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Relationships - Miscellaneous
Question:
Today in school, I got suspended. I was just wondering, if somebody tries to provoke you or get you to fight, how would you have self-control?
Answered on 07/26/06: That’s a great question. If somebody at school tries to provoke you or get you to fight, how do you have self-control? Well, you have to make up your mind before you get to school that you’re going to have self-control first of all. You’ve got to make up your mind in advance how you’re going to respond.
There are a lot of things that can happen in a normal day at school and what you should do is decide in your heart and in your mind, “Here’s how I’m going to respond if this happens. If someone tries to pick on me, I’m going to forgive them. If someone says something mean to me, I’m going to respond by saying something good to them and something powerful to them. I’m going to pray for them. I’m going to tell them, ‘All I want to know is, what are you going to do about Jesus? Are you going to receive Jesus or what?’”
You know, Larry, who is sitting by me here has a son was confronted by some kids who were teasing him a few months ago. They started teasing him, making fun of him and calling him names and finally, he just responded and said, “Look. Here’s all I want to know; are you going to accept Jesus or aren’t you?” And it totally made these kids shut up because there was nothing else for them to do. What else are you going to do at that point. You know, bring Jesus into the situation. What are you going to do about Him? I mean, this kid was bold. “What are you going to do about Jesus? That’s what I want to know.” That’s how you should respond in a situation like that. You tell them, “Look, man, we’re going to pray and we’re going to get the answer from God.”
And be bold as a Christian. And if they still pick on you, you just need to know that God is your Father, and God will protect you and if you need to have a big brother, get a bunch of Christians that go to your school and say, “Man, we’re going to rally together so that if kids pick on us, we’re going to go and we’re going to teach them the Bible and invite them to our Bible study and we’re going to pray for them.” See, you pray for kids like that and you make up your mind in advance not to respond to them or retaliate. And if someone keeps picking on you, man, just say, “Look, yeah, I could fight you and I could whoop you but instead we’re going to make it together. We’re going to make it by doing the right thing, not by doing the wrong thing.” Be strong in the Lord.
Question:
I know as Christians we’re supposed to be meek and humble, but how do you prevent people from taking advantage of you when you do that because shouldn’t you also be assertive at times?
Answered on 07/26/06: There are people that are going to take advantage of us as Christians but we sometimes need to be willing to be taken advantage of for the propagation of the gospel. We should not be taken advantage of because we’re letting our family be taken advantage of or we’re allowing ourselves to get into a bad business deal and we’re not standing up for ourselves. We shouldn’t be taken advantage of in that way.
This will probably help to give you an understanding. The word “meekness” means controlled strength. When a horse wins a Kentucky Derby, that’s because that horse had meekness. He was strong, but his strength was bridled. His strength was controlled to run the race and to win the race. That’s meekness. There’s a difference between that and having uncontrolled strength; that’s a wild, bucking bronco. But to have controlled strength, that’s meekness.
And that’s how Christians are supposed to be. We’re supposed to have strength, maintain strength, but we’re only supposed to use it in the right way; to take us in the right direction for the glory of God and for the protection of people and the propagation of the gospel.
Question:
As a leader in the department that I’m in, I have some staffers that come to me with personal issues. They ask for my opinions and my guidance. As a man of God, I want to be able to guide them with God’s Word, but I don’t want to overstep my boundaries. How do you recommend I go about doing that?
Answered on 05/11/06: Well, it depends on what the issues are about. If the issues are within your area of expertise, then I think that that’s fine and legitimate. I think that everybody that has basic questions, you can eventually turn that question towards God. There’s got to be an answer that you would be able to take from Scripture. No matter what anybody asks me, I want to be able to find a way to point them back to the Lord, to the Word of God, even if their question has to do with something very unrelated to the Bible. Eventually, it’s going to get related to the Bible unless it is a question that is meaningless because the Bible speaks to every issue of our lives in one way or another.
