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Be Accountable in Everything You Do - Extreme Ownership in Your Vocation · Sacred Men

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What's up men? Welcome back to the Sacred Men
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YouTube channel. Before we dive in today, I want
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to talk to you about a certain scenario.
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You've probably lived some version of it.
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A project at work fails. Your team misses a deadline.
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Your boss calls you in. He says he's he sends you an
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e-mail. He says he needs to talk to you.
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And the first thing your mind does before you even sit down
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with the boss is start building your case.
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Supplier was late. The instructions were unclear.
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This guy on the team wasn't pulling his weight.
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The process was broken from the start.
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Does this sound familiar? Or maybe it's at home?
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You just snapped at your wife. You missed your son's game.
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You haven't opened your Bible in a week, and you always have a
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reason. Work's been brutal.
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Schedule has been impossible. Nobody understands the weight
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that I'm carrying, the stress that I'm under.
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Well, here is the good news, but the hard truth that I want to
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bring you today. And interestingly enough, we're
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going to start with a guy named Jocko Willink.
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This is what he says. On any team in any organization,
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all responsibility for success and failure rests with the
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leader. The leader must own everything
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in his or her world. There is no one else to blame.
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Now, if you don't know who Jocko is, Jocko Wilink is a retired
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Navy SEAL commander. He learned this lesson in the
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streets of Ramadi, Iraq, in the bloodiest urban combat Americans
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had seen in a generation. And he came home off the
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battlefield and realized this isn't just a military principle.
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This is a principle for every man who wants to lead well.
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But here's one thing that Jocko didn't know.
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This principle, what he calls extreme ownership, is as old as
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Genesis. It runs through the bones of the
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entire Reformed tradition. It runs through the Scriptures.
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It's what John Calvin was teaching in Geneva 500 years
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ago. It's what Martin Luther nailed
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to the that door in Wittenberg. And today, on Sacred Men, we're
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going to do something a little bit different.
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We're going to sit at the intersection of a Navy Seal's
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battlefield wisdom and our ancient theology of vocation.
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And we're going to talk about what it means to take extreme
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ownership in the calling God has given you.
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Well, you know me. I'm your host, Pastor Justin
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Dean, and welcome back to the channel.
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This whole channel is about building strong and virtuous men
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and a culture full of weak and effeminate ones.
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And today we're going to look at this idea of extreme ownership
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and how it relates to our doctrine of vocation.
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We've been kind of doing a mini series.
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The last three videos have all been on vocation, so let's get
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after it. Now, I know I've kind of built
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this up in last couple videos, but I want to do a short
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introduction here because before we can talk about owning your
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vocation, we need to recover the word itself.
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Because most of us, if we're honest, when we think about
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vocation, we only think about our job.
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But vocation comes from the Latin word vagatio means a
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calling, a summons, and the reformers took that word and did
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something explosive with it. See, before the Reformation, the
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dominant view in medieval Christendom was that the truly
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spiritual life was the life of the monk or the priest or the
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Bishop. So if you wanted to serve God
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seriously, you left the world, you entered the monastery, you
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took vows, right? Everyday workers, the work, you
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know, the Carpenter, the bricklayer, the merchant, these
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were second class citizens in the Kingdom of God.
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Well, Martin Luther blew that up.
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He said this in his letter to the Christian nobility of the
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German nation in 1520. He says a cobbler, that's a
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Shoemaker, a Smith, that's a metal worker, a peasant.
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Each has the work and office of his trade.
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And yet they are all alike consecrated priests and bishops,
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and everyone by means of his own work or office, must benefit and
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serve every other. I want you to hear that, he
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says. The Shoemaker making shoes is
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doing holy work just like the priest.
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Just like the monk. The farmer plowing a field is
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serving God as surely as a Bishop conducting Mass.
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Every legitimate calling is a sacred assignment from God to
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serve the world, to serve God, and to serve your neighbor's
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neighbor's good. Every honest day's work is an
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act of worship. Luther went even further.
