Taking a break from my usual posting schedule this week due to fall break. But I am taking time to make our family’s annual predictions as we follow the MLB playoffs.
Tigers vs. Astros
Jason: Astros; Joshua: Astros; Sunny: Tigers
Royals vs. Orioles
Jason: Royals; Joshua: Orioles; Sunny: Royals
Mets vs. Brewers
Jason: Brewers; Joshua: Brewers; Sunny: Brewers
Braves vs. Padres
Jason: Padres; Joshua: Padres; Sunny: Padres
The boundary problem of control
Loving people well means respecting their boundaries. To disregard someone’s boundaries is to attempt to exert control over them.
As we noted in yesterday’s post, compliant people have a hard time saying no.
And controlling people have a hard time hearing no.
When I’m doing pre-marital counseling with a couple, I always talk to them about how they’re going to navigate the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas. It makes for great fodder for a counseling session — because it’s a real life issue that every family has to confront.
So I’ll say, “This will be your first holiday together as a married couple. How are you planning to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas?”
And that’s when it all comes out.
“Well, in his family, they always do their presents on Christmas Eve, so we’ll drive down to Tuscaloosa and spend the 23rd and the 24th with his family. But my Mom and her sisters always do a big thing on Christmas morning up in Tennessee, so we’ll wake up at 3am in Christmas morning and drive to Nashville to see all of them so we can do Christmas with them. But his step-dad’s side of the family does a big thing Christmas night, so we’re going to get on a plane that afternoon and fly to Oklahoma…”
I’m exhausted just listening to these plans.
If you have adult children, you should know that NOTHING stresses them out like figuring out how to navigate the holidays.
So when your adult kids finally work up the courage to say, “I don’t think we can come over on that day. We’re going to celebrate with his / her family this year,” — what do you say?
Well, I’ve been doing these pre-marital counseling sessions for years, so I know what some of you say!
“Well, we sure were hoping to see you. I’ve already told your cousins that you’d be here, but I guess I can tell them that you won’t make it.”
“You know, I already bought a 19 lb. turkey because I was counting on y’all being here. And I got that HoneyBaked Ham that you like — but I guess I’ll try to find the receipt and return it.”
“I just hope grandma makes it to next Thanksgiving since you won’t see her this year.”
That’s so controlling! All that guilt! Do you know how difficult it is for your adult kids to tell you this? They don’t want to disappoint you! But whenever this comes up, can you accept the fact that they have to tell you “No?”
Remember: controlling people have a hard time hearing “no.” And you don’t want to be a controlling person.
Simon Peter once tried to control Jesus. In Mark 8, the Lord was talking about the fact that He was going to have to die on the cross. But it says that Simon Peter pulled him aside and rebuked Him for this. He actually corrected Jesus and tried to control Him by saying that He shouldn’t talk about this! Peter didn’t want to accept this boundary. And do you remember how that turned out? Jesus said to him, “Get behind me, Satan!” (Mark 8:33)
A big part of maturing is learning to respect someone else’s boundaries.
Do you have a hard time saying, “No?”
Or do you have a hard time hearing the word, “No?”
If so, spend some time thinking about this principle of respect.
Maybe today you need permission to evaluate the areas of your life where you need to say “No” more often.
Maybe the message you’ve heard today will challenge you to listen for those areas where you’ve ignored someone else’s “No.”
Maybe there are some areas where you need to say, “Yes.”
Certainly when it comes to Jesus, I hope you’ll say “Yes.” Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
There is power in a simple “yes” or “no.”
He who has ears, let him hear.
The boundary problem of compliance
Compliance is when we don’t respect ourselves enough to maintain healthy boundaries. Compliant people have “fuzzy” boundaries. Their “yes” and their “no” doesn’t really mean anything.
An example of this is the person who claims to have appropriate sexual boundaries, but they give in as soon as their boyfriend / girlfriend pressures them to go further.
