Well, we've gathered at this conference really for one objective, it's a singular objective, and we wanna consider the beauty of holiness and how that works out in our lives. The essential purpose of salvation is holiness. In Ephesians chapter one verse four, the apostle tells that church, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love. That's why he saved us, to sanctify us. He brought us into his family to make us holy.

And at the same time, the entire objective of salvation is to undo unholiness in our lives. This is a progressive thing, and that's why John, in 1 John chapter three, verse eight, said, for this purpose the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil. So you have these two things, being made holy, being purified, set apart for God, and at the same time, removing remaining sin. This is the Christian life. This is the great blessing of the Christian life.

Getting rid of remaining sin is a blessing, isn't it? And to experience the continued purification of life with God is such a helpful thing. All is lost without holiness. That God is holy is the greatest blessing that man could ever know. Because if God is holy and God fills a man or a woman with his Holy Spirit, then that means that this gift of purity and holiness is manifested in the soul of that individual.

And the fact that God is holy is the best news for the humble at heart. But it's the worst news for the hard heart. The good news is that God is holy. The bad news is that God is holy for the unbeliever. Because God destroys everything unholy in his way.

Now, what I want to talk to you about tonight is the Holy Spirit, the spirit that is holy. The blessing of salvation is that you receive a Holy Spirit within you. And this is such a significant thing. I'd like you to open your Bibles to Ephesians 5.18. This is my text.

Ephesians 5.18. This passage speaks of the filling of the Holy Spirit. And it makes it very clear that the filling of the Holy Spirit is a very practical thing. It works itself out in every part of your life. Let's begin in verse 18, Ephesians 5.18.

And do not be drunk with wine, which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of God. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church, and he is the savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her. So why am I speaking about a marriage text?

Why am I in a marriage text with people who are not married. Now I recognize that most of you will eventually get married certainly not in your own time frame. But odds are you're gonna be married someday. And so texts about marriage can be very helpful really to everyone. And what we find here is there's one particular matter that's critical and that is the filling of the Holy Spirit.

And one reason this is so important to talk about the power of the Holy Spirit in all of life is, it says, I heard somebody say one time, the single you will be the married you. And so you might as well get started as early as you can on these matters. Marriage will not fix you. The Spirit of God will fix you. And I wanna make it very clear tonight as well that preparing for marriage by being filled with the Holy Spirit, it prepares you for everything.

It prepares you for everything you'll ever face. And this passage of scripture, of course, begins. Now, what I wanna do tonight, there are really two parts to this message. I wanna talk about the filling of the Holy Spirit, but then I wanna drill down to two applications, two really practical applications of this message. And First of all, the filling of the Holy Spirit is the supreme secret of a biblically ordered marriage, and a marriage for the glory of God.

And the filling of the Holy Spirit is pivotal for every person who is not married as well. The secret of marriage, the filling of the Holy Spirit, is the secret to every other part of life. And so that's why we have this passage of scripture structured the way it is. The presence of Jesus Christ through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, through the nourishment of the implanted word of God in your soul makes a marriage sweet, but it makes everything else sweet as well in life. And this perhaps may be one of the most important things to know about singleness and marriage, and that is the power of the infilling of the Holy Spirit.

Now, this passage of scripture is famously called the family life codes. Theologians call it this because it spins out various elements of family life, church life, and family life in the very same passage. And what you find here is that the filling of the Holy Spirit spreads out into all relationships. And the first, you know, most obvious fact is that there's a command. Do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit.

This is a control factor. There's something that's influencing you. And the question is, what is influencing you? Who is influencing you? You know, when you're drunk with wine, you say things that you wouldn't normally say, and you do things that you normally wouldn't do, because you're under the influence.

And the thrust of the meaning here is that be under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Don't be under the influence of anything but the Holy Spirit and the ministry of the word of God. Now, I wanna make a couple of clarifications here. There's lots of confusion about the person and the work of the Holy Spirit. And it's very important that we understand the Holy Spirit is not a force that comes upon you.

The Holy Spirit is a person who lives within you. The Holy Spirit is a person that can be lied to. The Holy Spirit is a person who can be quenched. The Holy Spirit is a person who can be grieved. The Holy Spirit is not a force that just overtakes you in a moment.

This person is a non-physical being. He is spirit. He is a spirit that penetrates the mind and directs the actions of the life. Maybe this is obvious to you, but the effect of the Holy Spirit is not getting worked up singing an emotional song. People get that very confused.

