In the last session, the second point about laziness, I mentioned the idea of the sluggard's field in which his marriages are not tended to. Then the weeds grow up and the flowers can't grow. And I did not bring enough for everybody. I did send Cindy a PDF of this peacemaking principles brochure Are many of you familiar with Peacemaker Ministries or Ken Sandy at all? Some, not many. So a man named Ken Sandy, this would be going back into the early 90s, I think, is a lawyer. And he became frustrated because Christians were not resolving their conflicts in a biblical way. And as a lawyer, 1 Corinthians 6 says, believers should not go to court with one another. We should resolve matters among ourselves with other believers in the church and other such problems that He came up, he wrote a book called The Peacemaker, which is now about 300 pages, which he meant to be a systematic theology of biblical peacemaking. And then, if you don't want to read the 300 and something page version, there's another version that's very short called Resolving Everyday Conflict, which is a summary of the crucial principles for dealing with conflict biblically. And then these brochures are, again, kind of like the cards. Actually, I keep some of the cards and I keep these brochures in my Bible and I wind up using this quite often with people. Most marriage counseling involves conflict. In the Peacemaker brochure, In the Peacemaker material, we're reminded that when there are sinners, there will always be conflict. There's conflict in the world. There's conflict in churches. There's conflict in families. And because of a fallen world, there's going to be conflict. Robert Jones, in his book about conflict, had a quote from somebody like, the Bible has four chapters of peace, the first two and the last two, and then 1,000-something chapters of conflict in between. This is an area in particular where the gospel is central in that as our sin brought us into conflict with God, and gospel where Christ gave himself for us to break down the barrier that we who made ourselves God's enemies could be reconciled to God, the gospel is absolutely central in resolving our conflicts with one another. And so in the time I have, I want to summarize first of all that when there's conflict, and the weeds now I would say are representing unresolved conflicts in marriage, where not only has there been neglect, which itself is a weed, but there often are issues of hurt, patterns perhaps of sin and misbehavior. that are not dealt with in a biblical way. And so sometimes when people come to us, they just have like a forest of weeds with almost no flowers growing whatsoever. I'm probably going to devote more time to pulling the weeds than I will to planting the flowers. My general theory would be if you've pulled the weeds, the flowers are easier to plant. It still takes some wisdom. And so in Ken Sandy, when he's laying out the principles here is that there's a reminder that conflict can be very dangerous. Jesus said, when you're angry with your brother, it's like unto murder in Matthew 5, 21. And people have done terrible things in the midst of conflict. You may say, I want to avoid conflict. Romans 12, 18 says, as far as is possible with you to be at peace with all men. And so there are times where there are things we ought to do. To avoid that, Proverbs 19.11 is one I use a lot for myself and in counseling, where it says, a man's discretion makes him slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook a transgression. And so we are not to be quarrelsome people. It's kind of cool, it's glorious to overlook something. this verse comes to my mind sometimes Caroline does things that annoy me and my fleshly temptation is to bring it up maybe to score a point or something and there you know that thing I don't the thing I do that you don't like you just did it and I did that's kind of see and Then I think but it would be more glorious to keep my mouth shut pin a medal on me or something because finally I didn't bring everything up and so I There's a lot of conflict that appropriately can be avoided, but there's also conflict that shouldn't be avoided. And one of the things he has on here is what he calls the slippery slope. And you can see it's this continuum, but there are unbiblical responses to conflict are both fighting and avoiding, and both are bad. And my observation has been in most marriages, there's one of each. There's one person that says, we are not going to sleep tonight until we solve this thing. And they just keep at it, keep at it. And the other one says, let's just go to sleep. But they never want to talk about it. And Caroline and I, when we were courting even, I think I was the guy, we're going to stay up until we solve it, and she was the one, let's just forget about it and never talk about it again. We both have had to grow out of that. And he has, you know, unbiblical responses to conflict. In churches, when some people, whenever there's a conflict and they don't like, they just leave rather than trying to resolve the conflict. And even worse, in some cases, there are people who cause division when things don't go their way. But then in the middle, he talks about there are biblical ways to resolve conflict through conflict coaching. And we're going to go through applying to marriage, get the log out of your own eye, gently restore your brother, and forgive is the key principles involved. I think another thing to recognize as we think about conflict resolution, this is true of all conflicts, is that though conflict can be dangerous, conflict also gives us an opportunity to honor the Lord. Whatever you do is to be done to the glory of God. Our aim is to please Him. And when there's conflict, how can I honor God here? And by the way, both people are thinking that