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He said that the whole system of society, and he said society is
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made-up of three estates, the household, the church, and the
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civil order under the household. That that includes all economics
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and, you know, trade, being a merchant, buying and selling
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your trade, the household, the church and the civil order.
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He says these three estates were structures that God himself has
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ordained. And when you filled your role
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faithfully in any one of them, you are doing holy work.
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OK, so this is doctrine of vocation.
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This is the priesthood of all believers.
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And then John Calvin, he picks this up and he sharpens it to
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something even more powerful. Listen to this from the
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Institutes of the Christian Religion.
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He says this. The Lord bids each one of us in
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all life's actions to look to His calling.
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OK, so the Lord tells us, in everything we do, look to your
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calling. Each individual has his own kind
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of living assigned to him by the Lord as a sort of sentry post,
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so that he may not heedlessly wander about throughout life.
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He calls Our Calling a sentry post, our specific calling from
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God, a century post. Another translation calls it a
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station, your station in life. I love those images.
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It's saying God has placed you exactly where you are, your
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workplace, your family, your neighborhood, your church.
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These are not accidents. These are assignments like
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military orders that have come down from God and a century who
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abandons his post, or who blames his equipment, or who falls
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asleep on the job, or who points fingers at other soldiers while
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the enemy advances. That century is a failure,
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Calvin continues. It is enough to know that in
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everything the call of the Lord is the foundation and beginning
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of right action. The call of the Lord is the
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foundation of right action. Before you can do anything,
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well, anything that counts before God, you have to start by
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acknowledging His calling on your life and your specific
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station that He's assigned you to.
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Men, our vocation is not our identity.
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It's part of our identity, but it's not our identity.
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Our identity is found and the one who calls us, that's Christ.
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But your vocation is your assignment, right?
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It's the post that God has called you to, and God is
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watching how you handle it. If you're faithful with a
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little, he'll make you ruler over much, right?
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So let's tie this together. Doctrine of vocation.
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Now let's get to this principle of extreme ownership.
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Jocko steps back into the picture.
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In 2006, Jocko Willink commanded SEAL Task Unit Bruiser and
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Ramadi Iraq. One night in the chaos of urban
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combat, a tragic friendly fire incident nearly derailed the
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mission and cost American lives In the after action review,
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every leader had a reason why things went bad.
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Every person on the team had their own justification for why
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why they did what they did. The intelligence was wrong.
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The communication broke down. Another unit moved too fast.
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On, on, so on, you know, so on and so forth.
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Well, in the midst of that, Jocko stands up.
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And he said it was all my fault. Not his team's fault, not the
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other units fault. His As the commanding officer,
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he owned every failure that happened under his watch.
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Here's how he explains the principle.
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Extreme ownership. This is what it is.
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Leaders must own everything in their world.
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There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge
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mistakes and shortcomings, must admit failures, must own the
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plan and resolve to get better. Now, this isn't some kind of
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false humility. Leaders must own everything in
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their world, right? This is strategic, clear eyed
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accountability. I'm the leader.
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The weight of responsibility rests on my shoulders.
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Jocko understood that the moment a leader starts deflecting
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blame, he loses the ability to fix the problem because he's no
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longer looking at what he can control.
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So if this guy screwed everything up, well, I can never
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control this guy. I can never make this guy do his
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job. So now the control of the
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operation, the control of the team is, no, I'm no longer in
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control, right? Some other guy is.
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So you can't just look at what everyone else did wrong.
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If you want to control the situation, you got to look at
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what did I do? Like, the weight of
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responsibility is on me. And here's the other side of the
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coin that Jocko names. He calls it.
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And this one's going to hurt. He calls it, no bad teams, only
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bad leaders, right? This is a principle.
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No bad teams, only bad leaders, He says it's not what you
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preach. It's what you tolerate.
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Now, that quote should hit us like an NFL linebacker.
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Think about your workplace. Think about your home.
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Are there things going on right now at your workplace, at your
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home, that you are tolerating Dysfunction, laziness,
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disrespect, mediocrity? Now think why?
