Today I want us look at how we deal with emotional pain in our relationships. Because we may talk about some personal things in our lives I want to remind us all to respect one another by keeping anything you hear confidential.
The place to start is by developing an understanding of what “emotional pain” is. Webster’s says that pain is “suffering or distress”. This makes emotional pain:
Feelings of suffering or distress.
We have all experienced emotional pain, some of us may be going through some today, and we will all certainly encounter it again in the future. My two questions for you this early in our lesson time are:
· What has caused emotional pain in your life, and how have you dealt with it? (Only share something that you are comfortable with.)
· What things could occur in the future that might result in emotional pain, and how do you think you might handle it?
{My personal events include, being abandoned as a child, being betrayed by a girlfriend, leaving my first wife and children and most recently, losing my father.}
Origins of Emotional Pain
There seems to be four direct and one indirect sources of emotional pain. These are:
· Losses, such as losing a significant relationship. It could include divorce from or death of a spouse. For a child it might be the loss of a pet.
· Violations, this is when someone does something to us that attacks our personhood. Abuse would be the single best example. A violation occurs when one of our personal boundaries is broken.
· Guilt, we can experience emotional pain as a result of something we do, the pain will only develop inside us when we come to understand and acknowledge our culpability. Realizing we have hurt or violated another person, and accepting personal responsibility for it results in internal distress over the fact that our actions and our values do not match up.
· Trauma, almost any negative event can result in a reaction inside our souls. We could witness a car wreck, or hear a story of child sexual abuse, or see people die in war; it can be almost anything. The most common trauma in this country is “post abortion stress”, which has become a syndrome, meaning professional psychotherapists have recognized it.
· Secondary Pain – This is where we have experienced pain as a result of one of the first four sources, and then have compounded it with our response. Examples include a teenager who has been sexually abused then acting out by becoming promiscuous, or a soldier returning from war hitting the bottle.
Every person you know has probably experienced some of this “emotional pain”, the question is there fore not about “have we got some”, but more about recognizing it and dealing with it.
How we get rid of our Emotional Pain.
Some of the methods we use to try to get rid of the pain include:
· Withdrawal, Avoidance and Isolating.
· Compulsive behaviors or addictions.
· Perfectionism or Chaos.
· Sabotage.
Did you notice that nothing on this list included help from God or godly people? Why do you think that might be?
When we try out some of these responses to emotional pain, we sometimes get relief don’t we? Have you ever felt bad and discovered that a few scoops of Haagen Daas seems to take that pain away? Or maybe when we work that extra half an hour at the office, we feel better. The question is, does this behavior reduce or remove the pain permanently? Let us look at a person in Scripture and see how he handled pain.
The person I have chosen is David, called by the Lord Himself “A man after God’s own heart”. Let us start with the big one, 2 Sam 12:1-7:
Then the Lord sent Nathan to David. And he came to him and said, "There were two men in one city, the one rich and the other poor. "The rich man had a great many flocks and herds. "But the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb which he bought and nourished; and it grew up together with him and his children. It would eat of his bread and drink of his cup and lie in his bosom, and was like a daughter to him. "Now a traveler came to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take from his own flock or his own herd, to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him; rather he took the poor man's ewe lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him." Then David's anger burned greatly against the man, and he said to Nathan, "As the Lord lives, surely the man who has done this deserves to die. "He must make restitution for the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing and had no compassion." Nathan then said to David, "You are the man! NASU
Do you remember what this story is about? (David had taken the beautiful Bathsheba from Uriah, his servant, and arranged to have Uriah killed, to satisfy his personal lusts and then cover up the crime). There was a great load of pain in David’s heart, and what did he do with it? The answer is found in Psalm 51. We don’t have to read it to remember his response to his pain; he threw himself down in front of the Lord and placed his life in God’s hands.
A second example is when David heard that one of his favorite sons, Absalom, had rebelled and plotted to take the kingdom, and kill his father. That sounds painful to me! What did David do, he didn’t react by seeking out his son to capture him, he went to God, as recorded in Psalm 3. Let’s read the whole thing.
Lord, how my adversaries have increased! Many are rising up against me. Many are saying of my soul, "There is no deliverance for him in God." Selah. But You, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the One who lifts my head. I was crying to the Lord with my voice, and He answered me from His holy mountain. Selah. I lay down and slept; I awoke, for the Lord sustains me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people who have set themselves against me round about. Arise, O Lord; save me, O my God! For You have smitten all my enemies on the cheek; You have shattered the teeth of the wicked. Salvation belongs to the Lord; Your blessing be upon Your people! Selah. NASU
If you have ever wondered what the phrase “A man after God’s own heart” was about, now you know. When David got into personal trouble he chose to go to God. David didn’t run away or hide or isolate, he didn’t pick up a six-pack or go to his GP for a new prescription. He went to God. David was as big a sinner as anybody you have ever heard about, he murdered, he raped, he stole, he coveted, adultery, he did it all, but when the pain arrived, he went to God.
Now, I know you have all been wondering what this boom box is doing here, well; it is time to find out. We are going to listen to a short speech given to a group of drug addicts by Robert McGee, the founder of Rapha, on the subject of emotional pain. After this we are simply going to spend some time talking about what you heard.
(Run Tape Here)
Let me run through some of the highlights:
· We have to face pain.
· Struggle and deal with pain until we die.
· Q – How do we deal with pain?
· Q – How do you keep pain from creating an addiction on your life?
· We will encounter pain.
· We don’t live well with pain.
· We will attempt to do something with pain, even if it is wrong!
· We will always try to reduce pain.
· Man’s way versus God’s way.
· Man focuses on the pain as the “evil”.
· Man looks for a way to eliminate or reduce the pain, quickly.
· Man is not so much interested in finding out why the pain is there.
· Whenever you reduce pain quickly, you produce an addiction.
· Examples; Chemicals, Jobs, Sexual Activity, Power, Perfectionism, Eating, Persons, Religious Experiences.
· Wall of diminishing returns, longer you use the “pain reducer” the worse it gets, eventually resulting in hopelessness.
· You will do something about the pain in your life!
· Incorrect methods of dealing with it. (Blaming)
· How do I deal with pain?
(Hand out the nine-question worksheet now)
(This next part is a “filled in” nine-question sheet)
1. Where does emotional pain come from?
Losses, Violations, Guilt, Trauma & Pain (Secondary)
2. What does emotional pain feel like? (Ask for personal answers)
Answers can include:
· A hole in my Soul.
· Depression.
· Anxiety.
· Stress.
· Lack of self-confidence or self-worth.
· Loneliness.
3. What kind of situations, events or relationships in my life can lead to emotional pain? (Ask for personal answers)
Some ideas; being put down by the boss, being rejected, losing a loved one, being wrong about something, having my ideas or suggestions ridiculed.
4. How have I dealt with emotional pain in the past? (Ask for personal answers)
Examples - Acting out sexually, being angry at everything, getting physically sick, slipping into depression, taking drugs.
5. What actions in my day-to-day life show me I might be dealing with some emotional pain? (Ask for personal answers)
Examples - Not being able to keep friends, raging, putting others down, being overly Perfectionistic, trying to control everything around me, acting like I am God!
6. Are these actions working for me? (Ask for personal answers)
Examples - No! I have trouble with feeling good about myself and others. From time to time I don’t function well. I can’t stand being alone for long periods.
7. What can I do differently to deal with my emotional pain?
Get counsel, take it to God on a daily basis, talk about it with trusted friends.
8. Is there any guidance in God’s word about dealing with emotional pain, and where can I find it?
Heb 13:5 – Dealing with rejection.
Pr 4:23 – Prevention is better than cure.
Is 53:4 – Jesus Himself will take on our pain.
2 Cor 1:3-4 – Receive comfort from God and others.
Rom 8:28 – God will use it for good in your life.
Rom 5:3-5 – Your pain, when taken to God, will develop perseverance and strong character in your life.
9. What can I do differently about dealing with my emotional pain?
Don’t try to deal with it alone! Go to God, through prayer, meditation and study, and to other people. See a counselor, go to celebrate recovery at the park.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Dealing With Emotional Pain (Blank Worksheet)
Note to readers: This lesson includes the use of a 15 minute tape recording on this subject, made by Robert McGee, founder of Rapha.
DEALING WITH EMOTIONAL PAIN
WORKSHEET QUESTIONS
1. Where does emotional pain come from?
2. What does emotional pain feel like?
3. What kind of situations, events or relationships in my life can lead to emotional pain?
4. How have I dealt with emotional pain in the past?
5. What actions in my day-to-day life show me I might be dealing with some emotional pain?
6. Are these actions working for me?
7. What can I do differently to deal with my emotional pain?
8. Is there any guidance in God’s word about dealing with emotional pain, and where can I find it?
9. What can I do differently about dealing with my emotional pain?
DEALING WITH EMOTIONAL PAIN
WORKSHEET QUESTIONS
1. Where does emotional pain come from?
2. What does emotional pain feel like?
3. What kind of situations, events or relationships in my life can lead to emotional pain?
4. How have I dealt with emotional pain in the past?
5. What actions in my day-to-day life show me I might be dealing with some emotional pain?
6. Are these actions working for me?
7. What can I do differently to deal with my emotional pain?
8. Is there any guidance in God’s word about dealing with emotional pain, and where can I find it?
9. What can I do differently about dealing with my emotional pain?
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Tying It Together
Welcome to the ninth and last lesson in our “control freak” series. Over the last few weeks we’ve taken a look at the following things:
· What is control?
· Who is in control?
· Characteristics of a “Control Freak”.
· Why “Control Freaks” act the way they do.
· Control Freak co-workers and bosses, Control Freak spouses, Control Freak parents and in-laws, and Control Freak kids.
· Our own “Control Freakishness”
· How to avoid being too controlling
In this last lesson we are going to try to “tie it all together”. First let us do a quick review of the whole series, touching on a few highlights.
In our very first lesson we defined what a “Control Freak” is:
Control Freaks are people who care more than you do about something and won’t stop at being pushy to get their own way.
We then looked at the question, “Is God a Control Freak”? For those of you that don’t remember, we agreed that God didn’t meet the definition above, and therefore He is not a “Control Freak”. We went on to look at the following questions:
Ø Is God in control?
Ø Where does my self-control fit in?
Do you recall the difference? Essentially we observed that God is in control in the “big picture” sense, He will always have events lead to filling His purposes. He will not, however, violate His own character by making our personal choices for us. One of the choices we make is whether to put ourselves under His will, or said another way, to place our self-control under His control.
We then looked at the 10 most common characteristics of “Control Freaks”, which are, (can you remember?):
Ø Obnoxious, Tenacious, Invasive, Obsessive, Perfectionistic.
Ø Critical, Irritable, Demanding, Rigid, Close-minded.
Next we moved on to why do “Control Freaks” actually act the way they do? We discussed how much of an illusion control is, and how a “Control freak” is riddled with a high internal level of anxiety, feelings of vulnerability, and a fragile self-confidence.
In section two of our book, lessons 3 through 6, we looked at the major relationships we had, from a “Control Freak” perspective. We covered:
Ø Co-workers.
Ø Spouses.
Ø Parents and In-laws.
Ø Kids.
Lesson 7 was where we used the questionnaire to discover about our personal control freak tendencies. Finally, lesson 8, which I missed, was on the subject of things we can do to reduce our over controlling ways.
Now we are ready to start tying things together!
I think the underlying objective of the book was to help us to think about how controlling behavior influences or affects relationships. Let’s take a look again at how this seems to happen.
First, we need to all agree that while God is in control, in a big picture sense, He has designed us with the ability and right to control our daily actions. If he were a puppeteer we would all do only what He chose for us to do. That is not His way, He made us to be free. Free to act righteously or wickedly, free to obey Him or to violate Him, and free to choose dependence on Him or to go our own way. In fact God encourages us to constantly develop a higher quality of self-control in Scripture. Let’s read 2 Peter 1:5-10:
Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble; NASU
One of the “qualities” listed here, which are discussed in the context of living a more godly life, is self-control. This is where the trouble begins!
Nowhere in Scripture does it say we are to exercise or develop “other-control”. In fact one of the themes of the whole book of Job is that of Job’s friends trying to get him to turn against God, by controlling him through suggestion. At the end of the book God is clearly not happy with Job’s friends as He tells them that His wrath is kindled against them. Wrath means “violent, resentful anger”, which is a pretty strong statement.
Is it any wonder then, that we who are made in the image of God, might develop deep resentments toward people who try to control us against our will?
Did you notice that I said “against our will”? That is really the core of the relationship problem with Control Freaks”. When we choose to give up certain parts of our life over to the control of others, it is still a self-control decision. For example, we can choose to come to class and listen to what is being taught. We give the decision on what is discussed to the teacher, and we do it freely. If, however, the teacher had you dragged here to listen, you would generate what? Resentment! Just like God had toward Job’s friends. So if I did this to you, you would resent my action and would automatically resent me.
What do you think these kinds of resentments do to relationships? (Open to class) Can you give us some examples of resentments you may have developed toward others who tried to control you? How about some resentments people may have toward you for what you’ve done in their lives?
When I think of people controlling me I most often think of the person who “invades me”. Let me give you an interesting thing to think about here. Let’s look at Col 3:21, it says:
Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart. NASU
This is very expressive to me. It speaks of the father’s ability to reach into the very soul of his children and provoke them to anger, to the point that they “lose heart”. The losing heart here is the Greek word “athumeo” meaning to be spiritless. Although this verse is used in the context of family relationships, it can be obviously applied to any relationship. Whenever somebody reaches into somebody else’s heart, which is another way of describing control, they invade him or her! For a child it will result in a discouragement, for an adult it will usually mean a resentment.
Does this whole discussion describe you? What do you think should be done when a person has engaged in controlling behavior and has finally recognized it? How can we begin to repair those relationships?
The beginning step, talk to God. I know it sounds simple, but it is also profound. If any one of us has sensed in our hearts that we have been controlling others, it is the Holy Spirit that is convicting us. It is like God is saying, “Come and talk with me about this”. So I say, “Confess this issue to Him”, after all He already knows! Personally I think we ought to spend some time doing this, don’t rush it, and communicate with the one who loves you unconditionally for a while.
The next step, talk to some safe people. I am referring to godly people you know, those who you trust with your personal secrets. Share what you are going through; speak about your dialogue with the Lord. God is so interested in helping you that He will bring you good advise from your friends. This is an application of the Scripture Pr 11:14:
Where there is no guidance the people fall, but in abundance of counselors there is victory. NASU
Now it is time to talk to the person that has been on the wrong end of your behavior. This is one of those major league relationship things. You have finally decided to make yourself vulnerable, how are they going to respond? This may sound like a cop-out, but I can only suggest one thing here, grace. Rely on God’s grace.
I want to look at this thing I’ve called “make yourself vulnerable” in more detail. This has got to be one of the hardest things for us to do. On top of this being difficult we must also take into account that we are approaching a person we may have hurt multiple times over a long period. This makes it “doubly difficult”. Does anybody have any thoughts on this, or has somebody here experienced doing this? (Open for discussion)
This is where the old boy scout motto comes in handy, “Be Prepared”. By the time you have come to this point, the moment you want to directly try to repair damaged or damaging relationships, you have consulted God, and received counsel from trusted friends. You are therefore mostly ready but not entirely. There are some things to finalize about your vulnerability.
First - Understand where you are. By this I mean know what you are feeling. When we realize we have been controlling others, or trying to, we can experience waves of shame and guilt about our behavior. The guilt we feel is appropriate, but the shame is misleading and can overwhelm us. If you are experiencing significant shame it will be a mistake to make yourself vulnerable and it would be unwise to proceed. This is a time to go back to God and your friends and deal with this problem. The problem is that you don’t have a heartfelt understanding of who you are to the point that you can put aside shame. If we approach someone in humility, one of the responses could be in the form of a shaming message. (Examples) If we are not prepared for this, we could go into an emotional tailspin.
God has a permanent remedy for this overwhelming shame we sometimes feel, we can find it in 1 Pet 2:4-10:
And coming to Him as to a living stone which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For this is contained in Scripture: "BEHOLD, I LAY IN ZION A CHOICE STONE, A PRECIOUS CORNER stone, AND HE WHO BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED." This precious value, then, is for you who believe; but for those who disbelieve, "THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THIS BECAME THE VERY CORNER stone," and, "A STONE OF STUMBLING AND A ROCK OF OFFENSE"; for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word, and to this doom they were also appointed. But you are A CHOSEN RACE, A royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR God's OWN POSSESSION, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were NOT A PEOPLE, but now you are THE PEOPLE OF GOD; you had NOT RECEIVED MERCY, but now you have RECEIVED MERCY. NASU
This is a very rich set of verses, but for our purpose here today, we’ll identify the eight descriptions of who God says we are:
Ø Living Stones (v4)
Ø Spiritual House (v5)
Ø Holy Priesthood (v5)
Ø Chosen Race (v9)
Ø Royal Priesthood (v9)
Ø Holy Nation (v9)
Ø People for God’s own Possession (v9)
Ø People of God (v10)
Notice that all these descriptions are about who we are and not what we do! When we are feeling down we can get this list out and remember that this is what God says.
The whole point of looking at this is to combat any shame in our lives with God’s word, so that we can prepare ourselves to admit our “Control Freak” guilt to those we have controlled.
Second – Know that you can’t determine the outcome! It is entirely possible that any person you talk to and admit guilt to will reject you and what you are saying. I would actually expect rejection, after all what have they suffered from you. Having said that, if they listen, and maybe accept an apology from you, or even express relief or forgiveness, you will experience joy. On the very negative side, it is also possible that you may undergo some table turning. This is where the other person may attempt to try to control you in some way, or seek some other form of revenge. An example would be that they try to get you to do or say something that is inappropriate, like agreeing that you did something to them that you actually didn’t do. The bottom line is that you cannot determine the outcome.
Lastly – have an objective! Know before you approach what you are trying to accomplish, and keep it simple. Be able to explain the objective to your trusted friends before you go to try to begin repairing the relationship. I even favor writing it down, so that you can compare what you planned to do with what actually happens. Scripture says it well in Proverbs 21:5:
The plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage, but everyone who is hasty comes surely to poverty. NASU
When it comes to trying to repair a damaged relationship there is ultimately only two things that matter.
Ø God will do His part.
Ø Rely on God to help you do your part.
Let’s briefly summarize this last part of our “Control Freak” series on the steps to repairing relationships.
1. Consult with God.
2. Consult with trusted friends.
3. Prepare yourself by:
Ø Knowing where you are emotionally.
Ø Knowing that you can’t determine the outcome.
Ø Knowing your objective.
Well, that’s it! We’ve finally come to the end of the series; I hope that you have all enjoyed it as much as I have.
· What is control?
· Who is in control?
· Characteristics of a “Control Freak”.
· Why “Control Freaks” act the way they do.
· Control Freak co-workers and bosses, Control Freak spouses, Control Freak parents and in-laws, and Control Freak kids.
· Our own “Control Freakishness”
· How to avoid being too controlling
In this last lesson we are going to try to “tie it all together”. First let us do a quick review of the whole series, touching on a few highlights.
In our very first lesson we defined what a “Control Freak” is:
Control Freaks are people who care more than you do about something and won’t stop at being pushy to get their own way.
