All right, we're continuing in our study of the book of Philemon. We're in this  management class where we're trying to learn how to manage people. Really,  it's learning how to lead people. Maybe you're in a in a in a for profit  organization, maybe a nonprofit organization, maybe you're in a church, all of  this is leadership and managing people is helping the people that are in your  organization achieve whatever the organization's goals are. Your family is a non  profit organization. If you're a parent, you're trying to manage people. Just want  to say something about the major words in in this title, it's a book that that's that  we're following in this course, you can download it, or you can actually order a  hard copy of it. If you do order the hard copy, you could lead people in a Bible  study with this kind of thing. But the key words are number one influence. You've taken several classes here at CLI and you've probably run into this whole what  is your spiritual dream question? Henry and I asked that of people all over the  world, and we got the same two answers wherever we asked it, and one of the  answers that people give my spiritual dream is to connect with God or the truth,  or go to heaven or connect to the force or whatever is out there. So it's sort of a  God answer. But the second answer that people give is they, they want to make  a difference. They want a good marriage. They want a good family. They want to make a difference in the life of somebody on the planet. In other words, people  have a spiritual dream of having, of being an influence to people. And if you're a  manager of anything, if you're managing anything, that's what it's about. It's  about influencing people in a positive way. That's what leadership is. And the  reality is, we all are influencers, and we either do it well or we do it poorly. We  either influence them towards God, or we influence them away from God. So as  we look at these principles, they will help you in your goal of trying to influence  people. Number two, the word friends. How to influence friends. Friend is a word that really describes the people around you. These are the people that are next  to you. These are the people that you do most of what you do with so these are  the key folk in your life. So we want to influence them. But how do we do it? We  want to tactfully get along with people. Tact is trying to influence people without  offending them. The problem with leadership is often people don't want to go  they don't want to be led. They don't want to have someone tell them what to do  or even show them what to do. They want to do their own thing. So how do you  help someone? How do you lead someone without offending their own sense of  who they are? So we're going to look at other principles in this book that deal  with that, how you tactfully do Paul is masterful. In this short little letter that he  writes, Philemon, he does several things that we're going to look at, where he  communicates what he wants to do and what he wants to happen, but he does it in a very non offending way. I just met with someone last night who is now  separated. Someone from my church is now separated from his wife. Is  extremely, extremely intelligent person. You know, logic is something that drives  him. And one of his issues is he is so smart, and he so wants to say to people 

and correct people in what they're thinking and doing, but he ends up offending  everybody, including his spouse. So he has the truth. He knows what is right, but he needs to figure out how to say it without offending people. And that's number  four, the last thing, how to influence friends and tactically get along with people.  There are really two things in life. There's God and there's people, and this is the 

second thing, people. So we're going to be looking at these principles. So how  we're going to look at these principles? We're going to look at these verses in  Philemon. There aren't that many, but we're going to divide all these verses into  three parts. There's part one, part two, part three. Part one is build the  relationship. We're going to see how Paul spends the first part of his letter just  building the relationship. He doesn't even bring up the problem. There's a  problem that Paul wants to deal with, with Philemon, and the problem is  Onesimus. Onesimus is the runaway slave of Philemon, so that's the problem.  That's why he's writing. But you don't know that for the first several verses,  because Paul is working on building the relationship, and the first thing that he  does is, or first thing that he does, and that we're going to take that principle out  of this is communicating to people that you are friends. Communicate that you  are friends. That's what Paul does. He's he starts his letter, Paul a prisoner of  Christ Jesus and Timothy, our brother to Philemon, our dear friend. That's the  first thing he says, Well, why does Paul call Philemon a friend? Number one,  Paul may have been the one who led Philemon to the Lord in, I think it's verse,  verse 19 he's talking about, you know if, if Onisimus has caused you pain or  cause you expense. You know, I will pay for it. So verse 19, he says, I Paul. I'm  writing this with my own hand, and I will pay it back. Then he says, not to  mention that you owe me your very self. So we don't know exactly what he's  talking about, but it could be that Paul actually led Philemon to the Lord at some  point. Or number two, perhaps Paul led Epiphras to the Lord. Epiphras was the  person who eventually took over the church in Ephesus. Maybe Paul led  Epiphras to the Lord, and then Epiphras led Philemon to the Lord. But, but  there's some kind of connection, and so Paul calls him a friend. Well, what are  the ingredients of friendship? What does it take to have a friend? Number one, it takes talking and listening. If you don't have talking and listening, you're not  going to have a friendship right now, I'm talking to you and you're listening, but I  don't hear what you're saying, and I'm not listening to you. If I could do that, we  go to the chat room at CLI and you talk. I listen. I talk. You listen. See, we can  start developing a connection to each other. So it takes talking listening to have  a friendship. Number two, it has to be done repeatedly. We can't just do it once  and have a friend. We have acquaintance, maybe, but if you want a friend, you  have to repeatedly talk and listen. Number three, the third ingredient of a  friendship is shared, interests, friendships. Friendships don't just happen. They  happen because somehow you bump into someone and you share. Maybe it's a hobby you both like the same hobby. Maybe you work together. Maybe you have

