Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 3, 2015 | Our Word For 2016

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January 3, 2015 | Our Word For 2016 · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Howdy.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Merry Christmas, Happy New Year.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Did you have a good uh holiday?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the uh I was gonna say I have mixed feelings, you know, uh when they announce it's time to take down the Christmas decorations, but they're not mixed at all.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like it.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I'd rather be, you know.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, we don't want to be like one of those houses that has the Christmas lights up in August, but um, so I know we need to take them down.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: But it seems to me that Christmas, more than any other time of the year, is carried not so much by words as it is by lights and by music and by the ambiance of those things.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got to say, this year, yeah, I loved, I love being able to do that Christmas series, Home for Christmas.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Really loved the video for that.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: But wow, the music and the lights this year that that took place in and around this building.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's just like my favorite Christmas ever this year, I've got to tell you.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we owe a big gratitude, you know, to Jeremiah and Sam and the rest of the and my sister, the rest of the gang here.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, lights come down, the house comes down.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Next week we're back in Route 66 at the Book of Micah.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: The book of what?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: The Book of Micah, the book of what anyway, so that's next week.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: But this week, uh, this is a cool week for me.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Every single year I get a one-time shot.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I get a it's a standalone message.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: The first Sunday, I mean, the first, you know, the New Year's message has always been a standalone message for me, a message that I preach primarily, a selfish message, a message for myself, you know, a message that has to do with looking back and looking forward and trying to figure out what the Lord wants in my life and in the life and perhaps in your life as well.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: I carry you along with me.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of years ago, a friend, Derek Durbin, shared with me a book that's big in his family called uh One Word, and I was taken by that book.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so two years ago, I preached a message uh for new for 2014, encouraging you to uh that's my son and Judah and my three grandsons and Asher and Reuben.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And let me pull this out and start over.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Huh?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Start my show again.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is a show.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the show.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Huh?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Is it coming?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Sam's coming.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, Sam's coming.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: We are in real trouble if Sam's coming.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, Sam! Thank you.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: It saw him coming.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: It got scared.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Sam can push buttons.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: It goes, okay, okay, okay.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give it to you.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, so that was 2014.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: One word.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then last year, I mean, that that was a big hit, so we did it again.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Last year's message, one word, one more time.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm coming up on December, I'm going, I really can't do one word, one more time, another time, or anything.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I sort of dropped the idea, and then something happened.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you about that, but my message this morning is entitled Our Word for 2016.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's a little different.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've picked a word already, even though I told you not to last week, then keep your word, go ahead, but I'll give you something else.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, one word, our word for 2016.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: The text, Proverbs 12, 15, say it with me.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 12, 15.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: You say, Well, that's an interesting verse.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, uh, anyway, uh, you know, it'll make sense to you later.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: So let me go back and sort of quickly rehearse for you uh how this whole one-word thing happened, the whole point of it, and then I'll jump off of that and tell you about what happened in my life this last month and where I want to take you.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so there's a book that's written called One Word That Will Change Your Life.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Three guys who have all been affiliated at times with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, headquartered Kansas City, and uh they they discovered in their own lives that something needed to change.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: They and their wives would, you know, had failed resolutions.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: The average resolution lasts till about January the 20th.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Unrealized goals.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of trying to develop more willpower, we found a simple way, they write, to live more powerfully.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of creating goals and resolutions, we found a single word that would be our driving force for the year.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: No resolutions, just one word.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: We simply developed a one-word theme for the year.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: It became a one-word vision for everything, and it changed our lives.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: By simplifying our approach, we discovered the secret to life change.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Our formula isn't rooted in our strength and resolve, but in surrender and simplicity.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's not based on temporary inspiration or on the latest pep talk.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's found in narrowing our focus because we believe less is best.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: For us, simplicity created clarity, power, and passion.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And what they're saying is uh, you know, reminds you a little bit of the old proverb, words are like sunbeams, the more they're condensed, the deeper they burn.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought as I read this book, you know, does this have any, does this land in the Bible at all?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And they quote some verses because they're all Christians, and the answer is, well, yeah, it does.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's certainly a one thing theme in the Bible.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: One thing have I desired of the Lord, one thing do I seek, Paul said, David said one thing.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you find these verses in the Bible that that focus on one thing.