Love Tells the Truth

We’ve been spending a lot of time on 1 Corinthians 13 over the past month or so, and for good reason. Because God sent his one and only son, Jesus Christ, so we could have a personal relationship with Him. And there is no way we can have a true, enduring relationship with anybody unless we love them as Jesus loved us. So that’s why we are spending so much time on love- because our world- that world right outside those front doors- has perverted the love that God promised us. The love the world tells you about is not love at all- it is greed, it is selfishness, it is lust. But 1 Corinthians 13 talks about true Christian love. Like how:

-love is patient
-love is kind
-love does not envy
-love does not boast
-love is not proud
-love is not selfish
-love is not easily angered
-love does not keep record of right or wrong

And tonight I am really blessed to talk about something I am passionate about:

-love tells the truth

Over 30 years ago, Time magazine did a cover story called "Lying, Everybody's Doing It". It starts off like this: "Lies, lies, lies. The current political campaign is erupting into a series of charges and counter charges of dishonesty and deception. All of which raises the question: Is anyone around here telling the truth?" Seems like not much has changed in the past 30 years does it? Did any of you see highlights of the Roger Clemens thing with Congress earlier this week. Someone was telling the truth. Someone wasn’t.

A recent survey of Americans said 66% of Americans say it's not wrong to tell lies. Only 31% agreed with the statement, "Honesty is the best policy." That means that every two out of three people do not believe that honesty is always the best policy. That is unbelievable- is what these people saying that “dishonesty is the best policy?”

So how can we be honest in a dishonest world? How do I tell the truth?

As I said a few months ago in one of my messages, I am a truth seeker. If you ask people where I work about me, those that care to admit they know me will tell you one thing- I tell it REAL and I tell what I hope is the truth. No wishy-washy, politically correct nonsense. The truth. And if you go to my myspace page, you will see that the word “truth” is the focal point.

So, when I am given this great privilege to address you guys, I treat it like it’s my last day on earth- that talking to you is the most important thing I could have ever done with my life. But I would be cheating you and sinning against each one of you unless I told you the truth- not only when I give a message, but also when we talk one on one. Now my style of getting in your face and telling it like it is has gotten me in trouble more times than I would like to admit. Because it seems like our culture these days doesn’t like the truth- it seems that our society encourages us to kinda dance around the edges, don’t take a stand, be tolerant of things even as you in high school would normally consider outrageous, be politically correct, don’t rock the boat. Why- because society now has confused what is right and what is just plain wrong.

But I know someone who knew what was right and what was wrong. His name was Jesus Christ. If you study His life, you’d find that sometimes Jesus avoided conflict, sometimes He resolved conflict and sometimes Jesus actually created conflict. He provoked it. He induced it. He caused it. In your life, all three of those responses are sometimes going to be right- Sometimes you need to avoid conflict. Sometimes you need to resolve conflict. But sometimes you need to create conflict.

I don’t know about you, but my view on things is that most people we connect with every day- whether it be teachers, girlfriends, boyfriends, plain old friends, parents- they don’t like it real. In fact, most people have a misunderstanding that keeping the peace means avoiding confrontation at all costs. They want you to swallow your hurts, hide your feelings, ignore problems in your life, pretend that everything is OK. Their response to so many things are two words that every time I hear them its like nails across a chalkboard- instead of telling the truth, they say just shrug their shoulders and say “well, whatever.”

But the Bible says that living in the world of “well, whatever” causes even more problems. The Bible says that hiding the truth rather than dealing with the truth causes trouble.

Proverbs 10:10 says, “An evasive eye is a sign of trouble ahead, but an open, face-to-face meeting results in peace.”

I think if I asked each of you if you agreed that honesty is the best policy, you would probably agree, despite that survey that said two out of every three people do not agree with that. But in real life, there are a lot of times when we don’t think honesty is such a good idea, where speaking the truth is not such a positive thought.