They think that's the Holy Spirit. And of course, there could be elements to it as long as it's consistent with the ministry of the word of God. But the effect of the spirit is not always a feeling or an emotion. Our thoughts do affect our feelings and emotions, but our thoughts are affected by the word of God. And people often mistake the Holy Spirit with their feelings, and it's a huge mistake.

Now the question is, how do you get filled with the Holy Spirit? That's the question. Now the Bible doesn't actually give us step by step processes for getting filled with the Holy Spirit. But what we do know is that you're not drawing on the emptiness of your soul. You're not drawing upon yourself in this matter of the filling of the Spirit.

To be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with the Word of God. That's why Jesus said, my words are spirit and they are life. The Holy Spirit is a person who speaks words of life, who speaks the word of God. And this energizes the life of the believer. That's why the Apostle Paul prays for the Colossian church, that they would be filled up with the knowledge of his will.

This is equivalent to the filling of the Holy Spirit. So to be filled with the Spirit is to be filled with the word of God. Jesus Christ is the word of God. And He, He, the Son, and the Spirit indwell the believer. Christ in you, the hope of glory.

So we have to be clear about what the Holy Spirit, The Holy Spirit isn't an it. The Holy Spirit is a person. I was reading something from Martin Luther the other day, and here's what he said. He said, neither I nor anyone else can ever preach the word adequately. The Holy Spirit alone must utter and preach it, for it is the Spirit who works by the word.

When through the outward preaching of the word and the inward witness of the Holy Spirit, faith is created, that which is promised in the gospel becomes effective for the believer. To be filled with the Spirit is to walk in obedience to God. So if you've ever been confused about what the Holy Spirit is, the Holy Spirit is a person, not a force, and it's manifested in obedience to God. You know when a person is filled with the Spirit when they're walking in obedience to God. So, with that out of the way, let the word of Christ dwell richly within you if you want to be filled with the Spirit.

Be like David and say, your word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you. Oh Lord, teach me your statutes. This is the filling of the Holy Spirit, which is the filling of the word of God. So Jesus Christ, through the word of God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, comes alongside to help you. And what we find here in these family life codes is that God energizes by His word, His people, through the Spirit, through the filling of the Holy Spirit.

And that's why we encounter these words, do not be drunk with wine, which is dissipation, but be filled with the Holy Spirit, because you're always under the influence of something. This generation needs to be under the influence of the Holy Spirit in everything. And what's the first manifestation of the Holy Spirit in this passage? In verse 19, you start speaking to one another. You begin to speak differently.

You talk about different things. Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. Giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. The person of the Holy Spirit energizes you and makes you talk about things maybe you wouldn't normally talk about.

And he plants within your heart thanksgiving, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father. And then There's also a manifestation of the Holy Spirit as you're relating with other people. It's actually a spirit of accommodation, submitting to one another in the fear of God. A true Christian is always calibrating toward the person that he's with to try to be a blessing to that person. We submit to one another all the time.

We weep with those who weep. We rejoice with those who rejoice. That means we're submitting to what's going on in their lives. We listen to them, we pray for them, we enter into their lives. We're interested in them.

You know, I was recently reading the spiritual diary of William Wilberforce, And he catalogs from age 16 his really spiritual journey. It's absolutely fascinating. It's very interesting. He's never satisfied with his spiritual life. But at the beginning of the book, there are testimonies of people who knew him.

William Warbleforth's the one who was pivotal for outlawing slavery in the UK, and he spent 30 years fighting this battle. And people write about him, and one of his members of parliament says, he was the happiest man I ever knew. Another man wrote, he was the most amusable man I've ever met. And he goes on and describes it, and he says, William Wilberforce was amused by everything that amused you. He was so interested in you that whatever you said, it was as if it was the biggest thing in the world to him.

He was the most immutable man. But he was submitting to those that he was around in love to engage them in the way that they needed to be engaged. And so you begin to speak to one another in Psalms and hear spiritual songs, and you begin to have a spirit of submission. You actually care about other people, not just your own self. And then If you're a wife, when you're filled with the Spirit in verse 22, you submit to your own husband.

You recognize that your husband is the head. And then if you're a husband, you love your wife like Christ loved the church. That's the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. And then if you're a child in chapter six, verse one through three, you obey your parents, you honor your father and mother. That's a picture of the filling of the Holy Spirit of a child in his home.

