Let's open a prayer. Father, we thank you for your great loving kindness to us. Thank you for what we heard this morning. And we pray that you would help us to be a church that accepts truth and lives by truth. And we pray that you would help us during this time together. I thank you for these men and women and for their desire to follow you. And I pray that you might use this time to strengthen their marriages and their parenting. And we pray all of this in your name, Jesus, amen. Just a couple of announcements I wanted to make Before we got into the lesson and the first one is you heard pastor Mentioned about the couples retreat save the date coming up Patty and I when we were first married were part of a church that Went to every Wilds men's retreat, women's retreat, and couples retreat. And every time the Wilds had one, I'm not sure that the church had their own, but the Wilds always has those. And as I said last week, we were so poor we couldn't pay attention. I had no idea how we would be able to go. But God provided that for us every single time. And I think for the past 52 years that we've been married, we have hardly missed a couple's retreat somewhere. Some of those we've been speaking at, but we couldn't miss those. But my point is early on in our marriage, that was so helpful. And you might say, well, there are only four sessions. How can that transform our marriage? You would be surprised what the Lord does in bringing one or two things out. I just pulled out a notebook this weekend of collections of things over the years. And it's a notebook about this thick. of just page after page of notes and sayings and things, and then I would categorize them into parenting and being a husband and spiritual leadership. And a lot of that input came from couples conferences and men's retreats. And God enabled us to go to men's retreats, women's retreats, couples' retreats, and we rarely missed one. I don't think we missed any in the first 10 or 15 years of our marriage. And it was so, so helpful because it kept bringing us back to a standard and reminding us of things that we perhaps already knew but had forgotten and weren't practicing well. And I just encourage you make that a matter of prayer that God would provide for you to be able to go to that and find somebody else ahead of time to take care of the kids so that you can go up there and spend that time with each other. And I just really, really want to encourage you to do that. The second housekeeping thing is a correction. I mentioned last week about one of our daughters, her fiance said, what are your parents like when they fight? Patty reminded me it wasn't her fiance, it was somebody she dated previous to my fiance, so I don't want to color my son-in-law. with that. The third thing I want to mention, and you'll see on the screen the homepage of Sermon Audio. If you did not see the first two of these, where we did Foundations for Parenting over in the auditorium before the first 10 class, I really encourage you to go back there, and here's how you can quickly find them. If you go to Sermon Audio here and click Sermons by Speaker, and then come down to Jim Berg, whoops, that's Alan Benson. That's Alan Kearns. Goodness. All right, I'll do it this way. Okay, there. So they're the most recent ones on my stream there that Faith Baptist puts up, I don't put them up. But last week's commitment matters is there. The second one down is the parenting number two, and the first one is parenting one. So I really would encourage you, if you didn't get one and two, or you weren't here last week, to go back and get caught up on that, and it will help you know where we are today. Okay, does everybody have a handout? You need to pass around the attendance sheet. Oh, that's right, we have an attendance sheet. Okay, you make sure that gets back up here at the end. We talked last week about commitment matters and this week we want to talk about communication matters. And let's see, I need a handout. The second bullet on the first page says God's principles are critical Well, let me back up even further. The first bullet. Most people's biggest problem is they don't know how to solve their problems. What are the rest of the handouts? Are there more? Are there more handouts? Okay. If one of you guys could help. Thank you, Peter. Getting those out. Raise your hand if you need a handout. If we run out, maybe couples could share, but we should have enough. Anybody else need one? In this society, everybody wants a handout. I need a handout here. We'll get one to you. Honestly, I mean, we talked about this a lot at the dinner table with our teenage daughters. Just reminding them most people's problem is they don't know how to solve their problems. All of us have problems. And the difference between wisdom and foolishness, and foolishness is trying to solve problems apart from God, is that the Bible speaks into every kind of problem we can possibly have. And we want to know how to solve problems. The second bullet on your handout says God's principles are critical not only for your marriage but for your parenting. If you begin operating by these principles, living by them, you will bring them into your parenting and you will teach your children. We spoke a lot about words. Even when the kids were in elementary school and preschool, we would say, you must be kind to your sister. You must be kind to that person. You just have little phrases you repeat all the time. You must be kind. You must obey. And being kind was one of them. And we focused a lot on their words. I remember our