{"id":97267,"date":"2021-04-10T08:49:19","date_gmt":"2021-04-10T12:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/discovergrace.com\/?p=97267"},"modified":"2023-09-20T10:56:33","modified_gmt":"2023-09-20T14:56:33","slug":"ask-pastor-mike-how-to-live-a-drama-free-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/discovergrace.com\/ask-pastor-mike-how-to-live-a-drama-free-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask Pastor Mike: How to Live a Drama-Free Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Got drama? Recently, we sat down with Senior Pastor Mike Adkins to talk about the book of James and how to live a drama-free life.<\/span><br \/>\n<b><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Pastor Mike, as a former counselor and someone who\u2019s grown up in a dysfunctional environment yourself, you\u2019ve been around your fair share of drama. Why do some people\u2019s lives seem to be filled with drama?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think it\u2019s important to make a distinction between suffering and drama. Some people will experience unthinkable tragedy on earth and that\u2019s not \u201cdrama.\u201d That\u2019s suffering. When we think of lives characterized by drama, we think of dysfunction and chaos. And the book of James actually links this sort of drama to worldly wisdom. James says that where there is worldly wisdom, there will be disorder and every evil practice. He calls this kind of \u201cwisdom\u201d unspiritual, earthly, and even demonic (James 3:15-16).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So how do I know if something is wise and comes from God, or if it just sounds awesome but comes from the world? James gives us a clue by saying wisdom produces certain things inside of you. If you\u2019re following worldly wisdom, it\u2019s going to produce bad things in your life \u2013 like bitter envy and selfish ambition \u2013 and so it will lead to the increase of drama, not the decrease of it (James 3:14-16). Conversely, James says that the \u201cwisdom from above is first pure, then peace-loving, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, and without pretense\u201d (James 3:17). So if you live according to God\u2019s wisdom, it will produce those characteristics inside of you.&nbsp;<\/span><br \/>\n<b><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>What does living according to worldly wisdom look like in a practical sense?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you\u2019ve ever known somebody who\u2019s filled with drama, here\u2019s what you\u2019ll see in their life \u2013 their life is constantly one fight with someone else after another. They tend to triangulate, which means to take two people and spin them against the third. They do this because their life and intimacy is built off of dysfunction. People who become accustomed to dysfunctional relationships actually build intimacy through conflict.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you grew up in a family like mine, your tendency is always going to be to feel comfortable in conflict, to feel comfortable in sorrow, and some people just really have trouble shaking that. So when the Bible talks about it, notice James says \u201cthe fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who cultivate peace.\u201d That word \u201ccultivate\u201d means you have to learn to build it. You have to learn to build godly wisdom into your life. Wisdom takes work. Even though it\u2019s a gift, it\u2019s something that takes a ton of work to build into your life.&nbsp;<\/span><br \/>\n<b><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>How can we grow in godly wisdom?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A lot of times wisdom is picked up as you watch people who are wise around you. That\u2019s the primary way in which people learn wisdom. They don\u2019t learn it from books generally, because wisdom is different from knowledge. Knowledge is information. Wisdom is the proper application of knowledge.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You might have someone who\u2019s super smart, but they don\u2019t know how to use it in a way that brings about godliness or righteousness. You can also find somebody who\u2019s very simple \u2013 and I don\u2019t mean \u201csimple\u201d in the Proverb\u2019s sense; I mean it in the \u201cwork with your hands and lead a quiet life\u201d kind of way, which Paul commends in I Thessalonians 4:11. You can meet someone who\u2019s simple in that sense, and yet super wise. They\u2019re gonna make righteous decisions. So to grow in godly wisdom, we need to surround ourselves with godly people.&nbsp;<\/span><br \/>\n<b><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>What hope can you offer to someone who\u2019s welcomed drama into their life by listening to worldly wisdom?&nbsp;<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To me there\u2019s so much hope in the reality that we are constantly learning and growing. No matter what kind of person you are today, you don\u2019t have to be that same person forever. I heard a quote once that said, \u201cHell is the place of no more becoming,\u201d and I love that. As long as you\u2019re alive, you are in a place where \u201cbecoming\u201d is possible. You can become someone new. You can become someone pure and peaceable, who\u2019s governed by godly wisdom. Someone unwavering, without pretense. Someone who cultivates peace instead of drama everywhere you go.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Got drama? Recently, we sat down with Senior Pastor Mike Adkins to talk about the book of James and how to live a drama-free life. Pastor Mike, as a former&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":105964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,98,103,38],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-97267","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-christian-life","8":"category-grace-church","9":"category-qa","10":"category-theology"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Ask Pastor Mike: How to Live a Drama-Free Life - Grace Church<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How can we grow in godly wisdom?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/discovergrace.com\/ask-pastor-mike-how-to-live-a-drama-free-life\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ask Pastor Mike: How to Live a Drama-Free Life - 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