Can You Relate? Part 2
by Kevin Allen
July 14, 2020 · Centerpointe Apostolic Church (Murfreesboro, TN)
Kind: sermon
Scripture: Matthew 7, Matthew 7:3-5, Genesis 1:27-28, Genesis 2:16-17, Genesis 3:11-13, Leviticus 16, 1 Peter 2:22-24

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/kevin-allen--can-you-relate-part-2
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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Also, last Wednesday I kicked off a new series titled Can You Relate, and we were in Matthew chapter 7, which is kind of the tail end of the Sermon on the Mount and greatest sermon that was ever preached. And I started off, we were talking about last week — do you remember? It was a little, it was a little two-word phrase. What was last Wednesday night? Remember what it was about? What was a sermon about that was week? What was it about? Judge not. That's right, guys, we're paying attention. This week we're gonna dive in a little bit deeper into how relationships can get off track. Anybody ever notice that sometimes they just get off tracking? Like, how did it even happen? I feel like everything was going good, and then it just kind of derailed and fell apart. And we're gonna kind of dive into that a little bit, and I feel like we have a little better understanding of where we are and how maybe we can make things better. Now moms, feel free if you need this as a rod, if correction for the moment, two wives, whatever the case may be. That was funny.

Matthew chapter 7 verse number three. I said it because I remember being a kid, like, there was no joke, like mom always had something like this in the purse. Anybody remember having the spoon of Correction, or the rod of Correction, or the sweat? Talking about it, switching to — you ever had, anybody ever have to go before church and get a switch? I can't even been bad yet, because your mama knew, we're gonna go ahead and get it now, because I want you to look at it all during service, so that you know, I don't have far to go. Lots of stories to tell, but I better stick with my sir.

Matthew chapter 7 verse number three. These are red letter words. That means these are the words of Jesus. He says: And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me remove the speck from your eye, and look, at plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove speck from your brother's eye. So tonight, want everybody to hold up. I see your plank. All right, that we're gonna talk about, the plank.

Jesus, I love you. I appreciate all that you do for us. Thank you, God, for being with us tonight in this place, and for your spirit that is here. Well, I pray that you and move so that we can receive the word that you have for us. In Jesus name we pray, and amen.

You know, I feel like that it would be a safe thing to say that you could probably divide the world into two categories, and that is you and everybody else. All right, there, was that profound? That was almost worth you coming out and being a part of this service, right there. That was deep, on it. Yeah, that's pretty deep. So two categories, and they are what? You and everybody else. Now we, we all have this built in us, to feel like that we are the main actor in the story, and everybody else is supporting actors. And then you are here as a part of my story, and things are going good as long as we're sticking to the plotline, long as we're going to the script that is in my head. But the moment you deviate away from that, I get frustrated. Does anybody ever feel that way? Yeah, sometimes like, why would you do that? Like, that's not in the script. Don't you know the script? You shouldn't do that. Maybe I should write the script for you, so you have a version of it. That way you know, you shouldn't do that, because that's not in the, that's not in the script. That's not the way things are intended to be. Now, if there is the, the two categories, which are again — you guys are slow tonight. Let's go again. Two categories are — there we go. Don't you like being interactive in church? So there's you, and there's everybody else. Now, which one of those two are you in charge of? You. That's right. Now, this is deep, in it. I know, we're going real deep tonight. But I feel like I have to do this, because we have this in us, and I speak as one of us, that we really desperately want to control the other side. Yeah. Anybody, like, if you would just listen to me, I could run your life a lot better, because I see everything that you're doing wrong. So if you got thirty five, forty five minutes, we can go over a few things about how you could be better at your life. So we can't control those things. We can only control ourself, one side, decide that we are.