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Why are you tolerating it? Are you tolerating it?
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Because it's easier to just tolerate it and you got somebody
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to blame if things go bad, But it's a lot easier to do that
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than actually confront them and challenge them and call them up
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to a higher, higher standard, he says.
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This, this is kind of rocked my world, right?
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There are no bad teams. There are no bad missional
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communities. There are no bad companies.
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There are only bad leaders. Oofed.
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That one hits, man. That one hits.
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Can you? Now I want you to think about
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that. Things are going wrong in your
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home. Things are going wrong at work
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and you. And what we're saying here and
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what Jocko's saying here is you have to take ownership of what's
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under you. You have to say it's up to me.
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You have to say I'm responsible for these failures.
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Can you handle that or is your ego too big to take that kind of
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ownership? It's not me, I'm doing my job,
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I'm doing my responsibility. It's this guy over here.
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Jocko adds one more concept I want us to sit with.
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He says implementing extreme ownership requires checking your
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ego and operating with a high degree of humility.
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Admitting mistakes, taking ownership and developing a plan
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to overcome challenges are integral to any successful team
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Ego, he says. That's the enemy of ownership.
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I can't take ownership of somebody else's failures or
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faults or whatever because that's going to make me look
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bad, right? The moment your ego gets more
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important than the mission at hand, you stop leading and you
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just start performing right? You're protecting your
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reputation. You're protecting your paycheck,
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you're protecting how you feel about yourself instead of
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actually solving the problem. So would you rather feel good
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about yourself and have disobedient kids that aren't
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following the ways of the Lord? Or would you rather say, you
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know what? No, that's on me and I need to
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do something about it. This is my problem to deal with.
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Well, many of us would rather protect our reputation.
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Brothers, the Bible has a word for this word that Jocko uses
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called ego, right? They called it pride.
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That's what the Bible calls it. The Bible calls it pride, the
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sin of pride. And the Reformers obviously
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trace, and even people before the Reformers trace this all the
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way back to the Garden of Eden. Augustine writing in the 4th
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century, he identified pride as the very root of all sin.
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He said this it was pride that changed angels into devils, and
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it is humility that makes men as angels.
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Pride says it's not my fault. Humility says I own it.
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And here's what's amazing. The path to redemption runs
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straight through ownership. Adam and Eve in the garden, when
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confronted by God, they played the blame game right.
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Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent.
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Neither of them could receive grace and find redemption until
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they faced the cold hard truth, right?
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Extreme ownership. So extreme ownership practiced
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by a Christian man is an is 1. It's the way that the gospel
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comes to us. God confronts us in our sin, and
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we have to take ownership and say, yes, I am a Sinner, Yes, I
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have sinned, and yes, I need the grace of Jesus Christ, right?
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I need to bow my knee to Jesus Christ as my King.
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And that's how I receive salvation.
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But it's also extreme. Ownership is also the path of
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sanctification. Every time you resist the urge
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to deflect and blame somebody else and instead ask, what could
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have, What could I have done differently?
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How did I screw this up? OK, I maybe haven't been
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teaching my kids this. I haven't been training my
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employees this. I haven't been whatever, right,
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leading my wife in this way. What could I have done
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differently? When you do that and you take
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the ownership on yourself, you're becoming more like
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Christ. Now, what do you mean by that?
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Well, what did Christ do? Christ took the ultimate
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ownership of a debt that wasn't his right.
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That's what Christ did. All right, now let's weave in
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the Puritans and learn some things about the Protestant work
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ethic and the diligent life. Now with the Puritans, the
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doctrine of vocation really gets practical.
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Now, the Puritans have gotten a bad reputation.
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They're remembered as kind of joyless, rigid, stodgy,
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oppressive dudes. But when you read them, they
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were not. And specifically, if you read
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them on work and on calling and on the diligent life, you're
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going to be blown away. You're going to be blown away by
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how much they sound like Jocko in a lot of ways.
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Cotton Mather, great Puritan preacher of colonial New
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England, he wrote in a Christian at his calling, and I want you
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to hear this. He says this every Christian has
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a general and a particular calling.
