Jesus, please uh speak. Holy Spirit, speak through your word this morning. Speak through what comes out of my mouth. God, we just want to hear from you. We want to grow. We want to have a deeper relationship with you. We want to have a deeper understanding of who you are. God, there's so many of us coming from so many different places. Some of us in the room may not even really be sure if you exist. And I just pray, God, that if anyone here is in that boat, that you would you would show them your love this morning, that you would make yourself known. And I pray that in your name of Jesus, amen. All right, speaking of important things, I want to talk about the year 1986. Who here remembers 1986? You're like, I have some type of memory of that year. Who was who was here in 1986? That's what I'm really asking. Thank you for participating. Some of us, who was not here in 1986? Like you weren't on the planet. I don't mean here at his hands. We didn't exist yet. I mean on the earth, not here in 86. Wow, cool. I feel old. Um so for those of you who who weren't around yet, or maybe you just can't quite connect with that year, maybe it's been a long time and because it has been, and you're like 86. I kind of think of the 80s, but but 86 specifically. Let me take you back to 1986 for a minute. If you in 1986 had turned on your radio, you would have heard a song like Mr. Mr.'s uh Broken Wings. You know that song? Take these broken wings, learn to fly again, learn to it's it's a very metaphoric song. That was a big song on the radio. Uh, how about how about from the Top Gun soundtrack? Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins? Heck yeah! I have said this from this stage before. This isn't the first time. That is the best song ever written, far none. Danger Zone, I don't care who you are, where you come from, where you live, you fire up Danger Zone from the Top Gun soundtrack, it gets people going. Like we might have to adapt it as a worship song somehow one day, because it just works. It just works. It's God inspired. Um, those would be like the songs you would hear on the radio in 1986. If you had gone to the movies in 1986, you might have been going to see something like Karate Kid Part 2. Hello? Yeah. Danielson, he goes to Japan. Mr. Miyagi faces off with his arch nemesis. It's a classic, Karate Kid Part 2. Part 2's oftentimes are the best, and I think that applies to Karate Kid. So you might have seen that. You might have seen in theaters Crocodile Dundee, another classic from 86. There's like this, there's this one line from Crocodile Dundee that always rings out in my head. I think it's the quintessential line from that movie. Anyone, anyone know it or like want to throw it out there? Just yell it. Yes! That's not a knife. But you have to say it like knife would be spelled N-O-I-F. Noif, right? You have to say that's not a noif. That's how that's how he. This Crocodile Dundee, come on. It's classic. The top grossing movie in 1986. If you had really been going to the movies '86, you definitely would have seen. I mentioned it earlier, actually, Top Gun, right? Top Gun. Probably number one in large part to Kenny Logan's classic danger zone being the soundtrack song. Like that's that's gotta play a part. But Top Gun 86, this movie was huge. This movie solidified Tom Cruise as a staple in American cinema for decades to come. If you don't know the basic plot of Top Gun, I'm not gonna spoil it, I'm just gonna give you the gist. Tom Cruise plays a cocky young pilot who faces great adversity, but despite the odds, he ends up victorious. And this would launch a whole slew of movies by Tom Cruise, right? Movies that really showed off his versatility. For example, Days of Thunder, where Tom Cruise plays a cocky young race car driver who faces great adversity, but despite the odds, he ends up victorious. Or a few good men, where Tom Cruise plays a cocky young lawyer who faces great adversity, but despite the odds, he ends up victorious. Or how about the firm, where Tom Cruise plays a cocky young lawyer who faces great adversity, but despite the odds, he ends up victorious, and then eventually we even get Jerry McGuire, where Tom Cruise plays a cocky young sports agent who faces great adversity, but in the end ends up victorious. Tom Cruise's movies, from Top Gun to like late 90s, it's kind of like the Curious George book series. If you've ever read those to your kids, it's just Curious George goes to a different place. You know, Curious George goes to the zoo. Oh, hilarity ensues. Curious George goes to school. Oh my goodness, a monkey in school. All of Tom Cruise's movies are just like, what if Maverick from Top Gun had a different job? That's just all of Tom Cruise's movies. It's just Maverick, Maverick goes to the law school. Okay, here we go. Maverick drives a car. Tom Cruise, 1986. All right, so 86, it's a big year. If you had, if you turned on the news in 1986, you would have seen some really intense stuff. 86 was kind of like a heavy year. For example, the Chernobyl disaster happened in 1986, the Challenger space shuttle, that was 1986. We were in the very like dead heat of the Cold War, I guess heat, cold doesn't, whatever. We were in the we were in the Cold War, and most people, if you would have taken a poll in 1986, the vast majority of people believed that a nuclear war was imminent within 10 years in 1986. It was a really heavy time. There's this other event that happened in 1986 that you may not be familiar with. Some of you maybe, if you really think back, it didn't really make a lot of headlines, but it's something called the Great Peace March of 1986. The Great Peace March. Does anyone remember the Great Peace March of 1986? No hands. I'll explain why. Here's what it was supposed to be. This was the dream, the vision. The Great Peace March of 1986 was supposed to be this movement where 5,000 people were gonna march from LA all the way to Washington, D.C. Like they were gonna physically march from LA to