Fhpr, Part 2 - The Necessity Ingredients Of Trust And Faithfulness Series

Foundations for Healthy Personal Relationships

Part 2 – The Necessary Ingredients of Trust and Faithfulness

Proverbs 11:13, Proverbs 20:6

August 8, 2010

NOTE: THE ME/WE/GOD/YOU/WE FORMAT IS FROM ANDY STANLEY’S BOOK, "COMMUNICATING FOR A CHANGE."

AUDIO CAN BE HEARD AT WWW.ABERDEENWESLEYAN.ORG

Me/We:

This is going to be one of the shortest messages I’ve ever preached.

There are a few reasons for that:

One, you’ve been having to hear my voice the whole service, and I don’t want to overload you, especially those who are staying for the meeting.

Two, the stuff we’re talking about today is easy to just go off on for a long time, and I think I can get my points across without hammering them into the ground.

Three, I do want us to be able to move into the meeting as quickly as possible so we don’t keep you any longer than necessary.

We’re continuing our look at developing healthy personal relationships, and talking especially about the necessary ingredients of trust and faithfulness in order for those healthy relationships to happen.

Probably all of us can think of someone who we can tell anything to and who we know will never turn their backs on us in a crisis.

Probably many of us can also think of situations or people who we thought we could trust, and instead we end up getting hurt because they couldn’t keep their mouth shut or, like Peter with Jesus, took off when the going got tough.

Trust and faithfulness are just a couple of those things that you can’t live without if you’re going to have a healthy relationship with someone.

Relationships just cannot flourish where trust and loyalty are absent.

And sadly, there are lots of people who don’t have someone they can really trust and count on, for one reason or another.

God/You:

This is so important that Scripture addresses it, just like it addresses everything else important to us and just like it shows itself to be relevant in every other area of our lives, so I want to look at just a few short passages as we spend a little time looking at this whole deal.

By the way – why am I talking about healthy relationships? It’s not like I’m Dr. Phil or Oprah or whoever, and I’m not trying to be.

The reason is that the Body of Christ – the Church – is supposed to reflect our love for Christ in how we love each other.

Christians who actually love each other – in action and in truth, according to 1 John – not only reflect that love, but also display how relationships can be based on eternal things, not temporary things like looks, money, and sex.

And today I want to focus on just two aspects of how we need to display our love for each other as we talk about trust and faithfulness.

Trust

Trust is one of those things you really just can’t live without if you want healthy relationships.

We all need someone or a number of someone’s we can trust, especially when it comes to sharing personal information about ourselves.

We need someone we can talk to and know that it stays right there.

Here’s the passage I want to use to help us with this.

Proverbs 11:13 –

A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy man keeps a secret.

Why this passage? Because probably the area of life that I see trust needed the most but also betrayed the most is in the area of gossip.

Can you be trusted to keep quiet about stuff someone shares with you from their hurts, embarrassments, and or even their joys that they’re not ready to share yet?

I sure hope so.

I mentioned this back in April, but gossip is spreading information without that person’s permission or knowledge.

Personal information belongs to who? The person who shared it with you. It doesn’t belong to you, so you have no business giving it away in any way, shape, or form.

You wouldn’t give away your friend’s car. But you’ll give away something hurtful or embarrassing that they entrusted to you, thinking that you’ll keep that to yourself and pray for them about.

Here’s the rule of thumb: if you don’t have their permission, you shouldn’t share it.

“But Pastor – what if they’re not around when I’m in a situation where others can pray about it with me?”

Well, I’m glad you asked, because that gives me the opportunity to talk about something you’ve heard me discuss from time to time.

How do most Christians gossip? “Prayer requests.”

“We really need to pray for Martha. Her marriage is in the toilet, especially since she found out about her husband’s affair with his drug dealer. Of course, this is just between us prayer warriors…”