way, it's going to go pretty well. Not, I'm going to win. It's not fair. I'm going to get justice. But rather, how would God have me to act? in this situation, and I want to see him honored, and I want to be willing to serve others and not just insist on getting my own way. I want to be looking for creative ways to deal with the problem. Going back, I mentioned earlier the pastor who was perhaps on the verge of losing his ministry, and he's the one that admitted that his marriage field was like the sluggards' field. Backing up a little bit, when his senior pastor insisted that he and his wife come see Caroline and me, before the meeting, he actually sent me a six-page email outlining the sins of his wife. He wanted me to know just how bad she really was. And when they got to the meeting, she did not need six pages. She was able to speak spontaneously and without notes. and tell me how terrible he is. And so the next passage to which I took them was Matthew chapter seven, where Jesus says, do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the manner you judge, you will be judged, and by your standard of measure will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye and behold, the log is in your own eye. You hypocrite. First take the log out of your own eye, then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. And so when people come in with conflict, with marriage conflict, Typically, they will come in like this couple did, each wanting to convince me that the other person is terrible, each having clear vision of the other person's sin and generally minimizing and excusing their own sin. This is human nature. And with this man, after he read that passage, I actually said, OK, something like this, that the rule in the first session is this. The only person about whose sin you can speak in this first session is your own sin. Who would like to go first? And usually that can't be solved in a first session, but we would talk about the principles of this. And this involves self-examination. Jesus says, look in the mirror. Look at your own sins that you've been minimizing. Where has your sin contributed to the problems in your marriage? Sometimes we give homework. We'll call it a log list. Make a list of the logs in your eye. Sometimes in counseling, we can help them identify those things. Sometimes we counsel them separately in order to help them reach that. But the psalmist says, search me, oh God, and know my heart. Show me if there's any waywardness in me. And so searching your heart and acknowledging, make a list. Here's where my sin has contributed to the troubles in my marriage. And then the next step is not to go straight to your spouse. But it's to go to the Lord and confess your sin to him. And when David had committed adultery and murder and he writes Psalm 51, he says, against you and you only have I sinned. If I am rude and impatient to my wife, it's more of a sin against God than it's a sin against her. Even David with his adultery and murder, it was primarily a sin against God. Obviously, many of the people were hurt. And for me to go to the Lord and said, you gave me this wonderful wife and here I am, acting unappreciative and not treating her in a Christ-like way and confessing that first to God even before I go to Caroline and then to go to her and to seek her forgiveness. We're going to talk about how to do that in just a moment. And so a lot of times I say, well, what if it's 90% her fault and 10% my fault? Confess you're 10%. Realizing that because you got a log in your eye, your perspective may be inaccurate. She probably thinks you're 90% and she's 10%. But confess you're 10%. Don't wait for them. I've had people I've given this assignment to and they come back a week later and they say, oh, we didn't have time. We just had such a busy week that Sally had ballet and Johnny had soccer and we just had so much going on. I said, OK, turn to Matthew chapter 5. Verse 23, please read verses 23 and 24. Jesus said, therefore, if you're presenting your offering at the altar and then remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar, go first be reconciled to your brother, then come and present your offering. Okay, what's Jesus saying? He's saying, he's not saying that worship through making an offering is unimportant. He's saying as important as worship is and offering worship to God monetarily Your relationship your broken relationship with your brother whom you offended is more important than that It's more important than ballet or soccer and sometimes you say well, then how much time did you spend this week in social media watching? Streaming and all these are the things is that this is a priority. That's urgent Very very important. There are no excuses if you have to take time off of work something needs to happen to address this, and of course often it's avoidance. Something that they have, Ken Sandy came up with, and one thing, the way I use this brochure, which you can buy your own, I actually buy them by the hundred and pass them out both when I'm teaching but also when we're counseling. is it has a summary of a lot of these principles, and also the PDF is available, but there's a list on here called the seven A's of confession. And the point that I think is beneficial of these seven A's is that you've got these weeds. Years ago in California, I had a garden, we had a garden, and we had strawberries in it, but it became like the sluggards field, and we neglected it for a couple of years, maybe had a few strawberry plants, not even making strawberries, trying to survive, and there are weeds all over the place. So what could I do? I could get a weed whacker, and I could whack down my weeds in my little garden until it looks a lot better, doesn't it? But what's going to happen? It's just going to grow