Washington, D.C. They were gonna start off in the LA Coliseum, they were gonna have this huge rock concert with these big bands, they were gonna be sent off by a hundred thousand people cheering them on their way, they were gonna get all these corporate sponsorships, it was gonna cost $20 million. Big time celebrities were gonna show up and lend their support and keep the movement going. They were gonna go all the way to DC. They were gonna take with them this incredibly sophisticated, like mobile encampment called Peace City. And at Peace City, it was solar powered, it was eco-friendly, there were gonna be hot showers, it was just gonna be like this amazing, amazing thing, and it was gonna be this huge demonstration for global peace. The problem is the Great Peace March never really never really materialized in that way. There weren't 5,000 people at the outset, there were 1,200, which, you know, that's still a good number of people. 1,200 people left LA. It wasn't from a 100,000-plus person crowd at a giant rock concert. About 6,000 people came to cheer them on, but it was at City Hall. They couldn't get the rock concert organized and all that. They ran out of money really fast because the corporate sponsors never showed up, the big-time celebrities never lent their support, and so they they went completely bankrupt before they left California. So they started in LA, they're supposed to go to Washington, they get to the Mojave Desert in California and they're out of money, the whole thing gets disbanded. Most of the people go home. Now there were a few people who stayed behind and said, no, we're gonna see this thing through, we're gonna do this grassroots, and so a few people kept going, but but that was marred by a lot of disaster as well. Mainly they fought a lot amongst each other. And this was like well documented. They fought a lot, they fought about dress code, they fought about their route to get there, they they fought about who should be in charge. They actually held elections in like Peace City, minus the hot showers. They held elections about who would who would run it, who would be in charge. When people found out the results of the elections, they they disagreed with the results, and so they just declared the elections invalid, because you know, America, that's what we do. And and it's just like that's what happened. And so they they get to to Washington, D.C. eventually, the small group that's there, and by the time the Great Peace March was done, many of the people running it were no longer on speaking terms. So you probably haven't heard of the Great Peace March of 1986 because A, it wasn't great, and B, it wasn't peaceful at all. It was like this disaster of fighting and arguing and bickering. And it's amazing how something dreamed up and envisioned in the name of peace can so quickly dissolve into bickering and fighting and just normal human political stuff. The truth of the matter is living at peace with people is hard because people are hard to get along with, right? People are hard to get along. Oh, people are gonna cheer, one person clap for that. That's it one, hey, he's being honest, right? Come on, people are hard to get along with, yeah. People. Some people are really hard to get along with, but but no, in general, people are hard to get along with. It's hard to live at peace with people. But here's the reality: if you look around the room right now, sitting around you, it's not just people, it's the church. The church is people, by the way. The church is not an organization, the church is not an institution, the church is people. When you read the New Testament, when you read Jesus talk about the church, when you read read Paul talk about the church in the New Testament, they're not talking about an institution, a brand, uh, an LLC, a nonprofit, nothing like that. They're talking about the people. The word church actually means the people, the people who belong to Jesus. And and as the people who belong to Jesus, being united, living at peace with one with one another, that's not just some optional pipe dream. Living at peace with one another, that's that's not just something that we should strive for. And man, wouldn't it be great if we really got along? Living at peace with one another is it's a must. It's basically a requirement for us to actually be the church that Jesus dreamed of. In John 17, we've read this several times over the last few weeks. Jesus is praying shortly before he goes to the cross. And in this prayer to God the Father, he says, I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me. So Jesus prays that we would be so united, so together as a group of people, that the world would look at us and they would see what the people who dreamed up the peace march in 1986 were hoping the world would see. They would see people so together, so united, so for each other, so willing to serve one another, so willing to set their differences aside, that the world would go, that has to be real. Jesus must be who he says he is. God must really love people because look at the love and the unity that exists there. That's how united we should be. And here's the reality: that the church doesn't always look like that. But but I will tell you this. The movement of Jesus was not some dreamed up idea that lost steam just a few feet from when it started. The movement of Jesus was was not something that that started strong and then quickly sputtered out. The movement of Jesus has been going for over 2,000 years. It's penetrated virtually every nation in the world, it's changed entire cultures and civilizations, it's changed the entire course of history because it's real. Because Jesus is who he says he is, because Jesus is, he is the Son of God, because Jesus really does love people in a way that the world has never seen before. And if you if you decide to become part of this family, if you decide to become part of the church, not our church, the church, you are joining a family that is