And then you have fathers. Fathers don't exasperate their children. They're filled with the Holy Spirit. They're not causing their children to sin by their harshness. And they're not provoking their children to wrath.

You can provoke your children to wrath. Sometimes children sin because their parents provoke them to sin. That's a problem with parents. And then if you're filled with the Spirit, it manifests itself in employees toward their employers. In chapter six, verse five, bondservants be obedient to those who are your masters, according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart as to Christ, not with I service as men-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, with good will doing service as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord.

So the filling of the Holy Spirit manifests itself when you're working for somebody else, maybe even a harsh boss. But in the next verse, in verse nine, if you're an employer, it manifests itself, the filling of the Spirit manifests itself in how you treat your employees, and you masters do the same things, give up threatening, knowing that your own master also is in heaven and there's no partiality with him. And then he ends the section by saying, finally be strong in the Lord. And then he opens up the whole matter of the whole armor of God. What am I trying to say here?

In the family life codes in Ephesians 5, 18 on into Chapter 6, you find various highly practical manifestations of the Holy Spirit. And the filling of the Holy Spirit is the greatest leverage point you will ever have in this world. And so I wanna talk about this whole matter of that. We are told in Acts 1.8 that you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be witnesses of Jesus Christ all over the world. So the work of the Spirit is a very critical thing.

And the first step in Christlikeness is repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ and putting off the old man, renouncing your own ways, receiving Jesus Christ, weaning yourself from the bankrupt impulse to glorify yourself and to begin a life of glorifying God through the power of the Holy Spirit. And that, brothers and sisters, is the need of the hour. It's the need of the rising generation. Because what we need is a generation that's guided by the Spirit of God, the Spirit of holiness. Because you're living in a generation right now where strong delusions have covered the world.

And the world will continue to feed you lies and you need to know how to keep your sea legs about you in the midst of a world that's constantly lying to you. And there's so many ways that we could talk about this, but this generation is being so set up to only hear lies. The algorithms of the great technology companies are making sure you only hear certain things when you search for something. Do you understand that? You're only hearing what they want you to hear So that you would believe only what they, the powers of darkness, want you to believe.

It's such a critical moment for the filling of the Holy Spirit for a rising generation. Now, I wanna talk about some just super practical areas of life, and the first application I want to make is don't be hard to live with. Don't be hard to live with. I'd like you to open your Bibles to Galatians chapter five, find verse 16, Galatians 5, 16. You know, what is it like to live with you?

The people who live with you, are they living with someone who's filled with the Holy Spirit or just filled with themselves? You know, it's easy to talk about being a generation that's on the precipice of tremendous assaults from the forces of darkness, but it's another thing to say, well, how am I living at home with the people around me? Because that's actually where it starts. And of course, this passage of scripture is the advice that I want to give tonight. Don't be hard to live with.

Galatians 5 16, I say then, walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like, which means it's not a comprehensive list, of which I tell you beforehand, just as I told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God, but, verse 22, The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Against these there is no law. And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. So this passage actually teaches us what it looks like to be filled with the Spirit.

You know whether or not you're being filled with the Spirit, whether you're walking in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. You can always tell what you're doing. You can always tell who you're under the influence of by that litmus test. So don't be hard to live with. Be filled with the Spirit.

You know, This, in some ways, in terms of the people that you're living with, this has to do with wear and tear. Like, you know, I'll just give me an illustration. Some roads are harder on cars than others. And people, some people, are harder on people than others. And it's directly related to the filling of the Holy Spirit.

So are you hard to live with? Have you ever heard of the term MTBF, MTBF? It's an acronym in manufacturing and engineering. Engineers design things according to how long something will last. Mean time before failure, MTBF.

So like that light switch over there, it was engineered only to survive a certain number of clicks. I remember when my son was young and he would always be clicking up and down the windows. I'd say, don't you know, don't you understand MTVF? That thing's gonna break if you do it a million times, a million and one, it's gonna break, you know? But some people are hard on one another, and they wear one another out.

And what does it look like to be hard to live with? The Bible actually tells you so. I'm gonna give you a list of what it means to be hard to live with. Narcissism, 1 Timothy 3.1. Unforgiveness, Colossians 3.13.

Impatience, 1 Corinthians 3.4. Unmerciful, Romans 1.31. Harsh words, Proverbs 15.1. Unkindness, Ephesians 4.29. Rash words, Proverbs 12.18.

