The Role of the Holy Spirit

Good morning everybody, welcome back from our brief break. This morning we are going to cover the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives, within the context of our general study of “The Search For Significance”. Before we start into the lesson I want to go over the chart of the four false beliefs (which we have labeled big lies), their consequences, God’s solutions and resulting benefits. It is found on pages 118 and 119, and I have reproduced it on a separate sheet for our convenience, with some added Scripture references. The four false beliefs are:

· I MUST MEET CERTAIN STANDARDS TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF.

This first lie is about performing to feel worthy.

· I MUST BE APPROVED BY CERTAIN OTHERS TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF.

This second lie is about getting approval from others to feel worthy.

· THOSE WHO FAIL ARE UNWORTHY OF LOVE AND DESERVE TO BE PUNISHED.

This third lie is about condemnation leading us to feel unworthy.

And lastly we come to the biggest lie of all:

· I AM WHAT I AM. I CANNOT CHANGE. I AM HOPELESS.

This lie is about a sense of personal shame leading us to feel unworthy.

As you can see from column two of our chart these false beliefs lead to fears. Fears of failure, rejection, punishment and the most debilitating fear of all, unworthiness.

In column three we see that through Christ’s finished work on the cross all these false beliefs and the resulting fears can be banished from our lives. God provides us with His answer to the enemy’s lies. He provides us the solutions of Justification, Reconciliation, Propitiation and Regeneration. In column four we see the results of His solutions to our problems of submitting our minds and hearts to the false beliefs. In the last column I have provided scriptures that capture these solutions.

Now we come to the point in our study where we are going to be truly challenged, and this is the challenge:

· Am I going to allow God to help me change?

This is such an important question that I am going to recommend that each of us writes it in the front of our Bible, let’s do it now, and record today’s date. This is so that when you see this question in the future you will be able to tell if you actually did allow God to work in your life.

Let me repeat the question, “Am I going to allow God to help me change?” Now let’s discuss what this means to you. Most of us here will immediately say “yes” to this question, and that is one of the core motivations we have for even coming here this morning to study together. It is an honest answer, but it is also naïve. Let’s look at what this question means from the perspective of practicality and in the context of our “Search For Significance”.

If we ask God to change us we are going to ask Him to do the following things:

· Remove the four false beliefs from our hearts.
· Replace them with His truth about Justification, Reconciliation, Propitiation and Regeneration.

Sounds simple, right? It sounds like something God can easily do, after all isn’t He all-powerful? The question I have for you is will He do it if we ask? The answer is yes and no! Yes He will help us, but no He won’t do it for us. Let us be sure to understand this situation.

We have talked many times about how we were created. We are made in God’s image, and one of the truths that result from this fact is that, just like God, we are persons having a free will. It would violate God’s character through disrespecting our personhood to impose change on us. What He does do is to work, through the Holy Spirit, to help us change. We sometimes even rightly refer to the Holy Spirit as the, “agent of change”! Let’s take a look at three Scriptures from the Gospel of John that speak to this:

John 14:16-17: "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. NASU

John 14:25-26: "These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. NASU

John 15:26-27: "When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me, and you will testify also, because you have been with Me from the beginning. NASU

Jesus called His own Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Helper! (In some translations the English words are comforter (KJV) or counselor (NIV) or advocate (NLT)) It has always been God’s plan that the Holy Spirit would come to the earth to be among us to help us change from being children of darkness to children of light. From being people who believe lies to people who believe truth and from people of disobedience to people of obedience. I think it is time to look at how He, the Holy Spirit, works to help us change.

There are two basic mechanisms that God has set in place for the work of His Spirit. The Spirit works from the outside or the inside of a person. It is really that simple! What is important to understand is that the Spirit chooses to work from the outside or inside based on how a person responds. Let me now start to expand these two thoughts of inside/outside work and our responsiveness.

Where the Holy Spirit Starts

The place to start is acknowledging and understanding that every person comes into life as an unbeliever. Scripture has a word that is sometimes used to describe all unbelievers; it calls them “the world”. In Jn 16:8-11 Jesus identifies the primary and initial purpose for the Holy Spirit being sent, let’s read what it says, Jn 16:8-11:

And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. NASU

What does this mean (Discuss)? Yes, it is as straightforward as it sounds. The Holy Spirit’s primary role is to inform every person of three things:

· Their personal sin, their individual offenses against God’s holy standards.
· The right way to live a holy life, which was demonstrated by Christ when He lived among us.
· The coming eternal condemnation and punishment through the exercise of God’s perfect justice.

This means that every day, every non-believer is convicted of these three things until they either become a Christ follower or physically die.

The question I want to pose and answer is how does the Holy Spirit actually do this, how does he convict a non-believer? Does anybody have any thoughts on this?

The Basics of the Soul

To try to understand this we must first remember what our being is made of, and we have talked about this in class a few times. We are a “soul” created in God’s image, carried around in a physical body that was manufactured for just that purpose. (Genesis chapter 2 has the story of the creation of man)

It is generally agreed upon that the soul of a human, which is the part of us made in God’s image, has three parts to it, the mind, heart and will. The mind is where knowledge, understanding and wisdom reside, the heart is where values, attitudes and beliefs are found, and in the will we have the attributes of choice, control and the gate. It is this gate found in the will of each human that is vitally important to understand. This gate is the boundary of our soul. Before I talk more about this gate, let us look at a scripture that might bring us all an “aha” moment of new understanding. In Jn 10:7-10 we see an important statement about a gate, which is called a door in some versions:

So Jesus said to them again, "Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. "All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. " I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. NASU

Jesus calls himself the gate or door, meaning he is the way into God. Being “in Christ” means you have walked through that gate. Just as God has a gate, so do we, and it is an important thing to know. Let’s look at it and do it in the context of how the Holy Spirit works in the life of the unbeliever first.

From the moment of conception you open and close your gate to things. Mostly we open our gates to let in things when we are young, we often call this learning. As we get older we start to discriminate about what we let in and what we let out. We have already stated that the Holy Spirit is constantly communicating conviction to an unbeliever. The message of conviction is one of many received by an unbeliever every day. Each day the unbeliever chooses to allow, or disallow, these into his or her soul through the gate. These messages are then tested within the soul by comparing them to what the person “knows” and “believes”. The unbeliever then either rejects, as in ejects out of the gate, or accepts the message.

When an unbeliever rejects the message of the Holy Spirit, he or she is simply denying the truth. As a person gets older he or she develops the ability to reject the message of the Spirit more easily, this is often called a hardened heart. This message rejection is often accompanied with anger, as all of the convicting messages challenge a non-believers belief system. This is why people sometimes get upset when you witness to them.

The Holy Spirit has many ways that He can deliver His messages of conviction to a non-believer’s gate, can you think of some?

· An audible voice.
· Through a believer’s testimony.
· Through witnessing.
· Through circumstances.
· By TV or radio.

There is really no way we could list every possible way that a convicting message could be delivered to a non-believer. They all have something in common, and that its that the non-believer has to choose to accept the conviction of the Holy Spirit by allowing the message to reach his or her heart so that can be changed. The gate must be opened, the message received and a profession of faith stated as described by Rom 10:9-10:

If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. NASU

That is then how the Holy Spirit works in the life of a non-believer. He delivers convicting messages, and that is all. God will never invade the soul of a person who doesn’t choose to open his or her gate; it is always the non-believers choice.

How About the Holy Spirit’s Work in the Believer?

This is much more interesting! Why do you think I might say that? (Discuss) It is because for a non-believer the Holy Spirit has to work from the outside only, for the believer He can work from the inside of the soul and from the outside. Can you think of some of the implications for us? Let’s look at some important ones.

Conviction – Even though we are saved we will still sin. Having the Holy Spirit inside us allows Him to convict us without us putting up an external barrier. He is able to speak directly to our minds and hearts to show us where we let ourselves down. The Spirit will help us by pointing out where we slip into unrighteousness so we can change direction, which the Bible calls repenting, and live a more righteous life.

While this subject could be a study all by itself, I do want to point out by simply reading the Scripture what our part is, in responding to the convicting work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Let’s look at 2 Pet 1:5-8:

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; for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you. NASU

In this passage Peter tells us to do the things he has listed for us so that we might become “fruitful” and “effective” in God’s service. Some people have asked God, “What can I do for you”. What we have just read is part of God’s answer and I am going to translate it here for you. Imagine that this is God speaking directly to you, close your eyes and listen if you would like.

Do the things I’ve listed here as a response to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, then I can use you. The more you work and build these qualities into your daily life the more I can use you. And the more you do this the more I can fill you with my Holy Spirit, which will bring you power to accomplish more of my purposes in you.

Do you see how it works? The Holy Spirit convicts you of sin and unrighteousness, you respond by repenting and going to work on these virtues. God sees you responding in accordance with His instructions so He, through the Holy Spirit’s power, begins to make you more effective in His service. God will always do His part in this process, will you?