Another example would be when you establish a boundary but someone pushes back against it. There is a temptation to take this as an indication that you’re doing something wrong. When this happens, you typically modify the boundary because the other person has convinced you that the boundary is the real problem. That’s what we mean when we talk about the boundary problem of compliance.
Compliant people have a hard time saying, “No.” Often times, they’ll feel as if it’s wrong for them to say “no.” So in an effort to be a people pleaser, they’ll say “yes” to something that they don’t really want to do.
But when this happens, we are violating the principle of respect. We’re not respecting ourselves enough to have healthy boundaries in place for ourselves. And we’re allowing other people to encroach upon our boundaries.
And more importantly, whenever this happens, we are disobeying Jesus. When he says, let your “yes” be “yes” and let your “no” be “no,” He means it. A desire to please people should never take precedence over a desire to obey Christ. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 2:4, “We speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.” So when you say “yes” whenever you really mean “no” in your heart, your boundaries are fuzzy and you’re out of line with Jesus. Ask yourself what’s more important: pleasing God or pleasing somebody else?
The principle of respect helps us overcome this temptation toward compliance. It helps us draw the line between behavior we will tolerate and behavior we will not tolerate. It gives us the ability to truthfully say “yes” and “no.”
If you have children, you need to teach them the power of the word “no.” (I know some of you who have two-year olds are thinking, “My child has the one down pat already.”) Seriously, this is one of the most important jobs God has given you as a parent. You need to teach them how to be appropriately noncompliant. Most of the time, you only have a few years to teach them how to say “No” when everyone else is saying, “Yes.” If someone is doing something that makes your child uncomfortable, does he or she know how to speak up? It’s your job to teach them how to say, “No, don’t do that to me. You’re making me feel uncomfortable. Stop that.”
The parent who says to their child, “Don’t you tell me no!” is really doing that child a disservice. You don’t want your babies to think that saying “no” is always a bad thing.
We’ll have more to say about this in a few weeks when we talk about boundaries in parenting. But it’s important to model this for your children — to show them how to say “no” in a healthy way.
In her book Good Boundaries and Goodbyes, Lysa TerKeurst says, “The absence of boundaries means the presence of chaos.” And if you’re a compliant person who always has to go along to get along, your life probably feels chaotic. If you can relate to that, I hope you’ll take your need for boundaries seriously. That’s just part of having a healthy respect for yourself.
It is a fundamental biblical teaching that every human being is deserving of a modicum of respect. Here are some of the key reasons for this:
Everyone is deserving of a baseline level of respect because every human being is fearfully and wonderfully created to bear the image of God. And even though that image has been tarnished by sin, God still sees every person who has ever lived as worthy of the sacrifice of His only begotten Son. That confers incredible dignity to each human life: male and female; young and old; black and white and brown; born and unborn; rich and poor.
And respecting people means that we are to respect their boundaries. Part of the principle of respect has to do with honoring the words “Yes” and “No.” Once again, this idea comes directly from Jesus himself.
Matthew 5:33-37
Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, “Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.” But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. All you need to say is simply, “Yes” or “No”; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.
Jesus teaches His followers to avoid any sort of appeal beyond the integrity of their own words. You don’t need to swear an oath by heaven or earth or Jerusalem — just say what you mean and mean what you say. Your simple “Yes” or “No” should suffice if you’re a truth-teller. We’re supposed to have a healthy relationship with the words “Yes” and “No.”
When “yes” doesn’t mean “yes” and when “no” doesn’t mean “no,” Jesus says that this comes from the evil one.
James, the brother of Jesus, repeats this idea in his epistle:
James 5:12
Above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear — not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. All you need to say is a simple “Yes” or “No.” Otherwise you will be condemned.
We can extrapolate from this principle that we are to respect the boundaries of others by respecting their “yes” and their “no.”
But the principle of respect is frequently violated when it comes to boundaries. Here are two of the most common ways this principle is ignored:
In our Boundaries series, we have identified three biblical principles for developing healthy boundaries:
Today we turn our attention to the third of these principles: the principle of respect.
