Mike Bickle emphasizes the critical importance of resolving conflicts and fostering unity within the community, especially as it prepares for significant growth. He highlights that internal strife is the primary vulnerability that can hinder progress and emphasizes the need for godly wisdom and intentionality in addressing conflicts. Bickle encourages individuals to approach one another with humility, patience, and a spirit of reconciliation, following biblical principles for conflict resolution. He stresses the necessity of clear communication and the importance of being of one mind to prevent division and promote harmony. Ultimately, Bickle calls for a proactive approach to maintaining unity as the community expands.

What to do if somebody bothers you and it really bugs you. Instead of just stewing on it and sort of accidentally sharing it, let's pray. Father, I ask you, in the name of Jesus, I ask you for a spirit of peace in our community. That it would be supernatural in the days to come. And I ask you for godly wisdom. That we would walk out the due process of scripture. That we would walk in peace with one another. And I thank you in Jesus' name, amen. Now, I'm not addressing a big problem I see right now. We have 75 departments. Each of these departments have 5 or 10 leaders, something like that, some more. There's a whole lot of activity and movement of people in leadership and interfacing with one another. And then there's the people under the department leadership teams. When I think of the growth that's coming, and growth is coming soon. Well, we're growing now, we're growing a lot now. But the Lord said we're going to go from 500 to 5,000 overnight in one night. I hope that doesn't mean 24 hours. I hope that's a figure of speech. Right now we're at the 500-so staff. A few more, but it depends on how you count. In terms of full-time. And then we've got the other 500 part-time. But we're right at that tipping point, I believe, spiritually speaking. Where the Holy Spirit is about to do something in our midst. And the thing, the reason I'm addressing this subject. The number one vulnerability that we have, in my opinion. We have 4 or 5 vulnerabilities that I can think of. But the number one vulnerability we have in growing will be internal strife. Internal division. The enemy knows this. And if we are not prepared and intentional and trained before the increase. It will be very difficult for us to manage the strife that the enemy is planning to bring in our midst. And internal strife has huge implications. Not just in taking, devouring our time and resources internally. It ends up in lawsuits and controversies on the internet. It just goes on and on and on. From the folks that joined us with sincere desire who get offended with one another. And so when I look at our future. And I'm thinking as the director of this missions base. I'm not just thinking of just a typical thing. I'm thinking of a spiritual father looking at this family. That is clearly the number one point of vulnerability to us. Will be people joining us and not being truly in unity with the vision and the values. They love the vision in one way. They join us and find out they're really not in unity. But they're relationally connected in the system. Or they are in unity. Not a problem there. But they get in the system and they run into people and they don't solve the problem in a right way. They don't have clear thinking as to what we're about. Or they don't have unity with the people that they're laboring with or the departments a couple steps over. This is real. Roman numeral one. And again we'll just look at a few of these notes here. And they're just mostly for you to go and read on your own. Paragraph A, John 17. The fact that Jesus prayed this at that most significant hour of his life tells you how much he values unity. I mean it's not neat. We're talking the primary theme of the high priestly prayer. This really matters to him. It's not just so it's more enjoyable to be together, though the Lord cares about that. That we would have the joy of dwelling together in unity. There are so many demonic inroads that come if there is not unity. One of our most dynamic dimensions of spiritual warfare will be unity together. This is a warfare tool. Walking in unity, knowing how to make godly appeals in the system when our heart gets injured, we feel mistreated or we get offended. Paragraph B. Look at Ephesians 4. Verse 1. Paul said walk worthy. Now look at this next list of words. All lowliness. Circle the word all. All gentleness. All longsuffering. Do you know what longsuffering means? It means to suffer long. But I mean some of us don't think of it that. And he's talking about because of strife in relationships, there is a place we suffer with each other long. The guy really bothers you and you really don't get what you deserve and that's really how it is. And you suffer. Your heart hurts. And we suffer long. Meaning we go through the process. It takes time. Paul said with all longsuffering. Bearing with one another. To live in a community this size with this many full-time people. I mean we have about 2,000 people that are, this is their primary focus. Between the 500 