oldest daughter, when she was in fifth grade, when she got home from school and I got home from work, she said, Dad, I really need help with my tongue. And you know how nice and kind fifth grade girls can be to each other? I mean, they can really get at each other. And she said, my friends and I are, We get together at recess and at lunch, and they just talk about these other two girls, and it's not kind. And she said, Dad, I started joining in, and Dad, I need help with my tongue. And so I said, well, honey, you're fifth grade. It's about time for you to learn how to do a proverb study. So she'd already been doing daily devotions, I said, here's what I want you to do. There are 31 days in a month, and generally there are 31 chapters in Proverbs. I want you to read one chapter a day, and you don't have to pay attention to anything in there except the verses that have to do with tongue or words or speech. And I want you, in your journal, she had a notebook, I want you to write out the verse. You can underline it in your Bible, but I want you to write it out. Now, why do I want her to write it out? It slows her down. It's got to go through her brain again. I consider written homework a speed bump in the road. It slows you down and makes you think. And so I had her write down, and I said, when you get done with this month, you will have your own journal of all of the verses and proverbs on the tongue. And what I'm also doing is teaching how to take any topic, and there are lots of them. the sluggard, friendships, finances. There are just a lot of topics in Proverbs. And I said, by the end of the month, I want you to have picked out five of those verses and memorize them. And so God has something to use to remind you when you're in those situations again. So she did that. And the memorization is critical with your kids. You can't go to the library and check out a book that isn't there. And the Holy Spirit can't use scripture to guide your thinking if you haven't already put it in your head. And scripture memory needs to be just a lifelong process. And so you're not only bringing these principles of communication into your marriage, but you're bringing them into your parenting. When she was in seventh grade, another time she came to me and she said, we talk many times between fifth grade and seventh grade. But in seventh grade, she came and she said, Dad, It's back, I'm starting to get a critical tongue again. And I've gone through my verses and Proverbs and I think I kind of wore them out. What else can I do? And I said, well, what I want you to do is read James 3 every day. and memorize 13 to 18 of James 3. And so she did that for a couple of weeks. But you're constantly taking your kids back to scripture that God has used in your own life and that you're aware of. So it's not just for marriage, although we've been talking a lot about marriage, but also for your parenting. And I didn't give this flow before, and some of the things are, this is on your handout. The anatomy of a conflict. Somebody's action, the other party's action can either be a sinful action, you find out your spouse is into porn, or using cutting words, or physical assault, or gambling, or a critical spirit, or there's a failure from human weakness like forgetfulness. Not every problem is a sin problem. We just, we forget to do stuff. We forget to go, to get the milk on the way home from work. We forget to call our wife that it's going to be late, that we're going to be late. There's a normal forgetfulness that goes into life that we want to improve on, certainly. And that poses a threat of some kind. Threatens, when interpreted rightly or wrong, we interpret everything. Our kids interpret stuff. And we interpret everything, anything our spouse does, we interpret that. And we may read the best into it, we may read the worst into it, depending on what's going on in our heart right now. And so much of parenting is helping your children interpret things. Like a little child memorizing Psalm 23, he leads me beside distilled waters. He doesn't know what still waters are. The closest thing in his mind is distilled waters. And it's so funny what kids say because they interpret from their perspective, their worldview, and they often get it wrong. And that's what makes it so funny and so cute. It's not so funny and cute when adults misinterpret or read the wrong thing into somebody else's actions. All of us are interpreters. We interpret everything somebody says and everything somebody does. The threat is interpreted rightly or wrongly as a threat to the territory of another and unfulfilled expectations or a violation of rights and that then leads to some kind of a reaction. And the choice is to respond with fleshly passion of the moment or biblical priorities and principles. And what we want to do is talk about those principles today. Last week, we talked about these stages of conflicts. And I'm not going to repeat those, but I want to go through several principles here as a result of those. some strategies for handling conflict, and the first one is learn to identify and address conflict in its earliest stages. Now, I'm not saying be picky about everything somebody says, but if there starts to be some tension, you need to start talking right then. Dr. Bob Senior used to say, you have to have a little trouble to avoid big trouble. And sometimes we let things build and build and build, and now we have big trouble. And we don't, you know, if everything's going well at home, while we got this tension going on, everything's going well at home, we don't want to bring up the problem and ruin the fact that everything's going well. And when it's not going well, it's going badly, and we don't want to bring it up then because it'll make it even go more badly. And so I used to tell the student leaders, room leaders, I said, when do we address a problem? I said, any time is a good time that's not a bad time. So what would be a bad time in marriage to bring up a problem? 