Quick responses, James 1.19. Caustic speech, Proverbs 18.21. Unfiltered speech, Proverbs 15, 28. Pride, James 4, 6. Evil thoughts, Mark 7, 21.

Well, those are 12 ways to be hard to live with. And all of them are contrary to the Spirit. The Bible gives dozens of handles for how to be easy to live with. Well, we just read them in the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, but There are lists all over the Bible to help you to understand not to be such harsh wear and tear on the people that you're with.

Now, you know, when you get married, you will not be transformed into a different person. You want to get ready now to be easy to live with. Hey, you know what? I married a girl who's really easy to live with. I did.

It's amazing to be married to somebody like that. In 1 Corinthians 13, four through eight, there are 15 qualities. You'll see the overlap. Love suffers long, love is kind, love does not envy, love does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil. In other words, thinks the best of one another.

By the way, you can eliminate almost 90% of the problems in a church and a family if people just thought the best of one another. But we don't tend to do that. Does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

There's another list in Colossians 3, an eight point list. Put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long suffering, bearing with one another and forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you must do. Well, the truth is your family life, your single life, and your church life can be destroyed by being hard to live with. And it all dovetails back to this matter of the filling of the Holy Spirit.

You know, someday you're gonna die. And what do you want those who you lived with to say about you? Your boss, your friends, your spouse. Well, I know what I want them to say. You know he was so easy to live with.

He made our marriage, he made our family easy. My daughter, my spouse made my burdens light. My spouse put on tender mercies. My spouse was always forgiving. If anyone ever had a complaint against one of us, we were forgiven.

My spouse put on love, which was the bond of perfection, Colossians 3.13. So it's the word of God, the implanted word of God by the power of the Holy Spirit that causes a person to be easy to live with. So that's the first application. What's it like to live with you now? It's really easy to talk about these great grand conflicts that are out there coming in the world, but what about right now?

Because right now you're preparing for later. So be filled with the Holy Spirit, don't be hard to live with. Here's the second application. Learn how to talk. Learn how to talk.

Do you know how to have difficult conversations with your parents, with siblings, with people who disagree with you? Do you know? Because actually the Bible tells you how to do it. Talking is really important because talking is how we work through disagreements. Now talking is how we express our strong opinions.

Anybody have any strong opinions there in the room? There you go. The rest of you get your hands up. We all have strong opinions. We were born that way.

And then we just develop them and they calcify, you know. Talking is how we share our concerns. Ever had to share a concern? Wanted to share a concern? Scared to share a concern?

Had a blow up when you shared a concern? Talking is how we make plans. But whenever we talk, the power of death is at the door. Well, I mean, Solomon said it in Proverbs 18. Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.

The world and the flesh and the devil are always hanging around when we're gonna have a difficult conversation where there's strong opinions involved that actually have significance. And so I wanna talk about how to talk. How to talk when there are strong opinions and important outcomes. You know, I'm just gonna guess that some of you have had difficulty having significant important conversations where there seems to be a lot at stake and there's emotion involved. And you're gonna have those conversations with parents and spouses and friends and bosses.

But the truth is is that you don't escape those when you leave your parents home, because married couples have difficult conversations as well. There are disagreements about money, disagreements about how to raise children, disagreements about all kinds of things. And so it's really helpful to learn how to talk before you get married, to practice. Yeah, maybe, yeah, probably many of you are not, still not living at home, but some of you are, but you got a really good opportunity to practice right now. My guess is that there have been times when you felt really awkward trying to talk to your parents about a significant matter in your own mind, where you actually might have a disagreement or you wanna find out how much disagreement there is on a matter.

So learn to talk. The world is being shaped into stupid conversations. On Twitter, it's almost impossible to have a healthy conversation about a hot matter. You've seen it. And it's almost impossible to even track the progress of the conversation, which inhibits everything even worse.

But a conversation is always the fruit of something else. And that's what I wanna talk about. I wanna talk about harmful patterns of communication. I'm gonna give you 18 of them, and then I'm gonna give you 12 really life-giving patterns of conversation. I hope it helps.

You know, James tells us that the tongue is like a rudder. In other words, your tongue always takes you in a direction. And James makes it clear that there are always spiritual forces at work on that rudder, on the movement of that rudder. But your words take you in a direction. And so it really, really matters.

18 harmful patterns. I'm gonna go really quickly on the harmful ones and try to get to the good ones, okay? But you might, I don't know if you can write this fast. If you want them, I'll send them to you. But I'm gonna give you 19 harmful problems, 19 harmful ways of communicating.

