't have peace within. Like a lot of times we'll say something like, I I've I've had a really bad day. And maybe, maybe when you've had your bad day, you kind of blow up and you take it out on the people around you. You know, you're just a little sharp, you're a little, you know, you're a little on edge, and you just you say something and you end up telling someone, hey, I'm really sorry, I've just I've had a bad day. And often what we mean by I've had a bad day is not necessarily that a lot of horrible things have happened to us. Sometimes that's true. But a lot of the times when we say I've had a bad day, what we mean is that I'm conflicted internally. I've got stuff going on, I'm not at peace with myself, I'm not at peace with life. And so I've got all this internal conflict, and it's just kind of stirring and brewing all day long, and it it inevitably comes out. It is impossible to have external peace in your life if you don't have internal peace, and that actually begins by being at peace with God. This is something that we we have to understand. Every single person in this world, every single person that's alive, every one of us in the room, every one of us watching online, every person breathing on the planet right now is in relationship with God. It's just a matter of what does that relationship look like. We are all, for example, God's creatures. Every single one of us has been created. Scripture is clear on that. Before you were you were born, before you took a breath, God knew you. He knew who you are, who you would be. All of us are created by God. And so, no matter if someone believes in God or not, every one of us exists in relationship with God and that he is our creator and we are who he has created. But his desire is not that our relationship with him would be simply defined as created thing and creator. We actually have the ability to be friends with God. In fact, Jesus said to his disciples in John 15, 15, I no longer call you slaves. Because a master doesn't confide in his slaves. No, you're my friends now, since I've told you everything the Father told me. It's possible to live as a friend of God. It's also possible to live as an enemy of God. There's no way that we as people can actually have real peace if we don't ultimately have peace with God, because like it or not, we're in relationship with him. And if we want to be in right relationship with him, we have to understand what he's done for us. It's not that we make peace with God, it's that God has made peace with us. Romans 5, 1 and 2 says, Therefore, since we have been made right in God's sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God's glory. Because of Jesus and what he did for us, the sacrifice that he made on the Christ, the cross, the life that he lived, the death that he died, and then the life that he reclaimed. Because of that, every one of us has the opportunity to be in a right relationship with God. And it's very simple, it's by faith. By placing our faith, placing our trust in Jesus, God makes peace with us. And that peace, by the way, it is certain, it is sure. That's why it says we confidently look forward, joyfully look forward to the glory that we're going to share with God. It's not a fragile thing. We have to realize that the relationships that we experience in this world are often much more fragile than we would like them to be. They're fragile because of death. They're fragile because, as people, we can we can mess up. We can ruin relationships. You cannot ruin God's love for you. Can't do it. It's certain, it is sure, it is decided. Had a conversation with someone this last week, awesome person, really loves God. And is someone who's trying really hard to live in a way that they know is right. They're doing everything they can, but they struggle. We all struggle. Everybody struggles. We all have issues. And by the way, if you have a struggle in your faith, if there's some aspect of life that it's not right and it bothers you, number one, trust the Lord and pray and ask for his strength to make that area of life right, to be in line with God, but at the same time also recognize that the struggle is often proof positive that your spirit is alive. Because if your spirit wasn't alive, you wouldn't struggle. You just do it. And it wouldn't bother you. In fact, you might celebrate it. But that struggle is often evidence that your spirit's alive, that God has brought your spirit to life, and you're you're working all that out. There's tension, there's there's a wrestling with God that happens, and that's okay. This person was dealing with that wrestling, but they they had fear. They're like, I know that that I'm messing up in this part of my life. Does that mean that that I'm not really in a right relationship with God? Does that mean that I should be worried about what would happen to me if I died? And I looked at the person, I never mind, I was on the phone, I looked at them mentally. Um, you know, I could picture them, and I said, no, no, no, no, no, you're fine. And then look, God has brought something to your attention that needs to change, and so so change it, but know that he has grace and mercy and patience like you cannot believe. But at the same time, just know that that your standing with God, it's not dependent on you, it's on him. It's what he did, not what we do. It's not that we've made peace with God, we didn't, we didn't make amends with God. I can't