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Remember we talked about this last week, your general calling,
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bow their knee to Christ, serve Christ as king.
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Your particular calling. These are the vocations that God
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has called you to. Husband, Father, you know,
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Carpenter, manager, whatever it is.
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His general calling is to serve the Lord Jesus Christ.
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His particular calling is the business wherein he is to spend
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most of his time and in which he is to glorify God by doing good
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for others. A man has a work to do in the
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world, and he must be faithful and industrious in his calling.
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What's he saying? He's saying a Christian man
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should be a provider, a producer, right?
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He's not just a consumer. He's definitely not a destroyer.
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He should be faithful and industrious in his calling.
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Now that's extreme ownership before Jocko gave it a name,
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right? I'm to take ownership over my
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domain over my century, and I'm to be industrious in it.
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The Puritans didn't separate sacred from secular.
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There was no part exempt from the lordship of Christ and
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therefore no part of life exempt from full accountability, right.
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Our whole life is uncovered before the the eyes of God to
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whom we must give account. He sees all and knows all.
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Now Richard Baxter and his book, A Christian Directory, he wrote
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what might be the most exhaustive treatment of
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Christian work ethic in the history of the church.
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He said laziness is a form of sin, A theft from God, a theft
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from your family and a theft from your neighbor.
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Now why is that? God has given me certain gifts.
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He's given me this, he put me at this century post that I'm to
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manage everything that I've got. I'm to use the, the gifts that
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he gives me. I'm, I'm supposed to multiply
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them and be industrious and faithful in my endeavor.
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And by working hard and doing that, I bring honor to God and I
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bring glory to God. OK, so when I'm lazy, I'm
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actually stealing from God. Same thing for my family.
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God's given me all these resources, all of these talents,
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all this ability give me the station in life.
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And if I'm not being diligent in my work and I'm being lazy, I'm
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actually stealing from my family because I could be providing
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more for them. And of course, if I'm not doing
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a good job at work and I'm being lazy or whatever, I'm stealing
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from my neighbor because he deserves the best effort I have.
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He deserves a high quality product, right?
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And all of my attention and focus and hard work.
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And so I'm when I'm being lazy, I'm stealing from my neighbor.
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Now he says this, and I love this because he's getting at
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taking extreme ownership over our time, taking extreme
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ownership over our schedules. All right, he says this.
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Keep up a high esteem of time, value time very highly and be
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everyday more careful that you lose none of your time.
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How do I lose time? Well, social media video games.
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That guy that I know, every time he walks over to my desk, he's
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going to want to talk for 10-15 minutes about nothing.
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That guy is stealing from the company, right?
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That guy's stealing from you. He's stealing your time.
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You could be productive with this time.
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Instead, you're talking it up with this dude.
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So be careful that you lose none of your time that you, that you
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are that. Oh so basically, be so focused
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on your time. Be as focused on your on losing
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time as you would be on losing gold or silver.
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And if vain recreations, video games, wasting time, dressings,
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feastings, idle talk, unprofitable company, or even
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sleep, be any of them temptations to rob you of any of
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your time. Accordingly heighten your
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watchfulness and firm resolutions against them.
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In other words, see these as enemies sleep.
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The Proverbs talks about this a lot.
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The guy who rolls over and over and over in his bed, he's the
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lazy man and he's not going to get a good reward, right?
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He's being, he's an unfaithful servant.
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He's not being diligent. He says be not more careful to
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escape thieves and robbers than to escape that person or action
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or course of life that would rob you of any of your time.
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So avoid the guy who wants to steal your time.
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Avoid worthless pursuits, the Proverbs call them, that want to
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rob you of your productive time and for redeeming the time, as
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the Scriptures tell us, to redeem the time especially see
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not only that you are never you never be idle, but also that you
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be doing the greatest good that you can do and prefer not a less
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before a greater. So when I have an opportunity to
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do something OK and something great, I'm going to do something
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great if I have to, if I have the opportunity to do something
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productive and something unproductive, I'm going to focus
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my attention on being productive.