staff full-time, 500 part-time and the 1,000 students and interns. There's about 2,000 of us who are doing this a lot of hours a week and there's lots of occasion to bump each other. Paul said bear with each other. Bear. There is the need to bear. We have to be patient. We have to suffer long. Then he goes on in verse 3. Endeavoring to keep the unity. That's what I'm talking about. Working hard to keep the unity. This is work. This is not automatic. Many groups do not have an active intentional plan to keep unity. I'm really pressed by the Lord on this. I think of problems in the future economics. The pressures. I think of legal vulnerabilities. I think of people attacking us from the outside. I think of the enemy striking us in our bodies, in our families, in all kinds of ways. There's many points of vulnerability. This is the number one issue that's weighing on my heart. Again, I'm speaking not just as one in the midst, but as the director of this mission's base. The Lord has stirred me. Prepare the people to dwell in unity. Give them skills to solve problems among each other. And again, these skills we can use in all kinds of relationships, particularly in our families. Paragraph C. Here's the verse that's really stirred me right here. 1 Corinthians 1.10. This is the verse that I got a hold of from the Lord concerning our next couple years. Paul is calling the leaders to invest time, to invest energy, to develop like-mindedness, unity of mind. If the mind is unified, everything else is far different. If we get out of unity at the mind level, in our thinking, then all kinds of problems happen. And so I want to take this 1 Corinthians 1.10, this Holy Spirit stirring of my heart, and I want you to feel this. I want all the leaders of 75 departments, you to feel this. This is not just a neat exhortation. This really is a prophetic exhortation about what's coming in the future of our number one vulnerability. Paul says, I plead with you. Speak the same thing. In other words, it takes time for us to learn the same thing to speak it. He says, carry the same heart, the same emphasis. Now, not in every dimension, but the Lord is speaking to us as a missions base. We have a message. Learn it and speak it together at every level, not just the four or five or ten people who do conferences. At every level, speak the same thing. Have unity so the enemy can't make a way in. Be perfectly joined. What a statement. Together in the same mind, with the same judgment. Judgment meaning the same evaluation. Look at that sentence. I want our leaders to feel this. Because the Holy Spirit is speaking, 1 Corinthians 1.10. To me and therefore to us as a leadership team and therefore as a whole family. Be perfectly joined to one another with the same thinking. With the same thinking. Meaning we've got understanding. We're working together. Understanding. This is not a statement against having diversity. Or even people having different opinions. Having the same mind doesn't mean we all think exactly the same thing like robots. It means that it's a higher dimension. We've agreed because of humility. We're going to stick together on the main, on the primary issues. We're going to say them. We're going to understand them. We're going to let our system have unity from top to bottom. It's not okay for a few leaders at the top to be thinking one way. But then to cultivate or recruit a team under them that's not in unity with where we're going. That's a real common thing in organizations. All over in the world in ministry organizations. For the leaders to take people that have a certain giftedness without concern that they're of one mind. And it's only a matter of time. A few minutes later, maybe it's a year or two, but there's trouble. And Paul said perfectly joined together in the same mind. Leaders, we have to labor that our teams are in unity. They understand the values, the vision. They know the emphasis of the season that we're in, and they can all say it. Now, this involves, look at four things here, and there's more than these four. But these are four things I'm staring at right now. To work hard, and I want our 75 department heads and all the others more leaders than those 75, and there's leaders over them. This involves strategically sowing the word into our community. This involves providing opportunity for two-way communication. This involves clarifying appeal structures, how you can make appeals in the system. And everybody knows who they can go to to make an appeal when something is troubling them. And this means continually repairing relationships in our spiritual family. I'm going to look at each one of those for just a moment. This is not comprehensive. I could put a few more things on that list, but these are the ones right in front of me right now. When I think of sowing the word in our community, I'm approaching this in a strategic way. Not that I have the perfect strategy, but I'm very prayerfully. I'm asking the Lord for the next two-year diet of what we're to be fed on the spiritual family. Not just myself, but the whole team. And some of the subjects he wants strengthened in our midst. I've been on the last couple months. The message of grace. The