back again. And a lot of people, when they try to resolve conflict, they're just mowing the weeds. rather than pulling the weeds. And then I would say spraying on the gospel roundup, if you will. But you see examples of this when athletes and politicians get caught with horrible things they've done. Well, I'm sorry if I ever offended anybody. I'm really better than that. And they think they've made it all right. That's not at all an apology. But oftentimes in marriage as well, there are very shallow apologies when much deeper work has to be done to really pull the weed so that we can plant the flowers. I'm gonna tell you a real example. We had a case many years ago where a woman, a couple came to us and the wife told a story where she went out to her car one day at the grocery store and on the windshield there was a handwritten letter of a few pages And it was from a woman claiming to have been the husband's mistress. And in this handwritten letter, this other woman described in some detail the relationship she carried on with the woman's husband, and probably also asserting her claim for the man. Well, the wife has this thing. She's obviously shaken up. The husband comes home, and she says, I got this on my car, and I'm devastated. Is it true?" And he says, yes, it's true. I broke up with her, and I'm sorry. It's over. I'm married to you. Just got to forget about it and move on. And the woman had a friend who claimed to be a biblical counselor, well-meaning mentor, And she's still very troubled by this. And she was more or less saying, what should I do? Well, he apologized. You just need to move on. And this was now like six months had been going before they came to see us. And she was not able to move on. And of course, the reason is, I don't even think he, I think he didn't even mow the weeds, just barely mentioning it. And we actually went through what Ken Sandy calls the seven A's of confession. And I'll go slowly in case you're taking notes, but someday you're going to have access to this through something they're going to email you. But the first one is address everyone involved. So think about this man. Who has been hurt by what he has done? Obviously the wife. Anybody else? Children. They had teenagers who see their mother crying, who hear their parents fighting, who see the terrible example of their dad who takes them to church and pretends to be a Christian. Could be her parents who see how much this has hurt their daughter. The other woman. Again, you have to be careful. Don't have a private meeting, but there might be some way appropriately to convey guilt and sorrow over guilt. Avoid if, but, and maybe. Most weed whacking, when you mow the weeds, people will then make excuses, and the excuse nullifies the apology. You know, I'm sorry I did that, but I travel a lot, and I get lonely, and then when I come home, you're busy with the kids, and I come to bed, and you're asleep, and so I've got these needs, and I'm sorry I just kind of fell into that. That's no apology at all. It's an excuse. If you're there to seek forgiveness, when you're getting the log out of your own eye is not the time to talk about the splinters in the other person's eye. And when you say, well, I'm sorry, I yelled and screamed at you after you made me late to whatever, you're really blame shifting. Later on, there may be a time to talk to them about their sin. Jesus said, after you get the log out of your eye, you can then help them with a splinter. But if you start talking about their splinter, It nullifies the apology. Admit specifically. Obviously, there was the sexual sin, but there's also many other sins. There was lying. There was a misuse of financial resources. Generally, these things are very expensive. I remember the wife more or less said, you wouldn't let me spend money for these things for the kids, and you bought her a car. So admit specifically. And then acknowledging the hurt. And this is the hardest one for me when I'm seeking forgiveness. It's usually of Caroline, is I know the right stuff to say. But to try to be in her shoes, how does it feel to be treated that way when you're the weaker vessel and I was harsh or whatever it was? And how does it feel for a wife? What's wrong with me that you had to go after her? And the pain in the, can I ever trust this guy again? Accept the consequences. Consequences, I deserve not to have you. I hope that's not going to happen. But I've had one guy quit his job to get away from the situation there. One person even moved his whole family to another part of the country to start over again. I'm going to do whatever. I'm not going to travel alone. I'm going to bring you or one of the kids at all times. So do something about it. Alter your behavior goes along with that. This is the sixth one. things will be different. I'm going to go to one of the pastors. I'm going to get counseling. I get counseling for us together. And then ask for forgiveness. This is a crucial part. This is where it mirrors the gospel, is that the scripture says, if we confess our sin, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sin, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We'll talk about forgiveness in a moment, how God has called us to forgive as we've been forgiven. to ask for, will you forgive me? When I say to Caroline, will you forgive me? It's not just, what do people usually say? I'm sorry. It's okay. Both of those are inaccurate. I mean, I'm sorry maybe a little bit. It could be, I'm sorry you're so sensitive. Sorry it happened. Things happen all the time. The way we're reconciled to God isn't just to say, I'm sorry. It's, you know, please forgive me. And so we're going to ourselves. I'm coming asking for grace and forgiveness in pattern after the gospel. And then hopefully the forgiveness will come. So