I think the thing that I would do if I were in your situation, if you are concerned about not stepping beyond your boundaries with them, is that when they ask you a question, you just ask them “Do you want my answer from God’s point of view? How much of an answer or how much information are you looking for?" Sometimes something just as simple as that will create the boundaries for you. I’ve had people come to me and I’ve asked them, “Well do you really want me to address this issue? Do you really want me to go into this area?” Some have said yes and some have said no so I just back away if they’re not interested in going that far.
I would say to you that in general, you ask them how far they want you to go with the questions that they’re asking and with the answers that you give them. Throw the Bible out there, throw the Word of God to them and give them the lifeline to the Bible and show them. If they’re asking something about their marriage or their mind or their finances, there’s always some answer from the Bible that you can give them. Two-thirds of the parables Jesus taught were related to finances. There’s always a way to take things back to the Scripture.
Question:
I’ve had a problem for a number of years with worrying about people talking about me. I’ve pretty much withdrawn from people. I’m pretty quiet in my workplace. I try to be kind and treat others as I want to be treated; to live by the Golden Rule. Unfortunately, I still have that paranoia; I still have that feeling of people talking about me constantly and it drains me physically.
Answered on 05/09/06: Well, let me give you a little encouragement about that. When we’re twenty years old, we think everybody is thinking about us. When we turn forty, we realize, not everybody is thinking about us. When we turn sixty, we don’t care that anybody is thinking about us. And when we turn eighty, we realize that nobody is thinking about us. As you get older, you realize that people are not thinking about you as much as you think they are. I want to encourage you that what matters most is what God thinks about you.
Paul the apostle struggled with people and trying to please people and trying to be approved by people and worrying about what they thought of him until he finally got free from people. It’s written about him in Acts 26:17 where God said to him, "I’ve delivered you from the people so I can deliver you to the people.” In other words, once he was free from the fear of people and what they thought about him, he was now empowered to truly be a blessing in other people’s lives.
The most selfish thing we can do in our lives is to think about how people think of us and how people view us rather than think about how God views us. When we’re worried and self-conscious about what other people think about us, then we no longer are of any good to them and then we can’t bless them; we can’t serve them or help them.
I want to encourage you to start meditating on what God thinks about you. Read Psalm 139 and Psalm 40. That’s my assignment for you. It will really encourage you about the way that God thinks about you. It will set you free from peoples’ thoughts toward you.
I know what you’re going through and I know how easy it is to withdraw and you lose all your energy because of all the effort that it takes to worry about what people think about you. You need to stop. You need to realize that they don’t think about you as much as you think they do. And furthermore, they don’t think about you the way you deserve to be thought about but God does think about you the way you deserve to be thought about.
We have to accept the fact that we don’t fit into people’s drama sometimes. People are going to try to make you the villain of their drama and they need to be the star of their drama. They need to be their own villain; we don’t need to be their villain. "Don’t be the mama in somebody else’s drama" as we like to say around here. Stay out of people’s drama. Don’t engage in that. Don’t allow yourself to put yourself under their thinking and under their view of you and their opinion of you.
You do your best to be pleasing to God because when you stand before Him, your boss, your employers, your employees, your friends, your family, your relatives, your neighbors, none of those people are going to be standing there when you’re standing before God. It’s only going to be Him. And that is eternal. That is forever. What we do in this life will echo into eternity.
Let us be pleasing to God on this earth, in this life, so that when we stand before Him, we can hear Him say, “Well done good and faithful servant.” Everybody else’s opinion of you is going to pale in comparison; it’s going to wither up and disappear on that day. So let it disappear now and focus your life on being pleasing to God. Pursue being pleasing to God and receiving His love and walking in His love towards other people.
I would say, “Be the person that God created you to be.” Let your thoughts meditate on His love for you and His attitude towards you and then that attitude of love and kindness is going to be reflected in your attitude towards other people. No matter what they do for you or think about you, you just think about them the way that God thinks about them and you’re going to have a great life.
Question:
When I was 17 years old, I started getting involved with homosexuality. I dealt with that for 3 years and then I moved away, not knowing that the homosexual spirit was following me everywhere. I fought it and fought it. I would get delivered from it and then it would come back and I’d get delivered and it would come back. I know I’m delivered from it and I can feel in my spirit that I’m delivered from it, but the thing is, the old friends keep coming around, being persistent. It’s like the enemy is trying to pull me back. So, what do I do about these people?
