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Good morning. Good morning. Yeah. Hey. Don't if you know that the structure of our church around here is we have this thing called lead team. And what that is is the is the the the lead. Everybody on this team,
some every department and every person backs into somebody in at that table, at that room. And we do a retreat every year where we just vision cast and and pray and talk. A number of years ago, while back, like, a lot of years ago,
we we have had a great team. I I believe this was an awesome matter of fact, it's mainly still the same team. We've been together a long time. And I thought we were a great team, but I felt like me and our executive, I felt like we weren't quite hitting on all cylinders.
And the reason was we felt like we weren't, as a group, loving each other and how we operated. We weren't saying the last 10% when we were struggling with something, when we're having a problem with each other, when we're trying to work through stuff. And what I mean by that, I realize a lot of people don't know what that means to say the last 10%. The last 10% is when you have a conversation, especially if it's a trying to manage a a change or a or a conflict or something, most people will share 90%
of what they think, how they feel, and what the issue is. And the and we will hold back that 10%. But here's what they've discovered. The 10% you don't share is almost always 90% of what the problem actually is. So you spend all your time, 90% of your time dealing with 10% of the actual issue,
and then you ignore. And that is why it's a great marriage thing. It's why many of you that are married keep having the same argument over and over and over and over again, even though the content might be different. Is because you never get you're dealing with symptoms all the time because you never get deep enough in. And it's usually because I can't really go there or I'm not really sure. Maybe you don't even know. You don't even see it.
And so we felt like we needed to have this talk. So we planned executive pastor Dave and I went up and said the first day it's only a three day retreat. We don't care if it takes the whole first day. We're gonna do the airing of the grievances.
That's what we're gonna do. We're just gonna go around. We're gonna take one person at a time and say, listen. Your turn. Anybody, if you've had one thing that you just you get frustrated with or you saw or you just wanna whatever, now is the time to let's talk about it. Let's just get it out in the open, and we're gonna do this until we're done.
And then me being the leader, I felt like, you know what? I'll go first. I'll be the one that goes first. I that'll inspire everybody. They'll see that I'm willing to take it. I'm willing to be accountable. I'm willing to be challenged.
So I said, I will go first. I thought that would work great. And everything was awesome till people actually had stuff for me. Because honestly, I really thought it would be a good example, and I didn't think anybody was gonna say anything.
I was so blind to something that I didn't see. I realized this is why we need other people. Because they started saying one person said, you do this thing. I'm like, do do you guys all agree? Oh, yeah. We all agree. And what's crazy is I knew we needed to do it. I believed we needed to do it. And I believed all of us need to do it until it came to the moment that I needed to do it. I'm like, why is this so difficult? Why do I wanna argue with them? Why do I wanna run away? Why? Had to make a decision.
I said I was gonna allow myself to be challenged. But when it happened, I realized this is hard. And that's what we're gonna look at today. In this series, we're gonna look at this idea of accountability. And the big idea is simply this. The big idea,
which should come up here. There it is. The real challenge is allowing ourselves to be challenged. The real challenge is allowing ourselves to be challenged. So we we often think the challenges in our life are all the external challenges.
I'm telling you, in every relationship you have, your walk with God, your marriage, your your your work relationships, I'm telling you, the biggest challenge you face is allowing yourself to be challenged. That is what accountability
is. That's what it means. And here's the problem with accountability. Just like in that moment, I may set up a system, which I did, where we can do it. You might have a system. You might like if you've been in church long, I have some accountability partners or I have this. The system means nothing
unless you choose to allow it. Accountability systems don't guarantee anything. You have to be humble enough to allow it.
And we're gonna see that when we continue in this king series where we've been looking at the first two kings of Israel. Saul the first king who actually looked the part, started off strong, but ends up being rejected as a king. And then David who didn't look the part at first, ends up be called a man after God's own heart and the greatest king. And the difference between the two is not that one sinned and one didn't. They both epic failures.