clarity of Romans 3 to 8. This is critical, and I can only stay on this for a short amount of time Because there's so many other issues to feed at the table in the diet of the next two years. I think of the end times. For about the last year, the subject of the end times is shifted over to the side. And that's okay for a season, because you can't maintain ten things on the front line all the time. You can't do it. But you can maintain them all in a two- or three-year cycle. And we can strengthen the body. I think of the Sermon on the Mount lifestyle. I think of evangelism and justice. Now evangelism is what we've been pressing for several months, and we're going to for a number of months. And we always do all of these things. We hit justice hard for about nine months last year. Other issues that I want to bring into the forefront pretty soon is relationship building at every level. So we have strong relationship skills all through our system. Then the subject of intimacy with God. That's becoming a distant subject to some. They haven't heard about it for a while. Then the subject of prayer and intercession itself. Then the power of the Holy Spirit, ministering of the gifts. When I look at the next two or three years, I've got these things laid out. And I'm saying, Lord, I want our family to be fed strategically and equipped and inspired. And not just equipped and inspired. Very important. But that we would have together the same emphasis in the same season. I mean the primary emphasis of what the Lord is saying to our community. And so that's why I insist on everybody that's on the staff. I have two time commitments. I mean we have many, but two in terms of hearing. And that is the all-staff meeting and the worship teams. They have a second one on the second Monday of the month. It is mandatory that you come to this. This isn't like if your Monday is free. I don't want people on our staff that don't have understanding in their mind of what we're doing. Why we're doing it and what our emphasis is now. Because if they don't have it, they will get out of sorts in a little bit of time. And there will be a vulnerability in our midst. The other one that I insist on, and I always have for the 10 years, 11 years, is coming to one meeting on Sunday. The FCF congregation to me is first and foremost an IHOP staff training time. And a place where I get the full-time people on board going in one direction together. And in two or three years, we're going to cover all these subjects again. Then we're going to go through them again. And different ones will be speaking at different times. And it's critical, I'm talking from the Holy Spirit, that we are of one mind in the next year or two. And so we have one time we gather together. It's a training time. It's an inspiration time. But more than that, or in addition, it's a corporate direction. What is the emphasis that we want top to bottom through our system? And right now, I know from observation, but I also know from the Lord, we are deficient in understanding the principles of grace. I mean our leaders are. Straight through the system. It's not in our language. It's not in our words. It doesn't strike us. And the Lord's whispered to me a few months ago, this must be put in place. I'm talking about all of our Bible school teachers need to have it. Not just the ideas, but they know how to say it, and it's on their mind to say it. Straight through the internships. Straight through the singers. The ushers. The shuttle drivers. We need to be of one mind. Then we need to do the same thing with the end times. Then we need to do the same thing with the relationship building. Then the same thing with intimacy. Then servant on the mount lifestyle. And then on and on again. Justice. Evangelism. Intercession. Holy Spirit ministry over and over. We want to, again, I'm spending too much time on this point. And the reason I am because it's the point that's bearing on me individually. But I'm not, in other words, I'm kind of venting to you about what the Lord's telling me. But I'll just go on another moment or two. And then I really want to get to the solving conflicts. But, again, most of it you're going to read on your own anyway. Number two thing. Providing opportunity for two-way communication of ideas. I want all of our 75 departments and all the entire spiritual family here to understand the best ideas for IHOP's future rest in this community. What I mean is God has deposited wisdom for our future in this spiritual family. So I'm going to create an environment where people can share their ideas. And whether it's suggestion cards in the foyer that you fill out. I want an environment where people feel welcome to share ideas straight across the board on how to make our systems better. All of our systems better. Stronger. Because the wisdom, the resource of wisdom is actually in this room right here. Now I appreciate going outside and getting some other guys that are experts in areas to come talk to us. But the Holy Spirit is giving this in our community right now. And so I want to really put some value on that. Is that if you get ideas for any area. And I want to figure out ways where you can give them to us again. Whether