Criticism and Compliments

Remember that old saying sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never harm me what I must.

My head open on a rock. Dr. Kaylee took some metal clamps to squeeze them atop my head in a couple days I was an insult.

Thoughtless work can penetrate were no stone can ever reach or no stick can ever touch because he can get to the sole use having incredible power they can encourage and build up but they can also cause incredible harm today on renewing her by Dr. RC Sproul looks at the profound impact her words can have in the relationship between husband and wife.

Once again I like to welcome you to this series of lectures on Christian marriage according to the recent polls in the surveys that have been taken among the researchers, the number one reason given in the United States for the breakdown of marriage is sex.

The second greatest problem. According to the researchers in destroying harmony in the home is money and the third reason that is frequently given is the problem of interference of in-laws. Now I certainly recognize and grant that those 3 Problems Have Raked Ave. ache and marriages in this country, but I think there's something that is even more severe in its power to hurt and destroy marriages.

The number one problem with marriages is the human tongue.

It's what we say to each other that I think contributes more than anything else to the breakdown of trust, breakdown of love and the breakdown of respect between two people in the marriage relationship. That problem may manifest itself sexually or in the arena of money we can understand how those problems come to bear as well as intrusion of in-laws, but we haven't learned how to talk not only to each other by way of communication that we have often been cool and thoughtless inflicting damage on each other with un-guarded remarks by way of contrast, let me read to you a brief section from the Old Testament that involves a celebration of love which is found in the song of Solomon. The fourth chapter of the song of Solomon begins like this where the author is saying, behold, thou art fair, my love, behold, thou art fair, you have dogs eyes within your locks in your hair is as a flock of goats that appear from Mount Gilead know that may not sound very complementary to say that your hair reminds me of a flock of goats prancing about the mountainside of Gilead but in antiquity.

That of course is a romantic and deep poetic expression of beauty and then it says your teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even sure which came up from the washing wherever everyone bears twin that I would say that about me as a note to reviewers are alike in the spirit of the person is described as having teeth like twins were each one is identical and matching one with the other and none is barren among them that is thrown any gaps between the teeth. Your lips are like a thread of scarlet in your speech is calmly new temples are like a piece of pomegranate within your locks in your neck is like the power of David built for an armory were on their hands. A thousand bucklers. All shields of mighty men. Your two breasts are like two young rows that are twins which feed among the lilies. Thou art all fair, my love.

There is no blemish in the know tradition has it within the Christian groups that what we find in the song of Solomon is an extended symbolic form of address and allegory of Christ's perfect love for his church that what we have here is a spiritual song celebrating the love that Christ has for his bride difference.

I think that represents more than anything I could point to the distortion and intrusion into the Christian faith of that Greek view. I was talking about that sees physical attraction and physical love as being something that is intrinsically evil. I would say just by way of passing you don't have time to defend it from an academic perspective that they're just simply is no justification whatsoever for interpreting the song of Solomon simply as an allegory of Christ's love for the church. What this is is a divinely inspired love song where the Holy Spirit is celebrating romance between two people. I think it's fantastic because we have a hard time with that.

We have to reinterpreted and make it somehow. A spiritual lesson but think of this before.

This thing could even qualify to be an allegory of spiritual love, it would first have to be acceptable to God for the content that's in there. So why can't we just take it at face value, but when I want to secede in here is that in this divinely inspired expression of love. The verbal relationship between the man and the woman is one of compliments. You don't here in this love song in the celebration of romance.

The man saying to the woman, why don't you do this or the woman saying to the man you are always late.

You are never going to make anything of use. In other words the tongue is being used, to honor the partner the New Testament tells us that the tongue is a small member of the boasts of great things and as a capacity by one spark to set hold for us ablaze that the tongue is the most destructive member of the human body with it we praise God with it. We also bring curses down on each other. I remember when I was a child, how there was a fellow in our community that was a bully used to make fun of me bicycle up the street to play with the guys and he would say, here comes Bucky beaver and he would make fun of my buck teeth and that crushed me. He was older than I was. I wanted to be accepted with the older kids to build play with them and every time I showed up the same kid kept talking about my buck teeth and I came home one day crime and my mother met me at the back door. She said what's the matter I said so-and-so called me buck teeth again and my mother felt sorry for me and she's trying to help me deal with this kind of thing that happens in everybody's life.

She says some let me tell you how to handle that when somebody says something to this. Not very nice you just say to them, sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me so okay that sounds good so I went back up I went up the street and here comes the sake of severe comes buck teeth again. I look at our specifics and stones will break my bones, and nasal never obligate in my head that early long because it still her and I found out what my mother told me wasn't sure is one time I split my head open on a rock with blood all over the place. I came home I thought he would die. Dr. Tammy took some metal clamps and squeeze them atop my head in a couple days I was no time guy comes breaks my heart was in the cast. Six weeks later my arms fly in and so thoughtless work can penetrate were no stone can never reach or no stick can ever touch because it can get to the soul at a constant experience which is my favorite illustration of this world woman came to see me because her marriage was in trouble and I could not help but notice is that woman came into my office that she was an extraordinarily attractive woman. She really was and she began to tell me about the problems she was having with her marriage and then she spilled out her story and she said that she could not respond to her husband because she knew that she was not attractive method of not here get just like my mother.

