"I Am Glue Man!"
EPISODE 189
Unite Around Our Common Faith
We're in Session 8 of our Talking Through Ephesians Guided Study, getting super-practical with Eph. 4:1-16. We examine our role in a superhero team and the importance of unity and working together in the church. We share our Top Four Proverbs on responding gently to conflict and how we both struggle with humility and patience. And we encourage you to build unity within the Lord's church today, becoming like "Glue Guy" — sticking brothers and sisters together with long-lasting bonds. Find this series's study guides and videos at biblegeeks.fm/ephesians.
Takeaways
The Big Idea: Though we all bring something unique to our role in the church, Jesus calls us to join forces and grow stronger together in love.
This Week's Challenge: Commend a brother or sister for their work as a "peacemaker" this week.
Episode Transcription
Hello, I'm glue man, and I am here to join you brothers may I make peace between you We know how the episode is starting now This is episode 189 I'm Bryan Schiele I'm Ryan joy Thanks again everyone for tuning in we're in session 8 here of our talking through Ephesians guided study I didn't realize that it sounded so excited for this upcoming section in the past few episodes But I suppose I am because we have made it to chapter 4 of Ephesians We're gonna get super practical here. But again, I think we're gonna lean on all the past three chapters and conversations We've had up to this point here in the book of Ephesians We're talking about chapter 4 verses 1 to 16 and there are more big ideas huge doctrines and all that in the practical stuff, just as there was practical stuff in the early part. But yeah, this is the beginning of us talking about how we walk, how we work together, how just all of these big ideas about the temple and God's love and the power of Christ in us start to show up in how we talk to our brother at the worship assembly or how we engage with our wife on Monday morning, that kind of thing. So, it's fun stuff. Bring it on. All right, so here we go. And we're going to go back to a conversation starter that we dropped a little while ago, and that is called Forces Combine. [FORCES COMBINE] This is Talking Through Ephesians. Forces Combine. Whether you grew up loving the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, Charlie's Angels, or the Avengers, Something special happens when forces combine around a common goal. What one team member can't do alone with their unique abilities, they can easily accomplish when they work together. They're unstoppable unless somehow they're weakened from within. Good news! You've made it to the last half of the Ephesian letter. While the first three chapters felt poetic and grand, in Ephesians 4, 1-16, Paul, Christ's prisoner, puts all his prior praise and prayer into practice. After introducing his audience to four Christ-like qualities of humility, gentleness, patience, and loving forbearance, we learn to put these virtues into action as we unite around our common faith. So here's the big idea. Though we all bring something unique to our role in the church, Jesus calls us to join forces and grow stronger together in love. There's so much that could divide us, yet there is one body and one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is overall and through all and in all. And in God's oneness, we're glued to each other in the bond of peace. Calling back to a Hebrew song, Paul reveals how the Lord equips his host of captives with gifts to use in his service. Though our contributions differ, they all serve the greater purpose of building up Christ's church to be more like him as mature disciples. We fight a crafty enemy who tries to trick us at every turn. But as our bond with Christ and his followers grows, the more we hold firm to the truth and draw strength from each other, we are unstoppable when each of us uses our abilities for the greater good. So here's the big question. Do you hold the body of Christ together in your work? So follow along with this guided study at biblegeeks.fm/ephesians and may the Lord bless you and keep you. Shalom. All right, well, the big idea that we talked about there is that though we all bring something unique to our role in the church, Jesus calls us to join forces and grow stronger together in love. And I love your team up theme. It's always fun to see heroes become a super team. I remember looking at comic books or cartoons and whenever you had these different, you know, Spider-Man, but it's not just Spider-Man. It's now Spider-Man and the X-Men or all these different ones coming together. And in those movies, you always see each one in their unique origin story. Your first, you're focusing on Thor and then you're looking at Captain America or whoever. And you have, in fact, with the Avengers, you even had their own movies, each one coming out separately. And then there's this big team up where you see them have to figure out how to work together. I think that's helpful as an idea to recognize that each member of the Body of Christ has been in their own journey. They have their own origin story. They have their own unique abilities that have been given to them, that they've been honing. Now we need to find a way to blend the abilities and to work together. That means recognizing that we are not the ones to do everything. That means recognizing the gifts of others. It means adjusting and figuring it out together and really honoring what each one can bring, like helping each other find it and notice you have a place to