marked by a love that the world has no idea how to even process. We are united by the love that Jesus has for us. We're united together. And for the last few weeks, we've been studying what it actually looks like to live together, what it looks like to live united. We've been going through this letter in the New Testament called Ephesians, going through it piece by piece, and we're in this section right now where the the author, Paul, just talks about how united we should be as the church, how we should be so together, just like we've been talking about. And we've been exploring what that really looks like. And basically, here's the gist of it. Just to catch you up, we've been asking a really serious question. Are we actually going to do this? Are we really going to be the church that Jesus dreamed up? Are we really going to be the church that Jesus pictured when he prayed and he viewed this unity that would be uncommon? Are we really going to love each other? Are we really going to care about each other? Are we going to care enough to actually get to know each other, to talk to one another, to find out the name of the person sitting next to us, to pray for each other? Is this actually going to be a place where we can be vulnerable and real and authentic and share life with one another, even when life isn't pretty, even when life is really messy, and know that there is support, there is love, there is grace, there is forgiveness, there is mercy, there is understanding, or is this just an event that we're going to attend? Is this just another thing that we're going to go to? Like we have we have we go to so many other things in life or we have to pretend like it's all fine, we have to put the smile on our face, we have to act like everything's great. Are we going to be an event or are we going to be the church? Are we really going to care about each other? Are we really going to live life together? We have to decide that. It's not about having a church program that makes that happen. It's not about anything like that. It's about us in our hearts actually saying, you know what, I'm going to care about the people around me. I'm going to love these people. I'm going to be committed to this dream that Jesus had of the church being unified. What does that actually look like? And today we actually get to Ephesians chapter 4. I'm going to read the first three verses and then we're going to unpack this together. Talking about unity, Paul said, Therefore, I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have all been called by God. Always be humble and gentle, be patient with each other, making allowance for each other's faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. So there's that word peace. Paul says, make every effort, make every effort to be united, to live at peace with one another. There are a few things in life that require no effort. I got married in 2005, I gained 30 pounds my first year of marriage. I didn't have to work for that. That was so easy. That was the easiest thing I've ever done. I just went, wow, 30 pounds, that happened fast. I just now got back to my premarriage weight. It's been 14 years. Took me 14 years. Took me one year to gain 30. 14 years to lose that 30. But gaining it required no effort. There are things in life that require zero effort. There are, like, I'll give you another example. Conflict. Conflict, bless you. Conflict requires zero effort. You do not have to put work into having conflict. You can, but you don't have to. You can have conflict by doing nothing. By doing absolutely nothing. For example, if you've never tried this, get married. Just get married to somebody. You can get married to a person. I remember this. Megan and I once, this was like, we were probably like dating six months. This actually happened. She looked into my eyes and she literally said out loud, I just can't find anything wrong with you. That was the last time she ever said that. That's never happened since then. And I was like the same way. I was like, oh, me neither. You're just perfect. It's like we're made for each other. You know, culture teaches us through romantic comedies and stuff like that that we're all puzzle pieces and we just have to find that other puzzle piece that we just mesh with. And that's not true. That's not true at all. We're like porcupines shoved into one another. That's that's the reality. That's what a relationship actually is. You know? That's that's real unity right there. Some of you are like, I'm never getting married. Um, some of you are like, I'm never getting married again. Like you've experienced that. Marriage is hard because you'll have conflict. You can marry the person that you think is the most amazing person in the world, and there's no question of whether or not you will have conflict. You will. By sheer proximity alone. Is it worth the conflict? Absolutely. Should you fight through the conflict? Absolutely. Solve it, but there will be conflict. You don't have to work for it, it will just come. If you don't believe me with marriage, some of you guys who are like newlyweds, you've been married for a few months, you're like, no, not us. Okay, have kids. Have children. And just watch the kinds of arguments that I get into with my children. You will not be prepared for the kind of argument you will get into with a two-year-old. Like the things that will actually come out of your mouth. I'm gonna tell you a story. This is real. This happened. I didn't plan for this. This is not in my notes, but this actually happened to me. We went to IHOP together as a family because we got four kids in IHOP. Kids eat free on certain days of the week, and so we go to IHOP a lot. And we go to IHOP, and you know, when you got a bunch of kids, you're trying to get them all situated, and one's in a carrier, and this one's here, and this one's gotta go to the bathroom, and you're just sort of multitasking to this huge degree. And so I'm doing my thing. I'm like, I'm like here, I'm