So Jesus, to me, I don't feel like he's settled at all in this teaching. I feel like he's very straightforward, very forthcoming in what he's trying to tell us. There are other people's faults. Everybody else has faults. Did you know they look at your day right now, so you got faults? Something else said that with lucky little feeling, you got faults. Please, I don't want to do any extra counseling this week, all right? Just be nice. You got faults. Now, now, now you say back to them what you do — yeah, we all have faults. Now, now here's the deal, is what we feel like is people seemingly are unaware of their faults. Like, how do you not know that you're doing that wrong? How do you not know that's so annoying when you do that? Anybody ever had one of those coworkers, they do that thing? You know what the thing is. They do the thing, and you're just like, like, if you do that thing you did it one more time, it's like you're just duck, and you know, everything's, it's an innie, and you're twitching because they do annoying stuff. Now, you would think we would know that we have problems too. There any problem free people in the room? This is good. Nobody raised your hand, because I was gonna invite you to the altar, because the Bible has a lot to say about liars. Yeah, we, we have problems now.

But why is it we struggle so much and seeing our own problems, and we can notice the smallest, most subtle things that somebody else does wrong, but glaring big things, it's like we don't see, we don't get it. We, where it's not there. Jesus uses a pretty strong word when he says hypocrite. You always want to correct what somebody else is doing wrong. You're looking at a very small speck, where, there, there I — and you first remove the speck from your eye, or the plank from your eye, then you can worry about somebody else. In other words, I feel like a better way to say that, as Jesus is letting you know, you know, you got a whole lot of problem yourself. Maybe you should just focus on you. And if you can ever get to the point that you narrow the plank down to a speck, then maybe, maybe at that point you can start worrying about somebody else. But right now, you got a lot to worry about yourself.

Now you may be saying, plank, what's this plank business about? We struggle having clarity, rah, our own problems. And the reason I feel like we struggle so much with this is because we are excellent at lying to ourselves. You may notice that you may be a horrible liar to everybody else, the man, you know how to lie to you. You know how to just somehow convince yourself that you are perfect, that you are God's gift, that when God made you, it was not quite perfection, because he's the only perfect one, but you're a real close second. You were runner-up. I saw a bumper sticker one time, they said, I didn't say you were wrong. I said I was going to blame you. You got to be careful, right?

You know what my problem is? My problem is my parents, my spouse, that I don't have a spouse, the place I work, or I don't have a place to work. My problem is this thing. It's little, or it's big. Gertz, we can go on and on. You know, it's interesting how we can always come up with some reason why we are the way we are. The justification, that's the plank. The justification for the behavior that I have — how I can sit down with you a minute, and I know you think I have a problem, but give me just a minute and I'll explain, while this thing is hanging out of my forehead, and by the time I get done you'll be like, oh, I get it. I understand now why that's in your face. We will rationalize everything. We can see, I cannot see my habit of blaming others, or judging others, or avoiding responsibility, because in the end that's exactly what the plank is: avoiding responsibility. The plank is owning my issue. I don't want to own my issue. It's way more convenient, and in a lot of ways more fun, if I just point out yours. Because in the end, I can sleep well at night if I know my problem isn't about, is yours. And that's something, how when someone else is going through something, or something bad happens to them, there's a little twinge. It's out of, it's just like moon, or at least my wife in that bed. We can always see those things. People are their whole life, and they never identify, let alone own or take responsibility for the real problem. You know what the real problem is? You. The real problem in my life is me. Me. If I want to be pointing any fingers, you know, I need to point him right here. There's something going on. I need to take responsibility. What's happening? What's going on? It's so common. And you're probably thinking right now about somebody that you wish was here listening to this sermon. That's the plank. There's a company like, manage, so-and-so was here. I mean, a pastor is all over it. They need this. That's the plank. The good news is, that person is here. It's you.

We learned to evade responsibility, to decide blame, because we're all sinners. A woman and her husband tried to teach her a little son about God by doing this. They were answering questions that they're a little two-year-old hat: Who made the Sun? Well, God made the Sun. Well, who made the tree? God. God made the sir. Who made Big Bird in the Cookie Monster? God made Big Bird in the Cookie Monster. One morning she walked in the room, and it was a wreck. I mean, it was a mess. It was stuff everywhere. She's like, who made this mess? And he responded, God did. Surely it wasn't me. I did that. Where did my children learn how to blame each other, such the early age? Wasn't for me. Surely it wasn't me. You think they're gonna guide it for me? You know, when Chassis was a toddler, she just was learning how to ride her name painting. Beverly can tell the story well. She got a marker and shred her name on the wall, and when her mom called her and asked her who did this, she blamed Josh. I mean, Josh was barely able to drool, much less write chastity on the wall. Nobody — God went to traffic school, and he was there, and he's listening to everybody, and part of the exercise was to talk about why you were in traffic school. And everybody went around, nobody owned up to doing anything. Finally got around him, that's what, what landed him there. He said, well, I guess I'm the only guilty down the room. I ran the stop sign. Which everybody applauded in class. Everybody's happy, because one guy owned up. One, one guilty party is there. But wouldn't church be more like that, to where you're just comfortable enough to say, I'm a flawed person, that I'm a broken human being, I'm not perfect, and I make mistakes. Some days I have struggles. Some days I do okay. Some days I don't do good at all. Why would we feel like we have to hide from those things, to be something that we're really not?