serve and then making space for them to do it. - I think that's well said. I feel like this whole idea here in this section is really just trying to get all of these disparate and diverse people to work together. And one of the things that we did there in the big question in that conversation starter ask, "Do you hold the body of Christ together in your work?" And so this isn't just the conversation about what other people are doing and making sure everyone else is doing their part, but also the fact that you have ownership in supplying the glue basically to be able to connect the body of Christ together. How do you hold this work together? And I didn't mean in the question really to overemphasize our importance in the work, But also don't under emphasize your role in the church either. Like you have a part in supplying this kind of, I just call it glue. I mean, you have a part in binding people together. And so maybe if I'm not putting in the effort that I need to put in to build up the body, then who's having to work harder to account for me? Or maybe on the other side of that, maybe if I'm just being negative or I have all kinds of criticisms or complaints, is that going to leave my brothers and sisters to feel frustrated rather than encouraged? Am I building up the body? Am I uniting people together or am I part of the problem in driving people apart? It's a really good question that all of us have to grapple with at different times. It does. It helps us to orient ourselves to the fact that this is part of the purpose of our work. It's not just to get a particular job done, but it's to do it in a way that unifies the team rather than setting ourselves apart or dividing or just going off and doing your own thing really well, but leaving everybody behind. And so I like the way you put that. And with that, we'll go into our superhero theme even further with a icebreaker. And the icebreaker question this week is what would your role be on a superhero team? Bryan, are you the Wolverine? - Oh yeah. - Captain America, who are you? - Oh for sure, yeah. You know, of all the teams, of all the superhero teams, I looked at the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Donatello. You know, he was like the super nerd on the group or like even Batman, who didn't actually have a superhero power and who wasn't really given any special abilities. He was just a guy who liked gadgets and definitely could relate to both of those two guys. If I am gonna be on a superhero team, I'll probably be the one doing all the nerdy tech stuff behind the scenes, building interesting gadgets to get the job done. That's probably my role. Not gonna be like the Hulk or Thor or Captain America or anybody out there with the big muscles getting the work done and pounding heads. No, I'll probably be the nerdy guy with the soldering iron behind the scenes. So how about you? - I like Donatello for you. That's a good, I mean, Batman is a whole other thing. I feel like that's a, you know, I don't hear the voice of Batman. - Oh no, no, for sure not. But I see where you're coming from there. I guess I like the Ninja Turtle thing. I think I'd be a Michelangelo, the goofball that just likes pizza, but I don't know. I was thinking, you brought up this idea of glue, all of us being the glue. I thought maybe I could be like that glue guy or the guy going around recruiting the team. Like I'm not one of the heroes, but I'm Nick Fury and I'm trying to get this guy and that guy together and pulled together. Hey, Natasha, whatever her name is, the Black Widow come over here and join up with this crazy big green guy. I kind of love team building and I love helping people to collaborate. I really enjoy that. So I don't know, maybe something like that. - Yeah, is Glue Guy an actual superhero? But if not, that seems like a really appropriate one for you for sure. - I like it, yeah. Maybe his powers, like he's super adhesive. - Super sticky, oh man, okay. - Well, let's move on to something that's actually super useful instead of super sticky. We're gonna get into our finding Jesus segment here. And of course we're in Ephesians chapter four, verses one to 16. And as we make this transition here from chapter three and really the first half of this letter, Paul reminds us that he is a prisoner of the Lord. It's all woven into his language here to the Ephesian church. I therefore a prisoner of the Lord urge you to walk. And so he's moving on, I think, all the conversation from Ephesians chapter two about how we used to walk according to our own passions. Now he's urging us to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. And so there's this unifying language that he's using here And how he talks about how there's one body and one spirit. There as we talked about in the conversation starter, all of these ones that unite us together. And then he talks really about how God has enabled each of us with special abilities, with things that we can do in his service to be able to fill roles like a prophet or an evangelist or a shepherd or a teacher. And all of these things as he's talking there to the first century church, would equip them for this special work of building up the body of Christ. And it's still the same for us today, maybe without all the miraculous abilities, but definitely with our unique gifts that the Lord has given us to basically fit in and become this team together in the church to build up the body for the work of the Lord. And so we're built by what every joint supplies, each one of us does our part, and all of these