We then looked at the question, “Is God a Control Freak”? For those of you that don’t remember, we agreed that God didn’t meet the definition above, and therefore He is not a “Control Freak”. We went on to look at the following questions:
Ø Is God in control?
Ø Where does my self-control fit in?
Do you recall the difference? Essentially we observed that God is in control in the “big picture” sense, He will always have events lead to filling His purposes. He will not, however, violate His own character by making our personal choices for us. One of the choices we make is whether to put ourselves under His will, or said another way, to place our self-control under His control.
We then looked at the 10 most common characteristics of “Control Freaks”, which are, (can you remember?):
Ø Obnoxious, Tenacious, Invasive, Obsessive, Perfectionistic.
Ø Critical, Irritable, Demanding, Rigid, Close-minded.
Next we moved on to why do “Control Freaks” actually act the way they do? We discussed how much of an illusion control is, and how a “Control freak” is riddled with a high internal level of anxiety, feelings of vulnerability, and a fragile self-confidence.
In section two of our book, lessons 3 through 6, we looked at the major relationships we had, from a “Control Freak” perspective. We covered:
Ø Co-workers.
Ø Spouses.
Ø Parents and In-laws.
Ø Kids.
Lesson 7 was where we used the questionnaire to discover about our personal control freak tendencies. Finally, lesson 8, which I missed, was on the subject of things we can do to reduce our over controlling ways.
Now we are ready to start tying things together!
I think the underlying objective of the book was to help us to think about how controlling behavior influences or affects relationships. Let’s take a look again at how this seems to happen.
First, we need to all agree that while God is in control, in a big picture sense, He has designed us with the ability and right to control our daily actions. If he were a puppeteer we would all do only what He chose for us to do. That is not His way, He made us to be free. Free to act righteously or wickedly, free to obey Him or to violate Him, and free to choose dependence on Him or to go our own way. In fact God encourages us to constantly develop a higher quality of self-control in Scripture. Let’s read 2 Peter 1:5-10:
Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble; NASU
One of the “qualities” listed here, which are discussed in the context of living a more godly life, is self-control. This is where the trouble begins!
Nowhere in Scripture does it say we are to exercise or develop “other-control”. In fact one of the themes of the whole book of Job is that of Job’s friends trying to get him to turn against God, by controlling him through suggestion. At the end of the book God is clearly not happy with Job’s friends as He tells them that His wrath is kindled against them. Wrath means “violent, resentful anger”, which is a pretty strong statement.
Is it any wonder then, that we who are made in the image of God, might develop deep resentments toward people who try to control us against our will?
Did you notice that I said “against our will”? That is really the core of the relationship problem with Control Freaks”. When we choose to give up certain parts of our life over to the control of others, it is still a self-control decision. For example, we can choose to come to class and listen to what is being taught. We give the decision on what is discussed to the teacher, and we do it freely. If, however, the teacher had you dragged here to listen, you would generate what? Resentment! Just like God had toward Job’s friends. So if I did this to you, you would resent my action and would automatically resent me.
What do you think these kinds of resentments do to relationships? (Open to class) Can you give us some examples of resentments you may have developed toward others who tried to control you? How about some resentments people may have toward you for what you’ve done in their lives?
When I think of people controlling me I most often think of the person who “invades me”. Let me give you an interesting thing to think about here. Let’s look at Col 3:21, it says:
Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart. NASU
This is very expressive to me. It speaks of the father’s ability to reach into the very soul of his children and provoke them to anger, to the point that they “lose heart”. The losing heart here is the Greek word “athumeo” meaning to be spiritless. Although this verse is used in the context of family relationships, it can be obviously applied to any relationship. Whenever somebody reaches into somebody else’s heart, which is another way of describing control, they invade him or her! For a child it will result in a discouragement, for an adult it will usually mean a resentment.
Does this whole discussion describe you? What do you think should be done when a person has engaged in controlling behavior and has finally recognized it? How can we begin to repair those relationships?
The beginning step, talk to God. I know it sounds simple, but it is also profound. If any one of us has sensed in our hearts that we have been controlling others, it is the Holy Spirit that is convicting us. It is like God is saying, “Come and talk with me about this”. So I say, “Confess this issue to Him”, after all He already knows! Personally I think we ought to spend some time doing this, don’t rush it, and communicate with the one who loves you unconditionally for a while.
The next step, talk to some safe people. I am referring to godly people you know, those who you trust with your personal secrets. Share what you are going through; speak about your dialogue with the Lord. God is so interested in helping you that He will bring you good advise from your friends. This is an application of the Scripture Pr 11:14:
Where there is no guidance the people fall, but in abundance of counselors there is victory. NASU
Now it is time to talk to the person that has been on the wrong end of your behavior. This is one of those major league relationship things. You have finally decided to make yourself vulnerable, how are they going to respond? This may sound like a cop-out, but I can only suggest one thing here, grace. Rely on God’s grace.
I want to look at this thing I’ve called “make yourself vulnerable” in more detail. This has got to be one of the hardest things for us to do. On top of this being difficult we must also take into account that we are approaching a person we may have hurt multiple times over a long period. This makes it “doubly difficult”. Does anybody have any thoughts on this, or has somebody here experienced doing this? (Open for discussion)
This is where the old boy scout motto comes in handy, “Be Prepared”. By the time you have come to this point, the moment you want to directly try to repair damaged or damaging relationships, you have consulted God, and received counsel from trusted friends. You are therefore mostly ready but not entirely. There are some things to finalize about your vulnerability.
First - Understand where you are. By this I mean know what you are feeling. When we realize we have been controlling others, or trying to, we can experience waves of shame and guilt about our behavior. The guilt we feel is appropriate, but the shame is misleading and can overwhelm us. If you are experiencing significant shame it will be a mistake to make yourself vulnerable and it would be unwise to proceed. This is a time to go back to God and your friends and deal with this problem. The problem is that you don’t have a heartfelt understanding of who you are to the point that you can put aside shame. If we approach someone in humility, one of the responses could be in the form of a shaming message. (Examples) If we are not prepared for this, we could go into an emotional tailspin.
God has a permanent remedy for this overwhelming shame we sometimes feel, we can find it in 1 Pet 2:4-10:
And coming to Him as to a living stone which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For this is contained in Scripture: "BEHOLD, I LAY IN ZION A CHOICE STONE, A PRECIOUS CORNER stone, AND HE WHO BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED." This precious value, then, is for you who believe; but for those who disbelieve, "THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THIS BECAME THE VERY CORNER stone," and, "A STONE OF STUMBLING AND A ROCK OF OFFENSE"; for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word, and to this doom they were also appointed. But you are A CHOSEN RACE, A royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR God's OWN POSSESSION, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were NOT A PEOPLE, but now you are THE PEOPLE OF GOD; you had NOT RECEIVED MERCY, but now you have RECEIVED MERCY. NASU
This is a very rich set of verses, but for our purpose here today, we’ll identify the eight descriptions of who God says we are:
Ø Living Stones (v4)
Ø Spiritual House (v5)
Ø Holy Priesthood (v5)
Ø Chosen Race (v9)
Ø Royal Priesthood (v9)
Ø Holy Nation (v9)
Ø People for God’s own Possession (v9)
Ø People of God (v10)
Notice that all these descriptions are about who we are and not what we do! When we are feeling down we can get this list out and remember that this is what God says.
The whole point of looking at this is to combat any shame in our lives with God’s word, so that we can prepare ourselves to admit our “Control Freak” guilt to those we have controlled.
Second – Know that you can’t determine the outcome! It is entirely possible that any person you talk to and admit guilt to will reject you and what you are saying. I would actually expect rejection, after all what have they suffered from you. Having said that, if they listen, and maybe accept an apology from you, or even express relief or forgiveness, you will experience joy. On the very negative side, it is also possible that you may undergo some table turning. This is where the other person may attempt to try to control you in some way, or seek some other form of revenge. An example would be that they try to get you to do or say something that is inappropriate, like agreeing that you did something to them that you actually didn’t do. The bottom line is that you cannot determine the outcome.
Lastly – have an objective! Know before you approach what you are trying to accomplish, and keep it simple. Be able to explain the objective to your trusted friends before you go to try to begin repairing the relationship. I even favor writing it down, so that you can compare what you planned to do with what actually happens. Scripture says it well in Proverbs 21:5:
The plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage, but everyone who is hasty comes surely to poverty. NASU
When it comes to trying to repair a damaged relationship there is ultimately only two things that matter.
Ø God will do His part.
Ø Rely on God to help you do your part.
Let’s briefly summarize this last part of our “Control Freak” series on the steps to repairing relationships.
1. Consult with God.
2. Consult with trusted friends.
3. Prepare yourself by:
Ø Knowing where you are emotionally.
Ø Knowing that you can’t determine the outcome.
Ø Knowing your objective.
Well, that’s it! We’ve finally come to the end of the series; I hope that you have all enjoyed it as much as I have.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
About Ourselves
Welcome to the seventh lesson in our “control freak” series. Over the last few weeks we’ve taken a look at the following things:
· What is control?
· Who is in control?
· Characteristics of a “Control Freak”.
· Why “Control Freaks” act the way they do.
· Control Freak co-workers and bosses, Control Freak spouses, Control Freak parents and in-laws, and Control Freak kids.
Now we come to the place you have all been waiting for; us! This morning I want to talk about some of the following questions:
· Am I a “Control Freak”?
· How much of a “Control Freak” am I?
· Where does my “Control Freak” nature come from?
· What can I do about it?
I want to start with each of us taking the test from the book. I have reproduced it here for ease of use. Let’s take just a few minutes to do it, answering every question, even if it doesn’t seem to apply, and then we’ll talk about the results. (The test is posted immediately prior to this posting for those that want to print it out. Please remember it is directly out of the "Control Freak" book by Les Parrott, and is subject to copyright law)
Before we score ourselves I would like to ask a different question, is it Scriptural to take a test like this? Let us look at Lam 3:40, to find out.
Let us examine and probe our ways, and let us return to the Lord. NASU
The answer to my query is obviously “yes”, and now I am going to ask another question, does this verse speak to you in some way? And now let’s look at Ps 139:23-24, was this, or something like it, your response?
Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way. NASU
I am aware that this kind of questioning about how we respond to the prompting of God can lead us into a “guilt trip”, or we might feel that we’ve let God down with a lesser response than the Psalmist gives. The feelings that come up at a time like this are real and they are our internal response to the prodding of the Holy Spirit. These internal reactions can be met with gratefulness as it confirms that our God cares so much about us that He wants to prompt us to come to Him in all things. Please close your eyes now and allow me to quote the Psalmist again, but this time make it your personal prayer, take ownership of these verses for the time you are here this morning.
How do you feel about what we just did?
Okay, it is now time to score:
For each “a” give yourself a point, “b” gets two points, “c” gets three and “d” four. Calculate your total, page 160 of the book gives us the author’s general assessment of what he thinks the scores mean. I am more interested in the individual questions:
Q1 – The “to-do” list. Does anybody have such a list? Do you keep one for other people, either written or in your memory? Do you have them from time to time, but not all the time? How do you handle “to-do” items? Do you fret about your list? Do you ignore it?
This is one of those sometimes positive, and sometimes negative things. Can you give me examples or reasons for this?
· Lists imply order (+ve)
· Lists imply focus (+ve)
· Lists for others can be helpful for getting chores done. (+ve)
· Lists for others can be used to control them! (-ve)
· Lists can lead us to worry. (-ve)
· Lists can contribute to workaholism. (-ve)
Does God like lists? In Exodus 20:1-17, God speaks into existence the first ever “to-do” list, we call it the “Ten Commandments”. The point of this list was to show us all that we were not able “to do” what He asked, and that we needed His grace to overcome our sin. And yes, it did give order and focus to the Israelites, it was helpful in getting things done, but it was also used by man to control other men, and to push them into worrying about their eternity, and even to do crazy things to themselves.
Q2 – Am I critical? Do I really have to say anything about this? I suppose I should. Do you remember in our first couple of lessons we talked about “criticism”, here are some of the high points:
· Mt 7:1-5, the log person!
· The big lie – “My criticism will make a big difference in their lives”.
· The root of criticism is pride and arrogance; someone is trying to play God!
· God says – James 4:11-12.
Q3 – I make plans, they want to change them. How flexible are you? Are you known as a donkey, I couldn’t use the word I was thinking about here? Are you known as a team player? I have only one point to make here:
· 1 Cor 12:12, we are all members of one body.
Q4 – Disagreement with others. Are you a disagreeable person? Do you argue a lot, like me! Is conflict your way of dealing with life?
· 1 Th 5:13(b) – Live in peace with one another.
· Eph 5:21 – Be subject to one another.
Yes, conflict is almost unavoidable, it comes your way. However, you can choose how you react. God says try to live in peace and submission, even in conflict.
Q5 – The slow driver. I sometimes have trouble with this guy, I used to be a firm “d”, ride the bumper, but I’ve been making progress. Anybody else want to comment? Does anyone have some “other driver” pet peeves?
My interpretation of the slow driver is that their actions are stopping me from moving forward at my pace, they are controlling me, which is why I get peeved. The same basic reality is true in many facets of life. For example, we all know family members who eat slowly, holding up our forward progress. Or, are you the one who can’t pick an item off the menu, so the waiter has to come back five times before you are ready. These “slow” actions can be controlling, but are usually not motivated by the need to control.
Q6 – Vacation arrangements. This control freak wants to make sure that everybody has a good time, by his or her definition. I really dislike the person who tries to make all my decisions for me; they are taking something away from me. It is called “choice”!
In this type of situation it is all about consensus, or something we can all live with. At best the person who does this is trying to make sure things go okay, but at worst, they are motivated by selfishness. Sometime it is hard to say which.
Q7 – How people succeed. This is actually a very spiritual issue. Let me ask the class, what is success? What does the class think God’s imperative is on this issue? Let’s look at one Scripture. Galatians 5:22-23, which says:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. NASU
This is probably something you have heard before, but have you heard it as a measure of success? What do I mean by this?
I am at the point in my faith where success is defined by phrases like:
· How close am I to God?
· Am I being Christ like?
· Do I resist temptations?
· Am I doing what God wants me to?
· Am I loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, gentle, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled?
So this is the Scriptural measure of success, how much do I bear the fruit of the Spirit? Are you challenged by this thought? Good!
Q8 – Rest. Do I get enough rest? When I rest am I fretting about what I have to do? Do I think rest is for “weak” people? Do I subscribe to the old adage “Idle hands are the devil’s playground”? Let me show you something.
· Gen 2:1-3, what does it say about rest?
God Himself rested, he even gave us the formula, one day in seven. Who are we to say that rest is not appropriate? Personally, I don’t think we rest enough. I am even going to say that those who chose not to rest are saying that God is wrong, which is a prideful and contemptuous action statement.
Do you remember that great movie “Chariots of Fire” and the central crisis in the story? It is about two runners, Harold Abrahams, a secular Jew, and Eric Liddell, a devout Christian. The crisis occurs because Eric who qualified for the 100-yard dash finals in the 1924 Olympics would not compete as it was to be run on a Sunday, the day of rest. He gave up his chance of a gold medal, and fame and glory to be obedient to God’s word. Liddell went on to be a missionary.
Will you take God’s admonition to rest seriously?
Q9 – The borrowed DVD. This one made me smile. I’m a little like that. In this case the lender feels like their whole life is in chaos unless the DVD is in it proper place. Can you imagine letting something like that stress you out? I guess I had better ask if anybody deals with this. Jesus had a very simple word to say about this, look at Mk 4:18-19.
And others are the ones on whom seed was sown among the thorns; these are the ones who have heard the word, but the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. NASU
This is part of the interpretation of the parable of the sower. It identifies that the worrier, who knows the word of God, gets so absorbed in worldly things that they become “unfruitful”, or useless for God’s purposes.
There is a lot of wisdom in the catchy saying, “Don’t sweat the little things!”
Q10 – Things aren’t going well. For some people their whole sense of “self worth” is wrapped up in their work. When things aren’t going well, they are not well, or put another way, they are sick! If you operate this way, you are probably shortening your life span. When someone wraps up their personal sense of well being with “work” they are demonstrating what they really believe in their hearts. They believe that they are a “human doing” not a “human being”! They believe a lie:
· If I do more and I do it well, I will be a better person.
What a trap! Jesus got to the heart of the matter in Mt 16:26:
For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? NASU
When you work, work, work, you give up something. Not sleeping at night over work or other worldly issues is a way to “forfeit your soul”, so beware!
Q11 – Paying the bills. I think that this question is about more than paying the bills. It is an example of somebody wanting to be in charge and in control. I know this is somewhat of a generalization, but, I think that the more a person adopts this “I’ll do it, to make sure it is done and done right” attitude, the more of a CF they are! There are several potential problems with this:
· People around this individual are delivered the message “You are not competent to do this task properly, I don’t trust you!”
· The perpetrator is exhibiting some contempt for others abilities, and/or pride in their own skills.
· People who could do the task choose to stay away from the individual, resulting in a loss of relationship at some level.
· It delivers a message to others that they are not wanted or needed.
What I would like to point out here is that if we get to acting in this controlling way it might be useful to put ourselves in the place of the other people involved. Let us check out what God has to say about this in Mt 7:12.
In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets. NASU
This is commonly known as “The Golden Rule”.
Q12 – Why am I here this morning? We’ll finish today by asking this as an open question to the class.
Next week we will be looking at things we can do to help ourselves reduce any “control freakishness” we may have.
· What is control?
· Who is in control?
· Characteristics of a “Control Freak”.
· Why “Control Freaks” act the way they do.
· Control Freak co-workers and bosses, Control Freak spouses, Control Freak parents and in-laws, and Control Freak kids.
Now we come to the place you have all been waiting for; us! This morning I want to talk about some of the following questions:
· Am I a “Control Freak”?
· How much of a “Control Freak” am I?
· Where does my “Control Freak” nature come from?
· What can I do about it?
I want to start with each of us taking the test from the book. I have reproduced it here for ease of use. Let’s take just a few minutes to do it, answering every question, even if it doesn’t seem to apply, and then we’ll talk about the results. (The test is posted immediately prior to this posting for those that want to print it out. Please remember it is directly out of the "Control Freak" book by Les Parrott, and is subject to copyright law)
Before we score ourselves I would like to ask a different question, is it Scriptural to take a test like this? Let us look at Lam 3:40, to find out.
Let us examine and probe our ways, and let us return to the Lord. NASU
The answer to my query is obviously “yes”, and now I am going to ask another question, does this verse speak to you in some way? And now let’s look at Ps 139:23-24, was this, or something like it, your response?
Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way. NASU
I am aware that this kind of questioning about how we respond to the prompting of God can lead us into a “guilt trip”, or we might feel that we’ve let God down with a lesser response than the Psalmist gives. The feelings that come up at a time like this are real and they are our internal response to the prodding of the Holy Spirit. These internal reactions can be met with gratefulness as it confirms that our God cares so much about us that He wants to prompt us to come to Him in all things. Please close your eyes now and allow me to quote the Psalmist again, but this time make it your personal prayer, take ownership of these verses for the time you are here this morning.
How do you feel about what we just did?