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then, and then if you focus, zero it down to one word, you realize that most of the, many of the characters, great characters in the Bible, can have a word attached to them.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: They sort of represent one word.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: For Abraham, it's Hinaini.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Hinaini, uh, every time God approached him, he would say Hinaini in Hebrew means here I am.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses said it later, as you know, at the burning bush.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Isaiah said it, you know, in the temple.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Hinani, here I am, send me, use me, whatever.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: For David, the word would be praise because he wrote the Tehelim, the Psalms.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: That means praise.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Nehemiah, Bill, John, believe.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, grace, Bible.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: The whole Bible, as theologians agree today, the theme word would, of course, be God.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Last year I shared with you the story of a man who'd been homeless up until about 1930 on the streets of Sydney, Australia.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Walked into a rescue mission, got saved.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: And shortly after that, in the early 30s, he had started going to a downtown little Baptist church, and a visiting preacher preached on Isaiah 57 about eternity.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the preacher said this, he said, if I only could write the word eternity everywhere in this town.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's just people need to realize they're headed for eternity, they forget about, and so forth.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, well, he went out, felt like God was telling him to do this.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: So he took out a piece of chalk from his threadbare coat and wrote eternity on the ground.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he did that then for the next 35 years.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: They arrested him a few times, but found that Sidney loved it, that he the word eternity was appearing on sidewalks everywhere.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote that word about 500,000 times in his life.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: People came to Christ because of that word, the word eternity.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I shared that, and then I urged you last year to pick one, to pick a word, a word that might change your life.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: And some of you said, Well, how do I pick a word?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is really, I said, rather simple.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Step one, determine the kind of person you want to become.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're not, it's not a resolution, something you feel guilty about that you're trying to stop.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's a positive thing.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of person do you want to become?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Second, step two, identify the characteristics of that person that you want to become.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Step three, distill that down and just pick a word, one word.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And last year, for example, uh, here are some of the words that you sent me, that you had picked.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful words, the word brave, unwasted, trust, enjoy, prayer, obey, ascend, gumption, witness, go, worship, kindness, fire, eternity.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let it go.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody clearly just watched the frozen movie.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Let it go, let it go.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Stop.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: A buddy of mine, first and better, sitting over comedy, I said, Jeff, that's not one word.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I say it really fast.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: It is, it works.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: First and better.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, freedom, enough, relentless, grace, spirit, patience, content.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: So you picked a lot of good words, and and so I come to December and I go, I'm not gonna do this again.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's sort of an ennui, sort of a tiredness that sets in.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you got to move to something new.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then what happened is early in December, I was reading several books of bestsellers, and to my utter astonishment, they all seemed to sort of end up dropping me in the same place.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: They're like spotlights that ended up focusing on the same character trader, the same virtue.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought to myself, wow, I mean, do I need this virtue?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, I answered, no, no, I don't.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm complete, I'm just fine the way I am, of course.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: No, but I mean, that's our natural tendency.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then something happened, and I'll tell you the story about it close to the end of my message, but something happened.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: I go, uh, yeah, I do need it.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you're inflicted with it.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna share with you something that I think God wants for you, but I know He wants for me.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna title it Our Word for 2016.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the three books, I want to walk through these three books really quickly, share with you their message and where they where they end up taking you.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to share with you the biblical basis for this and where it touched me and give you give you our word for the year.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the three books, the bestsellers, are Thanks for the Feedback, is the first one.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: The science and art of receiving feedback well.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's written by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, who wrote one of the best books, in my opinion, that's been written over the most helpful books in the last 10 years, called Difficult Conversations.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: I keep it close to my bed because all of us who work with people are always, you know, get involved in difficult conversations, whether it's at work or at home and so forth.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: And wonderful guide to that.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And they they found as they were interviewing thousands of people for that bestseller, that as people talked about difficult conversations, they kept coming back to feedback that they got from a wife or a husband or a boss or someone else.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the second book is called The Road to Character by David Brooks, who uh who's an op-ed writer and is on TV and so forth at the New York Times of all places.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: He's a conservative there.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: He's considered the only conservative writer there.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, once I was watching uh recently him on TV, he appears on both liberal and conservative uh talk shows, and he was asked, what's it like being the only conservative at the New York Times?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: He said it feels a little bit like being the chief rabbi at Mecca.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, so uh a great book called The Road to Character, third book by Henry Cloud, who seems to write a book every year, all of them good.