10 p.m. Pardon? 10 p.m. Yes. Yeah, 10 p.m., that's exactly right. 10 stretches to one then. And it doesn't end well. So when people are tired, when is another time? Right when he walks through the door and him and you and the kids attack him. Daddy, daddy, daddy, I need this. And daddy, will you talk to me about this? And she's been waiting. When he walks through the door, just give him a little bit of time. Dr. Fremont, the former Dean of Education at Bob Jones, he's with the Lord. He did a lot of marriage conferences, and when he got Alzheimer's, he willed us his speaking schedule for the next three years. That's how we got into speaking at couples' conferences. But he used to say, when he comes home, don't attack him with problems. Feed the brute first. And talk to him after the meal. So any time is a good time. It's not a bad time. And don't worry about messing up a good time. We need to solve the tension issues. Then, secondly, never address conflict without first examining yourself. And passages for that, Proverbs 13.10, only by pride cometh contention. Proverbs 28.25, he that is of a proud heart stirreth up strife. Luke 645, a good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil. And I hope when you're reading your Bible, you're thinking when you're reading that, when you read a passage like Luke 645, a good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good. God, do I have a good heart or do I have this evil heart that's bringing out evil things? Where am I? God is speaking to us through his word and we need to examine it rightly. We need to examine ourselves. If any man be overtaken in a fall, you that are spiritual, that are walking in the spirit, restore such a one in a spirit of meekness. And Matthew 7, 3 to 5 says, why behold this, the mote, the speck that is in your brother's eye, and you don't take the log out of your own eye. First remove the log out of your own eye, then you'll be able to see clearly to remove the speck out of. your brother's eye. So there's always this call for your own self-examination before you address a conflict. Your goal is not to win an argument, but it's to gain agreement together, and we'll talk about how to do that in a little bit. Learn and practice biblical principles of communication. And Before we get that, this is not on your notes. If you want this, you can take a picture of the screen. If you're wronged, just some real important principles here. Show genuine concern for the spiritual condition of the one who wronged you. If your husband or your wife is, being fleshly critical or something of that nature. You got to see beyond whatever the attacks seem to be. You need to see my spouse is struggling in her walk with God right now or his walk with God because a spirit-filled person wouldn't be saying that. Now that's not a time to to preach a message to the other person right then, but it is a time to acknowledge yourself. My spouse is struggling. I don't want to add more fuel to the fire that is already burning in their soul in a fleshly way. And the same thing with our kids. We can, by our critical spirit, by the way we talk to them, by our attitude, we can make it even more discouraging. That's why Ephesians 6 says, fathers, provoke not your children to wrath. And that's by the way we talk to them. They can come up with enough wrath on their own. We don't need to fuel that fire. So show genuine concern for the spiritual condition of the one Take the problem immediately to God. Your first impulse, whenever you're in a tense moment, is you have got to have a conversation with God. God, I could really mess this up right now. Please help me. I call those fire extinguisher prayers. You just, you see a little fire building and you've got to say, Lord, help. I need your grace. Help me to respond right. Do not in any way show an unloving spirit. Do not in any way show an unloving spirit. Do not in any way dwell on the insult to you. We can take those things and go over them again and again and again in our minds. When I'm talking to people about the necessity of meditation, people will say, I'm just not good at meditating. I say, oh, no, no, no, no, no. Do you know how to worry? That is meditation. It is meditation on the wrong thing. and this kind of going over and rehearsing grievances is meditation. I'm meditating upon how that person has wronged me, and I'm meditating on what I'm gonna say back, and I'm gonna meditate about where that leaves me. We are meditating, but it's not on God's word, and it's gonna end up in disaster. Try to resolve the issue biblically. We'll talk about that as we go. Focus your attention on the hand of God in the matter. God is up to something in this. As we heard in the message this morning, Paul's illness is probably what sent him to the mountains in Galatia. God used his problem to minister to other people. And God will use the problems we go through. I remember One of the early years of parenting, I was in a new job, overwhelmed with my new job as dean of students. I'd never been a dean of students before that. And so I'm responsible for the dean of men's office, the dean of women's office, student leadership, student