that's one element of pulling the weeds. There's another. which, so the key passage for the first of, you know, confessing, you're getting the log out of your own eye is from Matthew 7 primarily. And then the aspect of restoring your brother or sister is primarily from Galatians chapter 6, verse 1. It's an amazing verse because it encaptures so much of what the Bible teaches throughout about how to do this, that brethren, Even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, each one looking to yourself so that you too will not be tempted." This is packed with wisdom. Part of it is, he doesn't say elders. If someone is caught in a trespass, you confront them. It's brethren. It's all of us. According to the Bible, all of us have a responsibility when we see someone in sin to go to them. Again, I've had cases where you have two single people living together and one of them sees the other looking at something inappropriate on a laptop. Or I've had a case where one sees the other drinking excessively. And love requires you to go to your brother. Love requires you to confront what is wrong. This gets to be what some people being conflict avoiders is they just let things go because they just can't stand the confrontation. Caroline, by nature, has been a conflict avoider. And I remember thinking 20 or more years into marriage, she doesn't ever really correct me or confront me. And many of you would say, what a dream come true that would be. But for me, I was a bit nervous. Like, I need accountability. And what happened is she got trained and certified as a biblical counselor. And my joke is she's been making up for lost time ever since. But I want to commend her in that, of all the people I've seen applying Galatians chapter 6, she is the best at it. Because she comes to me not, I got you now. But I want to help you be a better, more godly man. I want to help you to be more like Christ. That's the motivation of coming. Well, you may ask, didn't you just say like 20 minutes ago that we should overlook many faults? Proverbs 19, 11, 1 Peter 4, 8 says, love covers a multitude of sins. How do you decide when to confront, when not to confront? Well, you can take some principles from scripture that there are minor things that can be overlooked. But if what this person is doing, like they claim to be a Christian and it's the kind of thing that could result in church discipline, it's sexual immorality, it's theft, it's destructive anger. drunkenness, that one is it's a matter that harms the reputation of Christ if a Christian lives that way. Two is it's a danger to their own soul, like the roommate who sees, or the wife who sees the husband. Caroline's had women, their husbands have Yeti cups, like I left mine over there, and they pretend they're drinking 7-Up and they've got vodka in there. And it's not just for how it affects her, but he's turning to this idol to relieve his stress rather than turning to the Lord. And so love requires her, for her professing Christian husband, to approach her about that concern. Again, not to vent her anger, but to help. The language here, if anyone's caught in any trespass, part of it is we've all been caught in trespass, right? We're all sinners. And the language here is almost like you get caught in a trap. You get, like in the parable of the Good Samaritan where the guy's going along the road and the robbers get him and sometimes we fall into sin and we don't even realize it. So there's a measure of compassion there because I too have been caught. I'm not perfect. And then just phrase by phrase, the language is brilliant here. It says, you who are spiritual. What does that mean? Can anybody think of the context of what that might mean? Galatians 6 comes after Galatians 5. What is the end of Galatians 5 about? Walking in the Spirit. How do you know if you're walking in the Spirit? Because when you confront them, you come with love, joy, peace, all of that. Most confrontation takes place in the flesh, outbursts of anger and dissension and jealousy. The majority of the list for the deeds of the flesh in Galatians 5 are relational, actually. Galatians 5.15 warns, by the way, that if you bite and devour one another, be careful you're not consumed by one another. And it's rare, I think, to find someone who comes genuinely walking in the Spirit in love. Many people who are conflict avoiders avoid and avoid and avoid and avoid, and finally they're so angry they burst forth in a fleshly way, and it becomes an attack rather than helping. So you need to make sure. Don't try to confront somebody if you yourself aren't walking in the spirit. You need to prepare yourself. I pray before I go to somebody. There are times in my life where I see somebody that needs to be confronted and I start praying that the Lord will help me to find the right situation and the right words. I plan ahead to some degree. That I could do this in a way that's according to scripture and would be pleasing to God. That would be same thing obviously in a marriage. And then the main verb in Galatians 6.1 is restore. Restore is actually a fairly rare word in the New Testament. Elsewhere, it's used of fishermen mending nets. And that's a really good picture. You're coming to this person not to obliterate them with your anger and frustration, which is what the world and the flesh do. You're coming to help them. The net of a fisherman that has big holes in it, his family is going to starve unless he repairs it. It's useless. And if a believer is caught in sin, they're not useful to the Lord. You're there to help them to repair. And like I said, when Caroline comes to me, sometimes she'll say that, I want to help you be a more godly man. I want to help you restore you to usefulness because of this thing I see you do. One of the ways she deals with me is