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Now what's crazy is, you know, these guys are right.
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He's writing this hundreds of years ago before the leadership
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and self help books have come on the market.
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But he's brilliant. He's using scripture here and
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he's basically saying the most important things for an
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organization, be it again, any station of life, family, church,
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business, the most important thing to be work, to be spending
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your time on is what's going to accomplish the goal, what's
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going to move us forward, whether that be towards piety,
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whether that be towards virtue, whether it be towards making
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money, right? Answering emails might be a
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complete waste of your time, right?
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There's a lots of things that you could be focusing on that
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are not productive. They're not going to bring more
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money into the company. They're not going to bring more
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money into you. They're not going to be
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developing virtue in your kids, right?
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Sitting there watching YouTube or doing whatever.
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It could be productive time, but a lot of times it's not.
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And we should use our time towards things that are
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productive towards the Kingdom of God, towards building our
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families and doing good in the world.
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Now Jocko has, so he's got at least two books, book Extreme
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Ownership. I would encourage you to pick it
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up. He's got another one called
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Discipline Equals Freedom. And the whole premise behind
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this is the man who disciplines himself earns the freedom that
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the undisciplined man never gets right.
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Baxter is saying basically the same thing from a theological
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angle. The man who stewards his time
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earns the fruit of a life well lived, right?
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If you're disciplined and you get up in the morning and you
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read your Bible and you pay your bills and you go to work and you
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put in work and you get your stuff done, you you're probably
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going to be more likely to be able to go play golf in the
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afternoon or play with your kids or do whatever it is that you
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want to do. But the man who rolls back and
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forth in his bed, the man that scrolls social media for an hour
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or two before he goes into work, that man is going to be behind
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on his day. He's wasted his time.
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He's pursuing worthless pursuits and by the end of the day, he's
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probably going to be playing catch up on emails and just
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trying to get his stuff done by the end of the day.
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Why he didn't have discipline. Discipline leads to greater and
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greater levels of freedom. All right, I just want to do, I
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want to merge these together and I want to give us three
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applications where you can apply extreme ownership to your
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vocation. Number one, own your work.
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Jocko writes that the leader has to own the plan and own the
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execution. He cannot outsource
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accountability. And Calvin reminds us that our
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particular station is a century post, right?
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So we have to be faithful in that calling.
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We can't go AWOL. Well, what does that look like
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at work? It means you are not the man.
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When your boss comes and says I need you to take care of this.
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You are not the man that says that's not my job, that's not in
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my job description. I've had people do this.
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It drives me insane, right? He's the boss.
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He can write your job description, right?
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If you want to succeed, if you want to get better, if you want
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to make more money, the boss trusts you with the
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responsibility. You take on that responsibility
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and you say, yes, I can get it done and you own it.
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It means when you take on a project and a project fails and
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it's going to fail, right, Your first response is not a defense
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brief, but a candid self-assessment and ownership.
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What did what went wrong? What did I do?
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Man, I could have followed up with that guy.
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I didn't follow up with him. Man, I should have front loaded
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this man, I, I bid this too low. Whatever it is, right, take
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ownership of it. It means you deliver what you
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promise, right? You meet the deadline.
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And if you don't meet the deadline, you pick up the phone
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or send the e-mail before the deadline and you own the
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shortfall, right? It also means this, you don't go
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to work. Let me say it like this, you
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don't. You can go to work and be there,
26:19
but you're not all in, right? We used to call this phoning it
26:23
in, right? You're just phoning it in.
26:24
You're there, you're going through the motions, but you're
26:26
not all there. I've met many Christians that do
26:30
this because they don't think their work is spiritual enough.
26:34
Luther said you can make shoes to the glory of God, and you
26:39
don't do that by putting little crosses on them, right?
