Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] I hope you enjoyed our teaching team as much as I did. I thought they did an awesome job.
[00:00:11] I'd like to remind you that our prime, the pump offering, is coming up.
[00:00:17] Jesus once taught a parable.
[00:00:21] And he said there was this businessman who was much more successful than he ever dreamed he could be.
[00:00:34] And in fact, he was so successful that he ran out of space for what he had produced.
[00:00:46] And so Jesus said that the businessman sat down and asked himself, what should I do?
[00:00:58] And he came up with this plan. He said, I'm going to tear down all my buildings.
[00:01:07] I'm going to build twice as big.
[00:01:11] I'm going to fill these buildings up.
[00:01:14] Then I'm going to retire, drink wine every day, watch Oprah Winfrey on TV.
[00:01:27] And Jesus said, God said to that successful businessman, you have been a fool.
[00:01:37] Yep. You succeeded in your business. You accumulated all kinds of stuff.
[00:01:44] But tonight your soul will be required of you. And what will become of everything you've spent your whole life accumulating?
[00:01:56] And then Jesus sometimes interprets his parables and sometimes he doesn't. This one he interpreted.
[00:02:04] And he said, the meaning of this parable is it's foolish to only be rich in earthly things and not rich toward God.
[00:02:17] This is the teaching of Jesus Christ.
[00:02:21] We have an opportunity in this very short life to be God's partners.
[00:02:29] Look, I think you should be successful in business. I work as hard as I can to make this a successful business.
[00:02:36] But brothers and sisters, Christ said, there's something bigger than that and that's being rich toward God.
[00:02:45] And I believe one of the ways we become rich toward God is that we're generous in doing with God the stuff he wants done in the world.
[00:02:57] I'm absolutely certain. I am absolutely certain that God wants us to help the poor. So part of the prime of the pump offering goes to help the poor.
[00:03:06] I feel called by God to support the orphanage in Uganda. And so part of the prime the pump will go to that.
[00:03:16] I know that people judge what we think about God by the way we take care of his house. And so part of prime the pump will go to keep this place looking beautiful and glorifying Jesus Christ.
[00:03:33] Would you be prayerful about what being rich toward God might look like in your life?
[00:03:40] Our dear heavenly Father, as we explore the scriptures today, I pray that your spirit would give us clarity.
[00:03:50] I pray that something of the wisdom of who you are would affect the way we think, feel and choose.
[00:03:59] And I pray that we would be better problem solvers because we've learned to solve problems in a way that your scriptures teach us.
[00:04:10] In Christ's name. Amen.
[00:04:18] Perpetua was the daughter of a rich, noble Roman who lived in North Africa.
[00:04:29] Her father was rich and had influence.
[00:04:33] They were roman citizens.
[00:04:37] And everything looked like it was going to be perfect for her. She married the right guy, good looking, good career.
[00:04:51] They had a baby boy.
[00:04:54] Everything seemed to be going well.
[00:05:00] And then Perpetua heard the gospel.
[00:05:07] History doesn't tell us who shared the gospel with her, but somebody shared the gospel with her. And she made the most dangerous choice she could possibly make.
[00:05:18] She chose to be a Christian when it was against the law to be a Christian.
[00:05:24] It was about 200, 203 AD, and it was against the law to be a Christian.
[00:05:33] Everything seemed to be all right. Until one day, roman soldiers knocked on her door.
[00:05:42] She passed the baby boy to a family member, and the roman soldiers took her to the governor.
[00:05:52] And there were four other people there that she knew. They went to the same church she did.
[00:06:00] And the governor said to each one of them individually, are you a Christian?
[00:06:10] Each one of them said, yes, I am.
[00:06:15] Then the governor scolded them and said, do you know that you're being unpatriotic? Do you know that you're causing problems in our world? Do you know it's against the law to be a Christian?
[00:06:31] And I'm going to give you a little time to think about this, and then I'm going to call you back in here, and I'm going to ask you again.
[00:06:40] See, here's how it worked.
