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A life with God doesn't have to be boring.
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You were made for adventure.
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It can be a heart pounding life of purpose.
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Join us every weekend for 30 minutes, challenge, hope
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and encouragement to guide you on your spiritual adventure.
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- Hey, everyone, and welcome to Crossroads Church.
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My name is Hannah, and I'm so glad you're here with us today.
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No matter where you are on your spiritual adventure,
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we're here to help you.
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There seems to be an increasing gap between us.
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No, not just you and me, because obviously
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there's a screen or whatever between us,
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but I mean us and our relationships, in our workplaces,
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and in our families and, yes, even our politics.
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Our fuses are shorter with each other.
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And we can't even get on the same page
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about what we think, believe or even tolerate from each other.
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Today, we're going to hear from one of our teaching pastors,
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Kyle Ranson, about why that gap exists,
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how it seems to be getting even wider,
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and what we can do to fill it, to be closer
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with our friends, neighbors, coworkers and family.
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Let's get started.
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- Do you feel like no matter what you do
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there's just this gap between you
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and even the people closest to you.
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This gap of not being on the same page,
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you're just missing each other
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or just not quite connecting and continually bumping
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into each other and causing pain and frustration?
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You know I've felt that in my life.
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I felt that between me and friends, like,
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"Wait, we had plans. Why are you bailing on me?"
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I felt that between me and my wife, Sarah,
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"Wait, I thought we promised to care for each other.
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How come it seems like you can't even see me right now?"
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I felt that between me and my kids.
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"Wait, since when did you start talking back to me?"
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I felt it between me and my coworkers.
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"How come it seems like you care more about your thing than our thing?"
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If none of that resonates with you, if every relationship
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in your life is perfect, today won't help you.
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But if you've got any relationship in your life
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where you want to see improvement, today is going to, I hope,
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give you a fresh perspective, language and set of tools
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to use to close the gap.
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So we're going to unlock a simple set of ancient truths
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that I believe hold the key to fixing the gap,
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no matter which relationship in your life
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is currently causing you pain.
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Hey, I'm Kyle, by the way, I'm a professional teaching pastor
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at Crossroads and a very, very amateur woodworker.
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I did, you know, I puffed up my chest and said,
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"All right, I'm going to go build a table.
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It's going to be awesome."
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I head out to the garage, I get out there.
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I'm like, "Time to pull out my phone and search YouTube,
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because I have no idea what I'm doing."
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It took me months and months and more money and tools
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than the table she wanted to buy in the first place.
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Don't tell her that.
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But I built it and I learned a bunch of stuff
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about table making all along the way.
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And now, years later, I built most of the furniture in my house
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and many, many tables, including this one, my coffee table.
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And what I love about this one, it's one of my favorite, by the way,
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is that it looks like one single piece of wood, but it's not.
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It's actually four distinct and separate pieces joined
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together into one.
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Now, do you know how that happens?
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Before I watched all those videos about woodworking,
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I just assumed when I saw a table like this,
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there were probably some kind of hidden screws someplace
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that I couldn't see or, you know, like long bars of metal
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that were connecting the whole thing together or something.
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Surely there had to be something I couldn't see
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that was metal holding the whole thing together.
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That's not actually true.
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The way it turns out that you bond individual boards
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into one piece is simple.
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The only ingredients you need are pressure
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and the right thing in the gap.
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If you get those two things together, what you end up with
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is a completely unified table.
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Pressure and the right thing in the gap make a unified table.
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Now, what's really fascinating, I think, about this
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is that the strongest part of this entire table
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are actually the joints.
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See, if this were to break and someday it probably will
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because they have two boys and they love to wrestle each other.
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So one day one of the boys is going to throw the other one
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through this coffee table and it will break.
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When it does, it is much more likely that
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and the Son of God come to rescue them."
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Jesus's dream for the church is simple: It's unity.
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It's also the one prayer He prayed for us.
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It happens in John 17.
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Here are His words, the words of Jesus. He said:
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He says when this happens it will be so incredible,
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so unseen that any other place in the world
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that everyone want to go, "Oh, my gosh.