Answered on 05/04/06: First of all, let me congratulate you on being honest, number one. Number two, on being a fighter. You’ve done great. I’m proud of you. You’ve fought and you didn’t give up. God’s proud of you.
So, how do you deal with old friends? In two ways. Number one, you don’t be deceived by the thoughts that keep coming to you because even though the thoughts come, that doesn’t mean that you’ve given in to them. That doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you just because you’ve had thoughts. We’ve all had thoughts. We all have had millions of thoughts. That is why the Bible says we need to take thoughts captive.
The difference between your life now and what you were before is that now you’re dealing with it. In the past, the thoughts would grow and then they would become an imagination, something that you’d think about all the time, and then it would become a stronghold. It would have a strong hold on you and it would control your actions and behavior. That’s how it was in the past.
But now, you’re dealing with it in the thought level. Now it gets to the thoughts and you don’t let it go to the imaginations and you don’t let it become a stronghold so now it can’t control you. So keep taking those thoughts captive. Realize that even though the thoughts come, that’s not who you really are. Even though the thoughts come, the real you is a woman of God, a child of God, a woman who can control herself and can avoid sexual sin.
You need to continue to deal with things at your thought level. Intensify that even more and fill yourself up with the Word of God because you need to replace bad thoughts with God’s Word in your mind and coming out of your mouth.
The second thing you must do is you must sever relationships with those people. You must not call them. You must not let them call you. You must not answer their calls. You must not respond to them. You have to cut off those relationships.
The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 15:33-34, “Bad company corrupts good morals.” So, it’s being with the wrong people that will corrupt you and it’s not you. You are a new creature in Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things have passed away.” You’re a brand-new person. But your new person can still be corrupted and act like the old person if you hang around that crowd still.
So you’ve got to avoid those environments and avoid those people. Run from them. Flee. The Bible says flee from them. If you’ve said everything that you can say to them, then just stay away from them.
Really, for me, it wasn’t me running away from my friends. It was that I began preaching to them and they ended up running away from me. Some got saved and then the others ran away. They didn’t want anything to do with me. So attack them with the Word and start preaching to them if they keep coming. Remember God told Lot to separate himself from those that were in Sodom and Gomorrah that were homosexuals and lesbians.
And I’m not judging homosexuals and lesbians. We know that the act of homosexuality is wrong but the people are just as loved by God as I’m loved by God; as my newborn baby is loved by God. God loves the person who is in homosexuality as much as He loves my baby.
God told Lot, “Get out of the city and run from Sodom and Gomorrah.” But he didn’t do it at first. The people there kept pressing against him, pressing against him, pressing against him and it ended up costing him his wife and some of his children because he did not really take it seriously the first time. And then the angel had to really to pull him out of there and it was too late for some of the rest of his relatives.
Question:
How are we to determine who we should be friends with? Which Scriptures should we follow?
Answered on 05/03/06: 2 Timothy 2:22-24 encourages us to flee from youthful lusts. So that means you need to flee from lusts and flee from people who are given to lusts.
And follow after righteousness, peace, faith, and love with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Those are the people you need to hang around – people who are going up with God. 1 Samuel 10 talks about people who are making progress with God, people who are going to be good company. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 15:33-34 that bad company corrupts good morals.
So, people who are moving forward with God, people pursuing righteousness, peace, faith, and love with a pure heart – not trying to get something from you. Those are the people that I would pursue a relationship with. And sometimes those are rare; they are hard people to find. But it’s better to be lonely than to be with the wrong crowd. When you have God in your life, you’re not going to be lonely anyway.
Question:
You mentioned that we are to trust people but not put our trust in people. I have a tough time making it applicable in my life. Can you help?
Answered on 05/03/06: I had a friend who promised that he was going to give me a million dollars. He had the money. He was capable of it and was going to do it. I was excited about it. I was going to put it in our building fund and use it for the Kingdom of God.