Sanctification – This can be thought of as the second level of salvation. It is the cleaning up process we go through for our entire lives as Christians. Paul puts it this way in Ph 2:12-13:

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. NASU

This is part of the work of the Holy Spirit in every believer, the cleaning up of the mind and heart. The removal of lies and replacing them with truth. This is what this entire study has been about. Did anybody recognize that they were being sanctified by the Holy Spirit during the last few weeks? How does it feel to know that he was working away inside your soul alongside you as you studied, helping to guide your heart and mind into new and improved states? (Discuss)

Revelation – I’m not talking here about the kinds of things John wrote about in the last book of the Bible. I’m talking about ordinary everyday life.

Another work of the Holy Spirit is the revealing of a truth to you that you would otherwise not know. This is a revelation and it is a miracle, a supernatural working of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer. It can happen to you at any moment, and it will always happen in God’s timing, and it will always happen to serve God’s purposes.

Before I speak more to this, I want to ask if anybody has some experiences with these kinds of personal revelations and is willing to share them.

While it is true that God can reveal, through the Holy Spirit, anything to any person at any time and in any way he chooses, it is also true that there are some ways He chooses more frequently. Let’s list them:

· Thoughts.
· Senses, or emotive stirrings.
· Dreams.
· Visions.

Let us all understand this accurately. The things I’m talking about can only happen to believers, and this is why. The thought, sense or other revelation being given comes from inside of the soul through the power of the Holy Spirit. They are actually the Holy Spirit’s thoughts or dreams, and we experience them. They are meant for the good of the receiver or the good of the body of Christ, and always for God’s purposes. The best example of this in scripture is the revelation of Christ to Peter. It is found in Matt 16:13-17:

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" And they said, "Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And Jesus said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. NASU

Simon Peter received the revelation through the Spirit, and Jesus confirmed that through His verbal acknowledgement. Technically speaking Peter didn’t receive this from the Spirit inside him, because Jesus hadn’t sent Him yet, but Peter did receive this message through God’s Spirit, which was in Jesus who was standing right beside him. It is still an example though because today the Holy Spirit stands beside any person who is a believer, only it is no longer a physical positioning, it is a spiritual position.

Every one of us here can receive personal revelations. I say that we ought to expect them, look for them, and be ready to respond to them in Godly ways.

Giftings – At the moment of salvation a new believer is given at least one spiritual gift, this is detailed out in 1 Cor 12:1-12 which we are not going to read. Our concern here is how the Holy Spirit works in and through us using the gifts we have all been given.

This is the deal. You have been given a gift, and you are to use it for the unifying and edifying of the body of Christ. In other words, to make the church a wholesome place and to build and strengthen it. If you are leaving the gift unused, then the Holy Spirit will respect your choice and not work through you. The church is at its best when all the believers are using their spiritual gifts together; this is because that is when empowerment of the Holy Spirit is at its maximum. Paul speaks to this subject in Eph 4:11-12:

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; NASU

The last thing I want to say is this. If you want to experience the power of God in your life, you must exercise your spiritual gifts. You have control over whether you do this; God supplies the spiritual energy, you supply the willing heart. God wants His Holy Spirit to empower you, and He will respect whatever choice you make.

Finally today I am going to connect all I have been teaching about the Holy Spirit to our “Search”.

Our “Search” has been about finding out where we incorrectly try to get our self-worth, or sense of who we are, from. We have discovered that our self worth is deeply affected by four major personal fears. These fears are failure, rejection, punishment and exposure. We have seen how God has provided the antidotes to these fears through the sacrifice of His son. The antidotes are Justification, Reconciliation, Propitiation and Regeneration.

It is the Holy Spirit who will convict us of incorrect thinking, and encourage us to match our thoughts and beliefs against the word of God. It is the Holy Spirit who will help us to become sanctified by cleaning up the garbage we have in our minds and hearts that limits our ability to lead an abundant Christian life. It is the Holy Spirit who will reveal things to us as we get more and more in tune with the mind of God, demonstrating that God is with us, that we are never alone or abandoned. It is the Holy Spirit that first brings us at least one spiritual gift, and then shows His power in us as we use it or them for God’s glory.

When we allow the Holy Spirit to work in and through us our faith is enhanced, and built up. As we become more and more filled with the Holy Spirit through His actions in and through us, the fears of this world will begin to fade away. As all these things take place in our lives we will see nine things growing in our lives. Let us see what they are, they are found in Gal 5:22-23:

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

With these fruits in your life, how can you worry about how others perceive you, after all God is helping you to bear these fruits through His Holy Spirit.

That is all for today, next week, which is our last “Search” lesson, I will be teaching about some of the nuts and bolts of how to move from false beliefs to healthy beliefs.

Shame

This morning we are going to cover the subject of shame, what it is, where it comes from and what it does to us, and how to be healed of its effects. To introduce the subject we can now look at the fourth “big lie”, which I believe is the biggest and most powerful lie of our enemy. First though, I want to us to remind ourselves of the other three big lies, they are:

· I MUST MEET CERTAIN STANDARDS TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF.

This first lie is about performing to feel worthy.

· I MUST BE APPROVED BY CERTAIN OTHERS TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF.

This second lie is about getting approval from others to feel worthy.

· THOSE WHO FAIL ARE UNWORTHY OF LOVE AND DESERVE TO BE PUNISHED.

This third lie is about condemnation leading us to feel unworthy.

And now we come to the biggest lie of all:

· I AM WHAT I AM. I CANNOT CHANGE. I AM HOPELESS.

Has anybody here felt that way? Can any of us here describe a time when this lie was circling around in our minds? Maybe someone has felt it recently and can go through the circumstances surrounding feeling like we cannot change. (Discuss)

What is going on in us when the feelings surrounding an event cause us to have a sense of hopelessness or maybe powerlessness? As you might expect from our lesson subject, what we experience is something called shame. Shame is an emotion, and in my opinion it is the most powerful emotion that we ever experience. Let’s define it now, so that we can all start from the same reference point.

Shame Defined.

Webster’s dictionary defines shame like this:

Shame is a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming or impropriety.

In a book by psychoanalyst Michael Lewis (Shame: The Exposed Self) he defines shame this way:

Shame can be defined simply as the feeling we have when we evaluate our actions, feelings or behavior and conclude we have done wrong. It encompasses the whole of ourselves; it generates a wish to hide, to disappear or even to die.

There are so many definitions of shame that it is usually a totally confusing emotion to get a grip on, but we all know what it feels like. So let me attempt to lay it out clearly for us.

Shame is a strong, powerful, and painful secondary emotion. It comes after we experience a primary emotion resulting from the exposure, or fear of exposure, of something we have done, something others have done that reflects on us or something that happens around us that we experience as a lack of personal value. The three major primary emotions that can lead to shame are guilt, humiliation and worthlessness.

So we can all fully understand what I’ve just said, let’s go through the elements of shame:

· It is an emotion! This means that it is internally generated inside our soul as a response to circumstances. It belongs to us, nobody can give it to us, and we own it.
· It is strong and powerful. Shame has the ability to sink us, to change the direction of our lives or to stimulate us to choose to change.
· It is a secondary emotion. This means it is felt after we feel a primary emotion like guilt, humiliation or worthlessness.
· It is always preceded by exposure or fear of exposure of something. We could have a sinful action exposed, or an embarrassing situation arises, or we simply realize something negative about ourselves. Other people could be involved in the exposed actions or we could experience an internal exposure of something.
· It is all about who we are! The end point of shame is that we have a sense of being less than we thought we were, or being less than what someone else thought we were.
· Shame is most often accompanied with a desire to hide or run away somehow.
· Shame is usually held in the deepest and darkest part of our inner being, and is kept secret.

Before we move on, I want to be sure to answer everybody’s questions about this definition.

The Purpose of Shame

Were you aware that shame has a purpose? What do you think it might be? (Discuss) God created all things, including the difficult painful emotion of shame. He didn’t do that to control us through the punishing effects of shame, He did it out of His love for us. This is what God’s purpose for shame is:

· The purpose of shame is to reveal our need for God.

One of the best ways to show this is by looking at the account of the fall in Genesis. Let’s look first at Gen 2:25:

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. NASU

This was before the fall; Adam and Eve had never experienced shame, much like our very young children demonstrate that they have no shame in them.

Then came the fall and the result was this, as laid out in Gen 3:7-10:

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, " Where are you?" He said, " I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself." NASU

In the context of shame, was what happening here? (Discuss) Adam and Eve realized that they had done something wrong, and experienced guilt. They saw their nakedness, that they were fully exposed in a physical sense, and felt the humiliation of it. They also realized that they had been less than the Lord might have expected, and felt that they had little value, which is worthlessness. The sum of these things brought them to shame, and fearing exposure to the Lord, they tried to cover themselves up and hid.