The difference is how they operated. What was the heart of what they did? And the key one that we see today that I think is one of the most important ones of this whole series is what did they do with being challenged? What did they do with accountability? And we're gonna start with Saul in first Samuel 19.
And
what's happening here is Saul has decided he's it's at this point, if you've been reading along with us, we've kinda jumped in and out of the story. David has rose up. He's been this great warrior and he's getting well known. He's doing everything God said he was gonna do. He's gonna become He's supposed to be the next king. Saul's rejected and he's gonna
at this point, he's decided he wants to kill David even though he's absolutely loyal to him. And his son comes and challenges him. So here we go. Verse one, Saul now urged his servants and his son Jonathan to assassinate David.
But Jonathan, because of his strong affection for David, Jonathan was David's best friend. Can you imagine that dad went, hey, you know your best friend who's done nothing but win epic battles for us? I want you to kill him. That's kinda awkward.
So he told him, he told David, told him what his father was planning tomorrow morning.
And he said tomorrow morning, he warned him, you must find a hiding place out in the fields. I'll ask my father to go out there with me. I'll talk to him about you, then I'll come tell you everything I can find out. The next morning, Jonathan spoke with his father about David saying many good things about him. The king must not sin against his servant David, Jonathan said. He's never done anything to harm you. He's always helped you in any way he could. Have you forgotten about the time he risked his life to kill the Philistine giant and how the Lord brought a great victory to all of Israel as a result?
Remember when he killed the guy you should have fought? You were certainly happy about it then. Why should you murder an innocent man like David? There's no reason for it at all. So then Saul listened to Jonathan and vowed, as surely as the Lord lives, David will not be killed. So so far it sounds like he was willing
to listen. But then look what happens. It says, afterward, Jonathan called David and told him what had happened. Then he brought David to Saul and David served in the court as before.
Verse eight, war broke out again after that. And David led his troops against the Philistines. He attacked them with such a fury, they all ran away. So he comes back in, he immediately is a hero again. So now Saul's like, okay, I'll be accountable. I'll listen to the truth you're sharing until it got hard.
He says, but one day when Saul was sitting at home with a spear in his hand, who sits at home with a spear in their hand?
I'm gonna have to ask about that someday. The tormenting spirit from the Lord suddenly came upon him again. Many people I know I can't get distracted by this, it's like, what does that mean? The Lord sent a tormenting spirit? I don't think it was like some evil spirit, but I think he allowed because Saul
did know God, but he continually would not listen to him and disobey. And with this holy spirit sending that conviction, it was literally God's okay with letting you feel tortured. And he's sitting in this moment stressed out all the time because he won't surrender. And so because of that, as David played his harp,
Saul hurled his spear at David. But David dodged it like a matrix. He dodged out of the way and leaving the spear stuck in the wall, he fled and escaped into the night. So this story starts off. His son goes to him, someone he loves and trusts, challenges him. He's like, you're right.
The second it gets hard, he tries to pin David to the wall with a spear, and that ended their relationship at that point. And you're thinking, what went wrong? Why? Why couldn't Saul stick to that? Why couldn't he be challenged and stick to it? And and the reason is, you see all through his story,
is is he did not really possess the four requirements, these four attributes that we must have if accountability being challenged is ever gonna grow us and change us and take us to a better place.
And here's what they are. The first one is availability. Are you accessible and interruptible? Now Saul kinda had this. He was available to his son. I don't think anybody else could have come and talked to him like that. But so he was available.
He did allow him his son to interrupt him, but it stopped there. But what about you? Do you make yourself available? Do you allow do you ask people to speak into your life? So Saul at least got that part right. The next three, terrible at. He never had the entire time that we see in the Bible. Honesty.
Committed to the truth even if it hurts. He did commit to the truth until it hurt.
