Keys To Healthy Relationships

Series:

Summary

Keys to Healthy Relationships

Pastor Aaron Sutherland

Our relationships matter the most, and Jesus wants to make our relationships healthy.

Families are...

a. Great

b. Challenging

c. Complicated

d. All of the above

I. HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS ENGAGE THE CYCLE OF GRACE

Matthew 7:1-2

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Shame doesn’t heal, only grace does.

Mercy is not getting what I deserve and Grace is getting what I don’t deserve.

When I choose to offer grace to another, I place myself where I can experience God’s grace to me.

II. HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS WALK THE PATH OF HUMILITY

Matthew 7:3-5

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

Those IN Christ are viewed through Christ’s righteousness not their own.

“If I see a brother or sister in sin, there are two things I do not know: 1. I don’t know how hard he/she tried not to sin. 2. I don’t know the power of the forces that assailed him/her. It is then Impossible to know what we would have done in their place.”

F.B. Meyer

The posture for helping someone walk through the pain of sin is not standing over them in smug arrogance, but kneeling beside them with a shared broken heart.

We must allow another’s circumstance to remind us of our own requirement of grace, not to fuel the myth that we have somehow outgrown our own need for it.

III. HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS DISCERN WISE INVESTMENT

Matthew 7:6

“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.”

Investing into people without God’s wisdom not only lessens our ability to help them, it increases the chances of them hurting us.

Discussion Questions:

1. How have you experienced the cycle of judgment and the cycle of grace? What were the results?

2. Have you experienced the impact of humility from another person? How so?

3. What would it look like to seek God's wisdom for who to invest your life into? How do you think this would affect the result of that investment?

Speaker: Aaron Sutherland

January 8, 2023

Aaron Sutherland

Lead Pastor

Keys To Healthy Relationships

Series:

Summary