Instead of going to the Lord, they ran away. Isn’t that so like us today? Shame is a state of broken heartedness, and only the Lord can heal it. That is why shame is designed to reveal our need for the Lord. Without His assistance we cannot get rid of it. We might be able to find some relief from it in some ways such as addictive behaviors, but it will still be there until we take it to the Lord, and let Him remove it. This has been so true in my life, until I confessed my shame and all the baggage that went with it, I couldn’t receive His healing.

Shame in the Scriptures

Throughout the old and new testaments shame is viewed as a just consequence of sin and a way to punish people. In fact we see, particularly in the Psalms, that the writers would pray that their enemies be brought to shame. Let’s look at a couple of examples, Ps 31:17 and Ps 109:29:

Let me not be put to shame, O Lord, for I call upon You; Let the wicked be put to shame, let them be silent in Sheol. NASU

Let my accusers be clothed with dishonor, and let them cover themselves with their own shame as with a robe. NASU

Evidently God wants us, through His word, to understand that shame is something to be avoided as it is painful to endure, and that the best way to avoid it is to live in obedience.

How Shame Works

This is how it works. Something occurs and we experience shame as a result of it. At that point the emotion is just sitting inside our soul and we have to resolve it, or deal with it in some way. My question for you here is, “what do we usually do with it”? We typically take one of two paths, God’s path or our own. I’m going to start by looking at what we normally do to deal with shame.

Let me introduce you to a new idea, the emotion closet. We all have an emotion closet; it is the place where we hang up all our emotions. In my bedroom closet at home I have my clothes hanging up in sub sections, shirts there, pants over there, shoes on the rack, and underwear and socks in the drawer. The stuff I really don’t like is relegated to the back where I can’t see it easily. It is organized, but it doesn’t have to be, it could just be all thrown in and be a complete mess. That is how your personal emotional closet is, you might have an anger section, a shame section, a pride section, your guilt is thrown on the floor and your humiliations you keep in a drawer. The shame section is kept way in the back, because we really don’t want to deal with it, so it gets stuffed in the deepest and darkest place we can find. You also have places you keep your joy, peace and happy emotional clothes, and the whole thing could be organized or might also be a big mess. And we all know people we might call “messed up” don’t we?

Except there is a big difference, you treat your physical clothes and emotional clothes differently! With your physical clothes you wear them, and when they get dirty you clean them, when they get worn you usually throw them out. With your emotional clothes after you’ve worn them you hang them back up in your emotional closet. Over the years you manage to accumulate a whole stack of emotional clothes. By the time a person is an adult they have got a fully stuffed closet.

Now the problems begin to happen, because we haven’t been keeping our emotional closet clean. Let’s use shame as an example. What are we supposed to do with shame? Take it to the Lord. When we don’t, we find our closet is full of emotional clothes, some are okay like joy and peace, but the positive emotions are typically overrun by the negative ones like shame. What we actually do is to take our shame out of our emotional closet and put in on again. After we’ve worn it a while we put in right back in the closet, and this leads to more problems.

Consider this, let us say we took out an article of new clothing from our clothes closet and wore it, and then we hung it up after we had finished with it, without cleaning it. Then a while later we took it out again, wore it and hung it back up. Then we did that a few times. What would the clothes be like? More importantly what would the closet be like? Yes, the clothes would be dirty and they would get stinky, if you don’t believe me try it! The closet would also get smelly, wouldn’t it? In fact the other clean clothes might even pick up the odor.

It is the same with shame. If we leave it in our emotional closet, we will continually take it out and wear it, and then put it back on its hanger. Eventually it begins to smell and it dominates our whole soul. This is what psychologists call a “shame based identity”; the smell of unresolved shame taints everything about our soul, our thoughts, feelings and actions. Any joy, peace, serenity or other positive feeling that comes into our life gets quickly infected and seems to disappear. Shame is a gigantic burden that many of us carry around, usually as a well-kept secret. It stops us from leading a victorious Christian life.

God’s Remedy For Shame

What does God say to do with shame? There is no actual verse that says something like “give me your shame” or “to dispose of your shame, drop it in the offering plate at church”. We do have a promise from Christ that addresses all burdensome emotions like shame, anger, worthlessness, hopelessness and guilt. We find it in Mt 11:28-30:

"Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." NASU

This is a reaffirmation and clarification of the promise found in Jer 6:16:

Thus says the Lord, “Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; and you will find rest for your souls.” NASU

There is a large amount of spiritual meat in the promise that Christ made. So let us dissect it to fully comprehend how shame, and any other painful emotion, is to be dealt with.

First, Jesus says, “come to me”. He is speaking here about coming to him as one would a friend, as a part of an intimate relationship. If a person has accepted Christ, they have the necessary relationship, if they have chosen their own path, Christ can only wait until they chose to accept Him.

Next, we see the phrase “weary and heavy laden”. Jesus is talking here about the emotional burdens that we carry around in our emotional closet. These are the ones that keep us awake, or disturb our sleep, and cause us to worry; they wear us down and wear us out. Shame will do this.

Third is the emotional exchange. Jesus says, “I will give you rest”. He is offering to take our emotional burdens and replace them with the emotions of rest such as peace, support and comfort.

Then he moves to saying, “take my yoke”, which means, “do these things like me”. He says we are to learn from Him, which means we can learn to help ourselves in the handling of the burdensome emotions. What do we need to learn? Please don’t miss this, because here Jesus gives us the antidote to the poison of painful emotions. He says, “For I am gentle and humble in heart”, and that is what we are to learn. We are to learn to develop Christ like gentleness and humility.

Fifth comes the promise that if we do all these things, have a relationship with Christ, bring our painful emotions to Him for exchange and learn Christ like gentleness and humility then “we WILL find rest for our souls”.

Lastly, we see that all this is true because His “yoke of gentleness and humility” is easy and His “burden of our painful emotions” is light.

When Shame is Unresolved

The last point I want to cover today is about what happens when shame is allowed to continue to stink up our emotional closet. We develop something that psychologists call a “shame based identity”. Basically we start to act on shame-induced beliefs such as, we are not worthy, we have no value, we are hopeless and we are not loved. These are painful things to deal with, and so we will develop methods of relieving the problematical emotion of shame. We will typically self-medicate somehow by doing things like indulging in addictive behaviors, withdrawing from relationships, striving to perform and becoming perfectionistic.

This is where I return to the purpose of shame; it is to reveal the need we have for God. For it is only God who can heal us of shame, and He can only do that if we turn to Him.

Let us resolve to not be like Adam and Eve in our response to our own feelings of shame. Let us not run away, hide and cover up our shame. Let us not hang up our shame in our emotion closet and stink out our soul. Let us take it to God for healing. We can choose to retain a shame-based identity, or we can choose to accept the identity that God has for us. How we deal with our shame is a mark of how far we have come in our Christian maturity. Consider what the writer of Hebrews says to us in Heb 12:1-2:

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. NASU

This is a great place to end the lesson. Seeing what Jesus did with His shame, He took it to the cross and despised it. In the same way, we ought to follow our leader by taking our encumbering shame to the cross, and hand it over to the living God.

The Blame Game

Today we come to the third “big lie” from our book, but before we look at it I want to open the floor for any lingering questions over the first two subjects of “Performance” and “Approval”. Let’s start by remembering the first two “big lies”.

· I MUST MEET CERTAIN STANDARDS TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF.

· I MUST BE APPROVED BY CERTAIN OTHERS TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF.

Let’s begin the actual lesson with a real life situation. This week a mannequin dressed as Sarah Palin with a noose around its neck was hung by a Mr. Morisette from the roof of his West Hollywood home. What should be done about this? (Collect thoughts)

Let’s remember what we came up with as we move to today’s big lie:

· THOSE WHO FAIL ARE UNWORTHY OF LOVE AND DESERVE TO BE PUNISHED.

There are no “wrong” answers to my opening question; in fact you may have more than one thought on this. The question is, what does this “big lie” mean to you? (Open) Here are some of my answers:

· That guy really messed up; he’s probably going to lose his job.
· She deserves to get what coming after treating my friend like that.
· I hope he catches something for sleeping around so much.
· Miserable drug addict, she has always been a loser.
· It’s not my fault; they should of………….
· If only they had not done that, I would think more highly of them.

Having considered our collective answers does your answer to how to how to deal with Mr. Morisette change?

What is going on here? Why do we indulge in finger pointing, blaming others and self-condemnation? Why are we so willing to punish other people, seek revenge or beat ourselves up? Why do we in our daily walk believe this new “big lie”?

