← ArchiveDesperate Households Part 2DateOctober 12, 2014Speaker—TextEphesians 4Passages in this sermonEphesians 4:291:53Psalms 3911:45James 1:1921:02Genesis 1:2722:10Ephesians 5:6–1525:52John 1531:07TranscriptClick any line to jump there.0:00Amen. Thank you so much. We are in this second part of the Desperate Households series and I was thinking about the topic today is communications and I was thinking about communicating. Deb and I've been married 34 years now and I told her just yesterday if you decide to leave me let me know0:28because I'm gonna pack my bags and go with you. I'm not gonna go through this again and so she said great. I started thinking about back at our anniversary was May the 10th and I was thinking about what that night that day May the 10th during our anniversary and we were sitting down in our office and and I said honey what what in the world where do you want to go for our anniversary? What do you want to do for our anniversary? And it just kind of warmed my heart to see the look on her face as0:55she had that kind of a melting appreciation look on her face and she said somewhere that I haven't been in a long time and I suggested the kitchen and that went over real well I can just tell you right now you know sometimes we mess up in this communication thing do we not we mess up constantly because we we we say things that we want to say and maybe not really the way we should them should say them and we have1:24had some great feedback thank you so much for the emails and the encouraging words that you gave me about last week we dealt with relationships our way versus God's way and we should always defer to God's way obviously we talked about marriage last week and that's going to kind of be this kind of a springboard of what we're going to be talking about again today desperate households desperate communication one verse of scripture leaped off the page to me is Ephesians chapter 4 verse 29 read along with me I'm1:53reading the New American Standard Version of God's Word Ephesians chapter 4 verse 29 do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs that it may benefit those who listen those who listen do not let now that verse of scripture2:15is actually in two parts there's two distinct parts to that verse description we're going to break that verse down for us today there's that thou shalt not and the thou shalt is what you'd say if you were keep preaching from King James that thou shalt not says do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth thou shalt is but only what is building others up according to their needs let's pray2:44father God let the words of my mouth and a meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight today Lord we love you we praise you thank you for what you're about to do in the midst today and I pray God as we unpack your word today and we give truths and principles from it Lord I pray you receive all the praise all the glory and all the honor father do what you want to do in this place do all you want to do knit together relationships today father I pray that we understand the need to communicate3:11properly and we give you all the glory for that in advance thank you for this day thank you Lord that you've raised up that pastor search committee as they begin in the next few weeks to get neck deep in the work of calling the next senior pastor father I pray that you keep them faithful and focused to the task and we give you all the glory and all the praise in Jesus name we pray3:36and the church said amen the message truth marriage relationships can be wonderful but they can also be work as well Joanna Greenberg said it this way anybody can hear it takes brains to listen there are some positives to any relationship and there are some negatives to any relationship it's how we deal with the challenges that will define how good our relationships have grown last week I told you about marriages and4:06how I would much rather do and and the big truth be known most pastors would be this way the truth be known that they would rather do funerals than weddings because they're a whole lot more fun good celebrate the life of that person and then you go eat wonderful food the wedding is a two-day event you got to do all the preparation and then you everything's got to be right in the wedding planners all out there no flowers got to be just right4:32I was in a did a wedding this past spring for a couple and uh it was a couple and it was a friends of our family and they asked me to be the officiating pastor for their wedding and so with this was one of those he was like a G.I. Joe type guy you know just rough and tough and straight up kind of big kind of guy and we were going through the premarital counseling scenarios and they made an interesting statement and she was kind of Barbie you know she was real real pretty4:59cheerleader real bubbly type personality you know just exciting she's blonde beautiful real tanned athletic and he's like Mr. G.I. Joe Mr. Workout King and all and so we're going through the premarital counseling scenarios and they made this interesting statement she said this almost verbatim our marriage is going to go down in history as one that will never have conflict I just looked at them I said I wanted to say5:28what rock did you crawl out from under right I mean they said this and so we got to the day and we went through the whole uh the whole uh the whole uh rehearsal thing