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Jesus is who He says He is."
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Isn't that amazing?
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So the picture is that we would be individuals,
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but so bonded together that when the world looks at us,
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what they would see is one, one church, one mind.
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That means every gap closed in every relationship.
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How in the world would that ever happen?
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Well, it turns out the same exact way as making a table:
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pressure plus the right thing in the gap is what leads to unity.
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In woodworking, you need giant clamps like these
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to supply the pressure.
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These are called parallel clamps.
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And each one of them supplies 1700 pounds of pressure,
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which is a ton of pressure.
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But when it comes to relationships,
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we don't need anything to supply the pressure
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because the world itself supplies the pressure.
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In John 16:33 Jesus said this:
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In the world right now there is plenty of trouble, right?
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And trouble brings pressure.
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Has anyone else felt the pressure this year?
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A pandemic, a divisive election season,
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financial stress, emotional fatigue.
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I want you to think about the relationships in your life
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and where you're feeling the pain of that pressure right now.
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Maybe it's between you and your spouse.
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Have you been arguing more lately?
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Maybe it's you and that friend who you used to text
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with every day, but you haven't heard from them in weeks.
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And maybe it's you and your kids, the same kids
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that used to crawl into your lap and beg me to read book
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after book after book.
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Now, every time you're in the same room,
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you can't stop shouting at each other.
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Or maybe it's at work.
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Maybe it's between you and your boss
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and though you've never said it to their face,
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whenever your friends ask you how work is going
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you just start with, "Man, I don't know how much longer
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I can keep doing this."
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My question is this: Is the pressure bonding you closer
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to your friends, your work teammates,
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or is the pressure splitting you apart?
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The key is what you choose to put in the gap.
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See, in every single relationship, there is a gap.
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It's the gap between me and you.
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The gap exists because despite the fact that we would
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sometimes love to be able to read each other's minds.
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I know my wife Sarah would love me to be able to
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just know exactly what she's thinking and feeling at all times.
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I can't, there's a gap between us,
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things that I can't know because I'm not her.
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Things we can't know because I'm not you.
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The gap is things like our thoughts, our feelings,
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our motivations, our intentions.
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But the thing is, we don't leave the gap blank.
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We don't leave the gap empty, we fill it in every time.
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When I don't know your motivations, I fill them in.
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And the thing is, there's only two options
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at the end of the day, two options of what to put in this gap.
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And what we choose determines
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whether we will bond together or break apart.
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The two options: our trust, which trust is saying
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when I don't know, when there's a gap between me and you,
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I will choose to trust you.
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I will choose to believe the best.
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The only other option on what to put in the gap is suspicion.
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Suspicion says when I don't know, I will assume the worst.
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Whether you choose to put trust in the gap
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or suspicion in the gap is the thing that will determine
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whether the relationships in your life bond together
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in strength and in unity or break apart forever.
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This is the same gap, by the way, that we see
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in bigger, more systematic issues
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and divisions in our country.
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Because see, it's not just me, me further out becomes us,
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and it's not just you, you further out becomes them.
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And we end up with these big gaps in division
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in our nation between us and them, between white and black,
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between Democrat and Republican.
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And there's this gap.
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And what we choose to put in the gap will determine
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the same thing for these big issues.
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Do I choose to put trust or suspicion in the gap?
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It all comes down to that.
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By default, we are born suspicious.
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Suspicion is what is in the gap.
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Think about this for a second with me.
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When a baby is born and it doesn't know what's going on,
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what does it do, Mom and Dad?
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Does it smile and assume the best, you know,
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when like in the middle of the night,
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it wakes up in its crib alone, does it think, you know,
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"I'll bet mom and dad are probably close by,"
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or, "I'm hungry, but, you know, gosh, I bet food's coming soon,"
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or, "I don't want to sleep. But you know what?
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I trust that mom laid me down for a nap
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and I trust that mom knows best."
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No, that's not what babies do.
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Babies don't do that at all?
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They cry. They freak the crap out all the time. Why?
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Because they don't trust you.
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Really, we're born this way.