See, we got to learn to quit looking at someone else's spec and start looking at our own plank. Anybody heard the Serenity Prayer? Yeah, about there. See, I think what, there ain't, there is a modification. These big O's, trendier. You only hear the modified version. Here's the modified version: God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it's me.

We spend so much of our life worked up about things we can't control. We spend so much time and so much effort and so much energy trying to fix people, when we're walking around either as worse, or worse off than they are. Brokenness, the balance — what do we do? You know, I feel like it's important that we learn to listen to what God is trying to tell us, because I can tell you this truth from me: they're more earnestly I seek after him, the more sincere I am about him letting me know what is wrong inside of me, the more he points out just where the problem is. The reality is simply this: am I willing to listen and make the change? And I hope we're gonna get there.

See, when Jesus calls us to focus on the plank in our eye, he's calling us to take responsibility for our own life. Yeah, there's overwhelming circumstances — I'll touch on that in a minute. There's things that happened that are beyond our control. But ultimately, every day I make a choice. I choose how I'm gonna react, what my attitude is gonna be, well, my outlooks gonna be, how I'm gonna treat other people. In reflecting, and I feel like this is a deep truth on how God made us from the beginning: Genesis said that God created you and I in his image. In fact, Genesis chapter 1 verse 27 says exactly that: God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them. And God did that, and then he blessed them, and he said, be fruitful and multiply and prosper and rule, have dominion, and filled the earth, and take charge, and be responsible for, for the fish in the sea and the birds in the air and the animals there. Tend to the garden I gave you, and all the stuff that's moving across the face of the earth. God made us for responsibility. I must say that again: God made us for responsibility. We are never more like what we should be in our created state than we are being responsible for the Dominion God placed us in. Yes, to live me.

See, here's the deal. In this Sermon on the Mount, as he's bringing this to the crescendo, to the moment, to the, to the, to the final part for us to take, all of the things, all of the countercultural statements that he has in that sermon, he's leading into the final chapter. And he starts off by saying, judge not. We talked about that last week, about what that really meant. But, but starting verse number three, he starts getting really down to where the rubber meets the road, and says, why don't you quit worrying — what's he talking about? He's talking about, you were judging, and he says, don't do that. And then he takes it a step further, one more level, and says, you're so worried about little small things, little subtle stuff that it's in people's life, quit it, because you got a whole big bunch and yours you should be worried about. Don't get caught up on those little things that are there, when you yourself have a planked responsibility.

See, here's what he was wanting you to know, is that you have a kingdom, and the kingdom is your life, and you are to be in control of your life. It's a gift God gave you. It starts with your body. How are you taking care of your temple? Are you doing what you should be doing? Because you were meant to reign, to be empowered, and to be led by God's Spirit over your kingdom. How you take care of your body. How do you spend your time? The most precious commodity you have is your time. You don't get anymore. How're you spending it? What are you doing with it? Are you making good on it? You decide those things. How do you treat other people? You decide. What were your attitude be today? You decide. What will you feel your mind up with today? Do you decide? God made you and I to be responsible for this, not telling other people to dictate those things, but for you and I to make a decision: what am I going to do with all the things that I get to be in charge of? And so many people don't do anything with what God gave them. They simply wasted. They simply wish it away, because everybody else seems to have this illusion of perfection, and I'm just stuck in my circumstances.