And that's where a lot of us go, I'm committed to the truth. And what you'll do, you'll notice it here. A lot of us will come in here. You'll hear a sermon. I see people nodding their head. Oh, yeah. And I've seen people I know that they desperately need to do what we're talking about. They're nodding their head. And then I watch them walk right out there, grab their spear, and continue to throw it at the Davids in their life. They they they they they throw it at the thing they should be engaging.
And and we do this a lot. Are you committed to the truth until it hurts? Or are you committed to the truth even when it hurts, especially when it hurts? Number three is vulnerability. Capable of admitting mistakes and sin. This, I believe, in the story of Saul is his greatest downfall.
If you read through if you've been reading through the bible with us, there's three great moments that he totally disobeys God and just does something knuckleheaded. And it was three strikes, you're out kind of a deal. He did other things, but all three of them, whenever he was tried to be held accountable,
he made excuses. There was always a reason why he had to do it the way he did it. How about you? Do you always have a reason why you don't have to listen to God? Don't be a Saul. Be vulnerable.
Like that was the hard part when I stood there and I invited the challenge in my meeting. I did it and the second it happened, I was like, all right, it is truthful. It does hurt. But I also said, but man, this is hard. I wanted to argue it. I didn't want to admit it. And then finally, the fourth one is teachability.
This is the key to actually getting somewhere with it. You can be all of this stuff and still not get anywhere. You have to be teachable, meaning you are slow to speak, you're quick to listen, and you're willing to respond to the challenge, especially when it hurts. Saul didn't have these qualities.
That's why even allowing someone to talk to him makes no difference. He allowed Samuel to tear, makes no difference. If you don't have these qualities, you're going to sit here and nod your head every time I'm preaching and then ignore exactly what God's word says.
And and and so you're never gonna get there. You're gonna miss out. You're gonna miss out. So what was different about what David did? Let's turn over ironically, we're in second Samuel, but also chapter 19. And what's happening in second
Samuel 19 is last week we talked about how David's son ended up rebelling against him, which was partially on David for his horrible being being a bad dad.
But Absalom is still responsible for what he did. And he left, he took the loss in order to get the victory. Well, this is happening after the victory. He had a bunch of loyal men following. He was outnumbered, his loyal men, they fought hard. They figured out they beat an enemy that was massively larger than them and they won. But before they went into battle, David said something kinda knuckleheaded. He went to his general Joab,
who has been rallying everybody and getting the tactics and helping them and sacrificing. And he said, hey, if you come upon my son, do not kill him in battle. And well, Joab went out, found actually came upon Absalom and immediately killed him.
He completely disregarded what the what the king told him. This is important because this is the guy that goes and confronts and challenges David, The guy that immediately killed him. And so now David is super sad, which is justified. But you would be sad if your son died of battle even if he was rebelling.
The problem is not that he should have been sad.
It's what he let it do in the face of what he should be doing as the leader of these people that absolutely sacrificed everything to be loyal to him. And we're gonna pick up the story right there. So it says, word soon reached Joab that the king was weeping and mourning for Absalom.
As all the people heard of the king's deep grief for his son, the joy of that day's victory was turned into deep sadness. They crept back into town that day as though they were ashamed and had deserted in battle. The king covered his face with his hands and kept crying, oh my son Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son.
Then Joab went into the king's room. This was the guy that actually directly disobeyed a king. Typically at this time, when you directly disobey a king, usually that can he could the death penalty. But he went into his his room
and said to him, we saved your life today in the lives of your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your concubines.
Yet you act like this, making us feel ashamed of ourselves. You seem to love those who hate you and hate those who love you. You have made it clear today that your commanders and troops mean nothing to you. It seems that if Absalom had lived and all of us had died, you would be pleased.
So he got in his face. And then he told him, kinda here's what I think you need to do. He challenged them. Now go out there and congratulate your troops. For I swear by the Lord that if you don't go out, not a single one of them will remain here tonight. Then you will be worse off than even before. Then you have no army.