26:42
That means whatever it is you're doing, you can do that to the
26:45
glory of God. You can manage spreadsheets to
26:47
the glory of God. You can write code to the glory
26:49
of God. You can build a wall to the
26:51
glory of God. You can run a crew to the glory
26:53
of God. There is no secular work when
26:57
it's done by a sacred man, a man who's devoted and consecrated to
27:02
God. OK, so #1 own your job, number
27:07
2. Own your family.
27:11
The the household is the first estate in Luther's framework.
27:16
The husband and father is the leader of that estate.
27:20
And Jocko's principle is brutal here.
27:23
If your team is struggling, look in the mirror first.
27:28
What does that mean? If your family is struggling,
27:32
look in the mirror first. You have to take ownership of
27:35
it. Is there conflict in your
27:38
marriage? Before blaming your wife and
27:41
cataloging all of her failures, ask What have I failed to do?
27:45
How have I failed to lead? What have I failed to
27:48
communicate? What have I failed to provide,
27:51
not just financially, but emotionally, spiritually,
27:54
relationally? You got to ask, am I leading or
27:58
am I just present here, right? Many guys get in, They choose
28:03
this woman, right? Because they see she's
28:06
productive. They see she's a leader.
28:09
And they just say, you know what I want?
28:10
I want to focus on work and I'm going to let my wife lead the
28:13
home. You've abdicated your
28:18
responsibility. You're not taking ownership of
28:21
it. And then if she's making the
28:23
decision on education, if she's the one making the decision on
28:26
how you're spending your budget, if she's the one making
28:27
decisions on where you're going on vacation and what church
28:29
you're going to and all this kind of stuff, you can't take
28:32
ownership of that because you've abdicated that responsibility.
28:35
That responsibility is meant to be on you, the leader of your
28:39
home. So you, if you've done that, you
28:41
got to have a conversation with your wife and you got to do this
28:43
graciously in an understanding way, but you have to take
28:46
ownership of it. Now, many men let their wives
28:49
lead because if they fail, there's someone to blame.
28:53
You could say, well, I didn't put them in that school.
28:55
Well, I didn't do that. I didn't make that decision.
28:57
That was your decision. Now you live with it, right?
28:59
That's not what a man of God is meant to do.
29:03
A man who takes extreme ownership says it's my
29:05
responsibility to take ownership of my home here.
29:08
Extreme ownership. So own your family.
29:14
Again, ask yourself, are your kids struggling before you blame
29:18
the school, blame the culture, blame the screens, Ask what am I
29:23
doing in my home? What am I modeling?
29:26
What am I teaching? Am I praying for them?
29:30
Am I reading the Word of God in my home?
29:32
Do they see in me a man who takes the faith seriously?
29:36
Or am IA man who outsources and abdicates my spiritual authority
29:41
and the spiritual formation I'm supposed to be providing to my
29:43
children, to the school, to a church?
29:47
Or am I taking ownership of that?
29:50
The Puritan Thomas Thomas Brooks wrote this.
29:53
The family is the seminary of the church and state.
29:58
And if children be not well principled, there all
30:02
miscarries. The family is the seminary of
30:06
the church and state. Your home is where the next
30:10
generation of disciples of Jesus and citizens of the United
30:13
States of America is either formed or deformed.
30:18
That is an extreme ownership statement if there ever was one,
30:23
right? We know where our church is
30:25
going to be in the future. We know where our society is
30:28
going to be in the future by looking at how men are leading
30:32
and discipling their children at home.
30:35
That's that's crazy. Take ownership of that #3 own
30:39
your spiritual life now. This might be the hardest one
30:42
for most men because we have 100 different reasons why our walk
30:49
with God has grown cold, right? I'm not a good reader.
30:53
Work has been brutal, the season's been hard, our church
30:57
is frustrating. On and on and on we go.
31:00
I don't sleep well, I'm not feeling well, I'm getting older,
31:03
I've got aches and pains. We got all kind of excuses.
31:06
But extreme ownership says there is no one else to blame.
31:13
You own where you're at with the Lord right now.
31:16
You own your prayer life. You own your time in Scripture.
31:22
You own your relationships. You own your sin patterns.
31:26
It is, in a very real sense, all on you, right?