[00:06:42] If she would have said, no, I'm not a Christian, they would have taken her to the temple of Augustus, and she would have had to offer a sacrifice to Augustus, proving that she wasn't a Christian.
[00:06:55] If she said, yes, I am a Christian, she got this lecture, and then she got a little time to rethink everything.
[00:07:04] Well, her dad found out what happened and came to her house, and he was livid.
[00:07:12] He said, what's wrong with you? I've spoiled you your whole life. You have everything anybody could ever want. Why are you doing this?
[00:07:22] No, I want you to go right now and tell the governor you're not a Christian.
[00:07:32] But she didn't.
[00:07:35] And so the time passed, and the soldiers came to the house a second time.
[00:07:41] And this time, they marched her to a different place where the governor was.
[00:07:50] And the governor asked each of them again, are you a Christian?
[00:07:57] And Perpetua? And the other four said, yes, we're Christians.
[00:08:03] And he put them in jail. He put them in the ugliest part of the prison they had.
[00:08:08] Her dad was wealthy and bribed some people and got her out of the dungeon. And he also gave her some pen and paper, and that's how we know her story. While she was waiting execution, she wrote her story out.
[00:08:25] Her dad bribed the right people, and they would bring the baby to the prison so she could nurse the baby.
[00:08:34] Her dad fell down on his knees in front of her and begged her, please, don't do this.
[00:08:46] Don't do this to me.
[00:08:48] I don't know how I'll be able to survive if you're executed.
[00:08:54] And don't do this to your baby. He deserves a mom.
[00:09:01] But the day came, and the arena was full.
[00:09:06] And the Romans killed the three men first.
[00:09:10] And then they brought out perpetua and another lady called Felicitus.
[00:09:20] And to make the whole thing as degrading as they possibly could, they sent the two into the arena naked.
[00:09:35] But it became obvious that she was a nursing mother. And people began to boo.
[00:09:42] So they took her back in, they put a cheap slaves robe on her, and put the two ladies back out in the arena.
[00:09:52] And then they released the lions.
[00:09:56] Ironically, the lions wouldn't go near them.
[00:10:01] So they hardened the lions up and put them back in a cage.
[00:10:05] And they brought out a bear in a cage, and they opened the door to the bear cage, and the bear wouldn't come out of the cage.
[00:10:13] And now it's not going the way the governor wanted it to go.
[00:10:19] Nothing is working out the way he wanted it to. So he sent in the gladiators, and in a very short time, the two ladies lifeless bodies, were laying in the sand.
[00:10:35] Ah. When I read this account, first of all, I thought, how heartbreaking.
[00:10:49] How heartbreaking.
[00:10:53] And then I thought, dude, you need to do a gut check.
[00:11:01] If that were you, what would you have done?
[00:11:09] If I were arrested tomorrow for being a Christian, and I knew I had two options, to recant or to die.
[00:11:19] If I were arrested tomorrow, and my family members, who I love more than life itself, they begged me, if I heard the threat of someone in authority say, we're going to turn lions loose on you, I wonder, would I have done what perpetua did?
[00:11:51] I'm doing a self check.
[00:11:54] I'm asking myself, who is Christ, really, to me?
[00:12:02] Not just when everything is good and beautiful, but when everything is hard and ugly.
[00:12:11] You see, the apostle Paul tells us in one Corinthians 1128, let a person examine himself.
[00:12:22] The apostle Paul says, if you're going to get life right, you have to examine yourself.
[00:12:29] The problem is we very rarely do it.
[00:12:35] First of all, many people don't know how to examine themselves.
[00:12:39] And second of all, when you start doing it, you start seeing things in yourself that you don't want to see.
[00:12:52] Ah.
[00:12:55] And I think this examining myself is a necessary skill for being a problem solver. We're doing this series on problem solvings. If we're going to solve problems, we got to first begin by solving our own problems.
[00:13:13] Listen to what Jesus said. You people who are trying to solve other people's problems, and you haven't solved your own problem, you're like somebody who has a two by four sticking out of the edge of their eye, and you're saying to the person next to you, hey, you got a little splinter in your eye. Let me help you get that out.