Okay, it is now time to score:
For each “a” give yourself a point, “b” gets two points, “c” gets three and “d” four. Calculate your total, page 160 of the book gives us the author’s general assessment of what he thinks the scores mean. I am more interested in the individual questions:
Q1 – The “to-do” list. Does anybody have such a list? Do you keep one for other people, either written or in your memory? Do you have them from time to time, but not all the time? How do you handle “to-do” items? Do you fret about your list? Do you ignore it?
This is one of those sometimes positive, and sometimes negative things. Can you give me examples or reasons for this?
· Lists imply order (+ve)
· Lists imply focus (+ve)
· Lists for others can be helpful for getting chores done. (+ve)
· Lists for others can be used to control them! (-ve)
· Lists can lead us to worry. (-ve)
· Lists can contribute to workaholism. (-ve)
Does God like lists? In Exodus 20:1-17, God speaks into existence the first ever “to-do” list, we call it the “Ten Commandments”. The point of this list was to show us all that we were not able “to do” what He asked, and that we needed His grace to overcome our sin. And yes, it did give order and focus to the Israelites, it was helpful in getting things done, but it was also used by man to control other men, and to push them into worrying about their eternity, and even to do crazy things to themselves.
Q2 – Am I critical? Do I really have to say anything about this? I suppose I should. Do you remember in our first couple of lessons we talked about “criticism”, here are some of the high points:
· Mt 7:1-5, the log person!
· The big lie – “My criticism will make a big difference in their lives”.
· The root of criticism is pride and arrogance; someone is trying to play God!
· God says – James 4:11-12.
Q3 – I make plans, they want to change them. How flexible are you? Are you known as a donkey, I couldn’t use the word I was thinking about here? Are you known as a team player? I have only one point to make here:
· 1 Cor 12:12, we are all members of one body.
Q4 – Disagreement with others. Are you a disagreeable person? Do you argue a lot, like me! Is conflict your way of dealing with life?
· 1 Th 5:13(b) – Live in peace with one another.
· Eph 5:21 – Be subject to one another.
Yes, conflict is almost unavoidable, it comes your way. However, you can choose how you react. God says try to live in peace and submission, even in conflict.
Q5 – The slow driver. I sometimes have trouble with this guy, I used to be a firm “d”, ride the bumper, but I’ve been making progress. Anybody else want to comment? Does anyone have some “other driver” pet peeves?
My interpretation of the slow driver is that their actions are stopping me from moving forward at my pace, they are controlling me, which is why I get peeved. The same basic reality is true in many facets of life. For example, we all know family members who eat slowly, holding up our forward progress. Or, are you the one who can’t pick an item off the menu, so the waiter has to come back five times before you are ready. These “slow” actions can be controlling, but are usually not motivated by the need to control.
Q6 – Vacation arrangements. This control freak wants to make sure that everybody has a good time, by his or her definition. I really dislike the person who tries to make all my decisions for me; they are taking something away from me. It is called “choice”!
In this type of situation it is all about consensus, or something we can all live with. At best the person who does this is trying to make sure things go okay, but at worst, they are motivated by selfishness. Sometime it is hard to say which.
Q7 – How people succeed. This is actually a very spiritual issue. Let me ask the class, what is success? What does the class think God’s imperative is on this issue? Let’s look at one Scripture. Galatians 5:22-23, which says:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. NASU
This is probably something you have heard before, but have you heard it as a measure of success? What do I mean by this?
I am at the point in my faith where success is defined by phrases like:
· How close am I to God?
· Am I being Christ like?
· Do I resist temptations?
· Am I doing what God wants me to?
· Am I loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, gentle, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled?
So this is the Scriptural measure of success, how much do I bear the fruit of the Spirit? Are you challenged by this thought? Good!
Q8 – Rest. Do I get enough rest? When I rest am I fretting about what I have to do? Do I think rest is for “weak” people? Do I subscribe to the old adage “Idle hands are the devil’s playground”? Let me show you something.
· Gen 2:1-3, what does it say about rest?
God Himself rested, he even gave us the formula, one day in seven. Who are we to say that rest is not appropriate? Personally, I don’t think we rest enough. I am even going to say that those who chose not to rest are saying that God is wrong, which is a prideful and contemptuous action statement.
Do you remember that great movie “Chariots of Fire” and the central crisis in the story? It is about two runners, Harold Abrahams, a secular Jew, and Eric Liddell, a devout Christian. The crisis occurs because Eric who qualified for the 100-yard dash finals in the 1924 Olympics would not compete as it was to be run on a Sunday, the day of rest. He gave up his chance of a gold medal, and fame and glory to be obedient to God’s word. Liddell went on to be a missionary.
Will you take God’s admonition to rest seriously?
Q9 – The borrowed DVD. This one made me smile. I’m a little like that. In this case the lender feels like their whole life is in chaos unless the DVD is in it proper place. Can you imagine letting something like that stress you out? I guess I had better ask if anybody deals with this. Jesus had a very simple word to say about this, look at Mk 4:18-19.
And others are the ones on whom seed was sown among the thorns; these are the ones who have heard the word, but the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. NASU
This is part of the interpretation of the parable of the sower. It identifies that the worrier, who knows the word of God, gets so absorbed in worldly things that they become “unfruitful”, or useless for God’s purposes.
There is a lot of wisdom in the catchy saying, “Don’t sweat the little things!”
Q10 – Things aren’t going well. For some people their whole sense of “self worth” is wrapped up in their work. When things aren’t going well, they are not well, or put another way, they are sick! If you operate this way, you are probably shortening your life span. When someone wraps up their personal sense of well being with “work” they are demonstrating what they really believe in their hearts. They believe that they are a “human doing” not a “human being”! They believe a lie:
· If I do more and I do it well, I will be a better person.
What a trap! Jesus got to the heart of the matter in Mt 16:26:
For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? NASU
When you work, work, work, you give up something. Not sleeping at night over work or other worldly issues is a way to “forfeit your soul”, so beware!
Q11 – Paying the bills. I think that this question is about more than paying the bills. It is an example of somebody wanting to be in charge and in control. I know this is somewhat of a generalization, but, I think that the more a person adopts this “I’ll do it, to make sure it is done and done right” attitude, the more of a CF they are! There are several potential problems with this:
· People around this individual are delivered the message “You are not competent to do this task properly, I don’t trust you!”
· The perpetrator is exhibiting some contempt for others abilities, and/or pride in their own skills.
· People who could do the task choose to stay away from the individual, resulting in a loss of relationship at some level.
· It delivers a message to others that they are not wanted or needed.
What I would like to point out here is that if we get to acting in this controlling way it might be useful to put ourselves in the place of the other people involved. Let us check out what God has to say about this in Mt 7:12.
In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets. NASU
This is commonly known as “The Golden Rule”.
Q12 – Why am I here this morning? We’ll finish today by asking this as an open question to the class.
Next week we will be looking at things we can do to help ourselves reduce any “control freakishness” we may have.
How Much of a Control Freak am I?
THE CONTROL FREAK SELF TEST
1. Some of the items on my lengthy to-do list could be delegated to a family member or co-worker, but:
(a) I don’t ask anyone because I don’t want to impose.
(b) I feel kind of awkward about it, but I eventually let people know that I need help.
(c) I don’t hesitate to ask people for help.
(d) I don’t see the point of asking, because hardly anyone can do the job as well as I can.
2. My family members, friends, and co-workers tell me I am sometimes critical and hard to please.
(a) Never.
(b) Sometimes.
(c) Frequently.
(d) All the time.
3. When I’ve taken time to make plans for an evening with friends and then they want to change what I have arranged.
(a) I don’t say a word about it, and am happy to go along without making a fuss.
(b) I let them know my feelings, but I eventually change my attitude and go along with it.
(c) I make it clear how hard I worked to pull everything together and try to convince them to see why my way is better.
(d) I make my stance known and don’t budge.
4. When I’m having a disagreement with a sales clerk:
(a) I swallow my words and give in just to avoid conflict.
(b) I work to resolve it as quickly as I can.
(c) I fight for my point even if it takes time.
(d) I often go to the mat to win and show why I’m right.
5. When I’m in a hurry and the driver in front of me is driving especially slowly, causing me to miss green lights:
(a) I take that time to slow down and enjoy the ride.
(b) I hope he turns off the road so I can get going.
(c) I get very frustrated and do whatever I can to pass him.
(d) I ride his bumper, flash my lights or honk, and give him a dirty look when I get around him.
6. I’m taking a long overdue vacation with a few friends. When it comes to making travel arrangements and planning our days, my style is too:
(a) Let my friends do the planning and go with the flow.
(b) Offer a couple of suggestions but remain spontaneous.
(c) Think things through, like where we will want to eat on that day, and plan accordingly.
(d) Read up on where we are going, schedule each day ahead of time, and purchase tickets well in advance to avoid potential hassles.
7. In thinking about how people succeed in life:
(a) I go with the flow and see what happens.
(b) I think it is good to have goals, but everyone has his or her own style.
(c) I don’t understand people who don’t have vision for what they can do.
(d) I have little patience for those who simply drift without direction.
8. I just spent twenty minutes at the office doing absolutely nothing. I feel:
(a) Justified. I deserve some slack off time.
(b) Energized. It felt good to veg out.
(c) Grumpy. I could have finished a project and not felt so bad.
(d) Guilty. I wasted precious time in which I could have gotten more done.
9. When someone borrows a DVD from my neatly organized collection and doesn’t put it back in the right place:
(a) It doesn’t bother me.
(b) I’m just happy the person returned it.
(c) I put the DVD back the way I want it, and make a mental note to tell the person where I want it to go.
(d) I show the person how to do it right and say that the next time he or she borrows a DVD; I want it returned to exact place I have it.
10. When an important project I’m working on is not going the way I want it to:
(a) I shrug it off because nothing is really that important.
(b) I do something else and come back to the situation with a clear mind.
(c) I mull over the problem but do my best to leave my worries at work.
(d) I can’t let it go. I worry to the point it keeps me up at night.
11. When it come to paying the bills in our home:
(a) I don’t have anything to do with it.
(b) It doesn’t matter who does it as long as it gets done.
(c) I do it myself if time allows or review the job if it was done by someone else to be sure I know what’s going on.
(d) I always do it myself because I want to know exactly where the money is going, and I want to be sure the bills are paid on time.
12. I’m reading a book on being a Control Freak because:
(a) Someone gave it to me, I’m not sure why.
(b) I am primarily concerned with finding ways to cope with over controlling people around me. But if reading this book keeps me from being controlling, that’s great too.
(c) I know I have controlling tendencies and hope this book might help me improve.
(d) I read few a few parts I think are best – just to be in the know – and don’t give much weight to ideas I disagree with.
1. Some of the items on my lengthy to-do list could be delegated to a family member or co-worker, but:
(a) I don’t ask anyone because I don’t want to impose.
(b) I feel kind of awkward about it, but I eventually let people know that I need help.
(c) I don’t hesitate to ask people for help.
(d) I don’t see the point of asking, because hardly anyone can do the job as well as I can.
2. My family members, friends, and co-workers tell me I am sometimes critical and hard to please.
(a) Never.
(b) Sometimes.
(c) Frequently.
(d) All the time.
3. When I’ve taken time to make plans for an evening with friends and then they want to change what I have arranged.
(a) I don’t say a word about it, and am happy to go along without making a fuss.
(b) I let them know my feelings, but I eventually change my attitude and go along with it.
(c) I make it clear how hard I worked to pull everything together and try to convince them to see why my way is better.
(d) I make my stance known and don’t budge.
4. When I’m having a disagreement with a sales clerk:
(a) I swallow my words and give in just to avoid conflict.
(b) I work to resolve it as quickly as I can.
(c) I fight for my point even if it takes time.
(d) I often go to the mat to win and show why I’m right.
5. When I’m in a hurry and the driver in front of me is driving especially slowly, causing me to miss green lights:
(a) I take that time to slow down and enjoy the ride.
(b) I hope he turns off the road so I can get going.
(c) I get very frustrated and do whatever I can to pass him.
(d) I ride his bumper, flash my lights or honk, and give him a dirty look when I get around him.
6. I’m taking a long overdue vacation with a few friends. When it comes to making travel arrangements and planning our days, my style is too:
(a) Let my friends do the planning and go with the flow.
(b) Offer a couple of suggestions but remain spontaneous.
(c) Think things through, like where we will want to eat on that day, and plan accordingly.
(d) Read up on where we are going, schedule each day ahead of time, and purchase tickets well in advance to avoid potential hassles.
7. In thinking about how people succeed in life:
(a) I go with the flow and see what happens.
(b) I think it is good to have goals, but everyone has his or her own style.
(c) I don’t understand people who don’t have vision for what they can do.
(d) I have little patience for those who simply drift without direction.
8. I just spent twenty minutes at the office doing absolutely nothing. I feel:
(a) Justified. I deserve some slack off time.
(b) Energized. It felt good to veg out.
(c) Grumpy. I could have finished a project and not felt so bad.
(d) Guilty. I wasted precious time in which I could have gotten more done.
9. When someone borrows a DVD from my neatly organized collection and doesn’t put it back in the right place:
(a) It doesn’t bother me.
(b) I’m just happy the person returned it.
(c) I put the DVD back the way I want it, and make a mental note to tell the person where I want it to go.
(d) I show the person how to do it right and say that the next time he or she borrows a DVD; I want it returned to exact place I have it.
10. When an important project I’m working on is not going the way I want it to:
(a) I shrug it off because nothing is really that important.
(b) I do something else and come back to the situation with a clear mind.
(c) I mull over the problem but do my best to leave my worries at work.
(d) I can’t let it go. I worry to the point it keeps me up at night.
11. When it come to paying the bills in our home:
(a) I don’t have anything to do with it.
(b) It doesn’t matter who does it as long as it gets done.
(c) I do it myself if time allows or review the job if it was done by someone else to be sure I know what’s going on.
(d) I always do it myself because I want to know exactly where the money is going, and I want to be sure the bills are paid on time.
12. I’m reading a book on being a Control Freak because:
(a) Someone gave it to me, I’m not sure why.
(b) I am primarily concerned with finding ways to cope with over controlling people around me. But if reading this book keeps me from being controlling, that’s great too.
(c) I know I have controlling tendencies and hope this book might help me improve.
(d) I read few a few parts I think are best – just to be in the know – and don’t give much weight to ideas I disagree with.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
PARENTS AND IN-LAWS
Today we are covering chapters 9 (The Pushy Parent) and 10 (The Invasive In-Laws) as a combined lesson. I am planning to talk a little less than usual; and stop cheering in the peanut gallery! I want us to share a little more intimately about growing up in our family of origin, particularly focusing on our relationship with our parents, grandparents and stepparents. Later on we can look at and compare this with our interactions with our in-laws.
First though let us look at the definitive verse on dealing with our parents, which to me also includes grandparents and any stepparents we may have had. Can you guess what it is? Let’s all pick up our Bibles and head into Exodus 20, verse 12:
Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you. NASU
This verse is repeated by Moses in Dt 5:16 when he starts giving the Israelites the whole law, and Moses offers us a slightly expanded version.
Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be prolonged and that it may go well with you on the land which the Lord your God gives you. NASU
Before I comment, I want to open it up for people’s views on what this means to them.
This verse has some unique characteristics.
· It is the fifth commandment, but the first with a personal promise. (Which is?) That your life will be prolonged, and that things will go well with you.
· It is the commandment God selected to come right after the first four, which deal with our relationship with Him. (What does that mean?) I think it signifies that is only just behind the first four in importance.
· It is the only “human relationship” commandment.
· God is specifically implying something here; the version in Dt will help the most. (Which is?) That honoring your parents is honoring God. (Why might that be true?)
· It also deals with other relationships, although they are not spelled out, what are they? The in-laws and grandparents of course, but also the judges, kings, prophets and teachers, these people were often called “father” in the Hebrew culture.
Another quick observation here from my second point about the fifth commandment being right behind the first four. Traditionally we are taught that the commandments are broken down into the four/six arrangement. I want us all to consider that God had something else in mind. Do you remember the scene in the original “Tem Commandments” where the stone tablets were etched by the fire of God? It is done as a five/five arrangement! This is what I think God intended for the Israelites, and now us, to understand. The first four mention His name, and are clearly about the God/Man relationship. The fifth does not mention His name, but it is implied that since He is our heavenly father, He regards this commandment as also being part of the God/Man relationship. The fifth commandment is a very unique instruction.
Now it is time to go back to when we were children. What happened to you in your home, that you are willing to talk about? Some example questions:
· Did your parents fight, and did you get included?
· Were you the family “clown”?
· Did your parents do drugs or alcohol, and how did that affect you?
· Were your Mom or Dad angry people?
· Did a big fat pink elephant reside in your living room, but nobody talked about it?
· Did you always have to comply?
· Did you have to constantly please others in the house?
As we talk about what happened in our lives, think about what kind of “automatic” behaviors you exhibit. Are you:
· Frequently depressed?
· Negative, when presented with something new or different?
· Avoiding change?
· Constantly “up”, but internally tired?
· The life and soul of every meeting?
· Always helping others, even to the point that your family is ignored?
(Spend some time on this, as much as the class wants)
Now we are going to go where the rubber meets the road. How are you as a parent?
· What would your spouse say?
· What would your kids say?
· What would your parents say?
· What would your close friends say?
Here are some interesting statements from others.
· Honey, don’t you think you are being a little too demanding of Johnny?
· Don’t you think you should let them play a little before homework?
· Son, when I was parenting, I would never let you do that!
· Sweetie, aren’t my granddaughter’s clothes too revealing?
· Mom, I can go forty here, you do.
· Dad, don’t tell me to quit smoking weed, I’ve seen you do it.
What are some things that came up as I read these statements? (Allow some time here)
The author does a terrific job here of helping how to deal with “pushy parents” and “invasive I-laws”. I am going to highlight some points, and we can discuss them briefly.
1. Put your self in their place. East to say, hard to do well. We have to make every attempt to understand where they are coming from. This is longer term activity because we need to be in an empathetic place as we consider our parents and in-laws life experiences. We ought to listen, with real interest, to their stories. So much can be found out this way. When we start to understand what they have been through, their behavior toward us will make more sense.
2. Find the good. Look for things that are positive, focus on them, talk about them. I’m not saying forget about the negative, but don’t dwell on it until it becomes impossible to handle with grace.
3. Be Forgiving. Carry around an attitude of forgiveness. It will help you deal with the rough times.
4. Set Boundaries. This is a big thing. If you haven’t read the book “Boundaries”, buy it and take it to heart. Saying “no” to a parent or in-law is something you must be able to do. If you don’t, then they control your life!
5. Know Your Part. In a parent/child relationship when the parent is “doing their thing”, you have a part in it somewhere. For example, if the parent tells you how to do something, and you believe it to be wrong, what do you do? Do you go along with the bad decision to keep the peace? If you do, you are a “doormat person” and you have successfully laid down your own ability to choose, and let the parent walk all over it.
I’m going to close here with one last thought. You decide when you go on vacation, not your parents or your in-laws! Do not ever let them try to tell you any different, it is your life and you are in charge of it and responsible for your own choices. (For any reader of these notes, this is an example of a dilemma many of can face, how to honor parents and maintain our own boundaries and family integrity)
First though let us look at the definitive verse on dealing with our parents, which to me also includes grandparents and any stepparents we may have had. Can you guess what it is? Let’s all pick up our Bibles and head into Exodus 20, verse 12:
Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you. NASU
This verse is repeated by Moses in Dt 5:16 when he starts giving the Israelites the whole law, and Moses offers us a slightly expanded version.
Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be prolonged and that it may go well with you on the land which the Lord your God gives you. NASU
Before I comment, I want to open it up for people’s views on what this means to them.
This verse has some unique characteristics.
· It is the fifth commandment, but the first with a personal promise. (Which is?) That your life will be prolonged, and that things will go well with you.
· It is the commandment God selected to come right after the first four, which deal with our relationship with Him. (What does that mean?) I think it signifies that is only just behind the first four in importance.
· It is the only “human relationship” commandment.
· God is specifically implying something here; the version in Dt will help the most. (Which is?) That honoring your parents is honoring God. (Why might that be true?)
· It also deals with other relationships, although they are not spelled out, what are they? The in-laws and grandparents of course, but also the judges, kings, prophets and teachers, these people were often called “father” in the Hebrew culture.
Another quick observation here from my second point about the fifth commandment being right behind the first four. Traditionally we are taught that the commandments are broken down into the four/six arrangement. I want us all to consider that God had something else in mind. Do you remember the scene in the original “Tem Commandments” where the stone tablets were etched by the fire of God? It is done as a five/five arrangement! This is what I think God intended for the Israelites, and now us, to understand. The first four mention His name, and are clearly about the God/Man relationship. The fifth does not mention His name, but it is implied that since He is our heavenly father, He regards this commandment as also being part of the God/Man relationship. The fifth commandment is a very unique instruction.
Now it is time to go back to when we were children. What happened to you in your home, that you are willing to talk about? Some example questions:
· Did your parents fight, and did you get included?
· Were you the family “clown”?
· Did your parents do drugs or alcohol, and how did that affect you?
· Were your Mom or Dad angry people?
· Did a big fat pink elephant reside in your living room, but nobody talked about it?
· Did you always have to comply?
· Did you have to constantly please others in the house?
As we talk about what happened in our lives, think about what kind of “automatic” behaviors you exhibit. Are you:
· Frequently depressed?
· Negative, when presented with something new or different?
· Avoiding change?
· Constantly “up”, but internally tired?
· The life and soul of every meeting?
· Always helping others, even to the point that your family is ignored?
(Spend some time on this, as much as the class wants)
Now we are going to go where the rubber meets the road. How are you as a parent?
· What would your spouse say?
· What would your kids say?
· What would your parents say?
· What would your close friends say?
Here are some interesting statements from others.
· Honey, don’t you think you are being a little too demanding of Johnny?
· Don’t you think you should let them play a little before homework?
· Son, when I was parenting, I would never let you do that!
· Sweetie, aren’t my granddaughter’s clothes too revealing?
· Mom, I can go forty here, you do.
· Dad, don’t tell me to quit smoking weed, I’ve seen you do it.
What are some things that came up as I read these statements? (Allow some time here)
The author does a terrific job here of helping how to deal with “pushy parents” and “invasive I-laws”. I am going to highlight some points, and we can discuss them briefly.
1. Put your self in their place. East to say, hard to do well. We have to make every attempt to understand where they are coming from. This is longer term activity because we need to be in an empathetic place as we consider our parents and in-laws life experiences. We ought to listen, with real interest, to their stories. So much can be found out this way. When we start to understand what they have been through, their behavior toward us will make more sense.
2. Find the good. Look for things that are positive, focus on them, talk about them. I’m not saying forget about the negative, but don’t dwell on it until it becomes impossible to handle with grace.
3. Be Forgiving. Carry around an attitude of forgiveness. It will help you deal with the rough times.
4. Set Boundaries. This is a big thing. If you haven’t read the book “Boundaries”, buy it and take it to heart. Saying “no” to a parent or in-law is something you must be able to do. If you don’t, then they control your life!
5. Know Your Part. In a parent/child relationship when the parent is “doing their thing”, you have a part in it somewhere. For example, if the parent tells you how to do something, and you believe it to be wrong, what do you do? Do you go along with the bad decision to keep the peace? If you do, you are a “doormat person” and you have successfully laid down your own ability to choose, and let the parent walk all over it.
I’m going to close here with one last thought. You decide when you go on vacation, not your parents or your in-laws! Do not ever let them try to tell you any different, it is your life and you are in charge of it and responsible for your own choices. (For any reader of these notes, this is an example of a dilemma many of can face, how to honor parents and maintain our own boundaries and family integrity)
Sunday, September 16, 2007
The Supervising Spouse
Good morning and welcome to the fourth lesson in our “control freak series”, and this one may be the “gem” in the series. I don’t know how I got the short straw, but I’m here this morning to talk about, “Control Freak Spouses”, and as you can see, my lovely wife is right here next to me. This should be interesting!
I’m going to start our time with the little test laid out on page 89 of our book, it should only take a couple of minutes. (Test time) Did anybody experience an odd or difficult thought, or maybe some hesitation or discomfort over answering these questions? Would somebody like to share his or her favorite question, or maybe his or her favorite answer? I don’t think there is any need to go over the results of this test, in my opinion it is only designed to make us think about this issue.
Is everybody familiar with the expression, “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”? What does this imply? What does this say about a household where this is the rule? BTW, this can equally apply to Dada!
· Mama controls the home.
· Every other person’s needs are subservient to Mama.
· Mama believes all is well, meaning that everybody is content.
· Every other person in the home is miserable.
· Secret rebellion exists; things are kept from Mama.
· As far as is possible, everybody avoids Mama.
What is always going to be true about a marriage where either Mama or Dada is the controller? (There can be many answers to this, they will always be some form of “it is dysfunctional and it is less than it could be”) Today we are going to explore what causes Mama or Dada to try to control the home.
Let us start with some Scripture. Gen 24:66-67:
Gen 24:66-67 - The servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. 67 Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and he took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her; thus Isaac was comforted after his mother's death. NASU
You may be thinking, what has this got to do with “controlling spouses”? That is a good question. This is my answer; it is all about the attitude of a spouse after the marriage contract has been established. Let us dissect these verses:
First – This is an arranged marriage. In verse 66 the servant comes back from his “wife scouting trip” with the ideal candidate, Rebekah. He goes and tells Isaac all about it. Did you ever have the understanding that most marriages are arranged? (Ask the class “what does this mean”) Your marriage is either arranged by your family or it is self-arranged. I know that this may be a revelation to some, but it is still the truth. Do any of us know of a God arranged marriage? Remember that God gives us free will to choose; he might tell us that we ought to marry, or not, a certain person, but he still gives us the freedom to choose.
Second – Isaac married Rebekah, and then he loved her. This is the big one! Did you get this? It is marriage first, followed by the decision to love. The Hebrew word “ahab” used here is the same word that is found in Dt 6:5 (You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might) Loving your spouse is an act of your will, not a thought or a feeling! It is a conscious decision to love, which comes as a result of the decision to marry. Looking at marriage this way can change your whole approach to how you conduct yourself inside a marriage. To me the issue is, “What does it mean to love”? That is where we will start to look at the control freak inside a marriage.
I need to get a little off the control freak subject here to lay out the groundwork for how damaging controlling spouses can be. Let us look at Eph 5:25-33:
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. 28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, 30 because we are members of His body. 31 FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH. 32 This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. 33 Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband. NASU
Chapter 4, 5 and 6 of the book of Ephesians deals with living a victorious Christian life, and this part we have just heard is the section that deals with marriage. As you heard, most of it deals with God’s instruction to the man. I have often reflected that God knew how bone-headed us men can be about some things, and being the “man of the house” is one of them. The bottom line is this; God gives us the following simple instructions:
· The man is to “love” his wife.
· The woman is to “respect” her husband.
Have you ever thought about this? Have you ever heard why it is such a simple instruction, and yet so hard to do?
In his book “The Marriage Builder” Dr. Larry Crabb identifies two basic needs (aside from the simple physical needs like air, water and food) that every person is created with. God plants these into our soul; and ultimately they direct us back to Him. However He recognizes that they can also be met inside a marriage to a reasonable extent. (Ask if anybody already knows what these are) They are Security and Significance. Both men and women have these needs but they each have different priorities.
· The man’s greatest need is to feel significant, with a lesser need to be secure.
· The woman’s greatest need is to feel secure, with a lesser need to feel significant.
How does this tie into our Scripture? Like I said earlier, it is simple. To feel totally secure any person would need unending unconditional love. This is why the man is told to “love” his wife, even if she is unlovable! The woman is told to respect, meaning “to hold in high esteem”, her husband, which will allow him to feel important, even if he does not seem to deserve respect!
This is where the “Supervising Spouse” control freak can be born. Let me say right here that there are so many variables that go into a marital relationship that it is extraordinarily difficult to provide a general picture of what happens to bring out the control freak in us. Such things as the social culture we live in, how we were raised, what we learned in school and our personal character influence how we conduct ourselves in a marriage. In the next few minutes I am going to outline what, in my opinion, seems to go wrong.
Let us start with the guys. Think about the things little boys do and say to one another, let me give you some examples:
· Doing – They seem to always want to win at games.
· Doing – They don’t like to be picked last for a team.
· Doing – Fighting is “natural”; they want to be on top.
· Saying – My lizard is bigger than yours.
· Saying – My Dad can beat up your Dad.
· Saying – My bike is better then yours, it has got two bells.
You get the idea; the boy seems to always want to be the winner, number one or the most important. This is where we very obviously see the need for significance asserting itself in the life of this young male. This is then reinforced by the implied understanding that the one who wins is to be looked up to, or the kid with the best bike takes the lead. Then all the kids who were not number one now have a challenge to try to take over that slot. You can see it in the way they try to position themselves to win the next time. They may try harder, they may practice to get better, they may lie cheat and steal, and they may try to persuade, coerce or manipulate to get ahead of the other guy. The controlling habits have begun!
Now let us fast-forward to the day they are grown and married. They have been honing their controlling techniques for years. They have become much better at it; they are maybe master manipulators, or physical persuaders or perhaps cunning coercers. They have matured in their methods, become more sophisticated, but it is still the same need. The need to feel important.
Let us now introduce the unsuspecting wife. She marries this lovely guy, he has great prospects, is charming and very attentive, but he has this huge need! He wants to be fawned over, he wants to feel important, and this woman he married has given him lots of kudos during the dating and early years of marriage. Then life catches up, it could the household chores, some kids, the jobs, almost anything. The kudos levels go down, he unconsciously trips back into behaviors he used to use and that succeeded in the past. He puts himself into positions where his wife is in a position to praise him, and if this doesn’t work, he may ask her outright or start to demand some adulation. Can you see how it happens so easily?
This is a good time to go back to our scripture in Ephesians 5:33, where God instructs women to respect their husbands. The Greek word here is “phobos”, from which we get the term phobia, meaning “a fear of”. The use of this word here is as it is used elsewhere in the NT when talking about fearing God, it is a reverential fear. Just as we are to place God in a high place in our lives, the wife is instructed to place the husband in a high place in the marriage. This is not for the purpose of valuing the man above the woman; it is for making sure that the man’s need for significance is met. I think this is another example of God knowing what we need and trying to help us meet the need in an everyday practical way.
Here is a tough question. What do you think happens when the husband’s need to feel important goes unmet? There are several good answers:
· More controlling behavior.
· Less intimacy between the husband and wife.
· He starts looking elsewhere.
· Possibly even an affair.
The thing we have to remember is this, the husband will find a way to get his need met.
Now we can move to the wife. What do little girls do and say?
· Doing – They play with dolls.
· Doing – They like to curl up on their parents lap.
· Doing – They engage in co-operative play, sharing.
· Saying – They like to talk with each other.
· Saying – I like to read stories with you mommy.
· Saying – I like you to play horsy with me daddy.
Do you get a sense that even at this young age the girl is connecting, relating, and achieving some level of intimacy with everybody around her? She is seeking to meet the love and security need that God wired her with. Then as they grow, these girls still like to talk and connect with everybody around them. They still like for dad to hug them, and for mom to be part of the growing up process, and for their friends to listen to their problems. They might even become part of a clique to get a deeper sense of belonging.
Let us fast-forward to the marriage. They married the great guy, you know, the charming one! They talked all the time when dating, she was in awe of him, a guy who actually listens! They get married, and then life happens. They start to have less connecting time; she feels a little panicked inside, feels a little unloved. So she quietly changes things so he has to talk to her, and give her hugs, slowly but surely drifting into mild manipulation. Then he starts to resent it, and makes his own changes to avoid this forced behavior. She feels even worse and does even more to get the love and security she desires. I’m sure we can all see this spiral down in the level of intimacy between husband and wife.
Alright, let us go back to our verses again. The husband is instructed by God to “love” his wife in verse 33, but we also must remember that in verses 25-32 God expands on it for the man. Us men are to love our wives as Christ loved the church. Which means that we must bear anything for our wives, even death. That is what I call a tough instruction. The Greek word here is “agapoa” which means, “Let love”, it is the same word found in the commandment to “Love the Lord your God”. It is the will-based love that Jesus showed us when he allowed himself to be killed for us. We have to willfully and totally love our wives. That is the standard!
OK, tough question time. What can happen if our wives need for secure love goes unmet in the marriage?
· She won’t want to hold you in high regard.
· Less intimacy, emotional and physical.
· She goes elsewhere for intimacy.
· Possibly has an affair.
Husbands, your wife will find a way to get her security needs met.
I want to take us back to a question I asked earlier. In the context of a marriage, “What does it mean to love?” We had just looked at the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah, where Isaac had married her, and then loved her. How would you answer the question now?
For me it is this; we all ought to heed God’s word. The man must do his honest best to “love” his wife. The wife must do her honest best to “revere” her husband. Tough talk, tough to do, tough to keep up, but God says that it is the way He designed things. Who are we to tell Him He is wrong, or say you haven’t met my spouse, he is a jerk or she is a whiner. God made your spouse too, He knows what will work.
I want to conclude today by tying this lesson into what the book talks about. We have seen how not getting our basic needs met can cause us to slip into some form of controlling behavior. Our author talks about this on pages 91 and 92 of the book. He explains it in terms of us developing a level of anxiety about not getting our needs met and so slipping into a controlling mode. This is followed by even more dysfunctional behavior, deeper anxiety and higher levels of controlling activity.
Our book does a terrific job in how it lays out things to do that will help to cope with controlling spouses, which is why I chose not to cover this today.
Next week, it is parents and in-laws!
I’m going to start our time with the little test laid out on page 89 of our book, it should only take a couple of minutes. (Test time) Did anybody experience an odd or difficult thought, or maybe some hesitation or discomfort over answering these questions? Would somebody like to share his or her favorite question, or maybe his or her favorite answer? I don’t think there is any need to go over the results of this test, in my opinion it is only designed to make us think about this issue.
Is everybody familiar with the expression, “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”? What does this imply? What does this say about a household where this is the rule? BTW, this can equally apply to Dada!
· Mama controls the home.
· Every other person’s needs are subservient to Mama.
· Mama believes all is well, meaning that everybody is content.
· Every other person in the home is miserable.
· Secret rebellion exists; things are kept from Mama.
· As far as is possible, everybody avoids Mama.
What is always going to be true about a marriage where either Mama or Dada is the controller? (There can be many answers to this, they will always be some form of “it is dysfunctional and it is less than it could be”) Today we are going to explore what causes Mama or Dada to try to control the home.
Let us start with some Scripture. Gen 24:66-67:
Gen 24:66-67 - The servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. 67 Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and he took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her; thus Isaac was comforted after his mother's death. NASU
You may be thinking, what has this got to do with “controlling spouses”? That is a good question. This is my answer; it is all about the attitude of a spouse after the marriage contract has been established. Let us dissect these verses:
First – This is an arranged marriage. In verse 66 the servant comes back from his “wife scouting trip” with the ideal candidate, Rebekah. He goes and tells Isaac all about it. Did you ever have the understanding that most marriages are arranged? (Ask the class “what does this mean”) Your marriage is either arranged by your family or it is self-arranged. I know that this may be a revelation to some, but it is still the truth. Do any of us know of a God arranged marriage? Remember that God gives us free will to choose; he might tell us that we ought to marry, or not, a certain person, but he still gives us the freedom to choose.
Second – Isaac married Rebekah, and then he loved her. This is the big one! Did you get this? It is marriage first, followed by the decision to love. The Hebrew word “ahab” used here is the same word that is found in Dt 6:5 (You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might) Loving your spouse is an act of your will, not a thought or a feeling! It is a conscious decision to love, which comes as a result of the decision to marry. Looking at marriage this way can change your whole approach to how you conduct yourself inside a marriage. To me the issue is, “What does it mean to love”? That is where we will start to look at the control freak inside a marriage.
I need to get a little off the control freak subject here to lay out the groundwork for how damaging controlling spouses can be. Let us look at Eph 5:25-33:
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, 26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. 28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, 30 because we are members of His body. 31 FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH. 32 This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. 33 Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband. NASU
Chapter 4, 5 and 6 of the book of Ephesians deals with living a victorious Christian life, and this part we have just heard is the section that deals with marriage. As you heard, most of it deals with God’s instruction to the man. I have often reflected that God knew how bone-headed us men can be about some things, and being the “man of the house” is one of them. The bottom line is this; God gives us the following simple instructions:
· The man is to “love” his wife.
· The woman is to “respect” her husband.
Have you ever thought about this? Have you ever heard why it is such a simple instruction, and yet so hard to do?
In his book “The Marriage Builder” Dr. Larry Crabb identifies two basic needs (aside from the simple physical needs like air, water and food) that every person is created with. God plants these into our soul; and ultimately they direct us back to Him. However He recognizes that they can also be met inside a marriage to a reasonable extent. (Ask if anybody already knows what these are) They are Security and Significance. Both men and women have these needs but they each have different priorities.
· The man’s greatest need is to feel significant, with a lesser need to be secure.
· The woman’s greatest need is to feel secure, with a lesser need to feel significant.
How does this tie into our Scripture? Like I said earlier, it is simple. To feel totally secure any person would need unending unconditional love. This is why the man is told to “love” his wife, even if she is unlovable! The woman is told to respect, meaning “to hold in high esteem”, her husband, which will allow him to feel important, even if he does not seem to deserve respect!
This is where the “Supervising Spouse” control freak can be born. Let me say right here that there are so many variables that go into a marital relationship that it is extraordinarily difficult to provide a general picture of what happens to bring out the control freak in us. Such things as the social culture we live in, how we were raised, what we learned in school and our personal character influence how we conduct ourselves in a marriage. In the next few minutes I am going to outline what, in my opinion, seems to go wrong.
Let us start with the guys. Think about the things little boys do and say to one another, let me give you some examples:
· Doing – They seem to always want to win at games.
· Doing – They don’t like to be picked last for a team.
· Doing – Fighting is “natural”; they want to be on top.
· Saying – My lizard is bigger than yours.
· Saying – My Dad can beat up your Dad.
· Saying – My bike is better then yours, it has got two bells.
You get the idea; the boy seems to always want to be the winner, number one or the most important. This is where we very obviously see the need for significance asserting itself in the life of this young male. This is then reinforced by the implied understanding that the one who wins is to be looked up to, or the kid with the best bike takes the lead. Then all the kids who were not number one now have a challenge to try to take over that slot. You can see it in the way they try to position themselves to win the next time. They may try harder, they may practice to get better, they may lie cheat and steal, and they may try to persuade, coerce or manipulate to get ahead of the other guy. The controlling habits have begun!
