[For the video elements associated with this sermon, please visit http://store.northpoint.org/life-apps-starter-kit.html.]
We are in the middle of a series called Life Apps, and to kind of get our heads around where we’re going with this, especially if you haven’t been here during the series, I want to just ask you a couple of questions. How many of you, and you’ve to raise your hands on this, how many of you have ever purchased a treadmill, a piece of exercise equipment, have ever joined a health club or read a book about a diet or part of a book about a diet? Yes, that’s all of us. Now, isn’t it interesting, if you can go back in time when you’re touring that health club, you know—here’s the pool, here’s the locker room, here’s the exercise stuff and a gazillion treadmills, elliptical and TVs. Or they brought that treadmill in and they put it in that spare bedroom or your basement or wherever you put it. Or they built that exercise equipment, or you’re highlighting that book, and you’re going in your pantry and going, Got to get rid of that; got to get rid of that; get rid of that, and your kids are like really nervous, like, What are we going to eat? Do you know what you felt? All those experiences, you may have had all those experiences, but at least one of them; do you know what you felt? You felt healthier. You felt healthier when they delivered the treadmill. You just felt healthier.
You felt healthier when you toured the facility and you saw all that cool stuff. And then some of you bought exercise clothes and you got in the mirror and you thought, I’m already thinner, because it’s really tight. It’s like you just felt better; you just felt completely healthier. But were you healthier at that point? Not a trick question. Were you any healthier at that point? No—and here’s why. Because say it with me: Application makes all the difference. Joining a health club doesn’t make you any healthier. Reading a book on nutrition doesn’t make you healthier. Buying exercise equipment doesn’t make you any healthier. Starting the exercise stuff doesn’t make you any healthier, but we feel . . . I mean you really felt, if you think back, you felt like you were making progress, but you hadn’t.
Where I kind of default to in this whole kind of dynamic is I love to go to the home improvement stores and buy all the stuff for the home improvement project. It’s just so great, and I feel like, when I’m buying the stuff, that I’m making progress. And I get it all and get a little extra, you know, I didn’t even know they had one of those. This is going to make it easier. There’s just sort of this, I don’t know, a euphoria of it’s going to get painted, it’s going to get stained, it’s going to get fixed, it’s going to get built, it’s going to be cooler. And I just love that process. I feel, in the process, as if I’m making some kind of progress, like the house is getting better just buying the stuff.
Then I get home and I think, I’m tired. So, I set the stuff down in the bag, or the box, then I go have lunch, then I take a nap, and then I decide to do something else. I need to admit this; there are home improvement projects still in the box, in the bag, in my basement. Now they’ve moved from the garage, to the upstairs, to the basement, and I look at it and now I just feel guilty. But in the moment when I bought all that stuff, I felt I’m making progress. But the problem is this: Application makes all the difference. A bucket of paint when the paint’s in the bucket—your house doesn’t look any better. The application makes all the difference. Now, we all know that.
In the world of church and in the world of religion and in the world of spirituality, there’s this same dynamic at play, and here’s how it works here. You come to church, you feel convicted, you feel inspired, you feel like you got an answer to a question, you feel better, and when you’ve had all those feelings in church, you feel like, I’m making progress. I’m moving forward. You’re not. You might even come to church and be extremely bored. In fact, you know if one to ten—the average sermon experience is a five, a seven is like you’re super bored, and you’re thinking, This is so boring and so uninteresting. I’m sure I’m getting extra credit with God that I endured an even more than averaging boring experience in church.
And you feel like something great has happened. It hasn’t. You sang the songs for the first time, you cried at a baptism, and we feel like that is such a religious experience, that surely something real and authentic has happened in our relationship with God. It hasn’t. Because what is true about our home improvement projects, exercise, and nutrition is true in our spiritual development as well. Application makes all the difference, all the difference, because here’s what happens, and you’ve heard me say this before. When you apply a truth, when you apply a biblical principle, when you obey God, and your obedience and your expression of faith and obedience intersects with God’s faithfulness, something happens on the inside of you and you make progress. But simply believing and simply singing and simply listening and simply feeling—it’s false progress. It’s not real. And yet in the world of church, we pat ourselves on the back and give ourselves credit for all kinds of things that we don’t need to take credit for, because Jesus taught, as we saw the first week, and James, the brother of Jesus, taught, as we saw in the first week, that it’s what you do with what you hear that makes all the difference.