I think I've done them all. Interrupting, number one. Number two, contradicting. Number three, presuming you understand what the person is saying. Number four, focus on winning.

Five, lodging threats. Six, name calling. Seven, blaming. Eight, the silent treatment. Nine, sullenness.

10, the cold shoulder. 11, discrediting. 12, hurling insults. 13, labeling. 14, exaggerating.

15, aggression. 16, lying. 17, oversharing. 18, walking out. 19, taking cheap shots.

I'm just asking us to take a careful inventory of our conversations And to do any of these bad patterns manifest themselves. When they do, you're always in trouble in a conversation. But we don't wanna stop there, right? There are certain things that we wanna put off, and then there are certain things that we want to put on to pursue the good patterns. And so I wanna give you a list of ways to have Difficult conversations, emotionally charged conversations, pivotal conversations.

Are you ready? 12 behaviors to sweeten difficult conversations. Number one, Prepare your heart. Prepare your heart before you have the conversation. Matthew 12, 34 says this, for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things. An evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account on the day of judgment, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. So pause and consider what's going on in your heart. Are you uptight, are you angry, are you offended, are you discouraged?

Take time, take time and fill your heart with good things before you have the conversation. Solomon said, above all else, guard your heart, for it's the wellspring of life. So, guard your heart. What's going on in your heart? Number two, Get yourself on a mission to bless.

Your mission is to bless with your words. Well, that's what the Bible says. 1 Peter 3.8, you know, Finally, brethren, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another, love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous, not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing. For he who would love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good.

Let him seek peace and pursue it. This has to do with the objective to bless. Be on a mission to bless. Your assignment is to bless. You know, when you go into battle, you have to understand your mission.

Be on a mission to bless. Number three, prepare to listen. Prepare to listen, Proverbs 15, 28. Good communication always starts with good understanding and taking time to listen. It's oil in a conversation that makes the grinding be minimized.

Proverbs 15, 28. He who answers a matter before he hears it, it is a folly and a shame to him. In Proverbs 18, 13, it makes it very clear that we often, we're so intent on answering that we don't listen. And listening is one way that we serve one another. It's a way that you get on a wavelength.

You know how often it is that you presumed that somebody meant something by using a particular word and you got offended, but if he had just asked for a little bit more, it might not have been so offensive. The heart of the righteous studies how to answer, but the mouth of the wicked pours forth evil, Proverbs 15.28. Now there's some complexities about this. Did you know, did you know that some women, are you listening to me, women? There are some women alive in this world who actually can't hear men.

They have an auditory dysfunction, and it's called the cookie bite hearing loss, and you're not able to hear mid-range sounds. This is a real condition that some women have, and they cannot hear the voices of men which are in the mid-range. But you wanna be able to listen. You want to be able to hear. Philippians 2, four, let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also the interests of others.

In other words, prepare to listen. More on that later. Number four, don't interrupt. Don't interrupt. Proverbs 18, 13, He who answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him.

Proverbs 25, eight. Do not go hastily to court, for what will you do in the end when your neighbor puts you to shame? Proverbs 29, 20. Do you see a man hasty in his words? There's more hope for him than a fool.

When we interrupt, we start jumping to conclusions, we presume things aren't really accurate, we try to defend ourselves, but we don't get more detail. So, don't interrupt. You know, Deborah and I have had, you know, quite a few opportunities to sit down with couples who never learned how to talk. And many years ago, somebody gave us this idea of when you have a couple like that, get a tennis ball and you give the tennis ball to the person who's gonna talk and the other person can't say anything until the ball is passed to the other person but the ball can't be passed until the other person explains what they were saying. You don't get to talk until you feed it back and report back.

Number five, ask questions. Number five, ask questions. James 1, 19 through 26. So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear slow to speak, slow to wrath, for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. There are questions that everybody needs to learn how to ask.

What did you mean by that? Can you tell me more? When you used that word blank, what were you talking about? Ask questions rather than to jump to conclusions. Listening just requires holding your tongue.

He who has knowledge spares his words and a man of understanding is of a calm spirit. Even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace. When he shuts his lips, he's considered perceptive, Proverbs 17, 27. So ask questions. You know, when we listen, we have time to discern, we have time to sympathize, rather than just respond and counter, which is what our normal impulse is.