And through a series of events, he changed his mind –for whatever reason. I had an opportunity at that point to be disappointed and to be mad at him, but the only reason that I would have been angry at him is if I had put my trust in him. But I put my trust in God. Since then, much more money has come into the church and the ministry so that we’ve been able to advance the Kingdom of God.
The difference between trusting in him and trusting him is that I trusted him in believing what he said, that he would actually pay up when he said he would. But what I need to make sure I don’t do is put my trust in him so that if he doesn’t pay up, it doesn’t devastate me and I don’t go out and buy things before the money shows up. That is the key.
Question:
There’s a woman at church who’s been nothing but nice to me; she’s done nothing mean or offensive. But, for some reason, she gets under my skin. What should I do?
Answered on 05/03/06: This really has more to do with you than it does with her. It’s a reaction of your flesh so you have to crucify your flesh. Here’s how I would do that:
First, pray for her – not publicly, not in front of her, but privately before the Lord. Ask God to bless her. Ask Him to encourage her and strengthen her. Ask Him to lavish His goodness in her life. That’s the first thing you do whenever somebody is bothering you. You pray for them, because love never fails. Interceding for someone else is one of the highest forms of love.
Then thank the Lord. Say to Him, “Thank you for bringing this person into my life to expose an area of my flesh that I need to deal with and I need to crucify.”
Finally, ask the Lord, “What is it in me that you’re trying to put your finger on that I need to address and deal with?” Ask Him to show you so you can work on aspects of your life and grow. I can’t tell you how powerful this can be.
Most people think, “There’s got to be a reason I feel this way about this person. There’s got to be something wrong with them.” But becoming more concerned with how you respond to situations instead of being angry or worrying about people treating you right – that will change your life.
Question:
I’ve lost a lot of friends, so I feel like I’ve got to hang on to the ones I have even if they are not believers.
Answered on 05/03/06: No, that is not what you need to do. What you’ve got to do is you’ve got to make new ones that are moving forward with God. I know the feeling. I lost a lot of my friends when I first got saved. But God will bring you new friends. And do your best to win your unsaved friends to the Lord, because if they’re really your friends, they’re going to understand your convictions; they’re going to understand why you’re doing the things that you’re doing and it’ll be a powerful thing.
Jesus said if you’ve left father, mother, brothers, sisters for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, you’ll receive a hundred times more in this life. So you be encouraged.
Question:
My ex-husband has remarried. I get along with him well, but people seem to think that it’s wrong that I have a relationship with his new wife and that I talk with her a lot. What do you think?
Answered on 05/03/06: There is nothing wrong at all with that. That is a good thing because you sometimes have to communicate with the spouses of ex-wives or ex-husbands, especially when there are children involved. It’s certainly much better to be able to get along and have a talking, working, friendly relationship than to have a relationship full of animosity.
Whoever is telling you that you shouldn’t have a relationship with your ex-husband’s new wife is not giving you good counsel. The Bible says to be at peace with all men. Whoever is advising you has the problem; they have to realize that they’ve got to forgive people, let go, and move on – especially with the spouse of a former spouse. So be encouraged! The Body of Christ needs more forgiveness because when we get to heaven, this isn’t going to be an issue anymore. Why make it an issue on this earth?
Question:
What if the person in your life wants you to do something that you don't agree with and they insist that it is obeying or submitting to God? What do you do?
Answered on 05/03/06: Remember when it comes to spiritual authority, whether it is a husband's authority in a wife's life, a pastor's authority in a church or a boss's authority at our job, we should submit to their authority unless they are asking us to do something that is contrary to the Word of God. If they are not asking us to do something that is unscriptural or manipulating us by making us feel guilty in order to get us to try to do it, then we should do it.
We had one lady say she was going to a church and the Pastor told her she needed to submit to him. And she said, “What do you want me to do?” He said, “I want you to kiss me.” Well, that is unscriptural. That Pastor was probably standing on the Word greet one another with a holy kiss but that was not the right application in the situation. A man of God needs to restrain himself and refrain from misusing his position of authority.
Question:
My birthday is coming up and I’m having some anxiety about it. I’ve been saved since January and attending your church for about a year. I’ve had a really rocky past two years. My friends want to celebrate my birthday and I’ve been presented with someone throwing me a party at a nightclub and I don’t know if I should go or if I even want to go. I don’t know what to do.