make amends with God. I can't, I don't, I don't have enough to make that payment. But he made peace with me. And he's made peace with you, and you have to believe that. You have to have, you have to have such faith in that that there's no doubt, because when the enemy, when Satan comes in and accuses you, which by the way is what he does, he's an accuser. Very often we hear a voice in your head telling you that you're not enough, that you fail, that you've messed up, that God is disappointed in you, that God is about done with you. Most of the time, if not the vast, vast majority of the time, that is not God, that is not the Holy Spirit, that is your enemy, he accuses you. I'm not saying that the Holy Spirit can't convict you. That happens. The Holy Spirit primarily affirms you. We have to have complete faith that we're good with God because of what He's done for us. And when you have that faith, when you have that certainty that no matter what you do, no matter how much you mess up, God's good with you, you have peace within. Or you can actually have scenarios in life where you mess up royally and you can walk and go away and go, man, I I messed that up. God, I'm so glad I can't mess it up with you. That gives you peace. And you have to have peace with God to have true peace within. And if you don't have peace within, you'll never have peace without. So, number one, God has made peace with us. Number two, we make peace with others. God makes peace with us, and we have to turn around and be committed to making peace with those around us. And this isn't easy. Like, amen, it's not easy to live at peace with everyone around you because some of the people you love the most, some of the people you might be sitting next to you like right now, they drive you crazy. It's okay to admit that in church. No one's raising their hand. I don't hear any amens right now, and I I get that. I saw a few half raises, like, yeah, a little bit, and then someone just looked at the person and went like, me? No, it's it's it's him. You know. Jesus says this in Matthew chapter 5, verse 9 God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called children of God. The classic translation of this verse is blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the peacemakers. It's funny, there's a difference between making peace and having peace. And I think sometimes when we get really focused on having peace, having you know a life that's uh that's not filled with strife and conflict and all those types of things, when we get obsessed with having peace, we often fail to make peace. Let me explain. Having peace means you you're avoiding conflict very often. Like I don't want to have this conflict because I just I want peace. Sometimes in order to have real peace, you have to actually go through some conflict, you have to make that peace happen. It says, blessed are the peacemakers. See, very often we live life avoiding conflict at all costs, because conflict is uncomfortable and we don't like to be uncomfortable. But understand this, conflict is unavoidable. You cannot avoid conflict. Look at the life of Jesus. Jesus lived a perfect life, he lived an absolutely perfect life. If any of us were giving letter grades for life, and you come to Jesus, like I would hope, I would hope you give him an A. I can't imagine where you'd find fault. Jesus lived a perfect life and ask the question was Jesus' life free of conflict? And the answer is like, no. Clearly not. In fact, Jesus dealt with more conflict in the three years that he was doing his ministry than most of us have experienced in our entire lives. So living the right life does not mean a life devoid of conflict. Conflict is is unavoidable. And this is where it gets really interesting. Conflict is often necessary. Conflict is often necessary and even beneficial, provided we handle the conflict the right way. So from now on, I'm gonna make a commitment. I'm going to decide that I'm gonna do this. Like one of those happened with my wife and I related to dishes, because my job at home is to do the dishes. And so I thought I was doing the dishes. Turns out I wasn't, according to my wife. Because in my mind, doing the dishes meant I take the dishes and I put them in the dishwasher and then I turn the dishwasher on and I walk away, and dishes done. My wife says, No, no, no, no. If you don't put them away, they're not done. And so I would come home and she'd be frustrated about the dishes, and I was like, I did the dishes. I do the dishes every day. She's like, No, you you you have to do the dishes and then you leave the other half in there, and I have to do that part. And I was like, Well, that's how you do laundry, and she's like, Don't go there. Don't you go there? And I'm like, I'm sorry, like we had a little fight, and I'm teasing, and and and so like, I'm like, okay, all right. I I will put the dishes up. I will put the dishes up. That's what doing dishes means. And the truth of the matter is, we had a little bit of conflict, but it led to a commitment, and that was really important. If you avoid conflict in your life completely, all you're gonna do is avoid necessary commitments for growth. There's a right way to handle conflict, and there's a way to handle conflict that often isn't fruitful. But conflict is essential. Now, now, unhealthy conflict tends to be about a person. So if you've ever had a moment where you've looked at someone and