Healthy relationships are founded upon mutual respect.
When someone shows that they have respect for your boundaries, you feel dignified. You feel as if you really matter whenever another individual honors the boundaries you’ve established.
Contrast that with the way you feel when your boundaries are questioned. How does it feel whenever you’re made to defend or explain your boundaries? How do you feel when someone pushes against those boundaries? That’s an altogether different experience.
One of the most reliable ways to ensure that someone respects your boundaries is to show proper respect for his / her boundaries. This idea is at the heart of one of the most well known teachings of Jesus. We call it the Golden Rule.
Matthew 7:12
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
I can’t hear these words without thinking of my mother. I bet she quoted this verse to me more than any other. This was my Mom’s go-to response for almost any problem I would bring to her. If I was telling her about a problem I was having with a friend or a classmate, for example, I could count on her to say, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Mom believed that most of life’s problems could be cleared up if we just did what Jesus tells us to do here.
At the heart of it, this teaching is about respect. If you want someone to treat you with kindness, you should respect her enough to treat her with that same level of kindness. And for our boundaries series, this opens us up to an important principle: Boundary markers are to be respected. In the spirit of “treat others the way you want to be treated,” if I want you to respect my boundary, I need to be respectful of your boundary as well.
This seems simple enough. But so many of our boundary problems boil down to a lack of proper respect.
When your favorite band and your son’s favorite band go on tour together, you take a road trip — which is what Jackson and I did last week. A couple months back, The War on Drugs and The National announced that they’d be playing a series of shows together this fall. After looking at the calendar, we chose to see them in Philadelphia. And we had so much fun!
Establishing healthy boundaries sometimes requires you to make some hard decisions.
All of our kids have Life360 on their phones. If you don’t know what that is, it’s an app that lets you track where your children are at all times. My kids have referred to it as the parental stalking app. It’s great — it gives you little notifications when they arrive at home or at school or whatever. When they started driving, we added that to their phones.
Anyway, I think Abby Kate was a senior in high school when this happened. Sunny and I were headed out of town for a wedding one Friday afternoon and I got this notification on my phone that Abby Kate had left school. But the school day wasn’t over yet. It was her last period of the day and the teacher was sick or whatever and they weren’t doing anything that day and it was a Friday — so she just left school.
I thought to myself, “Well, she comes by it naturally, I guess.” It was this full circle moment for me.
Of course, she got busted and they were talking about some slap on the wrist discipline for her. So she was saying, “This is no big deal. We weren’t doing anything in class and it was the last period of the day.” She asked me if I could talk to the principal, just say that this was no big deal. And I said, “No, I can’t do that.”
She said, “Why not?”
I said, “Because I’m the one who called and turned you in for skipping class.”
She said, “You did what?”
I said, “Yeah, when I saw that you had left, I called the school and told them that you weren’t there.” When the receptionist answered the phone, I said, “Hi, there, this is Jason Bybee. I would like to report that my daughter has just left school. I would like for her to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
I said, “So, yeah, Abby Kate, I called and turned you in.”
She said, “Why would you do that?”
Because you reap what you sow. And sometimes the most loving thing to do is to let someone suffer the natural consequences of their actions.
Things were a little frosty with my teenage daughter there for a while. But it was the right decision because it reinforced a lesson about boundaries and consequences — a lesson we all have to learn.
So here’s an example of what this looks like. Or, rather, what this sounds like:
This gives some good examples of language that reflects healthy boundaries. I especially want to highlight two of these:
I will end this phone call if you continue to shout at me.
I’m not comfortable with that. If you do it again, I will have to leave.