and the afternoon saturday afternoon wedding boy the flowers were spectacular the music was glorious i'm i robed out and all these attendants and all everybody was all decked out and it was a beautiful day and the bride she was gorgeous and i'm5:56i'm backstage with the groom and his best man and we we walk out and he's sweating profusely already and he's all nervous and all that kind of stuff and he we walk out and we're standing there we're going through the hole and she comes down and she's spectacularly beautiful oh man she's beautiful and she's walking down through there and they're standing going through all of those things and he gets6:21emotional in this particular portion of the service emotional to the point he starts crying and also was he sweating tears flowing out of his eyes he begins to start crying profusely i mean uncontrollably and i'm like dude get a grip that's what i wanted to say he's just cried and she's looking at him like wow and you know when you start crying not only tears start running but there's6:50other fluids start leaving your body and it was running out of his nostrils and it was running down on his lips and all i could think she's about to kiss this guy and he's over there wiping his i mean the tuxedo's got stains on it where he's taking it down i mean it's awful looking i'm saying what am i gonna do i mean i've seen it all man and it's kind of like and you know i'm sitting there golly sometimes7:16it's good and sometimes it's not i mean and all of a sudden he wipes clean and they smack you know it turned out to be wonderful but you see i want us to think about that thou shall not before i give you the thou shalls in this passage of scripture there are positives and there are negatives that thou shall not number one this is a strange7:44principle you probably never had one like this but i'm a strange pastor too but here's the principle we should stop lobbing dead fish in the ear of loved ones you say now that is a weird statement right there you see i don't know about you but dead fish begin to smell after a while they start8:08stinking do they not they can lay out in that ice but after a period of time if they're not filleted and cooked they begin to stink listen to what it says again in ephesians chapter 4 verse 29 do not let any unwholesome dead fish talk come out of your mouths but only what is helpful in building8:32others up according to their needs that it may benefit those who listen fishermen are weird ducks are they not how many of y'all like that going that fishing thing come on raise your hand confess your sin go ahead fishermen they're weird people they talk about the quantity and the quality of their fish don't they boy i caught one this big when it was really about this big right we had a multiple thing they9:00weigh them out in these fishing tournaments so that the ones who had the most weight they win the tournament it's a big deal i was speaking at our baptist assembly grounds over at shako springs a couple of years back for a youth event i i it was you know one of those last youth events that i had on my schedule to speak at and it was a a weekend retreat type thing and and i was in the hotel there at shako and they had the lake if you haven't been there it's a beautiful lake and and there there you9:28can go and fish in that lake but they ask you to actually put the fish back in the lake but these seventh and eighth grade boys happened to be in the room next to me and they were fishermen they were from down south alabama they were here at this event and so they were there and in my room next door it there's this odor now seventh and eighth grade boys have an odor anyway right i mean they just have an odor because most of the time they don't bathe on a regular basis but this particular room had a9:54unique odor about it and i said goodness gracious what in the world is this and so i finally knocked after the second day i knocked on the door brad and they said what i opened the door to goodness the smell was awful i said guys what is wrong with your room we need to have a housekeeper to come clean this room what's going on with here they said we don't know what you're talking about and i walked back into the bathroom and there was a bathtub with about eight or nine fish laying out in that bathtub with10:19no ice on it and no water they're just dying i said what are y'all doing we're gonna take them home with us they're the best catch we've ever caught you see folks that's exactly reminded me of that passage don't lob a dead fish in the ear of a loved one do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth now the word unwholesome in the greek it means saphiros meaning dead fish loud harsh mean words10:46saphiros how do we deal with that how do we deal with lobbying that dead fish in the ear of a loved one number one we confess to the father and then to the person if you have offended that person i don't care if it's 20 years ago if you've offended that person 20 minutes ago go to that person and confess11:09your sin to the father in heaven first if you're a christ follower and then go to that person and confess to that person stop lobbying the dead fish in the ear of a loved one we wonder why in the north american church is decaying declining is because they see how we supposedly christ followers act to one another we need to stop lobbying the dead fish in the ear of a loved one ask god's power and