DEC 9 2015 | Finding Relational Peace During the Holidays

Sea Change Church · "Finding Relational Peace During the Holidays" · Dr. David Levy · December 9, 2015
Romans 12:18; Philippians 2:3-7
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

One man who is doing that and really wants to see medicine changed is Dr. David Levy. He understands. It's interesting to see that there's a whole world in medicine. I see doctors and scrubs and when people go to Starbucks in their little blue suits, I think that's so cool. I just want to go buy one of those suits and go to Starbucks. I'll even keep the mask on, you know what I mean? You know, pull it down a little bit. Just, I want to be that. I want to be that doctor. I want to, you know, I grew up watching Rampart.

You know, and Emergency 51. And some of you are like, what? But there's a whole world and there's a whole ideology that is happening around medicine. Things I don't understand. And David wants to take his life and infuse it into that. Recently, I got a chance to speak to a bunch of doctors at a funeral that we had here at the church. And I got to say, it was one of the toughest, David spoke with me, one of the toughest crowds I've ever spoken to.

I mean, just, just look, just the, it was almost like you could just put a blank stare on the entire congregation that was in here. It was such a difficult crowd. David is going into those halls and along bedsides. His book is about being a doctor who went in before people's brain surgery and God challenged him, begin to pray with your patients before they go into brain surgery.

Ask them if they'll pray. And the book starts out, I won't ruin the book for you, but it starts out with the first time that he does that and he's sweating and there's a, there's a, you know, the anesthesiologist there and he's waiting for her to leave so he can do the prayer thing. And it's a great story. David's a great guy. Let's welcome up Dr. David Levy to speak to us today.

Thank you. Well, this is the season of joy. And I want to talk a little about joy. Joy registers as a brain chemical. From the time that we're born, we know joy. It gives us, gives us pleasure. Generally, we know it from looking into our mother's eyes. But generally, we receive joy through relationship. And it is that in the holiday season that often is difficult.

I want to tell you a story about Frank and Sally. This is based on a true story, so I've changed their names. Frank and Sally are married. They've got two children and a black Labrador named Max. Frank has been having some trouble on the job. He recently got a decrease in his salary. And that has made Sally a little upset. She keeps telling Frank that he should find another job.

And Frank, well, he's looking, but he's not so excited about finding another job. But in the process, what's happening is Frank is getting a little more distant. He's actually spending more time with Max. He buys him toys from Petco and spends a lot of time with the dog. Sally complains that he's not spending as much time with the children. When she asks him to fix things around the house, they don't seem to get done.

Well, it just so happens that Thanksgiving is at their house this year. And 15 relatives are coming over. So things are already a little bit tense at Frank and Sally's house. The women are all in the kitchen, and the turkey is in the oven. And the turkey then is ready. The women are chatting. Sally is complaining a bit to some of the relatives that the ice maker on the refrigerator hasn't been fixed, and she told Frank to do that.

And the oven door squeaks a bit when she opens it, and she told Frank to do that. So into the kitchen, when the turkey's ready, she calls Frank in to pull the turkey out of the kitchen, out of the oven. And so Frank comes in, and there are women standing around, and as he bends over to pull the turkey out, Sally, of course, is giving him play-by-play instructions.

Now, lift with your legs. You know you have a bad back. And you've put on some weight this year, Frank. And so you can kind of see him grimace a bit as he's reaching for the turkey. He pulls it out. He puts it on the platter. And now Sally says, Now, Frank, you go carry the turkey in and put it on the table. And she calls the children in from outside to come wash up.

She yells out the window, and in through the sliding patio door come the children. And as Frank is walking away with the turkey, he's sort of a little unsteady. Now, be careful, Frank, she says. And then she kind of turns to the women and says, You know, Frank, Frank doesn't seem to do anything right lately. And you can kind of see Frank sort of bristle, right?

And you can feel him sort of tighten up, and his hands start trembling a bit. And he just stops, and then he pauses for a minute, and all of a sudden he starts walking toward the back patio door. Sally says, Frank, Frank, where are you going? He says, I can't do anything right. That's right, Frank. You know you're having trouble lately. I can't do anything right.