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We are all born suspicious.
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This applies in every single relationship,
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it's our starting spot, it's our default,
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including between us and God.
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Suspicion is actually part of the very first sin.
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See, in this gap between God and man, Satan inserts suspicion.
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And whether you think this story is an allegory
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or a metaphor or fact, it doesn't really matter for this point.
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The point is suspicion is inserted.
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The story goes like this, it's from Genesis 3:1, it says:
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He says, "I mean, really? Is that what God says?
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You know, He said -- you're not going to die.
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What He's really after, His real intentions,
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His real motivations are to stop you from being like Him."
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And ever since, suspicion is our default setting.
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Think about this with masks.
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You know, how many of us have seen somebody with a mask,
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and if you think masks are good, you see somebody
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without a mask and you immediately insert suspicion.
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"Oh, you're a bad person or you don't care about me."
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Or vice versa, if you don't want to wear a mask
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and you should see somebody with a mask on,
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what do you think in your head?
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Not, "Oh, you probably have a really good reason for that."
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No, you think, "You're just giving into fear.
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You're just overreacting."
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This is our default setting.
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Here's why this matters.
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You have to understand you are not the exception,
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and I'm not either.
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We are all born holding suspicion.
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But God's dream for our relationships and for His church
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is unity, not to have suspicion.
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His dream is that we would be so united,
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so close together, that when you look at us
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you wouldn't see multiple pieces, you would see one thing.
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One is the word He used over and over again in John 17.
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And the rest of the New Testament, that idea
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of what kind of oneness is fleshed out.
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I'm going to read you about six different scriptures
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out of the New Testament that expand in this idea of oneness.
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The first one is from Acts 4:32, it says:
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OK, so if you step back from those
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and we just do a little bit of math,
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something really interesting emerges.
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See we heard about being one heart one time.
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We heard about having one voice one time.
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We heard of having one spirit twice.
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All of those are critically important.
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But do you remember the one we heard the most?
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Be of one mind.
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Why does the New Testament stress the mind so much?
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It's for this reason, because your mind, what you think
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is what's in the gap.
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It's your mind. It's your thoughts.
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And your mind must be renewed.
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Romans 12:2 says:
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Now, do you know what that chapter goes into right after this?
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A long description of how to think about each other,
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thoughts we have.
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What about you, what assumptions do you make
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about what other people think about you
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or want for you when you don't know?
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Now, the hard part about suspicion is that
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we're all so used to it's whispers in our ear
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that we don't even hear it anymore.
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It's talking to us, though, all of the time.
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And if we want to learn how to get rid of suspicion in the gap,
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we have to learn how to detect its voice.
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Now, suspicion always says two things.
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First, the voice of suspicion
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is always whispering in your ear that it's simple.
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It says phrases like this. Why? Why can't they just,
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you know, this is particularly at work.
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I hear this a lot at work between teams. You know?
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It's why can't marketing just do the thing I want
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or why can't sales just do the thing I want?
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How come management has to blah, blah, blah?
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Why can't they just X, Y and Z?
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Suspicion always says it's simple.
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Early on at Crossroads, I was leading
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our weekend experience team,
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helping create what happens on weekends.
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And it was late in a week.
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It was like a Thursday or something
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and I had this last minute idea. It was a great idea.
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I wanted a montage of video clips from different movies.
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And so I called our video team director.
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I said, "Hey, I have this great idea.
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All you got to do is just pull these ten clips
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and order them in this order."
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And she said, "We can't do that. It's harder than you think.
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It's not as simple as you're assuming."
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And I chose not to believe her.
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I said, "I don't -- I don't understand that."
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I got to this point where I said, "Fine, I'll do it myself."
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And she said fine.
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And so I went to this place, it was called Blockbuster.
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It was crazy, you walked in and you could rent things called DVDs.
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And I got these ten movies, brought them home to my house,
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sat down on my couch.
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I thought, "I'll have this knocked out in,
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I don't know, half an hour or so, how hard can this be?
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And about four hours later, I was still searching for the clips
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that in my mind where in these exact spots
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and how hard could this be?