doing all this. And my my oldest holds out his hand. He just goes like this, like, Dad, take this. And I'm like, yeah, okay, whatever. And I reach out my hand and he puts something in my hand, and I look at it, and it's brown, and you know, has the texture of like play-doh. And so I do what any self-respecting parent would do. I smelled it, and you know, guess what it was? And I look at my ear old son and I'm like, Did you just hand me poop? Did you actually just put poop in my hand? And he's like, Well, I didn't know it was poop. And I'm like, what just what just happened? He's like, I don't know, dad. I was walking in and I stepped on something, and then I reached down, I pull it off, and I was like, here, dad. You know? Like, if you don't believe that life will hand you crap, have children. Okay? It will. I mean, look at my year-old, you just hand, you just put poop in my hand. And I'm having this conversation in public at an IHOP. I'm like, you go and you put the poop in the trash and you wash off your hands. I gotta go. Like, I never could have dreamed of having a conversation with someone doing that to me until I had kids. You will not have to work hard for conflict to happen in your life. That's what I'm trying to say. It's just gonna happen. It requires no effort. Gaining weight requires no effort, having conflict. Living at peace with the people around you, that requires great effort. That requires so much commitment, so much effort. And that's what Paul says here.

Right?

He says, make every effort, make every effort. There's other places in the scripture where he says, do everything you can, as much as it depends on you to live at peace with those around you. Sometimes there's things that are not within our control, it doesn't always depend on us, but he says, to whatever degree it depends on you, live at peace with those around you, make every effort. And the reality is, if we're actually gonna be people who live life together, whether you're talking about your marriage, your job, other relationships that you have, dating relationships, friend relationships, the church, for sure, if we're really gonna do life together, conflict is going to arise and we have to make an effort to live in peace. We have to make an effort to live in peace. It's hard though. There's all these different ways that we can try to solve the conflict that we have, the conflict that will eventually come. So, for example, this last week we we did a Facebook Live and just I asked you guys, hey, how are like give some ways that you handle conflict? And you guys are really honest, those of you who answered. We talked about some unhealthy ways, like in my life, uh, breaking an inanimate object. That is that is like a go-to that I'm I'm sorry to admit is true, but there have been many glasses in my house over the last 10 years where I'm having a bad day, and I just take this glass and I look at the wall and I go, there, and then I have to clean it up and it's a big mess. And begging's like, Did you throw a glass? I'm like, Yes, I threw a glass, and then it's it's bad. And I'm just being honest. Many that's happened like five or six times. Glasses, but I buy new ones and it's all okay. You can eat your feelings, you can you can vent, you can do a lot of different things to handle the conflict in your life. Some of you guys shared some really positive ones. You said that, hey, you can listen to people, that's that's big. You shared, hey, go exercise. Somebody put that on. Go exercise, go work out, like let off steam. Definitely done that before. Someone talked about how just you know diffuse it with laughter. Like that's a that's a great idea. Because when my wife and I are fighting, I'm like, hey, let's watch a comedy. Um, you know, let's see how that goes. But but there's all these different ways that you can actually handle the conflict in your life. The reality is you're gonna have to handle it somehow. Some of you though were really honest, and you just said, my number one way of handling conflict is just to avoid it. Is anyone anyone like that? Anyone say, like, I avoid conflict, I'm a conflict avoider? Yeah, okay. Some of you guys aren't being honest, because that is by far the number one way that people handle conflict. And that's something you can read about it, you can research it. The number one way people handle conflict is to just not handle conflict. Is to avoid it, is to walk away. Even some of the things that people will throw out there as positive ways of handling conflict. Go exercise. That's great. You will let off some steam, you'll have some endorphins kick in, you'll feel a little better, but when you get home or you go back to work or wherever you're going, the conflict is still there. Nothing, nothing changed. There's never been a time in my life where where, like, my wife and I are having an argument and I go work out and I come back and she's like, Oh, your pecs look a little bigger. It's all good. You know, it's fine, we're good. We're back to square. No. A lot of the positive ways that we have in our culture, a lot of the positive recommendations for dealing with conflict aren't actually dealing with the conflict at all. It's just a way to avoid the conflict, a way to distract from it. But but if you really want to have peace in your life, if you really want to live at peace, if we're really gonna do this, then you have to handle conflict. And here's why. This is uh this is a I guess probably the most important statement of the morning. Real peace is not the absence of conflict. Real peace is not what happens when you avoid conflict. Real peace is what happens when you Overcome conflict. If you really want to have peace in your home, peace at work, peace in your life, peace in your relationships, if we really want to have peace as a church, it's not going to happen because we become masters of avoiding conflict. It's going to happen because we become masters at handling conflict, at engaging with conflict, and