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: You've probably heard of boundaries, but this one's called Necessary Endings.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, these are three very different books, and yet it seems to me they sort of wheelbarrow drop you off in the same place.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So let me go through these books real quickly, share with you the wonderful message that each one has, and show you how they all end up at the same place.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: The first book, The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks for the feedback.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we all have we all swim in an ocean of feedback.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, at one point, one of them says, I've been graded, rated, and ranked, coached, screened, and scored.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've been picked first, picked last, and not picked at all, and that was just kindergarten.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really true, isn't it?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: The average student in elementary and secondary school receives back 300 feedbacks a year in terms of uh tests and quizzes and papers.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: 300 a year.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Two million teenagers each year take the SAT test and receive back an announcement from that as to how well they did.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Millions apply to college every year, write long resumes and then hear back from the college.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: 40 million people are on romance websites.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Over 70% of them believe they know love, they can detect love at first sight from the feedback they see on the website.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then that's just a personal life, but then there's work.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Almost a billion, almost a billion hours are spent every year in this country preparing to give or receive performance reviews.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: And over half of the people, employees who get performance reviews, write that they believed their performance reviews were either unfair or inaccurate.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And one out of four employees says that that's the most freakish, hair-raising, awful moment of their year is the performance review.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: So feedback can be a tough thing.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, interesting, they write, when we give feedback, we notice that the receiver isn't good at receiving it.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Parents, have you ever noticed that with your junior high kids?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when we receive feedback, we notice that the giver isn't good at giving it.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then they say, as we work to develop ways to approach feedback differently, we soon realize that the key player, very important line, is not the giver, but the receiver.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: We spend a lot of our time trying to tell parents or authority figures, you know, how to give feedback better.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that's fine.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Training managers how to give feedback, how to push more effectively can be helpful.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: But if the receiver isn't willing or able to absorb the feedback, then there's only so far that persistence or even skillful delivery can go.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter how much authority or power a feedback giver has, the receivers are in total control of what they do and don't let in and whether they choose to change.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: So pushing harder rarely opens the door to genuine learning.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: The focus shouldn't be on teaching feedback givers to give.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: The focus at work, at home, should be on feedback receivers, helping us all to be more skillful learners.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you and I, if you think about it, you know we we don't we struggle, you know, when we get feedback.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like the way those genes look on you.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: You ever heard that?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: And immediately go, what do you mean you don't like the way these genes look on me?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, is it a problem with the genes themselves, or are you making a critical statement about the kind of genes that I buy?
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Or is that a subtle way to let me know that uh you don't like the fact that I'm 10 pounds overweight?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I mean, really, or you know, uh uh so we're going to this party, what do you mean?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you think that's the wrong color for the party, or are you about to tell me that you're filing for divorce?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And don't tell me that I'm overreacting.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you know how it works with feed.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, the the truth is that we all have a tough time handling feedback.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: 93% of American motorists believe they are better than average drivers.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: In a 2007 Business Week poll, 90% of the managers surveyed believed their performance in the workplace was in the top 10%.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, they say this book is about mastering the skills required to drive our own learning.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Key word there.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's about how to recognize and manage our resistance, how to engage in feedback conversations with confidence and curiosity.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: And even when the feedback seems wrong, how to find insight that might help us grow.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's about how to learn from feedback.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, even when it's off base, unfair, poorly delivered, and frankly, you're not in the mood.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: And one conclusion they make, this is my last slide on this book, is the single most important thing you can do is shift your internal stance from I understand already to help me understand.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Everything else follows from that.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's always more to learn.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that interesting?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Feedback.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Most important thing is not the giving, the most important thing is the receiving.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And as you receive feedback, criticism, whatever you call it this year, the question is can you learn from it or not?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Second book, The Road to Character, David Brooks.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: David Brooks, who's, I don't know that he's a Christian yet, but I think he's close.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: He's on the road.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened is that he realized as he became famous, written some books, New York Times, he's on all of the TV shows, both right wing now and left wing, very popular.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: He suddenly realized, as he said, I had now all the money that I had ever hoped to have and all the fame that I'd ever hoped to have, and I couldn't understand why I felt emptiness inside.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: So he says, I looked around and I would run into about one person each month that had something that I wished I had.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: They seem to have sort of an inner light, he said.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it struck me that there are people down through history that have had this sort of an inner thing going on.