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…”
Or, “Brother Martin’s taking drugs for his depression. Let’s pray the he will be delivered from this demonic thing and learn to lean on Jesus instead of medicine, okay? Let’s pray.”
Let me just cut to the chase here. Unless Martha and Martin gave you permission to share that stuff, then you are gossiping, and that is sin. And if that is you, you need to repent today.
You don’t need to share everything in a prayer request.
If you’re in a prayer group and you feel the need to ask for prayer for someone, you can be very vague.
“I know a person who is really struggling with something in their life. Can we just pray for that person?”
And then you pray, you pray, “God, we lift this person to you. May Your will be done. Please let them know that You love them and that You care about what’s going on in this situation.”
Let me tell you something about God: He’s smart. He knows who you’re talking about and He knows what’s going in that situation.
In fact, He knows more about it than you do, and He knows better about what needs to happen in that situation.
You don’t need to mention names or specifics. Even if you don’t mention names, don’t give the specifics, because then the rest of the folks might just figure it out.
Folks, the church should be the one place where a person can share what’s on their hearts and what’s going on in their lives and not have to worry about it getting around.
Christians should be able to trust other Christians with stuff they need to share, not worrying about whether it’s going to end up on someone’s Facebook status.
The only real applications for this section rest with the ones who are being trusted.
You can’t just say, “Well, they just need to learn to trust.”
The problem is that trust isn’t necessarily given – usually it’s earned as people see that you are trustworthy enough to trust with personal information.
You may need to repent and ask someone’s forgiveness.
You need to examine yourself, asking the Holy Spirit to point out to you areas of untrustworthy-ness so you can work on that.
Or you may need to just get in somebody’s face when you hear them gossip about you or someone else.
Once you quit being a receptacle for garbage – I mean gossip, then your own spirit can be cleaned out from it.
Let’s move on and look at…
Faithfulness
We’ll look at a few more passages of Scripture for this point, okay? Here’s the main one I want us to see for this section:
Proverbs 20:6 –
Many a man claims to have unfailing love, but a faithful man who can find?
This is a verse that says, “Talk is cheap. Let’s see what happens when the rubber meets the road.”
“I’m in jail right now for DUI. Can you come and give me a ride home? No questions – I just need a ride home. Can you come and get me?”
“I just found out my daughter’s been using drugs. I need someone to talk to. Right now. I know it’s 3:00 in the morning. Can you come?”
“I’m being accused of something at work I didn’t do. They’re going to fire me, even though I didn’t do it. People are going to ask questions. Can I count on you to squelch the rumors when you hear them?”
“The doctor just told me I’ve got cancer, and there’s nothing they can do. I really need a friend right now.”
Or this one: “I just got out of prison. Will you still stand by me and believe in me?”
In case it’s not clear, the answer to each of these questions should be yes – whenever possible.
Faithfulness isn’t tested when everything’s going okay. It’s tested when the going gets rough and you’re asked to do something that might cost you something on another person’s behalf.
Faithfulness, like trust, should a hallmark of the Church of Jesus. There should be no one more trustworthy or faithful than a Christian.
Whether it’s being faithful with other people’s money, their secrets, or their need to lean on you in tough circumstances, it should be a no-brainer to call on a Christian who really loves Jesus and wants to serve Him.
Let’s look now at Proverbs 3:3-4 –
3 Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. 4 Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man.
Verse 4 is key in this passage. If you want a good reputation in the sight of men and of God, then make sure faithfulness is part of who you are.
You want opportunities to minister, especially to the hurting, the misplaced, or others in tough situations?
Allow your faithfulness to shine through in the smaller things – and God will entrust you with other opportunities to touch and impact lives.
Before we finish this section, l want us to look at a passage that should be familiar to most of us…
Galatians 5:22-23 –
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Faithfulness is part of the fruit of the Spirit.
I’m not going to talk a lot about this, because it’s a whole message in itself, but all of the fruit of the Spirit is supposed to be evident in every believer.
It’s not like the gifts of the Spirit, which are divvied up among Christians.
Also, unlike the gifts of the Spirit, which are plural, there is only one fruit of the Spirit – with these nine characteristics.
If you take an apple and after biting it you realize it’s only a peel and the core, you would say something’s missing, right?
Same with the fruit of the Spirit. It’s all supposed to be there. Including faithfulness.
You can’t say, “Sorry – faithfulness just isn’t one of my fruits.” That option doesn’t exist.
Faithfulness is part of what every Christian is supposed to be and exhibit in their lives.
We: I’ve been saying throughout the message, in one way or another that the Church should be the safest place in the world for other Christians to go when they have a burden.
The church is made fun of a lot in movies, TV, and such, as being filled with gossips and self-centered people who are faithful only to themselves and their reputations.
If it weren’t for the fact that that’s true in many places, it would be funny.
But what’s funny is that the world recognizes that the Church should be a safe place, but in many places and many instances, isn’t.
Let’s commit this day to being people who can be counted on – to zip our lips when necessary and to be there when we’re needed.
And let’s show the world that not every church is like the ones they make fun of in the media, because we’re committed to honoring God in how we treat one another.
Let’s pray.