organizations, and there wasn't a manual. And so I'm having to put together policies from different departments that knew something about something, and I'm wanting to do a job, and nobody is really pushing me hard, but I got so overwhelmed coming home late at night. I'd come home from supper, I'd help get the kids in bed, and then I'd go back to the office until about 11 o'clock, and I did that for two years. That was the wrong thing to do. And I got to the point, I didn't even want to get out of bed in the morning and face another day of this. And I remember in seminary, I was taking Greek courses, and I had to translate 2 Corinthians, which is Paul's autobiography of ministry. And I thought, I need to read this. I have a really bad attitude about ministry right now. I have a DRA. You know what a DRA is? It's a dirty, rotten attitude. I have a DRA about ministry right now. And I can't remember how long I was in Second Corinthians, six months, six weeks, it was a long time. and memorized huge portions of 2 Corinthians. But it came to the first three verses where Paul says, blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, who comforteth us in all our trouble, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. And to show you my attitude, I read that verse and I thought, yeah, well, that's no help to me right now. I mean, that's, That's kind of my attitude. But I knew that I needed to memorize those because God wanted me to have that perspective of helping other people. And so God is going to use your trials to help your kids in the days ahead. And by the way, we'll not get all of this outline covered today. I don't want to rush, but we'll pick some more up and then take another topic and we'll get more directly into parenting. Focus your attention on the hand of God in the matter. And remember, unforgiveness is a serious matter with God. Unforgiveness is serious, why? Because salvation is all about forgiveness. God has forgiven us. And he says, now I expect you to forgive others. Nobody has wronged you like you wronged me. And that's what the whole first part of Matthew 18 is about. We need to make sure that we need to remember unforgiveness is a serious matter with God. So just some basics there. I want us to look at this passage, and I'll pull out a couple of things, and then we'll apply them. In Ephesians 4, 11 to 15 and 25 to 27, Paul says, he's talking about the church. He gave to the church some apostles, some prophets, and some he gave evangelists and some pastors and teachers for this purpose, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. Now, I want you to understand something that you and your spouse and you and your children, once your children come to Christ, you all are a part of this body of Christ. This message is for you in your home. and it carries out into how we minister to each other in the church. You can't do this in the church unless you're doing this at home, where you're concerned about the edifying and the building up of the body of Christ. You won't be doing that in church if you're not doing that here, in your own marriages. He says in verse 13, I've highlighted it for you, till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God. That's what I want my kids. That's what I want for my kids. I wanted them to come to the unity of the faith, to the understanding that they believe the same things God was teaching. and that they were coming to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. They were developing the character of Jesus. This is the mission of parenting. It's the mission that we bring as families into the church that we help each other with in the church family, the family of God. He says that we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie and wait to deceive, but speaking the truth in love. So a good bit of this edifying and helping one another is going to be speaking something, speaking the truth in love, that you may grow up unto him in all things, which is ahead, even Christ. Wherefore, putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be ye angry and sin not, let not the sun go down in your wrath, neither give place to the devil. And a couple of things, this is what this, highlighted piece in verse 13. This is what we want for ourselves, our spouse, and our children. And it's going to come through speaking the truth in love and every man speaking truth. So I want to take those principles and talk about some principles of communication. First, here's unbiblical communication. It looks like someone else around here could lift a finger to help out, right? That's unbiblical communication. It's addressing a problem, but not in a biblical way. Or at least I don't leave a razor lying around the sink, which is more than I can say, for some people I know. Or the least you could do is keep the racket down when a guy's trying to do his work. All right, sometimes people say, my wife and I, we just have a hard, we have problems with communication. No, you don't. All those three statements are communicating very clearly and the other person received the message. We are all communicating. We don't have problems of communication. We have problems with godly communication. Because all of us communicate what we want the other person to get. Whether it's stonewalling, that silence communicates something. Or a critical spirit, we looked at those four horsemen last week. All of those are communication techniques. We don't have problems with communication. We have problems with biblical, godly communication. Does that make sense? And Proverbs