31:30
What have you been putting in? That's where you're going to be.
31:33
You reap what you sow right now. The Puritans called this when
31:37
I'm kind of looking at my life, they called it self examination.
31:41
And it can go bad if you get too inwardly focused and too narrow
31:45
and rigid just gazing at your own belly button all the time.
31:49
But a regular, honest audit of your spiritual condition is
31:53
actually a good thing. In my missional community, one
31:56
of the things that we've started doing is at the end of the
31:59
night, we'll just say, hey, guys, on a scale of zero to 10,
32:03
where are you at in your life right now?
32:07
Like where are you at spiritually, relationally,
32:09
physically? Like how are you feeling about
32:11
your life? Where are you at?
32:12
Right? If a guy says a four, you know,
32:14
oh man, this guy's in a, in a rough spot.
32:16
I should probably check in with this guy, but that's, that's a
32:18
self audit. We're making him say that,
32:21
right? And so he might go, whoa, I
32:23
can't believe I just said that out loud.
32:24
I'm a four. Like, what am I?
32:26
What have I done to get me to this point?
32:28
Have I not been reading my Bible?
32:29
Have I not been praying? Are my relationships jacked up?
32:32
Am I too stressed at work? Right?
32:34
What am I? Am I really unhealthy?
32:37
It's a good practice to get in there to do this self
32:40
examination and this audit here. And here's where the gospel
32:46
enters into this conversation with good news and with force.
32:51
The reason that we can own our failures without being crushed
32:55
by them is because Jesus has already owned something
33:00
infinitely greater. The Apostle Paul writes in 2nd
33:03
Corinthians 521, God the Father made him Jesus the Son, who had
33:10
no sin, to be sin for us, so that in him Christ we might
33:16
become the righteousness of God. What does that mean?
33:21
Jesus was the only man that never sinned.
33:26
And what did he choose to do? He chose to take ownership of
33:32
our debts, right? Our shame, our failures, our
33:37
sins. Jesus stood up as the only man
33:39
who had never sinned, and he said, that's mine.
33:43
I'm going to take it for him. Not because of course he didn't
33:47
deserve it, right? He deserved nothing but
33:48
exaltation. But because love owns what it
33:53
doesn't have to do, have to love bears all things.
33:58
Love bears another's burdens, right?
34:00
And So what did Jesus do as love Incarnate?
34:03
He bore our burdens for us. Now.
34:06
Jesus is our model. Jesus is our motivation.
34:11
You can own your life and own your sin and own your failures
34:16
and own your weaknesses without fear or shame because your life
34:20
is already been purchased by Jesus Christ, right?
34:24
You've already been giving grace.
34:27
Now this is the challenge I want to give you.
34:32
I want to close today with with something that Jocko says near
34:35
the end of the first chapter of extreme ownership.
34:38
He describes the moment he walked into the after action
34:41
review and owned the friendly fire failure in front of his
34:44
superiors. And he says his superiors
34:46
response surprised him. Right.
34:50
What do we think's going to happen?
34:51
You walk in and say that failure out there in the field today,
34:55
that's all my fault. Most of us think if I do that,
34:58
I'm going to get fired. Right?
35:01
Well, the Admiral didn't fire him.
35:04
He didn't pile on and say, yeah, you really are a moron.
35:06
You really suck at your job. No, the Admiral said good and
35:11
then moved on. Why?
35:14
Because a leader who owns his failure is a leader who can be
35:18
trusted to fix it. Then God responds to our
35:23
ownership in the same way, right?
35:26
If we, when we take ownership and we say I've sinned, I've
35:29
messed up, I've screwed it up, it's on me.
35:31
It's not my wife's fault, not my kids fault, not my boss's fault,
35:34
not nobody else's fault. It's mine.
35:36
Then we we can receive the grace from God that we need and we can
35:42
do something to fix our actions. We can repent, we can change, we
35:46
can grow from it. This is like David when David
35:49
sinned by sleeping with Bathsheba and committing
35:54
adultery with her and then having her her husband killed.
