It’s been a delight to be with you folks for this last day and a half. I keep calling it a weekend and it’s not that, but it’s been a real delight. I felt very well treated. I appreciate David Livingston who has squired my wife and I back and forth and been a very gracious host, he and his wife Karen, as well as tonight at dinner with John and Noël and their family. We’ve very appreciative of being here. One of the things that I’ve become more aware of, the older I get — I hate being able to say that now with some degree of meaningfulness — is that I understand so little of what needs to be understood.

I used to feel very clever as a psychologist. I’ve done a lot of public counseling where I would counsel people in front of an audience. We do an advanced seminar every couple years where we counsel live in front of 300 people with somebody for four days. I go back to my program in Denver and I’ll be counseling live with a young couple who have some fairly significant problems, and every Wednesday afternoon for an hour in front of my class of 80 people, I’ll be counseling with them. And a lot of folks feel like that’d be intimidating. I’ve never asked a person to counsel publicly who has ever turned me down. It’s a curious thing. I pay them a lot of course.

But in years past when I would counsel publicly, there was a feeling within me of being rather verbally quick and somebody dubbed me with the nickname “Zorro,” as a counselor years ago. And no one has called me that in the last five or 10 years and I’m grateful. I don’t feel clever anymore, I really don’t. Every now and then I get a hint of what it might be like to feel wise. And what a difference. I’m done with cleverness.

I used to impress a lot of people and helped very few. People would leave my office at times saying, “Man, you can really think things through and what you come up with, boy, it’s terrific,” but they weren’t helped. And they weren’t drawn close to the Lord and that struck me as a rather significant observation. That made me think a little bit. It really has been maybe in the last few months when in a new way I’ve come to a very much stronger conviction that a counselor’s job is not to help a person find themselves, but a counselor’s job is to direct a person to find the Lord.

Spiritual Direction

That can be said in a very cliche, a trivializing way that sounds like a platitude but sure isn’t to me. I can recall maybe a year or two ago I was at a seminar where Dan and I were teaching and got up that morning and something was really troubling me and I was feeling a bunch of things inside that I didn’t want to feel as I was going to lecture. As I was taking a shower in the motel room that morning, I was trying to think things through according to all the ways that I teach and all the insights and all the models and all the stuff that I’ve come up with. And in the middle of trying to think through all the details of that, I got so frustrated I literally threw the bar of soap into the shower wall. My associate heard the noise, came in, and said, “You all right?” And we’re together so much, it’s like we’re married. I said, “I’m fine,” which is what you usually say to your spouse.

But the frustration was that thinking things through hasn’t resulted in what I thought it was going to result in. Have you noticed that? Have you noticed that as you get older, you get to the point where you realize that the problems you thought would be all gone by now just aren’t? And the ones that are gone have been replaced? And you begin to wonder, is the purpose of counseling to solve problems? And do we add “biblical” to the word counseling because somehow that’s supposed to be more effective in solving problems. Is that maybe a little backwards?

Should we be thinking about it a little bit differently? Should we be saying to ourselves that maybe our problems are things that God uses, that come along — living in a fallen world as fallen people — to direct us to our need to find the Lord and the degree to which we find the Lord. Not all of our problems get solved. Now listen carefully, those problems which interfere with his purposes for us do get resolved. But many problems that we wish were taken away are not taken away by finding the Lord.

What is your focus as you encourage a counseling ministry in your church? Is it a meaningful focus that you want people to somehow know the Lord more deeply and become more liberated to give of their resources for the purposes of God? Is that really what you’re about? And if you agree with that, then you must understand that a great majority of the Christian counseling movement is not going in that direction. If your real agenda is to somehow get hold of the reality of who God is in a way that liberates me to accomplish his purposes for me, that might leave me struggling with certain things that I wish weren’t there but might produce a joy that’s deeper than my problems, that keeps me loving others and living for him in the middle of my problems. Is that not more what it’s all about than somehow restoring to us the sense of self that we have made the primary value in our modern culture?

The Problem with Codependency and the Structure of the Soul

It seems to me, as we’ve already indicated, that the codependency movement generally is not moving in the direction I’m suggesting. It has put a priority on the finding of self. It has put a priority on somehow restoring to me the experience of me that I want in this world as opposed to what I think biblical counseling is all about, and that’s finding God in a way that frees me to achieve his purposes. Because there is a plan of good works that he has before ordained that I should walk in them and he wants me to walk that path. He wants me to be caring about other people. He wants me to be enjoying him. He wants me to be moving toward the lost. He wants me to be living out his purposes for me. And many times problems are an aid to that as opposed to an impediment.

What I want to do tonight is talk about two things. I want to talk about what I regard as the fundamental structure in the natural human soul that lingers in the believer, the fundamental structure of the fallen soul that is beneath all the problems that are presented to us as pastors or counselors. There’s a structure that must be dealt with beneath the surface. And that structure must be dismantled if we’re going to be released to be the people that God has called us to be. What is the structure of the fallen personality that has its residue in the believer that is still responsible for all the difficulties that counselees bring to counselors and to pastors? What is the structure of the fallen soul and how can we as a church put together a church ministry that will in fact dismantle that fallen structure?

Jeremiah, when he was called to the ministry, was told to tear down and to pull out and then to rebuild and to plant in the images of tearing down a house. And the house that’s there, somehow dismantling it and taking all the stones of which that house was built and grinding them to dust and when the house was destroyed, then rebuilding. And the second image was of a garden where he was told to pull out all that was in the garden and then replant. Is that something that we’re called to and a counselee comes to see us? Is there a tearing down process? And what are we tearing down? And then what does it mean to rebuild?

That’s my first topic and then my second topic is, not sure how to title it, but who are we as counselors and pastors? And how can we come up with an understanding of God and of life that frees us to have the power in people’s lives that we’d really like to have? I’m not sure if we’ll get through both topics. Let’s see how we do.

Getting Beneath the Presenting Problem

Take your Bibles and I want you to turn by way of introduction to Hosea. Turn to Hosea 5. A very simple way of looking at the counseling process is to think in terms of the individual who comes to see you in your pastoral study or in the counseling office. And when the first interview begins, as the person makes known their concern, the first thing the counselor says — and this is a reliably good way to begin a counseling session — is “How can I help you?” It’s the only thing I’m sure of that’s a good way to start. After that, it’s mass confusion. But it’s a good beginning. You say, “How can I help you?” And when you say, “How can I help you?” whatever the counselee says after that is what I choose to call very simplistically “the presenting problem.” Whatever they say, call it the presenting problem.

They might say, “Oh the whole range of things. Our marriage is in trouble, and I haven’t felt warm toward my husband for years.” They might say that they’re having struggles with their kids, they have a rebellious teenager and they’re not sure what to do about the situation with their boy. They might talk about discouragement that seems to be eating away at their souls and they’re crying a whole lot more. They might talk about a daughter that’s struggling with eating disorders. They might talk about sexual urges they wish were not there. Whatever they come up with is the presenting problem.

If they’re a Christian and if you’re a Christian, the assumption is that with this presenting problem, they want to bring this problem somehow before the resources of God and find the help that they need to deal with their life appropriately to resolve their problem if that’s in God’s plan — to get over whatever the struggles are so they can live more effectively for him. That’s ideally what they’re saying. Often their agenda is quite different, but they’re saying, “I have a presenting problem and together, because you’re a Christian counselor, I would like to come to you counselor and to make known my concerns to you and to find what the resources of God are there that can deal with my struggles.” A presenting problem, and we’re supposed to bring it before God. Hosea 5:13–14 says:

When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria, and sent to the great king. But he is not able to cure you or heal your wound. For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear and go away; I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.