Now let us fast-forward to the day they are grown and married. They have been honing their controlling techniques for years. They have become much better at it; they are maybe master manipulators, or physical persuaders or perhaps cunning coercers. They have matured in their methods, become more sophisticated, but it is still the same need. The need to feel important.
Let us now introduce the unsuspecting wife. She marries this lovely guy, he has great prospects, is charming and very attentive, but he has this huge need! He wants to be fawned over, he wants to feel important, and this woman he married has given him lots of kudos during the dating and early years of marriage. Then life catches up, it could the household chores, some kids, the jobs, almost anything. The kudos levels go down, he unconsciously trips back into behaviors he used to use and that succeeded in the past. He puts himself into positions where his wife is in a position to praise him, and if this doesn’t work, he may ask her outright or start to demand some adulation. Can you see how it happens so easily?
This is a good time to go back to our scripture in Ephesians 5:33, where God instructs women to respect their husbands. The Greek word here is “phobos”, from which we get the term phobia, meaning “a fear of”. The use of this word here is as it is used elsewhere in the NT when talking about fearing God, it is a reverential fear. Just as we are to place God in a high place in our lives, the wife is instructed to place the husband in a high place in the marriage. This is not for the purpose of valuing the man above the woman; it is for making sure that the man’s need for significance is met. I think this is another example of God knowing what we need and trying to help us meet the need in an everyday practical way.
Here is a tough question. What do you think happens when the husband’s need to feel important goes unmet? There are several good answers:
· More controlling behavior.
· Less intimacy between the husband and wife.
· He starts looking elsewhere.
· Possibly even an affair.
The thing we have to remember is this, the husband will find a way to get his need met.
Now we can move to the wife. What do little girls do and say?
· Doing – They play with dolls.
· Doing – They like to curl up on their parents lap.
· Doing – They engage in co-operative play, sharing.
· Saying – They like to talk with each other.
· Saying – I like to read stories with you mommy.
· Saying – I like you to play horsy with me daddy.
Do you get a sense that even at this young age the girl is connecting, relating, and achieving some level of intimacy with everybody around her? She is seeking to meet the love and security need that God wired her with. Then as they grow, these girls still like to talk and connect with everybody around them. They still like for dad to hug them, and for mom to be part of the growing up process, and for their friends to listen to their problems. They might even become part of a clique to get a deeper sense of belonging.
Let us fast-forward to the marriage. They married the great guy, you know, the charming one! They talked all the time when dating, she was in awe of him, a guy who actually listens! They get married, and then life happens. They start to have less connecting time; she feels a little panicked inside, feels a little unloved. So she quietly changes things so he has to talk to her, and give her hugs, slowly but surely drifting into mild manipulation. Then he starts to resent it, and makes his own changes to avoid this forced behavior. She feels even worse and does even more to get the love and security she desires. I’m sure we can all see this spiral down in the level of intimacy between husband and wife.
Alright, let us go back to our verses again. The husband is instructed by God to “love” his wife in verse 33, but we also must remember that in verses 25-32 God expands on it for the man. Us men are to love our wives as Christ loved the church. Which means that we must bear anything for our wives, even death. That is what I call a tough instruction. The Greek word here is “agapoa” which means, “Let love”, it is the same word found in the commandment to “Love the Lord your God”. It is the will-based love that Jesus showed us when he allowed himself to be killed for us. We have to willfully and totally love our wives. That is the standard!
OK, tough question time. What can happen if our wives need for secure love goes unmet in the marriage?
· She won’t want to hold you in high regard.
· Less intimacy, emotional and physical.
· She goes elsewhere for intimacy.
· Possibly has an affair.
Husbands, your wife will find a way to get her security needs met.
I want to take us back to a question I asked earlier. In the context of a marriage, “What does it mean to love?” We had just looked at the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah, where Isaac had married her, and then loved her. How would you answer the question now?
For me it is this; we all ought to heed God’s word. The man must do his honest best to “love” his wife. The wife must do her honest best to “revere” her husband. Tough talk, tough to do, tough to keep up, but God says that it is the way He designed things. Who are we to tell Him He is wrong, or say you haven’t met my spouse, he is a jerk or she is a whiner. God made your spouse too, He knows what will work.
I want to conclude today by tying this lesson into what the book talks about. We have seen how not getting our basic needs met can cause us to slip into some form of controlling behavior. Our author talks about this on pages 91 and 92 of the book. He explains it in terms of us developing a level of anxiety about not getting our needs met and so slipping into a controlling mode. This is followed by even more dysfunctional behavior, deeper anxiety and higher levels of controlling activity.
Our book does a terrific job in how it lays out things to do that will help to cope with controlling spouses, which is why I chose not to cover this today.
Next week, it is parents and in-laws!
Sunday, July 29, 2007
CHARACTERISTICS OF CONTROL FREAKS
THE TEN MOST COMMON CHARACTERISTICS
OF CONTROL FREAKS
Welcome to the first of our lessons from “The Control Freak Series”. Before we get into the meat of our material today, which will cover the ten most common characteristics of control freaks, let us try to figure out what a “control freak” is. Okay, the floor is open, what is a control freak?
Some suggestions I came up with:
· Micromanager.
· Bossy.
· Wants his or her own way.
· The critical one. Nothing is ever right.
· Nitpicker.
· List maker and list keeper.
· Seeks perfection, never gets there.
· Always wants to win.
As we can all see, there are many kinds of people we think of as CFs, so now let’s look at what our study book says. On page 2, the author defines a control freak for in this way:
Control Freaks are people who care more than you do about something and won’t stop at being pushy to get their own way.
Do you think this describes the God of our Bible? Why or why not, after all don’t we proclaim that God is in control? Let us spend a moment or two on the subject of “who is in control” by referring to Scripture.
1 Chronicles 29:10-14 – After we read it I am going to quote verses 10 and 11 from a particular version, The Living Bible, which a paraphrase, not an exact translation, but I think it get’s the point across very well.
(11) Yours is the mighty power and glory and victory and majesty. Everything in the heavens and earth is yours, O Lord, and this is your kingdom. We adore you as being in control of everything. (12) Riches and honor come from you alone, and you are the Ruler of all mankind; your hand controls power and might, and it is at your discretion that men are made great and given strength. TLB
As we can see from this wonderful prayer of David, which are his last recorded words, that David, after all the stunts he pulled in his life and all the antics of his dysfunctional family, has finally come to the point of view that God is in control of everything. Do you believe that?
Okay, since you do, let us now take a look at this Scripture, 2 Peter 1:5-8. In these verses, Peter is telling us to work at developing certain attributes, one of which is “Self-control”. Since we find this listed as a virtue by Jesus’ right hand man, it would imply that control in our own lives is something we have power over. Doesn’t that contradict what our previous Scripture said? It certainly seems to, but it actually doesn’t, because we are comparing “apples with oranges”.
God is in control – this is a “big picture” statement. Ultimately God will see His purposes completed. However, God limits Himself, because of His love for us, in that He will not violate His own character. He created us with the God given right to make choices for ourselves, and to be responsible for our own actions. Translated, this means that he created us with the power to exercise control over our own lives, not as puppets. We can choose to do it His way, or do it our way; we can choose to allow Him to control us, or to not allow Him to control us. (Open for discussion)
Having said all that, let us go to today’s actual lesson. The ten most common characteristics of control freaks.
1. Obnoxious – Let me say this right away, when I was younger, I was obnoxious. I can still get that way, but I’m not so much that way any more. Tell me, what does the word obnoxious mean to you? It is interesting to me that the root word here is the Latin noun “noxa”, meaning damage. From this we get the word noxious, meaning either damaging to the physical health or harmful to the mind or morals. It is further developed in English to obnoxious, another descriptive adjective, meaning “highly offensive or disagreeable”, or “likely to cause harm, injury or evil”. We see an example of this in 2 Samuel 10:1-7. The sons of Ammon became odious (obnoxious) to David because of their unwarranted treatment of David’s servants. In this biblical example, the result was war! Simple bad behavior is not obnoxious, intentional bad behavior is! Intentional bad actions are the product of a malicious mind and heart, where the control freak is trying to have power over people around them through fear of being damaged.
2. Tenacious – Okay, okay, I can do this too! This is one of those character traits that can be a tremendous strength or a disastrous weakness. In the verses from 2 Peter we looked at earlier it talks about adding “perseverance” to your life as a positive quality. The author here is really discussing the person who is tenacious in the sense of stubborn idiocy. Do you remember the story of Balaam and his donkey from Num 22:22-30? Let’s read it now. We are all told that a donkey is an obstinate or stubborn creature, what is our experience here? I think it shows that humans can be way more stubborn than any donkey! A stubbornly tenacious person is a control freak because it is all about having things their way, even when they are 100% wrong.
3. Invasive – Did you ever feel emotionally invaded? Well you may have met a control freak. When I was studying for my MBA, I took a class in industrial management, and we learned that it was normal to get hold of as much information about any situation we could, subject only to legal, financial and time constraints. The mantra “information is power” was spoken many times. This is exactly what the invasive control freak does, he or she gets as much information as they can, and then they have control over people. More information often leads to more control. They can be subtle, getting information in tangential ways, like talking to your friends, showing concern for you, but all the while picking up that juicy stuff on you. They can also be direct, asking you face to face a question they want to know the answer to. These people invade your lives!
I must also point out that people who are not control freaks might do this too. The difference between the CF and non-CF is that the CF does it constantly and in almost all their relationships, the non-CF does it when experiencing a sense of concern for others.
There is a character out of the Old Testament that exhibits in one of the stories about him some aspects of this “invasive” trait, and you might be surprised whom I picked. His name is Joseph. Let’s take a quick look at Gen 42:6-17. This is the beginning of the story about the move of the family of Jacob (Israel) to Egypt. In it we can clearly see controlling aspects to Joseph’s nature, recognizing some of his family, he starts to ask about the others and about their lives. Sometimes we think about Joseph as a long lost son, but he was also the most powerful man in the known world, he was used to being in charge and in control. Notice how he was not honest with his brothers, at least in the beginning, about what he knew and about his motives.
4. Obsessive – Does anybody relate to this? Have you ever gone through a period of your life where you have single mindedly focused on one thing. Everything you do revolves around it, you wake up thinking about it, you dream about it, you talk to everybody about it, you manipulate your life around it. That is the way it can be for a control freak. I honestly believe that most obsessive people are not in touch with their obsession, and don’t have an immorally controlling motivation about it. However there are a few who do. Can you think of some examples? How about someone who wants a big attaboy at work for getting a significant project finished, or maybe the same person looking for a promotion.
The core problem here is that this CF misses other important issues. Let me give you an example of this. The man of the household is studying something to get an extra degree so that he can advance his career. He comes home each night and hits the books, he is single minded about it. His wife continues to try to let him know how the family is doing, the kid’s grades, their friends, etc., but he really isn’t listening. One day he comes home, and there is nobody there, he thinks they are all out doing something, so he grabs some food, and hits the books. At 10 pm he quits for the evening, heads to the bedroom and remembers he hasn’t seen or heard anybody all evening. He finds a note pinned to his pillow, it says, “The kids and I have left you, how long did it take you to notice?”
Scripture provides us with some obsessive examples. Let’s look at 1 Sam 18:6-9. In this passage we see that Saul, the first king of Israel, is faced with the fact that David, who has just slain Goliath, is now more popular than the king himself. In verse 9 we see the beginning of Saul’s obsession with David. Right after this Saul tries to kill David with a spear, but he failed, this was merely the first of many attempts by Saul to kill David. This obsession lasted for the rest of Saul’s life and ended up consuming him, with the final result being suicide during a losing battle (1 Sam 31). How about that for an obsession?
5. Perfectionistic – Will anybody other than me admit to being somewhat of a perfectionist? I want to begin this section of our lesson by defining “Perfectionism”.
· Perfectionism (from Webster’s): A predilection for setting extremely high standards and being displeased with anything less.
I want to open this up to the class for examples of yourself or others in your life and how they demonstrate being a perfectionist. Let us try to pick out some common behaviors or phrases that they may use.
· Not good enough.
· You can do better.
· Let’s do it this way.
· Keeps every document, and files it.
· Has an immaculately clean house and yard.
· Their car is never dirty.
You get the picture; perfectionism is very demanding on the person encumbered that way and also on their family and friends. There is an example from the Bible that I really like. The story of Martha and Mary found in Lk 10:38-42. Who is the perfectionist here? (Martha) What does Jesus point out to her? (You are worried about so many things: and, by implication, that shall be taken away from you, choose better things like Mary has) I wish that perfectionists all over the world could hear that message.
I do want to say a little about perfectionism as compared to excellence.
· Perfectionism involves the setting of high and mostly unrealistic standards.
· Excellence implies the setting of high and achievable standards.
Scripture tells us in Ph 1:6 that we won’t be perfect until the day of the Lord, which means His second coming. It also tells us to apply ourselves to being excellent in everything, and from 2 Pet 1:8; we learn that it makes us useful and fruitful in Jesus Christ.
The message for all of us here is to do our best, and to not waste our emotional energy or destroy our important relationships through trying to be perfect or worse than that demanding that those around us are perfect.
6. Critical – Right up behind perfectionism we find criticism; the two seems to go hand in hand for some people. Most perfectionists seem to hand out a lot of disapproval, but “critics” are not necessarily perfectionists.
Our author says it well when describing some control freaks. On page 29 he says, “Control freaks can be some of the most painfully critical people you’ll ever meet”. I call such wonderful citizens “The Log People”. Let us look at Mt 7:1-5 to find out why.
I think we have to understand what is going on inside a “log person”. They believe the lie that their criticisms will make a difference in the lives of everyone. Underneath it all lays the great problem of pride and arrogance, and at its root the critic is trying to play God. In Jn 16:5-11, Jesus explains it as the Holy Spirit coming to the world to convict all of us of sin. The Holy Spirit’s conviction is the criticism of God on our lives and it is always for our benefit. When others criticize us it is rarely for our benefit when unsolicited and only sometimes for our betterment when we ask others for feedback.
In Num 12:1-10 we see Aaron and Miriam (Moses brother and sister) criticize him for marrying a non-Jew. God took offense as He had approved the marriage. So he turned Miriam into a leper as a consequence. The good news is that He let her stay that way for the next seven days only, but it made His point. Don’t criticize; there may be unintended consequences. Let us look at God’s specific instruction on this matter in James 4:11-12.
7. Irritable – Does anybody here this morning get cranky or impatient with others? When you don’t get your own way do you make every one around you miserable? I’m sure I’ve done my share of that kind of behavior, but I really don’t like people who do this consistently. They come across to me as extraordinarily self-centered. What do you think?
In Num 21:4-5 we see a result of this. In verse 6 God sends His message in the form of some nasty critters. While I think it is unlikely that we will have to deal with such a problem, I think we must understand His perspective. Who are we to not accept those around us and the state of our lives? God wants us to have a good perspective on where we are in everything. We know that people are fallible, so why do we think they can do everything right. We know that everything we have is allowed by Him, so why are we so ungrateful? We know that some things take time, so why are we impatient? It is because we want our own way in all things!
8. Demanding – What can I say here? A Control Freak can enter into coercive behavior to get things the way they want. Sometimes they hide behind the idea that “we are all trying to do the best we can, so I have to push you”. Excuse me if I say that that is all hogwash. I just love that stick-um I saw one time that said, “An emergency on your part does not constitute any urgency on mine”. There are many things that I think about as motivation for a demanding CF:
· So I, the CF, can impress others.
· So I, the CF, can leave work early.
· So I, the CF, can feel in charge.
Whatever the reason, whenever someone demands something of me, they are usually trying to make their problem mine!
How about these CF’s? Let’s look at Mt 23:1-4. This is the section of scripture where Jesus exposes the “teachers of the law”, the Pharisees, as major league hypocrites. They demand adherence to the law, but of course they didn’t follow their own teachings. They simply wanted to control the Jewish population.
9. Rigid – This describes the CF who is a “do it my way” kind of person. I am like that; sometimes I really believe that I have the best method for dealing with a situation. The problem for me is that this is sometimes true, so I believe that I have it right all the time. And that is wrong! My motivation may be okay; I want to get something done by the most efficient method possible. The reasoning fails to take into account another person’s experience and abilities. Insisting on my way becomes insisting on inevitable failure. How stupid can I be!
We all love the song “My Way” by Frank Sinatra. After all, he did it all his way, and that is very American, what’s not to agree with? The trouble is, he ran over everybody in his life to do it. Let us look at another “I’ll do it my way crowd”. In Joshua 7:2-5, the men of the Israelite army decided to attack Ai their own way. The result was demoralizing failure.
The lesson here is that if we want demoralizing failure, then do things your own way, be rigid!
10. Close-minded – Right on the back of “I’ll do it my way” comes “I won’t do it your way”! This CF has a very difficult problem to deal with. They are so arrogant that they cannot see that other people have good ideas. They willfully exclude other people from input so that they can control the outcome of everything they deal with. This is the exact opposite of what scripture says to do in Pr 11:14.
I need to say a little something here. There is at least one thing we need to be close-minded about. That is this:
· God’s way is the best way.
How many of us have experienced our own close-mindedness by trying to do things our own way? With the inevitable result of less than stellar results.
For our biblical character reference here I would like to show us the example of open-mindedness of Nicodemus in Jn 3:1-3. He is the only recorded Pharisee who looked for the truth in Jesus.
That concludes our lesson today, and I know it has probably raised more questions about life than it has settled. In the next few weeks we will apply some of the ideas expressed today to our real life situations.
OF CONTROL FREAKS
Welcome to the first of our lessons from “The Control Freak Series”. Before we get into the meat of our material today, which will cover the ten most common characteristics of control freaks, let us try to figure out what a “control freak” is. Okay, the floor is open, what is a control freak?
Some suggestions I came up with:
· Micromanager.
· Bossy.
· Wants his or her own way.
· The critical one. Nothing is ever right.
· Nitpicker.
· List maker and list keeper.
· Seeks perfection, never gets there.
· Always wants to win.
As we can all see, there are many kinds of people we think of as CFs, so now let’s look at what our study book says. On page 2, the author defines a control freak for in this way:
Control Freaks are people who care more than you do about something and won’t stop at being pushy to get their own way.
Do you think this describes the God of our Bible? Why or why not, after all don’t we proclaim that God is in control? Let us spend a moment or two on the subject of “who is in control” by referring to Scripture.
1 Chronicles 29:10-14 – After we read it I am going to quote verses 10 and 11 from a particular version, The Living Bible, which a paraphrase, not an exact translation, but I think it get’s the point across very well.
(11) Yours is the mighty power and glory and victory and majesty. Everything in the heavens and earth is yours, O Lord, and this is your kingdom. We adore you as being in control of everything. (12) Riches and honor come from you alone, and you are the Ruler of all mankind; your hand controls power and might, and it is at your discretion that men are made great and given strength. TLB
As we can see from this wonderful prayer of David, which are his last recorded words, that David, after all the stunts he pulled in his life and all the antics of his dysfunctional family, has finally come to the point of view that God is in control of everything. Do you believe that?