you've said something like, you always this, or you never this, that usually that's not gonna go well. That's conflict about a person. And sometimes there are situations where you need to have that kind of conflict, where you're that certain that something needs to be said. There were times that Jesus looked at the Pharisees and the religious leaders of his day and he said, You brood of snakes, you hypocrites, when Jesus said that, he wasn't trying to like reconcile with them in the moment. He wasn't saying, Hey, let's get past this so we can go arm in arm together. He was like, I'm calling you out. But he understood that when he said that, he wasn't making peace in that moment. That lines had to be drawn. And there are times for that. But those times are often fewer and further between than we like to think. Now there's a really healthy kind of conflict where it's not conflict about a person, but it's conflict about an idea. She didn't look at me and say, You never do the dishes. She's like, Doing the dishes means the dishes are done. I'm like, that's a good point. All right, so we have conflict about an idea. A great example of this with Jesus himself. In Luke chapter 22, we see uh an interaction Jesus has with his disciples. It says, then they began to argue among themselves about who would be the greatest among them. This is the disciples arguing, like, I think I'm the best one. No, no, no, I'm definitely the best one. And Jesus told them in this world the kings and the great men lord it over their people. And yet they're called friends of the people. But among you it will be different. Those who are the greatest among you should take the lowest rank, and the leader should be like a servant. Who's more important? The one who sits at the table or the one who serves? The one who sits at the table, of course, but not here. In other words, he's saying, Not in God's kingdom, not in my kingdom. For I am among you as one who serves. And so Jesus recognizes this conflict that's happening between the disciples, and it's unhealthy conflict, it's conflict about a person. No, no, I'm better than you. No, no, no, I'm better than you. And he goes, hey guys, let's talk about this idea of what it means to be great in God's eyes. If you want to be great, be a servant. And he convinces them of the truth in the idea of that. That's a healthy conflict. And it results in peace and restored right relationship. Conflict is unavoidable. Conflict is often necessary and even beneficial. And here's the simple truth: conflict doesn't solve itself. How often have you had conflicts in your life actually take care of themselves? We like to think that sometimes. Like if I just leave it alone, it'll take care of itself. But like 9.9 times out of ten, that's not the case. Conflict has to be confronted. It has to be confronted if you want to have peace. Anytime I'm talking to like a young married couple or someone that's about to get married, I'll give them this piece of advice, and I'm I'm certain that it's almost never taken, but I give it anyway. And I say, hey, when you get married, you should have marriage counseling your first year of marriage, like once every three months. And everyone will kind of look at me because in our culture we think that counseling is like admitting defeat. It's funny how that works, right? Like if you go to a counselor, people are like, whoa, what's wrong with you? Um, but if you go to like a personal trainer, people are like, wow, you really take fitness seriously. Or if you have a financial advisor, people are like, that's incredible. You must be doing really well financially. I don't I don't have a financial advisor because I'm not I'm not doing that well. But yet with personal counseling, we associate it with failure. All a personal trainer is is a physical counselor. All a all a financial advisor is is a financial counselor. Scripture actually says wise is the man or the woman who has many counselors, right? So I like counseling. And I'll tell young married couples, when you first get married, your first year, your first two years, go to counseling like once every every three months, every six months, not every week, because here's what's gonna happen when when you get married, you're gonna have you're gonna have conflict. And there's gonna be things that your spouse does that drive you crazy. And I know you think they're the greatest person in the world and they're amazing, and they walk on water, and all you can think about are all the good things, but trust me, a few bad things are gonna start making that list. Just give it like two weeks, right? Because when you're dating, by the way, those of you who are dating, that person's on their best behavior, like they're trying hard, and there's gonna come a day where they don't try as hard, and you're gonna see things that you never saw before. That's just the way it works. And so if you go to counseling early on, just a little bit, you're gonna have a chance to bring up some of those frustrations while they're small. They're minor. But if you don't deal with them, they're gonna grow. And eventually, 10 years in, they're not frustrations anymore, they're resentments. And resentments are a lot harder to root out than frustrations. And so then you go to counseling and you're like, this person drives me nuts. Whereas if you would have dealt with it early on, had a conversation, it may have been a little uncomfortable, but