When in your struggles you’re looking for solutions over which you have some measure of control, when you want to dig your own cisterns, when you want to turn to somebody with whom you can make a political contract to provide for your own defense (Isaiah 50); when you want to light your own fires in darkness, then you will lay down and you’ll be tormented. When you want to find some way to deal with life that denies your absolute dependence on God, then he will not be soothing or helpful to you. He’ll become like a lion to you. And in Hosea 5:15 it says:

I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me.

What? It’s their guilt. Their moral guilt. And this last phrase to me is a very striking phrase: “in their misery, they will earnestly seek me.”

Misappropriated Misery

What does Hebrews 11:6 say? That anyone who comes to God must believe that he is. I take that to mean more than a statement of non-atheism. I take that to mean that he must believe that he is as he reveals himself to be. He’s not the way we choose him to be, we cannot have a vague higher power and fill in the blank according to our needs. We have to take God as he reveals himself and sometimes it’s very disruptive to the way we wish he were. Anyone who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who earnestly or diligently seek him. What’s the condition for diligently seeking him? In this particular passage it’s misery.

But you all know and I all know a number of people, including ourselves many times, who know a form of misery that doesn’t lead to earnestly seeking God. There must be a certain kind of misery that leads to earnestly seeking God, because I’ve certainly had much experience with miserable people who I don’t think were seeking God. They had presenting problems that made them miserable, but their misery did not lead to a consuming desire to know the Lord, to wanting to know him above all other passions.

Rather than wanting to know him in their misery, there still was a clenched fist which said, “You owe me something and you’ve got to deal with this problem and I’m going to find some way to get you to deal with this problem and I’m going to read your Scriptures any way that I have to read them to get you to give me the comfort and the solace and the repair that I need. And if you don’t answer, I don’t mind going somewhere else.” Lots of misery doesn’t lead to earnestly seeking the Lord, but in this particular passage there is a misery that leads to earnestly seeking him.

Two Kinds of Misery

Look at Hosea 7 and notice two kinds of misery, one is productive and one’s not. Speaking still to Ephraim who has turned to Assyria, Hosea 7:13 says:

Woe to them, for they have strayed from me! Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against me! I would redeem them, but they speak lies against me.

And here’s the heart of our Savior, “I long to redeem them.” Our Lord is a longing being. He says, “I long to redeem them, but they speak lies against me.” Look Hosea 7:14:

They do not cry to me from the heart, but they wail upon their beds; for grain and wine they gash themselves; they rebel against me.

I presume that wailing upon beds is a non-productive kind of misery, that when I wail God doesn’t hear. But when I cry, God does hear. My question is what’s the difference? I do a fair amount of wailing. What does it mean to cry out from my heart as opposed to wailing upon our beds? Everybody who comes to a counselor with a presenting problem is in some form of need. There’s a need within them that they’d like to see dealt with. They’d like to see the need somehow met. And I wonder how many times, as the presenting problem is made known to the counselor, is brought to the church, if there really is a wailing upon beds and as a result God does not hear and God does not get involved in the process at all. And whatever apparent help takes place is not due to the work of the Holy Spirit, but to some illusion and some counterfeit. Because there are a lot of people who feel a whole lot better without the work of the Holy Spirit. That’s fairly clear, isn’t it?

There are pleasures and sins for a season. There are a lot of people who are unbelievers who at some level feel pretty good. They are doing okay at least for a season. They’re building their house on sand, when the storms come there’s big troubles but there’s still a season during which things are going well. I think a lot of people get counterfeit improvement in counseling that has very little to do with the Lord. Those who wail upon their beds at best get a counterfeit cure, but those who cry out from their hearts get the involvement of God. What’s the difference?

The Cries God Hears

Don’t turn to it but there’s a frightening passage in Ezekiel 8:18 where after describing some horrors as God let Ezekiel see some terrible things, he ends up by saying, “Although they shout in my ears, I will not listen to them.” Have you ever been terrified by a passage like that? Have you ever had moments when you’ve laid across your bed in the middle of the night and wept your eyes out? Have you ever sat in a room, as I have on more than one occasion in the middle of the night, vowing not to leave the room until God has met me. If I’d have honored that commitment, I’d still be in the room sometimes. There’s been a fair number of shouting in his ears where he hasn’t listened, on my part. There’s been a fair amount of wailing on my bed where God hasn’t seemed to be involved. I want to learn what it means to cry out from my heart.

I believe there’s a structure in the natural personality which makes it impossible to cry out from our hearts to God, and it’s a structure which needs to be dismantled. It’s a structure which needs, in the words of Jeremiah, to be torn down and uprooted and then a rebuilding and a replanting. There needs to be a new structure that is worthy of the new creation that we are in Christ. And we as counselors need to be sensitive. We as pastors need to be sensitive to this fallen structure that still lingers in the human personality, the regenerate personality, and to look for the evidence of that and do it to do what we can to dismantle that structure to make it possible for people to cry from their hearts as opposed to wail on their beds. What am I talking about? Stay with me and I’ll see if I can’t make a couple of points clear.

Discerning a Person’s Style of Relating

A person comes for counseling, they present their problem and they’re in pain. They’re in misery. They’re expressing need. They come to you because you’re a Christian, they come to your church because you’re a Bible preaching Christian Church and they want help. Are they crying or are they wailing? The first thing I suggest you do, and I’m going to not want to present this as a mini-course in counseling at a brief lecture. I could never pretend to be giving that. But it seems to me that the first basic principle that you want to follow when somebody makes known a need in their life or a presenting problem, is to shift the topic away from that problem to their primary relationships.

You talk about their marriage, their children, and their friends. You begin talking about their primary relationships. Why? As I’ve mentioned before, I believe that the reason why you want to talk about a person’s relationships is because you’ll find evidence of the fallen structure, if it’s there, in the way people relate to one another. And you’ll find it in the way people relate as you will in no other domain, no other sphere — the way they relate to God, the way they relate to their spouse, the way they relate to their kids.

What are you looking for? You’re looking for their consistent style of relating by which they meet the world to gain protection for their own souls. As I indicated to you this morning, I talked about the fact that I was rebuked by Chuck Smith a few years ago for being the kind of person who when a problem was presented to me, would tend to come up with not the compassion of my soul on behalf of the individual, but rather I’d work very hard to manage using my expertise, as much as I think may or may not be there. But finding out what I’m good at and giving that to a person, why? Can you see the level of self-protection that’s involved in that?

Positioned for a Seat at the Red Table

When I was in first grade, I went into the classroom and there were three colors of tables. There was the red table, the yellow table, and the green table. And the first day, Miss Carol, our teacher, looked at each of the students and assigned them to a red table, to a green table, or to a yellow table. And I didn’t realize for a couple days that she was assigning us on the basis of what she judged our intelligence to be. It took me about two days to realize the red table was for the smart kids. I wasn’t there. The yellow table was for the average kids. I wasn’t there. The green table was for the slowest kids, and that’s where she put me. She took one look at me and said, “Green for you.” When I realized that, I can recall as a first-grader sitting there and saying, “I’m going to get to that red table, that’s where I belong.” I made it in two weeks.

I was determined to never leave that red table ever since. If this sounds like boasting, forgive me, I don’t mean it as boasting. I say it to my shame in the sense of what I’ve used it for. I graduated first in my class at the University of Illinois. Do you know why? Not because I’m so smart, but that I work. I put in 60 hours a week of studying in my first year graduate school. I thought, “I’m going to get to that red table, let me make that clear.” What’s my style of relating? I’m going to find some way to use the abilities I have in one area of thinking, I’m going to make that work for me. Is that my god, is that my broken cistern? Is that me turning to Assyria?