says much about communication. A couple of verses you might want to jot down. Proverbs 18, 20, 21. Death and life are in the power of the tongue. It's like radiation. Our words can cure or kill. Proverbs 12, 18. There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword. There is a speech that's like the piercings of a sword, but the tongue of the wise is health. So we can use our words to slice and dice and shred people, or we can use our words to bring healing. And communication skills don't come automatically. Just because you're married, you don't become good communicators any more than buying a house makes you a carpenter. You will get a lot of practice doing repairs. Both of our two oldest grandsons are pastor's sons, and my kids grew up, I mean sons-in-law. Our sons-in-laws are pastor's kids and I grew up in a mechanic's home, a farmer's home. My wife's dad was a farmer and on the farm, you just do everything. And so around our house, when there was something to be fixed, I fixed it. And when they started dating, these two guys, pretty much at the same time, a few months apart maybe, both of the older girls came to me one day and said, Dad, we just got to be sure about something. We really love these guys, but can it be God's will for us to be married? They don't know how to fix anything. And I said, well, honey, they have the qualities that will help with the marriage. We can teach them the skills. When they buy a house, they will gain the skills. And I said, in the meantime, for Christmas and their birthdays, I'm going to be giving them tools. And so that's what we did. And both of them are really, really pretty good at it right now. They put down their own tile floor. They've done all kinds of stuff. It's pretty amazing what necessity is the mother of invention. Communication is, you gain skills by practice. And that's where you all have to be really patient with one another. If somebody's starting to communicate in new ways that he or she wasn't before, then the other one has to be patient while they wade into this, perhaps clumsily, but that's all right. If you never learned to ride a bike at seven years old, and most of us learn to ride a bike, I'm 72, so let's say for some reason, I've never ridden a bike, but at 72 it's really important for me to learn how to ride a bike for some reason. I'm gonna make all the same spills of a seven year old. It's gonna hurt more. It's further to fall and all that kind of stuff. Now, communication is the same way. If you're going to become a good communicator and work with one another and you haven't been doing that or you haven't grown up in a family where they did that, you're going to have some spells, but that's really okay. You've got to have the spells. but that's where you quickly, forgive me, that was the wrong thing to say, and I should have said it this way, and you began practicing. So Ephesians 4 is gonna tell us three things. The first one is speak up. Silence isn't golden, it's forbidden. That verb speak is in the imperative. You must speak up. the truth in love. You've got to say things. It's like the common scene. Well, what's the matter, Joe? Nothing. Oh, come on, Joe. Tell me, what's wrong? Nothing. No, honestly, something's wrong. Well, you ought to know. No, I don't know. Tell me. Well, just think. Just think. You ought to know what's wrong. This is not biblical communication. This is a very fleshly, self-centered guy responding. to somebody else's query about what's going on. That person is not trying to solve a problem. And people can't read our minds. Isn't that a blessing? People can't read our minds. And by the way, never say to your kids or to your spouse, I know what you're thinking. No, you don't. 1 Corinthians says, 1 Corinthians 2 says, no man knows the spirit of a man save the spirit that's in the man. Nobody knows what he's thinking except the guy thinking it. And you don't know what he's thinking unless he tells you what he's thinking. That's why communication is so important. We have to know what each other thinks. Now, you get, you can be married for 50 years, you can carry on a conversation just by smiles and winks and you, you know. I'm kidding, almost. There are a lot of things. We look at each other and we know exactly what the other person is thinking and we laugh together about it because you establish patterns. But honestly, we don't really know what another person is thinking. Please don't tell your teenager. I know what you're thinking, son. You do not know what he's thinking. We used to play a game with our girls. There's another thing we did along this line. we'd be driving down the road and we'd get at a stop sign. And we'd see from, there's this woman, and she's in the driver's seat, and all we see is the back, and she's going like this, and all kinds of funny motions. And I'd say, all right girls, what do you think she's doing? And we would have fun making up stories about what they're doing. And then I would say, and you know, that's been a lot of fun about what she's doing, but probably none of those things are true. We have no idea what's going on in that car unless we're there and she's telling us what she's doing. Those were games we would play to help them get in the practice of not reading into other people's actions, motives, and so forth that aren't clear. It's teaching them communication. Silence isn't golden, it's forbidden. We have to speak up, we're not to clam up or blow up. Sometimes we wish other people would let up, because they're just constantly going, but we don't clam up, we must speak