Relationship Goals Week 7: The ‘I Can’t Can’

⁴ Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;

1 Corinthians 13:4-5

In this the 7th installment of our Relationship Goals series, Pastor Yami tackles the final statement of vs. 5: “[Love] is not irritable or resentful.” Our human reality is that irritation and resentment are constant parts of our lives; the question we need to ask is not “Are you resentful about anything?” but “What are you resentful about right now?”
Now, we don’t get resentful for no reason. Injustice–whether on a large societal scale, a personal unfairness scale, or a divine “God how could you?” scale–is the most common cause of our undealt with resentments. And we SHOULD be angry about injustice; in fact, Pastor Yami reminds us, our anger about injustice can be the motivating force for righting injustice and creating change. However, when we exagerrate the injustice that makes us angry, add wildly to the pain, and stew on the injuries or simply shove them down so that they fester inside of us, instead of being a powerful force for good, our anger becomes resentment and quickly turns to poinson within us. Resentment unacknowledged, especially when it is resentment with God, can turn us into reckless, people-pleasing, destructive bullies. In this sermon, Pastor Yami challenges us to recognize and name our bitter spots and resentful feelings as the necessary first step to being able to grow through them and love well even when we are confronted with injustice, betrayal, or pain.

Our next steps for this week

Next Steps:

1. What hurt is defining you?
2. What struggle have you made your identity?
3. Where do you need to see God’s kindness towards you?

The reality of life is there is no life apart from relationships. Your relationships might be with stuff, not people, but your life is relating itself to STUFF. So our heart and our goal in this series is to just be at a place where we ask the hard questions, we get into the space of trying to understand what is love really like. Now when you get into scripture, scripture has a lot of stuff to say about love. So we are are looking at some few amazing things that God has said in his word in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 of what love is.

Catch up on earlier Relationship Goals sermons: Week 1 , Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5