it's the suggestion box, so to speak. The response box in the foyers. I want you all thinking about IHOP. Not just about your area. Asking the Holy Spirit. How can this place be better? And we want two-way communication from leaders up top, you know, top down, down top. Straight across the board. We want this kind of environment because there's ownership and wisdom that grows out of this. I want to strengthen that in our days to come. I mean really strengthen it. I mean the value is there, but I want to take it from a 5 to a 10 in the next 12 months. Then clarifying appeal structures. Developing them and clarifying. So you know specifically who you can go to when you're bothered. Not just when you have a good idea, but when you're bothered. And then having insight on how to repair relationships. And that's what I want to spend the next 15, 20 minutes on. What do we do to make appeals and to repair relationships? Romans 2. Paragraph A. The spirit of a relationship can be wounded without the people themselves being wounded. Meaning when I talk about a wounded relationship, don't instantly think of two people that are just devastated because they're so wounded. The people individually can be doing good, but they've lost trust with each other. The relationship is wounded. Paragraph B. A relationship is wounded long before it's broken. But if we don't repair it when it's wounded, it will become broken. And it's far more complex when it's broken. And I just want this value. Again, you're all here. We're all of one mind. That's the value of you being here. So you have this emphasis. We're carrying it together throughout our system, throughout IHOP. You and the interns and the outreaches and the justice department. All the 75 departments and the shuttle drivers. We all have these values together. We're going in the same direction. Look at C. I have the same verse from two different translations. A brother offended is hard to win. Much harder than a city that's guarded. If that wounded relationship becomes an offense, I mean he becomes offended. It went from I don't trust you and we don't talk easy. I'm talking about within the department or within departments. Then it becomes offense. The Word of the Lord says it's really hard to get the gangrene out of the relationship. Because it's going to fester. There's a sore and it's going to die. Much harder. Do it on the early days. Top of page 2. Now we all know this. Matthew, paragraph A, Matthew 18. These are the words of Jesus. If your brother sins against you. Or let's not make the word sin so heavy that it has to be a scandalous sin. But if a brother is troubling you. And mostly we think a brother troubles us because they don't value us. They don't treat us right. They're talking against us. They're resisting us. They're blocking our goals. They don't get who we are in God. So if your brother, I'm going to put a different word there, is troubling you. Because if you think of sin, you might think of only real big scandalous things. Jesus said if your brother is troubling you, I'm going to put that word in. Go and tell him. Go and tell him his fault. Not just his scandalous big thing. Tell him what he's doing that's injuring your heart or troubling your heart. Let's just use the word trouble. But go to him alone. Verse 16. If he will not hear you, go take another person with you. Take another person with you. Now in the structure here, it's to go tell another person. You want to tell somebody that's over you or them in the structure. You want to tell a brother or sister that has the authority in our structure to actually solve the problem. So it's not enough just to tell anybody. But tell somebody that can actually participate in the solution, bringing a solution. Now here's what happens. Is that a brother troubles us. And the last person we tell is the brother. That's human nature. That's not something unique to IHOP. It's humans. Every human group, the first tendency is for us to go to somebody. And this is well-meaning. I don't mean this in any way sarcastic at all. They go to somebody to get counsel. They mean it. But they get counsel and they want prayer. This guy's bugging me. What should I do? Already we're out of line. Already. And because that's a normal thing in most organizations, both Christians and non. It's dysfunctional not to do it God's way. It's organizationally dysfunctional. If we allow people to circumvent the process, the wise, loving process that Jesus gave, the system becomes, the infrastructure becomes dysfunctional. And right now, I don't feel like we're there. I feel like we need work on this. But where we're going in the next two or three years, I am really feel the weight of the Lord on this. The Lord says go, tell him. Now it takes, there's a lot involved. Jesus obviously understood this. To tell somebody their fault, it takes about five steps before that happens inside of the person who has to go tell the fault. They have to get clear. They have to weigh their motives. They have to get courage. They have, there's four or five things. I have them listed later. They have to do. But Jesus knew that. He just said, I command you, talk to the guy. Nah, nah, he's not going to