his indwelled11:36holy spirit in our lives to stop you from ever doing it again i love what psalms 39 verse and one says i said i will watch my ways and keep my tongue from sin i will put a muzzle on my mouth we had the bright idea when seth was a middle schooler is to get him a dog for christmas and we got him a a dog that12:03he always wanted now he's got a chocolate lab now he he loves cali the chocolate lab best dog i've ever been around hardly ever barks just a great dog and but we got him this golden retriever dog and they're just kind of brained out there i mean they're all over the place right so we got this golden retriever and he named it champ and so champ the golden retriever it was not going to be an indoor dog that's12:30this now some people love indoor dogs we're just not one of those people that love it because golden's shed a lot of hair you know and so we have champ and he's an outdoor dog and let him come down in the basement and sleep when it's real cold but we decided to let him run out in our yard and we didn't have a fence because we kind of live on the side of the hill it's kind of hard to put a fence up and that kind of stuff so we decided we found out that you can get these underground fences and so you build12:55the collar on there and it's got these little prongs on there and it's kind of a shock mechanism it's kind of an underground fence and so you have to train and you know people in our neighborhood thought we're crazy because we had the dog got their training have all these little flags you got to go over there you slap the flag and you slap the dog and you train them not to go past that right and the little beep goes off well i had that thing amped up a couple of times a cup of notches too much and i'll never forget brad i had old champ out one morning i was training and i got him real13:25close and he went zap yeah dog did a back flip man i'm gonna tell you i had that thing ramped up too high right well that's what he's saying here we need to put a muzzle on our mouth do not let any unwholesome talk any unwholesome talk come out of our mouths during this transition period church gathering here close i don't want you to miss this during this transition period i implore you13:51i beg you i beseech you from king james talk i beg you to let nothing unwholesome come out of your mouth if you're not happy keep it to yourself if you're happy let everybody know about it amen amen14:11folks do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths my son played soccer for oak mountain high school and that's a pretty doggone good soccer team in this area they won in his high school career they14:34won four three state championships in four years they're a pretty good soccer team a lot of travel clubs playing out of that group and my son was not one of those guys that played the travel soccer he played school soccer he played in a local travel club but nothing that you know going off on the weekends and doing that craziness and hoping that you're going to get some kind of world cup deal going on but he played on this small little travel club that was a local travel soccer club and you know15:04inevitably when we have the mixture of all those athletes and then we have the mixture of all their parents inevitably we always got that parent that is living vicariously through their kid and they won't let their kid be a kid and they won't let their kid play and just be a kid right they they somewhere along the way they may messed up in athletics or something like that and so they're15:32vicariously living through their kid well we had this one kid that was on our soccer club and he was a phenomenal player good player but he wasn't that top tier kid but he was good he was a striker he could score but his number on his jersey was number two and i didn't think anything about it they just all went in sequence i didn't think anything about it you know says number was number 11 i didn't think anything about that and so we were we were in this club and this dad was like the big time sponsor of this club15:58and i you know i just it's it's sports let's just let them be kids sometimes i think we should not take score during those times but just let them play and have fun right and so we're there brad and we're playing some group over there at mount vestavia somewhere like that we're we're playing and his kid is not having one of those stellar days in fact of the matter he let a kid score on him and his dad was screaming the whole time not wholesome stuff but unwholesome stuff towards our team trying to be an16:28encouragement but he was a discouragement to me and i'm sure to the athletes and when that last goal got scored and the kid passed on him and took the ball away from his son and took it the distance of the field and scored and literally that was the winning score his dad stood up in the stands and you know soccer in this area is big but it's nothing like football now my friends in central america they think16:57when i say that they get all wigged out about that they need to learn what real football is down there one day maybe it'll happen but right now that's what their football is but he stood up and he said no wonder we gave you the number two instead of one you will always be second place i had enough i stood up and as pastorally as i could17:25i looked at him and i said sir if you say that ever again i'm gonna whip your rear end in the