things really help us to see our role in Christ's work, that we're all important. So where do you find Jesus here in this great section about unity? - Talk about the glue guy. Jesus is the glue guy holding all of this together. Absolutely, he's all over this passage. But I really was struck by this quote from Psalm 68 and how it relates to the church. And I feel like this Psalm is appropriate to the whole book. Sometimes it seems like Paul is just grabbing a verse and tossing it in. But usually what I find when I dig in and I study is the themes in a passage from the Old Testament are all woven into all the themes of what Paul or someone else is talking about throughout the whole thing. So this Psalm talks about God's victory, his greatness, how much the Lord is doing, and it talks about where the Lord dwells, which has been this major theme, the Lord's temple that has now become his church. And so he talks about here in the verses right before the verse he quotes, he talks about where the Lord will dwell forever and the chariots of God are twice 10,000, thousands upon thousands. And think about the victory that it's giving to God. It's acknowledging to who Jesus is. The Lord is among them. And then he says Sinai is now in the sanctuary. Mount Sinai, where God met up with Moses and brought this covenant with God's people, is now within the temple and we are the temple. This covenant and all of the presence of God that rested with the fierceness of fire and thunder and earthquakes on Sinai, it's now in us. And then it says, you ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train. And so Jesus ascended on high. Jesus went into the heavens and then he gave out these gifts to men. And so he's sharing the spoils of his victory, having defeated death, defeating sin, having humiliated all of the rulers of darkness. He gives gifts to his people and he's sharing his victory with us. And these gifts are, quite interestingly to me, these roles that he gives to people and that he empowers people to do. He gave the apostles. The apostles are one of the gifts he gives to the church, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, the teachers. And so he's giving all of these people with special roles for this job of supporting and preparing and equipping all of the church to serve and to build itself up. And so I think what I see here is not only Christ's victory, but that Christ has the power to give us everything we need to keep growing his kingdom, to keep building his body here in the world. - I love that Jesus is the victor and of course he is. He's also, as I was looking at this, he's also the mature standard because we're being built up in every way to growing up into him who is the head. We're trying to be more like him, the son of God, to this mature manhood, to the measure, as he says here, of the stature of the fullness of Christ. It's like a little kid standing there looking straight up at his dad, who is just way bigger, way more mature than him, and thinking, man, it's gonna take me a long time to get there. And the more you look to Jesus, the more you see his love and his unknowable amazingness, as we talked about in the last episode, the more it feels like that standard is really hard to follow. but he is the perfect model for being a mature and fully formed human. And it almost actually makes me think of our cross training series. If you remember years and years ago, how we did a whole year long series about cross training. And when Jesus is our standard, as we're talking about in these verses, we can be like Jesus. We can be like him when we, as he says here, when we speak the truth. So that's the first discipleship dimension, truth. When we speak the truth in love, that heart aspect of it that we talked about there. That's the second part. And he says, when we work properly, so when we take action, when we do the things that we should do, those sort of actions, those verbs really that we're starting to get into here in the fourth chapter, but when we work properly, that's the third aspect of these discipleship dimensions, we build up the body, we build this community. And that community was the fourth aspect of those discipleship dimensions. When we're talking about cross-training, Only when we're focused on every aspect of our lives, truth, heart, action, and community, can we really follow in Christ's footsteps and become mature disciples of His. And this is really highlighting that point. When we unite with Him, when we use Him as our standard to be mature like Him, well, we can do that when we do these very specific things and focus on every aspect of our life. - That's neat, that He really pulls it all together here, and you start to see all the dimensions of what it means to be a disciple And as we keep talking about in the book of Ephesians, that's what the whole thing is, is zooming out and saying, this is how this all works together. It's not just love him, it's not just you need to have doctrine and stand in the truth. All of these things go together to create something that God has been planning for eternity. And that is this people who are building themselves up, growing his kingdom and representing him in the world. That's really cool. - For sure. All right, so let's move on to our second segment here on the episode, and that is top four proverbs. - One, two, three, four. - So we talked a little bit about the Psalms in Psalm 68. Maybe it'd be appropriate for us to talk through some of the proverbs. And as we're talking about this section here in chapter