These comments are really healthy, both emotionally and spiritually. These statements point out some bad behavior while staking out boundaries. “If you continue to do this, then I will make this choice. There will be a consequence if you continue to go down this path.” The idea here is that we cannot control someone else. Cloud and Townsend say it repeatedly in their book: the Bible talks about self-control, not “others” control. So we acknowledge that we cannot make someone do something. You might continue to shout on the phone or you might continue to take part in behavior that makes me uncomfortable.
But we CAN be clear on what we will and will not tolerate. “Here is the boundary and if you cross it, there will be consequences. Period. You will reap what you sow.”
We have to differentiate between consequences and a loss of love. They’re not the same thing. You can uphold the natural consequences of someone’s actions while still remaining tethered to them in love. That’s what God does with us. Sometimes we suffer the natural consequences of our actions; but this doesn’t mean that God has stopped loving us.
I love this quote from Lysa TerKeurst:
When we allow a boundary to be violated, bad behavior will be validated.
The principle of reaping and sowing is so important for us as we seek to establish healthy boundaries in our lives. When we always shield people from the consequences of their actions, we rob them of one of life’s greatest catalysts for change: pain.
Some of us find ourselves stuck in relationships that aren’t healthy. Take this person who is saying, “If you keep shouting at me, I’m going to hang up.” She is in a relationship with someone who feels that they can scream and yell at her — which is inflicting pain in this woman’s life. And maybe she’s allowed this to happen because she thinks that’s what she’s supposed to do: just be a doormat for everyone to treat her disrespectfully. What’s worse is that some people think that this is what it means to be a Christian — to just sit there and take it and take it and take it.
But what she’s saying here is so healthy — not just emotionally, but spiritually. Because she’s speaking up and communicating her pain.
I once read that “Ouch” is the most powerful word in communication. When someone says, “Ow, that hurts,” it’s jarring. It’s honest and it’s vulnerable and it completely changes the dynamic in the communication. This woman is saying, “Your tone of voice is hurtful to me. And I’m willing to tolerate it this one time; I’m willing to forgive this. But I’m letting you know that if you continue to go down this path, I won’t be party to it. I will not be a willing accomplice to your attempts to disrespect me. I have a boundary here for myself and if you don’t respect my boundary, I will have to walk away.”
To act as if the other person is not hurting her wouldn’t be truthful. And it wouldn’t be doing the offending party any favors. This other person needs to know that their actions are hurtful. And living with that little bit of pain might just be the catalyst to help them experience meaningful change in their lives.
But you’ll never get there if you don’t have a good boundary.
You’ll never get there without firm, clear boundaries based upon this biblical principle of reaping and sowing.
The language of sowing and reaping comes from the world of agriculture. It’s about cause and effect: the seeds you plant lead directly to the harvest you’ll gather. This proverb is about the natural consequences of our actions. And you find this bit of wisdom sprinkled throughout God’s Word. One example is in Galatians 6.
Galatians 6:7-9
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
It is a biblical principle that we reap what we sow. Cause and effect is a fundamental law of life. It’s just a part of the world God has created. Here, the Apostle Paul lays out this principle: whenever you sow to the flesh, you reap destruction. You’re going to reap corruption because the flesh is corrupted. But sowing to the Spirit reaps eternal life.
Each choice we make has some natural consequence:
But sometimes, people don’t reap what they sow, because someone else steps in and reaps the consequences for them. In their book, Boundaries, Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend point this out. Remember our story from last week? John was twenty-five years old, flunked out of school and living at home with his parents with no job, smoking weed and playing video games all day. But he never reaped any consequences for his actions — his parents continued to shield him from any meaningful consequences. Every time he ran out of money, his parents bailed him out. When he was dismissed from one school, they enrolled him in another. His parents were there to bail him out every time.
From the book:
Today we call a person who continually rescues another person a codependent. In effect, codependent, boundary-less people ‘co-sign the note’ of life for the irresponsible person. Then they end up paying the bills — physically, emotionally, and spiritually — and the spendthrift continues out of control with no responsibilities …. Establishing boundaries helps codependent people stop interrupting the Law of Sowing and Reaping in their loved one’s life. Boundaries force the person who is doing the sowing to also do the reaping.