So in this series, Life Apps, we’re talking about five very specific life applications, Christian applications, but if you’re not a Christian, you can try these at home as well. They work for just about everybody, but five things that as Christians we’re supposed to do. The first one was forgive—like don’t just feel it and think it—do it. Confess. Then, last week was awesome. Jeff talked about . . . remember last week was what? Rest. Have you heard the sermon on rest? That was absolutely incredible. And today I want to talk about trust, trust, and trust. Trust, not between you and God, but trust relationally. Trust in your home, trust at work, trust with your friends, and maybe even trust with the government.
I want to talk about this incredible, incredible thing called trust. It’s very misunderstood. In fact, the verses that we’re going to look at today, the verses that we’re going to look at today when you read these, they’re the kind of verses you read through really quickly and you keep going. We’re going to slow down, because in these four little phrases the apostle Paul draws us to this extremely, extremely, extremely important idea of the value of trust. What we all know experientially is this: that your relationships, whether at home, at work, wherever, your relationships are no stronger than the amount of trust that you have in those relationships. That trust is the bedrock of relationships.
In fact, when we came up with this idea for this series, we wanted one of the messages to be relational. And as we talked about it we all agreed, you know what, if you can’t trust and if you don’t know how to trust, and if you’re not willing to take some risks when it comes to trust, you will never ever, ever fully engage relationally, and there will always be something lacking. So today we’re going to talk about trust. Before we look at the passage, one other kind of precursor. Think about this, and we’re going to circle back around to this at the end. There are two things that make it hard for you trust: what you see and who you are, what you see and who you are. Somebody said they’re going to do something, they didn’t do it, I saw them not do it. I saw that they didn’t do it. I experienced that they didn’t follow through; they didn’t keep their promise. When I see that, it makes it hard for me to trust, and that’s the easy part.
But there’s another thing that makes it hard to trust, and that’s who you are, because you grew up in some kind of home. You had a bad experience with an ex-husband or ex-wife; you had a bad experience with a father-in-law or a stepfather or a stepmother; you had a bad experience in your former occupation or the former company that you worked for; you had some bad experiences. And what happens is over time, something happens to you, and something happens in your heart and you learn not to trust.
So this very, very specific life app is more difficult for you, because in general, you have a hard time trusting. But as a Christian, as a Christian, we are instructed, as we’re going to see, to stretch and to bend and to learn to trust. Now, if you have your Bible and want to follow along, we’re in one of the most famous chapters in the entire Bible, I Corinthians 13. I Corinthians 13 is sometimes referred to as the what chapter? The “love chapter,” that’s right. If you had a wedding in a Christian church, it’s very possible that somebody either read part of or all of I Corinthians 13. In fact, you may have asked the pastor, Hey, will you read I Corinthians 13—if you can remember anything that was actually said at your wedding. It’s a little bit of a blur sometimes.
In I Corinthians 13, the apostle Paul discusses love, and he does his best to explain what love is. And you know I want to know what love is. Don’t you? Don’t you want to know what love is? Everybody remember that song? I Want to Know What Love Is. And so he says I’m going to tell you. And instead of just giving us a sentence, he gives us a description, and here’s what’s so cool. At the very end, it’s as if he bumps into this issue of trust, and he thinks to himself, How do I say this? How do I say this, because this isn’t going to go well. People are going to think, huh? This sounds too extreme. How do I say this? So I want to read you the verses leading up to the big huh when it comes to trust. Here we go. Most of this is kind of yeah, yeah, yeah, we know.
I Corinthians 13:4-5 (TNIV)
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, [Well of course, everybody knows that. It goes on.] it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs.
Oh. Because some of you are married to people with a file cabinet, right? It’s like excuse me, oh yeah, May 13, 1992, do you remember? Okay. But real love doesn’t have a file cabinet. It doesn’t even have a 3 x 5 card. Love, real love keeps no record of wrongs. We should apparently come back and talk about that at some point. Love, now listen; now he’s starting to focus in on his big idea.
I Corinthians 13:6 (TNIV)
6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
Now he’s talking about evil in general and truth in general. Again, it’s like it’s hard to put this into words.