you would have dealt with it when it was easy, when it was small. See, the same is true with all the conflict in our lives, with all the people in our lives. If you just push it off, you might think that you're actually creating peace, but you're not. You're having peace in the moment, but actually what you're doing is you're storing up a conflict down the road, and that conflict is likely going to intensify and grow. But if you deal with it now, if you deal with it now when it's when it's small, when it's as small as it is going to be, and trust me, it's gonna get bigger as time goes on. That's that's the time to deal with it. Conflict, it's not gonna take care of itself, you've got to meet it head on. And yes, that's uncomfortable, but it's necessary. And look, I'm not talking to those of us in the room or those of us watching who would say, you know, and I'm just trusting your ability to admit this, like I'm kind of a hot-tempered person, and uh, and I'm I'm a person who really anywhere I go, there's gonna be conflict and drama because I'm just one of those people that stirs that up. If that's who you are, you know who you are, pray. And and that's been me in certain aspects of life for sure. I'm talking to those of us who don't like conflict, which statistically is gonna be the vast majority of us. Very few people like conflict, which is why, by the way, and I'm not saying this just to show you like a secret, when someone emails me really frustrated at me or or church stuff, which happens, I always call them. And a lot of times people are like, ah, you know, and I'm like, hey, I got your email, and they're like, Oh, I didn't expect you to call me. I'm like, Well, you email me, you know, like, and I'm not doing that to be like an authority, I'm I'm like, I want to deal with it. But I I've found that sometimes people are really comfortable writing out their conflicts, writing out their frustrations, but then in person it's like a different story because it makes us feel uncomfortable. But it's it's so necessary. And those of you that are are conflict adverse, I'm just saying, more likely than not, there is a long overdue conversation that you probably need to have with someone. There are boundaries that you need to set with people in your life if you have any hope of peace. I'll give you an example. I had a family member years ago that uh that and I love this person very much, and and they would call me on a pretty regular basis and share frustrations that they had with another family member of mine. And what was happening is these two people were fighting, and and this other family member was saying things to this family member who was calling me, and and some of these things were really hurtful, and I love this person, so I was walking around angry at the other person because of what they apparently, and obviously I was getting one side of the story, but what they had apparently said to the person who was calling me, and I realized one day, like, this isn't healthy. I'm mad at someone who hasn't done anything to me. I'm like daily walking around, just I have a negative mindset, negative attitude, negative opinion of this other person who I do have a relationship with, but it has nothing to do with me. And so I ended up talking to the person who was calling me. I said, Hey, I want to make ask you for a favor. When we talk, we can talk about anything, like literally anything under the sun, except that person. Because I'm carrying anger toward that person, and they haven't done anything to me, and that's not okay. And that conversation went really, really poorly. But the problem was solved, it wasn't received well, and I probably could have delivered it better. But but the the solution came nonetheless. Like awkward conversations are going to be awkward. Conflict is going to be uncomfortable. There's no way to have it and be like, it was great, it was wonderful. Have that conversation. It was oh so good. No, I guess it's super rare. Anytime you see that, like we broke up mutually, no, you didn't. No, no. Like maybe every once in a while. But no, typically, conflict is uncomfortable, but it's necessary if you want to have a solution, if you want to have peace. So God has made peace with us. We have to make peace with others, and that means we can't avoid conflict. We've gotta we've gotta have it. Some of us need to have conversations, we need to be praying right now about a conversation we know we need to have, a boundary we know we need to set. And yes, that might mean conflict, but God is with you. One final thing, one final truth, and it's this it's it's powerful. Love covers all. Love covers all. Proverbs 10, verse 12. It says hatred stirs up strife. And that word strife, by the way, is really interesting. In fact, the the proverb that we're studying today, Proverbs 17, 1, better to have a dry crust in peace than to have a feast with conflict. Strife is a is a better translation of the word that's used there. Conflict is a very general term. Strife, strife has a vitriol to it. Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all transgressions. When it says love, it's it's not talking about romantic love, it's not talking about the love that you have for your friends, it's talking about the kind of love that God has for us. It's a love that in the Greek language is called agape. It means unconditional self-sacrificial love. And I'll share this, um, kind of be real personal for a second. Like, I have been married now for uh for 15 years, and I love my wife. She's literally the greatest person I've ever known. I've never known someone who's had such a consistent relationship with God. I admire her. In fact, I am very certain that when I get to heaven and I thank God for a lot of the blessings I have in my life, he's gonna look at me and say, a lot of those Justin were just because you were standing next to her. It was like proximity blessings. I was blessing her and you were just around. Like, he loves me. I'm half joking there, but like seriously, I admire her. But like anyone who's been married for 15 plus years, just like I talked about earlier, we've had frustrations with each other. And a while back I had God speak to me as clearly as he's ever spoken to me, and it hit me really hard, like right between the eyes. But I needed it. And in this moment, I was I was frustrated. I was frustrated at little things, but they had piled up, and I hadn't I hadn't addressed them. Because sometimes I can be a passive aggressive person, and I can like I think I'm dealing with conflict, but actually what I'm doing is giving someone the silent treatment or the cold shoulder, and that's actually that that's worse sometimes than just saying what it what's going on. It's a lot worse most of the time. And so I'm having all these frustrations in my mind, and I begin to pray. I like to pray my frustrations out with God, by the way, especially when it has to do with my wife, because my wife is God's daughter, and I find that very often when I start saying, God, your daughter, uh, she needs to, you know, pretty soon I'm like, I changed my tune. But in this moment, I was just praying and talking with God about legitimate frustrations that I had. And this is what I heard the Lord say, and I heard it as clear as day. He said, Justin, every criticism you have of Megan right now is valid. And I felt good for a second. Like, yeah, I'm right. Because when you're married, it feels good to be right, especially when you're the man, you're so often wrong. You know what I mean? Like we're men, we're so often wrong, and we know we are. That's why we're the ones always saying, What did I do? What did I say? I don't understand. And so God says, Every criticism you have, it's valid. And I'm thinking, like, it kind of caught me off guard. But what God said next brought me to my knees. He said, Every criticism you have is valid. But if you loved her unconditionally, none of them would matter. And like in that moment, like it hit me hard. In fact, that that night I looked at Megan and I asked her, Do you feel like I love you unconditionally? And she paused. The truth is, there are people in your life that you have legitimate criticism with. And they've messed up and they fall short. That's true. But love covers a multitude of transgressions. He looked at me and he said, If you loved her unconditionally, none of that stuff would matter. And in that moment, I got this image in my mind, and my spirit understood the way God loves me. Unconditionally. And for a moment, I believe this was so clearly from the Lord, for just a moment, God allowed me to feel what it would be like if He loved me as conditionally as I was loving her at that time. And to be honest with you, it was terrifying. Oh, if God loved me the way that I am loving my wife right now, and it was that conditional, and he was that it's like I started realizing all the things in my life that were were off and not aligned, and and and it was it was a terrifying feeling. But then to recognize that he looks at me and he says, I love you, and I overlook all of that. I want to help you with it, but I don't I don't let it define my love for you. Love covers all. So if you want peace in your life, if you want right relationship with God, right relationship with other people, you've got to receive the love that God has given you and give it to other people. But you cannot give what you have not received. It's as simple as that. You can't give what you don't have. So this kind of brings us full circle back to that first point that God has made peace with us. It all begins. All of this begins. Real peace in your life begins by accepting the love that God has for you, by recognizing that you have flaws, yes, they are many and they are valid. And if the person who knows you best were to make a list of your flaws and hand it to God, he would say, Thank you for this, but I have more to add. Because he sees everything. And if he showed you that list of all of your mistakes and failures and your flaws and your shortcomings, what he would do is he would look at you and with love in his eyes, he would tear it to pieces. Because that is how complete his love is for you. You've got to receive that love. That's a daily thing, by the way. That's not a one-time thing. Yeah, it starts in one moment with God, but that's a daily experience to receive the love that he has for you. Trust it, believe it, and then give that away. Doesn't mean you avoid conflict, doesn't mean you run from tension. Can't do that. But it means in every conversation, in every fight, your motivation and your goal is love. Because everything God has ever done for you has been out of love. Scripture says that the Lord disciplines those he loves. So even when you've been disciplined, it's been out of love. Love covers a multitude of transgressions. Receive it.