St. John Studies

It happens every day….another public figure is trying to do “damage control.”  Today it is veteran NBC newsman Brian Williams.

It was 2003 and Williams was riding in a helicopter in Iraq.  The helicopter in front of his took a hit from enemy fire.  Over the years since, Williams said to some people that his copter was hit by enemy fire but now we learn the truth–Williams was about an hour behind the attacked copter.  He was never in danger.

Williams is a newsman and his whole career rests on his credibility, the honesty we feel about him as he reports the news, the facts.  Yet when the flight engineer on the crew of William’s copter says “It felt like a personal experience that someone else wanted to participate in and didn’t deserve to participate in;” that sounds problematic.

Where does he go from here?

Probably there is a publicist working with him right now trying to do “damage control.”

He’s caught in a lie.

He has apologized.  He did that on Wednesday night on the Nightly News.

Pastor Idleman quotes Susan Wise Bauer author of the book The Art of the Public Grovel:  “An apology is an expression of regret.  I am sorry.  A confession is admission of fault:  I am sorry because I did wrong.  I sinned.”

Now most of us don’t have the high profile career of Brian Williams but do we have his problems?  Sure we do.  Often we have an “awakening” that things are wrong in our lives and we regret that things have turned out the way they have but we are not really ready to repent.  We just have the regret.  We want to engage in damage control. Mr. Williams has highly paid advisors to help him and after a story becomes news, he has to figure out some way to respond.  Our sins are usually not public so what do we do?  We try to deceive others.  We try to put on a “righteous face.”    We “act” as if nothing has happened.

It has.

Pastor Idleman says the next step is crucial for all of us who have sinned.

“I am sorry because I did wrong.  I sinned.”

Repentence:  what so many people just don’t want to do.

“If you are a Christian, you know that there are certain things that should not be a part of your life.  If you weren’t a Christian, confessing and acknowledging those things would not be a big deal…But when we as Christians find ourselves struggling, our instinct is to hide those things rather confess them.”  Pastor Idleman’s words from pages 91 and 92

That is just what blogger Joshua writes about in his blog.  He lists 10 reasons people hate Christians.  I need to let you know that this guy may just know what he is talking about.  He is a grad student in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago.  He writes: “Christians are hypocritical.  Christians sin a lot.  Christians slap silver Jesus fish on the backs of their cars, and then cut people off, swear and honk their horns and flip people off.  If you offend a Christian’s religion, he or she will respond in anger often yelling at you for disrespecting God, and will frequently remind you that he or she is going to Heaven.”

Ok, this is a little extreme and is more of a rant than a comment but he does make a point–Christians sin a lot.

I do….do you?

I don’t have things figured out.  Many times I get confused and many times I make mistakes.  I wonder why I fall into sin when I really know better than to do it; yet I do it anyhow.

Sometimes Christians are so good at doing the sinless thing that they come across as “holier than thou.”  You have heard that expression and I am convinced that this attitude does more to keep the un-churched out of church than anything else.

None of us is “holier than thou.”

Pastor Idleman is firm in his idea that we have to be honest about our sinning.  He says [his italics] “No way am I going to tell anyone else about my secrets. It would be humiliating to share my mistakes.”   This attitude will kill growth.  Because he is a pastor, people expect him to maintain a certain image.  People expect him to be “spiritual and holy.”  Yet he admits that he sins like the rest of us.  It hurts for him to admit his shortcomings but he knows unless he is honest with his readers the AHA process fails.

You see he does not want to be one of those Christians that people hate, a hypocrite.  And he knows that better things are ahead:  A..awakening   H..honesty   A..action.

Pastor Idleman drills down on us to take honesty seriously–honesty with self.

In Chapter 5 he ask that we do a simple exercise.

Go to the bathroom, look yourself squarely in the mirror and say out loud some tough questions.

Do you spend more time this week on Facebook than in prayer?  When was the last time you told someone that you loved them?  How have you helped someone this last month?  When was the last time you said to someone, “I was wrong. Please forgive me”?  What’s on your DVD or on your computer’s history [that you would be ashamed of]?  When was the last time you prayed with your spouse? your children?  Can you name one missionary you pray for?  What sin have you confessed to God or someone else?  When was the last time you sat with an open Bible?  Did you spend more time eating out this month than advancing the kingdom of God?  When was the last time you cried over your sin?  Who besides God knows about your secret sin?