Does loving someone mean that you should always shield them from the consequences of their actions?
Absolutely not.
Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is to let someone suffer the natural consequence of their actions.
That’s exactly how God deals with us.
There are times when, in His wisdom, God chooses to shield us from the consequences of our actions. Certainly He does this in an ultimate way by sending Jesus to die on the cross. Our sinful actions deserve death, but Jesus rescues us by taking our place. He does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. So we can acknowledge that in this ultimate way, God has truly rescued us from the repercussions of our choices.
But there are plenty of other times when God upholds the principle of responsibility and the principle of reaping and sowing. There are plenty of times when God subjects us to the natural consequences of our actions. That’s because good boundaries come with consequences.
We talked about Adam and Eve back in the first week of this series. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God cast them out of the garden (Gen. 3:23). They had to suffer the natural consequence for bringing sin into their lives.
Does that mean God didn’t love Adam and Eve? No! Nothing could be further from the truth! Right there in the midst of this pronouncement of judgment, God makes what we’ve referred to as the seed promise of Genesis 3:15. At this early stage in history, God reveals that He already has a plan in mind for the Son of Man, the Messiah, to overcome the work of the evil one. And yet, Adam and Eve still must suffer the consequence for their sinful choice. They had to reap what they had sown. They had to leave the garden with all of its security and abundance and instead they had to live in a world of their own creation.
Good boundaries come with consequences. Boundaries without consequences are not boundaries. They’re just meaningless suggestions. It doesn’t make God unloving to reinforce good boundaries by having natural consequences. And it doesn’t make you unloving if you establish good boundaries and consequences in your relationships.
We have been reflecting on some of the biblical principles God has given to help us develop healthy boundaries. In this series, we have identified three of these principles:
We looked at the first of these last week. This week, we turn our attention to the principle of reaping and sowing.
When I was in the eighth grade, my school had a canned goods drive to help out a local food bank. And they incentivized the students by telling us that the grade that brought in the most canned goods would receive a day off from school. This was toward the end of the school year in May. We had one last regular day of classes on Tuesday before final exams on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. So this last Tuesday was the day off you could win if your grade brought in the most cans.
Well, my class rallied to bring in a huge number of canned goods and we won the day off from school. For me, this meant that I didn’t have to come to school on Tuesday; but because I had pretty good grades, I was also exempt from taking any exams on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. So essentially, I got to start my summer break a whole day earlier. It was a pretty good deal.
In eighth grade, my last class of the day was study hall. And I didn’t have anything to study on this final Monday — because my summer break was basically NOW. And since I only lived about a mile or so from the school, I came up with the idea that I would skip study hall on that Monday and I would walk home. My friend Brandon was going to be spending the night at my house that night, so I roped him into my crazy plan, too. So when the bell rang to go to study hall, Brandon and I snuck out a side door and walked to my house.
Seeing as how I lived nearby, we made it to my house in pretty good time. As soon as I walked in the house, the phone rang — and without even thinking about it, I answered and said, “Hello.” And the voice on the other end of the line said, “JASON BYBEE!” It was Mr. Welch, the principal. He said, “What are you doing at home when you’re supposed to be in study hall right now?” Apparently Brandon had been bragging to everybody about our plan to skip class and word got back to Mr. Welch. He said he actually stood at the window and watched us as we left.
We never had a chance.
Our punishment was that we had to show up at school the next day — the day we were supposed to have off! And we got a paddling (back then this was legal) and we had to spend the morning walking the campus picking up trash. At lunchtime, Mr. Welch said we were free to leave. He smiled at me and said, “At least you know the way home.”
I made a string of bad decisions that day: the decision to skip class; the decision to walk home; to decision to answer the phone. And those bad decisions led to some consequences. And the whole thing pointed to a lesson I needed to learn: you reap what you sow.
already & not yet 