35:59
God was not pleased with that. But what happened?
36:01
David owned it in Psalm 51. David repented, David grieved
36:05
over it. David changed and God said this
36:07
is a man after my own heart. So here's your challenge for
36:11
this week. And I actually want you to do
36:13
this. Don't just listen to it,
36:14
Actually do it because I want this idea, this concept, this
36:17
teaching to actually impact your life.
36:20
First, I want you to identify 1 area in your vocation where you
36:27
have been blaming external circumstances.
36:30
Might be at work, we don't have enough money, I don't know.
36:33
I have enough staff, my boss isn't giving me clear
36:35
instructions. Whatever it is, you've been
36:37
blaming external circumstances, right?
36:40
Right. And I want you to write this
36:41
down. 1 area in your life that you're blaming external
36:44
circumstances. Write it down.
36:48
And I and I'm and I'm one thing that you haven't owned yet.
36:51
I want you to write it down. OK, here's the second one.
36:54
And this is the hard part. Admitting you're blaming others,
36:58
admitting you're making an excuse.
36:59
That's tough, but it's not going to change your life.
37:03
The second one will change, could change your life if you
37:05
make it a pattern, if you make it a habit.
37:07
It's a part of your character and you consistently do it over
37:10
and over and over. And it's this.
37:12
So first, you're identify 1 area of your life where you're not
37:14
taking ownership. Secondly, take aggressive
37:18
action. Take aggressive action.
37:21
It's not enough just to acknowledge you actually have to
37:24
take the next step. Go to the person and have the
37:27
conversation right? Send the e-mail.
37:31
Do the thing you've been avoiding because owning it
37:36
actually feels like losing, right?
37:39
Go to the boss and say I'm sorry that that project failed.
37:43
That was my fault. Let me make it right.
37:45
Let me fix it. Now we avoid that because it
37:49
feels like admitting we're a failure.
37:51
It feels like losing, but it's not.
37:56
I just watched this video from Kobe Bryant and Kobe Bryant said
38:00
failure's not real. Failure's not a real thing.
38:03
He's like, well, they're like, what do you mean you, you lose
38:05
games? You, you know, you, you fail in
38:07
a game. He goes, yeah, I can fail to.
38:10
If I can fail today, learn from it, grow from it and see succeed
38:16
tomorrow, then failure's not a failure's not a thing.
38:20
Like failure can't just go up and down like this, like, I'm
38:23
not a failure, right. What he's talking about there is
38:27
taking extreme ownership. And even when I'm saying, you
38:31
know what, I had a bad game, you know what?
38:33
I didn't play, well, you know what, that's all on me.
38:36
You're not losing there. You're actually leading.
38:39
You're teaching other people. You're taking ownership yourself
38:43
and teaching others how to take ownership.
38:45
And that's what's going to move the organization, the family,
38:48
whatever it is forward. So men, those are the two
38:53
things, right? Write something down that you're
38:55
not taking ownership for and #2 take aggressive action to fix
39:01
it, right? Say take ownership of it and fix
39:04
it. Might be starting up, might be
39:05
doing a Bible study with your kids, right?
39:08
It might be apologizing to your wife for not providing well,
39:12
whatever it is, take aggressive action and you have a sentry
39:16
post that God's placed you in. The mission is not going to run
39:23
itself. You are here to accomplish a
39:26
mission in your sentry post, to be a productive Christian man in
39:31
your home, in society at large, and in the church.
39:35
Own it, right? Take that responsibility on.
39:41
Well, that's really all I've got for today's episode, guys.
39:45
I would really appreciate it if you're listening this far and
39:48
it's been a benefit to you. Share it with somebody else.
39:50
Give us a like subscribe. It's really cool to see our
39:54
subscribers are continuing to grow.
39:56
We still haven't really broke into the algorithm yet.
39:59
So just keep sharing it, keep liking it, comment down below.
40:02
It really helps other people find us.
40:04
And until next week, know the post that God has put you in.
40:10
Own your ground and go act like men.
40:14
God bless guys.