About 10 years ago when our boys were young, I was out flying a kite with them. It was an abandoned runway we were using to fly this kite and I was running backwards, flying the kite, trying to get it up in the air. And I tripped and I fell over backwards and my head hit against a concrete something or other on the runway and I suffered a very bad concussion and I kind of lost all sense of orientation. I didn’t quite know how to drive a car.

We were about three miles away from our home. My kids were eight and 10. So my older boy, my 10-year-old boy drove us home. I got in the car and kind of said, “Put the gears somewhere out this way,” and he drove us home. And we pulled into our home and my wife happened to be outside. And as she saw Kepi driving up in the car, she quickly picked up that something wasn’t as it should be. And the kids got out of the car and said, “Mommy, dad hit his head. You got to get him to the hospital, he’s crazy.” So they drove me to the hospital and I had a severe concussion and for half an hour, you know what I screamed in the hospital room? “I’ll never think again.” I was terrified of losing the only means I had to live.

I meet people with my mind, not with my soul. That’s not the energy of Christ. What’s my style of relating? What’s your style of relating? How have I found a way to make my life work? Is there a structure within my soul that has led me to clench my fist and say to this unreasonable world, “I’m going to find a way to survive. Let’s see, what do I have? Am I a beautiful woman? I’ll become a beauty queen. Am I a smart guy? I’ll get a PhD. Am I this? Am I a funny guy? I’ll become a jokester. I’ll become the social life of the party. Whatever I have, I’m going to find some way to relate to my world using my strengths to keep my soul intact.” Look for a person’s style of relating. What are they depending on to make sure their soul stays intact? Look for their broken cistern. Look for their Assyria.

Circles of Our Fundamental Structure

In your minds I’d like you to draw, and if you’re taking notes you might want to do this. Just draw a circle. Draw three concentric circles. Let me describe what I think is the structure of the fallen personality, which underlies this arrogant demand that I find some way to make my life work. It’s interesting, by the way, how God sometimes chooses to humble you in his graciousness. He humbles us by helping us to see that our broken sisters don’t work at all. He does that in a variety of ways.

Let me just tell you a brief illustration of what I mean. About two and a half years ago, I was in Dallas. I got a phone call from a colleague of mine back at the program, one of our students had tried to kill himself. He had taken an overdose of drugs that for all expectations should have killed him, but he survived. And when I flew back, I began to counsel this gentleman. I spent about 15 sessions with him. He was in the middle of very significant depression, his suicidal ideation was continuing unabated even though he was still alive after his failed suicide attempt.

I spent about 15 sessions with him, and God has gifted me as a counselor. I believe I have abilities as a counselor. And I did a really good job with that guy. I used that mind, that I was afraid I could never use again, in rather effective ways. I was able to pull together a lot of thoughts and help this guy see some of the roots of his depression, some of the ways he was living. I can recall one particular insight that I came up with that he sat there and said, “I never would’ve thought of that. That is very, very helpful.” I remember internally going, “Yeah sure, I’m pretty good at this.” How’s that for the energy of Christ?

It was about two months after I finished counseling with him, that one time I was driving away from the classroom where I was teaching back to my office to do some writing. I saw this gentleman whose depression had been somewhat lifted. He was still struggling, but he was having a good day and he was sitting on the lawn, talking to a woman, another student in our program, and they were both laughing. I had just been rebuked by Chuck Smith for presenting my expertise to people and not my heart. And I thought, as I saw these two people chatting, “I’d like to go over and just chat with them.” And I thought, “Well, I’m just going to do that. I’m not going to go over as an expert, I’m going to go over just as a guy and have a chat.”

So I walked up and he was sitting there laughing with this girl and he saw me. Eventually when I got up close to him he turned around and I said, “Hi, how are you doing?” When you’re a psychologist and you ask that nobody gives you a normal answer. I said, “How are you doing?” He said he was laughing and then he saw me. He looked up and said, “Oh, I’m a little better I think. A few things I’m still struggling with.” I said, “I don’t mean that. I just mean how are you doing?” He said, “You mean like fine, thank you?” And I said, “Sure.” And he says, “I’m doing great.” And I said, “Praise the Lord.” We sat down and chatted for about half an hour and I didn’t say an intelligent thing for half an hour. It was wonderful.

I was with that guy about a year and a half later. He is now a very close friend of mine. I was with him just last week as well. But I was with him about a year and a half after that and he was doing just super. I said to him, “Tell me, you’re really doing super now?” He said, “Yeah. I’m really just having a joy and I’m living for the Lord. There’s a lot of good things.” And he said, “Larry, you were really a part of the process. You were really helpful.” So I said, “What was most helpful?” And he said, “That chat on the lawn.” I remember going, “Hey, don’t you remember that insight when I put together these three elements that nobody else could see?” And he went, “Refresh me on that.”

Hating God, Needing Others

Sometimes God helps us see that what we value the most really isn’t the point. What’s the structure beneath the tenacity with which I hold onto that? Draw those three concentric circles. And let me suggest to you what I understand, and this is just one attempt, one feeble attempt that I wouldn’t suggest as a final way of stating it, but maybe it has a few worthwhile thoughts. At the very core of the natural, fallen personality (and still lingering in the redeemed personality), I would put two things. Here’s the first most natural, most basic foundational posture of the human personality. I’d put two elements. Draw an arrow to that center circle and put two phrases. One, “I hate God,” and two, “I need you.”

The first is, “I hate God. I have enmity with him. He’s not done what I want. He’s failed in a variety of ways. I’ve not been protected from my father who made me go to that landlord every month for five years. I have not been protected from that psychotic mother who put me in that heating vent for three days. I’ve not been preserved from the elements in life which have dealt with me and damaged my soul. I’ve not been preserved. I don’t see exactly what I’m supposed to worship him for. What’s he done for me? You tell me he’s good. Not from my evidence I can see.” Lewis somewhere said that one of the obstacles to his conversion was that he couldn’t understand how reasonable people could look at the state of the world and conclude that God was good. And then when he noticed a very interesting thing, some people who knew were reasonable had concluded that. And he began to wonder, there must be another source of evidence.

Without the other source of evidence, without revelation, without the Holy Spirit coming to work in a person’s heart, the natural conclusion to draw is that God is not much of a God. He’s not terribly good. What am I going to do as far as trusting him? I’m not going to turn to him. He’s not trustworthy. I’ve got longings in my soul. One says, “I’m a little girl who longs to be cherished by a dad and he doesn’t cherish me.” Another says, “I’m a young boy now, starting school who longs to be popular in certain ways and I can’t make the baseball team. And I prayed about it and he didn’t help me.” It’s not natural to turn to God and worship. For a fallen man it’s natural to hate him.

But we also say, “I’m stuck with the fact that I long for what I can’t find within myself. I long for something that I can find only outside of me. So I need you. Will you please come through for me? God, I am not going to turn to you. You’re not worth turning to. You’re not good. So I’m not going to trust you. I find you indifferent. I hate you, but I need somebody. I need mom. I need dad. I need friends. I need girls. I need boys. I need somebody to move toward me because my soul is somehow dependent. There’s something in me that longs for what I cannot provide for myself.” Francis Schaeffer put it this way, “No man is as sufficient as his own point of integration.” No man’s an island, to put it another way, I suppose.

I need something outside of myself, but it’s not him because he’s not trustworthy. So now I need you. World, you’ve got to come through for me. That’s the fundamental posture of the human soul — “I hate God and I need you.” Make the next content circle.

