Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:05] Welcome back to another edition of the Weekday Podcast. Thanks for hanging out with us today. Our hope is that these couple minutes offer encouragement for the rest of your day. And if you'd like to access any of the past episodes, the backlog, just go to weekdaypodcast.com and also if you're looking for just a fuller teaching around any of these concepts, you can check the message replays that are available through the Sugar Hill Church app and on our YouTube channel as well. Today I want to start with a confession, and I'm talking about the escalator at the Mall of Georgia. Now think about it. You're at the mall, you step off at the top and the person in front of you just stops. Like they just stop right there to look around like they've just summited everest. And meanwhile 14 of us are piling up behind them like a cartoon. Or maybe the coworker who hits reply all just to say thanks. Or the merge on 985. You've waited patiently for a mile and someone flies down the empty lane and squeezes in at the last second and everything in you wants to roll down the window and preach a sermon. Now here's the thing. None of those people have any idea that they offended us. We're the ones still carrying it into lunch. Paul's got this little phrase. In Colossians 3:13 he says, Bearing with one another. Now in the original language it means to hold up under something, to put up one with it. And it's ongoing. It's not a one time thing. It's a way of living. Now notice that Paul puts that phrase and the word forgiving side by side, but he keeps them separate. They're not the same thing. Bearing with is for the everyday friction. It's the small stuff that doesn't need a conversation. It just needs you to have a little more capacity. When peace is leading, we become a lot less offendable. And I love that. So here's a simple question to carry this week. Number Next time something rubs you the wrong way, ask yourself, will this matter in a week? Will this matter in a week? If it won't, let it go. Not every offense deserves a hearing. But I have to give you a warning here, because this is where a lot of us get tripped up. There's a way to look like you're bearing with someone when you're really not. We'll say it's fine, we smile, we even mean it in the moment. But underneath we're keeping a detailed spreadsheet. And that's not Grace. That's avoidance. Wearing Grace's clothes. And here's the difference. Bearing with someone means you let it go. Avoidance means you put it in a drawer. And every once in a while, you open the drawer and you take a look. So here's a test. If it was really small stuff, it'll be gone by next week. You won't even remember it. But if you keep going back to it, if you keep opening that drawer, then it wasn't small. It just got put away. And that's not a failure. That's information. That's your heart telling you there's something in there that needs more than patience. So this week, I want to invite you to do two things. One. One is when irritation shows up, ask the one week question and then let go of the small stuff. Let it go. And if there's something you keep going back to, write it down. Don't fix it yet. Just name what's in the drawer. Because not every offense deserves a hearing. Because here's the truth. Some things aren't small stuff. Some things are real harm. And for those, Paul asked for something far harder than putting up with it. And the first people who heard it read out loud had the person it was about sitting right there in the room. I invite you back tomorrow. As we dig into it, have a great day.