For some of you, you may be thinking, “If I told my father or mother the truth about him, they’d never speak to me again.” “If I told my boyfriend what I don’t like about him, he’d leave me.” “If I told my teacher that I was having trouble understanding chapter 6 of my biology book, they would accuse me of not studying hard enough, or not applying myself.” “If I confronted my friend and told him he needed counseling, he’d never see me again.” Do any of those things sound like something anyone of you have gone through?

We have been talking so much about love this year, and I know that sometimes because we talk about it so much, it starts to lose is effect. We tell each other in here that we love each other. And sometimes it seems that we are saying we love each other out of habit, and it starts sounding fake. I know some of you probably think that there are people in here who think it’s cool to say they love me in youth group on Fridays, but when I see them on Monday in school, they act like they don’t even know me. That sucks. But Love is not always easy. Love is not always fun. Love sometimes takes courage. Love sometimes is tough. And love sometimes includes a confrontation.

The message for tonight is 1 Corinthians 13:6, “Love takes no pleasure in evil- it rejoices with the truth.” Ephesians 4:15 tells us, “Love should always make us tell the truth. Then we will grow in every way and be more like Christ.”

So, what’s this have to do with each of us? Tonight we’re going to talk about a skill that almost no one is good at. I’m certainly not good at it. And I doubt of any of you here are really good at it. Because it’s a skill we were never taught. It’s not taught at BP, or Taunton High, or Middleboro High, or at Apponequet. Nobody ever sat us down and showed us the steps to doing it right.

It is how to confront someone you love with the truth in a loving way.

You may be asking, why is this important…no one seems to care when they confront me- not my parents, not my friends, not my teachers. You might be saying that most of the time when people confront me, all they do is hurt me. But like I said a couple of weeks ago- are you willing to break that cycle? Are you willing to break out of the chains society has wrapped you up in, and tricked you into being part of the world where we deal with others by just shrugging our shoulders and saying, “well whatever”? I hope not. Because you will never ever be in a true relationship with someone else unless you are honest with them and tell them the truth.

So how do you do that? How do you confront someone you love, with love? If you want to have a better relationship, if you want to help other people, if you want to be a people builder and not a people trasher, sometimes you are going to have to say tough things that others don’t want to hear, but need to hear. And you, in love, need to share it.

The good news is that we have two great models of how to do this. Jesus and Paul. Paul had started a church in Corinth, had eventually moved on, and in the bible he was writing back to friends who had major problems in their lives- people who had really messed up. He wrote two very tough letters. And in those letters he was brutally honest. Almost every chapter of 1 and 2 Corinthians is about a different problem. He says, You’re blowing it here, you need help here, you need to work on this… He had to deal with one issue after another in brutal honesty, but always speaking the truth in love. From these two tough letters that Paul wrote, we learn the four keys to speaking the truth in love. Four keys in confronting someone in love that I pray you will be able to use tonight, tomorrow, for the rest of your lives.
1. Why we confront
2. How we confront
3. Affirming (or encouraging) others when we confront
4. Risking rejection when we confront

1. Before you ever confront anybody in love, you need to double check your reason for confronting.

Check your motivation. Why do I want to confront this person? You might be sitting at home thinking and sulking about your girlfriend or boyfriend, and convince yourself that they are a screw-up, and they need to be confronted. Or, you might want to confront somebody just because you’re jealous of what they have because you want it. You might want to confront a friend because you’re irritated by them, frustrated by them, annoyed by them, angry with them. You might want to confront somebody just to get even with them. You might want to point out something wrong in their life just to make you feel better than them.

This week I asked a number of people in the church and at work to write me examples of what that I could use tonight of a time in their life when somebody spoke the truth in love to them. Times when people they loved didn’t want to hear it, but they needed to hear it. I hope you guys can relate to one of them.

The first one says, “About 6 months ago, I had to confront my boyfriend about his addiction to pain killers after he had a couple of injuries playing football. The amazing thing is I was also addicted to drugs, but refused to admit it. He started attending Celebrate Recovery on Monday nights, and although I didn’t think I personally needed it, I went along to support him. Then one night a man at Celebrate Recovery had the courage to point out my hypocrisy. He was right, and I thanked him for having the courage to be honest with me. Now I’m growing and changing, too. Without that guy’s guts to tell me the truth, I’d still be wallowing in my own self-pity.”