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And the next day I went into work and I said to our video team director,
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"I'm so sorry. I assumed it was simple.
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It turns out it's not. I wish I had trusted you."
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Suspicion always says it's simple.
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Where in your life are you listening to that lie?
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It taps into this thing that you and I have a built in mechanism
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that wants to judge other people and assume sin.
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You know, I spent years and years on our staff at Crossroads
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before I had any leadership position.
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And I would sometimes assume things, the worst things
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about motivations and why we were doing things that I didn't like
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and why not, I just always assumed
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something worse than what was actually there.
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You probably had this experience at Crossroads, too.
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If you've ever heard us talk about money, did suspicion talk to you
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and say it's sin, "They don't care about you? They just want your money."
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Did you hear that lie?
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That's the voice of suspicion.
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It always assumes sin.
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Meanwhile, 1 Corinthians 13, the chapter on love in the Bible,
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the definitive chapter says that love thinks no evil.
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It's all suspicion things about, though.
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It's nasty, but there is a way out.
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The antidote to suspicion is trust.
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Now, trust doesn't come naturally to me,
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and the reason is because trust is unnatural.
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See trust is a continual choice you have to make
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and if you don't make the choice you don't get trust.
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But it's not a one time thing.
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See trust is choosing again and again and again
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to believe the best about somebody.
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And that way it's actually a lot like faith.
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You know, I used to wish, and I know this sounds crazy,
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so just just go with me for a second.
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I kind of used to wish that I had done drugs because see what
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I thought faith was, was that it was a moment that you had.
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That there would be this big, dramatic moment in your life
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where everything was awful and then you just suddenly like came to faith.
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And I would hear these stories and wish that I had one like that
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and I didn't.
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Since then, I've come to understand that
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while a moment can happen for some people,
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and if you've had that moment it can be amazing and dramatic
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and inspiring in all the best ways.
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It's not what faith is. That's conversion.
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Faith is continuing to choose God again and again and again and again.
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When I think about my life, if you asked me,
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"Like the most faithful moment you've ever had in your life?
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I would tell you it's not when I most believed in God, you know?
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When I thought like, "Oh, for sure. For sure.
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God is real and He's for me."
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No, it's actually it's -- it's the moment where
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00:22:01
I kind of wondered if He was still there or even cared about me,
-
00:22:04
but I reached out to Him all the same.
-
00:22:07
I chose to pray and say, "God, I need you."
-
00:22:11
I think that's the most faith filled moment of my life.
-
00:22:16
It's the same with trust.
-
00:22:18
There'll be moments in your life when you don't want to trust,
-
00:22:22
when you've made the choice again and again and again,
-
00:22:24
but suddenly it becomes harder.
-
00:22:27
The stakes are higher and you don't want to do it.
-
00:22:30
That's the moment you most need to trust.
-
00:22:38
Trust is the same, it's a continual choice
-
00:22:40
to believe the best about someone else.
-
00:22:42
Now, it's not about their skills, it's about their character and motivations.
-
00:22:46
By that I mean, it's not about saying to your neighbor,
-
00:22:49
who's a salesman, "Hey, man, I need open heart surgery
-
00:22:51
and I just want you to know I trust you.
-
00:22:53
And so here's the utility knife, and I'm going to lay down this table
-
00:22:57
and you just go get started because I trust you so much."
-
00:22:59
It's not about that.
-
00:23:00
You don't trust people for skills they don't have.
-
00:23:02
It means you trust their motivations,
-
00:23:03
you trust their character again and again and again and again.
-
00:23:09
And when you're first learning to build a table,
-
00:23:11
one of the things you have to learn,
-
00:23:12
which is actually kind of hard to learn,
-
00:23:15
is that you need to put so much more glue in the joint
-
00:23:20
than you ever thought was necessary.
-
00:23:23
See, most people when they start woodworking,
-
00:23:24
they just do this little like, hey, I'll just do like this
-
00:23:28
and then we're good because you learned in kindergarten
-
00:23:31
not to get messy with your glue.
-
00:23:33
But it doesn't work this way.