Okay, since you do, let us now take a look at this Scripture, 2 Peter 1:5-8. In these verses, Peter is telling us to work at developing certain attributes, one of which is “Self-control”. Since we find this listed as a virtue by Jesus’ right hand man, it would imply that control in our own lives is something we have power over. Doesn’t that contradict what our previous Scripture said? It certainly seems to, but it actually doesn’t, because we are comparing “apples with oranges”.
God is in control – this is a “big picture” statement. Ultimately God will see His purposes completed. However, God limits Himself, because of His love for us, in that He will not violate His own character. He created us with the God given right to make choices for ourselves, and to be responsible for our own actions. Translated, this means that he created us with the power to exercise control over our own lives, not as puppets. We can choose to do it His way, or do it our way; we can choose to allow Him to control us, or to not allow Him to control us. (Open for discussion)
Having said all that, let us go to today’s actual lesson. The ten most common characteristics of control freaks.
1. Obnoxious – Let me say this right away, when I was younger, I was obnoxious. I can still get that way, but I’m not so much that way any more. Tell me, what does the word obnoxious mean to you? It is interesting to me that the root word here is the Latin noun “noxa”, meaning damage. From this we get the word noxious, meaning either damaging to the physical health or harmful to the mind or morals. It is further developed in English to obnoxious, another descriptive adjective, meaning “highly offensive or disagreeable”, or “likely to cause harm, injury or evil”. We see an example of this in 2 Samuel 10:1-7. The sons of Ammon became odious (obnoxious) to David because of their unwarranted treatment of David’s servants. In this biblical example, the result was war! Simple bad behavior is not obnoxious, intentional bad behavior is! Intentional bad actions are the product of a malicious mind and heart, where the control freak is trying to have power over people around them through fear of being damaged.
2. Tenacious – Okay, okay, I can do this too! This is one of those character traits that can be a tremendous strength or a disastrous weakness. In the verses from 2 Peter we looked at earlier it talks about adding “perseverance” to your life as a positive quality. The author here is really discussing the person who is tenacious in the sense of stubborn idiocy. Do you remember the story of Balaam and his donkey from Num 22:22-30? Let’s read it now. We are all told that a donkey is an obstinate or stubborn creature, what is our experience here? I think it shows that humans can be way more stubborn than any donkey! A stubbornly tenacious person is a control freak because it is all about having things their way, even when they are 100% wrong.
3. Invasive – Did you ever feel emotionally invaded? Well you may have met a control freak. When I was studying for my MBA, I took a class in industrial management, and we learned that it was normal to get hold of as much information about any situation we could, subject only to legal, financial and time constraints. The mantra “information is power” was spoken many times. This is exactly what the invasive control freak does, he or she gets as much information as they can, and then they have control over people. More information often leads to more control. They can be subtle, getting information in tangential ways, like talking to your friends, showing concern for you, but all the while picking up that juicy stuff on you. They can also be direct, asking you face to face a question they want to know the answer to. These people invade your lives!
I must also point out that people who are not control freaks might do this too. The difference between the CF and non-CF is that the CF does it constantly and in almost all their relationships, the non-CF does it when experiencing a sense of concern for others.
There is a character out of the Old Testament that exhibits in one of the stories about him some aspects of this “invasive” trait, and you might be surprised whom I picked. His name is Joseph. Let’s take a quick look at Gen 42:6-17. This is the beginning of the story about the move of the family of Jacob (Israel) to Egypt. In it we can clearly see controlling aspects to Joseph’s nature, recognizing some of his family, he starts to ask about the others and about their lives. Sometimes we think about Joseph as a long lost son, but he was also the most powerful man in the known world, he was used to being in charge and in control. Notice how he was not honest with his brothers, at least in the beginning, about what he knew and about his motives.
4. Obsessive – Does anybody relate to this? Have you ever gone through a period of your life where you have single mindedly focused on one thing. Everything you do revolves around it, you wake up thinking about it, you dream about it, you talk to everybody about it, you manipulate your life around it. That is the way it can be for a control freak. I honestly believe that most obsessive people are not in touch with their obsession, and don’t have an immorally controlling motivation about it. However there are a few who do. Can you think of some examples? How about someone who wants a big attaboy at work for getting a significant project finished, or maybe the same person looking for a promotion.
The core problem here is that this CF misses other important issues. Let me give you an example of this. The man of the household is studying something to get an extra degree so that he can advance his career. He comes home each night and hits the books, he is single minded about it. His wife continues to try to let him know how the family is doing, the kid’s grades, their friends, etc., but he really isn’t listening. One day he comes home, and there is nobody there, he thinks they are all out doing something, so he grabs some food, and hits the books. At 10 pm he quits for the evening, heads to the bedroom and remembers he hasn’t seen or heard anybody all evening. He finds a note pinned to his pillow, it says, “The kids and I have left you, how long did it take you to notice?”
Scripture provides us with some obsessive examples. Let’s look at 1 Sam 18:6-9. In this passage we see that Saul, the first king of Israel, is faced with the fact that David, who has just slain Goliath, is now more popular than the king himself. In verse 9 we see the beginning of Saul’s obsession with David. Right after this Saul tries to kill David with a spear, but he failed, this was merely the first of many attempts by Saul to kill David. This obsession lasted for the rest of Saul’s life and ended up consuming him, with the final result being suicide during a losing battle (1 Sam 31). How about that for an obsession?
5. Perfectionistic – Will anybody other than me admit to being somewhat of a perfectionist? I want to begin this section of our lesson by defining “Perfectionism”.
· Perfectionism (from Webster’s): A predilection for setting extremely high standards and being displeased with anything less.
I want to open this up to the class for examples of yourself or others in your life and how they demonstrate being a perfectionist. Let us try to pick out some common behaviors or phrases that they may use.
· Not good enough.
· You can do better.
· Let’s do it this way.
· Keeps every document, and files it.
· Has an immaculately clean house and yard.
· Their car is never dirty.
You get the picture; perfectionism is very demanding on the person encumbered that way and also on their family and friends. There is an example from the Bible that I really like. The story of Martha and Mary found in Lk 10:38-42. Who is the perfectionist here? (Martha) What does Jesus point out to her? (You are worried about so many things: and, by implication, that shall be taken away from you, choose better things like Mary has) I wish that perfectionists all over the world could hear that message.
I do want to say a little about perfectionism as compared to excellence.
· Perfectionism involves the setting of high and mostly unrealistic standards.
· Excellence implies the setting of high and achievable standards.
Scripture tells us in Ph 1:6 that we won’t be perfect until the day of the Lord, which means His second coming. It also tells us to apply ourselves to being excellent in everything, and from 2 Pet 1:8; we learn that it makes us useful and fruitful in Jesus Christ.
The message for all of us here is to do our best, and to not waste our emotional energy or destroy our important relationships through trying to be perfect or worse than that demanding that those around us are perfect.
6. Critical – Right up behind perfectionism we find criticism; the two seems to go hand in hand for some people. Most perfectionists seem to hand out a lot of disapproval, but “critics” are not necessarily perfectionists.
Our author says it well when describing some control freaks. On page 29 he says, “Control freaks can be some of the most painfully critical people you’ll ever meet”. I call such wonderful citizens “The Log People”. Let us look at Mt 7:1-5 to find out why.
I think we have to understand what is going on inside a “log person”. They believe the lie that their criticisms will make a difference in the lives of everyone. Underneath it all lays the great problem of pride and arrogance, and at its root the critic is trying to play God. In Jn 16:5-11, Jesus explains it as the Holy Spirit coming to the world to convict all of us of sin. The Holy Spirit’s conviction is the criticism of God on our lives and it is always for our benefit. When others criticize us it is rarely for our benefit when unsolicited and only sometimes for our betterment when we ask others for feedback.
In Num 12:1-10 we see Aaron and Miriam (Moses brother and sister) criticize him for marrying a non-Jew. God took offense as He had approved the marriage. So he turned Miriam into a leper as a consequence. The good news is that He let her stay that way for the next seven days only, but it made His point. Don’t criticize; there may be unintended consequences. Let us look at God’s specific instruction on this matter in James 4:11-12.
7. Irritable – Does anybody here this morning get cranky or impatient with others? When you don’t get your own way do you make every one around you miserable? I’m sure I’ve done my share of that kind of behavior, but I really don’t like people who do this consistently. They come across to me as extraordinarily self-centered. What do you think?
In Num 21:4-5 we see a result of this. In verse 6 God sends His message in the form of some nasty critters. While I think it is unlikely that we will have to deal with such a problem, I think we must understand His perspective. Who are we to not accept those around us and the state of our lives? God wants us to have a good perspective on where we are in everything. We know that people are fallible, so why do we think they can do everything right. We know that everything we have is allowed by Him, so why are we so ungrateful? We know that some things take time, so why are we impatient? It is because we want our own way in all things!
8. Demanding – What can I say here? A Control Freak can enter into coercive behavior to get things the way they want. Sometimes they hide behind the idea that “we are all trying to do the best we can, so I have to push you”. Excuse me if I say that that is all hogwash. I just love that stick-um I saw one time that said, “An emergency on your part does not constitute any urgency on mine”. There are many things that I think about as motivation for a demanding CF:
· So I, the CF, can impress others.
· So I, the CF, can leave work early.
· So I, the CF, can feel in charge.
Whatever the reason, whenever someone demands something of me, they are usually trying to make their problem mine!
How about these CF’s? Let’s look at Mt 23:1-4. This is the section of scripture where Jesus exposes the “teachers of the law”, the Pharisees, as major league hypocrites. They demand adherence to the law, but of course they didn’t follow their own teachings. They simply wanted to control the Jewish population.
9. Rigid – This describes the CF who is a “do it my way” kind of person. I am like that; sometimes I really believe that I have the best method for dealing with a situation. The problem for me is that this is sometimes true, so I believe that I have it right all the time. And that is wrong! My motivation may be okay; I want to get something done by the most efficient method possible. The reasoning fails to take into account another person’s experience and abilities. Insisting on my way becomes insisting on inevitable failure. How stupid can I be!
We all love the song “My Way” by Frank Sinatra. After all, he did it all his way, and that is very American, what’s not to agree with? The trouble is, he ran over everybody in his life to do it. Let us look at another “I’ll do it my way crowd”. In Joshua 7:2-5, the men of the Israelite army decided to attack Ai their own way. The result was demoralizing failure.
The lesson here is that if we want demoralizing failure, then do things your own way, be rigid!
10. Close-minded – Right on the back of “I’ll do it my way” comes “I won’t do it your way”! This CF has a very difficult problem to deal with. They are so arrogant that they cannot see that other people have good ideas. They willfully exclude other people from input so that they can control the outcome of everything they deal with. This is the exact opposite of what scripture says to do in Pr 11:14.
I need to say a little something here. There is at least one thing we need to be close-minded about. That is this:
· God’s way is the best way.
How many of us have experienced our own close-mindedness by trying to do things our own way? With the inevitable result of less than stellar results.
For our biblical character reference here I would like to show us the example of open-mindedness of Nicodemus in Jn 3:1-3. He is the only recorded Pharisee who looked for the truth in Jesus.
That concludes our lesson today, and I know it has probably raised more questions about life than it has settled. In the next few weeks we will apply some of the ideas expressed today to our real life situations.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
What we can change.
Now we are finally getting down to the place where “The Rubber Meets The Road”, we are about to look at what we can realistically do with ALL the things we have been learning. It is time to change! Are you ready?
First, let us take a quick look at where we have been.
We have learned that the DNA of Relationships is made up of three strands:
1. We are designed for relationship.
2. We have been given the freedom to choose.
3. We have responsibility for ourselves.
We have come to understand that how we internalize these three basic truths will determine the quality of all our relationships. The author of our study guidebook has given us some practical tools to use, which can help us improve our relationship situations. These are:
· Take Personal Responsibility.
· Create a Safe Environment.
· Keep Your Battery Charged.
· Listen With the Heart.
· Adopt a No-Losers Policy.
I want to be sure that we notice that these tools are all personal action items. Each of the five statements begins with an “action verb”, and each speaks to something we have personal control over. This is where today’s subject of change begins, with personal control.
I like what the author says about change:
· There is no guarantee of success.
I agree with him that this needs to be said. When we start a process of change in our lives, we can set our expectations. If we set them in high places we are more likely to experience frustration or even pain when our change goal(s) are not met. If we set our eyes on progress and not a target we can more easily deal with how our attempts at change are going.
What is missing from this entire chapter is this:
· No change, guaranteed failure.
Definitions and quotes:
Webster’s – To become different.
John Kennedy - Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
M. Scott Peck - The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Life is a progress, and not a station.
Unknown - Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.
On that lighter note is it finally time to really get down to it. Let us begin by asking a few questions:
· Is change something that God wants from me? Yes!
· If it is, then what does He want me to change?
· What does He want me to change to?
We are going to focus for the next few minutes on the “what does He want me to change” question.
I want to take a look at three scriptures here, Rom 12:2, Ph 2:12-13 and Eph 1:18.
· In Rom 12:2 we see Paul using the word “transformed” where “changed” could have been used. We all know and understand that to transform is to change, so why is this change put this way? The answer to this is found in the original Greek, Paul used the word “metamorphoo” from which we get “metamorphosis”, and that signifies a radical change. A good example would be a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.
· Ph 12:12-13 talks about “working out our salvation”. This scripture gets to the heart of what Godly change is about; we work, on our own, salvation. The Greek word used here (soteria) can be used in the sense of salvation, as in “being saved”, but also in another meaning, becoming healthy or sometimes, being delivered. It can be used in both a physical or moral sense. The message here is that change involves our own effort, our own being, and our own body and soul in our actions.
· Eph 1:18 discusses our need to have our hearts changed, or enlightened, so that we know the hope of His calling. The word calling refers to His plan for us.
· I also want to point out that all three of these scriptures refer to this “change” as being within God’s will. More on this in a few minutes.
Notice that the three scriptures refer to three different aspects of our inner being. Rom 12:2 covers the mind, Ph 2:12-13 focuses on our will (or purpose) and Eph 1:18 identifies the heart. It is with this knowledge that we make the following statement.
· It is God’s will for me to change.
Since this is true, we can also make another statement:
· It is NOT God’s will for me to NOT change.
Having established that God wants us to change, we can now look at “what” He wants us to alter. The answer to this has already been spoken about today. We identified three aspects of our inner being. The mind, heart and will; and what are these usually called when combined together? The soul!
So now we know that God wants us to change, and what about us He wants to change. The next question we would like to have an answer for is the third one from earlier in the lesson:
· What does He want me to change to?
The answer to this is really very straightforward. Let us take a look at Col 3:10. After we read it I will quote it from the Living Bible, which has an excellent paraphrase of the verse.
You are living a brand new kind of life that is continually learning more and more of what is right, and trying constantly to be more and more like Christ who created this new life within you. TLB
See, I told you it was easy. God wants us to become more like Christ. He wants us to “try constantly” and “continually learn”. This brings me to a more definitive statement about change, which I have written in the first person.
· I know it is God’s will for me to continually try to change my soul to be more and more like Christ.
I want to spend just a moment now on a little theology. When God created us, he said in Genesis 1:27, that He created us in His image. We know that God is spirit, Jesus Himself said this in Jn 4:24. This means that we were created in His image, but in a spiritual sense. Because of our disobedience our spirit, or soul, became damaged, and was no longer the exact image of God. The intimate connection between man and God was broken. But God had a plan! He sent Jesus to us, and He lived, as a man, a perfect and righteous life, demonstrating how we can be, if we choose. Jesus had an intimate connection with God the father. God has therefore, through His son, Jesus, shown us how to get back to being “the image of God”. We are to become like His son, Jesus. If any of us desire a more intimate connection with God, we must work at becoming more like Christ, we must change by moving toward Him. Finally, God knows how hard it is for us to throw off the chains of sin, so not only did he tell us to work on changing, but He gave us a helper, Himself, in the form of the Holy Spirit. What a God we have! If you have any questions about this subject I would be glad to address them now.
At this point I think it is highly, and I mean highly, important to say something. I am now holding up my Bible, and I am going to make a statement for you.
· Nowhere in this book does it say I can change another person!
Why is it that we believe the great lie that we can change somebody else? That is actually a question that we will cover in our next study, starting in two weeks time, called “The Control Freak”.
Now I’m going to look at some of the points the author covers in the change chapter.
Serendipity
This word comes from the Persian fairy tale of the “Three Princes of Serendip”, where these three characters were always making valuable and beneficial discoveries when they weren’t looking for them. Change brings “Serendipitous” events.
By agreeing with God that personal changes in one’s life are necessary, or put another way, realizing that we need to stop the insanity of repeating our failing behaviors or decisions; we are opening our lives up to changes that God wants to make. When we say to the lord, “I’m going to try to do it your way”, we break down the barriers of disobedience and rebellion in our lives, allowing Him to work in us, and just as the Philippians scripture we read earlier says. When we work at change, and He works with and in us, wonderful things can happen. After all God promises He will never do anything to harm us, let’s look at James 1:17 and Ps 119:68.
The book uses an example of a wife who spent years trying to change her husband into something she wanted. When she finally “got it”, which means she realized that she can only change herself, she started to spiritually mature. Then her husband found that he didn’t have to spend a great deal of his time and emotional energy on dealing with her constant whining, so he was able to focus more on his own actions. Then under the conviction of the Holy Spirit, he changed, and it was better for both of them!
Guarantees
There are none! When we embark of a journey of change, we may set sail with a particular destination in mind. Sometimes we simply cannot get there. An example could be, we take up running, intending to run a marathon after some training, but you develop bad knees, and have to give up your dream. The change you were making was a healthy choice, but the reality of bad knees stopped you. If you had set yourself a high expectation of running the big race, and couldn’t do it, you are setting your heart up for a bad experience. What if you had said, I’m going to begin running, and see how I do. You have begun the same journey, but you are allowing the road you travel to tell you how much you can do. When your bad knees get to you, you can say, I’ve gone as far as I can on this road, I need to take a new one. That is when you could take up swimming, which is also a healthy road.
The book says this very well on page 177; I’ve modified it slightly:
If you choose to travel down the road of personal transformation, the worst that can happen is that you will end up with a life that is far more enjoyable, satisfying, fulfilling and helpful to others than the one you have now.
It is important to understand that even if you desire to change into someone that is more honoring to God, it doesn’t mean that it is guaranteed to happen. As an example, I love praise and worship music, and I desire to be able to play an instrument and more importantly, be able to sing strongly and with perfect pitch. It hasn’t happened yet!
Personal Power
When we decide to change, we must be careful to only work on ourselves and the things we actually have control over. You only have the personal power to deal with your “stuff”. I think the serenity prayer says it so well:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
Do you accept the things and people around you, just the way they are? Or are you a perpetual victim, not changing the things you can? Do you have the wisdom to be able to differentiate one from another? These are questions you can ask yourself later.
Motivation
I want to say a few words here about the “why” of change. In is important to be honest with your self about why you desire to change. Let us look at a very instructive verse from the book of Jeremiah, Jer 17:9. We have probably all heard that before, and I think it is smart for us to consider what it is saying before we begin changes. What is our real motivation? Is it to change to other person, is it to manipulate somebody, and is it for selfish gain?
The best example of I could think of in the area of motivation is found in Ps 51, let us read Ps 51:1-12. Do you remember the background to this Psalm? It is found in second Samuel, chapters 11 and 12. It is the story of David and Bathsheba.