name of jesus folks let me tell you something we as the body of christ it is time for us to quit being politically correct and biblically correct and hold each other accountable for the things that we say and the17:53things that we do stop lobbying the dead fish in the ear of the loved one i saw the countenance of that wonderful young man the countenance just drained from his face we need to take charge of our mouths we need to put a muzzle on it if you want to change you can and you can with god's help second principle18:22this is positive we've gotten past the negatives now let me give you a word a positive word we need to learn to use our mouth power correctly watch this18:59i'm in here i forgot the owner get out what is that out you have a mustache19:14you don't even knock you have a mustache how long how long how long have i what ray been sporting that19:35for as long as you've known me and for as long as you've known me i've bleached it and it's not a mustache let me look at it don't examine me you should be apologizing to me i'm sorry nature can be cruel everybody knows that program everybody loves raymond right so one of the best programs on television but20:05i saw that clip and i said that's perfect because he's not using his mouth power correctly is he it's not an unwholesome thing he is there may be reality truth to there right that she may have a mustache i don't know but there's times that you just need to put a muzzle on that and use your mouth power correctly building one another up is what it says the second part20:33i i think there's several things for us to take from that learning to use your mouth power correctly let's read that verse once again 4 29 do not let any unwholesome talk any saferos come out of your mouths but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs needs that it may benefit those who listen you see we need to learn i used our mouth power correctly we need to learn to listen better look with me to james chapter 1 verse 19 and should i stay21:02any length of time i probably will try i've been studying james on my own and i really love this book it really beats you up a little bit but it's truth i mean it is thick with principle but look what james chapter 1 verse 19 says this you know my beloved my beloved brethren but let everyone be quick to hear and slow to speak and slow to anger be quick to hear and slow to speak you see sometimes we need to21:31let our words be seasoned correct we need to use we need to learn to listen better not only do we need to learn to listen better but we need to know the voice differences between males and females james dobson said that girls speak first and men and boys never catch up amen they they're smarter than us they're21:55better looking and they're smarter than us male uses about 30 000 words a day a female uses about 50 000 words a day james genesis chapter 1 verse 27 flip back over genesis chapter 1 verse 27 i want you to read this verse along with me as well and god created man in his own image and in the image of god he created him male and female and he created them he didn't create a she-male he created a male22:24and a female i love what the research says the researchers larry barker and katie wilson watson say research has consistently demonstrated that ineffective listening habits present the most common barriers to success in relationships and careers again joanne greenberg says anyone can hear it takes brains to listen so we've got to use the brain that god gave us to learn to listen better we need to know22:54the voice differences we need to know the learn to listen better we need to know the differences between male and female voices research has consistently say demonstrates that ineffective listening habits create the barriers between relationships and in our careers so i think there's three principle third principle there not only do we need to listen better know voice differences male and female but we need to practice drive through listening or drive through talking now guys i want you to focus in here23:22gathering here close ladies you can take a nap guys most of us do not hear what our wives say to us do we not and that's why we have learned the art of using this wonderful terminology huh when they say something to us what do you think huh it's because you're not listening she's talking now i want to illustrate that by early days of my career i've only had two jobs i worked for a food service company out of23:51houston texas for 11 years and then i've ran our non-profit ministry for now over 30 30 plus years and i i i love the food service distribution business because i was on the other side not cooking the food i was selling the food and i was in the wave of this fast food industry we have some fast food chick-fil-a guys in here and they have the wonderful way of getting the food hot to you and they have these nice little voices on there when you do the drive-through you know24:17they'll say meet you at the window with this little smiley face on and they're so fired up and i love it the way they treat their guests that's coming to eat with them but by the early days when we started drive-through they had this little microphone and it sounded like this when you drive through you you know it's one of those real phd types that were in there taking your order right real intelligent person you walk up and say i want something and you get up there and you say