-
00:23:35
If you want boards to become unified,
-
00:23:37
you've got to overload the gaps with glue.
-
00:23:43
Put so much glue in there that when the pressure is applied
-
00:23:47
and the clamps come together, what you see is a line of glue.
-
00:23:51
That's how you know if you have enough of it.
-
00:23:54
The idea is a term called squeeze out.
-
00:23:56
You see it happening right here?
-
00:23:58
That means you've got enough glue in those joints.
-
00:24:00
It turns out if you want unity, here it comes,
-
00:24:05
you've got to have so much trust between you and the other person
-
00:24:10
that when pressure comes in your life,
-
00:24:13
what's visible to everybody else is how much you trust each other
-
00:24:17
when the pressure is applied.
-
00:24:20
There we go. Come on.
-
00:24:23
You see the trust come out.
-
00:24:26
This is what God says in 1 Corinthians 13.
-
00:24:31
You might have heard this chapter before at a wedding or some place.
-
00:24:34
It's kind of become like the wedding scripture.
-
00:24:36
It's because it talks about love.
-
00:24:38
It's the one that's like love is patient,
-
00:24:39
love is kind, you know, all that stuff.
-
00:24:41
Well, there's a section in there that not everybody always gets to
-
00:24:46
if they're trying to do the quick version at a wedding.
-
00:24:48
It's 1 Corinthians 13:7, it says:
-
00:24:58
Did you know that love promises to always trust?
-
00:25:04
See, when suspicion says it's simple,
-
00:25:05
trust chooses to believe that it's harder than I understand.
-
00:25:10
When suspicion says it's sin, trust chooses to believe
-
00:25:14
that they're following God's direction every time.
-
00:25:17
When suspicion says they're selfish,
-
00:25:19
trust chooses to believe that they want the best for me,
-
00:25:22
even more than they want the best for them.
-
00:25:24
And I know it can be hard. I know it can be hard,
-
00:25:27
but you don't get to unity in your relationships any other way.
-
00:25:31
If you want the blessing that comes from being bonded together
-
00:25:33
with the people closest to you, you have to put trust in the gap.
-
00:25:37
You have the right thing in the gap between you and me,
-
00:25:40
otherwise you don't get unity.
-
00:25:41
By the way, if you put the wrong thing in the gap,
-
00:26:42
Will you engage with them differently? Will you listen?
-
00:26:43
The choice is yours. No one can make it for you.
-
00:26:45
If you want unity in your life,
-
00:26:48
you must overload the gap between you with trust.
-
00:26:56
- I know that there are some areas in my life
-
00:26:58
where I just automatically go to suspicion.
-
00:27:01
I grew up with a lot of sisters and any time
-
00:27:03
an article of my clothing was missing, I just knew that it was them.
-
00:27:07
I was always suspicious.
-
00:27:09
But, you know, another place I used to be suspicious was with my money.
-
00:27:12
It was always easy for suspicion to creep in.
-
00:27:15
But when I decided to trust God with my money,
-
00:27:18
instead of being suspicious, everything changed.
-
00:27:21
God challenges us to spread his message through the church by giving.
-
00:27:25
And if that's you, well done.
-
00:27:27
But if you want to give for the first time or just learn more,
-
00:27:29
you can go to Crossroads.net/give or text Crossroads to 313131.
-
00:27:36
We have a lot more than our weekend services
-
00:27:38
and one of the things we do regularly is podcasts:
-
00:27:41
podcasts for women, podcast about parenting,
-
00:27:44
podcasts about living life aggressively and many more.
-
00:27:47
Let's take a look at some of our regularly occurring podcasts
-
00:27:50
that you can find at Crossroads.net.
-
00:27:54
- Life is crazier than ever these days,
-
00:27:56
you could use some hope, some encouragem
-
00:27:57
ent, fresh ideas,
-
00:27:59
faith driven perspective, and maybe even a little bit of laughter.
-
00:28:03
We've got you covered.
-
00:28:05
Parents, you are not alone.
-
00:28:07
Ladies, it's time for some real talk.
-
00:28:09
No matter who you are, stop settling.