up, we don't clam up, we don't blow up, and sometimes we have to let up. And by the way, for both men and women, but oftentimes for ladies, you don't feel like your spouse has heard you. And so you, do you want to address that? Do I want to address it? Yeah, about what women do. What women do? I've counseled a lot of women who told me they did not feel like men believed them or understood them or listened to them. So my husband would say, you need your wife's perspective. So listen to your wife. She's seeing things that you don't notice. There have been times when Jim and I have been ministering to people, maybe speaking somewhere, and I will say to him, afterward, did you notice her eyes filled up with tears when she said this? And he'll say, no. And I say, yeah, when this issue came up, you know, so your wife will pick up on things that you don't pick up on with your kids or with other people. But there is something else that I want to share. So let me just share some things that I learned. We learned from experience, and that is that women do, well maybe all of us, but I know women do, we tend to hold in our hurts. our disappointment, he's doing something and it disappoints us, we tend to hold it in. It might be because we don't have time to talk. So we hold it in, we hold it in, we hold it in, and then at 10 o'clock at night, one night, it turns into a big explosion. There's a lot of emotion because we've been holding it in for so long. Let me just share a couple ideas with you women and maybe they apply to you guys too. I don't know, maybe you want to apply them. But one thing is that, You need to cry, if you're gonna cry and you have a lot of emotion, try to cry to God first before you talk. There have been times when I just went in the bathroom and cried and said, God, why is it this way? And maybe part of it, ladies, is because you know the role that God has put you in. We are equal with our husbands. We are equal in value to God, but he's put us in a different, position as far as our role and we do submit to our husbands and so we hold things in maybe. And you might even feel like it isn't fair that I have to do what he says. You might be feeling that. Well, first, cry to God. And Jim was, the slide's not still up right now, but you need to develop your relationship with the Lord and then ask God to help you and try to expend all that emotion as much as you can before God. And then ask yourself some of these questions. Now, ladies, you're supposed to be his helper. That's what God said when he created us. So you have the right to help him to have a right perspective. But I would say ask yourself these questions. These are the questions that I learned to ask myself. One is, are you going to tell him this thing that bothers you? in order to help him to be a better person, a better Christian, a better husband, a better father, or are you saying this to him to blow him away because you're so mad and you're trying to punish him and make him pay for how insensitive he has been? Your goal needs to be, I want, think about this in advance, I want to help him to be a better man, a better husband, a better father, better at ministering to others. I would tell Jim some things that I noticed that I thought, I think you could, this thing you're doing might hurt your ministry to other people, and I would very occasionally share something. A second question that I asked myself, and it stopped me from saying some things. I've never told my husband this. It is. And the question I asked myself was, do you want this statement to ring in his ears forever? He mentioned the verse, there is that speaketh as the piercings of a sword. And we can say some very discouraging and hurtful things. And even if we go back and say, I was wrong to say that. Will you forgive me? It's still there. We still said it. There have been things that I have not said. Actually, I never ever did say it. I know we're supposed to speak up, but I never ever... I felt like saying something really mean, but I never said it. I never did say it because I thought that... I can't take that back. I can ask forgiveness, but... It can ring in his ears forever. You can make one very encouraging statement that'll ring in your spouse's ears forever, or you can say something really hurtful. I remember one thing that I said that I feel, I don't know if he remembers it, but I do. One thing I said that I hate the thought that I ever said it, but I did. I'm not going to remind him. He can guess forever what it was. But just do you want this statement to ring in his ears forever? Or could you just not say it? You know, we do communicate and we should speak up, but there are some things that should never be said. And they're the fleshly things. And then the third thing I ask myself is, does he already know this thing? If he already knows that he has this problem, I don't need to bring it up. The Holy Spirit can remind him. You know, ladies, there are some things that, some problems we have that we know, some ways that we wish that we could change, And, but it would break our hearts if he ever said it to us. If he ever said to you, you need to lose weight. Well, you know, we might think that. We might already know that. But if he said that to us, I think that would probably ring in our ears forever, that he told us we ought to lose weight. There's something, does he already know that he has this problem? Tell him the things that you think he doesn't see. Or maybe the things he doesn't understand about you. But you don't need to tell him things he's already convicted about