Someone else wrote this:
“I grew up in a home where dad corrected us with his fists and degrading harsh words. From that, I developed a big mouth constantly cussing, criticizing and destroying other people with my words. Then one day a friend pulled me aside and gently, firmly told me the truth about my big mouth. My first reaction was to rebel. He was being a prude. Who made him the judge of my life? But then he pointed out that my words were doing a lot of damage. I didn’t change immediately but that encounter kept replaying in my mind until one day I humbled myself and I admitted he was right. Fifteen years later I still remember that life-changing confrontation. This past Thanksgiving my dad stayed with us. He pointed out that my gentle but honest words used in our home were far better than the words he used to raise me. But I would have never changed without being told the truth in love.”

Another guy wrote, “I was a Christian, but I was living like a non-believer. I was working in an electronics store when an acquaintance walked by and said, ‘I heard you were at a Bible study the other day. Is that right?’ I looked around the store and said, ‘Shhhh. Don’t blow my cover. But yes, I was there.’ The guy said, ‘Are you a Christian?’ I replied, “Well, yeah, I am.” The guy then says this: ‘Let me get this straight. You say you’re a Christian. But you’re doing drugs and you’re living a wild life. How does this all fit together?’ I said, ‘Well you see, I’m a cool Christian.’ The guy said, ‘I see. There’s another name for that. Hypocrite.’ That simple truth stung me, and I got really mad and accused the guy of being judgmental, but that conversation haunted me. I realized the guy was just speaking the truth. And that he cared enough to confront me in love. Over the next couple of days my anger turned to reflection, turned to repentance. Just a few days later I fully committed my life to Christ. I thank God for his courage.”

But some of you here tonight might be thinking, hey, nice stories with living happily ever after endings, but didn’t Jesus say, “Judge not lest you be judged.” Yep, He sure does. And that is probably the most misused and misunderstood verse in the Bible. When Jesus said don’t judge, He was not saying ignore problems in a friend’s life. He was not saying tolerate sin. He was not saying be a doormat, set your brain on cruise control and let anything go on around you, never make any observations or corrections about it. He was not saying allow evil to exist. People want to say, “Judge not lest you be judged” means just let anybody do what they want to do. But that’s not at all what He was saying.

When Jesus said, “Don’t judge,” He was saying don’t be a hypocrite- don’t condemn in other people the very thing that you do. That’s what He’s talking about. He’s saying you don’t build yourself up by tearing other people down when you’re doing the exact same thing.

Proverbs 27:6 says, “Wounds from a sincere friend
are better than many kisses from an enemy.” In life, there are two kinds of relationships. On one side you have shallow, superficial relationships. That’s what most of the people in the world have – relationships that are fake and indifferent.

On the other side, you have meaningful, deep, significant, intimate relationships. Soul-to-soul bonding and connection.

So how do you get from superficial relationship to intimacy whether in a friendship, a marriage, a partnership, whatever? How do you get from superficial to a deep, close, intimate connection with another person?

There’s only one way. That is to go down through the tunnel of truth. In the tunnel of truth, you deal with all the issues of the relationship you really don’t want to deal with. The world says “Let’s push that problem of yours aside... Let’s not talk about that issue that is eating you up inside... Let’s just have lollipops, happy smiles, and rainbows…if there’s a problem, just shrug your shoulders and say, “well whatever.” But in the tunnel of truth, you will have chaos, you will have conflict and you will have confrontation. And it may not be fun. When you leave a shallow relationship and say, “We’re going to take this relationship to a new level,” and you go into that tunnel of truth, it’s going to scare you to death. It’s dark, it’s dank, it’s scary. Sometimes it’s painful. Sometimes it can get a little loud. Everything in your body in the middle of the conversation says, “Let’s just back out of this tunnel, go back to the shallow end of the pool where its safe and comfortable. That way is a whole lot easier.

