Welcome to our deep dive into Proverbs. We are slowing down and looking at the major themes we see in Proverbs and talking about them. We talked about words. We talked about the battle between humility and pride. What Godly success looks like. Last week Sam talked about the fact that we can’t hide who we really are, it comes out. Remember the one statement he kept repeating? You simply can’t hide your heart. It comes out, it is seen, it is heard, and it is felt. Sam was bringing out another major theme we see in Proverbs. The most important thing you can do is deal with your heart condition.
Today I will talk about another theme all through Proverbs. Relationships. Solomon wrote a lot about living in relationships. Relationships like marriage, with your kids, your parents, and even how to get along with yourself. Solomon wrote in detail about how words impact your relationships. He explained how money impacts friendships. He gives instructions on how to heal a relationship. Again, it’s all through Proverbs.
Here is what we need to understand about relationships. Your spiritual maturity can be measured. It’s measured in how you respond in your relationships. That simply means, how you get along with others is one the main indicators of how spiritually mature you really are. Why? Because responding well to people consistently is the hardest thing you will ever do. To respond to others well demands that you and I have several things in our lives. Things like, love, things like being empowered by God’s grace, things like maturity.
Think about your relationships. What is in people around you? Hurts, wounds, selfishness, and sins. What is in you? Hurts, wounds, selfishness, and sins. If that is true, think through what happens when you marry someone. What happens when you go to church with people? What happens when you go to work with people? What happens when your kid goes to school and plays on a sports team with other kids? What happens when you have to deal with other parents, teachers, and coaches in school? Here is what happens. People who are hurt, wounded, selfish, and sinful clash together. We call that community. Another name for it is marriage. Work. Church. School. Family. To believe you can find and live in a community and everything will be perfect is very naïve. To believe you will be in a relationship with someone and you won’t be hurt is very naive.
Continue to think through this with me. How people get along in friendships, marriage, family, church, and at work shows you how spiritually mature that community is, it shows how spiritually mature the individuals are.
That’s why scripture says,
The whole Law is summed up in one commandment: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” GNT Ephesians 5:14
No matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. MSG 1 Corinthians 13:3
As a quick recap before we go further, the first thing I want you to see about relationships is that how you get along with others is the main indicator of how spiritually mature you really are. Why? Because responding well to people consistently is the hardest thing you will ever do.
The second thing I want you to see is why relationships are so hard. They are hard because we are all filled with hurts, wounds, selfishness, and sin. And our relationships have a way of exposing all of our insecurities and immaturities.
The third thing I want to say is, relationships have a way of starting out great but over time they get messy. Vacations are great on day one – then you have to drive home with sand in your shorts. Marriage on the wedding day is awesome – then you have to clean the house and pay the bills. The first day of kindergarten makes the parents cry – and then the bullying begins around the lunch table.
When Karen and I dated, we thought it was a great idea to get married. She’s drop-dead beautiful. She is one of the nicest people I have ever met. She is extremely responsible. What could go wrong? She’s a Christian, we went to church together, and it’s a no-brainer.
Let me share. We got married and discovered going to sleep at night meant two different things to both of us. I thought going to bed meant you go to sleep. Apparently, and I did not know this, but going to bed to Karen actually meant, it’s time to talk more. The thing is no one told me about this. She asked me, “Are you going to sleep?” I said, “Yes, that’s what bedtime means. I go to bed to sleep. It’s what people do at bedtime.”
Let’s back up, you think, let’s get married, what could go wrong? Actually, a lot. Bedtime could go wrong. Relationships have a way of starting clean and getting messy. And then you must decide how you will respond.
Today I want to give you the greatest relationship principle you will need when relationships get messy. But I will tell you, it can be hard, so hard, you probably won’t be able to do it without being in a relationship with Jesus.
If you are sensible, you will control your temper. When someone wrongs you, it is a great virtue to ignore it. GNT Proverbs 19:11
Same verse different translation.
Sensible people control their temper; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense. NIV Proverbs 19:11
Same verse different translation.