listen anyway. Jesus says, I don't give you that option. You don't have the option not to. If he bothers you, talk to him. Because if you don't talk to him, you will talk to somebody about him. It's just human nature. It's how we're built. Go to him. And then, again, the process changes us when we go to the guy, the friend. I mean the guy in the department. But he's bothering us. He's troubling us by something he's doing or saying. We get changed by the process we have to go through to muster up the courage, the clarity to go to our brother and speak to him directly. Many, many good things happen if we do this. And Jesus, the chief shepherd, he knew this. And, again, I want to say most systems, organizations don't do this. Because it's just easier to take shortcuts. And then we reward the shortcuts. And then when we do that, the system is dysfunctional, which is 99% of all the systems in the earth. I'm talking about organizations. Dysfunctional in this regard. You go and tell him, and tell him alone. Don't get counsel with somebody else. Now, if it's somebody that's over that person, now I'm talking infrastructure, if it's somebody that's over that person, and they have authority to weigh in on the matter, you can go to them for counsel. But if it's not somebody over them, because a leader then will hold you accountable as to what you're doing and the way you're doing, and they can help you process it. It did not say process it with your best friend. Yeah, that's my one friend. There's nothing in the Bible about processing what's bugging you about a guy with a friend. That is really, honestly called slander. Well, if we're good friends, and he won't tell nobody, it's not slander. The Holy Spirit says it is. It is slander. It is. And the trouble goes the wrong direction, because now the guy that knows it, who was confidential, you shared it with, he's bugged a little bit. And he carries that just a little bit. He may not tell the story to anybody else, but he carries that to the next relationship. We have to do it the Lord's way. Go tell him the fault. No offline processing. Meaning we can't process it out there. We have to go to them. Now, the paragraph B, tell him. I should have put the verse, because it's Matthew 18, verse 20. It's only a verse or two down. Jesus said, wherever two or three gather in my name, I'm in the presence. And when he said, when two or three gather in my name, I'm in your midst, my presence is there, he meant there's many applications to that promise, but it's in context to a brother sharing with another brother that he bugs him. That's the context. Here's the point. B, when you go to that brother and talk to him, the spirit is present. And he moves on you, and surprises happen. When you look at them eye to eye, the dynamics are different. I mean, he can be a villain with horns on. You get eye to eye. You don't even want to. You feel more tender. You feel more mercy. You see things you didn't see, because the spirit is in the midst, because that's what Jesus said two verses later, verse 20. He goes, I'll be in your midst if you do this. I will help you. That isn't just a promise if two or three are gathered for small churches. That is a promise for healing relationships in the body of Christ. The active presence of God will be there. Now, I have it written wrong here, paragraph B. It says, many meet their brother to save time. What I meant to say, many do not meet their brother because they want to save time. They go, you know what? It's not going to do any good anyway. I'm going to save the time of meeting with him because he's going to blow me off, and it's going to go nowhere. Number one, you don't get the option to do that because Jesus said, go to him. He didn't say, think about, go to him. Go to the Lord first, but go to him. We think it saves time, but let me tell you this, that hour that it takes to go to him, you get your emotions stirred up for a few hours before, your emotions stirred up a few hours afterwards, you got five or ten hours in that one-hour meeting, you know, between the whole thing. If you don't go, you'll have 100 hours invested in terms of emotional traffic. It is far more costly on your time not to go. The guy goes, I want to save the time. You'll waste 100 hours in vain imagination and in venting and in answering why you vented, why it was biblical and why you had to and why it really wasn't sin that you did it. You'll waste 100 hours saving one hour, even though it might take you five or ten hours to get that one hour clear. The Lord knows what he's saying. We get changed, paragraph C. We get changed. The guy going to the brother, you're not confronting him. Don't put confrontation there. Put sharing your heart. We're not talking about going and saying, you are the sinner, thou art the man. We're not talking about confrontation. We're talking about sharing from your heart with tenderness and humility why your heart is troubled. Roman numeral four, making the appeal. A, the appeal. We make a godly appeal that starts with asking questions, requesting help, and sharing feelings. I just want to give you this little road map if you haven't done this much. You ask questions, request help, and