overcoming the conflict that comes our way. We know this because we have Jesus. And we say this a lot. We're Jesus followers. Like I'm a Jesus follower. So Jesus, to me, he's the standard. If I want to look at one person and say, how do you do life? I look at Jesus. And say what you want about Jesus, but he was not afraid of conflict. Jesus was not conflict adverse at all. I'll give you some examples in Mark chapter 3. There's this really interesting story of Jesus healing a man on the Sabbath, which was Saturday. It was a holy day for his people. And he's in the synagogue, so he's in church. It says, Jesus went into the synagogue again and noticed the man with a deformed hand. Since it was the Sabbath, Jesus' enemies watched him closely. If he healed the man's hand, they planned to accuse him of working on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with a deformed hand, Come stand in front of everyone. Then he turned to his critics and asked, Does the law permit good deeds on the Sabbath, or is it a day for doing evil? Is this a day to save life or to destroy it? But they wouldn't answer him. He looked around at them angrily and was deeply saddened by their hard hearts. And then he said to the man, Hold out your hand. So the man held out his hand and it was restored. At once the Pharisees went away and met with the supporters of Herod to plot how to kill Jesus. So, for some background, here's what's happening. Really simple. There was a law about doing work on the Sabbath. The religious leaders, they kind of controlled things, and doing work was forbidden on the Sabbath. And they viewed healing someone as work. They viewed healing, like it they had some crazy laws. These are not laws that God gave them. These are things they kind of came up with on their own, but they were crazy. Things like if it was the Sabbath and you were a doctor and someone showed up to you like seriously wounded, you were allowed to do something that would make sure it would not get worse, but you couldn't actually fix it. That would be considered work. So it's like, well, you know, put a band-aid on it, but don't actually give the person stitches. That would be like what it would be, because that because it's the Sabbath, and we don't want to work on the Sabbath. Like crazy stuff that God never intended. But religion has this way of just getting nuts, getting crazy, getting weird. So Jesus, he's there, he's at the synagogue, here's a man with a deformed hand, he knows what's going on, and he has all the power in the world to heal it. And it really isn't even work for him because it was the spirit that was doing it through him. But but Jesus knows what the Pharisees think, and he knows the trap that he's in. If he wants to, he can just meet the man afterwards and do it privately. That would be the way to do it with no conflict. But what does Jesus do? He calls this man up in front of everyone. And it's so intense. Like, really see the intensity. Before he heals this man, he he turns to his critics and he asks a question they can't answer. I love Jesus. He's the man. He says, No, you answer me this. I know what you're thinking. Is the Sabbath a day for doing evil or a day for doing good? And then it says he stares them down. He looks at them angrily. Just picture Jesus standing up in front of all these people, this poor deformed man with him. This is a man, by the way, who wouldn't have been able to work, wouldn't have been able to provide income for his family because of his deformity. And Jesus looks all these people in the eyes. He just scans the room. And then he heals the man. Right in front of him. And it creates conflict. So much so they go to plot how to kill Jesus. Jesus was not afraid of conflict. He didn't avoid it. He didn't step around it. He walked into it. Another great example would be John chapter 18. We read a little bit from John 17 earlier where Jesus is praying before he gets arrested. This is the story of him being arrested. Verse 1, after saying these things, Jesus crossed to the Kidron Valley with his disciples and he entered a grove of olive trees. Judas, the betrayer, knew this place. Because Jesus had often gone there with his disciples. The leading priests and Pharisees had given Judas a contingent of Roman soldiers and temple guards to accompany him. They're on their way to arrest Jesus. Now with blazing torches, lanterns, and weapons, they arrived at the olive grove. Jesus fully realized all that was going to happen to him. Let's stop there for a second. Last week, if you were here, we talked about what Jesus actually went through, what crucifixion was actually like, what Jesus actually experienced even before he was crucified, the brutality of it, the intensity of it. It says Jesus fully realized everything that was going to happen to him. So what does he do? He stepped forward to meet them. He stepped forward to meet them. I mean, come on. That is not a man afraid of conflict. That is not someone looking to sidestep the issues that he's facing. That's a man who hits it head on. I love Jesus. Jesus is Lord of all. He's called the Prince of Peace. But he's not the Prince of Peace because He lived his life without conflict. He's the Prince of Peace because when conflict came his way, he overcame it. When conflict came his way, he handled it, he dealt with it, and he conquered it. Even death, you want to find something people get conflicted about, look at death. Everyone gets conflicted about death. Jesus conquered death itself. There is no confrontation. There is no issue. There is no hardship that Jesus is not willing to face. And what does he do? He steps forward to meet it. If we're going to be Jesus' followers, if we're going to be people like Jesus, we can't be afraid of the conflict in our lives. We can't be afraid of awkward conversations. We can't be afraid of difficult meetings or or or hardships. We can't be afraid of anything that's going to come our way. We can't be afraid of conflict even