Hating Others and Ourselves

What develops naturally on the basis of the “I hate God, I need you” phenomena is, “I hate you and I hate me.” That comes next. Why do I hate you? You failed. I hate you because I’ve looked to you for something that you’ve never really given me. No matter how good you might be. Sam talked about his functional family. I talk about my functional family. We’re both grateful for our families. And yet the best parents in the world don’t give that child’s soul everything he longs for. And if my parent becomes my god and I’m requiring a parent to be for me everything my soul needs, I end up saying, “Why won’t you come through for me? You’re not big enough. You’re not good enough.”

In a sermon I heard on tape by Chuck Swindoll, he said something remarkable about his father’s death. When I heard it, Rachel and I were driving across the country as I recall. And we had a number of Swindoll tapes and we put them in and somebody had given us a series by Swindoll on freedom. And I was thinking about the topic, so I wanted to listen to Swindoll’s thoughts on it. In the course of these sermons he said something that when I heard him say it, both my wife and I just kind of went, huh? It struck me as a rather major sentence. He said this on the death of his father, “When I closed my father’s eyes in death, I felt a pressure taken from me that I had lived with as long as he was alive.” And he speaks appreciatively of his father. There’s something in a human relationship that’s always imperfect. There are times internally when I’m wanting something and I can’t understand. I think, “Why won’t you give it to me, doggone you. I need this right now, for crying out loud.”

“I hate God and I need you.” But now I end up saying that you’re not a whole lot better than him, so I hate you too. You’re just not sensitive to the deepest parts of my soul. And you say, “Now wait a minute. My wife, my husband, and my parents are pretty sensitive.” That’s the point: pretty sensitive. We can’t live on people who are pretty sensitive. I need perfect love. I was designed for it. And I’ve already ruled him out and now I’m depending on you and you fail me every time in terms of perfect love. Don’t you have tensions with your spouse? Is the word “hate” too strong on occasion?

We spent a few months in Cambridge, England a couple years ago. I think I mentioned that to you. And I was working on my book. Rachel came up to the room where we had two little bedrooms in our flat where we were staying at the Tyndale House in Cambridge. And she came to where I was writing. We had an opportunity to go to an English grocery store and we didn’t have access to a car. And some friends down below living in the flat, Jean Merrill from Dallas Seminary was there as well. And he and his wife were very hospitable to us and they had a car and they offered to take Rachel to the large grocery store, which was quite a tourist attraction really. It was rather unusual, a very different kind of a store in some respects. And Rachel thought I might enjoy the tourist opportunity to look at the grocery store. So she came up to my room where I was writing my book. And her timing was exquisitely off.

What Do You Need That For?

I was right at that point that everything was flowing wonderfully. I was coming up with great stuff. It was coming. And I wanted to keep on writing. And Rachel said, “Would you like to go to the grocery store?” What I was writing was how to be a good husband. And what I wanted to say to her was, “No, the timing is bad.” But looking at my words, I turned to her and said, “Sure.” How do you feel when you do that? Think of all the tensions that develop. I said, “Sure hun, I’d love to go.” That’s your first hypocrisy. And as I got up from my desk to get my coat to go downstairs, I felt the same way you feel when you do something for somebody you don’t want to do. You feel noble, right? It’s pretty impressive. Do you ever feel noble? You come back from a long trip and go into the men’s room in your office and nobody put on the toilet paper on. The toilet paper roll was still behind the commode.

Don’t you feel like you’re the only one in your whole family who ever puts the new roll of toilet paper on? Don’t you feel that way? And as I went in and saw it sitting there, my thought was, “I’ve been gone for a couple of months. I’m the president of this corporation. It seems to me somebody else could put the roll of toilet paper on.” But I did it and I felt very noble, just like I felt getting in the car and going to the grocery store with my wife. We got to the grocery store and my thought was, “I think she’ll be aware of how gracious I am in coming and she’ll go to the grocery store rather quickly so I can get back to God’s work.”

That apparently wasn’t in her mind exactly because she took a fair amount of time going through the aisles. She got to one part of this grocery store, and there were about 30 aisles in this grocery store. I think, it was the size of a couple of football fields. That was my impression. And she wanted to explore every aisle. She got to this one particular place where there were a bunch of spices. And you guys that don’t go to grocery stores need to understand that spice racks and stores, especially in stores in the UK, are big. And there were about maybe 14,000 little bottles of spices on this rack. And Rachel just stood there and began looking at them. I think she was memorizing their names. I was kind of behind her with a cart just getting so impatient, feeling noble and wanting her to be sensitive to me. I was thinking, “Why can’t she understand what is deeply valuable to me? I’m using my mind. God was working through my mind and writing a book. I’m under contract. God’s going to use this book and I’m standing here with a shopping cart looking at spice racks.”

So finally I said to her — and a few ladies who are here will appreciate this — “What are you looking for?” That didn’t warm her up. She said the name of the spice I’d never heard before and could live without. And when she said that my next sentence was the winner. I said to her, still feeling very noble but now infuriated and hateful, “What do you need that for?” That wasn’t a good sentence, gentleman. That really got her mad, apparently, because she turned to me and she went, “Why did I even ask you to come along anyhow? It would be simpler if you wouldn’t have come.” And my thought was, “I didn’t want to come in the first place, I came for your sake.” And she started storming off down the aisle and I’m walking behind her with this grocery cart.

The thought occurred to me, “So we come to you for marriage counseling, what are you going to do? Are you going to build up my self-esteem? Are you going to tell me the toxic shame behind all that? Are you going to tell me that there’s a demand in my soul where I turn to my wife and sinfully say to her, ‘I’ve got some struggles. Listen, Assyria. Listen, broken cistern. You’ve got to come through for me. Remember our contract 20 some years ago, you made me feel good about myself during courtship. Well you’re not doing it now and that was the deal.’”

How about God? I thought, “Come on woman, I hate you. At that moment, I hate you.” And then what’s next? I think, “Oh for crying out loud, am I never going to get this right? Doggone it, I can’t do anything about books on marriage. I want to put a shopping cart into my wife’s rear end. This is terrible! I hate me, I’m a disgusting slime. I hate you and I hate me.” And I developed a deep sense of contempt for my own soul. I feel like I’ve got nothing to offer anybody. And I feel like there’s no point in my ever doing a thing. It’s all sheer pride. Doesn’t feel that way to me. And so I find some way to survive.

Finding a Way to Make It Work

Center circle: I hate God and I need you. Middle circle: you aren’t doing so well, I don’t think you’re so good either. Well, I can’t make it work and I know I’m doing wrong. And if I were a better husband this wouldn’t happen. I know I’m a mess. Oh, I guess we need help. I don’t know. The outer circle: but I’m going to find some way to make it. That’s the outer circle. I’m going to find some way to make it. The most standard way in our modern society for making it is a fancy psychological word called “dissociation,” or “splitting,” as some psychologists call it. And all that means is that I’m going to take that part of my soul that cannot get satisfied and kill it.

I’m going to take that part of my soul that can’t seem to make it in this world and say, “I’m going to do without that part of my soul.” I long to feel like a strong man. I long to be the kind of man, and I do and you do as well. I long to be the kind of man who when difficulties come, when criticism hits me, when bad things happen, that I can just rise above it and in the strength of God respond the way I long to respond and to be the kind of man that my wife can always say, “I deeply respect you.”

Well, I can’t seem to get there so I’ll forget about that dream and I’ll make my dreams a little more manageable, things that maybe I can pull off. I’ll make it my dream to not be such a bad guy. I’ll make it my dream to say, “Well, I don’t beat her. I don’t have affairs. I don’t watch porno flicks. I’m not doing too bad. And I didn’t put the shopping cart into you. I’m not doing too bad. I’ll find some way to make it.”