Smart people know how to hold their tongue; their grandeur is to forgive and forget. MSG Proverbs 19:11
The relationship principle is this, for relationships and communities to thrive, and be healthy, everyone involved will have to absorb hurt and give back love. And because we are all filled with wounds, hurts, selfishness, and sin, the last thing we want to do is absorb hurt and give back love.
To be clear, when I say, ‘absorb hurt’, I am not talking about physical or emotional abuse of any kind. I am not talking about an employment situation where you need to fire someone because of their consistent bad choices. I am not talking about being in a relationship with someone with addictions that require tough boundaries. Lastly, I am not talking about dating someone. Dating isn’t about putting up with someone who hurts you. Dating is about discovering if you and the other person can bring their best to each other. If they can’t bring their best to you, you don’t absorb it, you say bye-bye. In general, I am talking about the normal relationships we all live in.
For relationships and communities to thrive, and be healthy, everyone involved will have to absorb hurt and give back love. And if you can’t do that, there will be drama, tension, guilt, hurt, constant complaining, and arguing.
I want to give you three examples of how this works. These are real-life examples we have dealt with at MRC.
Example 1. Marriage, ‘I’m not getting what I want.’
Jesus told us, “Not everyone is mature enough to live a married life. It requires a certain aptitude and grace.” MSG Matthew 19:11
Do you see the ‘aptitude and grace’ part? That means you have the ability to absorb hurt and give back love. Marriage is made up of two very different people who both want the same thing. They both want to be accepted, loved, and celebrated by the other person. What is the challenge? How the husband feels accepted, loved, and celebrated is different from how the wife feels accepted, loved, and celebrated.
The best marriages are the marriages that understand this and live it out. The marriages that struggle the most refuse to understand this and make any changes. How your husband wants to be loved is different from how your wife wants to feel loved. To have a great marriage you must very quickly understand this and love them the way they need to be loved.
But most don’t. In general, many folks tend to expect more from their spouses than they give their spouses. We begin to keep ‘the list’ of how we are outperforming them. We think, ‘When you do what I want, then I will give you want, maybe.’ Then we tell ourselves, ‘I’m not getting what I want, so I will stop communicating, or I will put them down in public, or I will make them earn my love, or complain to them until I get what I want.’ What happens, when both people do that, they are not accepting, loving, and celebrating each other. The marriage begins to fall apart. They either get a divorce, or they stay together and are miserable.
Here is what spiritual maturity looks like in marriage. While you are not getting what you want, you are accepting, loving, and celebrating your spouse the way they need to be accepted, loved, and celebrated. Honestly, you won’t be able to do that without a deep connection with God’s love and grace.
Marriage reveals how spiritually mature everyone is. Why? Because marriage is hard and can get messier over time.
That’s why scripture says,
It is foolish to speak scornfully of others. If you are smart, you will keep quiet. GWT Proverbs 11:12
When someone wrongs you, it is a great virtue to ignore it. GNT Proverbs 19:11
Example 2. Raising kids in school with music, sports, teachers, coaches, and other parents.
If you are walking through this, you know, you are absolutely maxed out. That means as parents, you are exhausted. You are running from work, to practice, to games and concerts. In the middle of that, you have to deal with dentist appointments, family get-togethers, church, and parents getting older, and you can’t balance it all. You used to have time to hang out with friends, but now you just want to make it to lunch without something bad happening.
You feel bad because you can’t keep up. Your kids are growing up, and part of growing up is they wrestle with insecurities and anxiety with friends, their spot on the team, getting a job, driving, and dating. In the middle of all the chaos, in your opinion, the coach, the teacher, will probably never be fair to your kid – right? Because your kid should get ‘the spot.’ And anything you try to get your kids to do, like empty the dishwasher, is like you expect them to climb Mount Everest.
I remember hearing my daughter cry in the shower after a game because of the coach. I remember hearing my daughter come home terrified for weeks that she may be cut from the team. I remember lying next to my daughter praying that I could take her pain from her.
Do you know how hard it is to absorb the hurt that someone gave your kid and give back love? And yet, that is what is needed for a healthy community. Don’t you think somehow that doesn’t apply to your kids in school? Let’s be real, no other parents are absorbing anything and they sure aren’t giving back love. Why should you? Why bother living like that, it won’t make any difference anyway – right?