And Frank takes the turkey, and he throws it out the patio door. Sally screams, Frank, how dare you? Now, Frank used to cut wood as a young man, so he had a pretty good heave on that turkey. And it's football season. He didn't get a spiral, but he got some hang time. He actually cleared the patio, and the turkey landed in the backyard. As the turkey landed in the backyard, it sort of compressed the bird, and the stuffing came out, ejected onto the lawn, which I think is a huge tragedy.

Stuffing is my favorite part of Thanksgiving. Now, when I say lawn, you may be thinking about grass, but remember, we're in California, and nobody's watering anymore. So this is really just dirt, and it slopes down to the road. So the bronze butter ball hits the dirt and starts rolling down toward the road. Ends up stopped in the pea gravel next to the road.

At which time, Max the Black Lab believes that Frank has just thrown him another chewy toy that has been preheated for him, a 14-pounder. So he starts chewing on the leg. Frank grabs his keys, he grabs his coat, and he starts walking toward the door, and Sally says, Frank, don't you dare walk out that door. And Frank turns around, and he says, I'm going to In-N-Out Burger.

I need some peace. Out the door he goes. Bam! The screen door slams, and Sally does one of those sort of pseudo-fainting things where you go find a chair, and all the women are fanning her with their aprons. Someone brings her a glass of water. So the men are thinking, this is probably going to delay dinner a bit. Maybe they should go with Frank. Frank.

Wisely, they all take a quick look at their wives, and all their wives are pointing, go get the turkey. They all file out the door. They stop watching football. They go file out the door, try to get the turkey, wash it off, clean it off, put it on the table. There were a lot of leftovers that year. Everyone claimed that they were vegetarians, or at least for the season.

So Frank, Sally ends up in the bedroom. She won't come out. The guests clean up. By the time Frank comes home, it's dark. In-N-Out Burger is closed on Thanksgiving. He went to Denny's. By the time he comes home, Sally's in bed, face to the wall, and she's crying. And he comes over, and he sits on his side of the bed, turns on the light, and says, I can't take this anymore.

I want out. And Sally, through her sniffles, she says, well, can we at least try counseling? Okay, Frank says. And so the two of them find themselves in the counselor's office the next week. And this counselor is a Christian counselor, and he reads the verse, starts out in Genesis 2, verse 18. And the Lord God saw that it was not good for man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him.

And Frank says, well, she's no helper to me. And Sally says, well, that's why I don't like to read the Bible, because it's against women. And the counselor, being a wise man, he said, well, that word helper, does it mean what you think it means? Because it's an English word, helper, but the original Hebrew, the way we understand what words mean is we look at the other ways those words are used.

And of all the times that this word, helper, is used, it's used the vast majority for God himself. So if you think that that word helper means that you're the maid or the servant or the person who mows the lawn, then you would think that God is your maid or a cosmic bellhop, which he clearly is not. And as God is a helper, if we are made in the image of God, not only the woman should be a helper to the man, but the man also to the woman.

And so what is a helper? It's someone who is concerned about the other person as well as the health of the relationship. Sometimes you can give the person what they want, but you may damage the relationship. And sometimes you can say no to the person and it's healthy for the relationship. So each relationship that we're talking about today, and it's not just marriage relationships, there are two people, two powerful people, and then there's the health of the relationship.

So how can we have healthy relationships? Because it is that that we really want, that brings us joy, that is designed to give us joy, to give us the brain chemicals that produce this joy. joy. And when we can't find healthy relationships, we will look for joy in other places. And there are plenty of those places around the holidays. There are plenty of chocolate around that gives us that pseudo joy.

There's alcohol. There is any kind of pornography or sexual activity. It hits the same center, but it is pseudo joy. It is not what we really want. We really want connection. But most of us can't get it. So we will settle for pseudo joy, which actually erodes our relationships. It makes it more difficult to have the real thing if we're participating in these pseudo joys.