The answer to this can be traced back through our motivations to how we were originally designed, which is where I’ll start looking at the why question. Let’s consider Adam and Eve, do you think they knew right from wrong? They did, although some may say they didn’t because they originally did not have knowledge of good and evil. Let’s not get this mixed up, wrong is not the same as evil. When Adam and Eve took the forbidden fruit they knew that it was wrong, but it was a colossal mistake not an evil action. The ability to recognize a transgression of the boundaries for living a godly life were therefore in the soul of each of them, they were designed in, and they are to be found in all of us. Don’t believe it? Let’s look at the book that contains a lot of theology, turn to Rom 2:14-16:

For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus. NASU

Paul here is speaking about the people we used to be, unsaved Gentiles or non-Jews. He is stating quite clearly that they have the work of the law, and therefore the actual law, written on their hearts. It is important to remember that Paul’s perspective on the heart was that it was synonymous with the mind or will, that inside our soul all three were connected and worked in unison. This means to us that all people have God’s law, the Jews have it written on their hearts and in their Torah, non-Jews have it written on their hearts only. Christian non-Jews, since they believe, have the law both in their hearts and in the Bible. No matter whom we are talking about, we will all be judged according to this thing we call the law.

Since we all have the law on our hearts, we also have the capacity to know right, matching the standard of the law, from wrong, failing to meet the standard, and the knowledge that there is a consequence of failure! This is where we add in a little corruption of the mind, which is usually called a fallen nature and we can start to see how all the blaming, revenge and self-condemnation can be understood.

Starting with the fact that we all have the knowledge of right and wrong inside our soul, after the fall we added a deceived and misguided view of everything, the source of which is our self-centeredness. Let’s see this from scripture, look up Jer 17:9 and Pr 21:12:

The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it? NASU

Every man's way is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the hearts. NASU

Now I have a gem of a question for you. What happens when someone knows the rules but is self-centered with the ability to pass and execute judgments? They become the prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner all at once; they disallow a defendant any right to present their case or a defending attorney to help them. They become the moral police, dispensing instant justice. That is us; and it all comes from our self-serving hearts.

Now you know where the blame game originates. Let’s look at a few of the major self-centered reasons we want to blame others or ourselves. First I’m going to list them:

· To distance ourselves.
· To feel superior.
· Because we feel unworthy.
· Because we reject forgiveness.
· Because we feel threatened.
· We want to play Judge.
· We want to hang on to resentments.
· We fear punishment.
· We want to avoid dealing with feelings.

Now I’m going to say a few words about each of these, please feel free to jump in whenever you want to discuss one more thoroughly.

To distance ourselves – We often want to remove ourselves from the being close to a person who has failed or an event where failure occurred. That way we are not blamed or tarnished by them or it, at least in our own eyes. An example could be where parents allow their 18 year old to throw a party, but leave for the night. When the kids get drunk they say, “We were out, we didn’t have anything to do with them getting drunk”. One of our neighbors actually did this.

To feel superior – We often point the finger at others so that we can feel good at how much better we are than them. Have you ever said, “I would never do that”? What is unsaid here is the end of the sentence, which is, “because I’m superior in my behavior to them”. The actual real basis for actions of this type is our own low self esteem, we try to drag people down to below our level, and condemnation is one way we do it.

Because we feel unworthy – When we fail or make mistakes we can often feel unworthy of being loved or held in high esteem. We link our not “doing” well with our not “being” well. This is when that belief that you are a human doing instead of a human being kicks in. We talked about this in lesson 2 – The Performance Trap”. An example is when a high school boy really wants to be on the team, but he is not talented enough compared to those around him. What might he feel? He certainly could feel a sense of failure, and if his parents have really been pushing him to get on the team, he might feel that he is not worthy of their love. Does anybody have an “unworthy feeling” story?

Because we reject forgiveness – This is a big one. Some of us blame or condemn others so that we can avoid giving forgiveness to them. Not only do we carry around an unforgiving heart, but also we will often exaggerate the offense to make it worse and therefore less excusable and forgivable. This further justifies our lack of forgiveness, in our own heart and mind! In this we are wholly disobedient to God. Some of us even beat up on ourselves about failure, believing we have committed unforgivable sins, thereby actually committing the sin of unbelief, unbelief that God will forgive all our sins. This is a good time to remember what God says about this subject of forgiveness; turn to 1 Jn 1:9, and also to Eph 4:32:

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. NASU

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. NASU

When someone has done something that affects you negatively, and you want to blame him or her, it is always wise to see if unforgiveness is lurking in your own heart first.

Because we feel threatened – When you are out with your spouse at a social event and they say something off-color, demeaning or embarrassing, in your opinion, you can feel threatened. It is not that your physical safety is at risk; it is your personal self-worth. You get worried about what people think of you because of what your spouse has said. Then you condemn them; sometimes you might even tear them down right then and there. This is so that you feel better by separating yourself as much as possible from your spouse and what they said. That act, ladies and gentlemen, is an act of self-centeredness and is also an act of disobedience to the command we just read in Eph 4:32. That command is to be kind to one another. At the core of dealing with this problem is that we must make a discerning judgment about whether the offense was a mistake or a sin. Sins do have to be addressed, but mistakes can be dealt with in loving kindness, sometimes by being immediately excused and forgiven.

We want to play Judge – another big one! Some of us try to do the convicting work of the Holy Spirit under our own power. The problem is our clumsy attempts at being the moral police actually result in condemnation of others who we are attempting to correct. While it is normal to be intolerant of injustice or other sinful actions, we haven’t been given a license from God to be His “Godly Punishers” or His “Sin Seekers”; God reserves that role for Himself. Did anybody ever see the “church lady” on Saturday Night Live? I always enjoyed watching that character, she is a great example of what not to be like of course, but that character showed us what we look like to the world. Even the world recognizes what hypocrites we, in the church, can often be in our judgments and condemnation of others.

In John chapter 8 we see the story of the woman caught in adultery, let’s read the very end of it, verses 10 and 11:

Straightening up, Jesus said to her, "Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?" She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said, "I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more." NASU

In this story Jesus points out the truth, all have sinned and therefore all are condemned by the law. We are all under condemnation. It is the gracious and merciful act of God that saves us by Him choosing, as in this story, to say, “I don’t condemn you”. Notice that he ends by saying, “Go, and sin no more”. Shouldn’t we follow His example, don’t deny the sin of someone we are tempted to condemn, instead encourage them to change to a more godly way of life.

We want to hang on to resentments – When we indulge in blaming and condemnation of people who are close to us we usually develop things called resentments. These are hard feelings of anger towards other people that we hang on to as it gives us a sense of power and control over them. The problem is resentments don’t work that way. If the person we resent knows about a resentment, they either ignore it or move emotionally away, since we have become unsafe. If they don’t know, then the resentment is nothing to them. When we blame others for stuff and develop a resentment, we have laid an emotional cancer within us. Just like physical cancer, emotional cancer can slowly kill us if it is not dealt with. Scripture speaks to this in Job 5:2, let’s look at how both the NASU and NIV translate it:

For anger slays the foolish man, and jealousy kills the simple. NASU

Resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple. NIV

I think you might agree that hanging on to resentments generated by our desire to condemn others for our own selfish reasons is not smart.

We fear punishment – This is very straightforward. Often we blame others so that we won’t get punished. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Did anybody take the fear of punishment test on page 82 of the book? (Discuss)

We want to avoid feelings – Living a lifestyle of blaming and condemning others can allow us to not feel the pain or hurt caused by the actions of people or events. We focus on the object of our condemnation, which helps us to deny what we are feeling. The problem is that the feelings are there to tell us something. I can’t say what that might be, since all people and situations are unique. I can say that it is hard but smart to embrace the pain in a situation and do one’s best to learn what it is telling us. If the pain is deep or lasts a long time, get help from accountability partners or a formal counselor. Avoiding feelings never works, emotions must either get resolved or we will “stuff” them and they will come out later in ways and at times that we don’t expect. (Discuss)

The final thing I want to say today is this. Let us not appointment ourselves as the divine corrector and punisher in other people’s lives. There are three reasons to avoid this:

· We victimize people when we do this, attempting to exercise our own power and control over them.
· We have not been equipped or empowered by God to do this job for Him.
· It is a path of personal destruction for us. While we are attempting to straighten others out, we are actually hastening our own physical death and destroying our relational life.

That is it from me for today. Next week we will cover God’s answer to this big lie, propitiation.

Reconciliation

Last week we looked at the underlying problem of the person who needs to feel accepted, approved and affirmed by other people to feel emotionally okay within their Soul. We called them “approval addicts”, and we agreed that to one level or another we all exhibit this “people pleasing” tendency. The second big lie from the book was identified; can you remember what it is without looking it up?

I MUST BE APPROVED BY CERTAIN OTHERS TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF.