One of the decisions Karen helped me make was, we aren’t going to chirp. We are going to support our kids, support the other kids, never complain and be negative. We were going to be positive with everyone. Even with the teachers and coaches – and I still remember their names.
The relationships around your kids can reveal how spiritually mature everyone is. Why? Because the relationships are hard and get messier over time. Our responses reveal what is in us.
That’s why scripture says,
It is foolish to speak scornfully of others. If you are smart, you will keep quiet. GWT Proverbs 11:12
When someone wrongs you, it is a great virtue to ignore it. GNT Proverbs 19:11
Example 3. Marriage, parents, and guilt.
I have met several young couples. One of the challenges of being young and starting a new family is how to deal with pulling away from your parents. When you are newly married, in general, you are still deeply involved with your parents, so life and holidays are no big deal. Then kids come and sometimes the family vacations together. It’s an awesome time for everyone. However, when kids get older or when life gets busier, that relationship will need to change a little. And not all families deal with that change well.
The parents feel like they see the kids less. The kids feel like they can’t keep up with life and are tired. Healthy families roll with it. Healthy families ask each other what is going on so they can support each other. Healthy families never make each other feel bad for how life is unfolding. However, that’s not what always happens. Sometimes, the parents keep score of how much time they have with their kids. The most unhealthy parents drop guilt to make their kids do what they want. Then the kids feel that guilt and feel terrible. The problem with guilt is, that it’s powerful and it works. However, it’s toxic. The more you use it, it will, over time, damage the relationship and it will end and end badly.
And here is a young couple’s challenge. To be a healthy family requires them to create their own home and pull away, which means spending less time with, their parents while at the same time, feeling guilt because they are pulling away from their parents. As a young couple, it’s super hard to walk through. To be a healthy parent requires the parents to make a life adjustment. You move from parenting to loving. You move from having kids to doing what you can to support your kids having kids. Instead of expecting them to get on your page, you now need to get on their page.
This relationship between parents and the kids getting older can reveal how spiritually mature everyone is. Why? Because that adjustment is hard.
That’s why scripture says,
It is foolish to speak scornfully of others. If you are smart, you will keep quiet. GWT Proverbs 11:12
When someone wrongs you, it is a great virtue to ignore it. GNT Proverbs 19:11
Relationships reveal your spiritual maturity in how you respond to people. Why? Because relationships are hard and get messier over time. Responding well to people consistently, over time, is the hardest thing you will ever do.
For relationships and communities to thrive, and be healthy, everyone will have to absorb hurt and give back love. And because we are all filled with wounds, hurts, selfishness, and sin, the last thing we want to do is absorb hurt and give back love. In fact, most people feel like people and relationships have worn them out. It’s almost like we give up. Do you feel like that? Do you find it hard to have the desire to absorb hurt and give back love – again? Do you feel like people and relationships have worn you down so badly that you don’t even want to try?
The desire and the passion and the power in you to absorb hurt and give back love is found when you remember what Jesus has done for you.
Scripture says,
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. NIV Ephesians 4:32
If you refuse to absorb hurt and give back love, you don’t understand Christianity. You don’t understand what Jesus did for you. You don’t understand your sin. You don’t fully understand God’s forgiveness. He has wiped your guilty charges clean. And every we ignore Him, if we ask, God forgives us. Every time we sin, if we ask, God forgives us. Every time we are lazy and indifferent about pursuing Him, if we ask, God forgives us. Because of what Jesus did for you, you will never experience what you deserve.
What it means to be a Christian, to be a Christ follower, means I will do for others what Jesus has done for me. And in that process of absorbing hurt and giving back love, you become more like Christ.
Let’s close with this. You can measure your spiritual maturity. Look at the relationships you are in. Are they life-giving or are they filled with strife? Even if there is drama around you, how are you at absorbing hurt and giving back love – consistently? What comes out of your mouth, encouragement or guilt? Do you remember how someone has wronged you and keep it to use against them later?
The greatest relationship principle we find in scripture is absorbing hurt and giving back love. Why? Because that is what God consistently does for you.