[00:13:36] Jesus said, if you're going to be a problem solver and help somebody else get the splinter out of their eye, you probably ought to start with the two by four in your own eye.
[00:13:48] And how do I do that?
[00:13:53] I do that by examining myself.
[00:13:59] Ah.
[00:14:02] I begin to examine myself by saying, when a problem arises, do I hear myself saying, that's not my fault?
[00:14:12] Do I hear myself saying, this isn't my problem?
[00:14:17] Or when a problem arises, do you feel anger rising up in you?
[00:14:24] Or when a problem solve arises, do you hear yourself say, I am a problem solving person.
[00:14:36] I'm going to take responsibility.
[00:14:40] I'm going to have peace in my heart, and by the grace of God, I'm going to solve this problem.
[00:14:51] Do you see God as your partner in problem solving?
[00:14:59] All of these questions get us to, how can I examine myself now?
[00:15:07] I've got 20 questions today, and you can get them from us. I think if you use this barcode, you can get them. I also know if you call the office, they'll email them to you. There's some other ways to get them, but I don't know how to do it. It's too complicated. But if you talk to somebody who does, they'll tell you. So you can do it off this barcode, or you can contact the church office and they'll give you these questions.
[00:15:36] Okay, we're going to email it to you. You don't have to do anything.
[00:15:40] That's what I like. Team teaching.
[00:15:44] All right, so let's talk about self examination, and let's begin with giving ourselves a mental self check.
[00:15:57] We're going to start with, how are we thinking? What are our thought patterns?
[00:16:03] All right, number one, do you approach life fearfully?
[00:16:11] Do you hear yourself saying, this problem can ruin me.
[00:16:17] You see, that's not a good place to start thinking about a problem.
[00:16:21] If you're thinking, this is a disaster. If I don't do this right, it could ruin me.
[00:16:28] This could change everything. That's not a healthy place to start thinking about a problem.
[00:16:34] Two, do you have self defeating thoughts? I hear people say something nice to me, doc, this always happens to me. Why does it always happen to me?
[00:16:48] You see, that is not a reality. That is a view of life. It happens to everyone.
[00:16:55] Look around this room. Everyone in this room has problems.
[00:16:59] There are different kinds of problems. They have different intensities. But there's not a person in this room right now that doesn't have a problem.
[00:17:08] So if you're thinking about a problem and saying, why does this always happen to me? That is a wrong way of thinking.
[00:17:18] Or there is a biased way of thinking because you have created a biased in your mind. You see what you're looking for, and the only thing you're looking for is problems. So you see them everywhere you go.
[00:17:33] You look at your spouse problems. You look at your kids problems. You look at work problems.
[00:17:39] You listen to network news problems.
[00:17:43] That is a biased way of thinking. There's more than just problems in the world. And if all you see is problems, you're thinking about things wrong.
[00:17:55] How about this?
[00:17:57] Facts versus assumptions.
[00:18:02] Do I look at life and rely on my assumptions? Or do I look at life and say, I'm going to have to do some homework on this and find out what the facts really are?
[00:18:16] Do you see a healthy way of thinking is I'm not going to trust my assumptions. I'm going to do some homework and I'm going to try to figure out what the facts in this issue really are.
[00:18:31] And then there's a spiritual way of thinking.
[00:18:34] I ask myself, am I letting God's ideas have influence on me?
[00:18:41] As I look at this problem that I have to deal with in life, am I permitting God's good ideas to have influence on me? Or am I thinking about my life problems in a way that excludes the good ideas of God?
[00:18:59] Now, with those five questions, you can do a healthy mental check. How is my thinking healthy? You just have to be brutally honest with yourself on this.
[00:19:11] Then we can move on to an emotional check.
[00:19:15] What do my feeling patterns look like? How do I feel about life?
[00:19:21] Number one is anger with people in situations misdirecting me.
[00:19:32] We live in an angry world.
[00:19:36] We do live in an angry world.
[00:19:42] A tense, angry world. But that doesn't mean we have to be guided by that.
[00:19:47] That doesn't mean that I have to absorb the feelings of the world around me.
