and so I want you to keep that in mind: Matthew, chapter number 19, verse 4. Uh, let’s look at what Jesus says. Jesus says these words: «Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? They are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.» I want to talk from this subject. Some of you may get a kick out of this because I don’t know why I started saying this, but I say it all the time. I’m using it as the subject for today’s sermon. I want you to put it in the chat; here’s the topic of today’s teaching: Did you hear what I just said? Did you? Did you hear what I just said? A couple of weeks ago, I shared my conviction, as I regularly do with the spiritual family called Change Church, that there are three ways you can live your life: Culture’s way, the Church’s way, or the King’s way. I communicated during that presentation that these three lanes of living lead to three different levels of living; that the lane you run in determines the level you live on. Living culture’s way leads to sinking; living the Church’s way leads to surviving; living the King’s way leads to thriving. So, I can’t take the wrong lane and get to the right level, and I can’t complain—or shouldn’t complain—about the level I’m on when I wasn’t willing to change the lane I was in. I hope I’m making sense here. Three ways, three lanes we can live our lives, and each lane leads to a level; those levels are sinking, surviving, and thriving. However, this is what I’ve learned: When it comes to running in these lanes, we must run in these lanes in every area of our lives. What am I saying? I’m saying it’s possible to run in one lane in one area but run in a different lane in another. Am I making sense? Let me unpack this. Some of you have seen this—there’s this graphic, as some of us learn visually; I’m one of those people. So, there’s this graphic we created here at Change Church; it’s called the Life Pie, and we use the pie, not a chart, because I like sweets. I’m getting delivered—kinda, but anyway. We want you to see, I want you to see something: When I talk about life, when we talk about life change here, we don’t simply mean behavior modification. When we say Jesus wants to change your life, we’re talking about every slice in this pie here: your character, your business and work, your resources, your health, and your relationships. So, when I want you to catch this: When I say there are three different lanes we can live in, it applies to every slice of your life. So when it comes to my character, I can live the culture’s way, the Church’s way, or the King’s way. When it comes to my business or my work life, I can live culture’s way, the Church’s way, or the King’s way. The same goes for my resources, my health, and my relationships. And this is what I’ve learned: It is possible to live the King’s way in one area and live the Church’s or culture’s way in another area. But if our life hasn’t changed, we shouldn’t call it life change; we need to call it what it is. Some of us, our lives haven’t changed; your character has. So, we’ll live in the King’s way when it comes to character, but we live in culture’s way when it comes to our resources. So if I want to next-level my life, I’ve got to identify which slice I need to lean into based on the season I’m in. Because what people must wrap their heads around is this: In culture, it seems as if you can live a compartmentalized life, but when we are influenced by a kingdom or a Christ-centered worldview, what we realize is everything is interrelated. You might not know it’s interrelated, but it is. Your emotional health affects this—oh yes indeed! Did you hear what I just said? Emotional health affects relationships, and then relationships affect your emotional health. Your character affects your relationships, but your relationships affect your character. Don’t be deceived: Bad company corrupts good character. Am I making sense? Your character determines how you handle business and how you do work. If you’re an entrepreneur, it determines whether or not you are exploitative or profitable because you can be profitable without being exploitative. Am I making sense, y’all? And so in this series called «Respectfully,» this is what we’re arguing: If our life is going to change, we’ve got to be willing to have some tough talks when it comes to some of these slices. We talked about having tough talks with ourselves; we talked about having tough talks with God. Come on! We talked about having tough talks with friends. I want to come back to this relationship slice today because today I want to talk about how to have tough talks with Bae. I don’t know how it is in the chat, but if you’re still here, I just want you to put «I’m here.» Just, but I’m here! I want you to put «I’m here.» You see, when we live the King’s way in this slice, the manifestation of what it looks like will be different based on who…