Genesis 2:16 and 17, we see here responsibility was given. Says this in verse 16: And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden you may freely eat. How many trees? All of them, right? Except he puts it in there, but of the tree, the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. So how many trees are there, any, anybody know? There's a bunch, right? I mean, it's not just three or four. There's a lot of trees, a lot of trees that yield fruit. And he says, look how all those, you enjoy every one of those, but this one, this one right here, don't know, don't bother that one. God always has something separate to set aside that belongs to him. Always has something that separate, set aside that belongs to him.

But notice what happens after they do what God told them not to do. Genesis 3 verse 11: And he said — that he would be God — who told you that you were naked? Here's the question that's important: Have you eaten from the tree which I commanded that you should not eat? All right, that was the question, right? He said, who you naked? But any, or they gets down and said, hey, wait a minute, beyond the naked, have you eaten up the tree I told you not to eat? Now that seems, there's a straightforward question. That seems straight for ting. Does everybody agree that's a straightforward question? Feel like it would be, right? So do we get a straightforward answer? 12: Then the man said, the woman who you gave — even him, even me. I didn't ask for you. Just put me sleep. You need to rip out. You gave her to me. Then she come bounding up with this fruit. I mean, I don't know. Maybe I knew it was wrong. Maybe I don't know. But it was her. Now he asked a simple question, but he did not get a simple answer back. I feel like he said me, like, yep, it was me. You know what, God, I did, my bad. Uh, it was your command. I just, I didn't. But no, blame started. Did it get any better with Eve? No. He just threw Eve under the bus, ran her over with it, didn't backed up. It was her. Basically he was saying, God, it's your fault. That's what he was saying. But then he questions Eve. Verse 13: Lord God said the woman, what is that you have done? And the woman said, this is a serpent. What's going on here? Nobody's taking responsibility. Now, was this the last time that a married couple has had an argument and blamed? Boy, it's quiet in the room right now, with it. No, absolutely not. Now, it does not mean that we don't confront each other. It does mean that we don't speak hard words when we probably need to do a little examination of self.

You know, I've spent quite a number of hours with couples who are going through struggles in their marriage. Here's what I found very interesting to me, and I'm not a licensed therapist practice. We got Dr. Griggs in the house. She probably can go on for hours about how I do everything wrong when I meet with people. But I asked questions when I'm meeting with individuals, and the questions I ask always found a very interesting, because, man, people will rail on for hours about what their spouse has done wrong. But anytime I try to shift it over to, okay, I know, I know he did this. I know she did that. I know we don't know you. You brought a list, and typed up, double-spaced. We've got 15 pages of it. I'll get to it, but let's just set that aside for just a minute. I just want to ask a question: could there be a possibility that, maybe, just maybe, you have some part to play in the dysfunction that is in the relationship? Well, I mean, I'm out of it, you know. I feel like if I wants to make a, draw a circle and say, okay, we got a pie here. Now what portion is this of this pie, if problem is, is going to your spouse? I mean, they'd have like a slit, like, I'm like, okay, well, let's just talk about then that little bitty, you know, WeightWatchers sliver you put there, that's you. Let's talk about it. Man, you just — why? Because we don't like that. We don't like the responsibility. We don't like the ownership. People get so addicted to complaining about the Speck and other people, that they can't see the plank in their own. If you focus on the part of your life — and in focus is, is the right word to use, because you have to drill down a little bit and understand that I got problems, I'm not perfect — if you focus on your part, here's what, here's what I know happens: you'll start to grow. When you understand that I have something I need to work on too, because again, I'm gonna go back, there's two categories of people. What was the first one? What was the second one? Which one can you control? So you can only change you. Are you willing to make those change? Because you can. You can pray, God, God help me. God, change me. God, grow me. God, make me to see the areas in my life that I need to change. God, me. And what will happen over time is your kingdom will increase. You will gain more and more dominion, and that's exactly what God wanted. But on the other hand, if you're always focusing on the other person's problem, if you spend all your time trying to tell them what it is they need to change in their life, your kingdom decreases, because it's an area that's outside your jurisdiction. You're made to rule you, your kingdom. What happens is, the problems in your life grow, and resentment grows, and negativity grows, and your little kingdom get smaller and smaller and smaller, because then you get into simply what I call the blame game. And blame is not productive. It does not help you at all. Blayne spoils relationships. Blame will ruin and poison families. It undermines your kids. It violates loves. But I can rationalize so quickly why it's okay. It's easy for me to fail to live with gratitude, to let love abound inside of me, to not have the right kind of energy or excitement or enthusiasm or faith or dependence on God or joy, and then I can just blame it on my schedule. I can blame it on my family, or some outside force, instead of me.