After the list of questions, we turn to the next page and Idleman admonishes us in his words at the top of the next page.  “So let me guess…You did not take the time to do the exercise.”

From another context altogether; from the movie “A Few Good Men” starring Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson.  I remember the courtroom scene when Nicholson shouts out “YOU CAN’T STAND THE TRUTH ! ”

That’s it, isn’t it.  To do the exercise is to deal with our honest replies to the answers.  The responses of no, never, rarely and yes I spend more time on Facebook than in prayer.

Why go to the bathroom and ask the questions face-to-face in the mirror?  We want to grow in our Christian lives.  We don’t want to stay stuck where we are today.  We want to grow closer to our Lord and Savior.

We may not want to deal with our answers but God already knows the answers.  Hebrews 4:13  “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight.  Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”

Take the time.

Pastor Idleman says in Chapter 5, “That kind of honesty is difficult.  The hardest person in the world to be honest with is the person in the mirror…We’d prefer the awakening without the brutal honesty.”

AHA

Awakening, Honesty, Action

The prodigal son was ready to eat pig slop.  He was ready to be one of his father’s hired servants.

He had sinned.

He knew it.

He owned it

Whatever was to come his way, he was ready for it because he knew he deserved to have hard times.

I love the way Pastor Idleman says this: “There was no one else around.  It was just him and the pigs.”

I would add…and God.

He does not have to throw in the towel and admit his sin.  He does not have to grovel to his father.  He can do what a lot of us do.  He can put on the best face he can.  He can “spin” his story.  He can be dramatic and play the sympathy card.

Those strategies work for us every day of our lives as we sin and do the best we can to cover it up.

I had a student explain to me about cheating in school.  He said cheating was not cheating until you get caught and then you are a cheater.  Up until you get caught, you are just “trying to get an edge.”

In a much earlier post, I commented that Pastor Idleman’s book was not about self-help or finding a way to successfully tackle your new year’s resolutions.   However, this book is about growth.

It is about growth in your Christian life here on earth.

You know the prodigal son story.  When he asked his father to make him a hired servant, his father said no.  He pulled his son out of the pigpen, he clothed him, he fed him, he made sure he had a good roof over his head.

Did he deserve this?  The son thought no.  The father thought yes.

The father recognized that his son had that “talk with himself”, just the son and the pigs.

Put yourself in the place of the son.  You are in the pig pen.  You ask your father to make you one of his hired servants.

Would you be pulled out of the mud and slop?

Would you have to learn to live in mud and slop?

Have that talk with yourself in the mirror; have that talk–just you and the pigs…there is where you can begin to grow.

You may be reading this blog for the first time today; maybe you have visited St. John Studies several times but you have hesitated to join in all the way.  You have not purchased Pastor Idleman’s book.  We are just in Chapter 5 and after this week, we have 8 more weeks to go.  Is it time to make a little commitment for your personal growth?  Pastor Idlemans’s book can be purchased instantly on Kindle on Amazon for $3.99, on Amazon used for $5.65 + shipping, on Amazon new for $6.47 + shipping or at Christian Book Distributors new for $11.99 + shipping.   Books on Main may have a copy or they can assist you in ordering a copy.  You can easily catch up.  Older posts can be accessed by scrolling down on the right side of this page.

Click on the > above and you will be introduced to Pastor Idleman.  He explains the basic premise of his book AHA.

So far we have studied the first 4 chapters and in those chapters he has talked a lot about us seeing the need to change our behaviors.  Part 1:  Sudden Awakening

Let’s review:  We sometimes find ourselves far from God in what Idleman calls “The Distant Country”  Chapter 1.  Chapter 2:  We need to recognize our problems in “Coming To Our Senses”.  We should wake up to our problems when we have “A Desperate Moment” Chapter 3 and when we are faced with “A Startling Realization” we need to pay attention Chapter 4.

This is just the first step in the process of AHA; now Idleman wants us to take the next step which will be hard:  Part 2:  Brutal Honesty.

Why is honesty so hard?

We really don’t want to admit 1. we have problems  2.  we are responsible for our problems  3.  we need to make changes

Why is change so hard?