four, it's all about unity. It's all about building each other up and contributing to the work. And you know what sometimes happens in the middle of all of this? There's problems. Problems arise, conflicts come up. And if you can imagine what Paul is gonna have to deal with with a bunch of Gentiles who are now closely related to and working side by side with Jews who used to hate them not very long ago, you can imagine problems are gonna come up. And so here in the Proverbs, we see a lot of conversations about strife and difficulty and really how we can best help resolve those kinds of problems that we have between people. So maybe kick this thing off with our first proverb. Proverb number one, Proverbs 15 verse one. And the proverb says, "A gentle answer turns away wrath, "but a harsh word stirs up anger." And maybe we've talked before about this period, when I lived out there in Arizona, when I was taking this martial art called Hopkido, which is this Korean martial art, it's similar to Japanese martial art Aikido, and they both have this idea of using the force of the attacker against them, you take this posture, the fighting stance isn't with these balled up fists, it's with your hands up, like you're surrendering with open palms and you're just, yeah, no, it's good, man, it's good. And from that position, you can easily, whenever somebody attacks you, grab their fist and swing or toss or do whatever you need to do. And it's just an interesting metaphor to think about those who are attacking you, those who have a conflict with you. If you are in proper mental posture, emotional, spiritual posture where you're thinking about the right goals that we've been talking about these goals, like unity in the church and that kind of thing, loving others, then you can respond with this wisdom and this skill that changes the whole context of the conversation. And something I've been reflecting on a lot and deepening as a way of understanding a way of relating to people is the strength it takes to be gentle and the weakness of reacting. And that's another one of those things, like we talked last week about those things where you're like, yeah, I get it. And I'm having just one of those breakthrough moments where I'm like, no, but you don't understand. You don't even know, dude. And so anyway, I've been thinking about, you know, what it means to be, especially in a home, I've been thinking about what it means to be a father, what it means to be a husband, and to bring that strength, that positive masculinity, that gentle strength that can really set the tone for things. And not to say that there's no place for another kind of strength for punishment or correction or that kind of thing. But even in those correction times and even in times of firmness, seeing that whenever I changed my outlook to see that I don't have anything to defend, I don't have anything that I need to worry about protecting. I don't, I'm not under threat. I can be strong enough to respond with the kind of not physically necessarily putting your arm around someone, but the way you react, the way you're responding can say, "Hey, I hear where you're coming from and I understand and here's what we need to do differently." Or just redirecting in a really positive way. And Adrienne and I have had a lot of conversations about this as I've worked through it and learned a lot. And I think there's something to be taken from this proverb in this direction. I totally agree. I think a gentle answer turning away wrath, just like you said, obviously makes so much sense on the surface, but is very hard to actually put into practice. So my proverb here, proverb number two, is from Proverbs six versus 16 to 19. There are six things that the Lord hates and seven that are an abomination to him. This is one of those proverbs that you forget is actually in the Proverbs, but it's definitely there. He says, "Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers. And that one, that last one here is really the focus. But it is interesting just thinking about its inclusion in the overall list of things that God hates, pride, lying, people who kill other people. I mean, like just all these terrible things, you look at it, it's wow, this is terrible. And then people who sow discord among brothers. If there's any motivation to build bridges rather than burning them, it's that God hates a person who holds the match to burn the bridge. God hates it when somebody destroys relationships and drives a wedge between people. And it is strong language here, but gossip and backbiting and all the things that we might be tempted to participate in, these things, as the Proverbs say, are an abomination to the Lord. He hates when his people are driven apart from each other. That's a sober reminder for me that like, if I find myself involved in things that drive people away, rather than being glue man and sticking people back together, God's not going to be happy with me personally or just the situation at large. Absolutely. And you can see in the one that you just shared and in the one that I shared before, these reflections of Ephesians four, you can see verse two, these virtues of humility. Oh, yeah. And in what you're saying, bearing with one another in love and my first proverb, gentleness. And in my next proverb, it really focuses on this idea of humility. And so proverb number three is chapter 13, verse 10, where there is strife, there is pride, but wisdom is found in those who take advice. And so the antithesis of pride in this verse, in this parallelism that the