I Corinthians 13:6 (TNIV)
6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
Do you know what that means? That means that love isn’t trying to catch somebody doing something wrong. Aha, I knew it! I knew you were going to do that. I knew you were going to be late. I knew you were going to mess up the budget. I knew you weren’t going to give me credit for that; I knew it. Aha, I’m just waiting to catch you doing the wrong thing. He says that’s not how love operates. Love is looking for an opportunity to catch people doing the right thing. And then it’s as if Paul stops and goes, Okay, that says it, but that doesn’t quite say it. Then he gives us four quick phrases that all are pointing to the one idea of trust. Here’s how he writes it. It . . . talking about love.
I Corinthians 13:7 (TNIV)
7 It always protects, always trusts,
There’s our word. Always?
I Corinthians 13:7 (TNIV)
7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes,
Wait a minute. Always?
I Corinthians 13:7 (TNIV)
7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Okay, always? I mean isn’t that kind of extreme? And Paul is going yes, if you think it’s extreme you understand what I’m trying to say about love. Love bends, love leans into, love is always looking for an opportunity to give the other person the benefit of the doubt. So consequently, it’s always trying to protect the integrity of the relationship, even if you have to do a lot of the work. It’s always trusting. I’m just going to do everything I can possibly do to trust. Always hopes—not giving up, not giving up, not giving up, and it always just perseveres. I’m just going to bend in your direction. The New American Standard says it this way. Here’s another translation.
I Corinthians 13:7 (NAS)
7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Now, let me give you three statements to kind of summarize this whole idea, and then I want us to talk specifically about how this relates to us. Here’s what Paul is saying about love as it relates to trust: Love gives the other person the benefit of the doubt. That’s what love does. Love, when there’s a dilemma, when there’s a discrepancy between what’s promised and what actually happens, love gives the other person the benefit of the doubt. The second statement is this: Love looks for the most (and I love this word) love looks for the most generous, love looks for the most generous explanation for the other person’s behavior. All of a sudden there’s a gap. We’re going to talk about the gap in a minute. There’s a gap between what was promised and what actually happened, and all of a sudden, I’m looking at this gap—my kids said this, but they did this. My husband said this, but he did this. My boss said this, but he did this. And I’m going to put something in the gap. And love says, you know what, before I jump to conclusions, what are some other possibilities? Love looks for a generous explanation.
The third statement is this: Love chooses trust over suspicion. Love chooses trust over suspicion. Now, let me illustrate it this way. We talked about this when we did the Staying in Love series, but in the Staying in Love series, we talked specifically about marriage. But this principle applies to all relationships, everywhere. I don’t know a better way to illustrate it. Here’s how it looks. In every relationship there are expectations, whether it’s at work, with our government, at home, in the neighborhood, the neighborhood association, if you coach little league, if you’re in a fraternity, a sorority, a club, a team, there are always expectations. And then there’s what we actually experience. Here’s what you said you would do, here’s what I experienced that you did. Here’s what time you said you would be home, this is what time you actually got home. Here’s what you said about that project, here’s what you did about that project. Here’s the list we agreed on, here’s the part of the list you did or didn’t do. And sometimes there’s a gap—that is, there’s a gap between what we expect and what we experience.
And if you don’t get anything else out of this message, if you can just pause long enough to embrace this simple truth: When there is a gap, we choose what goes in the gap. We—and here’s the key—we decide what goes in the gap. In the midst of the experience we think, No, no. We don’t decide what goes in the gap; they have decided what goes in the gap, because they said 8:00. I hear the garage door opening at 10:00, so they have now forced me to assume the worst. The truth is they don’t control what you put in this gap. That’s why the apostle Paul says when it comes to love, when it comes to the bedrock of great relationships—friendships, dating relationships, marriage relationships, work relationships, you need to understand love bends. Love does everything it can to protect the integrity of that relationship, so love goes out of its way to believe the best. Because love understands that you, that I, that we, choose what goes in this gap.
And there are gaps at every level of a relationship. You’re raising kids; there are some gaps. You have talked about that room being clean a hundred times. If you’re married, you have talked about the budget a hundred times. We all agreed that we’re going to do what Pastor Stanley said to do and we’re going to input all of our expenses, aren’t we? And everybody said yes, we’re going to put in all our expenses, and now it’s not happening. There’s a gap. But I thought we said—and you agree that we’re only going to spend this much money on clothes, and you agreed that we’re going to go on this kind of vacation, and you agreed as a couple that you’re not going to spend any more time with him, because you think he’s a bad influence on you. The next thing you know you’re playing golf with him.