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: They seem more humble than other people, more self-effacing, not so defensive, not prideful, and so forth.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're not struggling to get the top, they're thinking of other people.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, you know, where's that?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: So he writes this book where he he finds uh, I think it's 10, of famous people down through the years, Dwight David, Eisenhower, Dorothy Day, on and on, and and people who came out of tough backgrounds, who wrestled with their own weaknesses and then developed this uh, you know, character virtue of sort of an inner light.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so as he's as he's trying to, you know, as he's reading the stories and telling the stories about these people, for instance, he tells the story of 10-year-old Dwight David Eisenhower, uh Cansan.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And Eisenhower himself tells a story about how angry he was when his older two brothers got to go trick-or-treating one Halloween, and his dad and mom didn't let him go.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, um, he always had problems in his life with his temper, but especially when he was young, and so he ran out the door, throwing a tantrum, went to the apple tree in the front yard, began slugging it with both fists.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I was crying.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Eisenhower said, I was crying at the top of my lungs, and I was slugging in the tree, and I got all the skin off my knuckles, and my hands were bleeding.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I finally just came in the house.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: My father was irate, he gave me a whipping and sent me to bed.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: So he said, I was in my bedroom, after about half an hour, my mother Ida came in and sat on the bed.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And what then happened, he said, was the most important conversation of my life.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: She quoted a verse from Proverbs to me.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: It is better for a man to conquer his anger than to conquer a city.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And she talked to me about self-control and the and the weakness that I had in this area.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, it changed my life.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he set himself a desire that he would not allow anger to control him.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's an astounding story about a 10-year-old boy.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: And Brooks uses that as an example of the kind of a the kind of a decision that each of us need to make that develops moral character.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: He writes things like this we all need people to tell us when we're wrong, to advise us on how to do right and how to encourage, and to encourage, support, and inspire us along the way.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Success, and he says, I learned this in my own life, success leads to the greatest failure, which is pride.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Failure leads to the greatest success, which is humility and learning.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Humility is the awareness that there's a lot you don't know, and that a lot of what you think you know is distorted or wrong.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Self-respect, great quote here, self-respect is not the same thing as self-confidence or self-esteem.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Self-respect isn't based on IQ or any of the mental or physical gifts that help get you into a competitive college.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's not earned by being better than other people at something.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Self-respect is earned by being better than you used to be.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he says that's so, so tough for us now because we live, he calls it, in a uh big me society.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: He points out that 40 years ago, when 10,000 young people Or ask how they would respond to the statement, I am a very important person.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Only one out of eight and a half, only 12% said yes.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And today, 80%, 80% say yes.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: He says she he pointed out that psychologists have a narcissism index in which they they give to 10,000, they've given to 10,000 young people who did it in 1955 and now they did it in 2005.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: They wrote down narcissistic statements and ask ask uh asked the young people how they would respond.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Statements like, I find it easy to manipulate people because I am such an extraordinary person.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Someone should write a biography about me.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: I show off if I get the chance.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: I like to look at my body.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: I like to be the center of attention.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: I am a remarkable person.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: He said that in 1955, uh, less than, you know, about 30% of teens would answer yes to any of those questions.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: But now the number is over 80%.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: But he said maybe it's not surprising in a social networking age where, and and interesting, he cites another study.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, whatever you call it, has become in some ways a way of competing for celebrity, where each of us becomes our own self-promoter, our own sort of, you know, uh uh uh agent, uh, whereby we put forth a picture on Facebook, whatever it is, of a person who's a little better, you know, a person who's who's happy and outgoing and sort of, you know, something like this, because we're portraying sort of an image of celebrity.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and so anyway, this all fits in with this idea that it's more difficult for people today to decide to become better than they actually are because it requires what he calls a high humility index rather than a high me index.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: The road to character.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: Third book, final book, Henry Cloud Necessary Endings, a very different kind of a book because, as the subtitle says, this is he says, the employees, the businesses and relationships that all of us have to give up in order to move forward.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you think, what in the world does that have to do with the rest of these things?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, here we're talking about the 12 million employees that get laid off every year.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking, though he talks about the fact of so many others that perhaps need to be laid off, the kind of relationships that are toxic, the kind of things that need to end.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: But it becomes wider or larger than simply the kind of relationships we need to end.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes about us.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: For he says, without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: You see, wisdom comes from experience, either the experience of others or of oneself, and to let experience do its work.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: A person has to be here it is, open to receiving the lessons that it has to teach.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Are you kidding me?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm reading this and I'm thinking, wow, just like those other two books, this is taking me in the same place.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Many people, he says, wish for a different universe than the one in which we live.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: They want one where every day is harvest time and there are no long, laborious summer months to go through in order to get there.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says later, sometimes there is bleeding when you cut out a cancer, but it needs to happen, right?
