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This keeps me growing - Toby
Sermon Summary
Toby teaches that having hard conversations—though uncomfortable and challenging—helps us grow deeper roots in our relationships with others and with God, leading to true peace, humility, and fruitful community when we remain connected to Christ as our source
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A leader reflects on the cost of keeping a fragile peace and the spiritual discipline of engaging in hard conversations. Using a personal story about impulsive spending that avoided real communication, the talk surfaces how avoidance and anxiety masquerade as peace but erode trust and create messier conflicts later. Scripture anchors the argument: Psalm 1’s imagery of a tree planted by streams underscores the need for deep roots; Proverbs calls for humility, listening, and receptiveness to correction; John 15 and the pruning metaphor insist that abiding in Christ is the source of true growth. The account of Peter’s denial and Jesus’ restorative, threefold questioning shows that confronting failure lovingly can lead not to condemnation but to restoration, clarity of calling, and strengthened witness.
Practical rhythm is emphasised: spiritual practices—Sabbath, scripture meditation, community disciplines—form the roots that enable believers to receive correction without defensiveness and to enter tough conversations with grace. Hard conversations are reframed as spiritual tools that prune selfishness, expose anxiety, and invite repentance and reconciliation. The talk presses for humility over performative peace, urging believers to bring messy realities honestly before God and others so that healing and fruitfulness follow. In closing, two pointed questions invite listeners to identify relationships neglected by silence and the inner burdens withheld from God, encouraging concrete steps toward confessing, listening, and repair. The overall call is to trade comfort-driven avoidance for vulnerable engagement grounded in Christ, so relationships and communities bear lasting fruit.
Key Takeaways
1. Avoid peace through avoidance:
Keeping the illusion of calm by sidestepping conflict only delays the inevitable fracture of trust. Avoidance often protects personal comfort at the expense of collective accountability, producing patchwork solutions that demand more energy later. Naming the avoidance exposes the anxiety beneath it and creates space for honest repair.
2. Hard conversations deepen relational roots:
Difficult talks are not merely confrontations but opportunities to enlarge mutual understanding and covenantal trust. When entered with humility and a posture to learn, they realign expectations, reveal hidden needs, and allow relationships to bear mature fruit. The work of relational pruning prepares partners to thrive, not collapse, under pressure.
3. Invite God into difficult conversations:
God does more than tolerate confession; God uses confrontation and pruning to redirect life toward flourishing. Bringing messiness to God prevents performance-based faith and opens one to corrective grace that reshapes desire and action. Allowing the Spirit to lead these moments turns sharpness into restoration.
4. Listen before defending yourself:
Immediate rebuttal is a temptation that masks fear and preserves self-image; listening first honours the other and reveals whether correction is gift or grievance. Active listening creates a disarming space for truthful exchange and keeps pride from turning a repairable issue into rupture. Responding after hearing cultivates wisdom and humility.
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