So the counselor asked Frank and Sally, how are they at resolving conflict? And they both looked at the ground and sort of shook their head. Not so good. He said, what if I show you some tools that would help you resolve conflict? I want to give you an acronym. It's called PLEA. P-L-E-A. A PLEA is an appeal. It's an appeal for connection. It's an appeal for a relationship.

It's what we really want. And the P stands for pause and pray. Pause and pray. Frank, while you were carrying that turkey, could you have paused? Could you, when you're about to have an argument with a person, it's actually very difficult to pause? It's more natural to just say what you're going to say, to just do what you're going to do, to just toss the turkey. For you to be able to pause actually is an act of humility.

It actually hurts a bit because, wait a minute, I need to fight back because if you would have watched Frank, you would have seen that he was breathing quickly and shallowly. That's how we breathe when we have these stress chemicals on board. When we have this adrenaline and the cortisol and all the stress chemicals, we tend to be in a fight or flight mode. What Frank did, first thing was a fight, something that would hurt her, and the second was a flight.

He's out the door. That's what we do. That's what these chemicals want you to do. They just tell you, just get this over with, do something to stop this. And that's when we yell, and that's when we scream, and that's when we have drama because drama generally stops whatever it is that's happening. So that's why drama gets increased around the holidays. Fight or flight.

In order to turn this fight or flight response off or turn it down because the blood flow now is going all to the fear center. It's not going to the frontal lobes where you need it because that's the part that makes your decisions for you, your good decisions, your healthy decisions, the part that helps you with sequences like, if I throw this turkey, it's actually going to hurt more people than I intended.

So part of this, I say pause and pray because prayer is also very difficult when you're under stress. Very difficult when you're under stress. Almost impossible because when you're under stress, you become non-relational. You are not concerned about a person. It's not actually a real person. It's just an obstacle, somebody in your way, or it's a resource you can use to get what you need to get this problem over with.

Look at you're driving in traffic. You're late. You've got those stress chemicals. Your heart's beating fast. You're breathing shallow. The person in front of you is not even a real person, just an obstacle in your way. So we become non-relational with other people and also with God. So in order to get our frontal lobes back, we need to do some deep breathing. The vernacular, just take a deep breath, is actually engaging this other system, this parasympathetic system that helps us slow down.

So I want to practice that right now with everyone going into the holiday season. I want you to put your one hand on your belly. We're going to do some belly breathing. This is what a child does naturally when they come out. They naturally breathe from their belly. As we grow up, we pretty much all chest breathe. Especially, and the more we chest breathe, we get much less air.

And when we breathe from the chest, shallow and rapid, we tell our brain there's danger. Secrete more of those chemicals. When we breathe from the belly, we tell our brain, no danger. It's okay. You're okay. You can relax. You can rest now. So take a few breaths, and I want you to feel your belly coming in and out. To some people, I talked to three people this week who could not do this for anything.

They absolutely couldn't. They have been, and all of them have ADD, had ADD as children, unable to belly breathe. One of the ways we can slow ourselves down, is that and remember, your physical body does affect your spiritual life. The shape you keep your physical body in is going to affect your ability to connect with God and to connect with others. So as we learn to quiet ourselves, and one of the highest predictors of mental illness is the inability to quiet yourself.

deep breathing. So as we breathe, as we practice some deep breathing, and we give ourselves five minutes or twelve minutes to do that, I did that with a man this week, and after twelve minutes he says, I feel the presence of God. Which is probably true because we were working together in a church, but it's also very possible that he has never done any deep breathing to just set his brain at a frequency where he might be able to sense the presence of God.

When we pause, it requires suffering. Whenever we do something that we really don't want to do, and we have to not yell or not have a tantrum, it actually costs us something. Hebrews 5, verse 8 and 14. Speaking of Jesus, it says, although he was a son, he learned obedience through the things that he suffered. Verse 14 says, but solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment, trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

So Jesus learned obedience through the things that he suffered, and that suffering translated into maturity. Well, the same is true for us. Now, we look at the suffering as, oh, he suffered and died on the cross, so we can kind of dismiss it, but I believe that Jesus also, just like you and I, had a hundred different ways every day that he had to suffer.