or already knows. And then fourth, tell him at a time when you can have his full attention. Get his attention. I don't mean by screaming. I just mean get a time when the two of you can pay attention to each other. Because you're going to tell him this thing and you're not going to keep repeating it. So when you do tell him, You want it to be a time when you have his attention. Now, why would you not want to keep repeating the thing over and over again? It's annoying. You're being a nag. Solomon hated a contentious woman. And it's just nagging. So you want to have his attention and tell him the thing. And then he can remember that. He's smart. But if he's listening to you, and we hope he will be, you can tell him one time and you can talk about it. And then you can tell him how you feel about a certain thing. He can't read your mind. He's not a woman. He doesn't know how you feel unless you tell him. So he doesn't know how you think. Early in our marriage, one time, Jim said to me, you know, when you say something to me in a negative way, if it, you know, if I'm upset with him or whatever, I can defend myself against you. If not with words in my own mind, I can defend myself. But when you don't say anything, The Holy Spirit beats me up. So that was a good lesson to me, to not keep talking, not keep nagging. And I would also say, ladies, since God made you to be his helper, you should help him. You should help him to grow as a person, but do it in a spirit-filled way. And if you have a problem, if you're not able to work something out, get help early. How many years did you say people wait? Six or seven years? By then, things are so piled up and habits are so bad and you're so angry. Not you. People are so angry with each other that they interpret everything the wrong way. I mean, it doesn't even matter what you say, the other person takes it the wrong way. So get help early. There's nothing wrong with going for help. We went to people and asked for help. And we have people who come to us all the time asking for help, people a lot older than you are, too. But get help early so you can fix the things early and you don't develop a bad attitude toward each other so you assume the worst about everything the other person says. That's all I've got to say. Let me illustrate that. Let's say you have a neighbor who has a dog. who comes into your yard and makes some daily deposits. And you have little children that you want to let loose out in the yard and you don't have a fence. And that neighbor is unsaved and you want to have a ministry with that guy. Does that color how you're going to handle this tension that's developing? So at first you might go to Walmart and get your own super duper pooper scooper and go out and clean up your own yard and bag it. And there may come a time when you do need to address it with him. But you don't collect all that stuff and put it on his front porch in a pile and say he needs to know how this feels when you step into this junk. You don't do that. And what I'm illustrating is that if you want to have a ministry with somebody, you're going to handle the tensions in a way that doesn't hinder the ministry that you want to have with that person. And that's true in the ministry to your spouse, the ministry to your children. I forgot the, are you spirit controlled right now? I forgot to tell you one other thing. You want to give your spouse a chance to respond the right way. Our natural response when someone tells us there's something wrong with us is to defend, right? To get upset and defend. And you want to give him a chance, ladies, to have a right response. So give him a little warning that you're going to tell him something. This is what I do with Jim. I've probably done this a half dozen times in our marriage. You did it yesterday. I did it yesterday. So I want to give him a chance to have a right response, make it the easiest I can. So don't try this at home unless you agree in advance that it's OK. But I say to him, honey, are you spirit-controlled right now? And if I say that, he knows that I want to tell him something, that he's going to need to be spirit-controlled to have a good response. So I'll say, honey, are you spirit-controlled? I said that to him just recently. Are you spirit-controlled right now? And then he says, OK. Go ahead. And then I tell him. And it gives him a chance. Otherwise, you're tempting. You're putting temptation in front of the other person to defend. That's the natural response. And guys, it could go the other way, too. You work out your own communication. what I started doing, and I tell him, I'm gonna tell you this one time, I'm not gonna bring this up again. Now that's a hard promise, isn't it, ladies, to say, I'll tell you this one time? But it'll keep you from being a nag. Someone has said, that kind of response on the wife, it's the wife ducking while God smacks your husband. You just duck and let God go through. And I tell you, there are times I get fiercely beat up by the Holy Spirit. And I know it's not coming from her. It's coming from God. And we pray for each other in those ways. And I would say one last thing about this. Silence isn't golden, it's forbidden. And that is that the person you're avoiding, is probably the person you need to talk to to get the problem resolved. So if you're avoiding your boss, you're avoiding your spouse, you're avoiding your teen, you're avoiding somebody else at church, then like Adam and Eve in the garden, they're hiding. The one person they needed to talk to, they were staying away from. The only one who