-
00:28:12
No matter what stage of life you're in,
-
00:28:14
Crossroads podcasts have something to offer you.
-
00:28:17
Find them today on all major podcast platforms.
-
00:28:32
Now, I know what you may be thinking, which is, "Love always trusts?
-
00:28:35
That sounds like you're asking me to be always let down
-
00:28:38
because some people shouldn't be trusted.
-
00:28:40
I've done it before and they let me down again and again and again.
-
00:28:43
Love always trusts sounds like I'm always disappointed."
-
00:28:46
And here's the thing, yes, if you choose to trust people,
-
00:28:50
if you choose to put trust in the gap when you don't know,
-
00:28:53
sometimes you will get burned.
-
00:28:56
If you want a life in which you are never hurt,
-
00:28:59
you're never injured, you're never let down.
-
00:29:00
It's really easy, never trust anybody.
-
00:29:03
You will never get burned.
-
00:29:05
However, you will also miss out on the very best part of life,
-
00:29:09
the part that comes from being bonded together with somebody else,
-
00:29:11
the part that's only found in relationship and in unity.
-
00:29:13
And you won't ever experience what Jesus wants for your life, you won't.
-
00:29:18
Love always trusts.
-
00:29:20
You know, Jesus is not an exception.
-
00:29:22
Jesus sat down many times at a table with people
-
00:29:26
who broke His trust, who burned Him.
-
00:29:29
He had eleven disciples.
-
00:29:30
One of them was a guy named Judas, who Jesus trusted
-
00:29:34
so much so that He actually gave him the money box,
-
00:29:38
the money that supported their little band of ministry
-
00:29:40
as they were traveling around the countryside in Israel.
-
00:29:42
He gave him the money box,
-
00:29:43
even though He had reason to believe he wasn't trustworthy.
-
00:29:47
He still trusted him and He got burned.
-
00:29:50
Judas stole from the money box. Judas betrayed him.
-
00:29:54
But Jesus trusted anyway,
-
00:29:58
and on the other side of that was a blessing, a movement,
-
00:30:00
the 11 guys who rewarded that trust, who bonded together,
-
00:30:04
and who changed the world.
-
00:30:06
They're the reason we're having this conversation in the first place.
-
00:30:09
Jesus hasn't stopped trusting either, and He still gets burned.
-
00:30:13
Think about this, Jesus who scripture says knows
-
00:30:17
every single word that's on our tongue before we speak it,
-
00:30:21
who sees our real hearts.
-
00:30:23
He chooses to trust you and me again and again and again and again.
-
00:30:30
Scripture says that everything we have comes from Him.
-
00:30:33
That means He's trusting you right now
-
00:30:35
by literally putting His money in your pocket.
-
00:30:39
He's trusting you right now by putting His mission in your hand.
-
00:30:43
He's trusting you by putting His children literally inside your house.
-
00:30:48
He's trusting you and here's the deal,
-
00:30:50
if you choose trust, you will get burned,
-
00:30:54
but God will bless the effort and reward you
-
00:30:57
with relationships that make it worth it.
-
00:31:00
Now, I don't know where the gap is
-
00:31:02
between you and somebody else in your life.
-
00:31:04
I don't know what kind of relationship it is.
-
00:31:05
Maybe your gap is with somebody who you have
-
00:31:08
no experience with in your life, maybe it's somebody new.
-
00:31:10
You just started a new job. It's a new boss.
-
00:31:13
You just got a new roommate.
-
00:31:14
You just moved in, started a new year at college.
-
00:31:18
You never met this person. It's your freshman year, you have no idea.
-
00:31:21
What do you do in that case?
-
00:31:22
If you have no experience with them, you don't know them?
-
00:31:24
Easy, you trust from the beginning.
-
00:31:28
From the beginning, you found the relationship on
-
00:31:30
when I don't know what's in the gap between us,
-
00:31:33
I'm going to choose to believe the best.
-
00:31:36
Maybe the gap in your life is with somebody
-
00:31:38
who you don't have as much experience with yourself,
-
00:31:41
but somebody else does who you know,
-
00:31:43
and they've been whispering to you,
-
00:31:45
telling you that they're untrustworthy.