Getting to the Heart

I want you to turn to one passage very quickly in Malachi. Malachi is a very interesting book where the Lord rebuked the Jews in a series of rebukes and in every case their response was, “What are you talking about?” Look at Malachi 3, just very briefly. Let me maybe make this point in passing really. I think God is bringing his last accusation against the Jews in this particular book. Malachi 3:!3 says:

Your words have been hard against me, says the Lord. But you say, “How have we spoken against you?” You have said, “It is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts?”

And look at Malachi 3:15:

And now we call the arrogant blessed. Evildoers not only prosper but they put God to the test and they escape.

What are they saying? I’m going to find some way to make it work. Arrogant, self-sufficiency. Happiness comes from finding some task that I can manage and managing it. Dependent? No way! I’ve rooted my soul. He’s not worthy of trust but I need somebody, but you can’t come through so I hate you. I can’t make it work, so I hate me. I’ll find some way to make it work, I’ll find some resource within me. I’ll deny what I really long for and I’ll say, “No, I can’t have that. That’s the impossible dream.” Let’s see. How can I make it in this miserable world? Well, I have a good mind. I’ll get good grades. I’ll write a book. Well, I’ve got this. I’ve got that. I’m going to find some way to make my world work and that’s going to bring happiness to my soul. The Jew said that. There are a few more words from God and then he closes his mouth for how long? For 400 years he didn’t say a word. Ever have somebody who didn’t talk to you for a while? A relative hasn’t talked to you in four or five years and you go to the mailbox one day and there’s a letter from them. Aren’t you pretty eager to open up?

After 400 years what’s the first thing God said when he opened his mouth? Officially, when the Lord came and broke the silence and opened his mouth and officially spoke for the first time. In Matthew 5:3, he said, “Blessed are the . . .” not the arrogant. He was saying, “I’ve come to teach you the root of happiness. I’ve come to teach you the root of joy, because I want my people to be happy. I want my people to have deep joy. But the root to joy is not that self-sufficiency which is built on the structure of, ‘I hate you and I hate me,’ which is built on the deeper structure of, ‘I hate God and I need you.’ I’m telling you that there’s arrogance that you have that you’re going to find some way to make your life work. It’s all wrong! You’ve got to be reduced to poverty of spirit.” And the word for that, I’m told, is a word which doesn’t mean “down to your last dime” but “out of your last dime.”

What I want to suggest is that when somebody comes for counseling or as you preach to your congregation and you hear about all the problems that people have, all the struggles that are going on in their lives and all the stories that break your heart as you hear the human misery that’s sitting before you, that you want to be encouraging the process of crying out from heart as opposed to wailing on beds. I want to suggest to you that perhaps one way to think about wailing on beds is people who leave that structure unmolested. They keep saying, “I hate God, I need you. I hate you, I hate me. But I’ll make it somehow.” They leave that structure unmolested and say, “I’m going to make it somehow. Come on God, won’t you help me?” They shout in his ears and he will not listen. They say, “God, for goodness sakes, can’t you heal me of this bad self-image I have? Things aren’t going well. Can’t you make this marriage work? Come on higher power, do something. Come bless me. Come soothe me. Come do something.” Oh, listen to you. How?

Working Together for Change

I have just a couple of words on this. Forgive the quickness with which I go over this. I would suggest that when small groups meet, that one legitimate function of small groups is to begin to discuss the quality of the ways people relate to each other in that small group. I believe it’s valid in small groups to start by looking at the ways we relate to one another that reflect my determination to make it in this disappointing world. The person who never brings up a need, why not? They might think, “If I bring up a need, nobody seems to listen to it anyhow so why should I ever bring up a need?” That’s your style of relating. Can you see the arrogance in that? Can you see that reflects your determination to build your city? The only goal for not speaking has nothing to do with loving God and loving others, it has to do with preserving your own soul. That’s wrong.

What’s involved in that style of relating? As in a small group, you begin to notice the ways you relate to each other, the ways you impact each other, the ways you come across to one another. You notice the ways you relate to one other that make the other person feel a particular way as you explore the quality of your relationships, looking to see if there is a way that I relate to you? Give me feedback, a small group that cares about me that I know very well. Give me feedback. Help me to see the ways that I relate to you that reflect my arrogant determination to make life work, because frankly you’re not going to come through for me and I can’t stand myself and God’s no help. And I wish he would do it, but I can’t make it work. So I’ll find some way to keep my soul as safe as I can keep it. By maybe not talking too much, by maybe always coming up with intellectual phrases, by maybe always being funny. By doing a variety of things that make me feel like maybe I can make this world work after all, if I just stay within certain spheres of competence in my attempts to relate.

That’s the way I would suggest exposing that outer circle, the arrogance in the way we relate to one another. I think small groups can have a second function besides exposing the arrogant styles of relating that ruin or at least stain Christian fellowship. In addition to that, I think secondly that middle circle, the, “I hate you. I hate me.” I think that can be dealt with in a small group to some degree by encouraging people to talk honestly about their stories. Where have they felt failed? Where have they felt failed by people? Where has there been pain? Where is it? What’s it like to have that particular man for a father? It’s not running down dad time, but just honestly facing where they have felt failed?

Uncovering the Underlying Pain and Self-Protection

I’ll never forget a pastor that I worked with in a small group five or six years ago. He was a very stiff man. He was known as very, very stiff. His church people knew him as a very, very stiff man. In the course of a small group I said to him, “Tell me, Joel, where have you felt failed?” And he thought about it for a bit and stumbled around. And he finally told me a story. He said, “My parents were the kind that never felt like they should ever give their children what their children really wanted because it might spoil them. And I can recall the time . . . ” And he began talking about it and his stiffness, you could see it begin to melt away. His style of relating was stiffness. It kept him safe. He was (in my mind) a very stuffy dry exegete who could only talk exegetically, never personally.

As that had been talked about, and people have given that kind of feedback, I said, “I wonder what’s beneath that? What’s going on in the way you relate to people? You don’t draw people to yourself.” I knew his wife. She wasn’t a warm woman because he was a very stiff relater. And I said, “What was behind that, Joel? Where have you been hurt? Where have you been failed?” And he said, “One time I can recall, I was about 11 years old and I had never had a gift that I wanted. Christmas time would come and whatever I had asked for, I’d always get something a little bit different. So I wouldn’t be spoiled. That was the philosophy of my parents. And there was a basketball that I wanted and it was leather, a good quality basketball. And I really had my heart set on that. And I remember saying to mother and dad when we were out shopping one day, ‘I want that. Could I have that? I know it’s a little expensive, but man, I would love to have that leather basketball.’ And both my parents said, ‘Sure, son. We’ll get it for you.’” Christmas Day came and he had the cheapest little substitute for a leather basketball.

And as he told that story to us, a group of about seven or eight people, one of those remarkable moments happened and he just began to sob and to scream. He got up from his chair and began to run out the door. I reached up and I grabbed him and he began to cling to me and he said, “You won’t let me go, will you? You must stay with me. I’ve been failed.” When he had sat down, I said, “What have you done with how badly you’ve been failed.” He said, “I’ve hated my mother and dad and I’ve hated me ever since.” I asked, “Why have you hated you for that?” He said, “Why couldn’t I get them to love me? Wasn’t I valuable enough to be given the leather basketball that I wanted? Well, I found some way to handle that. I’m never going to ask for leather basketball.” I asked, “How’s your prayer life, Joel?” He said, “Oh, I don’t pray for much.”