share feelings first to Jesus and then to the brother that troubles you. But do it to Jesus first. I really urge you to do this. B, number one, we ask the Lord. Before you meet with the guy, I mean you'll work with him, but you might not actually get the courage and the clarity to meet with him for a couple of weeks or a month or two. You're stewing on it. You're thinking on it. And again, most people, they think that's going to waste my time. I promise you, you will waste 100 hours trying to save that one hour. You really will. Ask the Lord. And I have some things there. They're real simple. Holy Spirit, what do you think about this guy? What do you think about the conflict? Ask more than once. Holy Spirit, talk to me about my deficiencies. Tell me how I lack sensitivity. Ask him. It will change the tone and the atmosphere of the meeting dynamically if you do that for a week or two before you meet with him. B, I mean number two, ask the Lord for help. Ask the Lord to prepare. Now, people say, well, of course. But I got this feeling that most people never do that, or they do it very little. Do this. This is critical that we do this thing. And we don't just ask for the Lord to prepare the brother. We address the spirit that's often behind the conflict. There are spirits stirring up good godly men and women against each other in a work of God. So we actually dislodge some of the spiritual dynamics behind it. Don't skip number two. And then number three, share your feelings. I've done this before with the Lord. Journal it where you tell the Lord what you feel. Be clear. But don't talk to the air and don't talk to a friend. And talk to Jesus for real, for real. He bothers me because the talk to Jesus who loves him, but tell him what you really feel. David did a lot of this in the Psalms. And I ask the Lord, tell him the positive things. Take a minute and say, but, Lord, I like this. This will really change, again, your feeling in the entire atmosphere of how you talk to him. See, the next, we're going to do those same three things to the brother that's troubling you. Top of page three. First, you're going to ask him. You're going to ask the brother some questions. When you start the meeting, you don't start the meeting. Sit down. You know what? You're just against me. And you know what? I know why you're against me. You don't start with a statement of what's bothering. Start with a question. Ask the guy. You're looking at him. Ask him, what troubles you about what I'm doing or what I've said? Tell me what troubles you. Or say, tell me how the last month or two could have been differently, what I could have done different. Or, what were you thinking when you told me this statement? And tone is critical. Not, what were you thinking when you told me this statement? Not like that. Tone is critical. Tone is critical in this. But, you know, I want to know what you were thinking when you said this. Give the guy a chance to answer. Start with questions. Then ask for help. Ask to understand his heart. Say, help me. What I heard you say and what I felt when you said this was that, help me sort through this. Ask the guy for help, actually. Paragraph three, share your feelings. Don't make accusations. You came against me. Share feelings. It felt like you came against me. There's a big difference. It really is. It felt like you're resisting me. It's probably me. I don't know. But that's how I feel. Share feelings more than definitive statements. You tell the guy, I felt rejected. Don't say you did reject me. I felt rejected. I thought you wanted me off the team. When you said you really liked that other drummer, I thought you wanted me off the team. The guy goes, no, I didn't. I just really liked that other drummer. It had nothing to do with wanting you off the team. You think, wow, I appreciate that. Tell them how you feel. Don't make the statements. D, this is critical. James 5, confess your sins. Look. Search. And if you're really honest, you won't have to search that hard. I promise you. It won't be long. It's never taken me that long to find a sin. But when I go to the table of reconciliation, I don't like to go empty-handed. I like to go with an offering of a confession of something I did. I ask the Lord, I want to bring something to the table. I don't want to go empty-handed. I'm talking about if I'm relating to my wife, my sons, my friends, whatever. Ministries down the road, department heads, come with an offering, but it must be sincere. Don't ever apologize or ask forgiveness of something you don't believe. Like, don't leave. If you leave and have to roll your eyes, or you can roll your eyes, like, that was crazy, don't do that. That is not truth. Work on it until you have a seed of truth. I promise you there's enough pride stored up in there. There was pride in something you said. Just always, if you can't find nothing, go for the pride one. That's a big, big, vast resource in all of us. I'm serious. But look for something to bring to the relationship. There's plenty. I've never, ever had a problem finding it. But never, ever speak in a way where you won't be willing five years later to say the same thing back to them. Like, when everybody's