You see, taking responsibility for your life as part of God's plan for growth — you just owning up to the fact that I could be a better person if I tried — it doesn't mean that you ignore in social justice. It doesn't mean that you deny that you may have been a victim of some kind of horrible abuse or betrayal or disease that you didn't ask for, things that were done outside of your control, or people that should have been protecting you didn't protect you or take care of you the way they were supposed to. And, but it, but it affects your kingdom, your little kingdom that you're supposed to rule. It comes into play, and all of a sudden you implement limitations. You, because you refuse to deal and go to God and ask him, because what his desire is, is for the you decouple your life up with his, because his kingdom is about effective change. And when your kingdoms out of place, it's out of whack, things draw out. You have to be careful, because there's always some way, something that you can blame for. We can all come up excuses. If I had better co-workers, then it would be better. If people weren't lazy around me, do their job, then I would be so tired all the time, let me crank when I come home. If, if this didn't happen, a wife would just do this, or my kids would just be this way, or, or whatever, we can shift blame. When our kids are out of control, will it be, if I had a youth pastor, the Karen, Sunday School Department is to be better. But we always are serious, shifting and focusing to blame somewhere else, and never stop to ask ourself the question: could there be something wrong with me? Could there be something that maybe I could be better at, instead of always looking for the reason as to why everybody else is to blame for the problem I'm dealing with? Could it be me?

There's a term I've referred before in my teaching and preaching. It's biblical. It's called scapegoating. All peoples, all society, all cultures have a custom of scapegoating. It's a practice that you find somebody or some group, and you pin the blame on it for them. It's their fault. It's, it's their reason. And then you give all the resentment and all the anger, and, and all of the whatever you're dealing with, you, you blame it on them. You push it over there. It's there for, you know, it happens. Let's be honest, right? Let's just be truthful for here for a minute. How many of you — for some of you, all know this will be just a second, but let's rewind to elementary school. You there, you remember going in, there was the one kid. Do you remember the one kid? Because everybody knew the one kid, unless you were the one kid. There was always the one kid that got picked on. How did that happen? I mean, did you come in with the sign that says, you know, please pick on me? But something about him, either they looked a little different, maybe, maybe they didn't have the right shoes, as shallow as that is, or the right kind of clothing label, or whatever there is. Or maybe, maybe their parents couldn't afford to help them with, with their bad ether. They didn't have the opportunity to bathe on a regular basis. Or maybe they had a, heaven forbid, a speech impediment that they couldn't control. Whatever the reason, though, this, remember there was somebody. Do you remember, dude? I'm not saying you're guilty, but do you raise your hand if you had, remember there was a somebody in your school? Yeah, because there's always a somebody. You know what that somebody is? The scapegoat. It says somebody that everybody picked on, because it made them feel better. It made life a little more tolerable, if, if there was the somebody that could, that could bear the brunt of everybody else. That's scapegoating.

There's a study that came out a couple of decades ago that said families very often have scapegoats, the one person the family who's the black sheep, who all the problems get blamed on, so that everybody else feels better about their life. Nations have scapegoats. For Hitler, it was the Jews. For Stalin, it was the descendants. For Rwanda, it was at itse group of the tribe. Scapegoating is the ability to dehumanize people and to blame them for all the problems.

But let's go back to the Bible, back to the Old Testament, back to Leviticus, back to the sixteenth chapter, on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. The priest actually had to choose. Lots were given for the goat. There was two there, one that was gonna die, and one that the priest would put his hands on the top of his head, and he would have begin to outloud confess all the sins of the nation, and then that goat was led by a fit man way out to be released. That's where the term comes from: scapegoat. There were other cultures that did this, other nations, but oftentimes it was out, actually Goethe was actually human that had to die. That word for scapegoat victims who would be sacrificed was Pharma chaos, in a Greek, where we get the word pharmacology from. That's why nobody likes to go the pharmacy. I'm just made it up, really.