There are just gaps at home. There are gaps at work, because you both agreed you were going to present this as a joint idea and next thing you know somebody is taking credit for your idea. And you agreed on how much you were going to pay, and actually, they wrote you a check for a lot less. You agreed on what the commission would be, and as it turns out, they found a loophole and you’re not getting what you expected. There’s a gap and in every relationship; there’s a gap. Nationally, I mean you know, it’s a sport, talking about politics, and hating the other side is sort of a national past time here, right? Because if you’re a Republican, you think all the Democrats are idiots, and if you’re a Democrat, you think all the Republicans are idiots. And it’s like, those politicians, you know those Republicans, those Democrats, those national leaderships, the Congress.
And when there’s a gap between what we expect and what we experience, we choose what we put in the gap. In other words, you have far more power in deciding how this goes than you anticipate. And Paul says love is always looking for an opportunity to believe the best, rather than assume the worst. In fact, do you know what all the research has shown, especially when it comes to marriage? This is huge. A big tip, ready? In healthy relationships, in healthy relationships, both parties . . . In a healthy relationship, in the best marriages and the best relationships, both parties go to ridiculous extremes to believe the best. That’s what all the research shows. That in essence, love is blind.
And what Paul said is exactly right. They believe all things, they protect at all costs, they endure all things, always believe, always trust, because at the end of the day, at the end of the day there’s nothing gained by refusing to trust. There really isn’t, and here’s why. Let me try to explain this. Suspicion is an expression of rejection. That’s what suspicion is. When you feel like I don’t trust you, and I’m suspicious of everything you’re doing, and why are you sitting next to her, why did you call him, why did you text him, why didn’t you come in my office first, why didn’t you tell me about that, you know, why is the room not made up, why, why, why—when you feel like I’m suspicious of you, you experience that as rejection. Do you know what we do in relationships when we feel rejected? We do not open up, do we? We close down. We close.
That’s right, and here’s why. Listen, God designed you as an acceptance magnet. You’re drawn to environments and you’re drawn to relationships where you feel accepted. You see that in your kids all the time, and what happened to you when you were in third and fourth grade when you first experienced that, nothing has changed. Suspicion communicates rejection, so consequently, when you choose—and it’s a choice, remember you’re choosing—when you choose to assume the worst, even if you’re right, even if you’ve got a long list of why you should assume the worst, anytime you communicate I don’t trust you, you have taken a step in closing down that relationship.
You’re no longer protecting it at all cost. You’re no longer enduring at all cost; you’re no longer bending like love bends. It’s an extraordinarily powerful thing to communicate to someone, and for some of you, you need to have some conversations like this. We’ll talk about it in just a minute. It’s a powerful thing to look at someone and say, I really want to trust you. That’s way better than, Na-na-na-na-na, and I’m pulling out the file drawer, and you did it again. And you may be exactly right. But that’s far different than looking at someone and saying, You know what, I really want to trust you.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, and we’re going to get there in a minute. You’re thinking, Yeah, but if I could come up and tell my sad story really quickly, you know Andy, you would not have a sermon. Okay, it would be over. Everybody would be going, Oh yeah, what do you do about that? If I could tell you about my father-in-law, if I could tell you about my brother-in-law, if I could tell you about family vacations, if I could tell you about my fourteen year old son. We’ve all got these extreme stories, and I’m going to address that in just a minute. But pause with me before we go there. I just don’t want you to lose sight of one thing: No matter how bad this is, no matter how wide the gap is, and no matter how consistently there is a gap, you choose what you put here every single time. Nobody has ever forced you to assume the worse. Nobody can do that for you.
It is within your power to choose what goes in the gap. And your best shot, your best shot, your best chance at restoring and healing and making stronger a relationship, your best shot is always to believe the best. I’ve never heard anyone say, You know, things at work were so tense, and then he came and he told me that he doesn’t trust me. Boy, things have just been better since then. You know our marriage, we were just at each other, and finally she said, I don’t trust you, and I mean it just soared after that. It got more romantic. I mean it’s just awesome. Why? Because when you communicate, even when you deserve to communicate I don’t trust you, you have begun to shut down the relationship, because suspicion and a lack of trust is rejection, and we all flee from rejection.