I interrupt too much. I'm talking all the time. If I'm in a group, and you may see it today at lunch, if I start talking too much, she'll put her hand on my arm and I'll be quiet and let other people talk. So that's one of the areas she works on me. And so my analogy would be when most people when they confront, they come like a judge or a lawyer to condemn, like a prosecutor. but to restore is to come like a doctor or a nurse. I'm here to help you, not I'm here to show you how terrible you are so that I can crush you. And this is in the spirit of gentleness. You're taking something out of somebody's eye. If you had a splinter in your eye, who do you want taking it out? Do you want a drunk person with a rusty knife? Or do you want a trained nurse with sterilized tweezers? It's no fun to be corrected. When I see Caroline coming, I'm already beginning to defend myself and justify myself. There's nothing wrong with what I just did. Gentleness, when I realize I don't like being corrected, then realizing other people have a hard time. We have to do what we need to do, but we need to do it gently. Each one looking to yourself so that you will not be tempted, tempted to fleshliness. There could be other implications of that. And then here's a really big challenge for us, especially, I think, as husbands, but it would apply to all of us, is, is it safe for your spouse to correct and restore you? There's a verse that I recite to myself when I see Caroline coming. And it's Proverbs chapter 9, verse 8. Do not reprove a scoffer or he will hate you. Reprove a wise man and he will love you. Am I going to be a foolish scoffer who hates those who correct me? Or am I going to be wise to love those who love me enough to bring me correction? Even if I may think they're wrong, okay? Sometimes people bring correction and we may not think it's fully justified. We should be grateful that they're trying and we should receive it humbly. many church leaders who need to read this, that they're very defensive and they won't listen to correction. I'm sure that's not true here, but there are places where that happens. Another case we're counseling in where people had a concern with a church leader and they tried to go and he yelled at him and everything. My wife, being a conflict avoider, myself being of a stronger personality, that I need to make it very safe for her to come. It's hard for her to come. And if I react defensively or counterattack, it's going to be hard for her to come again. So we want to make it, we want to welcome those who come to restore us. And then the third major area, and I'm going more into summary mode, is then we are to grant forgiveness. And a key passage for that would be Matthew chapter 18, verse 21 to the end. Just an amazing, amazing passage. But when the scripture says in Ephesians 4.32, forgive one another is God and Christ has also forgiven you. And so this parable illustrates that principle. You know, in the Lord's Prayer, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. You know, Jesus says, if you won't forgive your brother, then God will not forgive you. This is a really big deal. And the point is that we merit God's forgiveness by forgiving others. The point is, if you understand how great God's forgiveness has been to you, if you've experienced the gospel yourself, then you're going to reflect the gospel to other people. And so in Matthew 18, it begins in verses 21 and 22, where Peter said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me? And I forgive him up to seven times. And Jesus said to him, I do not say to you up to seven times, but 77 times. In some translations, we 70 times seven. But I can tell you in 45 years, you go way beyond the math there. It means lots and lots without limit. And then he tells the very famous parable of the unmerciful servant. For this reason, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he begun to settle them, the one who owed him 10,000 talents was brought to him. But since he did not have the means to repay, the Lord commanded him to be sold along with his wife and children and all that he had in repayment to be made. So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him saying, have patience with me and I will repay you everything. And the Lord of that servant felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. And in this parable, basically two points. You have been forgiven much, therefore you ought to forgive others. And there's no relationship on earth you need more of that than in marriage, right? And in this picture of how God has forgiven us is so powerful. By the way, I also would add parables are not allegories where every single little detail corresponds. God's not exactly like that master, but it does display the nature of our forgiveness. The idea of 10,000 talents. This is like billions and billions of dollars. None of you have a credit limit that will go that high. None of you can do that on your credit card. It's hyperbole. And the idea is that it's an unpayable amount. And yet, part of the thing that's crucial is, do you see your sin that way? Before you were a Christian, you said, well, nobody's perfect, but I'm probably better than most people. I'll probably go to heaven because I've done more good things than bad things. If that's the way you think, you're not a believer, and you haven't yet experienced that forgiveness. The scripture said, all have sinned. All have fallen short of the glory of God. All of us like sheep have gone astray. Every one of us has turned to his own way. And when we realize of ourselves how great our sin is, is that we offended the majesty of an infinitely holy God, that we've lived for ourselves rather than for him, we've done things our way and not his way, we see our debt, even the 10,000 talents, it's not