But if you will stay in that tunnel of truth and deal with those issues, deal with that parent that always seems to be on your back, that friend that seems to be using you, that girlfriend or boyfriend who is not treating you right or honoring you, you will eventually come up on the other side into genuine intimacy and true Christian love.

2. Plan how you will confront.

Think through what you’re going to say before you say it. I admit I stink at this…I’ve put my foot in my mouth more times than I can remember, but Proverbs 16:23 says, “Intelligent people think before they speak. What they say then is more persuasive.” If you want to be persuasive, you must think through what you’re going to say in advance.

Paul did this when he had some painful truths to present to his friends in Corinth. He says this in 2 Corinthians 2:

At the time I wrote, I was suffering terribly. My eyes were full of tears, and my heart was broken. But I didn't want to make you feel bad. I only wanted to let you know how much I cared for you.

Paul says, I had some tough things I had to write to you about. But this wasn’t impulsive. Paul didn’t just sit down and blast off an e-mail or text message. How many of you have discovered how dangerous an e-mail, text message, or myspace post can be? You can vent real quickly, hit the button and it’s gone. And then you wish you could pull it back. Can anyone in here connect with that?

Paul says this, “No, I didn’t get out my laptop and send you a nasty message on AIM. I didn’t leave you a mean and cruel voicemail, like a coward. No. I sat down and thought about this. I agonized. I cried. That’s how much I care about you. I have some tough things to say that you probably don’t want to hear, but you really need to hear because your life is messed up, I really thought about it. I planned, I grieved, I agonized.”

Paul spoke it in a loving way. Because you should never use truth as a club. Because you should never beat people up with the truth. You say it in a loving way. And how do you know if you’re saying it in a loving way? Simply this- is what you are saying for their benefit, or yours. If you feel good in saying it, you’re probably saying it for your own benefit.

The next thing you do is…

3. You give them affirmation.

The Bible says that the truth will set you free. When you go through that tunnel of truth, it does free you to the deeper level relationship. The truth will set you free, but first it may make you miserable. If I were to come to you today and say, “======, let’s go have some coffee. I want to point out several areas of your life that need changing,” you would not be thanking me for that invitation. You’d be going, “Who do you think you are?”, probably in stronger words than that. But the point is you’d probably be resentful, rebellious, resistant, stubborn. You wouldn’t be going, “This is great! Tell me all the areas in my life I suck at. Go ahead Bob! Get in line behind all the other people in my life who tell me where I mess up…get behind my parents, my girlfriend, my boyfriend, teachers at school, my school bus driver, my boss at work. Go ahead Bob- take a number cause I just don’t care anymore

But that’s why it is so important in relationships to add encouragement to the truth. The truth by itself is like a sandwich filling without any bread…you need a slice of encouragement on the top and a slice of encouragement on the bottom. Without the encouragement, all you have is peanut butter and jelly, and it’s a complete mess without the bread to hold it together. So when you are having a speaking-the-truth-in-love session with somebody, you want to affirm three things- let’s make this a triple decker sandwich- three slices of bread:

1. TOP SLICE OF BREAD- You want to affirm that you deeply love and care for them.
2. MIDDLE SLICE OF BREAD- You want to affirm that you will pray for them and help them.
3. BOTTOM SLICE OF BREAD- You want to affirm that you believe they can change.

Lastly…
4. Risk their rejection.

Paul did this in 2 Corinthians 7, when he said:

“I know I distressed you greatly with my letter. Although I felt awful at the time, I don't feel at all bad now that I see how it turned out. The letter upset you, but only for a while. Now I'm glad—not that you were upset, but that you were shaken up enough to turn things around. You let the distress bring you to God, not drive you from him. The result was all gain, no loss.”