We talked extensively about the fact that the more we believed this lie the greater the power of the fear of rejection was in our lives. We looked at some of the root causes for the establishment of this false belief in our hearts. They were abandonment and/or abuse as a child, and how our parents and close family “trained us up”. We looked at two verses together that have great application here, let’s read them again, Pr 22:6 and Jn 14:6:

Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it. NASU

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. NASU

The idea here is that we ought to raise children up to look toward Jesus in all things, because He is the way, and this should include emotional needs like approval. Then when the child grows up they will be less likely to seek approval in the wrong way, from the wrong people and out of the wrong things.

We concluded our time with a look at one of the major results of believing the big lie and living in the fear of rejection; codependency. Now we come to the damning spiritual result of believing this lie and what God has done to solve it.

Let me begin our quest to understand what I mean by the “damning spiritual result” of believing this lie start by asking a simple question. Who do we seek approval, acceptance and affirmation from in our normal daily lives? Let us make a list:

· Parents.
· Children.
· Family.
· Friends.
· Co-workers.
· Acquaintances.
· People we don’t know.

The answer is basically everyone we know and anyone we come across. We even do our best to get approval from people who will have no significant impact on our emotional well-being. You know who I mean, the clerk in the store, the bank teller, the yardman, everybody! We want everybody to love us; we want the whole world to be our friend! (Discuss) I know that some of us are less inclined to be nice to some of the people on the list. If that is you, you must still admit you have a list of your own. The point here is that as much as we can, we try to make the whole world our friend. Interestingly the Bible has something to say about this, we ought to look up Jas 4:4:

You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. NASU

Before we all get upset about the scripture saying “adulteresses”, it is an awkward thing to translate, the real meaning is well illuminated by the Amplified version.

You [are like] unfaithful wives [having illicit love affairs with the world and breaking your marriage vow to God]! Do you not know that being the world's friend is being God's enemy? So whoever chooses to be a friend of the world takes his stand as an enemy of God. AMP

We can now see that the end result of obsessively seeking approval from people is that we become an enemy of God. What happens to God’s enemies in the end? They go to Hell, and that is why I said this problem of approval seeking has a “spiritually damning result”.

The next big question out of our mouths ought to be, “Does that affect me”? The answer for a Christian is no! This is because God has provided the solution to the whole problem of being His enemy. He makes us His eternal friend by something called “reconciliation”.

Let’s see if we already have an idea of what reconciliation means by polling the class. (Discuss) If you look at a dictionary you will find that the verb to “reconcile” means to “restore to friendship or harmony”. This is called in grammar a “transitive” verb because it indicates a transition from one permanent state to another, in this case from “enmity” to “friendship”. The root word here in English is from the Latin word “conciliatus” meaning to have been united. The Apostle Paul uses the Greek word “katallage” in a couple of places, which we translate as reconciliation, and it carries the figurative meaning, “restoration of divine favor”.

We can see from all this wonderful grammatical analysis that “reconciliation” carries with is some powerful ideas. It tells us we are now God’s friend, when we were His enemy, it tells us we are restored in unity and harmony with Him, and it tells us that it was the result of His divine favor.

From a Scriptural perspective, reconciliation is therefore the divine act of grace that turns an enemy of God into a friend of God. We go from being condemned into eternal isolation to becoming fully accepted and approved by God. We go from relying on the conditional approval of people to the fully unconditional approval of God.

When and how does this happen? It happens the moment we accept Him, at the moment of salvation. Let’s see what the Scriptures say, take a look at Rom 5:8-11:

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. NASU

Paul uses the words “the reconciliation” as if it was an event, which is a good way of understanding that the death and resurrection of Jesus can also be thought of as the moment of reconciliation of the world.

Have anybody here been reconciled with somebody they thought was lost to them? How did it feel? (Discuss) I have a picture of how it might have been in Heaven the moment any of us accepted Christ. God the Father holds up His hand to quiet the worship and turns to His son, Jesus, and says, “Look son, we have a new friend”. Then Jesus shouts out to the angels saying, “Rejoice, one who was lost is now found, one who was dead is now alive, one who was an enemy is now my friend, strike up the band!” And all of Heaven celebrates just for us.

Do you believe that? Do you act as if you believe that in every moment of every day? Let’s look at the person in Scripture who was the first to be called “friend” by God. Turn to Jas 2:23:

And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, "AND ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS," and he was called the friend of God. NASU

The Greek word used for “friend” here is “philos” which is the Greek root word for “phileo” meaning to love in a deep and abiding way as a brother or sister. It is where we get the word “Philadelphia” from which is called the city of “brotherly love”. When God calls someone His friend he therefore means someone He has an intimate relationship with.

Our verse has James quoting Gen 15:6, where Abraham is said to have believed God, not just believed in God, which even His enemies do. What did Abraham believe, he believed that when God said, “You will have an heir, and you will be the father of many descendents”, that it was going to happen. This is the original mention of what is known as the “Abrahamic Covenant”, and that became formalized in Gen 17. Do you believe the new covenant God has made with you, that you are now His friend; that you need to turn only to Him for your approval and personal self-worth? What is stopping you from believing this?

Potential Barriers to belief that God is your friend.

There is only really one source of barriers; it is all your relationships!

When we pursue other relationships in front of our relationship with God, we relegate ourselves to acquaintances of God from friends of God. God desires all of you, every piece, your mind, your heart, and your will, and it takes all three to have an intimate relationship with Him. Jesus is very clear in this, what did He say was the greatest commandment? We can find it in Mt 22:37-38, where he quotes Dt 6:5:

And He said to him, 'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.' “This is the great and foremost commandment”. NASU

Our choice of other relationships ahead of our friendship with God is simply an act of disobedience, a sin. We state by our actions of seeking approval from other people that what God said is less important than what other people say.

I don’t want any person hearing or reading this to miss this next thing. Obedience to God in the matter of approval is this:

· Seek approval from God.
· Give approval to others. (Rom 15:7)

Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God. NASU

Acceptance is the translation used here meaning approving of us the way we are, and this has no relationship with the way we act.

Let me leave you with an illustration of the degree of sin involved with this disobedience. If I do not willingly give my wife approval, and yet God does, what am I saying? I’m saying that I know better then God, and that is a prideful place to be. I’m saying that I don’t believe God, and that I’m putting myself ahead of Him.

That is all I’m going to say on this subject, except to answer any questions or to comment on any thoughts or observations that you want to raise.

The Ministry of Reconciliation

I wanted to conclude today on a subject that is not often covered when talking about being a friend of God. It is the ministry of reconciliation. Let us look at the defining passage on this, it is found in 2 Cor 5:16-21:

Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. NASU

What message do you think that God is sending us here, first from the perspective of our lesson, and then in a general sense?

Applying this passage to our need for approval or fear of rejection theme we can see that Paul is telling us to choose to be reconciled to God, to become His friend, His loving intimate companion. God has done His part, and after that it is time to do our part. In here we have all started this process through the event of our moment of salvation, and we finish it when we love Him with our entire mind, heart and will. We will be unable to shake off the desire to receive good opinions from others until we fully hand our souls over to Christ. It is hard to do that and yet it will be so freeing, so rewarding. Even moving toward God in this will help us with the problem of wanting approval from others. Always remember it is progress not perfection we are after!

Not only does this piece of scripture call us to reconciliation with God, it also calls every believer to be part of the “ministry of reconciliation”. This is a worldwide ministry of working to make friends of all people in the name of Christ. The purpose is to show them Christ so that they might choose Him instead of the other path. Be careful to fully understand the following things about this ministry:

· We are to try to become friends with the people God puts in our life.
· We are not to become friends with the “world”, meaning its ways, its pleasures, it systems or its philosophies.
· We are to point others toward Jesus, we are called His “ambassadors”, and we represent Him here on earth.

To be sure that we understand what is going on here with this “ministry of reconciliation” I want to point out a few things about it that we ought to take into our understanding:

· God has forgiven us everything.
· God is calling us His friend.
· God is trusting us with His word.
· God has given us the power to carry this work out.
· God’s Spirit is with us to guide us in this work.

It is these things that we must consider when we talk to our non-believing social acquaintances, those are the people we usually call friends. When we absorb these things we are more confident and prepared to do what the Lord is asking us to in the work of reconciliation. It starts with being His friend!

In summary, we are to choose our relationship with God over all others if we are to overcome our misplaced need for approval. We are to give it all to Him, our mind, heart and will, which are all we have that has any eternal value. As a result of being God’s friend, we are to carry this word of reconciliation to others and point them to Jesus by doing it.

That is it for today; next week we will be covering the “blame game”.

The Approval Addict

Today we come to the lesson you have all been eagerly waiting for. We are going to look at the problem of being hooked on other people’s opinions. Right there at the beginning of chapter 4 we can see today’s big lie:

I MUST BE APPROVED BY CERTAIN OTHERS TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF.

This big lie, which most people have as a false belief in their heart, results in us craving approval, affirmation and acceptance from other people. The great problem here is that the need for approval is legitimate, but the way we seek to meet that need is not.