-
00:31:46
Maybe you were in a department, you just got a transfer to a new one
-
00:31:49
and your coworkers have told you like, "Hey, he's not the best boss.
-
00:31:53
Hey, he's only out for him. Hey, watch out for this."
-
00:31:57
What do you do when you've heard someone is untrustworthy?
-
00:32:02
Easy again, you choose to trust; you don't start with suspicion.
-
00:32:07
That same chapter that says that love always trusts
-
00:32:10
also says that love keeps no record of wrongs, no record.
-
00:32:14
It means you and I don't keep records.
-
00:32:15
It means we don't accept transfer files from another department,
-
00:32:18
somebody else who says they let me down,
-
00:32:21
we don't go, "Great, thank you so much."
-
00:32:23
No, we choose to trust from the beginning.
-
00:32:28
Maybe the gap in your life is with somebody
-
00:32:31
who you have firsthand experience with at breaking your trust.
-
00:32:35
How do you trust somebody who has broken your trust before?
-
00:32:39
This is the hardest situation.
-
00:32:40
Let me say from the beginning, there are situations
-
00:32:42
where you trusting somebody to keep you safe is a bad idea,
-
00:32:46
who's broken your trust and it could be dangerous for you
-
00:32:48
to go in and trust that they'll protect you.
-
00:32:51
There are situations of abuse and neglect in your life.
-
00:32:54
And I'm not saying put yourself or your children in harm's way.
-
00:32:58
That's not what this talk is about.
-
00:32:59
This is about trusting someone's heart and motives,
-
00:33:02
their character of saying, "I'm sorry and I want to try again."
-
00:33:07
You can trust their heart. That's what this is about.
-
00:33:10
So how do you trust somebody who has before
-
00:33:13
in your life shown themselves to be untrustworthy?
-
00:33:16
Well, first, you don't ignore the situation.
-
00:33:19
This is not a sweep it under the rug message.
-
00:33:21
This is not a suck it up message.
-
00:33:22
This is not a pretend everything is OK message, not at all.
-
00:33:25
You confront them. You're candid about what happened.
-
00:33:29
"Hey, back here, you broke my trust.
-
00:33:32
You said one thing and you did another.
-
00:33:34
You promised one thing
-
00:33:35
and you delivered something different."
-
00:33:37
You have a candid conversation.
-
00:33:39
But when that person says to you, "I'm sorry.
-
00:33:44
I broke your trust, would you forgive me?
-
00:33:48
Will you give me a second chance?"
-
00:33:49
You say yes and then you do.
-
00:33:51
Love keeps no record of wrong, you go back to trust.
-
00:33:56
And right now in our world, it is game time.
-
00:34:00
There is more pressure on our lives for most of us
-
00:34:03
than at any other time in our life.
-
00:34:05
And here's the thing, friends, it's not going anywhere.
-
00:34:09
It's not; it's not changing.
-
00:34:11
The pressure is not going away.
-
00:34:12
If the pandemic ends, something else is coming.
-
00:34:15
The world will supply the pressure.
-
00:34:17
And as much as you want to run away, you want to escape,
-
00:34:19
you want a time out, and you go on vacation,
-
00:34:21
it will be here when you get back.
-
00:34:24
And that pressure will either break you apart
-
00:34:26
or it can bond you together.
-
00:34:30
The health of the relationships in your life
-
00:34:32
will be directly determined by how often
-
00:34:34
you choose to put trust in the gap.
-
00:34:39
If you do, man, I'm telling you, you --
-
00:34:44
the picture of unity in your life will be amazing.
-
00:34:47
If you put trust in the gap,
-
00:34:49
you'll have the marriage you always wanted.
-
00:34:51
The marriage that looks like one.
-
00:34:53
People will look at you and go, "How do they do it?
-
00:34:55
It's like one heart, one mind."
-
00:34:58
If you choose to put trust in the gap,
-
00:35:00
you can have the team culture at work that you want.