could resolve that was God, and they needed to have a conversation with God. And the one person that you're avoiding is probably the person you need to talk to in order to get something resolved. Now, I'm talking about where that's safe. If there's been sexual assault and sexual abuse from a family member or something, and it's not safe to be talking to that person, there are other ways to address that. I'm not saying put yourself in any kind of a dangerous situation. One more point and then we'll, what, two more points. Secondly, silence is often the cruelest form of punishment. In our penal system, the cruelest form of punishment we have is what? Solitary confinement. I mean, next to capital punishment. That's the cruelest form. Well, never mind. I remember a dad after a couple of conference at the Wilds and saying, I need some help. I need to reestablish communication with my son. And I said, how long is it? He's an adult son, a married son. I said, how long has it been since you? He said, we don't talk. And I said, how long has it been since you've talked? He said, it's been about 10 years. And I said, why that time? Because I so disagree with what he thinks and what he does that I don't think he deserves to be talked to. That's punishment. That dad's not trying to resolve any issues. That dad's trying to spank his adult son by not talking to him. And we don't use communication. We're not to use communication that way. And I'll close on this one and pick it up next week. Like God, you must become a master of words. The only way that you get good at anything is by practicing it, as I've already mentioned. And I tell you, as I know, if you have children already, you've got a lot going on. We tried to get our children, our daughters, involved as early as they could in the nursery or working in the summertime at the CDC and helping out in children's church and junior church. And my whole philosophy was practice on somebody else's kids before you mess up your own. So getting them, but you work in children's church and you work in the nursery and the toddlers and the wobblers or whatever, we call them at that age, those pre-people stages. They're not morphed into humanity yet, but they're coming there. So you work with them and learn. Some people say, I had a guy tell me in seminary, he said, oh man, I was telling the guys that, and he said, oh man, I could never work with junior hires. I said, you better learn it because you're going to have one. Whatever age you don't want to work with, you're going to have a kid that age. And it would be really, really good if you had some practice on working with junior hires. And I'm not saying all of you need to go out here and volunteer for all these things, but as you have opportunity, particularly if you don't have children, start getting that practice in and becoming a master of words, how to communicate with little kids. because you're going to have some. And I would say here, in closing, God didn't just, you know, a guy may say, I told my wife, you heard the joke, I told her that I loved her when we got married 25 years ago, and if I change my mind, I'll tell her. You know, she doesn't need me to tell her I love her every day. Yeah, she does. And sometimes more than one time a day. My husband's really good at that. I try to practice it this way. I will say, when we get up in the morning, I will say, have I told you yet that I love you? And she'll say, not yet. And I said, I really love you. And then we'll be sitting down for lunch or something, and I'll say, have I told you since lunch that I love you? And I just want ways to remind myself that my responsibility is to nourish and cherish her. And that's not measured by how I think I'm nourishing and cherishing. It has everything to do with whether she thinks what I'm doing is nourishing and cherishing. It's like playing with your kids. Well, it's just quality time. That's not quantity, it's quality time. It's not quality time unless your kids think it's quality time. If you're doing what you want to do, I used to love to swing the girls so that I could think about all the stuff that went on during the day. They wanted me to play in the sandbox when I came home. Well, that's a lot more of my attention. So it's not quality time if I'm swinging them and they don't want to be swung. They want to play in the sandbox. That's quality time. And the same thing about expressing affection toward your wife. It's only helpful if she sees it as affection and values that. So what I want to say is God didn't just do something. He didn't just die for us, and I say just. He died for us, but he did far more than that. He tells us a lot of things. He uses words. And we can't just say, well, I'll bring home the paycheck, and I put a roof over our head, or whatever else I do. I cook all his meals. Okay, but those are sacrifices. But what about the words? Jesus didn't just do something, he said something. and you and I must become masters of words. Okay, we'll stop there and pick up next week. Lord Jesus, thank you that you have modeled all of this for us and you came down to here. communicated with people who disagreed with you and who even hated you. And then you had disciples who didn't understand you and people who listened to you and were grateful to you. And I pray that we would become masters of words. And may we, with our tongues, bring health to one another, to our children, to the people we minister to. And we thank you for your example in all of these things, Lord Jesus. We pray these things in your name because we love you. Amen.