happy, you say, well, you know what, I didn't really think I did that. Don't ever confess something that you can't believe, because it's not truth. The Spirit's not in that. We're not talking about pacifying or conning somebody. We're talking about the process in you that happens when you go dig for that offering to bring to the table. Because you really get changed in the process. And when you do confess your faults and you say you're sorry, now this is really important in marriage, but this is important everywhere. A lot of these work in marriage. Here's what, when you apologize, don't say, this is absolutely worthless. It's worse than worthless. Don't say, I'm sorry if I offended you. Never. If you say that to your wife or your children or your friends or your department, disaster. Don't say, if I offended you, I'm sorry. Say, since I was proud, since I said some wrong things, I ask you to forgive me. Don't go with the if you're offended, because what you're really saying is, because you're so easily offended, I have to bother with this reconciliation time. If you had your head in the game, we wouldn't be having this meeting. That's what it means when someone says, if you're offended, I am sorry. That is absolutely a step backwards. You just put some cement over the problem, and it's beginning to dry. Seriously. Say, since, since I sinned against you, but have a real sin, and I have written there. I assure you, you came up short in love somewhere in the relationship. Find it and offer it and be real about it. But the thing is, you need to be accountable. You can't say it then later, not follow through. You really need to follow through on what you tell them. If you confess that you were insensitive in that relationship, you need to then become focused on that area or the whole thing is not real. Solving problems and making appeals, it's not just about getting that guy off your back. It's about the Lord bonding his church together and closing the gaps so the devil can't come in our midst. That's what it's about. And if the guy that's troubled gets as much change internally as the guy who did the troubling. Okay, Roman number five. And I'm watching the clock, and I'm going to get you out on time. We must judge, but we have to do it with the right spirit. Matthew 7. I think this is a theory. Judge not lest you be judged. I think that's the most well-known Bible verse in the earth. I really do. No, no, I mean for real. A complete unbeliever, they know that one, and Jesus wept. Those are like the two they know. You could talk to a total atheist, they know that one verse. They don't know anything else, but they do know that one verse. I mean nothing else but the Bible, but they know that verse. The most, I really mean this, the most well-known verse, and the most often misquoted and misunderstood. Jesus did not say don't evaluate people and come to conclusions that they're wrong. You have to evaluate people. You have to. It's called discernment. If you don't evaluate people, well, you do anyway. It's impossible to live in this world and not evaluate. That means you would have no discernment, no opinion. You would not be thinking ever. When you read it in context, which I can't prove it right now, but I will sometime. I'll take time to do this at another setting. He is talking about the manner of judgment, and the big point is verse 2. He says the way that you judge is how you will be judged. What he's saying really in verse 1, don't judge in a way you're not willing to be judged in return. That's the message because with his own lips, on a number of occasions, he commands us to judge. He didn't contradict himself. Jesus is saying don't judge in a way you're not willing to be judged yourself. And, beloved, that's good news. Because if you judge in the right process, with the right information, with the right spirit, that's how God will cause people to judge or evaluate you. You will sow into relationships and then reap what you sow. God will cause literally it to come back to you. Now the three things I identify here at the end of paragraph 8. We have to judge in the right process, for the right purpose, and with the right spirit. It's critical. There's a process. We go to them first alone. That's the process. We tell them, but there's a lot of vigorous spirituality that happens. I mean, it's vigorous to do this right. Because you've got to check yourself, make sure the information's right, make sure your spirit's right. Ask the Holy Spirit. It's just this whole big, like, ah. But you can change. The right process is critical. You cannot skip the process. And you want people that come to you to live in the same process too. Then, for the right purpose. You're coming not to win an argument. You're coming because you want good to happen. Not to win an argument. Your purpose is for the will of God to be done in your lives together. And you come in a right spirit, with humility, with the right tone. Tone is everything. Motive and tone are involved here. The right purpose and the right spirit. Paragraph B, look at here. Jesus commands us to judge in Luke 17 3. If your brother sins, rebuke him. Now, he's talking about the brother who has continued in an