Proverbs writer is giving us, is taking advice, is listening, is saying, okay, I don't know everything, and maybe what you say actually has value. And when I don't do that, whenever I dismiss the wisdom that someone else is bringing, then I'm proud and create strife, and I have no wisdom. And that's the opposite of how we think of wisdom. We think of wisdom as having all the answers. And the Bible wants us to understand that wisdom is knowing you don't have all the answers, but you're pursuing wisdom. - Yep. - The beginning of wisdom is this, get wisdom, look for it, try to get it. There's another, there's a bonus proverb. And so listen, and boy, I can work on this. Don't think you know, decide you have something you can gain by setting aside what you think you know and trying to really hear the point and the intention behind it. Why are they saying it? Even if you think, you know, I don't really think this is a critique or a path that I need to take. Well, try to think about why is this person who does have some wisdom choosing to tell you this piece of criticism or this piece of advice? And you'll usually find something worth taking in it. - Yeah, the listening piece of it is huge. And if there's anything that you could use as a tool in your toolbox that not a lot of us jump to immediately is listening when it comes to conflict resolution. I mean, listening to somebody's side of the story, listening to understand where they're coming from, What motivated them to do that and give them the benefit of the doubt and all of the things that we see from like 1 Corinthians 13 about the definition of love and what it's about. We see that listening and understanding is such a huge part of that. So last proverb here, my final proverb is Proverbs 19, verse 11, where the wise writer says, "Good sense makes one slow to anger, "and it is his glory to overlook an offense." I think maybe this sums up a lot of what we've been talking about here, just the ability to let it roll off your back, just to overlook an offense, how long is my fuse? For somebody to be quick to anger, that's not a good thing. It's sensible. It makes good sense to be slow to anger. It is a glorious thing actually to look at somebody, to see that they cut you off on the freeway and just be like, "No big deal." Not that we're just like the dog in the burning building with the coffee saying everything's fine But you know the fact that we see that it's something is wrong that somebody did hurt us But being able to overlook that and just to look past it ignore it not take it So seriously that is a thing to cultivate That is a skill to develop and to be better at every day and yeah Not super hard to do here very very simple things we've been talking about here with conflict resolution, but yeah, I think they're all super important. And again, it's just so interesting how Paul's summary at the beginning of chapter four captures all of this because what you're talking about is patience and bearing with one another in love. Yes. And so all of these proverbs, I don't know, I wasn't trying to place something with each of the virtues he identifies in my proverbs, but it just worked out that way because the unity of Scripture and the wisdom that these practices bring to our lives. Yeah, and maybe it's worth revisiting those verses here in our Reach Out question this week. So our Reach Out question this week is which of the four virtues that we have been talking about here, humility, gentleness, patience, and loving forbearance, you can find those verses here here at the beginning of Ephesians chapter four, which of these four virtues do you excel in and which do you struggle with? And I think we're all gonna find opportunities here to be really good at some of these things and maybe we're gonna struggle with all of them, but I think they're the key, really, the linchpin in unlocking this ability to be united with each other. - Sure, yeah, I don't think I've mastered any of them and it would be interesting to get the answer to this question from those who know us best, like our families. - True. But I think my strongest is probably that loving forbearance. Not always, but I usually can have some compassion from this habit of putting myself in other shoes and seeing that they usually, they were trying. Some people are trying their best and still fall short of it. And it's not an excuse, but there's a reason why they fell short. And I so appreciate when that kind of compassionate forbearance is given to me. And so I really hold it as a value I try to offer others. I'm probably weakest in humility. I went back and forth trying to think of where I'm weakest. I think I can overestimate my skill or my level of understanding, or just my ability to handle things. I've definitely gotten myself in over my head at times because I forget that I can't do it all as we were bringing up earlier and sometimes as we also talked about, I'm a poor listener because I think I already know these things. There's just a lot of ugly ways that pride shows up. We did a whole episode where we talked about this and that was, that was a very painful reach out question, maybe having some, uh, some flashbacks here to that. But I think it's a constant project to keep growing in humility in these areas. Maybe those areas you don't always think of humility or I don't always think of cause I don't think of myself as better than anyone. I try to be a servant, but at the same time, it rears its ugly head in strange ways sometimes. - Yeah, I don't think you're very humble at all, so that's