1. you have to feel.  That seems strange.  You might say I have feelings all the time but I have to ask, are your feelings productive?  Are you feeling joy about doing something that is not that good for you and then you feel guilt because you have done it?  Are you feeling excitement because you have gotten away with something and then you feel anxiety because you are afraid you are going to get caught?  Well those are feelings but I am not sure they are productive.  What about the feeling of doing the right thing?  What feelings can accompany that?  Relief, freedom, confidence etc.

2.you have to try the unfamiliar.  People who have experienced change relate that the reason people struggle with change is that they cling to the familiar.  What they are doing is harmful but it is part of their pattern of life.  It is scary to try to perform a new behavior because you are not sure that you can do it.  You may not have a positive result.  You cannot “see” down the road when you will be free from a behavior that is holding you back.  You have all heard the old expression that a “bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”  We all know that expression means that it is easier to accept what we have in front of us than to deal with the unknown.  People who are scared of change tend to retreat into the past, declaring that “this is the way my parents taught me,” or “it has worked for me before” or “this is the way I have always done this.”

3.you have to be willing to see change as a process.  You know what time of year we are in.  The glow of those new year’s resolutions may be fading a little.  You have made that commitment to go to the Y.  You have made that commitment to quit smoking. You have made that commitment to quit that behavior that is a sin.  You know it.  You do it.  You feel good when you do it and feel awful when you stop doing it.  You feel like a sinner.

Bet you did not see that one coming.

Pastor Idleman knows change is hard and as we read chapter 5, he is asking for the hardest change that we all have to make.  We need to be honest about ourselves.  We need to start the process by being honest about what we are doing.  If we are not honest, nothing will happen.  If we are not honest, we will hide from our real feelings.  If we are not honest, we will keep doing the familiar, that habit that is hurting.

Are you willing to start the process?  It all begins with Brutal Honesty.

Identity management.

Let’s be honest.  How many of us walk into the bathroom, look into the mirror and really examine ourselves?  I am not talking about examining the lumps, bumps, lines and blemishes.  I am talking about an honest questioning of who we really are.  An honest question and answer examination.

Pastor Idleman asks some tough questions in Chapter 5.  Do you spend more time on Facebook than in prayer?  When was the last time you told someone you love them?  How have you helped someone this past month [be specific]?  What is on your computer’s history?  When was the last time you prayed with your spouse?  Your children?  Can you name a missionary that you pray for regularly?  The questions keep on coming and they are not easy questions.  Most of the answers are rather disappointing if we are being honest; speaking the “God’s honest truth.”

Which brings me back to the title of the blog entry.  “What do you use a mirror for?”

Most of us use that mirror to cover up the lumps, bumps, lines and blemishes.  People who study the self concept call that the practice of identity management.  The question that may be uppermost in our minds is “how can I put my best foot forward when I go out in public?”  We don’t want to show that person staring back at us in the mirror in the early morning.  We want to present a better-looking version; in other words, we want to manage our identity.

Is the identity we present to the world real?  No.

The early morning face is real.

God hears our answers to the tough questions above and he knows the real answers.  Why do we answer the way we answer?  Again, identity management.  We wonder how would a Christian answer?  How can I present my best Christian face to the public?  What façade can I use to make me acceptable with my Christian friends, my church?

Chapter 5 is going to ask a lot of us as we study it.  The most important thing it is going to ask for is honesty.

Real Honesty

In Chapter 4 Pastor Idleman has discussed the need for us to experience the messages that God is sending us.  This week I have commented on how we make life harder than it should be.  God’s messages can be simple and receiving his blessing can be a simple process but we make it hard.  God’s messages can be pretty obvious but we don’t see them.  They are right in front of us be we don’t open our eyes.  We just can’t see them.

To end the week, the focus is on our minds.  What do we need to do to be in a position to receive God’s help?

Get to a place of solitude.

I used to need to be with people.   I could not handle being alone.

Then I found God and I discovered something: I am never alone.  He is always there. But being alone is not enough.  You need to be in a place of solitude. That means nothing in your environment should distract you.  I go to a room in my house and take my coffee.  The room is far away from the flow of the house and early in the morning when I have “solitude” time I turn off all the lights and the room is often pitch dark.  No TV.  No Computer. No phone.  Just me, the coffee and God in the dark.