the same kind of personality. There has to be some cause, some thing that  you're doing together, and in the doing of that, a friendship develops. Number  four, there's some kind of a connection. You know, you meet a lot of people, but  not all of these people become a friend. So because of shared interest, repeated talking, listening, something happens and you get connected. And finally, I think  one of the ingredients of friendship is care. I care for you. You care for me. Well,  what does calling someone friend communicate in a difficult situation? So that's  what Paul does. The first thing he does is say you're a dear friend. He has this  difficult thing about Onesimus He wants to talk about he doesn't know how it's  going to go. So he starts out with this thing, we are friends. What does that  communicate in a difficult situation? Number one that the issue we are about to  discuss is between friends. So often people get upset with one another,  somebody does something, and finally, you can't take it, and you set them down, and you're going to tell them, you know, this hurt me, and this is what you said.  And we do so as if we're enemies. What if the first thing you did before you  talked to someone that yet there's a potential conflict, and the first thing you  said, Now, look, I'd like to talk to you about something, but first we have to  understand that we are friends, and when we're done talking, we still want to be  friends. Number two, that we are not enemies, where one is against the other.  Number three, that we are not competitors, where one wins and the other loses.  So often in a discussion where there's a conflict, whether it's in your own family,  whether it's at the workplace, whether it's at church, so often when a conflict  starts, and sometimes there's other people around in the middle of this conflict, it becomes more about winning and losing. And you know, if I'm on one side of the fence and you're on the other, we start arguing and talking. I don't want to be  embarrassed by losing, so I. Don't give in. I don't. I don't really try to hear what  you're trying to say, because it becomes this battle I need to win, and you're  trying to win, and no longer are we even talking about the thing that we should  be talking about. So starting off the conversation, we are friends. This is a  problem, or this is an issue between friends. We're not enemies, we're not  competitors. Number four, that as friends, each of us has a desire for outcomes  that benefit both of us. We're not, you know, I don't want to just get something  from you. I want this to work for both of us. Number five, that both of us, to some degree, are willing to sacrifice our rights for the greater good. There's this  problem that we have between us, but we're a part of something bigger than just you and I. Well, whom can you start calling a friend? Sometimes? When we  have a good friend, we're afraid to talk to that person about something difficult,  because we don't want to spoil a friendship. Or number two, we don't have a  game plan of how to do it in a winning way. And that's what these principles are  going to help us do. Give us a game plan. And game plan number one, deal with people as friends. In fact, call them friends lot of times. We're sort of hesitant to  give people the friendship status, and we have very few friends like, you know, 

we have to, you know, we can only have three friends in our lives. Why can't we  have many friends? Here's my assignment for you. Try this out, find someone  that maybe you don't get along that well with, and just, you know, text them,  send them an email that says something like, Hey, let's do lunch sometime.  Friend, just put that little tag on there, friend. Or when you're talking to them,  Hey, my good friend, how are you just just drop that little line and see what  happens in the relationship. Okay, so Paul starts out, Paul, a prisoner of Christ,  Jesus and Timothy, our brother to Philemon, our dear friend and fellow worker,  also to Apphia, our sister and Archippus, our fellow soldier, and to the church  that meets in your home. He calls Philemon a fellow worker. And that's number  two, build a relationship. That's part one. That's what we're you know, Paul's  doing in this first part of the book. Number one, communicate that your friends.  Number two, communicate that you are both on the same side. Paul does this in I Corinthians, in the letter to the church at Corinth, the one who plants and the  one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor for we are co workers in God's service. You are God's field,  God's building. So one waters, one plants, one talks to someone, invites them to church. Another one perhaps leads them to Christ. We're all in this together. We  are co workers. Well, there are often conflicts in an organization, whether it's for  profit, nonprofit, your own family. In the church of Corinth, there was a problem.  Paul writes to address this problem in I Corinthians 11, in the first place, I hear  that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent, I believe it see the problem in the current Corinthian church was  there were some rich people. They were coming to church. They're having  communion. They brought their own food. They were celebrating God's gracious love towards them and having a great time. And then there were poor people in  the same church, they were sitting at a different table, and they didn't have any  food at all, and Paul is writing them saying, you know, you get together, you  celebrate how God loves all of us, but then you're not loving one another.  There's a conflict here. What form does conflict sometimes show up in an  organization. Number one betrayal, people will betray others to get ahead. It can be a subtle little thing in a company, you know, everyone's wanting a better  position. Everyone wants, you know, to make more money or to have more  responsibility, and, you know, the organization is like a team, and it's trying to do something as a team. Church is a team, and you're trying to make the whole  thing work, and every part contributes to it. A family is a team. We're in this  together. If one is hurting it's going to hurt the whole team, but people within a  team are sort of pushing and shoving to get a better position, and sometimes  one might betray another. And a lot of different ways to do it. For probably the  number one way to do it is number two Gossip. Gossip is when two or more  people get together and they start talking negatively about someone who is not  there, someone who is not there to defend themselves. And it happens so easily.