Answered on 05/03/06: First of all, I want to congratulate you on making the decision to really serve the Lord. The second thing is that I want you to follow your Spirit because I could already hear in your Spirit that you really don’t want to go. You want to be able to celebrate; you want to be able to have friends and you want to be able to do something that’s fun. So I would encourage you to tell your friends, “Listen, instead of us doing that, let’s go out to a restaurant and let’s fellowship over a meal. Let’s celebrate together. Plus it’s less expensive than a club and you’re not going to have to be tempted with guys and tempted with alcohol and all that."
So just ask them to take you out to eat. Ask them to take you to a movie. Ask them to do something like that, something that will put you in less of a compromising situation. The Bible says that bad company corrupts good morals, so you don’t want to put yourself in an environment or a situation where you’re tempted or where you’re going to be caused to stumble or where you could cause somebody else to stumble.
Question:
I wanted to know if we should, as Christians, fellowship with people who are non-Christians? Should we ask them to visit our churches?
Answered on 05/03/06: Well, according to the Bible, it says in 2 Corinthians chapter 6, “What fellowship has a believer with an unbeliever?” So clearly, the Bible teaches us to derive healthy relationships with those who are like-minded, who are godly, who are Christian, and who are going in the same direction with God as you are.
That doesn’t mean that we should isolate ourselves from non-Christians or try to hide from them. It means that we should derive our friendships and our relationships from people in the churches that we go to where we fellowship with other believers.
And then, we should be then reaching out evangelistically to those that are not saved; to those that are not Christians. We should be reaching out to them in love and trying to win them to the Lord Jesus Christ. We’re not deriving our fellowship from them, not deriving our need for relationships with them, but deriving nothing from them except what we can give. Freely we receive and therefore, we freely give.
So I want to be careful in what I’m saying. No, we’re not to derive our fellowship from people that are not Christians. That doesn’t mean if I go golfing, I can’t golf with somebody who is not a Christian who wants to play golf with me. By all means I’m going to play golf with them and by all means, I’m going to talk to them. By all means I’m going to ask them about their lives. But I’m going to hope for and believe for an opportunity to share the gospel with that person so that I can win them to the Lord. I’m not going to build a bond with them to where I’m deriving my friendships and my fellowship with them.
As far as asking them to your church, it depends on the situation that you’re in. Sometimes people are ready to have you ask them to visit your church. Sometimes people are just ready for you to say, “Hey, you know what? I know you’re struggling with some things in your life. Is it okay that I pray for you?” And so that’s a good thing to do with somebody who is not saved. Pray for them. And yes, invite them to church if they seem open.
Sometimes people are ready to receive Jesus Christ and so you can ask them if they would like to be born again and receive Jesus Christ as their Savior. It just depends on where they’re at. Don’t force it on them but wait for an opportunity and when you see an open door, walk through it.
Question:
How do I continue to trust the God-ordained pastor in my life when that person hurts me or betrays my trust? God has called me to submit to this person, but how do I trust them and trust their discernment since this happens so much?
Answered on 03/09/06: Well, I mean God doesn’t call you to submit to a person that has proven an untrustworthiness. So if this person has proven untrustworthiness, then you’ve misplaced your loyalty.
Your loyalty is to God and to His Word, and if a pastor has continued to betray your trust in a real unbiblical manner, then you shouldn’t maintain your loyalty to that church. You can respect that person, you can be kind to that person, but you shouldn’t be in a relationship pastorally with somebody that continually betrays your trust—whatever that means.
We need to identify how you define betraying trust. If the pastor says, “I’m never going to preach that homosexuality is good or right.” And then he preaches that homosexuality is good and right, then he obviously has betrayed your trust. If the pastor says, you know, “This money that we take up in this offering is going towards orphans” and they don’t use that money for orphans, then that’s betraying the trust.
So we need to make sure that we have integrity, pastors, and if they don’t, then, and they betray your trust—now that doesn’t mean that they’re going to never make mistakes. But if this is a pattern, then you need to re-look at where you’re going to church.
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