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then remarkably, maybe not so remarkably, because Henry Cloud is, I'm positive, a Christian, he actually has a chapter on the book of Proverbs.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I was astounded, it's the same kind of stuff I've taught here and taught at CareParavel for 20 years.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: There are three types of people in the book of Proverbs: wise people, foolish people, evil people.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, and he's exactly right about this, that the one primarily distinguishing factor between wise fools and evil is how they respond to what we might call today feedback, what he calls criticism.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wise people invite and accept criticism.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Their philosophy is I need to learn and grow.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Foolish people, however, reject criticism.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm fine just as I am.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I added in this one, he doesn't put it in, but in Proverbs, evil people attack the critic.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: They attack the parent or authority figure or school teacher because they have the idea, you've just disrespected me.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: But as he puts it, when truth presents itself, the wise person sees the light, takes it in, and makes adjustments.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: The fool tries to adjust the truth so he doesn't have to adjust to it.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm telling you that is a huge theme in the book of Proverbs, chapter 1, verse 5.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: A wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding will attain wise counsel.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Or Proverbs 15, 5, only a fool despises a parent's discipline.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever learns from correction is wise.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or 18.2, fools find no pleasure in understanding, but delight in erring their own opinions.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or 23.9, speak not in the ears of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Or my theme verse, our text for the morning, Proverbs 12, 15.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: The New Living Translation puts it bluntly.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to others.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Our word for 2016, well, let me correct that.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Our phrase for 2016 is learn and grow.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Learn and grow.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Two words that if Jesus were here, he would go thumbs up on, because even Jesus clearly had this as a philosophy.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: We read in three verses in the Bible, he grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 50, verse 4, prophetically we find that Jesus says, Yahweh God, my Father, awakens me each morning.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: He awakens my ear to listen like those being instructed.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 5.8, even though Jesus was the Son of God, he learned obedience by what he suffered.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, learn.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Girl, all of these books are dropping me in the same place.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is a couple weeks ago, and I'm thinking, do I really need this lesson?
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't quite sure, but I have a grandson who's named Judah.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's six years old, and I love to go fishing with him.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: We go to ball games, and that night I took him to the Sprint Center in Kansas City because the Jayhawks were playing my favorite childhood team, the Oregon State Beavers.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not as competitive as I used to be.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: Those of you that played ball with me at the Y would rather not rather die than lose, would rather kill than lose.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a pretty sight.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I played ball on Monday night at a community center here in town.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: They'll tell you I'm a really nice guy.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's partly because I can't leave the ground and I'm not fast enough to catch up with anybody anymore.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: But but so but here's the problem is that when I'm watching my teams, other teams, I have these expectations, and when they don't meet those expectations.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so the Jayhawks are getting slaughtered by Oregon State.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I no longer like my childhood team as much as I like the Jayhawks basketball team.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so I am unhappy.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm seriously unhappy.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: Little Jude is sitting next to me on my right-hand side, and I'm going, oh, oh.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, oh, I can't believe you missed that layup right.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, the Jayhawks are down by 14 points with about a minute to go in the first half.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: And uh some player, I think it might have been Mason, was at the line and he had a one-and-one, and he missed the foul shot.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, something like that.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And Judah stands up, grabs hold of my arm, which is out, turns around, he faces me, and he says, Papa, it's okay if we lose.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm having fun just because I'm with you.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Shut up, kid.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's more important that we win.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't say that.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because it was not only cute, but it was really convicting.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I promise you, I didn't, I didn't say anything negative to the rest of that game.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now it doesn't mean that the next game, you know, because this is something I'll need to work on.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, oh wow, okay, Lord, you know, I made it clear I still need to learn and grow, even when it's a six-year-old giving me feedback, you know.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, so let me encourage you to join me this year in realizing you're never too old to become more teachable, more humble, less prideful, more open to feedback and criticism.