Let us first establish that seeking approval is actually legitimate, meaning that we were created with this need in our soul, by looking at Jn 12:42-43:

Nevertheless many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God. NASU

Here we can see that the Apostle John is telling us what was happening within the leadership of the Jews in Israel. Many of them actually turned to Jesus and believed. However, because they substituted the approval of men in the place of the approval of God, they didn’t confess that Jesus was Lord. This statement from John tells us that approval is legitimate as a need, and that it is found in God.

I want to be very clear here. We all have the need for approval built into us, it is God designed for the purpose of internally pointing us toward Him. Whenever you feel the need to be approved of, or affirmed, or accepted, or validated, it is legitimate. There is no reason to carry any sense of guilt about feeling needy. God gave each one of us this need for our spiritual benefit, so that might connect with Him as our provider, as our “need-meeter”. It is when we deal with this legitimate need in illegitimate ways that we get off track in all our relationships.

Let us look at some of the sources of this illegitimacy. Starting with the knowledge that our need for approval is given to us from God, can we identify where our need for men’s approval might have come from? This is my list, and it is prioritized.

· Our parents.
· Our immediate family.
· Our childhood friends.
· Our loose social groups. (Like church or the boy scouts or school)
· Our extended family.
· Co-workers.

In my opinion the top two have way more influence than all the others combined. Why might this be so? Let us look up a famous verse from Proverbs, Pr 22:6:

Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it. NASU

Mostly we hear about this verse in the context of raising kids, which it does apply to. It is usually focused on pointing kids toward understanding right and wrong and knowing God, but it has a deeper significance. The Hebrew word “chanak” translated here as “train up” has a better translation and it is “point down a narrow path”. When you add it to the Hebrew word “derek”, meaning “the way”, or figuratively “in the true things of life”, you get a slightly different and deeper picture. Let’s look at Jn 14:6:

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. NASU

Putting these things together what do you see? It is the essentially the same message, in one we are told to teach our kids that what the way, truth and life is, in the second Jesus is clarifying it, He is the way, truth and life. The verse in Proverbs is telling the person raising the child to point them toward God in everything. In the context of our lesson about approval, it means that even as a child we are to point them toward God as the source for approval, from as early a time as possible. A child sees his or her parents as god in the flesh, and from the beginning of their life seeks approval from them. This is normal and natural, but it won’t serve them well when they get older, because they begin to replace parental approval with other’s approval instead of God’s approval. And men’s approval is always conditional!

It happens to all of us, at some point we realize we are not approved of by somebody important to us. What do we experience at that moment? (Open) That is right, we experience rejection. How many rejection moments does it take before we start to have a fear of rejection? I don’t know, but I suspect it is not many.

The single biggest original source for the fear of rejection is abandonment during childhood, the second biggest is child abuse. I am an abandoned child, and this fear of rejection is a core issue with me. It has led to some significant “acting out” over the years, and I may never get it conquered, but I’m working on it. Does anybody else identify with the fear of rejection? (Open) Did anybody take the “fear of rejection test”?

Let’s move on to some of the more practical aspects of the results of the fear of rejection. The book lists several:

· Anger, Resentment and Hostility.
· Being Easily Manipulated.
· Codependency.
· Avoidance of People.
· Control.
· Depression.
· Repeating of Negative Messages.
· Hypersensitivity to the opinions of others.
· Hypo sensitivity.

Due to the constraints of time I am only going to cover in detail three of the items from this list. These are Codependency, Avoidance of People and Hypersensitivity.

Codependency

There are as many definitions of codependency as there are codependents! So let us see what the class thinks it is. (Open) As we have heard all of us have some form of understanding of what it might mean. CODA, Codependents Anonymous does not have a definition because of this very issue of being unable to define it accurately. So they define it through a list of behaviors, which I am handing out now.

In co-dependency, others have control over us because we care more about their needs and feelings than our own. When we have a need for approval that gets met by serving the needs of others, and receiving a reward of other’s approval, then we have become codependent. Let me step through that again so that we all understand it well:

· First, we all have a need for approval.
· Second, we find that serving others results in us feeling approved, and our need is at least temporarily met.
· Third, we go back to this approach again, and it works again, so we develop a compulsion.
· Fourth, we start to do this frequently, and it becomes necessary for us to be able to emotionally survive each day.
· Fifth, we hand over the emotional control of our lives to others, usually just one or two individuals, and we are addicted to it.
· Sixth, our life is totally out of control, and we don’t know it, as we appear to be functioning normally.
· Seventh, if we don’t get help we break down.

Usually most of us get stuck at the fifth point, we are addicted to people pleasing. We don’t feel that life is okay unless those around us are okay.

At the root of this problem, which started with a legitimate need for approval, is self-centeredness. The legitimate need is met through our own efforts; we control how we meet it, and sometimes try to control the people around us to get it met. Is it all about us!

What we call codependency is a significant barrier to our personal spiritual growth and our ability to serve God. In a section of Scripture (Gal 1:6-10) that deals with the preaching and teaching of a false gospel, Paul identifies the reason it was happening, he didn’t call it approval based codependency but that is what it is. He concludes with two simple rhetorical questions in verse 10, let’s read it:

For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ. NASU

Paul presents this as and either/or challenge. This is because we all face the problem of making men as our object of worship, which is either secularism or humanism, versus making Christ our object of worship, which is Christianity. Jesus Himself summed it up as part of His “Sermon on the Mount” in Mt 6:24:

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. NASU

I have quoted the whole verse here, but, in my opinion, it really ought to have been split into two verses. The relevant part here is the first sentence. Jesus says you can’t serve, and be devoted to, two masters. In the context of the need for approval and codependency or approval addiction it means this. You are not able to serve and worship God while you are serving and worshipping your own self-focused needs.

Tough words indeed! Codependency generated through the need for approval or fear of rejection can actually stop a person from being able to live for Christ. Let’s look now at some of the ways we exhibit codependent behavior in our normal daily lives. Let’s refer to the list I handed out earlier, and we can pick on one or two of them:

· Denial of feelings: codependents often have a hard time feeling their own emotions. They are too busy feeling other people’s emotions for them to connect with their own.
· Projection of feelings: A codependent will often project his or her feelings onto others, assuming that they feel the same things. This can be particularly damaging for a parent to do this to a child, as the parent will often tell the child what to feel.
· Enabling behavior: The fear of rejection can lead us to contribute to the bad behavior of another person. One example is the spouse that keeps buying booze for their alcoholic partner. Another is the girl who turns to prostitution to keep her boyfriend in drug money. And what about the mother who does her kids homework for them?
· Hanging on: This is where we fear losing a relationship and feeling abandoned so much that we tolerate bad stuff. This could be the wife who stays with her abusive husband, or the boy that dates a girl who belittles him with others.

There are so many more examples we could bring up, but you get the idea. I personally believe that we live in a culture where codependency, driven out of the need for approval, is the biggest compulsive behavior problem we have.

Avoidance of People

Here we have a seemingly big contradiction. We live with a need for approval from people, and the fear of rejection that goes with it, but we avoid people. What is going on here? (Open)

Have you ever been told that your work is not satisfactory or that your hair doesn’t look good or something like that and experienced a sense of personal rejection? I have! When you meet people who say these things to you consistently, you then do your best to avoid them. You might say it is because they are so negative, but it is not! It is because we feel rejected. It wouldn’t surprise me if we all know someone who stays at work to avoid going home to his or her spouse. Now we know that it may all be about the “worker” feeling rejected in their own home.

Some of these “avoiders” can also be the life and soul of the party, and they are good at socializing. The problem is they never go deep with others for fear of rejection. They will often have no true friends, the kind you share secrets with, for fear of receiving disapproving messages, and consequently feeling bad about themselves. The “avoiders” are actually lonely people.

Can any of us here, apart from me, identify with this “avoider” label? (Discuss)

Hypersensitivity

Some of us are devastated when another person says something remotely negative about us. A comment about how we look or how we are dressed can ruin us for the day. Some of us worry about what complete strangers are thinking about us. These are all examples of being very sensitive to other people’s opinions.

This particular problem gets so bizarre that some of us even take negative self image thoughts about ourselves and project them to others as if they thought them. This means that we can, in our own minds, turn an accepting person into a critical monster. We all know people who are accepting of everyone around them. However, there may be one or two individuals in the group who believe that they are not accepted or approved of by this person. This could be the projection/rejection phenomenon at work.

Does anybody have any examples that they can share about hypersensitivity in people in their lives?

Finally I want to say this. Approval of others is a big deal, and we all have to pay attention to what God says about this subject. I think it is best summed up in Rom 15:7:

Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God. NASU

Next week we will cover God’s answer to the problem of approval addiction and codependency; reconciliation.

