Live Free with Josh Howerton - Communicate in a Christ-Honoring Way • Pastor Steve Stroope | Ep. 135 | Friday August 11, 2023

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

Are you a pouter or a shouter? This episode is all about understanding our communication styles and learning how to use them to honor God and build stronger relationships. The gift of communication that God has bestowed upon us can be used to encourage, provide direction, express anger, and much more. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.combe.com slash daily drive. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hi, this is Pastor Steve, and it's great to be with you today on the Daily Drive. Today we're going to be talking about Christ honoring communication. You know, one of the greatest gifts that God has given us is this gift called communication.

With communication, we can encourage one another, we can give direction, we can tell people when something's bothering us and express our anger in a God-honoring way. There are just so many things that we can do with this gift called communication. but we need to be careful with it because like all good gifts it can be good and it can also be used for evil it's like water water can quench our thirst it gives us life we can't live without water and yet we know that water too much of it at one time uncontroll can cause death same thing is true of fire the fire can warm us and it can cause us allow us to you know heat the food that we're eating there's all kinds of wonderful uses for fire but we've also seen raging forest fires that have provided death.

In fact, in Proverbs the 18th chapter, verse 21, it says that in our words are both life and death. And so we want it to be life. And so how can we honor God with our communication? I want us just to look at one aspect of that today. If you have a Bible and you're where you can look at it right now, look in Ephesians, the fourth chapter. In Ephesians, the fourth chapter, it talks to us about what good biblical, healthy communication contains. In verse 15, it says that we're to speak the truth and love.

It talks about two sides of the equation. Truth and love. There's a book by Kim Scott called Radical Cander, and it's called Radical Cander because it's radical because it's loving, and it's candor because it's truth. When they described Jesus Christ, they said he was full of grace and truth, truth and love. And those are the two balance.

axes of good biblical communication. And it's really speaking to two groups, and most of us fall in one group of the other. He says, speak the truth to those that are powders. Now, powder can get upset, they can be angry and yet not, no one know why they're angry, but everybody knows they're angry because they're slamming things around. They're sending messages, but they're sending it by Morris Code,

by slamming around pots and pants. To those people, he says, if you're angry, enough about it to be mad, then you need to be angry enough to speak the truth. You can't just hold it in. So for those of you who are powders, and somebody says to you, is anything wrong, you go, no, which is code for, of course there's something wrong. I'm making that really clear, but I'm not about to tell you what's wrong yet until I punish you with my silence. Okay, that's wrong. Okay? So powders need to hear speak the truth. But there's another group called shouters, and they need to hear the love part. You never have to wonder what a shouter is upset about because they will tell you.

And by the way, I can say this because I am a shouter by nature. You don't have to raise your voice to be a shouter. You can just be intense. You can just tell somebody how stupid they are in outlined form. And that's a shouter as well. Let's just kind of take a poll if you're where you could raise your hand right now. Go ahead and raise it. How many of you would say that when you're not communicating the way God wants you to,

you have a temptation to be a powder? Would you raise your hand right now? Okay? And how many of you have a temptation to be a shouter? Would you raise your hand right now? And how many of you are switch hitters? You could do either one equally well. Raise both hands unless you're driving right now. Okay? These are talented people right here. It can be powders or shouters. But to the powder, he says, speak the truth. In other words, let your communication be clear. And to the shatter, he says, let your communication be calm. So the first two things about biblical communication is that it's clear. And then second of all, that it's clear. And then second of all, that it's clear. calm. And then if you look on down in verse 25 of that same chapter, he says, therefore laying aside falsehood, there it is again, speak truth, each one of you with his neighbors for were members of one another. It says, be angry and yet do not let the sun go down on your anger. The third C

of biblical communication is that it needs to be current. It needs to be calm and it needs to be clear, but it also needs to be current. And the reason it needs to be. And the reason it needs to to be current is sometimes when we we need to speak to someone a hard truth in love, we push it down. We think, well, I'm not supposed to complain, so I'm just going to push it down. Or if we're a powder, we don't like confrontation, and we're not as good verbally as maybe someone else. And so we don't want to get into a debate with them because we always lose. And so we push it down for whatever reason we're pushing it down. What you need to understand is that that anger does not go away.

Okay, it has a very long half-light. and it's going to come out eventually and many times it comes out in the most inappropriate times it comes out at the wrong person sometimes and so what we need to do is we need to deal with each time of anger that we need to communicate about one at a time there was a time when I was doing some counseling and many times when I was doing marital counseling people would get historical I didn't say hysterical I said historical and what they would do is they would tell me what this other person that they were married to or they were dating or they were in a work relationship had done wrong for the whole relationship. And that's because they never let go of it. And that builds up and builds up. And then when it does come out, when it does erupt, when we throw up on somebody emotionally, many times we can't even remember the source of the anger. And so the other person can't even deal with the facts of the conflict, but all the emotion is still there. And so if you're angry today, then share today.

It says, don't let the sun go down on your anger. That's not literal. But within the next 24 hours, find an appropriate. And another scripture says, private time where you can share that with that person that you're having a conflict with. And then verse 29 gives us our last see. In verse 29, it says, let no unwholesome word come from your mouth, but only such a word is good for edification according to the need of the moment that it might give grace

to those who hear. Our communication needs not only to be clear and calm and current, but it also needs to be constructive. In other words, we don't just need to complain, but we need to request. We need to get on the solution side. We need to say, hey, when you did that, it made me angry at you, and I don't want to be angry at you. What if we did this the next time?

It doesn't talk about the past as much as it talks about the future. It tries to create, tries to give information to create a better future. You know, many times when we're in a conflict with someone, what we end up doing is we end up interrupting them. We end up inserting ourselves. We end up cutting them off. And the truth is, is that whenever you have a conflict with another person, it's a puzzle you're putting together. And you'll never be able to put that puzzle together if you keep pushing their pieces off of the table. Let's get all the pieces on the table.

Let's invite them to speak to us in a clear, in a calm, in a current, and a constructive way. And then let's honor them by speaking in a clear. and a calm and a current and a constructive way. And when we get all those pieces on the table, my belief is that we can come up with a solution that will be God honoring. Let's speak the truth to each other in love. Thanks for tuning in today.

For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. standard time. Also, if this podcast was helpful to you, would you be sure to rate, review, and share this podcast to help get the word out? For more information about all digital ministries of Lake Point, visit lakepoint.compt.combe.combe.com slash daily drive.