[00:19:55] Two, have I allowed discouragement to Deenergize me?
[00:20:05] When you face a problem, do you feel deenergized because you bring the strong feeling of discouragement to that problem?
[00:20:16] Oh, brother, not this again.
[00:20:25] See, discouragement robs me of the energy I need to solve problems.
[00:20:30] So I can't approach my problems with a predominant feeling of discouragement.
[00:20:40] How about joy?
[00:20:43] Do you bring well being to the problems of life?
[00:20:49] Look, I've been in rooms where we are dealing with a very hard problem and just one person being humorous at the right time changed the feel of the whole problem solving.
[00:21:06] One stupid joke broke the tension and made everything seem a whole bunch easier because it brought joy into the process. It wasn't us raking our teeth on the concrete.
[00:21:24] This isn't really that bad. We can actually enjoy this.
[00:21:30] How about peace?
[00:21:33] Do you bring peace to problem solving?
[00:21:38] There's a beautiful verse in the Bible. I've quoted it to myself a million times and it says this.
[00:21:46] Now, may the peace of God guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.
[00:21:53] That's this idea that in the middle of problem solving I can have an inner sense of peace and that peace will guard the way I think and the way I feel.
[00:22:09] Do you feel hope when you do an emotional check? Do you feel hope?
[00:22:16] Do you expect to win?
[00:22:18] Do you expect to solve the problem? Do you expect for things to work out in a good and healthy and beautiful way?
[00:22:27] See, if I do an emotional check and I don't find in myself any joy, peace or hope, I guarantee you my approach to solving problems is not going to be a good one.
[00:22:43] The way I engage in that problem is going to be flawed because I'm not bringing a healthy emotional self to it.
[00:22:54] Let's do a choice check.
[00:22:59] What do your choice patterns look like? Or maybe it's better to say habits. What do your life habits look like?
[00:23:11] When you look at the habits that you've created over life, would you say I have to admit I'm a problem avoider.
[00:23:24] When problems come up, I tend to check out. I avoid them good. I'm going to get one. Amen. I listen to everybody else preach. You guys say amen 30 times, I'm up here dying. All right, there we go.
[00:23:49] Or maybe you're not a problem avoider.
[00:23:54] Maybe you're a lazy problem solver and a lazy problem solver. Sounds something like this.
[00:24:02] I'll get to that later.
[00:24:04] I'm going to do all the stuff I like to do in my workday, and hopefully I'll run out of time and I won't have to deal with that problem.
[00:24:14] Anyone?
[00:24:17] I'm putting the problem at the very end of my to do list because hopefully I can get through the day and never have to deal with that.
[00:24:29] Or do you hear yourself say, I hope somebody else will take care of this?
[00:24:42] Do you hear something in your inner self say, if I just look the other way, maybe somebody else will.
[00:24:54] Hey, dads used to be that way for me. Changing diapers. If I just wait long enough. Sharon, any other dads?
[00:25:10] All right.
[00:25:14] I'm doing a mental, emotional, and a habits self check.
[00:25:23] The fourth question.
[00:25:26] Do I work well on problem solving teams?
[00:25:32] See, I'm a firm believer that the hardest problems take teams of people. They're not solved by individuals.
[00:25:39] I'm also a firm believer that even the easy problems, life is more fun when you're on a team doing it together.
[00:25:48] When you do a self check about your habits of life, are you consistently part of a problem solving team, or do you find yourself in the ring alone, slugging it out all by yourself?
[00:26:05] See, if we're going to be. If we're going to be the good people God wants us to be, he means for us to do things together.
[00:26:16] Brothers, your wife is your problem solving partner. Let her have some influence with you.
[00:26:24] Ladies, your husband is your problem solving partner. Let him have some influence with you.
[00:26:31] The two of you, partner, in solving the problems. The two of you don't become enemies in solving problems.
[00:26:39] Parents and kids, you're problem solving partners together.
[00:26:46] This is the way my family worked. I would say when we're in public, when you're at school, I got your back 100%, and we'll take care of everything else when we get home.