hyperbole, it's actually minimizing, that we have an infinite debt. And yet God has forgiven us that debt. And the picture of forgiveness is also interesting, where what does the servant say? He doesn't say, forgive me. What does he say? Just give me time, and I will pay you back. That's a ridiculous statement, right? If you owe $50 billion, you could have 100 lifetimes, and you'll never pay it back. Of course, with inflation, probably you could. But I've got in my, for the next talk, I've got $100 trillion Zimbabwe dollars thing. But anyway, back to my, I shouldn't interrupt myself. But he says, give me time. But the master gives him better. than was asked. He says, not, OK, I'll give you time. It says, I wipe out the debt. I forgive you. And none of us can pay the debt. But the debt has been removed. But I'm going to add that what God has given you is better than what the master gave the servant. If you understand the gospel. Second Corinthians 8 and 9 says, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, that you through his poverty might be made Not debt free, but rich. In the parable, the debt gets wiped out. In the gospel, Christ has wiped out our debt by paying it on our behalf on the cross. But then his righteousness has been imputed to us. The righteousness that comes from God has been given to us by faith in Christ. And if the parable were an allegory, the master would say, not only do I forgive you, but I'm adopting you. And everything I have is yours. That's what God has done for us in Christ. And when you realize how much you've been forgiven, I'm not going to have time to read the rest of the parable. I think most of you know it. Then the first servant, another servant owes him 100 denarii. That's another point about forgiveness, by the way. 100 denarii, a denarii is a day's wage. And in the typical wages now in the United States, that would be tens of thousands of dollars. It's not just a few coins. If somebody owed me tens of thousands of dollars and wouldn't pay me back, I would be annoyed. That would be hard, but that's also a picture like with my couple that sometimes forgiveness is hard. Sometimes people, it's a big debt until you compare it to the bigger debt that's been forgiven, but it's the power of realizing you've been forgiven the infinite debt that makes it possible to forgive a debt like this woman had to forgive of her husband when he was repentant and she did forgive him. I had another case where a woman was having a really hard time forgiving her husband. Then one week, I could just tell by body language, things had changed. And they were sitting together. I said, what happened? She said, well, I went to church on Good Friday. And the pastor described in detail the suffering of Jesus on the cross. And I realized if Jesus would do that for me, then I could forgive my husband. And both of these couples, by the grace of God, are still together decades later, thanks be to God. The gospel is what empowers our forgiveness, and it's not a freedom we have. If someone has sought forgiveness, we must grant forgiveness as God has forgiven us. I'm going to give you one caveat, and that is you say, well, what if the other person won't seek my forgiveness? And I believe the Bible teaches that we should always have an attitude of forgiveness. But there's a sense in which the transaction of forgiveness can only take place if the other person repents. And some of you are in relationships right now where you've been deeply hurt and the other person won't seek your forgiveness. And I think our attitude, if that's your situation, would be like Jesus on the cross, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they do. When Stephen was being stoned, Lord, do not hold this against them. We should have an attitude of grace and realizes God has forgiven me the chief of sinners and I can still be gracious. I don't have to be embittered. And I'm like the father of the prodigal son waiting with my arms open that someday maybe they'll come back. In some cases the person who hurt you is gone. You just have to leave that in God's hand. We can always have an attitude of forgiveness but the actual transaction of forgiveness and that may be something you need to pray for is when the other person does repent. It can't be fully resolved. Luke 17 3. Be on your guard if your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. And it's also parallel to the gospel. Whom does God forgive? Does he forgive everybody? Whom does he forgive? Those who repent. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sin, then God is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I'm happy to say, actually, I'm in possession of the letter that the woman brought into counseling, that part of when she forgave her husband. They're still married. They take walks on the beach every day. They live in Southern California. They listen to sermons together, and God, by His grace alone, has done a good thing. Forgiveness enables us, and Ken Sandy on this forum also talks about the promises of forgiveness. Jeremiah 31 talks about how God will remember our sin no more in the New Covenant. It doesn't mean you don't remember that the other person sinned. God remembers what David did, that God treats David as if it never happened. He doesn't remember our sins against us. And so when you forgive and, you know, he has the paradigm of, I'm not going to dwell on this. I'm not going to keep bringing it up and using it against you. I'm not going to go gossip to others about how terrible you were. I'm not going to let this stand between us and our relationship. And so forgiveness is as far as you can to bring restoration to the relationship. And so that's a quick summary of pulling the weeds. Sometimes the weeds have been growing for decades and it takes a really long