good. (both laughing) - And you're so humble. - And I'm so humble. (both laughing) Isn't it hard though? I think you're right. It would be much easier if we asked people who were really close to us what we struggled with and what our skills were maybe, but. I connected with what you said there about loving forbearance. If I had to think about something that I was good at or that I at least was marginally better at than some of the other things, maybe not good or skilled in any way, but I would like to think that I give people the benefit of the doubt or that I don't view things as always so black and white. I find myself putting myself in people's shoes a lot. And especially when I'm preaching or I'm listening to other people preaching, or I'm listening to what things sound like in a Bible class or just in conversations with people, understanding that everybody has a different backstory. As we talked about here on this episode, everyone is on a different journey and we've all come from different places. We bring different skills to the table, just trying to be compassionate and show that mercy and understanding to people. But all of that being said, I am not very patient. If there's something that I struggle with here, undoubtedly it's patience. Undoubtedly, it's just my speed, my ability to do things quickly sometimes. And I feel like things need to be done at a certain pace and I could do it faster. So I'm just gonna take care of it myself. And for me, I think it's a struggle to just be supportive. When I'm watching somebody, they're doing their best at something and I know it could be done quicker. And rather than jumping in there and trying to get it done, I just have to wait and watch and make sure that people feel supported while they're doing their work. And that is a really hard thing for me. Obviously there's a level of pride there that also plays a part of that. And there's a lack of love sometimes that I'm not giving people enough space to grow and to mature, you know, it's things I need to work on. But patience is something I really struggle with. And maybe just because a lot of things come easy for me. And then if I'm honest with myself, I realize that I need a lot of patience. I need people to be patient with me because man, I mess up a lot and I do a lot of things that I shouldn't do. And so it is kind of ironic that I'm not always willing to give the thing that I desperately need from other people so much. - And that's a big source of that growth that we can have in the Lord, especially when we see the amount of patience and forbearance and gentleness that we need from the Lord. And again, going back to that conversation we had last week, the more we ground ourselves in His love and the nature of that love for us, the more we start to find ways to reflect that to others. And yeah, it is a lifelong journey, kind of like listening. - I have a real suspicion that these virtues, by the way here, are not hyper-localized to the conversation about unity. I think as we talk about here in these first 16 verses of chapter four, obviously the conversation is about being one and being united, but I think these virtues, humility, gentleness, patience, and loving forbearance. I think these things are really gonna weave their way into really all the rest of the chapters here that we're gonna talk about. - Well, if we want to create the peace, if we want to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace, as he talks about it here at the beginning of the chapter, we're going to need to bring these virtues into our lives. And the more we do in the church, the more we'll be able to successfully build the body up. And I guess that goes with our challenge this week. I am ready to face any challenges that might be foolish enough to face me. So this week's challenge has to do with peacemaking to commend a brother or sister for their work as a peacemaker this week. And I like how this goes not only with this idea of creating and maintaining the bond of peace, but also with building one another up that as we build each other up, we're creating unity and strengthening the body of Christ. It's interesting to me how often we see conflict, but how rarely we see effective conflict resolution. I don't know if you'd agree with that, but I think I see a lot more difficulties and battles and little side snarky comments and complaints and gripes and all those things than I do somebody actually stepping in and being the peacemaker. - A lot more avoiding the issue and stepping away from it rather than resolving it maybe. - Yeah, oh, no doubt. And maybe in the guise of overlooking an offense, I mean, yes, you should overlook an offense, but maybe it's time to actually build the peace instead of just ignoring all the difficulties that go on. But I'd agree with that. I think when conflict happens, somebody's got to budge or somebody's got to step in to help somebody budge. And the more we encourage submitting to each other, deferring to each other, or being a mediator, having this relationship that's a interested but uninterested third party who steps in and helps people, brings people together. Glue man, glue man busts into the scene. Glue man needs a big pat on the back, although you may never get your hands off of his shoulder. - So sticky. - The more that behavior spreads, I think the kinds of unity builds and grows as a result of that. And these kinds of challenges, I think they're pretty easy for us to do just to commend somebody or appreciate somebody. But as compared to reconciling a brother