i wanted two fry uh two24:42cheeseburgers and i ordered french fries and you got seven cheeseburgers and no french fries right because they couldn't hear and you couldn't hear them we need to practice better drive-through talking when we're laying back in our loser boy this afternoon and our wife walks by here's what i would suggest you say this is what i've started saying when my wife walks by me and says something that i didn't25:09hear here's what i think i heard you say i told her i was going to use that statement today she said that's the dumbest thing i've ever heard you say i said was it better than huh she said a little bit folks let me tell you something we need to learn to listen better we need to know our voice differences voices differences of women and females male and male and female and we need to practice drive-through25:37talking better and fifth we need to fourthly we need to fight for time we need to fight for time look with me to ephesians chapter 5 verse 6 to 15 and 16 therefore be careful how you walk not as unwise men but as wise men making the most of your time making the most of every opportunity25:59because the days are evil now i want you to gather in here close we're about done no one in this room gets more time than the other if you're getting 25 hours a day i feel slighted every one of us get the same amount of time to build a healthy relationship and to build a healthy26:23common relationship amongst each other as husband and wife as family members we have got to fight for the time back in the day there was a lot of expendable time meaning we had extra time we weren't faced with uh work schedules that we're faced with we weren't driving distances to work i'm telling you26:47there are so many things that are pulling on the family now for that almighty dollar we got sports and all of those things are well and good so we have to manage we have to fight for the time i want to give you something to take home with you today we need to fight for the time we need to have date nights as husbands and wives and the wives are shaking their head like i didn't like dating him in the beginning i sure don't want to date him now we need to fight for that time and have those date nights27:17but a thing that we do in our marriage we have e-breaks electronic breaks where we shut it down you say wait a minute you shut your cell phone down absolutely absolutely i got a posting from a guy on facebook recently said i am off facebook for one month have a nice day don't contact me because i'm not27:41responding he's a close friend of mine so i did the right thing i text him i said brother what what's up you sick or something he said no i am so tired of reading all the trash that is on facebook i am done with it for at least a month and if i can live without it i might live without it folks we need e-breaks i was sitting in a restaurant28:09this week with my wife thursday night smell a mushroom night for us we go to mellow mushroom just about every thursday night so if you want to find this mellow mushroom on 280 five o'clock 5 30 we're sitting there having our mellow mushroom they they know us so well they already pour this two diet coats of limes when we're coming in that's kind of sad that we're in that big of a rut amen but we're sitting there in melon mushroom and i look over there and there's an older couple older than us which is shocking in the room but it was28:37five o'clock because we old people have to eat early because we go to bed early amen so i'm sitting there and there's this older couple and i watch them the entire time we're there they never ever look up they're both looking at their cell phones and they're doing their thing and they never communicate with each other and i wonder what happened i wanted to go over there but i didn't i wanted to my wife wouldn't let me i planned on doing it but she said no it's none of29:06your business i wanted to go say hey guys why don't y'all take an e-break let's have a communication line here huh and then i started thinking about you know what before i throw toss that stone i better look at the ones that are being heaved at me because we're all in the same boat if we're going to have the next generation pastor sent to us we're going to need to spend more time praying than emailing we're going to need to be more time asking god to call up the right guy to come and lead this29:35congregation then we are facebooking it is time for us to have these e-breaks we need date nights and folks let me tell you something this is one to take home no is not a bad word i know some of you need to say yes because you've been saying no way too long and we need you to serve some of you been saying no since you joined this church you've been sitting it's time for you to get30:02serving amen so the others that have been working their tails off here they just say no every now and then but no is not a bad word we need to take e-breaks we need to take date nights seriously do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths but only what is helpful for building others up30:25according to their needs that it may benefit those who listen dr bob barms in his book we need to talk couples who don't see to it that they schedule time for communication end up only communicating when arguing if you're only communicating when you're arguing with one another you've missed the fact30:52smalley in his five love language he says