You see this dynamic at work in scriptures. You see it when, when cane — unlike Abel — brings in an unfit sacrifice before God. God is not pleased. The what takes place? Cain slays Abel. He thinks to himself, well, if Abel's not around, that God has no choice but to escape me. He gave the scapegoat there. But God was not happy. That did not satisfy. Cain was just trying to escape his responsibilities about owning the mistake for what was wrong in his life.

But in the Bible, something unprecedented happened. Stories of blame, stories of scapegoating, they, they go away. We would be told these stories, in all of a sudden we actually become sympathetic to the victim, to the one who gets scapegoated, because God cares about the victim. God condemns the act of these people and families and nations that were doing these things. God said, the blood of Abel cries out from the ground. Joseph's brother, brothers, they try to scapegoat him, cover his coat and blood, presented to the dad. Why, why was Joseph annoying? Yeah, she's, Joseph had known better, maybe should have kept his mouth shut. Sure, probably so. Did he do what he did to Mary death? What problems that go unchecked lead to death. Eventually, something's gonna die, if you can't handle, if you can't take ownership, if you can't take some responsibility of, I'm allowing my feelings about my brother to go way out of bounds. Somebody should have stopped them when they were just having the conversation about killing him. Somebody said, said, oho, oh, hang on just a minute. Did you hear what we just said? We were gonna kill our brother. Did you hear what we just said? We are, we really having a conversation about killing our own brother? But no. You know why? Because none of them was willing to deal with the plank. All they could see was that Joseph had a speck.

I promise you, if you don't learn how to deal with the plank, you become a murderer. You'll commit spiritual murder. Jesus, the innocent one, the one that was blameless, the one that was sinless — all the powers of the day, all the religious leaders, everyone who was in charge, everyone should, who should have known, who, who should have picked up on all that was being fulfilled, all the prophecy that was coming into play, the one that they should have recognized — he comes in, he becomes the scapegoat, the one who could have saved them. Pilate says, look, I'm washing my hands of this. I don't want anything to do with what you guys are doing. I can't find anything wrong with this. I'm backing away. On the cross, he lay bare, exposed to the violence, to the injustice, to the wickedness.

We're told in 1st Peter chapter 2 verse 22: He never sinned, no ever deceived anyone. He did not retaliate when he was insulted, nor threat and revenge when he suffered. He left his case in the hands of God, who always judged fairly. He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross, so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you were healed. It was his great love. He absorbed all the sin, all the hatred, all the violence, all of that. He took all that on himself on the cross. He paid the price. He made the atonement. And in his resurrection, he says, now that the blaming doesn't get you anywhere. You're only trying to shift off the responsibility that you yourself need to take. Gee has become, against all odds, the great skate go. The ultimate skate bill. The final skate go. The one who took our sins away, so that you and I could be forgiven.