time. It's not just a matter of spending an hour in a counseling session. And perhaps some of you are thinking about this and saying, we've got some weeds that I need to pull. I need to look at the logs and seek forgiveness. And maybe it's been you've mowed the weeds and you haven't pulled the weeds. You've ignored things. And you wonder why you can't get close. Well, there's weeds preventing the flowers from growing. And we will give this as an assignment for couples to spend time. And again, think about where your guilt is. Seek God's forgiveness humbly. Go to one another. It can be really hard to go back, maybe just saying in 20 years of marriage, I've never really admitted I was doing this. And now I'm going to seek your forgiveness. It's hard to admit you failed that much, but God loves it when sinners repent. Real Christians love it when their spouse repents and can build something better. You may need to get help from your pastors or godly couples who could help you work through this if you get stuck. There's so much more to it. But I wanted, at least in the last few minutes, talking about planting the flowers. The objective of clearing the weeds isn't just to have bare dirt. You want to grow crops. You want to grow the corn or the strawberries or the flowers, whatever it is. And that also takes some effort. Some of that I covered in the last session when I said the plans of the diligent lead to advantage. And life is so busy, you have to be intentional about spending time together. If you don't plan it, it will not happen, especially in busy times of life when you have little kids or you're both working. And so communication is something that doesn't just happen. It's something that takes diligent effort. And then according to scripture, Love listens. In Proverbs 20, verse 5, it says, the plan of a man's heart is like a deep well, but a person of understanding draws it out. The man I was talking to earlier this week, he says, well, my wife and I have nothing to talk about. Well, you need to get a longer rope and a bigger bucket. to get down, she wants to communicate with you, she doesn't trust that you want to listen. And listening is a biblical skill that you really care about what they have to say and you want to know them. Philippians 2, consider others more important than yourself, Paul writes, which is to be Christ-like and humble. Many cases when couples do talk, it's like, would you be quiet and listen to me and then everything will be fine. And while the other person's talking, we're reloading. So when it's our turn, we can finally you know, get our point across, and then maybe they'll come to their senses. Humility would be that when we're having a disagreement even, is that I want to understand your point of view. We were talking to another pastor and his wife, and I don't even want to go to the details, but basically she wanted to make a decision, he went against her decision, and they both needed to be admonished because rather than saying, he basically said, I'm the man of the house, we're going to do things my way. That is not what Ephesians 5 and Headship are talking about. It should be, help me understand, honey, why you disagree with me. And really listen and care to hear that. Many men are very terrible listeners. And they're not just a terrible listener because you need to learn some technique. How do you become a good listener? You're humble and realize you're not as smart as you think. And the other person is really important. They have good things to say. Proverbs 31, the godly woman, the teaching of wisdom is on her lips. The heart of her husband trusts in her. To value your wife is saying profound and important things you ought to listen to. She's reading the Bible. She's studying the Bible. You can learn from her. And she's with the kids all the time or whatever it is. And you want to know her. Another counseling case where a couple we perform pre-marriage counseling. I performed the wedding over 30 years ago Their marriage is really in trouble. They're not going to divorce. They're not going to give up but they just aren't close anymore and I asked him. What does your wife want from you Mike? He says well, she wants me to provide well so she can be at home. She wants me to help with the kids and And he does those things, take care of things around the house. I said, but that's not what your wife wants more than anything else. I think I know what your wife wants more than anything else. What is it? Anybody want to guess? She wants to be known. When you were courting, you could not know her enough. She wants to be a person you want to know as deeply as possible. The techniques will all work. All communication techniques work if you've decided you want to communicate. And we've got different ones we teach. How first you say, here's what I think you're saying. And then she says, here's what I think you're saying. And then, wow, that's really good. And here's where you got it wrong. I mean, there's all kinds of good things. And write letters to each other. They all work if you're just saying, I'm determined. that I want to get close to you, I want to hear what matters to you, that I'm not the only smart person in the room, and I want to respect you and what you want to say. I do want to know you deeply. Brad Hambrick wrote an article called About Conversation and Sex. And his point was that men and women have different needs. A lot of men have high levels of need for intimacy and lower perceived needs in communication and realize that your wife may have as much need for communication as you do sex. It's not a matter of getting sex by communicating. It's a matter of caring for her enough to realize that I don't just want to get what I need. I want my wife to be really happy and her needs to be met. just as a