Scripture says, “He gives exceedingly, abundantly,” but he was thinking, “Sure. I don’t believe it.” I said, “Do you hear what you’re saying now out of the center circle? Do you hear what you long for? You were built metaphorically for a leather basketball. You were built to be wonderfully loved. Your soul was designed to be cherished, to be respected, to be valued. It was built for all that.” He said, “I’ve given up on that a long time ago.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Because it isn’t available in the universe.” I said, “Tell me who you’re ultimately mad at.” It took a while, but his fury at God began to be poured out.

Tear Down, Build Up

A small group was used to do some dismantling of that structure. He thought, “I’m going to find some way to make it. I’ll be stiff. I’ll just handle things. I’ll preach in a way that my people will understand that I know the word of God. As far as getting relating to them, I won’t come close to that because if I ask them, if I ever let my people know I’d like to have them to love me in some form or I’d like to feel some appreciation, I might get a vinyl basketball. The dickens with that. Mom and dad are fine. I don’t want any of this knocking down mom and dad’s stuff. Let’s not talk like that. But you know it really did hurt.” I said, “This hatred in you, is that legitimate because of what your dad didn’t know? Is that legitimate because you couldn’t get them to love you?” He said, “No.” I said, “The real problem in your soul, down to the core, is what? The real problem in your soul is ultimately, on the basis of your stiff relating is that you’re saying, “God’s no good.” That’s not true.

There was meaningful repentance in that man’s heart. He began to preach differently to his church. The structure was dismantled and it began to be replaced with not, “I hate God” but “I love God. He’s good. Eternity is going to be everything my heart could possibly desire. Look what God has done for me. Isn’t he something? I don’t hate him, I love him. I don’t need you. I want you, sure, I want you to like me. But I don’t need you to like me because I’ve got him who is already by a sovereign grace come to me and said, ‘I choose to accept you and I’ve got a plan for your life and you’re going to end up in heaven with me forever.’”

And now that I have all things in Christ, I still long for human fellowship, but I’ve got God so in the deepest sense of the word, I don’t need you because I have him. But I sure at a more shallow level, I still need you in some sense and I still want you in lots of ways, but if you fail to come through for me, well that’ll be hard. That’ll hurt a bunch, but I can handle that now ’cause I know him. So I don’t have to hate you when you fail me. I don’t have to hate myself when I get failed. And I don’t need to make my life work by using my stiffness, I can be who God made me to be. Small groups can be useful in achieving all that. Do we feel competent to get all that going?

Power for Practical Transformation

I need the last few minutes to talk about my second topic. How can we as pastors come to a point where we can move into our pulpits, into our relationships and experience, with some of the power to deal with people’s lives as we preach the text, as we relate and a counseling hour to get involved in a small group, whatever our situation might be.

There was a man, a pastor, who recently was exposed for his moral failure. And he said to a friend of mine, “In all my years as a pastor, a very successful pastor, I made it a point to never have a conversation with anybody that lasted more than five minutes at a personal level.” My friend said, “Why?” And he said, “Because I knew that if it went beyond five minutes talking about people’s lives in the deepest parts of their souls, I knew I’d be exposed as having nothing to say.” He fell. He’d been involved in an affair for eight years and he was finally exposed.

I talked to his son, a fine young man in his twenties. And the son told me about how he felt about his dad’s failure. He said, “There’s only one thing that I can think of that’s good about what’s happened with my father. Obviously it’s awful (the son was a strong young Christian man). I think his moral failure and the exposure of his weakness provides me with the only chance I’ve ever had to actually get to know my dad. He’s never known what it is to make himself known to me. I’ve never felt connected with my father at all.”

That particular pastor, four years ago when I talked to him about some counseling matters and talked about small groups, was entirely negative on anything that smacked about relational matters. He was entirely opposed to anything called counseling. I wonder why. I would suggest pastors, if we’re going to become leaders of churches where we’re going to grow in discernment as to how to encourage small groups and what brakes to put on smaller groups and how to guard against some of the excesses we’ve been talking about today and yesterday and how to preach in ways that are consistent with making God known to the deepest hearts and minds of people, and if we’re going to be seeing to it that the leaders in our small group Sunday school classes are all working consistently with what we’re preaching on the Sunday pulpit, if we’re going to be moving people in directions that honor the Lord, then maybe we’re going to have to do a few things beyond a lot of other things that we’re already doing and aware of.

Suggestions for Structuring Small Groups

I want to suggest three things to you that I would suggest that each of you at least ponder. If you’re going to form, have the discernment to know how to run small groups and to deal with the fallen structure from the pulpit and small groups and all that. I want to suggest three things to you that you might want to think about. These three things, by the way, came out of a consultation I had with a local church in our area. The pastoral staff asked me if I’d come and interact with them because they were aware as a pastoral staff that the relationships in their staff were good but they weren’t intimate. They had a couple hour long staff meeting a month before, and they had been together for a number of years. It was a staff of about seven people at a fairly large church, obviously.

They said, “As we got together for lunch a while ago, one of our staff members’ wives had died a few years back and he was courting a particular young woman now after a few years of being a widower. And he had just asked her to marry him. And he told us this at our staff meeting and someone said to him, ‘Tell us how you proposed.’ And that led to all the guys in the room talking about how they proposed to their wives.” After two and a half hours of telling their romantic stories of courtship and proposal, they all made an observation. They said, “Right now we feel closer to each other than we’ve ever felt in the history of our staff. How did it happen and how can we keep it going?” And they all said, “We haven’t got a clue.” So they called me and said, “Do you have any thoughts?”

We spent a couple hours talking about it and here’s what we all came up with. This is not all my stuff. So if it’s bad, you can hate somebody else. But here’s a couple of thoughts that might be helpful for what it means for a pastoral staff to grapple with their own lives in a way that makes them more effective vessels to lead their churches and to meet the needs of people in legitimate biblical ways, and to lead groups in ways that are appropriate dealing with that fallen structure I’ve talked about. Three things I want to suggest.

What Is Your Primary Community?

Number one, to each of you as individuals I’d ask you this question, “Who is your primary community for growth?” Do you have a person, two people, three people maybe that is your primary community for growth? Obviously I think deep work of growth takes place in our own personal time with the Lord, but I also would suggest along with C.S. Lewis that the Christian community is God’s major laboratory for finding him — whether we’re to meet together corporately for worship and corporately for admonition and corporately for bearing each other’s burdens. Who is your primary community for growth? Do you have one, two, or three other people that are your primary community? Have you identified it?

I would suggest that no matter how good your marriage is, that you do not say that it’s your wife. You and your wife, I trust, are having times when there’s meaningful growth between you. But are there not a few men that you get together with at least a time or two every now and then and regard, “This is the group where I most meaningfully pray together.” It may be a couple of elders in your church. It may be somebody a couple of states away that you pray with over the phone once a week. Who’s your primary community for growth? I would suggest that the primary community needs to include at least one person with whom you’ve shared everything.

The number of men that are carrying around secrets that are tearing up their hearts is unbelievable. Don’t raise your hands, but I’m sure many hands would go up if we honestly admitted to how many of us have a secret that we’re too ashamed to have ever told anybody in our lives. If there’s one man that knows something about me, nobody else knows. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life was to tell him. What have you not told anybody? Do you have a primary community for growth where you’ve made known something of your soul?

First thing I’d suggest is identifying that community. If you don’t have one, make it a matter of prayer. Ask God to bring along one, two, or three other guys where there’s a kindred spirit, a felt connection, a sense of there being somebody that at a very perish level can work with you, where your soul can be knit and together you can hold hands and beseech God to work in your souls about things you’ve discussed with each other. Do you have that? That’s the first thing I’d ask you to think about.