or sister that you don't have peace with, which was a previous challenge that we did, I think this one's going to be a lot easier than that. So let's celebrate these actions, these kinds of people who bring peace and who reconcile people back together in the ways that hopefully we're seeing more and more. Hopefully we're getting good at doing ourselves. I like where that conversation about this challenge went because like that gentle strength we were talking about earlier, earlier, peacemaking is not about just always laying down and being a doormat or letting things just roll on because sometimes you overlook an offense, but overlooking offense does not mean avoiding the issue and then carrying resentment about it onward into the future. Some things need to be confronted as issues and confronting an issue doesn't mean being confrontational. You deal with it. You work through it. A gentle answer. Hey, yeah, - Yeah, can we talk about this? You said this thing and I don't think you meant anything by it, but here's how I took it. And maybe there's something deeper underneath it. Can we talk about that? - You big, giant dummy. No, no, no. - Hello, I'm Glue Man and I am here to join you, brothers. May I make peace between you? - Oh, we know how the episode is starting now, so. No, that's right on. I think you're 100%. It is such a difficult thing to work through because our natural reaction so often is to do the very opposite of what we're talking about here. - Well, on that high note, let's end things. And I think the perfect place to end this is with a prayer and the suggested prayer. The study guide is, "Lord, may we maintain "the unity of the Spirit and grow into the measure "of the stature of the fullness of Christ." Taken from our readings here in verse three and verse 13. So let's pray. We bow before you, Heavenly Father. We ask you to strengthen us with power through your Spirit and our inner being. We ask you to help us as we strive to build up the Body of Christ. Pray that we would each recognize the unique work that we have to do when we're working properly in the Body, that we would find places to serve and to build. that we would recognize all that we share in you, even in the midst of different backgrounds and different personalities and different ways of looking at the world. I pray that we would see that we share one Lord and one faith and that we all serve you. We share so much and we are so grateful for the fellowship we have with other faithful servants of yours. We thank you for their example, we thank you for their service throughout the whole world. We thank you for the way that you empower the body to bring life into itself and into the world, to bring your love into the world, and to continue to grow and expand your kingdom. And we pray that your kingdom would grow. We pray that your name would be proclaimed throughout all the world, that everyone would hear of you, would have the opportunity to know you and the power of your gospel. Pray that you would solidify your church, stabilize us in the truth so that we're not carried away and pulled by every strange idea and every wind of doctrine and everything that the evil one wants to bring to divide us or to lead us away from you. We pray that you would embolden us to speak the truth and love so that we can keep growing up into Jesus. And we pray all of this in His name. Amen. Amen. All right. So on the next episode, we're going to get into our ninth guided study session here in our Talking Through Ephesians series. And that's going to be a conversation about a whole new you. And we're going to close out this chapter from 17 to verse 32 of chapter four, talking about how we will now walk in a different way. We'll no longer walk as the Gentiles do, but we will walk in a way that is pleasing to God. And so of course, we're going to be talking a lot about putting into practice, I think a lot of the things we talked about in chapters one through three, being driven by love, being motivated by our connection to Jesus and the change that he's called us to in obedience. So we encourage you to get ready for that conversation by reading Ephesians chapter four verses 17 through 32. If you did the previous challenge not too many weeks ago about highlighting all the references to walking, you will notice that you have a lot of highlights here in this section of reading. So that'll be a cool conversation. - Did you notice that all of these readings, all of these sections are divided by comments about walking? Chapter four verse one, this section that we just did starts with walk in a manner. - Walk in a manner worthy. The next one talks about no longer walk as the Gentiles do. The next one after that starts with walk in love. And so we're gonna keep starting each section for a while with that walk and I love that. A new you. This is a new identity that we have that comes with changes to our lifestyle. It'll be fun to talk about. - Put on your walk in shoes and thanks so much everyone for tuning into the Bible Geeks podcast. You can find us on our website at biblegeeks.fm. You can find show notes for this episode in your podcast player of choice or at biblegeeks.fm/189. You can also find this series, Talking Through Ephesians, at biblegeeks.fm/ephesians. There you'll find all the conversation starters, all the downloadable study guides, everything that you need to have these conversations in a small group or with your friends or just on your own. And again, until next episode, everyone, may the Lord bless you and keep you. Shalom. [MUSIC]