If there's anything in us that, that should come alive in this moment, it should be simply this: that I need to recognize that I am a sinner, and before I go point out faults in anybody else, I better be sure there's not something glaringly wrong with me. So I want you to take out your planks this week. I want you to keep this with you. I want you to write on it. You can do it now, if you want, if you have a pen. You know, we didn't pass out pens, because I want this to be personal, because planks are personal. I want you to pray about this. I want you to ask God to reveal some things to you, because I feel like some are so blind in this room. They easily spot the faults and the failures and the shortcomings and everybody around them. It's easy to blame. It's easy to say, well, if this was different, if that was better, then I wouldn't be where I am. It's, it's easy to do that. It comes natural to us all. But I want you to take this plank. I want you to write on — already written on mine — we should write on that thing, the area where you know God needs to do some work in your life. We should write it on there. I want you to carry this with you. And I got a story I want to tell. Before, in Henry Ford was in the boom, in the height of creating this new revolution in our society, the car. It changed the world. As production was ramped up at its highest, and things are going so great, one of his largest plants shut down. Shut down, because the massive electrical generator that was running his assembly lines wasn't working. Panic goes through the plant. They're calling every engineer they got. Everybody's examining. Everybody's scratching their head. Everybody's trying to figure out how in the world they're gonna be able to get this up and going. In a couple of days passed by, and Henry Ford is checking out, because he sees he is losing money by the minute. The assembly line is not running. Workers are just standing around twiddling their thumbs. So finally, call goes out to a electrical engineer they knew in the town, that supposedly had a reputation for being the man who could fix problems like this. So they call the guy in, and he walks around for a couple hours looking at the generator, going over it, inspecting, peaking in, doing all this stuff. It gets up on a ladder, and he's looking at the top of the generator. For about two hours, he pulls out a piece of chalk out of his pocket, right there on the side of the generator, he marks a big white X, crawls down off his ladder. He goes to the engineers of the plant, and he tells the engineers, he says, right behind that X, you have a couple of bad coals. You need to go in, pull those out, rewire them, re-- spin them, and put them back in. That's gonna fix your problem. The engineer's man, they popped to it. Henry Ford's like, come on boys, get it going, to get it going. Short enough, they do exactly what he said, and the generator starts running again. Oh, everybody's exciting, and the plant goes back up and home. The man goes home, sends a bill in to Henry Ford, sends the bill for $10,000 to fix the electrical generator. Henry Ford goes ballistic — that's a lot of money in those days — so he does, the secretary says, you write him a letter backs out on an itemized statement. To which the man responded very quickly, right back to him, with a bill for out of my statement: line item one, marking chalk X on the side of broken generator, one dollar. Line item —, knowing where to mark the X, 9999 dollars. And Henry Ford paid the bill.

Now, why would I bring that story up to you? For simply this: every one of us has a plank. Every one of us has a plank. Every one of us should have something written on our plank. But what I want you to do is to pray this week, God, help me work on this, so that I one day can mark an x over this. Because as long as I leave this undone, this defines me. Everywhere I go, this defines me. This is what I'm known by. This, it always comes up. But allow him to do a work inside of you, so that you can remove the plank, and you can put an X across that, because he knows where the problem is, and he can help you solve the problem.

See, this is what's important. This is why I want you to keep this with you this week. I want you to put this someplace where you can see it every day. In fact, for some of you, you know exactly where to put this, because you can put it in a place where you're most susceptible to be what on the plank. For some of you, you need it on the dash to your car. Enemy's right there, so the moment you're, you're about to be this, you'll see it right there: no, no, no, I don't want to do that. Some of you, you need to put this in your house somewhere every day, so the, before your this to your family, you'll see it, and you'll remember, I don't want to be that. Some of you may need to put this on your desk or your cubicle or wherever it is. You know where to put this, somewhere. Some of you may need to keep in your purse — that weights twofold, it's spank the kids and they remind you — but keep it. I want you to keep it with you, because I want our relationships to be the best they can be. And the only way we can truly make them the best they can be is we have to work on the thing that we can't control. Two categories: number one is, number two is. And you can control which one you.

So, as you stand with me tonight, I'm gonna ask you the question that's a title this series: Can you relate? Can you relate? Now, we've talked about not judging. We've talked about planks and specs. You come back next week, we're gonna talk about pearls and swine's, cuz God has another word for us. Let's praise Jesus. Thank you, God, for the truth is in your scripture, for the things that you reveal to us each and every day. God, I pray that we continue to have a hungry heart to make the changes in their life we need to make, to realize and understand that each and every one of us needs your mercy and grace in our life every day. God, I pray that I would not be a person who's so quick to judge, so quick to point out the faults and the fairs and other people, to think things I shouldn't think, but instead reflect internally inside myself. They asked questions: God, is there something inside of me that needs to be changed? God, I pray as each and every one of us spend some time seeking after your face this week, that your spirit will reveal to us the very area in our life we need to work. God, I pray we'd write this down on our planks we've been given. God, we would keep these things nearby, and we would remember it. Lord, we are to be better people in you. God, help us make the changes we need to make, so that one day we can feel confident enough to mark an X out on those things, because it no longer defines who we are. I love you. I think you got for hearing our prayers and for being with us tonight. We ask all these things in Jesus name, and let the church say Amen. God bless you. You are dismissed in Jesus name.