[00:27:00] My kids never had to wonder if I was going to show up and take the principal side. Sorry, principals.
[00:27:09] I always said to them, I have your back, and if something needs worked on, we'll work on that at home.
[00:27:17] Your children need to know that you've got their back, that you're their partner in solving problems.
[00:27:25] Listen, I can't let this go yet, okay? The worst thing that can happen, mom and dad, is for your kids to see you as the very last person in the world that it's safe to share a problem with.
[00:27:40] That is a disaster.
[00:27:43] The very best thing you can do is say, my family is a problem solving team.
[00:27:51] And when it gets hard, we go back to back against the whole world, and then we work out the problem at home.
[00:27:59] Problem solving teams five is the Holy spirit helping me to develop better life habits?
[00:28:14] If you do a self check and you look at your life over the last year and you're real honest with yourself, would you say you have developed in the last year some better habits?
[00:28:28] Or would you say your habits are the very same as they were last year? Or hopefully, God forbid, not that your habits have gotten worse than they were last year?
[00:28:41] I read on my study month, I read a very insightful thing from St. Augustine about the nature of sin and temptation.
[00:28:53] And Augustine says that sin starts out as a wrong desire, and if we give into that wrong desire, it becomes a wrong habit.
[00:29:09] And if we let that wrong habit stick around too long, it becomes a wrong compulsion, and we actually lose what control we had to begin with, and we become the slaves of sin.
[00:29:28] The habit makes me a slave to sin. I think it's a brilliant idea, and I'm going to talk to you some more about it. All right.
[00:29:37] When I do a self check and I start looking at my life and I start paying attention to my habits, am I finding that the Holy Spirit is having influence with me? And some bad habits I had last year, I'm overcoming them. They're passing away.
[00:29:57] Or are you finding that these bad habits have gone beyond a habit and now they're a compulsion and you find that you have very little strength to overcome them?
[00:30:12] Let's give ourselves a spiritual self check.
[00:30:16] What does my life with Christ look like?
[00:30:20] When was the last time you said to yourself, what does my life with Christ look like?
[00:30:28] Here's our five questions.
[00:30:33] Am I praying about my problems?
[00:30:38] Do your problems make their way into your prayer life?
[00:30:48] I want to make a distinction.
[00:30:50] I sometimes call complaining to God prayer, but it isn't.
[00:30:58] It's complaining to God. There's a difference between complaining to God and praying. I hear myself saying, all right, here's this problem again, instead of saying, here is this problem again. So obviously I haven't learned something that you want me to learn, and I pray that in the problem this time, your spirit can do something and teach me what I need to learn so that if this problem ever comes up again, I am a different person than I am right now.
[00:31:34] Or if this temptation comes up again, I will meet that temptation with a different character than I have right now.
[00:31:43] 02:00 a.m.. I. Applying God's good ideas to my personal life in a daily way.
[00:31:51] Can you look at last week and say, on this occasion I applied God's good idea in this way in my life last week, I was feeling resentful, and I remembered that God said to me, I need to be quick to forgive. And so I applied that idea to my life. And the thing I was feeling resentful about, I forgave.
[00:32:21] Can you look at your life and say, I can see times this week where I was applying God's good ideas in my daily life?
[00:32:33] A soft answer turneth away much wrath.
[00:32:37] Can you see a time last week where you softened your answer and it made things better, and you did it because you remembered that God said that was a good idea?
[00:32:51] 03:00 a.m.. I. Living in faith or anxiety?
[00:32:59] If you looked at your life, would you say, I have this faith that no matter what comes up that God likes me, he wants to bless me and he's going to help me through it?
[00:33:11] Or are you living in anxiety?
[00:33:15] I don't know what's going to happen. I'm not feeling good about this. A friend of mine told me that they knew, think something just like this and it was a disaster. And you start feeling that anxiety in your stomach.
[00:33:31] Anyone?
[00:33:33] No?
[00:33:37] Thank you.
[00:33:41] How about this?
[00:33:44] Am I open to being corrected or redirected in my spiritual life? Am I open to God saying to me, dude, you are on the wrong track?