How Do You Understand Sanctification?

The second thing, with your primary community of growth, is to come up with your understanding of how change really occurs in the human personality. First, identify a primary community. Secondly, identify your theology of change. How do you believe change really takes place? Talk about it theologically. Talk about it biblically. Talk about the biblical passages. What does it mean to be “transformed by renewing your mind”? What does it mean to put off and to put on? Read the books that came out a few years ago: Five Views of Sanctification. See what your theology of sanctification is? There’s a lot of different views.

I would suggest with two or three other guys, you sit down, you pray, you study, you think, and you talk about how you understand that people actually grow more and more into Christ’s likeness. How does it work? And then as you come up with some theological understandings from the Scriptures as to how you think the change process really takes place, make sure that you can illustrate the change process from your own life with your two or three close friends. And make sure you can talk about change in your life in a way that other people say, “Yes, I praise the Lord for that.” Because the change you come up with nobody else has seen is probably suspect. But are you able to say to your primary community, “I really believe I’m becoming a more patient man that’s more like Jesus,” if your two friends say, “More patient? You’re more irritable than you’ve ever been,” then maybe you’d have some discussion to do.

But if they’re able to say, “Yeah, it’s been a wonderful thing over the last couple years to watch you become patient. Let’s think through how that happened?” You’re not going to reduce the mystery out of it. You’re not going to get away from the fact that it was simply the work of the Holy Spirit who worked in your heart. But what were the things that you had to do? Was it more time in the word? Was it more vulnerability in the pulpit? Was it talking with people in different ways? Was it discussing your style of relating? Was it looking at your past? Was it facing the pain of having gotten a vinyl basketball rather than a leather basketball? What was involved in your change process? Identify it, think it through.

And at this point I’m not suggesting, “Here’s what I think should be your theology of change.” You as people who love the Scriptures, you come up with your understanding of it. Among the two or three or four of you, that’s the second thing I’d recommend.

What Is Your Story?

The third thing I’d recommend is this. Now you have your primary community. You meet at some level of regularity. You’ve discussed your theology of change. You’d be able to write a paper that the three or four of you could all sign your names to and say, “Yeah, I think this is something how change occurs. We’d like to export our understanding to our people. We’d like to see this taught in our church. We’d like to see our small groups reflect this theology of change because look at what our understanding of how Jesus works in a person’s life is doing for us. We’re thrilled. I’m loving my wife better. I’m less impatient with my kids. I’m more connected to people. I feel like I’m more patient. My lust problems are diminished. I no longer feel the strength in that lustful temptation. Those difficulties that I had are getting less. I handle my discouragement differently now. There really is growth in my life. I praise God for it and I’d like other people to know about it.” That’s when you teach your group leaders how to run groups.

Now with all that thought through a little bit, then I would suggest in your small group that you tell your story to one another. Tell stories. Let me tell you what I mean. I think the most significant group I’ve ever been involved with was a group of a couple of friends of mine, all faculty members at Grace Seminary when I taught there for seven years. A handful of us would gather together about once every two weeks for, I don’t know how long it went on, a couple years. By the way, your primary community shouldn’t last forever. If it disbands, that’s okay. But we met together every couple weeks for a couple years. And what we did for probably about a year of that time is we’d get together on a given night and it would be my turn. And for two and a half or three hours I’d talk. I’d talk about my confusion with God. I’d talk about my memories as a youngster. I’d talk about my life. I’d be guaranteed that these four or five men who love me wouldn’t get bored.

Now that’s wonderful. Don’t y’all have a fear of being boring to someone? Be able to talk. I’m not talking about some self-centered vomiting, your internal stuff, but I’m talking about being able to talk about the mystery of your own life and how a sovereign God is orchestrating and what the damage has been and how God can work in your life. You tell that story to somebody.

A Breakthrough in Growth

I will never forget, one of the guys said to us, “As a kid, I was so unbelievably lonely. The only friend I had from very young to maybe 15 was my dog. And ever since then I’ve had a dickens of a time relating to people.” And he told his story at length for two and a half or three hours. We listened, we counseled, and we prayed.

And about a month later, he came back. This was a Greek professor. He came back and he said to us, “I had a student come into my office who had a question about who was taking my beginning Greek class. And the student had a question. And what I normally would do, since I relate so poorly, would be to answer his question in a way that would give him the answer and tell him to get out. This time when he came in and said, ‘I have a question Prof, can I have a minute?’ I said, sure, come on in. Let me pour you a cup of coffee.” It was a whole new approach. It was repentance for him.

He said to this guy, when he asked the question, “I want to answer your question, but you seem kind of nervous about the class. Can I talk to you about that?” And the guy said, “Yeah.” And the professor told the group that night, “When that student began talking about his life, I actually felt warmth toward that student. It was the first time I felt warmth toward a student in my whole seminary teaching career.” And the guy was so cute. He said, “I had a tear in my eye as he was telling me about his problems and I was just hoping he would see it. I wanted him to know that I was struggling for him.” We had a wonderful time.

Learning to Love Your Wife

Another professor who was telling his story, we had dinner with him. My wife and I had dinner with the gentleman and his wife, and the phone rang during our dinner time at his home. The wife got up to answer it and it was a relative of hers talking about family problems. She came back after a 15 minute phone conversation and sat down very distressed. It was just she and her husband and Rachel and I, and she turned to me and began saying a few things like, “Larry, can you help me with this? This is really bad. My sister just called with this family problem. I’m not sure what to do.” I found myself, as she was talking to me, kind of looking over at her husband. And he was sitting there just kind of smiling. I’m thinking, “You’re smiling. Your wife is dying and you’re smiling!”

I said, “What would your husband say if you asked him?” She said, “Oh, he’d just smile and say that it’ll all work out.” And I said, “Is that what you’d say?” And he said, “Oh yeah.” And I said, “Well, I want to see this.” And so she turned to him and she said, “Well, all right. This is what happened. My sister called,” and she shared the story. And the guy literally grinned and he said, “Oh honey, it really isn’t that big a deal.” I turned to him and I was furious. He was a good friend. So I turned to him and I said, “You just failed your wife.” It changed the tone of the conversation.

This man loves God. He looked at me and he said, “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. Help me understand.” We spent the next while talking about it. His wife came to me two weeks later and she said, “My husband hasn’t slept for the last couple weeks because he doesn’t want to fail me. It never occurred to him that he was failing me.” And she began to cry. She said, “What’s happened the last two weeks is too good to be true, will it last?” He came to me a couple weeks later and he said, “It’s never occurred to me to actually build a relationship with my wife.” I said, “Have you ever read Ephesians 5? Doesn’t that talk about it somehow?” He said, “I’ve never read it that way before.”

Tell your stories. These men are men who now better know how to lead a church, how to move into people’s lives, how to dismantle the fallen structure that says, “God, you’ve not come through for the deepest part of my soul, so I can’t deeply trust you so I’ll turn elsewhere. But you’ve not come through, what’s the matter with you? What’s the matter with me? I’ll find some way to make it. I’ll just stay in my theologian’s library and never build a relationship with my wife because I’m a good theologian and I’ll smile whenever she brings up a problem and it’ll go away.” No, that’s your arrogant style of relating. You’re not reaching into your wife. You’re preserving yourself. Trust God enough to be a man in that woman’s life. Move into her life in repentance. Tell your stories to each other.