When his brain would want something and he would say, that's not the way that I want to go. I'm not sure how much chocolate was available to him, or he didn't have any videos that he probably shouldn't see, but we have all of those temptations in our lives. And each time that we say no to that, for the health of our brain, and for the health of our relationship.

Every time I don't look at that magazine cover at the checkout stand, because that's not healthy for my relationship. Oh, I'm free to do it. It's a free country. But I realize if I suffer a bit now, and don't do what my mind wants to do, I'm actually going to benefit in other areas. I will have the kind of relationship that I want to have, which is actually what we all really want, a connection.

We really want that intimacy. And so, by saying no to the food, to the thing that we want to look at, what our mind is drawing us to, every hyperlink that we want to click. The most valuable thing you have is where you choose to put your attention. The most valuable thing you have is where you choose to put your attention. Make no mistake. Every click, every app, every time you decide, your brain's telling you it's not even a decision.

You just naturally click on things. But I want you to become more aware of these things. When you pause, if you're having this argument, when you pause, you also need to not just say, let's talk about this later, but Frank can say, pause, and Sally can say, Frank, when do you want to discuss this? And he needs to set a time. We can't say, oh, let's just talk about this later with no intention of ever talking about it.

That creates a lot of discord because people just keep putting it off. They will never engage. And so when people finally come together to have these dramatic arguments, they feel like they have to say everything at once because it's never going to happen again. And that also destroys a lot of relationships. So set a time to come back and talk. The L in plea is listen, with love to learn.

Most of the time that we are listening in our relationships, we are listening like a lawyer is listening, preparing our rebuttal. And as soon as they take a breath, we say, that's not true. Yes, but. And we stop the process. We stop the flow because we are not listening with love to learn. We are listening because we have an agenda and that's very important to us.

So I want to ask you in your relationships, in those important relationships, what is the purpose of the discussion? Is it to learn? Because this becomes very, very important. And the goal that we're talking about here is not just self-help for your relationships, it's actually making us more like Jesus. In Philippians chapter 2, verse 3 through 7, it says, Doing nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. Being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

You know, this is talking about Jesus actually being God. And he was with God, but he didn't use that authority, he didn't use that position for his own benefit. He left that and he humbled himself because there was something better. It was relationship he was after. And he wasn't going to be able to get the relationship. All through the Old Testament, God doesn't get the relationship without sending his son.

And so all of this really does come back to the cross. The reason we're listening to our partner, our wife, our husband, is because we actually love them. And we want to love them with the best of our ability. So some questions that we need to ask. What do they want that they can't get? What does Sally want that she can't get? Well, Frank needs to listen.

He doesn't want to listen, but they're in the counselor's office, he's able to listen, and one of the things he learns is that in Sally's family of origin, her father left. He lost his job, he started drinking, and then he left. So what does the person want, and what are they afraid of that may be causing this behavior that is so irritating to you? Sally didn't grow up as a little girl saying, I cannot wait to get married and nag my husband.

That's my dream. No, a husband grows up, I cannot wait to get married and then play with the dog. This is not what we are thinking about when we get married. So something is happening, or any relationship, we're all looking for something, we're all looking for this connection, but we need to understand the backstory. What's going on with them? Some of the things that, if you're in a relationship with a man or a woman, things that men fear.

Men fear looking like a fool. Men fear failure. Public embarrassment. They fear being unable to provide. Being seen as a fraud for not knowing something. That's why we don't like to ask for directions. We assume that we have to know everything, but women have a little bit different brain chemistry, and they realize that we're all relational, we're all connected.

It's okay to ask for directions. Disrespect. And Sally, you can see that she was making him feel like a failure, embarrassing him among his relatives, and disrespecting him. Pushing his buttons. Now, what do women fear? That they're not needed. I don't matter. I'm unloved. I'm not attractive. They fear rejection. They fear abandonment. And all of those things were also going on in Sally's mind.

And as we learn what the other person fears and what the other person wants, as we listen to them, one of the ways is that we echo back to them. The E in plead is echo back. Is this what I understand you saying? Is this what you're really saying? Do I got it right? Do I have it right? And if not, then you repeat it as many times as you need to, to convince them that you understand.