So Paul says look, I know this sounds extreme. I know this doesn’t even sound practical, but even in the most difficult of relationships bend, bend, bend. Do everything in your power to communicate I trust you. Now, what happens when you can’t? I mean what happens when it’s just over and over and over, and the gap gets wider and wider and wider, and it’s just consistently a gap? Now, when I tell you what you’re supposed to do, you’re not going to write this down because this is so obvious. But it’s so obvious, and we still don’t do it. It’s simply this: When you can’t choose to trust, you have to choose to confront. When you can’t choose to trust, when it’s like, Okay, I’ve bent all I can bend; I’m about to break. I mean I have been feeling like a fool for a long time to put up with this, but now . . .
Do you know what Jesus said? In fact, this is so amazing. In Matthew 18 and Matthew 5, but in Matthew 18 specifically, this is amazing to me. The only time that I know of that Jesus taught step one, step two, step three, I mean because life doesn’t work that way. There’s not like, To raise your children, step one. Life’s not like that. The only time I think that Jesus ever taught step one, step two, step three was when he addressed the issue of confrontation. When you’re going to confront somebody, here’s how you do it. Now Jesus, why would you give such focus to step one, step two, and step three in confrontation? Jesus is thinking, because this is a necessary part of relationships, and for there to be healing and for the gap to be closed, there is a point in time where we have to confront.
Here’s our problem: We don’t confront, we gossip. We don’t talk to, we talk about. And even if you don’t talk about, you have imaginary conversations, right? I told that kid a hundred times, I told that kid a hundred times, I told that kid a hundred times. Hey, Sweetheart. I told my husband if he ever and he comes in—and you’re happy face, happy face, happy face—let’s have dinner. And then we get into this whole thing you know, What’s wrong? Nothing. What’s wrong? Nothing. You know why they ask what’s wrong? Because when you are suspicious and when you’re assuming the worst, that gets telegraphed. What’s wrong? Nothing. What’s wrong? Nothing. And then the earth starts to shake and the sheetrock starts peeling off the walls. What’s wrong? What’s wrong? And then, boom! I’ll tell you what’s wrong! It’s like, Whoa! Sorry I asked.
You know what Jesus taught? You know what common sense is? You know what some of us have learned the hard way? The moment, the moment that there’s a gap, have a conversation, the moment there’s a gap, have a conversation. And here’s how. Confrontation, ready? Asking for an explanation and assuming there’s a good one. I’m not asking you because I don’t trust you; I’m just asking you because I’m assuming the best. But I’m not going to assume the best and make up a story in my mind to explain your behavior. I’m assuming the best. I just want to hear an explanation. I’m sure there is one.
You’re an hour late; it was an accident, sick. I’m assuming the best. I’m assuming the best and I’m asking you for an explanation. That’s what confrontation is. I want to know. And do you know what you’re communicating? You’re communicating I want this door to stay open, I’m going to do everything in my power to keep this door open, I’m believing the best, I’m not going to assume the worst, I’m protecting the relationship, I’m doing everything I can. Because I’m going to bend, bend, bend, bend, bend. But when I don’t know, instead of having imaginary conversations about you and being mad, instead of gossiping, I’m going to confront you.
Now, I know what some of you are thinking. You’re thinking, Oh Andy, I’m not a confronter. I’m not a confronter. Good news, here’s some good news—most people aren’t. You are in the majority. There’s only about five percent or eight percent of the world’s population that can’t wait for a confrontation. All right, confrontation. I was born . . . Listen, the good news is this: If you don’t love confrontation, you’re going to be better at it. Have you ever been confronted by someone who likes confrontation? Was that a happy time? Because people who love confrontation, they’re like bringing three witnesses, an attorney, and they’ve got a list, they’ve got a red pen, and it’s so perfect. And it’s just like, Whoa! I can’t do this. So here’s the good news: If you’re not a confronter, you will probably handle this perfectly. But you cannot hide behind the fact that you don’t like conflict, because if you let the gap stew and simmer and build, it gets bigger, it gets bigger, and then there’s another gap. And it’s bigger and then there’s another gap. And it’s bigger and it’s bigger and it’s bigger, and you never confront. Finally, something’s going to break, and it’s going to be ugly.
So Jesus said, common sense tells us, and experience tells us. If you turn it around and you’re on the other side, if there’s somebody in your world at work or at home that’s sitting around going, I don’t know why, I don’t know why, I don’t know why, don’t you want them to just ask you why? In fact, isn’t it true, come on, that most of the times when we confront people and they give us their explanation we go, Oh, oh yeah; I didn’t know that. Well, it’s because you hadn’t asked. Oh yeah, I should’ve asked sooner.