However, I am still not in a place of solitude. My mind needs to be still.  I have removed a lot of the external noise of life because I am away from technology and sound and sight but I still may have physiological noise.  At the moment, my wife is suffering from a sinus infection so guess what, her solitude is being interrupted by her sinus pain.  Physiological noise could be a headache, sore muscles etc. etc. [you get the picture].

Even more important to achieve solitude is the psychological noise we all experience.  Thoughts occur [most of the time at random] about people, places, things we want to do or need to do.  We bring our anger into solitude.  We bring our worry into solitude.  We bring our joy into solitude.

We don’t have solitude if we don’t make the mind quiet.

Psalm 46:10  “Be still and know that I am God.” Pastor Idleman uses such good illustrations in his book, his daughter who so desperately wanted to catch a butterfly and she did but she had to do what her father told her.  You have to be still and quiet.  Then a butterfly landed on her knee.  The church in England that recorded silence on a CD.  The congregation was told to take a half hour every day for a week and listen to the CD, a CD with nothing on it but silence.  Elijah went to the mountain to meet God.  Surely he thought God would be in the wind.  He wasn’t.  Surely God is in the earthquake that is shaking this mountain.  He wasn’t.  God must be in the fire. He wasn’t . Elijah finally found God…in a gentle whisper.

For many of us today, true solitude is what we can’t achieve.

Without it, we will never hear the “still, small voice” of God.

Questions:  As we leave Chapter 4 and prepare to study Chapter 5, what do you need to do to achieve real solitude?  What do you need to do to realize God’s wonderful blessings in your life–to really “see” them?  Is life so complex for you that you cannot comprehend God’s blessings in the simple things?  What do you need to change so you can see His simple expressions of love and caring?

Pastor Idleman has been writing in Chapter 4 about realizing the power of God that is right in front of us.

This morning I awake with a concern on my heart.  I spent some time last night with a younger friend who has a wife with a chronic illness.  For years, she has suffered from a crippling physical ailment and now my friend’s life revolves around weekly doctors visits because she is not getting better.

Last night over dinner, he started experiencing pain down his lower back and legs to the point that I wondered if I was not going to have to have a little trip to the emergency room.

However, we were out to eat and we ordered our food and he was able to eat his meal.  Before eating we prayed over the food as is our custom.  This man is part of a group of Christian men [including two pastors] and we have a habit of thanking God for our food.  I was the elder man at the table because the two pastors were absent so I grabbed his hand and thanked God for the food and asked God for a healing for my friend.

He said after the prayer that he felt something.  He felt better.  I hope so.

He suffers from physical pain but he also [like many Christians] suffers from depression.

Do you ever talk to yourself?  I know I do.  Turn to Psalms 42 and listen to the psalmist talk to himself: “Why are you so downcast?”, “Why are you so disturbed?”, “Why have you forgotten me [God]?” and “Why must I go about mourning?”.  Sound like a depressed man?

I think so.

I watch my friend interact with others.  He tells me and another friend his problems and we listen.  I offer no advice.  I just listen and hope that the telling does him some good.  Then the meal is over and we move through the restaurant to pay our bill and all along the way he sees people that he knows and he stops and tells them of his pains.  I have seen this before in people who have chronic pain and people who are depressed.  Turning to acquaintances and even strangers and telling them your troubles.  What good does it do?  No good at all.

The psalmist in Psalms 42 finds a way to deal with his pain, his depression.  He takes it to God.

I wonder one day if my friend will do what the psalmist does at the end of 42–put his hope in God and praise God, for God is his Savior.

No spirit of depression can destroy that covenant relationship we have with God, no fluctuating mood can overpower our special connection with our Savior.

Will he ever see that?

Over years of teaching I have met numerous people.

Over years of teaching I have used several gimmicks to create learning moments with students.

One of the most interesting ones I have used is to get people to “see” Jesus in the image above.  The point of this is that some students will see Jesus and some will not.  It is a common perception exercise.  When I would show the above image to a class, sometimes I would kid around.  Like a revival preacher I would shout  “JEEESSSUUUSSS” and then an amen and a big HALLELUJAH!   Students would not only get a kick out of the illusion but also my kidding. Invariably some would see Jesus and others could not.