there's five surface facts opinions and then i love four and five feels and needs i love what john 15 verse 12 and 13 says my command is this love each other as i have loved you greater love has no one than this that he lay down his life for his friends31:15church gathering here close it is time and this community is begging for a church to stand up and say we're stop lobbying the fish at one another we're going to learn to use our mouth power correctly we're going to listen to the needs of this community beginning in our own home31:40we're going to know the differences between the languages we're going to sit down and have dialogue that's not an argument the church of the living god in this community desire is desired to be standing in that position the community is begging for a church to stand up and said that's who we are32:05individually as well as collectively we need to learn to use our mouth power correctly we need to not let any unwholesome talk come out of our mouths but only what is helpful in building one another up now let me ask you this question and we're done32:31you're probably saying dan i'm that person i don't let any unwholesome stuff come out of my mouth that's good praise god but maybe you know someone and maybe someone is in this room did you know that and maybe they have let some unwholesome talk come out of their mouths towards you or someone else you know what it's time for us to be honest with one another it's time for us to confess that sin32:56and to confess it to one another and so i want to challenge you in the next few moments as we gather here in this what we call an invitation time i invite you invite you to confess that sin to god first and then confess that sin to someone else if husbands and wives are at odds with each other and you need help we have mediators for that33:25they call them counselors we have opportunities for you to sit down with a a person who's walking through scripture and has studied scripture and and bathed in scripture that can walk with you and help you in any area of your life dev and i periodically just sit down with our mentors and say here's where we are in this 34 years of life here's some things that we need to work on what do you think and they walk with us and pray with us folks every one of us in this room33:53have a need to have someone in our lives that could speak truth into that life but if you're here today and you're struggling and you've had some unwholesome things come out of your mouth or you've received some unwholesome things i challenge you to come to this altar and kneel and pray husbands and wives maybe y'all need to come and say let's let the next generation of our marriage be wholesome let's let the next generation of our marriage be corrected through our mouths the way that we talk and34:22communicate let's let god be lord completely over our lives with every head bowed and every eye closed our instrumentalists are coming to prepare our time of invitation whatever the decision that god has put on your heart whatever the situation is going on in your life whatever god has spoken to you about will you commit today will you as i pray i'm going to pray over you they're going to sing over you in just a34:47second this altar will be open we have counselors and pastors that will hear that will pray with you but maybe you need to come to this altar already some have come and you just continue to pray father god i ask you right now lord do your work in this place father rip down any barrier that's standing in the way of us being radically changed in this place god i ask you right now as we begin to sing this song of invitation it's nothing more than a song to to kind of helped us through this35:18period but there's some here to that just need to stand up and step out some in this room that need to come to this altar husbands and wives need to come and confess they need to come and recommit their lives to one another but more importantly their life to you maybe there's some teenagers in this room that need to go and speak to their parent maybe there's some children in this room that need to go and talk to their parent about what they're35:46what's going on in their life and how they've been ungodly with their unwholesome tongue towards their parent father we need to walk wisely because the days are numbered and father i pray that we will be a church a body of believers that this community will know by its love and god i pray that we surrender our lives to your lordship today whether we do that or not you're still lord36:12but today i pray many will stand up and step out and confess and say today he's going to be lord over every aspect of my relationship and god do that in this room in jesus name we pray with heads bowed would you quietly and eyes closed just quietly stand to your feet i want this to be as quiet a time as we can i believe there's some couples that are slipping out right36:39now that just need to come right now just come on the altar's open i'm gonna have the musicians to sing over us in just a second you stand where you are slip out right now the altar's open right now you may not need to come and say to anything to me you may just need to come to this altar maybe just come as a couple just come and let god be lord in your life commit your life to him right now slip out that's right come on that's right37:07right come on that's right37:27youMore sermons on Ephesians →