Someone says something that hurts you. You're now hurt. You're going to  automatically look for someone who is sympathetic to you, and you start talking  to someone else about the situation, and that person wants to be sympathetic  towards you, so you end up talking negatively about someone who is not there  to defend themselves. That's only one side of the story. And then that gossip  goes around. It gets exaggerated, and then it finally gets to the person that the  gossip is about, and then they're hurt, and it just destroys organizations. Or  sometimes conflict takes the form of competition. We're competing with one  another and and the feeling is, if you win, I lose, so I need to win, which means  you lose. Or number four, jealousy. You know, some people are more talented  and gifted than others, or some people seem to just get all the breaks and and  why do they get all the breaks? And I don't, so sometimes we get angry at God  for that. Or number five, just basic disagreements. Part of what what's fun about  a team is people have different experiences, different things that they know, and  you can grow from each other, but sometimes the process looks like  disagreement. And once we start disagreeing with one another, and then we  want to own our own thing. This is my idea. I'm going to defend it to the death,  and you're going to do the same, and all of a sudden, you know, instead of just  sharing ideas and learning from one another, we get into this sort of anger  disagreement syndrome. So conflict happens in organizations. Well, how can  you communicate to the person you may be in conflict with that that you and that Saint, that person, are on the same side, that we both are on the same side. Let  me give you some just practical ideas. One way is just saying, you know, I know  we have this conflict with one another for this thing that we have to solve, but we are on the same organization, so we should be able to do this. Number two, we  seek the same goals. We want the same things. We want this company to  succeed. We want our church to, you know, help make the kingdom of God go  forward this family. We want this family to succeed. There's not like we don't  want just one to six. We were in this together. You could just say it. These are,  we have the same goals. Number three, we follow the same Lord. I mean, if  you're talking to our Christian, we follow the same God. We both need God's  grace. So, you know, whatever conflict is between us, we should be able to  solve this. Lot of times there's fight fights between Christians, and it just doesn't  make any sense. So, but sometimes we have to put it out there up front. Now,  we do follow the same Lord. So as we talk about this, let's be mindful of that  number four, if you're married, we share the same bed, we share the same life.  We should be able to resolve these conflicts. Number five, we are brothers and  sisters in the same house, so when brothers and sisters fight and not getting  along. Number seven, we go to the same church. Churches often are hot beds  of conflict. There are people that won't talk to each other. They're they're one will sit on one side of the church and one will sit on the other. I had that in my first  church. These people sat here, these people sat here, and they never talked to 

each other. We go to the same church. How can that be? Number eight, we play on the same team. Now maybe we're competing for positions on some sport  team, but look, we're on the same team. We're trying to make the same thing.  We want to win together. Number nine, we're on the same side of a team or  group or relationship network, anything that you share with that person, so in  some way, communicate to them that we are on the same side. Number 10, we  share the same enemy. Okay? Ultimately, we are not enemies with one another.  We're on the same team against something else. Ultimately, it's the devil and  what he's trying to do. So let's not let the devil come in here and destroy the  problem, destroy our relationship because of something that. Has come up.  Well, why does communicating, friends status work? Well, we get a bigger  picture. We realize that together, if we can overcome our differences, we will  have a better chance of succeeding in our cause than if we're at odds with one  another, if we're on the same side, we communicate that we're friends at work.  We can, we can deal with whatever the issue is, if, if we somehow understand  before we get into a conflict at home. Look, we're on the same side before you  launch into some problem that you have with your spouse, you know. You know  my spouse, you know, thinks I should clean up more. And so when she sees  something laying on the ground, her tendency is to launch right into it, you know, is it too hard to shut the cabinet? That's the first words that come out of her  mouth. Well, I get defensive. The first thing I do is defend myself, because  someone's throwing a brick at me. I put up my hands. But if the first thing that  she said was, you know, we got married so many years ago, and at that time,  we became one, and we are on on the same team. I want this marriage to work.  You want this marriage to work. So there's an issue I'd like to talk to you about.  You see, now I'm not as defensive. It's like, Okay, I agree with everything you  just said, and now you're talking about something that hurts, that okay. I guess  maybe I should look at that same thing at church 



Last modified: Wednesday, March 5, 2025, 8:25 AM