amongst one another. It's going to happen. We have to be people bold enough, brave enough, and honestly loving enough to engage with one another even when there's conflict, to deal with it, to handle it. Because real peace does not happen when you avoid conflict. Real peace happens when you overcome conflict. And you cannot overcome something you avoid. Now let's get let's get practical for just a second. We'll wrap up with this. How? How? How do you actually do that? Because it's one thing, it's one thing to say, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna be afraid of conflict anymore, I'm gonna overcome it, I'm gonna deal with it, and then you know you're in your your everyday life and and you're talking to someone and and there's conflict there, it's your boss, it's someone you work with, someone who works for you, maybe, it's a spouse, it's a girlfriend, it's a boyfriend, it's a good friend, it's a family member, right? It's someone even here at the church, whatever it is. You actually have that conflict and go, okay, I'm not gonna avoid it, I'm gonna be like Jesus, Prince of Peace, overcome conflict. What do you do? You just tell them off. That's what you do. Everyone loves that. You just really speak your mind. That's that's the most important thing. No, actually, what you do is you get on Facebook and you post a sort of a sort of veiled statement that like they know who you're talking about, they know, but they can't prove it. So that's how you handle conflict. No. What's really cool actually is, and this is why scripture is so awesome, is Paul gives us the recipe right here. We'll go back to Ephesians chapter 4, verses 2 and 3. Always be humble and gentle, be patient with each other, making allowance for each other's faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. So before he says make every effort to live at peace, he gives us these three ingredients it's humility, gentleness, and patience. When you have conflict in your life, if you will approach that conflict with humility, gentleness, and patience, you will you will see wonderful things happen. So let's talk about that really quickly. Humility. It's interesting because in the Roman world, humility was not viewed as a trait you would want. There's actually no word in the Greek language that this was written in for humility that's positive. There was no concept in the culture at that time of humility that it was something you should strive for, something you should esteem to have. Like you should be a person with humility. Humility was weakness. Humility was something to be despised. Like we live in a time in a time when you can say, Yeah, I want to see humility in my leaders. And when one of our leaders in America tweets something that's really braggadocious, we get upset. We're like, they shouldn't do that. Come on, have some humility. The leaders in Jesus' time actually built giant statues of themselves and told people to worship them. Like they actually did that. So you want to talk about humility, that that wasn't even on the radar in that culture. There was no concept of humility that was good until the church. Like actually, Christianity is what made humility something to desire. Because to really be a Christian, to really come to Jesus, so to speak, you have to be willing to admit that you can't do it. That's the whole difference between our faith and the faith of other faiths. Every other faith in the world is about what can you do to earn God? How holy can you be? How good can you be to finally earn your way to holiness, to acceptance, whatever. Christianity is like, can you just admit that you can't do it? Can you come to the end of yourself and say, hey, I don't have what it takes. I'm not good enough. I'm not strong enough. I don't have enough willpower. I don't I don't know enough. I'm not wise enough. I'm not self-controlled enough. I can't, I can't do it. And then God goes, Yep, let me do it for you. That's our faith. That's humility. To live with humility means you have the ability, and this is huge. This is rare. To live with humility means you have the ability to say, I'm sorry. Or I was wrong and not follow that up with a but. Not I'm sorry, but and then you say something that actually justifies everything that you did and shows that you're not really sorry, you think the other person should be sorry, or I was wrong, but and then you go on this long rant of justifying everything that you did that that shows that you really don't think it was wrong, you think it was necessary. With humility, you can go into any conflict and you can actually say, I'm sorry. I did not think of that. I will do my best to think of that in the future, but I just I didn't think of that. I'm sorry, I didn't I didn't realize that. If I could go back, I would do it differently. And I'm gonna do my best in the future to make sure that that doesn't happen. Not I'm sorry, but, but just I'm sorry. And yeah, thank you for bringing that to my attention. If you'll do that, if you'll practice that, someone comes to you, they have beef with you, they're like, you know, I'm really frustrated. You go, you know what, you're right, I'm sorry. Like people go, what? I don't excuse me? You know, they're waiting for the but. I'm sorry, but you and no, no, no. Humility just means you can say you're sorry, you can say you're wrong. If you approach conflict with humility, you'll see you'll see peace. Number two, gentleness. Some translations say meekness. Now we hear meek, we think weak. But gentleness, it's not it's not weakness at all. In fact, in in the Greek language, the word for gentle is attached to this word prais, and it's it's not a word that has any connotation of weakness, it's a word that has a lot of connotations related to control. So gentleness is really about control, not about a lack of strength. What it really means is power under control. To be gentle means you're powerful, you're under control. In fact, that same word that we could translate