It’s scary to speak the truth in love. I get scared all the time. But I think the reason why we stuff our emotions and stuff our feelings and we don’t speak the truth and hide the issues in our relationship that we’re bugged about but we don’t want to bring up is because we fear the possible consequences. Being a coward keeps us from speaking the truth in love. We let fear become greater than our love. The truth is, it’s scary to tell others the truth. We don’t know how they’re going to react. Your boyfriend may get mad. Your girlfriend may walk out. Parents or teachers may misjudge your motivation. They may attack you. You don’t know what’s going to happen. So it’s scary, and you’re taking a great risk.

And because we don’t want to take that risk, we settle for superficial, shallow relationships. Some of you in here may have relationships like that at home, at school, maybe even here on Friday nights. Maybe you repress the truth, maybe you hide your feelings, maybe you ignore issues, maybe you try to sweep everything under the carpet so you can keep that shallow, lousy relationship alive. Maybe you sweep it under the carpet and sweep it under the carpet and sweep it under the carpet and that mound under the carpet kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until one day it just explodes!

You must be willing to risk rejection because you love that person. You must be willing to take a hit of initial anger because you love that person. It takes enormous courage.

I know a lot of you in here, and believe me, I want to get to know more of you better…that’s a mission of mine this year. But for the ones I do know, I know that many of you have not felt loving toward a loved one, or loved from someone who should love you one for days, weeks, months, or maybe even years. You have a parent, a brother or sister or some relative, a friend, but you don’t love them and you don’t feel any love from them. Because you’re stuffing your feelings. You’re stuffing the truth. You’re pushing it down. You’re not speaking the truth in love, you’re not dealing with it and you are killing the relationship. I am doing that right now with my family in Delaware. And I’m scared too. Scared of failure. Scared of being humiliated. Scared of rejection. I know because I’m just like each of you.

Margaret Becker wrote a song called Honesty. Part of it goes like this,

“Tonight by the glow of the fire light you found the courage to speak your mind
and tear down the walls you’ve been hiding behind.
So many of us spend so much of our time smoothing things over
and pretending they’re fine.”

VIDEO =è





Who do you need to speak the truth in love to, today? Who do you need to have an honest conversation with, today? Who do you need to share the love of Christ with, today? Somebody in your neighborhood? Somebody in your small group? Somebody at school? Somebody at home? Somebody here tonight? Do you see a friend heading down the wrong direction, getting involved in things they have no business getting involved in and you know that their parents aren’t going to do anything about it. Will you? Will you care enough to speak the truth in love? Do you care enough to speak with them before its too late, like Alex failed to do with her brother in the video. Are you willing to be used by God?

Proverbs 24:26 says this, “An honest answer is the sign of a true friendship.” Real friends speak the truth. They tell their friends what they need to hear not what they’d like to hear. Sometimes love must be tough. Sometimes love hurts. It hurt Jesus to die. That’s the kind of love Jesus had to die for you. HE died for the truth.

Let’s Pray:
Do you know somebody maybe in your extended family who’s overbearing and controlling and nobody’s ever spoken the truth to them about it? Do you know somebody who’s wasting their life and they’ve never been confronted? Is there someone you love, you care about, who’s flirting with temptation. Are you going to just sit there silently and let it get worse? Do you have a friend who is a gossiper and a divider and is divisive and they love to spread rumors, but nobody’s ever had the courage to say, “Stop it! You’re hurting people with your gossip! Or do you feel a need to be truthful with yourself, and love yourself, and invite Christ into your heart, tonight.

If you want to move to the highest level of loving, I invite you to pray this prayer: “Dear God, this is scary. You know how much I fear speaking or even thinking the truth sometimes. I hate conflict. I don’t like rocking the boat. But I see what is going on, and I know it’s not right. Please, give me the courage I need to talk to that person. Help me to check my motives first. Help me to find the right words and the right time to say it. Help me to be positive and wrap the truth in love and encouragement and affirmation. I am willing to risk rejection in an attempt to save this relationship. I’m willing to face the pain or anger because I love this person and I really do want what’s best for them. I ask You to use me in this most difficult expression of genuine love. Help us as we go through the tunnel of truth. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”