Justification

Last week we looked at something called “The Performance Trap” in which we saw how the following simple lie can get a grip on our lives and rob us of the joy and freedom we can have in Christ. This is the lie:

I must meet certain standards to feel good about myself.

We saw how this leads to the fear of failure in our lives, and then discussed what this fear can do to us. We looked at just three possible outcomes, perfectionism, addictions and loss of identity. Today we are going to talk about how God deals with this big lie. His answer is something theologians call “Justification”.

Justification

This is a major theological principle, it can be made as complex as one wants to make it, and we are going to go into a little detail about it in a moment. First though I want to give you a way of remembering what it is basically about.

Justification means that God has made things “just as if I had never sinned”.

Now we are going to construct an understanding of what “justification” is from the Scriptures and following that we will look at how it applies to us in the context of the “Performance Trap”.

I’ll start with a definition of “justification”:

Justification is a divine act of grace whereby an infinitely Holy God judicially declares a believing sinner to be righteous and acceptable before Him.

Let us start from the beginning. When mankind was created, they were perfect, and then sin entered the world through the action of disobedience of Adam and Eve. They became sinners, as did all of those who followed. What is sin? (Open discussion) Let’s see how the Bible defines sin, turn to 1 Jn 3:4:

Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. NASU

Sin is therefore the act of disobedience to God by breaking of His law. Just so that we know some basic truths about sin, let’s look at a couple of passages in Romans, Rom 3:23 and 6:23(a):

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. NASU

For the wages of sin is death. NASU

So here is the situation. Adam and Eve have messed up, they have sinned and as a result we have all sinned, and we are going to die physically and spiritually as a result of it. The enemy is rejoicing, as he believes he has foiled God’s design and intention to have eternal fellowship with mankind who were created to freely love Him. But God has a plan!

Mankind has fallen and now cannot live with God in what we call “right standing” and the Bible calls righteousness. No matter how we come to Him, we will always fall short of the standard of perfect Holiness required to live with Him. In Isaiah 64:6 God says our righteous deeds, meaning righteous in our eyes, are like “filthy rags” to Him, and I picture that as being like something we wear that covers up our uncleanness. The Bible tells us in several places what God is going to do about our unrighteousness, let’s look at one of them, Rev 19:11:

And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. NASU

All unrighteousness, which is a result of our sin, will be judged. In fact God will wage war against all that is unrighteous. We all know the outcome of this future war, all that is unrighteous and unholy will be judged and thrown into the eternally burning fire, all that is holy and righteous will be saved. The question is, how does God deal with mankind so as to turn them from being unrighteous to righteous? How does He save us all from the fire, because He knows that we cannot do it for ourselves?

He decides to do it for us, how does John 3:16 put it?

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. NASU

God Himself comes here and shows us His righteousness, God the Father allows His son to be murdered by us, all of mankind, and to receive judgment as a man. How does this murder of Jesus get mankind from being unrighteous to righteous and remove the consequences of sin from our lives? First we must be sure that this is actually what happens, let us look a 1 Jn 1:5-10:

This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. NASU

In this passage the Apostle John tells us that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. That is all sin, meaning past, present and future. It also tells us that these sins are forgiven, resulting in us owing God nothing, and further says that we are cleansed from all unrighteousness, also meaning past, present and future. But notice that there is a condition! This is all conditional on and hinges around us “walking in the light”. Walking in the light is Bible talk for being saved. So how do we get saved? The complete answer is found by combining Rom 10:9 and Eph 2:8-9:

If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; NASU

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. NASU

When a person confesses Jesus as Lord, the outward action, and believes in their heart that He is risen from the dead, an inward action, they are saved. The Ephesians passage then tells us that at that moment an act of grace, based on the faith shown in our outward and inward actions, occurs. Hence the phrase “saved by grace through faith”.

This is also the moment of Justification. Let us see what the Scripture tells us here, look at Rom 5:1-2:

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God. NASU

It says we are justified, by an act of God’s grace through our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now let us see what we said the definition of justification is:

Justification is a divine act of grace whereby an infinitely Holy God judicially declares a believing sinner to be righteous and acceptable before Him.

God performs this act of grace by imputing Jesus righteousness to us. Jesus, as the man, is right with God, and since we have accepted Him, He will stand in our place. When God looks toward our unrighteousness, all He sees is the perfect righteousness of Jesus, and he judges us as acceptable.

Before we move on to application of this to our study we must state a couple of things.

· Our actual sins are not taken away by this action, nor are their earthly consequences. The full effect of justification happens at the first judgment.
· Our actual unrighteousness is not removed either, we don’t become actually fully right with God until we pass from this life. Until that time we are said to be positionally right with God.

This is a good time for a break in my teaching to open the floor for questions.

Now we come to the practical side of justification. How do we apply this wonderful spiritual stuff to our lives today? We’ll first look at the big lie that has been called the performance trap; can you remember what it is?

I must meet certain standards to feel good about myself

The truth is that we can never meet the standard of complete and perfect obedience to God’s laws, which is the standard that is necessary to meet for entrance into eternal life. This is the big lie that sucks so many of our fellow Americans into sure eternal death. We often hear it expressed this way, “I’m a good person, and that is why I’ll go to Heaven”.

The truth is that once we are saved by grace through faith, “certain standards” or performance is irrelevant in the context of getting into heaven because of justification. Once we absorb this as a core belief of our Christianity we can become freed from linking performance to feeling good about ourselves. Some of us, however, carry around some barriers to absorbing this as a core belief, the book lists four.

· Addiction to the approval of others. We’ll be looking at this in detail next week.
· Sense of hopelessness. Becoming and living as a passive victim, I sometimes think this is an addiction too.
· Desire to live by some formula. This is a person who has to have rules about everything to feel okay in life.
· Controlling nature. Being a control freak is a major barrier to overcoming the “performance trap” lie.

I’m only going to talk about the barrier of being a control freak this morning. The book says this, and I have to admit this made me smile as I read it!

Most of us have a priority system that goes something like this, air, water, food, control.

I think the author was talking about me. Our control freak nature is pictured here, not as a character defect (which it is!), but as a vital thing that we need to sustain our life. When a person’s need to control gets that strong they are controlled by it. This person finds it so hard to let go of control that they will not let Christ into their lives. In fact I see this in unsaved people, people who even when they have heard the gospel and understand it will not accept Christ because they will have to hand over control. This is a person that feels secure in their own abilities, but it is a false security, and all of them will have to deal with it at some point. Jesus talks about this in this parable which is found in Lk 12:16-21:

And He told them a parable, saying, "The land of a rich man was very productive. And he began reasoning to himself, saying, 'What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, 'This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry."' But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?' So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God. NASU

This parable is normally used in the context of identifying greed and hoarding as foolishness, but I want us to understand that it is a good example of a control freak at work. This person actually said, and I’m going to paraphrase here, “Soul, you are in so much control of your life that no one and nothing can bring you down, go have a good time, and do your own thing”. Here the control freak has so absorbed the lie about feeling good through meeting certain standards that he shuts out God.

I used this parable so demonstrate that being a controlling person is such a character flaw that it can even keep a person out of heaven. In our lives, being a control freak is a barrier to spiritual growth. It gets in the way of healthy relationships with those around us and with God. In the context of our lesson, our internal need to control may stop us from enjoying the upside of the justification that Jesus has provided for us. This upside is the belief that we don’t have to succumb to being driven by performance in order to feel okay.

That is where I am going to finish today. Chapter four has a section at the end of it on why we ought to be obedient to God. We didn’t have time today to cover it, but it is worth reading and rereading.

Next week we are going to cover the “Approval Addict”, which is chapter 5 in the book.

The Performance Trap

This morning we are going to start work in earnest as we take the first steps together in our “Search for Significance”. Hopefully we have all had a chance to look at chapter 3, “The Performance Trap.” Before I get into our study this morning I want to open up the class to anyone who has something to say about what they have read this week, in either the book or the journal.

Now we are ready to start. I’m not going to begin within our study subject, I’m going to get us going today by reading a small piece of a very important scriptural passage, we’ll discuss it for a moment, and then I’m going to read a prayer I’ve written for this time. First we are going to go to 1 Cor 2:12-16:

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ. NASU

The essence of this piece of scripture is that we, as believers, have been given the Holy Spirit, and that gives us something that an unbeliever can never have, the mind of Christ, which gives us spiritual discernment. Let us pray:

Father, we come into this study resting on the truth explained by your word in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Most holy God, we desire to put aside the foolishness of the world and replace it with your truth. Lord we are going to ask for your help in understanding the material we will cover and how to apply it into our thoughts, feelings and actions. Holy Spirit we ask that you guide our minds with the mind of Christ into a full awareness of the things that the Father wishes us to learn about ourselves. Lord Jesus we ask that you speak your wisdom into our hearts that we might discern any lies of the enemy that we cling to. Father we ask you to enable us to place our willful actions under your guidance that we might honor and glorify you by how we change and what we do as a result of this study. We pray this today because we want to live in love of, and obedience to, our savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Now I feel like we are ready to tackle the work, but before I do, does anybody have questions about the passage we just read?