-
00:35:02
"Oh, my gosh. It's like one team,
-
00:35:04
they think the same way, the same direction.
-
00:35:06
The results they're getting is incredible."
-
00:35:08
If you put trust in the gap,
-
00:35:10
you will pour Miracle-Gro on your friendships.
-
00:35:13
"Oh, my goodness, I wish I had the support system they had.
-
00:35:15
I wish I had that group that they have. It's incredible."
-
00:35:19
If we choose to put trust in the gap, if we do this,
-
00:35:23
if we all do this, we will see unity.
-
00:35:27
We'll see the giant divisions in our nation
-
00:35:29
that threaten to break us apart, will have not a chance of closing.
-
00:35:33
We'll see the "us"s and the "them"s disappear.
-
00:35:35
They'll be gone.
-
00:35:36
If we choose to trust, it may be the thing,
-
00:35:41
the one work we do in our whole lives
-
00:35:44
that brings the most people to Jesus.
-
00:35:47
John 17: Father, may they be one as we are one.
-
00:35:53
Let me pray for you and your relationships right now.
-
00:35:56
God, I thank you for the promise You make
-
00:36:01
and the road you set before us.
-
00:36:02
Not an easy road, God. Not a simple road, but clear one.
-
00:36:07
Would You empower us to trust again and again.
-
00:36:11
Would You heal us when we get burned,
-
00:36:13
when our suspicions would have been validated, God.
-
00:36:15
And would You unite us together,
-
00:36:17
would you make the lines between me and you disappear?
-
00:36:20
Would you make the lines between us and them disappear?
-
00:36:22
Would you bond us together in that picture of one church
-
00:36:26
who looks like You so that the world may believe
-
00:36:29
You are who You said You are. Amen.
-
00:36:32
Now, this is not a self-help message.
-
00:36:34
This is not one we're going to do on our own.
-
00:36:36
So right now, we're going to turn our attention to God
-
00:36:38
and sing together to Him.
-
00:45:23
- We heard from Kyle that one of the best ways
-
00:45:25
to fill the gap that exists between us with trust
-
00:45:28
is by gathering around a table like the one he was making.
-
00:45:32
We want to help one lucky family do that
-
00:45:34
by giving away the same table that Kyle just built.
-
00:45:38
Anyone can enter to win this random drawing at
-
00:45:40
Crossroads.net/fixingthegaptable by Friday, September 11.
-
00:45:46
Whoever you are, wherever you are,
-
00:45:48
we'll ship the table right to your home.
-
00:45:50
The best way to watch Crossroads is by downloading
-
00:45:53
the Crossroads app on your iPhone, Android, or TV
-
00:45:56
and never miss a service again.
-
00:45:59
You can get notified when a new episode premieres
-
00:46:01
by texting NEXT to 313131.
-
00:46:06
Next week we start a new series called Taking Control
-
00:46:08
about how God has made us each managers of our own lives.
-
00:46:14
- Does this feel like your life right now?
-
00:46:16
You can't control everything,
-
00:46:18
but you can control more than you think.
-
00:46:20
God wants you to be a boss with what you've got:
-
00:46:23
your finances, your relationships, your whole life.
-
00:46:26
He wants you to grab the wheel and rip it.
-
00:46:28
Taking Control, a new Crossroads weekly streaming series,
-
00:46:31
inspiration to fill you up and challenge to change your week.
-
00:46:36
You'll learn how to take control of what God gave you.
-
00:46:39
Get started at Crossroads.net.
-
00:46:45
- Thanks for watching.
-
00:46:46
and I want to help you go on your spiritual adventure.
-
00:46:50
We have a community of people that gathers online
-
00:46:52
to go on an adventure together through processing
-
00:46:55
the weekend message and applying it week in and week out.
-
00:46:59
We call these Weekend Follow-up Groups
-
00:47:01
and you join one today from anywhere you are
-
00:47:03
by heading to Crossroads.net/onlinecommunity.
-
00:47:07
It might just be the thing that takes you
-
00:47:08
to the next place on your adventure with God.
-
00:47:11
We'll see you next week.