Like I said, I've done almost every one of these. Number six, heighten self-awareness of tone. Heighten self-awareness of tone. Monitor your tone. Understand how you're saying things.

This is one of the biggest conversation killers. Tone really matters. Pay attention to yourself. Calm down. You've gotta take that hot edge off or you won't be heard.

Everybody's built that way. First Timothy 4 16, take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you. Take heed. Proverbs 15 one, a soft answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up anger.

And then he says, but the tongue of the wise uses knowledge rightly. In other words, there's knowledge, there's stuff on the table, there's a significant conversation where emotions and big opinions are involved, but the tongue of the wise uses that knowledge rightly and wisely. Use the knowledge rightly. Be conscious of your tone. Tone always communicates louder than words.

So watch your tone. Number seven, understand your body language. Understand your body language. First Corinthians 6, 20, glorify God with your body. Romans 12.1, present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

A great deal is communicated through visuals, the look on your face, do you look checked out, are you shrugging your shoulders, are you rolling your eyes, are you smiling, Are you making eye contact? All these things have meaning in a conversation. Looking off in the distance, not looking at the person. Number eight, Don't project outcomes. Don't project outcomes.

Beware of doing this. We wrongly project outcomes. And we think that if we have an honest conversation, we'll lose the relationship. We think, if I say that, he'll do nothing about it. We act as if we're omniscient.

We act as if we know what the outcomes are, and we don't know what the outcomes are. So Don't project outcomes, just do the right thing. You might say, well, I'm not gonna talk to him, he never listens to me anyway. Well, how do you know? Maybe this is the first time in his life he's gonna listen to you.

You're not God, you're not omniscient. Number nine, don't compare. Comparing their experience with yours. You know, when you hear another person tell their story, immediately you connect it with your story, And now you're talking about yourself. The listening ended with the shift.

Number 10, don't harp, don't harp. You know what harping is. Proverbs 17, nine, It's just repeating the same old thing, rehearsing the same old offenses. Proverbs 17 nine, he who covers a transgression seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates friends. Rebuke is more effective for a wise man than for 100 blows of a fool.

You know, you can harp on things that happened a long time ago. You remember in 1967 when you said this to me, you can't cover that over, you can't move on? Number 11, don't use default expressions and phrases. In other words, be careful with what you say. Ecclesiastes 10, 12.

A scoffer does not love the one who corrects him, nor will he be wise. In other words, We have these pet phrases. Give me a break. Are you serious? Just snarky thing.

Does snark ever help? No. Don't use default expressions and phrases. Number 12, the last one. Focus on the very best outcomes.

Focus your objective. You need to know where you want to go in a conversation. Wise people establish in their minds the best possible outcome, and they try to take everybody there with them. That's what wise fathers do, that's what wise employers do, that's what wise spouses do. They set theirself on a track for success.

Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you. Also, resolve what you do not want to happen in that conversation. Resolve what you do not want to have and drive toward that. Set a vision for a godly result. So 12 behaviors to sweeten a difficult conversation.

Prepare your heart, be on a mission to bless. Prepare to listen, don't interrupt, ask questions. Heighten self-awareness of tone. Understand your body language, don't project outcomes. Don't compare, don't harp, don't use default expressions and phrases, and focus on the very best outcomes.

And be filled with the Spirit. And don't be hard to live with. And learn how to talk. And do it in every situation you'll face in the future. My guess is that you're gonna face really challenging and difficult conversations in the future, many of them with unbelievers who hate God, and you should behave in this very same way with them.

Your generation is gonna face deluded people, strong delusions that have covered the world. And what we need in this world are people who love the truth and who walk in the truth, who are filled with the Holy Spirit of God, filled with the word of God, people who've received with humility the implanted word, people who really know how to live. We need people like that in this world. And it's your generation to do it. And one of the things that I do know about so many of you is that you love the scriptures, and you really do wanna walk in the ways of God.

You don't wanna walk in the ways of God. You don't wanna walk in the ways of the Gentiles. And that'll be a great protection for you. And you'll find the blessings of heaven come down upon you. So be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Let's pray. Father, we are so thankful that you have sent your Son and your Spirit to dwell within us so that we would have within us the spirit of truth speaking to us, guiding us, comforting us, helping us. And Lord, I also pray for this training ground that you've put this younger generation in to learn how to walk in the Spirit, pray that you'd bless them in it and magnify your glory through them in a very dark world. Amen. Thank you.