I just thought, I don’t have to be right.

Steve Brown:
I just thought, I don’t have to be right. Let’s talk about it, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life here to let Christians know that God isn’t mad at them. Keep listening and you’ll hear that because of what Jesus has done, you’re welcomed home into the family of God because of His radical grace, free from the penalties of sin and never alone in your suffering.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. We’re looking at the church and the arguments that go on in the church. There are two verses, and I’m not going to read them to you again. And you have a tendency, and I did, to miss the profound teaching in these two verses on what happens within the church. Now, this is a part of our study in Philippians, and we’re up to Philippians 4:2 through 3. Two women in the church, one was named Euodia and the other Syntyche, they were fighting. And that’s all we know about them, they were fighting. And Paul addresses that, and he does it quickly, and he does it easily. And we think, well, I don’t have to spend much time there. And then it hit me, there’s some profound stuff in this. And we saw yesterday, if you were listening, the principle of potentiality. Because of the residence of God’s Spirit in the life of all believers, God’s purposes are achievable. I may not love you, but I can. I may not agree with you, but I can walk with you. I may not want to walk with you, but I can because of God’s Spirit inside of me and of you. And Paul knew that about these two ladies. And everybody knew they were fighting, he wasn’t talking about some great secret that was hidden from everybody. He wouldn’t have brought it up if it hadn’t been causing some really pain in the church. But he said.

I plead with you.

That was not wasted because of God’s Spirit inside. That’s true today. If your church is going through a time of great division, and we have about 4,000 pastors on our mailing list at Key Life, and you would be surprised how often there is division, and anger, and even hatred sometimes. What needs to be done, at least in the beginning, is say.

I plead with you.

I plead with you, because you’re my brother or you’re my sister in Christ. Let me show you something else. I want you to note not only the principle of potentiality, please note also the principle of superiority. Most arguments have very little to do with facts and are rather a way of fulfilling an ego need to be superior, Philippians 4:2.

I plead with you Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord.

Now, notice particularly that Paul does not take a side. In fact, we don’t even know why they were fighting. He doesn’t write a tome on why some of the principles held by one of the ladies is wrong and some of the principles held by the other lady is wrong. He simply lifts up the pleading and asking them to agree with each other. Yeah, but what if she’s really wrong? I mean, what if she’s violated something important? What if she just doesn’t understand? What if she is shallow? Paul doesn’t say any of that. He just says, you guys agree with one another. My friend Fred Smith, and I have been accused of making up Fred Smith, so I could say really out of the box things. You might want to go and check out BreakfastWithFred.com Fred was my mentor for 30 or 40 years, and I still have conversations with him, because I know what he would say about a thousand things. But one of the things that Fred did, and he made a lot of money doing it, one of the things he did is that he served as a consultant for large businesses, primarily the oil business. And they would call Fred in. He’d never been to college, I’m not even sure he finished high school. But he was the wisest man I’ve ever known. And they used to call him into these businesses to consult when they were having serious problems. And I said to Fred one time, What do you do when you go? That’s not something you have training in or a degree in, when you come in and they pay you all that money to be a consultant, what do you do? And he would laugh and he said, It’s simple. I look for the ego. And when I find the ego, I have found the problem. Man, that is true in the church. Look for the ego, when you find the ego, you have found the problem. It’s not important, that you be right. It’s not important that I be right. I want you to think for a minute about an argument you had with somebody a year ago. And how it was really a hard and difficult time. Think about that. We all have those in our lives. Now, tell me, if you will, what you were fighting about. You can’t do it, can you? You can’t remember the details, can you? That’s because it’s not important that we be right. Now, don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. It’s important that we stand for the verities of the Christian faith. For what is absolutely true, but I’m talking about everything else. We have our egos. And we want to be right so we can be superior. And the apostle Paul, when he dealt with arguments in the church, spoke directly with that. Hey guys, agree with one another. You think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Mmm, some powerful insights there on being right. Thank you Steve. We’ll continue from here tomorrow, so hope you’ll join us. So, what does it mean to stop, to be quiet and to sit at Jesus’ feet? Well, you know the story of Mary and Martha, but what about your life? Ironically, the more we need to do this, it seems the harder it is to do. If that sounds familiar, I want to tell you about a message Steve gave called, When the Noise is Too Loud. I think it’ll bless you, especially in the midst of this Lenten season. Take a listen to part of that talk, then I’ll be back to tell you about a special free offer. Here’s Steve.