In this Psalm, David is heartbroken because of his actions, and in verse 10 asks God to create in him a “new heart”. He asks God to destroy his old motivations and replace them with something pure. He wants to change, and he comes to God confessing his sin and seeking cleansing and purifying from God so that he can be made into somebody new.
Couldn’t that be the motivation and goal of our change? To have a clean and pure heart, made that way by God Himself. Just like David, our desired changes ought to involve only two people, God and ourselves.
That concludes today’s lesson on change. Next week we’ll be tying it all together, with our concluding lesson for this series. The week after we will begin our new study, which is called “The Control Freak”.
First, let us take a quick look at where we have been.
We have learned that the DNA of Relationships is made up of three strands:
1. We are designed for relationship.
2. We have been given the freedom to choose.
3. We have responsibility for ourselves.
We have come to understand that how we internalize these three basic truths will determine the quality of all our relationships. The author of our study guidebook has given us some practical tools to use, which can help us improve our relationship situations. These are:
· Take Personal Responsibility.
· Create a Safe Environment.
· Keep Your Battery Charged.
· Listen With the Heart.
· Adopt a No-Losers Policy.
I want to be sure that we notice that these tools are all personal action items. Each of the five statements begins with an “action verb”, and each speaks to something we have personal control over. This is where today’s subject of change begins, with personal control.
I like what the author says about change:
· There is no guarantee of success.
I agree with him that this needs to be said. When we start a process of change in our lives, we can set our expectations. If we set them in high places we are more likely to experience frustration or even pain when our change goal(s) are not met. If we set our eyes on progress and not a target we can more easily deal with how our attempts at change are going.
What is missing from this entire chapter is this:
· No change, guaranteed failure.
Definitions and quotes:
Webster’s – To become different.
John Kennedy - Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
M. Scott Peck - The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Life is a progress, and not a station.
Unknown - Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.
On that lighter note is it finally time to really get down to it. Let us begin by asking a few questions:
· Is change something that God wants from me? Yes!
· If it is, then what does He want me to change?
· What does He want me to change to?
We are going to focus for the next few minutes on the “what does He want me to change” question.
I want to take a look at three scriptures here, Rom 12:2, Ph 2:12-13 and Eph 1:18.
· In Rom 12:2 we see Paul using the word “transformed” where “changed” could have been used. We all know and understand that to transform is to change, so why is this change put this way? The answer to this is found in the original Greek, Paul used the word “metamorphoo” from which we get “metamorphosis”, and that signifies a radical change. A good example would be a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.
· Ph 12:12-13 talks about “working out our salvation”. This scripture gets to the heart of what Godly change is about; we work, on our own, salvation. The Greek word used here (soteria) can be used in the sense of salvation, as in “being saved”, but also in another meaning, becoming healthy or sometimes, being delivered. It can be used in both a physical or moral sense. The message here is that change involves our own effort, our own being, and our own body and soul in our actions.
· Eph 1:18 discusses our need to have our hearts changed, or enlightened, so that we know the hope of His calling. The word calling refers to His plan for us.
· I also want to point out that all three of these scriptures refer to this “change” as being within God’s will. More on this in a few minutes.
Notice that the three scriptures refer to three different aspects of our inner being. Rom 12:2 covers the mind, Ph 2:12-13 focuses on our will (or purpose) and Eph 1:18 identifies the heart. It is with this knowledge that we make the following statement.
· It is God’s will for me to change.
Since this is true, we can also make another statement:
· It is NOT God’s will for me to NOT change.
Having established that God wants us to change, we can now look at “what” He wants us to alter. The answer to this has already been spoken about today. We identified three aspects of our inner being. The mind, heart and will; and what are these usually called when combined together? The soul!
So now we know that God wants us to change, and what about us He wants to change. The next question we would like to have an answer for is the third one from earlier in the lesson:
· What does He want me to change to?
The answer to this is really very straightforward. Let us take a look at Col 3:10. After we read it I will quote it from the Living Bible, which has an excellent paraphrase of the verse.
You are living a brand new kind of life that is continually learning more and more of what is right, and trying constantly to be more and more like Christ who created this new life within you. TLB
See, I told you it was easy. God wants us to become more like Christ. He wants us to “try constantly” and “continually learn”. This brings me to a more definitive statement about change, which I have written in the first person.
· I know it is God’s will for me to continually try to change my soul to be more and more like Christ.
I want to spend just a moment now on a little theology. When God created us, he said in Genesis 1:27, that He created us in His image. We know that God is spirit, Jesus Himself said this in Jn 4:24. This means that we were created in His image, but in a spiritual sense. Because of our disobedience our spirit, or soul, became damaged, and was no longer the exact image of God. The intimate connection between man and God was broken. But God had a plan! He sent Jesus to us, and He lived, as a man, a perfect and righteous life, demonstrating how we can be, if we choose. Jesus had an intimate connection with God the father. God has therefore, through His son, Jesus, shown us how to get back to being “the image of God”. We are to become like His son, Jesus. If any of us desire a more intimate connection with God, we must work at becoming more like Christ, we must change by moving toward Him. Finally, God knows how hard it is for us to throw off the chains of sin, so not only did he tell us to work on changing, but He gave us a helper, Himself, in the form of the Holy Spirit. What a God we have! If you have any questions about this subject I would be glad to address them now.
At this point I think it is highly, and I mean highly, important to say something. I am now holding up my Bible, and I am going to make a statement for you.
· Nowhere in this book does it say I can change another person!
Why is it that we believe the great lie that we can change somebody else? That is actually a question that we will cover in our next study, starting in two weeks time, called “The Control Freak”.
Now I’m going to look at some of the points the author covers in the change chapter.
Serendipity
This word comes from the Persian fairy tale of the “Three Princes of Serendip”, where these three characters were always making valuable and beneficial discoveries when they weren’t looking for them. Change brings “Serendipitous” events.
By agreeing with God that personal changes in one’s life are necessary, or put another way, realizing that we need to stop the insanity of repeating our failing behaviors or decisions; we are opening our lives up to changes that God wants to make. When we say to the lord, “I’m going to try to do it your way”, we break down the barriers of disobedience and rebellion in our lives, allowing Him to work in us, and just as the Philippians scripture we read earlier says. When we work at change, and He works with and in us, wonderful things can happen. After all God promises He will never do anything to harm us, let’s look at James 1:17 and Ps 119:68.
The book uses an example of a wife who spent years trying to change her husband into something she wanted. When she finally “got it”, which means she realized that she can only change herself, she started to spiritually mature. Then her husband found that he didn’t have to spend a great deal of his time and emotional energy on dealing with her constant whining, so he was able to focus more on his own actions. Then under the conviction of the Holy Spirit, he changed, and it was better for both of them!
Guarantees
There are none! When we embark of a journey of change, we may set sail with a particular destination in mind. Sometimes we simply cannot get there. An example could be, we take up running, intending to run a marathon after some training, but you develop bad knees, and have to give up your dream. The change you were making was a healthy choice, but the reality of bad knees stopped you. If you had set yourself a high expectation of running the big race, and couldn’t do it, you are setting your heart up for a bad experience. What if you had said, I’m going to begin running, and see how I do. You have begun the same journey, but you are allowing the road you travel to tell you how much you can do. When your bad knees get to you, you can say, I’ve gone as far as I can on this road, I need to take a new one. That is when you could take up swimming, which is also a healthy road.
The book says this very well on page 177; I’ve modified it slightly:
If you choose to travel down the road of personal transformation, the worst that can happen is that you will end up with a life that is far more enjoyable, satisfying, fulfilling and helpful to others than the one you have now.
It is important to understand that even if you desire to change into someone that is more honoring to God, it doesn’t mean that it is guaranteed to happen. As an example, I love praise and worship music, and I desire to be able to play an instrument and more importantly, be able to sing strongly and with perfect pitch. It hasn’t happened yet!
Personal Power
When we decide to change, we must be careful to only work on ourselves and the things we actually have control over. You only have the personal power to deal with your “stuff”. I think the serenity prayer says it so well:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
Do you accept the things and people around you, just the way they are? Or are you a perpetual victim, not changing the things you can? Do you have the wisdom to be able to differentiate one from another? These are questions you can ask yourself later.
Motivation
I want to say a few words here about the “why” of change. In is important to be honest with your self about why you desire to change. Let us look at a very instructive verse from the book of Jeremiah, Jer 17:9. We have probably all heard that before, and I think it is smart for us to consider what it is saying before we begin changes. What is our real motivation? Is it to change to other person, is it to manipulate somebody, and is it for selfish gain?
The best example of I could think of in the area of motivation is found in Ps 51, let us read Ps 51:1-12. Do you remember the background to this Psalm? It is found in second Samuel, chapters 11 and 12. It is the story of David and Bathsheba.
In this Psalm, David is heartbroken because of his actions, and in verse 10 asks God to create in him a “new heart”. He asks God to destroy his old motivations and replace them with something pure. He wants to change, and he comes to God confessing his sin and seeking cleansing and purifying from God so that he can be made into somebody new.
Couldn’t that be the motivation and goal of our change? To have a clean and pure heart, made that way by God Himself. Just like David, our desired changes ought to involve only two people, God and ourselves.
That concludes today’s lesson on change. Next week we’ll be tying it all together, with our concluding lesson for this series. The week after we will begin our new study, which is called “The Control Freak”.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Listen With The Heart
LESSON SEVEN – LISTEN WITH THE HEART
Just as we did last time let’s briefly cover what we have learned so far in the first six lessons:
In Lesson One: We learned that “Life Is Just Relationships, The Rest Is Just Details”, said another way, “Everything In Life That Truly Matters Can Be Boiled Down To Relationships”. In God’s account of His creation of mankind, found in chapter two of the book of Genesis, He (God) summed it up this way, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen 2:18). This is a very big statement, as it is the only thing that God said was not good in the whole creation story. We were made for relationship!
In Lesson Two: Also from chapter 2 of Genesis we identified the three principles that God designed us to live by, our book calls these “The DNA Of Relationships”:
1. We are designed for relationship.
2. We have been given the freedom to choose.
3. We have responsibility for ourselves.
We also looked at Genesis chapter 3, and showed how the fall of man and the introduction of sin into the world was a direct result of not following these principles combined with God’s one simple instruction, (don’t eat the forbidden fruit).
In Lesson Three: We began to see that as a result of the fall, fear was introduced to the human soul. As Adam said it in Gen 3:10, I was naked and afraid. We identified how it is some basic or core fears that rule how we react or respond in problem situations in relationships. The author calls these responses a “Fear Dance” since it always involves at least two people.
In Lesson Four: We began the process of learning to dance a new dance. We identified the first new dance step, taking personal responsibility for our thoughts. We discovered that by exercising the fruit of the Spirit known as self-control, we could transform our minds, leading to better personal control over our feelings and our actions. We confirmed that this is indeed possible in our lives, and that God encouraged us to do that very thing as we looked at the meaning of Rom 12:2. We learned that we could create a better life for ourselves.
In Lesson Five: The concept of “creating a safe environment” was introduced, and we looked at five actions we can personally work on to become safer people. These were; Respect The Wall, Honor Others, Suspend Judgment, Value Differences, and Be Trustworthy. Notes for this lesson are available on the blog.
Last week, in the sixth lesson, we looked at “taking care of yourself”. This lesson focused on the need to be in good spiritual, emotional, intellectual and physical condition, and highlighted the need to love oneself. We also noted that the Bible states this need in nine separate places, which emphasized that this is a highly important issue.
Today we are going to focus on the topic of emotional communication, sometimes called “listening with the heart”.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
What does this phrase, “listening with the heart”, suggest to you? The author doesn’t really define it for us. My answer to our question here is “empathy” or “having empathy for”. Webster’s defines empathy as “Identification with and understanding of another’s feelings, situation and motives. After I did a little digging I discovered that our English word is derived from the Greek word “empatheia”, which is sometimes translated as “to experience with” and often as “to suffer with”, and on occasion as “to have passion with”. I say all this to try to get over to you what this “listening with the heart” expression is really getting at. It says we are to do our best to identify with others feelings. (Gal 6:2) {Mention that Christ’s “Passion” is the greatest act of empathy of all time, as he felt the pain and burden of our sin, and then acted out of love for us by allowing Himself to be killed.}
My first reaction to this was “You have to be kidding, how is that possible in all of our relationships?” Well, apparently it is! Let us start by connecting with a basic truth.
· Communication is more than words.
The author says it differently; “The real message is often the emotion beneath the words”.
Have you ever noticed how when someone has spoken with you, and you believe you have understood, that sometimes you realized that you really didn’t understand? That there is some form of disconnect between the words you heard and the eventual apparent meaning. Let me give you an example:
You are part of a married couple, and your teenage daughter, who usually gets good grades, comes home with a “C”. Your spouse says, “Our daughter brought home a “C” today”. You hear this and respond with “Okay, I’ll talk to her”. Sounds reasonable doesn’t it? They are dealing with a potential problem quickly. Then the first spouse says, “It was in Math, she never gets bad grades in Math”. You have the first sign that you really didn’t understand the original message. So you rationally say something like, “Oh, does she have a new teacher or something?” Your spouse finally comes out with “It is the or something!” Now your brain kicks into real listening mode as you say, “What did I miss?” Then the real message hits your ears, “Our daughter has a new boyfriend, and he is in the Math class with her, and we don’t know him, and I think he may be a bad influence, and I don’t know his family or if they go to church!”
Do you see how the first spouse started with something in their mind, a concern about a new relationship the daughter is in, but delivered the message that a bad grade has occurred? Can we see how the simple word message that began this whole exchange didn’t convey the underlying feeling and wasn’t received as a major concern statement? And can we also understand how the ball could have been dropped if the second spouse didn’t go beyond the words and find the feelings?
Now here is another example for us men. What if, in our daughter’s low-grade problem from above, we had responded in typical male fashion to the opening statement? What if we had gone straight from the problem to a solution like, “Okay I’ll ground her until the grades come up!” We would probably be thinking, “I got that fixed!” or even “Bring on the next problem, I’m in full solution mode!” We would have missed the whole thing. Psychologists call this dealing only with “the presenting problem”, and never getting to or discovering the “real problem”.
Okay, it is now the ladies turn. How about if you were the first spouse and you told your husband about the issue as we have outlined. Then he responded in another typical male fashion with “okay, let me think about it”. You know that this situation is actually more serious than the grade suggests, so you say, “Please talk to her now, I’m worried”. Sound reasonable, yes of course it does. But, you don’t know that your husband has something else on his mind, he has had a bad day and just needs time to unwind, and then he will be able to help. In this case, the wife didn’t go behind the message to get at the feelings of her husband.
This non-empathy we have described here can lead to antagonism between the husband and wife. When the man went into full solution mode, he missed the real problem and almost certainly grieved the wife because her concerns were so easily brushed off. In fact she really wasn’t listened to. In the second case the wife persisted in pushing the husband to do something ‘now’, going down the road of nagging. He may feel like the load he has been carrying today just had a whole stack of bricks added on top, and his own wife did it to him, doesn’t she care how he feels?
I hope by using this simple example we can see how not getting to real message can lead to the worsening of relationships. BTW – The new church-going boyfriend had helped the daughter get a “C”, otherwise she would have gotten an “F”, and apparently she was worried about all the arguing Mom and Dad were doing recently!
Now let’s get to the more practical aspects of today’s lesson and ask the question, “What can I do to develop an empathy for others”?
EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION THROUGH EMPATHY – WHAT I CAN DO.
First – Allow Others Emotions To Touch Me.
I want to open this up now to see what we might understand by this “emotion touching us” thought, how about some ideas?
For me it suggests we can experience at some level the feelings of the other person in a relationship. It can be either positive or negative. Maybe our spouse has had a promotion and we share in the joy and happiness, or our son has lost his starting position on the football team, and it hurts and he is embarrassed.
Just for fun, which famous person used the communication and empathy approach to achieve enormous success? Bill Clinton! His famous line was what? Yes “I feel your pain”. He used this to get to the very top of his chosen profession, politics. He also used it to get other places too! He is what I would call a “master” at this empathy thing.
Why is this so important? Why is “allowing emotions to touch me” so very important? Let us consider the spouse and their promotion. This is the situation, your spouse is up for a new job at work, and they hear that they have got it. They come home, burst through the door, and say with a big grin, “I got the job, the promotion”. And you do this:
· Carry on doing (the meal preparation, reading the sports news, watching TV) whatever you were doing. And you respond with “That’s nice, dear, congratulations”. Can you guess how your spouse might feel? Will they believe you care? Okay, how would it be if you did this:
· Stop what you are doing, joined in the grinning and went over and delivered a hug, or more! And you said, “That is great, I’m so proud of you, what can we do to celebrate”. How might your spouse respond, would they believe you cared?
This was an easy and obvious example to demonstrate that it is way more caring to share in the wonderful feelings than to not let them in. I will say a little more about this in a minute.
How about the other side? What if your spouse comes home and walks in head hanging down and says, “I didn’t get it, they gave the job to someone else”. Do you:
· Look up and say, “I’m sorry dear, that’s tough”, and then go back to your business. What are they to get from that, how might they feel? Do you care? Or would you:
· Stop whatever you are doing, and go over to be there and listen. Not saying anything right away, just look and try to sense where your spouse is emotionally, and “feel their pain”. What is your spouse getting from you? Are you caring, yes you are, are you sharing, yes you are, and you haven’t said a word!
I want to point out something here by using a cute phraseology:
· Shared joy, is joy doubled, shared pain is pain lessened.
When we share joy, or any positive emotion, it takes nothing away from the source individual; in fact the total amount of joy grows. When we share pain or any negative emotion, the burden of the negative emotion is lessened in the person feeling it. This is one of those aspects of how God created life that we sometimes miss. He wants us all to have a full life, where we have great joy and only minimal pain. What does this say to you about how we ought to share our emotions?
When we ‘allow others emotions to touch us” we are demonstrating that we care, and we are accentuating the positive but lessening the negative. That is why this is important!
Second – Listen With Feeling
Very simple to say! Difficult to do well! This is a small thing but a big issue, and follows on from our discussion above. I only have a couple of points to make here.
· The person who is transmitting to you needs to know you care. If you listen with feeling, demonstrating that you feel the pain or joy, they will have a sense of reassurance that they are understood. You might listen by nodding your head or saying things like, “that’s the pits”. This is sometimes called active listening.
· Agreement is not necessary. You don’t have to agree with your partner’s statements, but you do have to understand them. This involves getting behind the words and understanding the emotions behind them, or as we said earlier, being empathetic. Having empathy does not include having to agree!
Third – Discover Through The Dynamic Process
The book uses this definition, “Effective Communication Is A Dynamic Process Of Discovery That Maintains Energy In A Relationship”. What a mouthful! The first thing I spotted when reading this was the word “discover”, and I said in my head, “discover what?” It was a really good example of one of those thoughts I always seem to have in mind, which is “What is the point?” This is a common kind of thinking in men. It gets to the “bottom line” and if the bottom line is interesting then we look for the detail. So, if it is okay with everybody I’m going to start this section by going to the bottom line.
Discover what, that was my question. What exactly does effective communication discover and how does it happen? When I reflected on this for a little time I came to realize that the answer is simple “It doesn’t matter”. This may sound strange, but here is why.