[00:34:01] And me saying back to him, thank you, help me get on the right track? Or do I hear me say back to him, come on, God, look at, I'm really not that bad. You need to lighten up a little, church.
[00:34:24] What do you hear yourself doing more?
[00:34:28] Giving thanks or complaining?
[00:34:33] If you looked at your spiritual life last week and you had to compare how many times you complained to how many times you gave thanks, how would that comparison come out when you are paying attention to yourself?
[00:34:52] That's the problem. We complain when we're not paying attention to ourself.
[00:34:57] And out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaketh.
[00:35:02] All right, I'm trying to examine myself.
[00:35:08] All right, I'm trying to create a systematic way of saying, where are you? If you're going to live this life that God wants you to live, you have to do self examination, and then you have to make adjustments based on what you find in these self examinations, because it's God's way of making us better people.
[00:35:34] He doesn't say, examine yourself so you feel terrible and you criticize yourself and feel bad about life. It's not what he wants. He wants us to examine ourselves so we become more healthy, more competent, more enabled to live this life. He wants us to live.
[00:35:58] And so the Lord says, you have to examine yourself. This is in the imperative mood. It means it's a command.
[00:36:07] I mean, we take the Ten Commandments really seriously, and we should.
[00:36:14] But I think the Ods of anybody in this room murdering somebody tomorrow are relatively low.
[00:36:22] You might surprise me, but I'm guessing it's pretty low.
[00:36:30] But I take that command real seriously. It is an equal command that God says to me, examine yourself, dude.
[00:36:37] You're in more trouble if you don't examine yourself.
[00:36:41] All right, the second thing I want to say about this is we need to do these self examinations before problems overwhelm us, not after.
[00:36:54] Right?
[00:36:58] You want to do the self examination before the hard problems hit, because it's almost impossible to do it after the hard problems hit.
[00:37:09] And then here's the hardest thing. Nobody can do this for you.
[00:37:15] You get it? You can go to the doctor. They can listen to your heart, take look in your ears and your nose, and they can do their exam checklist.
[00:37:29] But you can't go to the doctor and do a self examination.
[00:37:34] This is a personal requirement.
[00:37:42] Okay. I also want to say you will examine yourself.
[00:37:47] What other people say about you that you don't like won't be nearly as damaging because you know something different about yourself.
[00:37:56] You know something different about yourself.
[00:37:59] On the other hand, if you're not examining yourself, what they say will have a lot of influence, because, trust me, they have examined you, and they didn't like what they saw, and they're going to let you know that. All right?
[00:38:17] Nobody can do this for us. We have to do it for ourself. And when we do it for ourselves, something healthy happens in us. I want to say, nobody can do this for me, but someone can do it with me. The Holy Spirit, God's holy spirit is in the world to help us do self examines, examinations just like this.
[00:38:39] And so God sends us into the world to be his partner as problem solvers. You are God's partner as a problem solver. Tomorrow, in your home, with your friends, in the workplace, wherever God puts you, you are his problem solving partner.
[00:38:56] And to do that, well, Jesus said, take a good, hard look at yourself.
[00:39:04] Maybe you can't see it, but you got a two by four in your eye. Maybe you can't see it, but you're not thinking in a healthy way. Maybe you can't feel it, but you're not feeling in a healthy way.
[00:39:18] You've got a couple of bad choices that have become bad habits, and they're holding you back your spiritual life is anemic. It needs a shot of vitamins.
[00:39:32] In self examination, God helps me take the plank, the two by four, out of my eye. In self examination, God develops in me the experience I need to help other people with the splinter problem they have.
[00:39:52] And so let a person examine himself.
[00:39:59] Our dear heavenly Father, I thank you for your good ideas.
[00:40:06] I ask for myself, and I ask for everyone in this room and everyone who's watching online.
[00:40:11] I ask that you would prompt us to do healthy self examination.
[00:40:17] And then, as we examine ourself, I ask that you would help us to make the adjustments that we need to make so we can be better partners with you in solving the problems that are around us. And I ask this in Christ's name. Amen.