Then I would point to the image and use my finger to describe His hair, His eyes, His cheekbones and then a couple more would see Him [HALLELUJAH! I would shout].  No one was ever offended and many students knew me as a Christian so they knew I did not mean disrespect.

The exercise made the point that we all don’t experience life the same way.  We can’t even see the same image the same way.  What are we going to do about this?  Appreciate that other people have a different point of view.

One day I remember doing this exercise in a Fort Campbell Kentucky class on the military post.  I delivered the material the same way and got the same joyful response and made the same point but an African-American woman came up to me after class and was upset.  She said “I have always gone to church, I am a Sunday School teacher and read the Bible and pray every day and I CAN’T SEE JESUS.  What is wrong with me?”

I could tell she was upset but I also knew this was not a matter of life and death so I went to a Xerox machine and made her a copy to take home and told her to tape it up on the fridge for a few days.

Guess what, after walking by the image at home numerous times, she saw it.

Next week in class she came up to me and said “I SAW JESUS!” He was there all along.

Pastor Idleman says “I don’t want to spend any part of my life missing out on what He wants me to see now” but maybe we are trying too hard or maybe we are not trying hard enough.  I had a friend who had this optimistic motto in life; “Life is hard and then you die.”  Wow.  That guy did not think there was anything good in life.

I don’t believe that.

I believe the good is here and God wants us to see it NOW.

It is right in front of you……it was there all along.

Pastor Idleman really gets at the truth with his comments about perceiving the truth in life.

We want relationships with people who will tell us the truth but we only believe 95% of what they say.  That last 5% we just miss.

How does this relate?  Well, we find ourselves in situations where we are really in trouble but we just don’t see it.  We rationalize, we justify, we excuse ourselves, we blame others–you know the stuff we do to keep from taking blame.

Then that person who cares for us tells us 100% of the truth, the unvarnished view of our behavior.

If you excuse me, I want to tell you a story that I used over the years when I was teaching public speaking.  The point of the story is that it is important to know your audience and give them a message that they can relate to, appreciate and understand.  To do that you have to get over yourself and think like the audience as much as you possibly can.  Too often we only think of our own interests and worry about our own image; to be a successful public speaker, the needs of the audience should come first.

Abraham Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address; a speaker who thought about his audience.

The dedication of this National Cemetery at Gettysburg on Nov. 19, 1863 was a big deal so the President had to attend, but Abraham Lincoln also knew that he was not the first speaker of the day.  Yes he was the President but a popular orator named Edward Everett was chosen to speak before Lincoln.  This was 1863, a time long ago when long attention spans existed.  People could listen to long speeches; in fact, long orations were the norm.  Lincoln knew Everett was going to “go long.”  Lincoln also knew his popularity was not so great in 1863.  The Civil War had lasted far too long and the North was indeed war-weary.  His re-election was not a foregone conclusion.  The presentation was outdoors.  This was the day before amplification and approximately 15,000 people were in attendance, standing around the speakers, not many of them seated.  Lincoln was aware that they could wander off the premises if he did not strike the right note.

What did he do?  Well, he listened to 100% of the truth.  He needed to be short and sweet.  As I told my classes over the years, it is important from time to time to remember three golden speaking rules;  stand up, speak up and shut up.  Lincoln did not need to listen to his handlers, his advisors, his speech writers.  He knew he needed to listen to the truth.

What if he had not accepted the whole truth that day?  He would have faced a crowd that had just listened to a rousing 2 hour speech, delivered by a learned person with an exciting, melodious voice.  He would have faced a crowd that was not in love with their President [so common for Americans not to love their President].  He would have faced a crowd that was standing outdoors trying to hear a man with a shrill Kentucky accent.  Maybe they would have stayed for his long speech; maybe they would have walked away.

When I taught speaking, I would ask class members to tell me the author and title of this speech.  I would read the first sentence.  “Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature.”

No one knew it. [Edward Everett, The “Other” Gettysburg Address].

Then I would read the first sentence of the other speech.

“Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Hands would go up in the first three or four words and most students knew the author, the title of the speech and some knew some of the circumstances.

Lincoln hit a home run with his little 272 word speech.  How did he do it?  I contend he got over himself and he paid attention to that “five percent that we miss”.

The truth.