Okay, the performance trap; what is it? (Ask for thoughts and discuss) If you have your book go to page 29 and there we can see how our author defines the trap:

· I MUST MEET CERTAIN STANDARDS TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF.

What are some thoughts that come to mind when we consider this statement? Here are some examples:

· I don’t feel good about myself unless I do well.
· Success always results in good feelings.
· I’ll feel better when I finish this task.
· I feel awful, because I didn’t get my work done.
· I’m inadequate; I didn’t get an “A”.

The book introduces a scripture here to enlighten us on where this statement about “certain standards” comes from and which we ought to spend a moment on, let’s turn to Col 2:8:

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. NASU

This scripture identifies three basic sources of opposition to right thinking and that is why it is a good verse to reflect on in this matter of the performance trap. Lets quickly look at them:

1. “Philosophy and empty deception” – This is a reference to what we would call “the world system” or secularism. The world has a set of rules and regulations developed over the years based on man made philosophies, and this forms the world system. An example here would be, “live to work and work to live”. This means that our source of life is work, a very worldly perspective suggesting that you are nothing unless you work.
2. “The tradition of men” – is similar, but refers more to dealing with our fleshly nature than the world system, it is more personal. We all have behaviors and thought patterns that come from our families or culture. This scripture calls this “the tradition of men.” An example in the context of performance traps might be that we choose to go to our parent’s alma mater instead of a superior choice of school.
3. “Elementary principles of this world” – This refers to the “truths”, which are actually not truth at all, which the enemy pushes. Examples are, it is okay to lie about things and if nobody gets hurt, it is acceptable to steal. These are originated from the enemy himself, who is called the ruler of this world. He runs the game, because he sets the rules!

So, in this verse Paul is warning us to watch out for these three basic opponents to right thinking; the world system, our fleshly nature and Satan.

Let us now go back to our statement and definition of the performance trap.

· I MUST MEET CERTAIN STANDARDS TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF.

Because we have identified what God says about the origins of the opposition to right thinking, it is now easy to see how where the “certain standards” come from. They are from the secular world, our fleshly nature or the enemy. No matter what the source, they still represent a false belief when held up against God’s word. We will be covering this comparison in more detail next week. For now let us all agree that the false belief about needing to perform is a lie and a trap.

There is one major result that believing this lie seems to achieve in all of us, it places a root of fear in us. In this case it is a fear of failure. Tell me, has anybody taken the ‘fear of failure test” on page 32 of our book, and is willing to talk about it? (Open for class discussion)

Now let’s look at some of the potential consequences of this fear of failure, first I’ll list the ones mentioned in the book and then we’ll cover a few of them in some detail.

· Perfectionism.
· Avoidance of Risk.
· Anger and Resentment.
· Pride.
· Depression.
· Low Motivation.
· Sexual Dysfunction.
· Chemical Dependency.
· Addiction to Success.
· Identity Entanglement.
· Sense of Hopelessness.
· Anger at Ourselves and God.

Perfectionism

Let’s begin with perfectionism. The book calls it “an unwillingness to fail”, are there some other ways to define it? (Open for discussion) In the context of our subject, perfectionism is the result of not feeling good enough about oneself, having a low self-esteem.

This is how it works. We either have a low self-esteem or an incorrect view of it. We notice that when we do something well, we feel good, and that is a legitimate internal response to excellence. However, we substitute our bad feelings that come from low self-esteem with good feelings that come from performing. The first time this happens, which will most likely be in our childhood, a potential perfectionist is born!

Over the years we fine tune and develop our perfectionism so that whenever we get into some form of slump we can go out and do something and we feel temporarily better. Some of us will even develop systematic ways of doing things in a perfectionistic way so that we have a constant source of feeling good coming in at all times. It is like being emotionally paid for performance. There are a couple of variations of perfectionism that I won’t detail but will mention. The procrastinator and the mess-up.

Let’s look at some actual examples of perfectionism, can anybody give us some?

· The always on time person.
· The clean freak.
· Yard of the month man.
· The fashion Queen.
· Ms. Busybody.
· Mr. “Always in a debate” Man.

The common theme with all perfectionists is that they feel better about themselves when they do something. Their motivation for performance is about their own needs not what is right. God speaks to this in Col 3:23:

Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men. NASU

This verse supports excellence, but not perfectionism. We are to do our work, meaning perform, as if we are doing it for God, rather than for men, which includes self. It is about motivation, not personal need. When the personal result of feeling better is taken off our emotional backs in this way we get freed from the “hamster wheel” of performance. We can continue to do well without having the result of our work determine if we will feel good from day to day. God will accept anything we do for Him, nor matter how we perform, as long as it is done out of love and obedience to Him.

A last word on perfectionists. They can drive the people around them crazy, and make life miserable. They do this by demanding that others meet their needs to perform for self-esteem in some way. An example could be a boss that has everything done his or her way when another way might work just as well, and take less time and effort. Can anybody give us some examples of craziness like this?

Addictions

The connection between the fear of failure and addictive behavior is not always easy to see. However in some cases it is the fear of failure that is at the root of a compulsive behavior that eventually becomes an addiction.

Consider what a person driven by performance typically experiences. They tend to feel better when they are performing well, which puts them under a great burden. They operate with a fear that they will fail, and they are basically on a “hamster wheel” of their own choosing. They have to keep “performing” to keep the good feelings about themselves alive. If they stop the good feelings recede and other feelings develop, which usually are experienced as less than good and sometimes as bad. This person probably ought not to be called a “human being” anymore, but is better thought of as a “human doing”.

Operating as a “human doing” is not how we were created, and is a dysfunction or malfunction within our soul. Sometimes the person carrying this malfunction will discover how to ward off the bad feelings through self-medicating. Self-medicating is giving oneself an emotional drug. Can anyone think of some examples of self-medication”

· Prescription Pills, Illegal Drugs and Alcohol.
· Exercise.
· Pornography.
· Entertainment.
· Illicit relationships.
· Socializing.

Did you notice that not all of the items on the list we came up with are thought of as compulsive behaviors or addictions?

Let’s be clear here. Not everybody who has an addiction is dealing with the performance trap, there can be other sources, as we will discover later in our study of the book. Also, not everyone who is performance driven will fall into a compulsive behavior. The performance and addiction connection is quite common, but hard to see or link up in practice. Does anybody here experience this difficulty or have a family member or friend that is a type A with a “performance” issue?

Are there any questions about this connection between the fear of failure, which is the performance trap, and addictive behavior? Solomon, who was known as the wisest man that ever lived, although he wasn’t, Jesus was, wrote about this in the book we call Ecclesiastes, let’s focus on Ecc 1:8:

All things are wearisome; Man is not able to tell it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing. NASU

This comes within a whole section of scripture of the futility of the things we do, which we usually call work. I want us to all take in what God is saying for us here:

· Work or performance is ultimately wearisome.
· We can’t figure that out.
· It will not satisfy us.

While Solomon doesn’t speak to becoming addicted, which can be thought of as seeking satisfaction in the wrong places, he does say later that we need to turn to God for satisfaction. We’ll look at that more next week.

Identity

In the discussion we just had on addiction I talked about a person moving from the status of “human being” to “human doing”. This can be thought of an identity shift. Let me demonstrate this to you.

(Ask people to introduce themselves with a name and to tell us what they do for a living if they work. This is what will happen. They will all say something like this, unless they have seen this done before, I’m Fred and I’m a carpenter or I’m Judy and I’m a homemaker)

Did anybody hear what happened? We all gave our names and then said, “I am something”! Our identity, or who we are is automatically wrapped up in what we do. This says that how we think about ourselves is wrapped up in what we do, and that we get our sense of feeling valuable from our work. If we are afraid of failing in our performance we will most likely have a fear of feeling worthless too.

That is not how we were created to think and experience life though. I will speak more about this next week, but I do want us to leave us with the appropriate understanding of who we are as we conclude today’s lesson. Let’s look at 1 Jn 4:16 and combine it with 1Cor 13:1-3:

We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. NASU

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. NASU

This reminds us that God is love, and that without love I am nothing. It doesn’t matter what I do, or what I know or what I feel, without God I am nothing. Without God I am worthless, without God I have no value, and I can be thrown away.

With God I am priceless, with God I have value, with God I am treasured. Isn’t this one of the messages found in the good news of Jesus Christ? Isn’t this something that we must remember at all times and be willing to share whenever we can?

Let us all say this together, “I am a priceless child of God, fully loved and having infinite value”.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where we finish today. Next week we will cover the deep subject of “Justification”.