My mother used to buyer close at Maxine's in downtown and at Saks Fifth Avenue and they should go to the beauty parlor and it should come walking into the house looking like Grace Kelly stepping out of Vogue magazine or something to say hello. I look awful tonight that in our standard, it was going fishing again loves you she was fishing for commas because my reply was posted on a lot a lot like dealing with the most beautiful mother. The narrow SON.

This woman did that to me was, she said in the counseling chambers that she could respond her husband because she knew that she just wasn't attractive enough, I wanted to say, not lady of play games with me and I realized she was serious. So I began to explore in her past. Here's what she said. She said that when she was a young teenager just growing in adolescents that she struggled with her appearance for several reasons. The first thing she was afflicted with teenage acne adolescent actually exits okay how to put Clearasil on her face every night.

In addition to that one. Her adult teeth came and they came in all crooked and so her teeth were funny and she was one of the first girls in her class to have to wear glasses and her prescription was so strong that her glasses were like the bottoms of Coke bottles, so here's a school runner-up.

She gets braces on her teeth. She got Clearasil honors.

It's that she's got moms a coke bottle look around at she's water up as she's not too pretty right. However, at the same time nature and down her with a very beautiful body. She was one of the first to develop and the boys noticed and one day she was walking across the schoolyard when she was 13 or 14 years old and the guy who was the super athlete than the big man on campus kid saw her coming and he laughed and said to another follow-up within her hearing. Look at so-and-so put a bag over her head and should be terrific.

What happened in the ensuing years the braces did the job. Her teeth right now.

She outgrew the adolescent acne contact lenses replaced the coke bottle glasses and the ugly duckling emerges as a beautiful young woman and everybody that saw her noticed her beauty except her 25 years later she was still convinced that all she lacked to be a good wife was a bag over her head. The human tongue can devastate another person was in an airport once looking for something to read, and I was going through the paperback book rack and I saw this book that attracted my attention in the title the book simply was criticism. I think another rack. I looked at it and I could recognize the name of the author, the publishing company I'd never heard a loud the pages. The paper was cheap great paper and the print was on wavy lines outside the system vanity press only printed in their basement but I am in the El Cerrito. I bought the book I took on the airplane and the book started with the story for this man told about visiting New York City. That was his first mistake, and he decided to explore the city at night. That was mistake number two but the real Lulu came when he decided to take a shortcut in New York City at night by going through an alley and so he starts down this alley at night in New York as he is halfway back in the alley and there's a full moon out he sees in the shadows. Two guys come up from behind garbage cans with knives glistening in the moonlight and start moving toward him, and at this point the author interrupted his own narrative and he says to the reader what do you suppose this man did in that circumstance. What would you do if you had half a brain would you do go the other way if you saw two guys while graduate lives in New York City and alley and you could run to get another that's what you do right. That's a naturalistic self-preservation said but we know to run from that. We don't know how to run from this what you do when somebody comes up to you and says I'd like to give you some constructive criticism. The Bible tells us to speak the truth in love, comment on your heads a Christian friend got to say brother or sister. I want to tell you something in love.

My best advice to you is if somebody comes up to you and says I want to tell you something low.

The best thing you can do 95 times out of 100 is turn around and run, run for your life. There is such a thing as constructive criticism. I know that I don't know what the exact percentages are but my best guess is that at least 95 out of the hundred criticisms that you receive and you get from people are destructive criticism and they're not mentioned in one caught all of our lives to accept criticism gratefully. We give people a license to criticize us and when somebody comes up and says brother I want to type something in love and they stick a knife in as Christians here's were supposed thanks I needed that. That's really going to help with my sanctification and if you really love me do it again twisted in their a little deeper so that I can grow in the spirit while there killing. What if we had any brains would turn around and run again. There are forms and ways to experience constructive criticism and we all need it.

I read what I wrote one book a few years ago for Harper & Row, I turned it in to my editor and I got it back after he took it through copyediting and I counted up over 10,000 corrections to be made. They were minor, here and there but like Mr. came back with so much red ink on it look like a Christmas tree and I was so depressed and then I remembered something lady had said to me once RC don't ever let anybody tell you you can't write an experience that I had to happen like this.

A consultant came to Ms. Dorsey I want you to write down a piece the five most meaningful compliments you've ever received in your life. Saw Celeste a fun exercise is not done I get to sit down here and sit back and try remember nice things people said about so I rack my brain. Everybody's at least five compliments their life and I just wrote on the first by the came in to my mother. I was shocked with what I saw at that man come to me and said RC write down the piece of paper.