So to sum it up, in every relationship—expectations, in every relationship something does or doesn’t happen, and every time there’s a gap, you, I, we choose what goes in the gap. And Paul says, To the uttermost, bend, and believe the best. When it’s just too hard to give a generous explanation, you ask, and you ask quickly, and you ask them and you go to them directly. Now most of you, you know your church experience with us at one of our campuses, or even online is this—you know you come to Sunday morning and then you leave. What you don’t think about, which there’s no reason for you to think about it, is that we’re an organization. I’m actually a boss. We have employees. We have about 320 or 330 full time equivalents with all of our campuses, and so we have an organizational culture here—the Monday through Friday part that you don’t see.
And this is a big deal to us. Every few years I get the whole staff together and I teach on this subject, because I know this—our organization is no better than the quality of our relationships, and our organization is no better than the trust that we have with each other. So when I begin to teach on this in sort of a corporate setting for our staff, I ask our staff to make five commitments, and I want to run through these very quickly. I’m not going to give you time to write them down. We may put them up on the website somewhere if you’re interested, but I think these five commitments should be reflected in every relationship—at home, at work, nationally—I mean this is just kind of bedrock bottom line stuff when it comes to relationships. But here’s how we have expressed this here among the staff, and maybe this will help clarify.
Five things: Number one, when there’s a gap between what I expected and what I experienced, I’m going to believe the best. I am deciding ahead of time, before I even know what the gap is, I am pre-deciding that when you disappoint me I am going to give a generous explanation for your behavior. When you disappoint me, when you don’t come through, when you said it’s five and it turned out to be two, when I said 8:00 and you showed up at 9:00—whatever it is, I’m just going to assume, I’m pre-deciding, I’m pre-deciding that I’m going to assume the best and believe the best.
Number two: When other people assume the worst about you, I will come to your defense. Oh, wouldn’t that be awesome? In other words, when you create a gap with somebody else and they’re na-na-na-na-na, I’m coming to your defense. I’m going to say, Whoa, whoa. You know what, it could be . . . In other words, there is another explanation. It might be, Why are you assuming the worst about her? Why don’t we just believe the best? Now, let me tell you where you can practice this, a safe place to practice this. If you don’t think you’re any good at this, you don’t want to try it at home. The safest place to practice this is next time, if you’re a Republican, and when you’re with all of your Republicans na-na-na-na-na the Democrats, or if you’re a Democrat and na-na-na-na-na the Republicans, and you know, they’re kind of getting their juices up, this is good practice. You stop and say, Well, you know what, there might be another explanation for that. What? I mean you’ll be ostracized, you may become an independent, I don’t know. It may be difficult, but all I’m saying is this—that’s a safe place to do that.
If people start yakking around about what a senator said or the vice president said, just stop and say, Well, you know it could be . . . In other words, there may be an actual good reason these people do these things. It’s unimaginable, I know, if you’re looking across the aisle at another person, but that’s just a safe place to decide when you somebody yikkity-yakking about somebody, you know that you step in and say, You know what, there may be another explanation. But at work, at home, what an incredible commitment to make. I promise you ahead of time, until the facts say otherwise I will come to your defense.
The third decision that we made was this: If what I experience begins to erode my trust, I’ll come directly to you. If what I experience begins to erode my trust, I mean I’m just having a hard time doing this, I want you to know, I’m coming directly to you. The fourth one: And when I’m convinced I will not be able to deliver on a promise, I’ll tell you ahead of time. When I realize I’m about to create a gap, my commitment to you is I’ll tell you ahead of time. You’re not going to be sitting there going, Oh. I’m going to let you know. And the last one of our commitments was simply this: When you confront me about the gaps I have created, I will tell you the truth.
When you confront me about the gaps I have created, I’m just telling you ahead of time, I’m going to tell you the truth. Now, let me just say this, because I know there are some extreme situations. I live in the world; nobody calls the church to say, Hey, things are going great. All right, just checking in. That’s not our world. So, I understand there are extreme situations. Now let me just say this, I’m telling you, most people, and I mean most like most, most, most people want to be trusted. They do. When you look at someone and say—because you’re at the end of your rope, you don’t know what else to say—when you look at them, as I said a minute ago, when you look at them and say, I want to trust you, what the average person feels is, I want to be trustworthy.