Steve Brown:
He was a missionary. Really good at it, too. Had a lot of energy, a lot of knowledge. He served in some really tough places. And there are a lot of names on the Lamb’s book of life because of his faithfulness. And then, he left. Nobody knew where he went. He just left. I got a call some seven years later from him, like no time had passed, like nothing had happened. I said, Bob, I thought you died. He said, I didn’t die, man. I’m driving a semi, I’m in Arizona. He said, it’s like a traveling condo. He said, I got a soft bed and a television and a refrigerator and nobody calls me. You’d like it. I thought, yeah, I think so. I read last week that they’re giving dogs Prozac. Have you seen that? That’s pretty cool, man. They housebreak better, they don’t chew off the postman’s leg, and, you know, they’re not as anxious. They calmly chase the stick rather than telling you to go get it. I came home and told my German Shepherd, Thor, you want Prozac? And he went, uh, and went back to sleep. And I sat there envying a truck driver and my dog. What’s with that? I have a friend in Atlanta, I do in Atlanta what I do here. This is my home church and I love coming here. And I’d been talking about, I don’t even remember the text or the context about how Christians sometimes get emotional problems. When you became a Christian, it doesn’t mean you never get depressed. You can’t face bipolar problems, that you can’t be paranoid schizophrenic, that you can’t be down, and I said that. And then I said, in fact, I think that God has allowed us to discover some antidepressant drugs that maybe were designed because he loves us and knew that it’s harder now than it was in the first century. After the service, man came down and said, man, I am, he has subsequently become my friend. His name is Gene Wheeler. And Gene said, I’m going to send you a mug that I send to all of my friends. And I said, cool. He sent it to me and it sits to the right in my study, to the right of my desk and in big red letters on this mug it says, Prozac until Jesus returns. Are you as busy as a mosquito in a nudist colony? And you know what to do, you just don’t know where to begin. I like to tell people that but they’re as busy as I am, so it doesn’t help. But I’m a religious mosquito in a religious nudist colony with a commission from God to do what I do. So, I’m not only busy and tired, I’m guilty. And it’s really, really hard. Sometime, and if you ever hear that Brown just left, you check a semi somewhere in Colorado, cause I’ll be on it. And I’ll be taking Prozac and not caring. You ever want to just run away? You think, I can’t do this anymore. It’s too much. Nobody can do this, nobody can do all this stuff. I, my kids are driving me nuts, I’ve been listening to James Dobson and I just can’t be that good. I can’t be that good. I’m a father. I’ve got all this stuff on me, I’ve got to bring home the bacon, I’ve got to discipline, I’ve got to be a godly example, I can’t have a beer, I can’t do any. I just, I am so under it, I can hardly breathe. You ever feel that way? You ever just want to go away and drive a semi? If you do, I’ve got some really neat stuff to teach you this morning.

Matthew Porter:
And if you just heard that and thought, Whoa, Steve is reading my mail, then please let us send you this message on CD for free. Just call us right now at 1-800-KEY-LIFE that’s 1-800-539-5433. You can also e-mail [email protected] to ask for that CD. To mail your request, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses. Again, just ask for your absolutely free copy of the CD called When the Noise is Too Loud. And finally, if you’re blessed by the work of Key Life, would you help share that blessing with others through your giving? Just charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope. Or you can text Key Life to 28950 again that’s Key Life, one word or two. It doesn’t matter, just text that to 28950 and then follow the instructions. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.