The 50 people who had the most positive influence in your life whose names I would've written out for those 50 people, but I know I never would've dreamed to include this woman whose name appeared twice in that list of five compliments. It was my eighth grade English teacher, the one that stood out to look should give this assignment to write a descriptive essay was our first experience with creative writing, so I wrote this little essay that I made up the bottom mountain and I turned it in. As she took the papers home it came time to grade them. She brought them back.

She's going to deliver them. The class and pass them out.

She said class and I were to pass out these papers. But before we do it. I want to read one of the whole class. She wrote to the whole class and then when she was done she went over to this bulletin board that was above the blackboard and she took a thumbtack and she put my essay up on the bullet and set on that paper A+. Don't let anyone ever tell you you can't write you have any idea how many people have tried to tell me that I can do you know how many people have tried to discourage me from doing what I wanted to do artistically with a pen and I have nurtured to my bosom. I have held on, sometimes with my fingernails to the kind statement that that woman made because I believed her complement. I know that she minute and I trusted her authority and be a good experience for you to do them. If you really want to find out about yourself.

Go home and do that same text. Write down the five most meaningful compliments. You can think of that you've ever received. And then when you're done.

If you want an exercise in terror.

Turn the paper over and right five most painful criticisms you've ever received and who send them that'll give you a quick route to the center of your own emotional pain place where you are hurting and you will be shocked. I'm sure to see you're carrying around in your life. Comments that people made years and years and years and years ago but still paralyze you and still then you will begin to see the power of the human tongue. We need to understand that because what we say to each other in marriage is what creates the environment of trust of intimacy and in love. When I married my wife. I filed to cherish her. I know that women today do not want to be put on a pedestal, in the sense that they are not real their objects, and so on, and I'm not sure I understand all that because I'm a man and I'm not sure I understand women. I'll never understand. Okay, but I've never met a woman that didn't want to be cherished and never met a million didn't want to be cherished. What I say with my mouth is what communicates how much I cherish my wife.

Of course, what I do speaks as well. But nothing can destroy her sense of being cherished faster unkind, thoughtless, cutting remark that comes out of my mouth. The Bible tells us again that in any kind of health relationship, not just husband and wives with friends and associates is that we are called to build up each other to add a fight each other.

Not to tear each other apart. What happens in the marriages we get angry with each other and you say something to me that hurts with my natural response far was far wound for wound retaliates it back pretty soon it escalates into a war and then we say those awful words honey. I didn't mean she was to say, then why did you say that the bosses are certain things that you cannot recall the flying arrow.

Once you pull it bow back and you let loose of that string, and the arrow starts the fly.

You can't call it back, and included in that list of the Bible is the spoken war. Once I say I can apologize for. I can pretend that I overstated it but I set it and she heard it and it's stored in it may be doing its damage for another 30 years, but where there is love, there is kindness and when there is kindness there is a desire to do is crisis told us to do to present our brides to him without blemish to be willing to give our lives to honor the one that we live in. I'm a man and I'm in the public eye and I have women come up to me from time to time about her eyelashes at me know your subdued Nola stuff on it looks when I look in the mirror. I know that's not but they start playing these games and I can respond in one of two ways I can respond and allow myself to be flattered by that and therefore tempted or I can see that as a threat to what I cherish no flattery is empty. We would had expression flattery will get you nowhere and I'm not saying to couples why to each other about your gifts and your straits. Tell your wife she's a great cook, which is a lousy cook is not what I'm talking about.

She know she's a lousy cook and she won't trust that complement. If you tell her she's a good cook which is not a good one. An authentic complement is is believable where you take the time to find something of value in your mate crystallize putting into words. Tell her tell him that you've noticed and when we honor each other in that way we can heal the damage to spend on psychologist tell us it takes 9 Authentic Compliments Out Way the pain of one whose need to be slow to speak and to move and to keep our anger in check so that that is not set before us is probably no better marriage advice in the world and those few words. Be slow to speak, keep her anger and check.

Honor one another. Thanks for listening to Renewing Your Mind on this Friday I'm Lee Webb were wrapping up highlights of Dr. RC Sproul series. The intimate marriage this week. He's shown us that if we follow God's principles. Marriage can be a celebration of joyous intimacy. You'll find RC's biblical practical advice in each of the six lessons in this series.

Let me encourage you to contact us today and request this series on two DVDs. It's available to you for your gift of any amount you can make your request online@renewingyourmind.org or you can call us at 800-435-4343, no matter your stage in life whether your newly engaged work celebrating a decade-long marriage. This series is a wonderful resource. So I do hope you will contact us today either online@renewingyourmind.org or by phone at 800-435-4343 and as always we are grateful for your donations of any amount. Many times Jesus spoke in parables and next week Dr. Strobel explore the rich truths they reveal about who Jesus is. When he came to earth to accomplish through his life, death and resurrection. I hope you'll join us. Beginning Monday here on Renewing Your Mind