ongoing way. Rebuke him. Now, rebuke doesn't mean psych up and yell at him. Rebuke does not mean tone. Don't add tone to this. Like, you oh Ishmaelite. You oh Laodicean outer court Jezebel. Why did you do this to me? You double dead, uprooted, clouds without. You know the verse. In Jude. Trees without fruit. Clouds without water. Foam cast up from the sea. Don't say all that to them. Alan, you like that? I think you've learned those, haven't you? No, we've teased about them. Rebuke doesn't mean tone. Rebuke means you're getting to the point of what troubles you. So, don't put tone on the word rebuke. Look at John 7, 24. He says, judge but with righteous judgment. I thought you said don't judge. Now you say do judge. He goes, judge in the right way with truth. Judge, get all the information first and do it right. Here's how we do it in the right way. Roman numeral six, B. And it really takes a vigorous spirituality to do this. It takes time. It's search your heart. It really is a bit of a spiritual surgery to do this thing right. But it's critical we do it right. We do it with gentleness. We approach the person with tenderness. You can read that on your own. Paragraph top of page four. We do it with humility, paragraph D. We look at our own failures. We acknowledge what we've done. We bring something to the table. E, we do it accurately. We need to get the information accurate. It takes time and effort to do this. Look what it says in Proverbs 18. He that answers a matter before he hears it, before he hears the whole matter is the point, it's a folly. Verse 17. Here, catch 17. The first one to plead his case seems right until the neighbor comes along and cross-examines him and asks him questions and then it's all a different story. In other words, it takes time to get the right information. And we look at this and go, ah, I don't want to bother with this. I just want to tell my friend how that guy bugs me. Jesus says, you can't, you can't. And not, if you're going to do that, you will end up in a spiritually sick environment if this is okay and permitted. F, you have to judge patiently. We do judge as patient. Give the person time to repent. Give them time to understand the gravity of what they've done to your heart or another situation. Don't rush through it too quickly. You think, I don't have time for it. I want to say it one more time. You don't, you will spend more time not doing this and all the emotional traffic of internalizing it and it will be on your mind, even if it's on the side, on the peripheral, it will be bothering you for a long, long time. Offense never just goes away. With confidentiality. And then, here I have the paragraph G. We never reveal past sins if the person repents. Peter said, above everything, cover them. Proverbs 17, He who covers sin seeks love. If you repeat the sin, you separate friends. We cover. And then it goes on. You can just read the rest on your own. When we make an appeal, we go to the guy, and if the guy won't hear us, or we can even go to the guy, the person above. You can appeal upwards in the authority structure. I'm talking to the infrastructure, to the people that have more information of the big picture. If they're leaders that are not confidential, if they're leaders that get scandalized by somebody being trouble, then that leader, sooner or later, they get reassigned before it's all over. I mean, I don't mean we do, although we will do it, but I'm saying life itself will sort out a situation, an organization, where the leaders are not confident, and they're not, I mean confidential, they're not spiritually minded in this kind of thing. If somebody's bothering you, you can appeal upwards, but you cannot appeal horizontal, and you cannot appeal below. You can't go to your friend. You can't go to another department head. You have to go to somebody over you, or over that person, and get counsel and bring them into it. If we do this, and we labor to be of one heart and one mind, I tell you, we will close the door to, I believe, the biggest vulnerability that we have in our future. And again, today, as of August 2010, we're doing pretty good. We need improvement, but this isn't like a big gap right now. This is not a big, I can't hardly even think of two or three situations right now, and they're small ones. I have 75 departments, and I'm sure there's a bunch more little festers, festering ones, but I'm telling you, we're doing pretty good, but we've got to bring it up a notch to get ready for 2011, 2012, 2013, and I tell you, we will do good together. Leaders, if we labor to be of one mind, we have the same emphasis and the same seasons together. I'm talking about in the broadest strokes, at the highest levels. We have the same values. We repair the relationships. We have two-way communication where people can share their ideas, you know, from top to bottom, bottom to top, where we have collaboration, this whole environment of ownership and creative thinking. We value that, and again, I don't know exactly how we'll do that fully, but I want to say in the next year, we want to strengthen that ability so the full wisdom and ownership that's in our midst will come to the surface. Amen. Let's stand.