wife towards her husband might think, even if this isn't always what I want, I want my husband to be thrilled to be married to me. I want my wife to be thrilled to be married to me because I want to listen to her. My wife wants someone to listen to her. I learned this early on, just every day we would sit down 15 minutes, even with little kids, because she just had to tell me about her day, and she wanted somebody who cared about her day. Now she counsels all the time, and all these women are pouring out their hearts, I have nobody else who will listen to me, and no one else I can talk to in my life, and I'm the guy she can talk to. And, but not just walking along and, yeah, okay, okay. That really cares about her. Cares about her excitement when she sees someone growing and her sadness when someone seems to be falling away and, you know, when her pie burns and the, you know, it's not saying, yeah, I'll go to the store and get you another pie. That's not it. That pie was her. in a sense, and just working at that understanding in relationship. It's learning to love what they love because they love it. And we don't have a perfect marriage, but that's the one I have the most examples from. When I hit 50, I started taking up long distance running. And Caroline is the most unathletic person I think I've ever known in my life that didn't have some kind of physical handicap. She can't throw. She can't catch. She can't hit a tennis ball. But I was preparing for these marathons, and she started training for half marathons. And I started training her for the half marathons. I'd run the marathon. She'd run the half marathon. I bought her a shirt that says, I hate running. She'd wear that sometimes. But if that was what I was doing, and I would help her train her and doing her long runs, and then she did it, she would have never done it. But she wanted to be with me and my friends as we were doing those things. Another example into the side is Caroline has collected stamps, actually, with her mother, who's here, ever since she was a girl. And it used to be her mother would come see us and bring her stamp book, and Caroline would her, I don't know what they were doing, really, but they had their stamp books, and they're looking at stamps, and maybe one had stamps, the other one needed. Anyway, many years, several years ago, we were living in Southern California, I learned there was a stamp show about an hour away. And I learned Caroline had never, she'd been collecting stamps for 50 something years, she had never actually been to a stamp show. And so I planned to take the day off, and I drove her to this place, and she brought her stamp book, and she, here's one I'm missing, here's one I'm missing, and they have all these dealers there, they had a display of This ultra rare stamp, there's a cop there with a gun guarding the upside down Jenny stamp that's worth millions of dollars. They had that there. Is that right, stamp collector? Anyway, something like that. You can just turn it upside, I don't know. Anyway. But she was like a kid in the candy store. She was so excited. And I was happy I had a smartphone to keep me entertained all day. But when you love somebody, you're delighted in their joy. Another thing Caroline loves is Disney World. Anyway, apart from that. But we go to Disney World, sometimes I see people in my generation watching their children watching their children. My generation paid. They're standing there. They paid $200. today to thousands of dollars, but even their ticket was just to watch their grandchildren play and their children enjoy some things. But when you love your grandchildren and you love your children, it's delightful to spend the thousands of dollars to see them do that. Well, so it should be with our spouse, that you find out what they love and you talk about it with them. You find out what they love and you find ways to do it with them. And when you care about somebody else, then making them happy becomes more important than you being happy. And it's all of life, including communication. Again, it can be, you know, I already described kind of practically things we've tried to do in terms of make sure we talk every day. Now we have an empty nest. I have flexible schedule. We're able to take the walk. Some of you could never do that yet. Work on it. You know, getting away together, doing different things. But the structure is one thing, but then the commitment of saying, I want us to be close. The man who said I'm too busy to get close to my wife needs to change his priorities. He needs to change his heart. This is really important. I've already kind of brought this up. Have fun together. Back to where I began last night with my little verse in Ecclesiastes 9.9. that enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life, which He has given you under the sun, for this is your reward in life and in your toil, which you've labored under the sun. God has given marriage that we can bring blessing to one another, receive marriage as a gift from Him, but it doesn't just happen. We need to pull the weeds. And then by the grace of God, we need to plant the flowers, and then we can at least come closer to enjoying the ideals the gospel enables us to fulfill. Let's pray. Father in heaven, you know the hearts of each person here. You know the condition of the marriages represented here. I pray where there are weeds and unresolved conflicts, that you would bring reconciliation, humility, confession, forgiveness. Help us where we may need to confront others, to do so with love and gentleness for restoration. And help us not to just be satisfied with problems having been resolved, but help us to each bring joy to the other in marriage and to know each other and to be known. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.