And then it might be worth saying, oh, I understand. That makes sense. I see now why my behavior would cause that reaction in you. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. And an important point here is also forgiveness. That when we listen with love to learn, we're also looking for a reason that might help us develop compassion for the person.

Not to look to find their weakness. We're looking for a way to have more compassion so that we can more easily forgive them. Oh, that was in your family. Okay. I understand better now. I can apologize. I'm sorry that I've been doing that to you. And if we can get an apology, the chance that we can forgive is much, much higher, the research shows. If we get an apology.

Most of us will never get an apology, unfortunately, and we need to forgive anyway. And so forgiveness, one of the ways to develop forgiveness is to develop more compassion for them. And Jesus comes in and helps us again with humility and with developing compassion because as he's hanging on the cross, he says, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing.

Now, it would appear to me that those men knew exactly what they're doing, the ones who were pounding the nails in and the religious leaders who were standing there mocking him, that you would think they would know exactly what they were doing. But Jesus says, no, they actually don't. And so whoever has offended you and whoever has offended me, we can take it on from a good source that they don't know what they're doing.

Not in the spiritual arena, they don't. And so we can forgive them. And if we have trouble forgiving, we can also stop and we can ask God to help us. Would you, you are in me. Would you help me forgive? Would you forgive? I give you permission to forgive them. From inside of me. And we can start moving toward releasing these things, getting some freedom from bitterness.

There is nothing that will destroy your relationship as fast as bitterness. That person, there is nothing you see attractive about them anymore. They have no good points. Bitterness will wipe away all of the good. It loves to. It loves to just degrade and destroy their relationship. So going through this and listening and echoing back. And the A is for acknowledge.

Acknowledge with an attitude of humility. I can see that I've hurt you. I want to do better. I can see that you had a reason for nagging me. And Frank, I can see you had a reason for playing with the dog. I get it now. I want to do better. I want to work at this. I'm going to give you just a few moments now to spend some time thinking about your relationship.

And what is the message behind the message? What might they be needing? Or what is it that you want? Or what is it that you need in this season? To move toward the connections that you want to have. I'm just going to, you may even want to put a hand on your belly and do some belly breathing for the next minute. And just connect with God and ask for his input on your relationships.

Thank you. In closing, In closing, I want to say a few more things. One is the victim attitude. Many of us in the holidays, either ourselves or one of our relationships will have this victim. What a victim is, is someone who focuses on my moral superiority to this person and how bad that person is. As we focus on how bad that person is, we don't own our own stuff.

And that's a problem. All God asks us to is to sweep our side of the street. Even if 95% of it is on their side, he's not asking us to sweep that. He's just saying, now, you had something to do with it. Let's come clean with that. And God loves honesty. He moves very close to the contrite and humble in heart. He loves honesty. The last thing I'll say is many of us who have trouble in relationships, there's a verse, Philippians 4.

Philippians 4.4 says, Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice. And many of us say, well, I have a lot of trouble rejoicing on my own. But that rejoice is plural. Basically, he's saying, find somebody and rejoice with them. Many of the times when I call people on the phone or I talk to Adam, I say, let's just stop and thank God for what he's doing.

Let's praise him and let's rejoice together and start some of these positive brain chemicals moving because we all know what's not working. And God knows as well. But if we can start with this attitude of gratitude, we move into relationship as we move into appreciation and gratitude. It actually changes your brain chemistry and makes you more relational.

I have a habit. In the morning and in the evening, I have a pad next to my bed. And I want to give three things that I'm thankful for before I go to bed. And to develop a habit, I keep a list and I have an accountability partner that's going to ask me at the end of the week, did I give thanks for three things every night before I went to bed? Because I want to develop that habit.

And the first thing I get up in the morning, I want to give thanks as well. It is not my natural tendency. And if it's not yours, you may need to develop a habit like that as well. Well, I want to just bless you with the blessing that Moses told Aaron to bless the people this way. I come from the tribe of Levi, the priestly tribe. I love to give this blessing.

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. And lift up his countenance on you and give you peace. Thank you. Thank you.