Questions and Answers

That’s it. Those are my thoughts. Let me just say before the questions come that I really can’t tell you how grateful I am to have had a chance to speak to a group of pastors. God puts this call on people and I’m really grateful for the opportunity. I very much appreciate it, John, you’re asking me to come. You guys have a tough calling. You have a glad calling, but it’s a tough one. I’ve got a tough calling but it’s different from yours. There’s times I get very discouraged. But it’s a glad calling. It still amazes me that people actually still listen while I talk. Really doesn’t make much sense to me because I know what a mess of a person I am so much of the time. I still feel like putting a grocery cart in my wife sometimes. And you spend time listening to me tell you how to live the Christian life. That makes a lot of sense, huh? Sure it does. Because you’re a mess too.

That’s why it’s important to get off the topic of us being a mess. Yeah, we have to face that. But God isn’t a mess and somehow he knows how to take this mess that I am and still get some good out of me in a way that brings me great joy. To think that I actually might have said something which might have encouraged one of you guys in the ministry this couple of days is unbelievable. And I’m very grateful for the opportunity. The conversations I’ve had with some of you have been very, very gratifying. I appreciate your spirit. I know some of you disagree with what I’ve said. That’s okay. Let’s hold hands as brothers. We differ about a few things. I think you’re wrong too. You think I’m wrong? That’s all right.

The areas where we disagree are not strong enough that we have to break fellowship. We still serve the same Lord. And I appreciate your warmth and your spirit as you’ve interacted with me and listened to me for this day. I deeply appreciate the opportunity to be here at Bethlehem. I’m thrilled with the emphasis that John is bringing in his writings to what it means to serve a happy God who takes pleasure in being God. His newest book I’ve just delighted in regarding what it means to be a hedonist, Christian style. There’s something really good about that. I’m thrilled to be here. We’ll take just a question or two and I’ll close.

What’s the importance to understanding one’s identity in relation to the primary dynamics of sanctification?

It’s a balance of a number of items. To come up with any one item and say that’s the key to the whole thing is a little bit presumptuous. I think there’s a number of items. This morning I made a brief passing reference to the notion of identity in Christ but have not emphasized that much in my understanding of theology of sanctification. What is my understanding of the importance of positional truth and identity in Christ in terms of our growth as Christians? I would suggest that there does need to be a balance of understanding a variety of things. There’s no one key to the whole thing, which once we and our desire is to get the key, our desire is to get one kind of a magical insight that once understood will change everything. That’s not how it works. God keeps us more dependent than that.

We don’t have any particular technique or insight to master. We have ideas that draw us closer to the Lord, but none that kind of gets us all the way there. It’s his sovereign work. But I would suggest that there’s at least four elements that go into my theology of sanctification. The first one is position in Christ, identity in Christ. It’s the fact that I really am a new creation. I am his special child. He does have the hairs on my head counted. I now stand secure in him. Nothing can assail me. And no matter what my dysfunctional background tells me, it’s not true that I’m without value. I belong to him and he cares very deeply about me and has a use for my life. That’s one element that I think is crucial to a theology of sanctification.

A second element is the spiritual disciplines. It’s simply spending time in Scripture, learning what it means to pray, and making sure you’re involved in corporate worship and all the things that go into spiritual disciplines. It’s working hard to live the life God has called us to live through all the means of grace that he’s made available to us. A third thing is a profound awareness of our sinfulness. I think that’s the element that I talk about the most. But that’s not because I think it’s the only element or the most important element, but because I think it’s the most neglected element in our current way of thinking that we don’t understand ourselves as sinners. Because we don’t understand ourselves as sinners, the grace of God doesn’t mean all that much to us. It’s kind of a nice thing that he’s done, but when you understand how bad we are, then it’s an unbelievable thing that he’s done.

I think Brennan Manning has put it that until grace has become a majestic surprise to us, we don’t understand our sinfulness or our grace. So that’s the third element. And the last is summed up in the whole thing, how does the Holy Spirit work through all this? What is his ministry in dealing in my life and pointing out who Christ is and pointing out the fact that he is the well of living water and pointing out what it’s like to know this God and what it’s like to know myself? So the work of the Holy Spirit to me is the fourth element. Those are the four elements. There are others I’m sure, but those four strike me as a bit of a balanced beginning in thinking through how change takes place. The reason I focus on the issue of sin so much is because I think it’s the most neglected thing.

I listened to Roy Clements at Eden Baptist Church in Cambridge a couple years ago and he put it very well in exegeting Romans 2 when he said that as Paul developed the gospel in his systematic lecture in the gospel in Romans, the first thing he did was to establish there’s no excuses and get everybody’s mouth stopped. And then he says, “Now take a look. Now that your mouth is stopped, let me reveal grace.” And he said this, “What’s the one thing you need right now more than anything else in order to continue?” And he said, “Unless you answer forgiveness, you don’t understand yourself.” What does it mean that I need God’s ongoing forgiveness in my life? If God were to take the last hour of my life, as I’ve been speaking to you, and he were to measure the purity of my life for this last hour and to assign me to an eternal destiny based on my individual purity for the last hour, I wouldn’t go to heaven.

I stand in need of his imputed righteousness now, even though I’ve been a believer for 40 years, and I’m not consciously sinning against any of you right now. But my life is not a hundred percent pure. So forgiveness is an ongoing reality, which is mine to revel in. I took my son out to dinner, every birthday I take my boys out to dinner up to age 21. That particular part of our life is over. It was a good tradition. I would ask them a bunch of questions and record the answers. And at age 21, we go away for a big trip and talk about a lot of things and I write them a long letter about how I see their spiritual growth and development. And two years ago, my younger boy and I were out to dinner and I said, “Kenny, I want you to convince me you’re a sinner.”

He looked at me and he said, “This is going to be a fun evening, I can tell.” And I said, “Tell me how you’re sinner.” And so we began talking in ways that really were not very clear, not very strong. Oh he broke the speed limit a time or two. He said some other things he didn’t want to tell me about, that sort of thing. And I said, “Ken, for the last half hour we’ve been sitting together at dinner, has your heart been throbbing with the opportunity to represent the God you love by encouraging me?” He said, “What?” I said, “Have you been sitting here just consumed with every fiber in your being, wanting to be used at a bottom line to be a blessing and encouragement to your father?” He said, “Frankly, I was thinking more about my food and dessert coming up.” And I said, “But that’s the law. How are you doing?” It’s Christ having kept the law and his paying for my sins and imputing righteousness to me, that’s the basis of my hope.” And I think that we have not understood that sin is operating so deeply in our being and that’s why I emphasize that so much. But there are other elements to consider.

Could you explain the difference between a person who had a lot of hurt in their life and became codependent, and the person who had a lot of hurt in their life and did not become codependent?

I’m not sure how to answer your question. I’m not exactly sure what you’re after in the question, but let me take a feeble stab and see if I miss you too badly. I think what I’d say is that all of us to some degree have experienced pain, some far more than I ever have. I have wonderful parents, nobody’s beat me as a kid and all that. But I’ve been disappointed. I’ve not been told I was loved in certain ways like I wished I would’ve been. So I’ve had some pain, nothing like some of you have experienced. But to whatever degree there’s been pain in my life, I believe that that pain has interacted with my commitment to find some way to make life work that has led me to put my life together, apart from the work of the Spirit, on some foundation other than God.

The direction that I have gone in my life depends on a host of factors, but in every case those factors are going to lead me to relate to people ultimately in manipulative, self-protective ways. I think that’s true of all of us. Now, some are going to be more blatantly and obviously deserving of this label we use today called “codependency,” and some are not going to be. That just depends on the host of factors. But the underlying realities are going to be the same for everybody. So whether it’s a codependent phenomenon or not, to me, is a fairly unimportant thing.