When communication is effective, both parties are working together to achieve a kind of bonding around the understanding of what needs to be communicated. Discovery could mean something factual, like “I had a wreck on the way home”, or it could be “I’m not feeling well, I think I have a bug” or maybe “I’ve had a frustrating day, and I’m a little angry about it”. It could be almost anything. The whole point of discovery is that an emotional connection is made and relationships are enhanced!
Some of you may remember a book called “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Steven Covey. In this book he describes a habit called “Begin with the end in mind”, and this is exactly what discovery is all about. You begin effective communication with the objective of discovering whatever needs to be discovered. There is a truly superb example of this habit, which is actually a biblical habit, found in the life of Jesus. In Matthew chapter 4, right after His temptation, we see Jesus begin His ministry. What does He do first, where does He begin? Let’s look at verses 18-22. We can see that his first action is to pick His disciples. This is because He (Jesus) knew where He was going and that His disciples would be the people carrying out the great commission after His ascension. He taught His followers, He helped them go through discovery over a three-year period until the bond between Him and them was so incredibly strong that they would die for Him. Is that where you are with your serious relationships?
Remember our definition? “Effective Communication Is A Dynamic Process Of Discovery That Maintains Energy In A Relationship”. The words “dynamic” and “process” appear in it. I don’t find these two as mysterious as the “discovery” word so I’m only going to say a few words about them.
Dynamic is exactly what it means, as per Webster’s, “Marked by continuous change, activity or progress”. Serious communication in a relationship is marked by all three factors, change, activity and progress. After all, if all you talk about is one subject day after day, you will tire of the talking and of the relationship quickly. But we all know that our best relationships are indeed marked by changes in subject material, interactive give and take and a general movement to the discovery we talked about earlier.
Process, which Webster’s says is “A series of actions, changes or functions that achieve an end or result”. Effective communications is certainly that. There is always a movement toward the end, which is what? Yes, discovery. There is almost always a whole set of minor discoveries to be made as communication progresses.
One of the great benefits of effective communications is what our definition calls “energy maintenance”. The book says this is where a relationship is kept, “fun, exciting, satisfying and healthy. For some reason, this whole section made me picture a dating relationship. Do you remember dating? Wasn’t it fun, exciting, satisfying and healthy? That was because “effective communication” was going on! One of our author’s co-workers came up with a great idea; what if I listened to (fill in your significant other’s name) like it was the first time? Wouldn’t that action on our part spice up, in a very appropriate way, our relationship? I’ll leave that with you to answer.
Fourth – Work!
I knew this was going to be hard! Our book says it though, “Effective Communication Takes Work”. But all is not lost because this work can be managed through the correct setting of our expectations. The book gives us three major examples:
· Expect problems and misunderstandings.
· Expect that you’ll need a lot of patience.
· Expect a lot of trial and error.
Expect problems and misunderstandings - I think we would all agree that there will always be “P & M” in communication until the end of time. Why is it such a surprise to us sometimes when we have a misunderstanding? Effective communicators expect this to happen. My wife and I have always had misunderstandings, after all we speak different languages, I speak the Queen’s English and she speaks Okie English. We still get surprised from time to time. If we always knew that there was a chance of a miscommunication, wouldn’t we be a little less quick to get frustrated, hurt, disappointed or angry?
Expect that you’ll need a lot of patience – Give it time! Effective communication needs that dose of realism called patience. Sometimes I just don’t get it! That can frustrate my wife, and if she is not patient with me, she might end up by abandoning the attempt to discuss something of importance. We are both losers if this happens. At the beginning of our lesson today we talked about the need to get to the emotion behind the message. I’m not sure that can be done well if we rush our communication. We must expect that the “dynamic process of discovery” we have discussed requires a little time and a dose of patience.
Expect a lot of trial and error – Think of communicating as always learning to ride a bike. You are always going to wobble a bit, sometimes fall off and on occasion get some bumps and bruises. Keep on trying, you’ll get there! If one way of communicating doesn’t seem to be working, try something different.
Fifth – Avoid the Blame Game.
The point of communicating is the enhancement of relationships, to develop understanding of each other, not to point out who is right and who is wrong. Jumping into trying to figure out who did what to who is totally useless. After all you can be 100% right, but your spouse won’t talk to you. This is because proving yourself right says, “I am important, and you are not!” A very destructive behavior.
There you have it, with that message to avoid the blame game, we conclude our lesson. Let me summarize what we have focused on today.
The basic message today was “listen with the heart”, which is sometimes called empathy, and we identified five actions we can take to help us become empathetic.
· Allow Others Emotions To Touch Me.
· Listen With Feeling.
· Discover Through The Dynamic Process.
· Work!
· Avoid the Blame Game.
Next week we talk about the idea of teamwork, and adopting a no-losers policy.
Just as we did last time let’s briefly cover what we have learned so far in the first six lessons:
In Lesson One: We learned that “Life Is Just Relationships, The Rest Is Just Details”, said another way, “Everything In Life That Truly Matters Can Be Boiled Down To Relationships”. In God’s account of His creation of mankind, found in chapter two of the book of Genesis, He (God) summed it up this way, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen 2:18). This is a very big statement, as it is the only thing that God said was not good in the whole creation story. We were made for relationship!
In Lesson Two: Also from chapter 2 of Genesis we identified the three principles that God designed us to live by, our book calls these “The DNA Of Relationships”:
1. We are designed for relationship.
2. We have been given the freedom to choose.
3. We have responsibility for ourselves.
We also looked at Genesis chapter 3, and showed how the fall of man and the introduction of sin into the world was a direct result of not following these principles combined with God’s one simple instruction, (don’t eat the forbidden fruit).
In Lesson Three: We began to see that as a result of the fall, fear was introduced to the human soul. As Adam said it in Gen 3:10, I was naked and afraid. We identified how it is some basic or core fears that rule how we react or respond in problem situations in relationships. The author calls these responses a “Fear Dance” since it always involves at least two people.
In Lesson Four: We began the process of learning to dance a new dance. We identified the first new dance step, taking personal responsibility for our thoughts. We discovered that by exercising the fruit of the Spirit known as self-control, we could transform our minds, leading to better personal control over our feelings and our actions. We confirmed that this is indeed possible in our lives, and that God encouraged us to do that very thing as we looked at the meaning of Rom 12:2. We learned that we could create a better life for ourselves.
In Lesson Five: The concept of “creating a safe environment” was introduced, and we looked at five actions we can personally work on to become safer people. These were; Respect The Wall, Honor Others, Suspend Judgment, Value Differences, and Be Trustworthy. Notes for this lesson are available on the blog.
Last week, in the sixth lesson, we looked at “taking care of yourself”. This lesson focused on the need to be in good spiritual, emotional, intellectual and physical condition, and highlighted the need to love oneself. We also noted that the Bible states this need in nine separate places, which emphasized that this is a highly important issue.
Today we are going to focus on the topic of emotional communication, sometimes called “listening with the heart”.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
What does this phrase, “listening with the heart”, suggest to you? The author doesn’t really define it for us. My answer to our question here is “empathy” or “having empathy for”. Webster’s defines empathy as “Identification with and understanding of another’s feelings, situation and motives. After I did a little digging I discovered that our English word is derived from the Greek word “empatheia”, which is sometimes translated as “to experience with” and often as “to suffer with”, and on occasion as “to have passion with”. I say all this to try to get over to you what this “listening with the heart” expression is really getting at. It says we are to do our best to identify with others feelings. (Gal 6:2) {Mention that Christ’s “Passion” is the greatest act of empathy of all time, as he felt the pain and burden of our sin, and then acted out of love for us by allowing Himself to be killed.}
My first reaction to this was “You have to be kidding, how is that possible in all of our relationships?” Well, apparently it is! Let us start by connecting with a basic truth.
· Communication is more than words.
The author says it differently; “The real message is often the emotion beneath the words”.
Have you ever noticed how when someone has spoken with you, and you believe you have understood, that sometimes you realized that you really didn’t understand? That there is some form of disconnect between the words you heard and the eventual apparent meaning. Let me give you an example:
You are part of a married couple, and your teenage daughter, who usually gets good grades, comes home with a “C”. Your spouse says, “Our daughter brought home a “C” today”. You hear this and respond with “Okay, I’ll talk to her”. Sounds reasonable doesn’t it? They are dealing with a potential problem quickly. Then the first spouse says, “It was in Math, she never gets bad grades in Math”. You have the first sign that you really didn’t understand the original message. So you rationally say something like, “Oh, does she have a new teacher or something?” Your spouse finally comes out with “It is the or something!” Now your brain kicks into real listening mode as you say, “What did I miss?” Then the real message hits your ears, “Our daughter has a new boyfriend, and he is in the Math class with her, and we don’t know him, and I think he may be a bad influence, and I don’t know his family or if they go to church!”
Do you see how the first spouse started with something in their mind, a concern about a new relationship the daughter is in, but delivered the message that a bad grade has occurred? Can we see how the simple word message that began this whole exchange didn’t convey the underlying feeling and wasn’t received as a major concern statement? And can we also understand how the ball could have been dropped if the second spouse didn’t go beyond the words and find the feelings?
Now here is another example for us men. What if, in our daughter’s low-grade problem from above, we had responded in typical male fashion to the opening statement? What if we had gone straight from the problem to a solution like, “Okay I’ll ground her until the grades come up!” We would probably be thinking, “I got that fixed!” or even “Bring on the next problem, I’m in full solution mode!” We would have missed the whole thing. Psychologists call this dealing only with “the presenting problem”, and never getting to or discovering the “real problem”.
Okay, it is now the ladies turn. How about if you were the first spouse and you told your husband about the issue as we have outlined. Then he responded in another typical male fashion with “okay, let me think about it”. You know that this situation is actually more serious than the grade suggests, so you say, “Please talk to her now, I’m worried”. Sound reasonable, yes of course it does. But, you don’t know that your husband has something else on his mind, he has had a bad day and just needs time to unwind, and then he will be able to help. In this case, the wife didn’t go behind the message to get at the feelings of her husband.
This non-empathy we have described here can lead to antagonism between the husband and wife. When the man went into full solution mode, he missed the real problem and almost certainly grieved the wife because her concerns were so easily brushed off. In fact she really wasn’t listened to. In the second case the wife persisted in pushing the husband to do something ‘now’, going down the road of nagging. He may feel like the load he has been carrying today just had a whole stack of bricks added on top, and his own wife did it to him, doesn’t she care how he feels?
I hope by using this simple example we can see how not getting to real message can lead to the worsening of relationships. BTW – The new church-going boyfriend had helped the daughter get a “C”, otherwise she would have gotten an “F”, and apparently she was worried about all the arguing Mom and Dad were doing recently!
Now let’s get to the more practical aspects of today’s lesson and ask the question, “What can I do to develop an empathy for others”?
EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION THROUGH EMPATHY – WHAT I CAN DO.
First – Allow Others Emotions To Touch Me.
I want to open this up now to see what we might understand by this “emotion touching us” thought, how about some ideas?
For me it suggests we can experience at some level the feelings of the other person in a relationship. It can be either positive or negative. Maybe our spouse has had a promotion and we share in the joy and happiness, or our son has lost his starting position on the football team, and it hurts and he is embarrassed.
Just for fun, which famous person used the communication and empathy approach to achieve enormous success? Bill Clinton! His famous line was what? Yes “I feel your pain”. He used this to get to the very top of his chosen profession, politics. He also used it to get other places too! He is what I would call a “master” at this empathy thing.
Why is this so important? Why is “allowing emotions to touch me” so very important? Let us consider the spouse and their promotion. This is the situation, your spouse is up for a new job at work, and they hear that they have got it. They come home, burst through the door, and say with a big grin, “I got the job, the promotion”. And you do this:
· Carry on doing (the meal preparation, reading the sports news, watching TV) whatever you were doing. And you respond with “That’s nice, dear, congratulations”. Can you guess how your spouse might feel? Will they believe you care? Okay, how would it be if you did this:
· Stop what you are doing, joined in the grinning and went over and delivered a hug, or more! And you said, “That is great, I’m so proud of you, what can we do to celebrate”. How might your spouse respond, would they believe you cared?
This was an easy and obvious example to demonstrate that it is way more caring to share in the wonderful feelings than to not let them in. I will say a little more about this in a minute.
How about the other side? What if your spouse comes home and walks in head hanging down and says, “I didn’t get it, they gave the job to someone else”. Do you:
· Look up and say, “I’m sorry dear, that’s tough”, and then go back to your business. What are they to get from that, how might they feel? Do you care? Or would you:
· Stop whatever you are doing, and go over to be there and listen. Not saying anything right away, just look and try to sense where your spouse is emotionally, and “feel their pain”. What is your spouse getting from you? Are you caring, yes you are, are you sharing, yes you are, and you haven’t said a word!
I want to point out something here by using a cute phraseology:
· Shared joy, is joy doubled, shared pain is pain lessened.
When we share joy, or any positive emotion, it takes nothing away from the source individual; in fact the total amount of joy grows. When we share pain or any negative emotion, the burden of the negative emotion is lessened in the person feeling it. This is one of those aspects of how God created life that we sometimes miss. He wants us all to have a full life, where we have great joy and only minimal pain. What does this say to you about how we ought to share our emotions?
When we ‘allow others emotions to touch us” we are demonstrating that we care, and we are accentuating the positive but lessening the negative. That is why this is important!
Second – Listen With Feeling
Very simple to say! Difficult to do well! This is a small thing but a big issue, and follows on from our discussion above. I only have a couple of points to make here.
· The person who is transmitting to you needs to know you care. If you listen with feeling, demonstrating that you feel the pain or joy, they will have a sense of reassurance that they are understood. You might listen by nodding your head or saying things like, “that’s the pits”. This is sometimes called active listening.
· Agreement is not necessary. You don’t have to agree with your partner’s statements, but you do have to understand them. This involves getting behind the words and understanding the emotions behind them, or as we said earlier, being empathetic. Having empathy does not include having to agree!
Third – Discover Through The Dynamic Process
The book uses this definition, “Effective Communication Is A Dynamic Process Of Discovery That Maintains Energy In A Relationship”. What a mouthful! The first thing I spotted when reading this was the word “discover”, and I said in my head, “discover what?” It was a really good example of one of those thoughts I always seem to have in mind, which is “What is the point?” This is a common kind of thinking in men. It gets to the “bottom line” and if the bottom line is interesting then we look for the detail. So, if it is okay with everybody I’m going to start this section by going to the bottom line.
Discover what, that was my question. What exactly does effective communication discover and how does it happen? When I reflected on this for a little time I came to realize that the answer is simple “It doesn’t matter”. This may sound strange, but here is why.
When communication is effective, both parties are working together to achieve a kind of bonding around the understanding of what needs to be communicated. Discovery could mean something factual, like “I had a wreck on the way home”, or it could be “I’m not feeling well, I think I have a bug” or maybe “I’ve had a frustrating day, and I’m a little angry about it”. It could be almost anything. The whole point of discovery is that an emotional connection is made and relationships are enhanced!
Some of you may remember a book called “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Steven Covey. In this book he describes a habit called “Begin with the end in mind”, and this is exactly what discovery is all about. You begin effective communication with the objective of discovering whatever needs to be discovered. There is a truly superb example of this habit, which is actually a biblical habit, found in the life of Jesus. In Matthew chapter 4, right after His temptation, we see Jesus begin His ministry. What does He do first, where does He begin? Let’s look at verses 18-22. We can see that his first action is to pick His disciples. This is because He (Jesus) knew where He was going and that His disciples would be the people carrying out the great commission after His ascension. He taught His followers, He helped them go through discovery over a three-year period until the bond between Him and them was so incredibly strong that they would die for Him. Is that where you are with your serious relationships?
Remember our definition? “Effective Communication Is A Dynamic Process Of Discovery That Maintains Energy In A Relationship”. The words “dynamic” and “process” appear in it. I don’t find these two as mysterious as the “discovery” word so I’m only going to say a few words about them.
Dynamic is exactly what it means, as per Webster’s, “Marked by continuous change, activity or progress”. Serious communication in a relationship is marked by all three factors, change, activity and progress. After all, if all you talk about is one subject day after day, you will tire of the talking and of the relationship quickly. But we all know that our best relationships are indeed marked by changes in subject material, interactive give and take and a general movement to the discovery we talked about earlier.
Process, which Webster’s says is “A series of actions, changes or functions that achieve an end or result”. Effective communications is certainly that. There is always a movement toward the end, which is what? Yes, discovery. There is almost always a whole set of minor discoveries to be made as communication progresses.
One of the great benefits of effective communications is what our definition calls “energy maintenance”. The book says this is where a relationship is kept, “fun, exciting, satisfying and healthy. For some reason, this whole section made me picture a dating relationship. Do you remember dating? Wasn’t it fun, exciting, satisfying and healthy? That was because “effective communication” was going on! One of our author’s co-workers came up with a great idea; what if I listened to (fill in your significant other’s name) like it was the first time? Wouldn’t that action on our part spice up, in a very appropriate way, our relationship? I’ll leave that with you to answer.
Fourth – Work!
I knew this was going to be hard! Our book says it though, “Effective Communication Takes Work”. But all is not lost because this work can be managed through the correct setting of our expectations. The book gives us three major examples:
· Expect problems and misunderstandings.
· Expect that you’ll need a lot of patience.
· Expect a lot of trial and error.
Expect problems and misunderstandings - I think we would all agree that there will always be “P & M” in communication until the end of time. Why is it such a surprise to us sometimes when we have a misunderstanding? Effective communicators expect this to happen. My wife and I have always had misunderstandings, after all we speak different languages, I speak the Queen’s English and she speaks Okie English. We still get surprised from time to time. If we always knew that there was a chance of a miscommunication, wouldn’t we be a little less quick to get frustrated, hurt, disappointed or angry?
Expect that you’ll need a lot of patience – Give it time! Effective communication needs that dose of realism called patience. Sometimes I just don’t get it! That can frustrate my wife, and if she is not patient with me, she might end up by abandoning the attempt to discuss something of importance. We are both losers if this happens. At the beginning of our lesson today we talked about the need to get to the emotion behind the message. I’m not sure that can be done well if we rush our communication. We must expect that the “dynamic process of discovery” we have discussed requires a little time and a dose of patience.
Expect a lot of trial and error – Think of communicating as always learning to ride a bike. You are always going to wobble a bit, sometimes fall off and on occasion get some bumps and bruises. Keep on trying, you’ll get there! If one way of communicating doesn’t seem to be working, try something different.
Fifth – Avoid the Blame Game.
The point of communicating is the enhancement of relationships, to develop understanding of each other, not to point out who is right and who is wrong. Jumping into trying to figure out who did what to who is totally useless. After all you can be 100% right, but your spouse won’t talk to you. This is because proving yourself right says, “I am important, and you are not!” A very destructive behavior.
There you have it, with that message to avoid the blame game, we conclude our lesson. Let me summarize what we have focused on today.
The basic message today was “listen with the heart”, which is sometimes called empathy, and we identified five actions we can take to help us become empathetic.
· Allow Others Emotions To Touch Me.
· Listen With Feeling.
· Discover Through The Dynamic Process.
· Work!
· Avoid the Blame Game.
Next week we talk about the idea of teamwork, and adopting a no-losers policy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)