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I would encourage you, would you read out loud this prayer for me?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: With me, dear Lord, I am tempted to think that I know all that I need to know.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: Remind me that you have much left for me to learn.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: I am tempted to pridefully shut my ears to negative feedback.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: Make me humble so that I welcome criticism and teachable so that I learn from it.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: I am tempted to believe that I no longer need to grow.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Make me like your son so that I learn and grow this year.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray, Father, thank you for the opportunity to continue growing, to realize that we're never done growing, that if your son needed to learn and grow, then obviously we do too make us more like him.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: It starts now.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Learn and grow starts now.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: It starts with the Lord's table.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because I want to suggest something to you.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to learn and grow in the area of the Lord's table and what I mean by that.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I suggest to you there's nothing we do, no sermon, no singing, that has the power and the impact that the Lord's table was meant to have in bringing back to you the wonder and amazement of his salvation rescue of you from eternal destruction.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: And for that reason, you and I need to, when we take the bread and the cup, we need to think back with sort of awestruck heart at what he did for us.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give you an example that shows you what I mean.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: This comes from my favorite books, which are The Lord of the Rings.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a story close to the end of The Lord of the Rings, when the city of man, the great city of Gondor, it's called, is under attack and it's about to fall.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's a horrible situation because the enemy, as Pippin, the little hobbit, stands in the door of Gondor and he's looking out.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: He realizes they have so few of them against so many of these uh these orcs, these sort of demon-possessed soldiers, and they're coming by like hundreds of thousands, and they're in such danger.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: But but all of a sudden something happens that's that makes them forget all of that, and that is that the king of the demons himself, called the witch king of Angmar, the king of the demons himself suddenly appears in all of his dark and huge might, and he sweeps through the door right into Gondor itself, and everyone's heart is lost, everyone quails, Pippin falls down, and they all know that they are just seconds away from total destruction.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: And as the demon king raises his mace to destroy them all, something happens, something remarkable.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's the sound of a trumpet.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: No, a thousand trumpets that comes from way far away.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: What's happened is that the thousands of horsemen of the northern kingdom, it's called Rohan, they're great warriors, the great horsemen.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: They have just ridden with their king up to the top of the hill, and they have looked down and they have seen this absolutely unfair battle.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: And they have realized that their friends, that their relatives are all about to be killed, the people that they love.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so the king himself raises the bugle, ancient bugle blows it so hard that it breaks into pieces, but all the thousands of his horsemen, of the riders, they all raised their horns and they blow them at the same time.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it is said that the sound of those horns blowing was like the sound of a storm upon the plain, like the sound of thunder coming down from the sky.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: And when that sound came in their ears, all of a sudden, that witch king, that all of a sudden that demon king, he quailed back and he retreated back into his host.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the riders came thundering down the hill to rescue them.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: And their king, in a battle against the witch king, lost his life, but in losing his life, he rescued them.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the point.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: Tolkien tells us that for the rest of his life, whenever Pippin, whenever Pippin heard the sound of a horn, tears started to his eyes because it was a reminder of that moment when the horns blew and they were saved from certain destruction.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: And listen, that's what the Lord's table is.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord's table is like a horn blowing from the past.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: That reminds you of that amazing moment when we had absolutely no hope and we were headed for certain and eternal destruction, and then suddenly riding down from the sky, appearing our Savior, and He lived and He died and He hung there for us, and in losing His life, He rescued us forever.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: And in that moment of taking the bread and the cup, that moment when God says, This is the time when you remember what He did for you.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: If in that moment tears start in your eyes, they are meant to start in your eyes so that you remember the amazing thing that He did for you, and that you never forget that.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's what the Lord's table can do for you, that nothing else can do for you.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: This morning, as you take the bread and drink the cup, hear the sound of horns.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Look forward to the sound of the horn blowing in the future when Jesus reappears to save us one last time.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: Father, this morning we thank you for the reminder of your death in our place.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you for the opportunity that you give us to remember that in this special way.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: In the name of your Son Jesus, our rescuer, our savior, we pray.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.