gentle was the word they would use for a domesticated animal. Meaning an animal that had been domesticated, had come under control. And it's so funny that that's actually something from their language, because when I think about gentleness, I have this picture in my mind of a dog that I had when I was a kid named King. King was a big collie, like a lassie, big giant collie. And he was my dog. And uh, and my little brother also had a dog, a pug. You know, like one of those dogs that shouldn't exist. Like it wouldn't, it wouldn't make it in the real world for like a minute. But we had this dog, and I have my collie king, and Aaron has his pug named Baby, and Baby was horrible. Baby was not intelligent, um, not fun. Baby was crazy, just like all over the place all the time, just a mess. And and baby drove King nuts. King was like four or five years old, you know, so in dog years, he's like, he's elderly, and uh and he just wasn't having it. He just wasn't having it. So baby would always be biting at him and jumping and yapping and all this stuff. And every once in a while, King would get to this point where he would lose it. He's like, that's enough. And he would always do the same thing. It was hilarious. He would reach over and he would swallow Baby's entire head, just completely and totally have her head, whole head in his mouth, and you would look and you would see this big collie and the body of this little pug coming out of his mouth, and the body was like doing all this kind of stuff and like trying to escape, and and then eventually baby would just like, okay. And King would look at us with his eyes, and he would be like, Can I? Can I please? You just give me the word and it's done. I can take care of this whole thing for you right now. I know you guys regret this decision. You know, come on. And you know, we never gave him the go-ahead, so baby, baby, she lived. But he didn't hurt her, he never injured her. But he could have. Like in a second, it's over. He showed his power, but he kept it completely under control. That's what it means to be gentle. If you want to have peace in a conflict, that means there's gonna be times, there will be times where if you wanted to, you could just completely and totally like like give it to the other person. Like verbally, you could just you could undress them. You could say, hey, you know, this and you did this, and you have this problem and this issue, and you always do this, and it's because of this, this, you could just bring it. You could literally destroy their confidence. You could pick apart and focus on every insecurity they have, every mistake they've made, but if you're gentle, you won't do it. If you're gentle, you will, you will hold back. You might have this whole mountain of evidence, this whole mountain of accusation, and all of it might be accurate, but if you have gentleness, you will you will keep that under control. And rather than unleash that on the person, which is only going to result in them digging their heels in and becoming prideful or defensive or whatever, instead of creating resentment, you just keep that stuff to yourself. You share only what needs to be shared, and you'll see peace. If you have gentleness, if you have humility, if you have patience. Patience is often translated in the Bible, long-suffering, which is a great way to talk about patience. You know, people are hard. And, you know, newsflash, I don't think that as a church, we're really good at this. This is kind of our thing, like we're messy, but you're hard. Each of us, we're hard. Look in the mirror, and that that is a hard person to live with. Because you have to live with yourself. And be honest, how many of you at some point in time have wished you could move away from yourself for a little while? You know, like, yeah. You're not you're not as easy to live with as you might like to believe. We all have our stuff. And we have to remember as as Jesus followers, remember this defines everything in our lives that God is long suffering with us. God is so patient. God would have given up on you so much, like so long ago, if he had your patience. If God had your patience, you'd be done. We'd be done. Like the earth, done, gone. We would give up on one another, on our own selves, so much faster than God ever would, because he doesn't do that. To have the patience of God means that you look at people and you believe that they're still good. You believe that there's still a chance, you believe that there's something redeemable. Having the patience of God means that we look at one another and we say, Yeah, we have our issues, but you know what? We're not done growing yet. And God still has work to do. And so I'm not gonna lose sight of the fact, I'm not gonna treat this person like a finished product when they're not one. And look, I know that logistically speaking, that's kind of hard to live out in the real world because some of us, some of us are employers, some of us have to let people go. Some of us might be in a relationship with someone, and and I'm not talking about marriage, I'm talking about like a dating relationship, and it's not the right relationship, and you might have to break up with that person. I'm not saying that there aren't times that we have to part ways for some reason or another, but that's a very different thing than in your heart of hearts giving up on someone and saying that they're they're they're useless, they're worthless, they're no good. God never does that. He doesn't do that. And we can't do that with one another. If you want to see peace in your life, practically speaking, here in the church, your relationships, your job, humility, humility, gentleness, patience, long-suffering. If those words mark the way you approach other people, you will be someone who sees peace happen in the midst of your conflict. And worship team, you guys can make your way out. We'll wrap up. I just want to close by saying this. I love you guys. I love this church. I mean