When you look at someone and he or she has created a gap a mile wide, and you say, What can I do, what can we do so that I can trust you—and let me just tell you how powerful this is, even if you are married to the worst of the worst, lying, cheating—he’s got a motorcycle hidden somewhere, or she’s got credit cards hidden somewhere, I mean I’m telling you, if you’re in the worst situation and you look at the person and you say, I want to trust you, that is the most direct route to discovering whether or not he really is trustworthy. The best way to discover whether or not someone is trustworthy is to trust her. The best way to turn somebody who is trustworthy into someone who is not trustworthy is not to trust him. That’s the power of this word, and I think that’s why Paul was kind of like, How do I say this? They need to know. This is extreme.
So, here’s how I want to wrap this up. I want to ask you a couple of questions. Number one: If you’re the kind of person, who you just kind of have a difficult time trusting people in general, and you have good reason, and again, something in your past, something in your childhood, something in a previous marriage, a previous employer, you just have a hard time trusting people, I want to give you step one in how to overcome that right now. It’s very simple. You can’t do it here. And you will think this is silly, but when you do this, when you try this, you’re going to go, He’s not such an idiot after all. Here’s what I want you to do. At some point today when you’re alone, maybe in the car, maybe in the bathroom, you know, close the door, in the bedroom, alone. If you feel like you’re one of these people, you just have, generally speaking, a hard time trusting people, I want you to say this out loud three times. Out loud, because you’ve already thought it—you’re thinking it right now—I want you to say out loud three times, there’s no place like home. No, that’s not it.
Okay I want you to say . . . and tap your heels together. I want you to say this out loud: I have a hard time trusting people. I have a hard time trusting people. Oh, I? Oh, my goodness, I? Oh, my goodness, you mean all these gaps with all these people—because I think the world is just full of untrustworthy . . . you mean I have a hard time trusting people? And then you know what you can do? When you realize there’s a gap and you realize in general I have a hard time trusting people, then—I’m going to bend, and I’m going to do what does not come natural to me, and I’m going to do what is not intuitive to me, because I’ve got the power and I’m going to choose to believe the best, even though I have a hard time trusting people. Because you do not have to decide based on your propensity toward trusting or not trusting; you have the power to put in this gap whatever you want to.
Now, for the rest of us: You’re a very trusting person, I mean you trust strangers. You pickup hitchhikers, I mean you’re like the most . . . You trust just about everybody, but there’s that one person, and she’s related to you, or he’s related to you, or it’s that guy at work, or it’s that coworker, and he’s just shifty or she’s always whispering and then she straightens up when you walk by. There’s just something; you just don’t trust him or her. There’s always a gap. Here’s my question for you, because if you’re a Christian we’ve got to lean into this. What can you do to break that cycle of mistrust? What can you do? You go, Well, I don’t have to do anything. If he would just act more trustworthy, quit looking at me that way, quit texting my girlfriend, quit sitting next to my wife, or whatever it is—if they, if they, if they, then I, then I, then I.
Let me explain this again. Love, love, love, love believes all things, endures all things, hopes all things. Love bends. Here’s my question. What can you do, what can you do to break that cycle of mistrust between you and that other person? It may be a conversation, it may be time for that conversation where you sit down and say, Look, this is awkward, but I want to trust you, and I’m struggling. You know what? I don’t care how evil he or she is, the phrase I want to trust you keeps the door open, and if there’s any potential for hope, that’s it. Now if you forget all of this, which you probably will, and if you forget all about my cool stuff over here, and you forget about me and you forget about church and this whole day becomes a blur, let me summarize the whole thing with the brilliant insight that Jesus delivered to us about all relationships.
When there’s a gap, it’s very simple. Do to others what you would have them do to you. When you create the gap, what do you want people to do? You want them to assume the best, believe the best, and so when you take the words of Paul and the words of Jesus and what Jesus said about confrontation and you mix it all up, it’s basically this simple: When there’s a gap you trust. When there’s a gap, you trust. You bend, you extend to them not what they deserve, and you extend to them exactly what you have chosen to extend to them: the gift of trust. And if you do, you’ll be better, your relationship will be better; the doors on relationships even on the most difficult relationships, will stay open, simply because you chose to trust.
Let’s pray together.
