monday morning commentary.

a walk to remember.

that's what our new series is called and no... (i'll eliminate all suspense) mandy moore is not involved. wink.

this series is about the life of abraham. this particular sermon was from Genesis 13... relational conflict between Lot & Abraham.

in this case Abraham handles himself REALLY well... like an example for us.

Luke used a stop light to communicate 3 ways to handle relational conflict {not that anyone deals with that. #sarcasm} in a God-honoring way.

i know i am bias but i think this was Luke's best sermon since this summer. all Praise goes to the LORD!

first. red light means... stop NOW.
abram {his name hadn't been changed yet} chose to reach out and instead of having a full blown fight, he said...let's fix it.

second. yellow light means....YIELD.

• let the other person go first. and have their way.
• abram chooses the selfless action.
  
• we are so hung up on 'what's fair' vs. just letting the other person have their way.
  
• in this situation Lot ends up getting the best stuff {land} right after the fight; but in the end it will all be Abe's anyway.

third. green light means... GO!
Abe goes way out of his way because he cared about the relationship. not because he wanted to (per-say) but because it honors Christ. {what if my life really honored Christ?...}

i loved when luke said this.... God always....
responds in love
grants another choice
we need to act more like him.
operate the way Jesus does.
speak kindly of the person

in the bible (sorry i didn't catch the reference) when God looks at us all he sees is Jesus' blood covering us - what if{???} we did the same. what if.

we have a pretty unbelievable example of all of this.... that happened this weekend.. not for the sermon or anything. wink.

Luke has had car problems basically since he got a car.
when he was in high school he got a car and got into a really serious accident and that car basically blew up.
after that he got another car that at one point he left it parked behind our church for a few days and it got stolen. (note: a month before we got married)
after we got married we bought a new car which he graciously gave to me and he got my old car. which when driving he pulled the hood release rather than the emergency brake release and the hood flew off. thus it had a black hood and white body for as long as it lived.
once that car finally died we got a better looking version of the same car... a camry.
the last few weeks it hasn't been starting well and the other day it started smoking. it hasn't started since.

so i have a friend whose husband owns a dealership. i was asking him the other night to help us get the car fixed because we needed to use someone we trusted. after all we have gone through with cars, and the way luke treats them (this came from his mouth, no, i'm not getting myself in trouble;)) he should be driving a really crappy bike. instead the other night my friend's husband shows up with a really, really nice car from his dealership. just to help.

so... what if that's how we acted in relationships... if people who have hurt us or said something mean to us or have tarnished our name or who have {fill in the blank with your relational conflict} if we let them sit pretty (after of course dealing with the conflict) because that honors Christ more than retaliating (what our flesh wants to do).

what if?!
let's honor Christ today- you in?!
kg:)

p.s. how do you like my rainbow post<-------------------------