that. I love this place so much. And I love the people here. I love walking around on Sundays and talking to you guys. I love bumping into people. I love it when I love it whenever I bump into someone that I haven't seen in a few weeks. And I have a chance to remember how awesome God is and the fact that He's brought so many incredible people here. And it's really weird for me. Sometimes I stand on this stage and I look around and I see some of you, and there's a part of me that wants to stop giving the message and just be like, ah, you! I haven't talked to you in months. How are you doing? And that would be weird. Yeah, it's all good. I thought that was like the gong show from back in the day, and I'm my time is done. I gotta go. All right, guys, it's been great. See you later. Here we go. Um, I will hurry up though. I love you guys. And and I want to bring this back. We're talking about our own lives, practically, your marriage, your work, all that kind of stuff. That's great. But let's talk about ourselves as the church real quick. And why don't we do this? Let's go ahead and stand up if you're able. We're gonna finish with worship. Around you right now are brothers and sisters. And I can promise you that if you would draw a circle that includes about the closest five people to you in any given direction, you would be shocked at how much you disagree with that person on a variety of topics. Like you'd be shocked if you actually took time to really get to know that person. And I encourage you to do that. Start doing that. Start with the people you sit near. Why not? Like you might ask him, oh, tell me about this, and they're gonna say things like, oh, you're one of those. Okay, okay. But we're the church. We're the church. Will there be conflict? Yes. Will there be things in each other's lives that we don't agree with? Absolutely. Will there be decisions that I make that you don't agree with? Absolutely. We're the church, we're people. But we can love each other through anything. We can serve each other no matter our differences, no matter our our backgrounds. But we have to be people. If we're really gonna be the church God's created us to be, and I believe He's created us to do something special, brought us together for a special purpose. If we're really gonna do that, we have to be mature enough to say, you know what, we're gonna have conflict. It will not always be easy. But I'm am I am I in this? Am I in this faith? Am I in this family because it's easy, or am I in it because it's important? I don't care what conflict arises, I don't care what issues pop up in your life, in your family's life, I can tell you this. There's nothing that you could have be like exposed that would shock the people in this room. Not all of them. We we talked about that last week. If you weren't here, we all stood up together and you look around the room, like, oh, we all get it, we've all been there. But I'm committed to having peace with you. Let's be committed to having peace together. Let's actually live out the words that Paul wrote. Like, like the church would be so different if we just did what the Bible said. Just so simple. Make every effort to live it at peace with those around you. Which means that when when you find out that someone disagrees with you, when you find out, oh, I don't like that, I don't like that decision. You know, we have someone getting baptized and the two people getting baptized in the second service, and believe it or not, when we move the baptisms from there to there, people got mad. You know? They're like, I liked it better over there. Okay. Well, it's not there anymore. You know? Like, that's gonna happen. But let's let's be committed to peace. On the front end, let's say, hey, whatever happens, I these are my brothers, these are my sisters. I love these people. We have common ground, we share the same spirit, we have the same God, we have the same faith. Let's love each other, and let's remember that we love each other because he loved us first. And I'll close with that. If you're here this morning and you've never experienced the love of God, if you don't know what it's like to have peace with God, that only happens through Jesus. Because he himself is our peace, He has He has been the peace offering to restore our relationship with God. And there is a love that is waiting for you. There is a peace that is waiting for you when you have an acceptance with God the Father through Jesus that you have never experienced before. Do not hold back, do not wait, accept him today. Say, God, I'm yours, Jesus, I believe in you. Sign up to get baptized, go all in because I'm telling you, he's all in with you, and it's awesome. But we have to be all in with him, like he's all in with us. We've got to be all in with each other because he's all in with every one of us. So I just want to say that I love you, I am committed to peace, and that as a church, we will make every effort to be united. We will make every effort to live at peace with one another. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much for this amazing family. Thank you so much for this place. Thank you so much for every person in this room. Gosh, I love these people. Lord, I pray that you you bless them. God, I pray for those of us who are hurting. And Lord, I do want to lift up Elmer and his children and other families in our church who have experienced loss recently. God, help us surround our brothers and sisters with what they need, with the support they need when they need it most. God, give us the courage as brothers and sisters to reach out when we need that help. To not keep that to ourselves, but to go and share that with someone. As we can help each other. Lord, bless us this week. Help us walk out of this place and take the love that you've given us to the people around us. Help us live at peace with those that we work with, those that we live with. We love you, Lord, and we ask all this in your name, Jesus. Amen. Love you guys.