What do you think, David? This is this general that literally caused his sadness by killing his son. Now the case could be made is everybody knew his son needed to die. So he did him a favor, but he just sees it as a lost son in direct disobedience to him. And he walks in, interrupts him, and then challenges him.
This isn't his son. Like like like like he lost his son. Saul had his son who he loved to challenge him and he couldn't handle it. But in verse eight, here's our response. So the king went out and took his seat at the town gate.
And as the news spread throughout the town that he was there, everyone went to him. In other words, he did the hard truth even though it hurt. He was willing to do it. He went out and did the right thing. Even though that probably hurt, he knew that this guy's right. He's right. And so I have to accept this.
See the real challenge in this moment wasn't that he was sad because his son died. The challenge was he needed to allow himself to be challenged. Otherwise, it would have been horrible for David. And in the end, think about it, his son would have died for nothing at that point. So
that's David's response. Why was he able to do that where where where where Saul wasn't? It's because even in the story, and if you read through the whole story of David, you could see, especially in this point, he was available.
He allowed the guy that actually disrespect, but he was his general. He allowed him to come in and interrupt him in his grief. He he was available to him. He was allowed it. He was honest. Even though that truth hurt deeply and he had every reason to be mad at Joab, he still accepted and was committed to that truth
when it hurt. Not until it hurt, he accepted it in the middle of the hurt. He was vulnerable. He admitted his mistake. We can see that by he walked out there and did what Joab said he needed to do, which also shows that he was teachable. David consistently had that. He did knuckleheaded things just like Saul,
but he consistently showed that he was willing to be challenged. He was willing to be held accountable and he did something with it. How about you? Are you committed to truth and tell it hurts?
Or are you willing to let all people challenge you and help you especially when it does? What's your reaction to the challenge of accountability?
I think there's four basic reactions we have when it comes to being challenged into accountability. The obvious one is a lot of us just say no. Some of you are the guys that you go golfing with the same guys for the last thirty years and you never say anything of meaning about your lives.
Some of like, well, how's their kids? Your wife asked you that. I go, I I didn't even know they had kids. Yeah. That's you. No. You just you just don't want it. And a lot of us will say why.
The why obviously sometimes is, well, why? Why do you why are you telling me this? Why are you doing but a lot of this is kept internally. A lot of times, like, think Saul went away, said yes, but was saying, why? Why do I need to do that? He's a threat to me. I don't like him, so I'm going back to no.
If you question why a lot, you end up why is usually your excuses to get back to no. But I think the part where most of us lose it and we never get to the growth and the better side in our relationship with God and relationship with others is this one, the who. This isn't really a marriage series, but it really is.
Because let me use marriage as example. We often when someone tries to focus more on the who is giving us the challenge than the what and the truth of what they're saying. And that is a deflectionary shielding tactic so we don't have to deal with it. We will judge the other person just like think about it.
David classically could have said, who are you to tell me this? You're the reason I'm sad. Get out of here and I think I might have you executed tomorrow. As if who Joab is disqualifies the truth of what Joab said. And here's what I think. We do this big time in marriages over and over and over again.
But you know, kids do this all the time. Little kids, one gets mad at the other because they did something to them that hurt them, and they're like, you're stupid. And then what's the other kid say back?
You're stupid. Mom, you stupid. You're stupid. You're stupid. Then they're swinging at each other. And you know what? Is the parent is the person watching brothers and sisters do this? What do you know is true about both of them? They're both stupid.
Because what they're doing is because you are mean too, the truth of you telling me that I was just mean to you doesn't count. That doesn't make any sense. Why would why would your list of stupidity disqualify my stupidity? And you're like, that's kids stuff. That's dumb. But we do it all the time in marriage.
You see, when we have to deal with something hard, we have to deal with something that's tough, and we have to deal with these moments, it's interesting how
how what we'll do is we'll often sit there and the person brings the problem. And it might not even be a personal thing they did. It might be something as we have to get this done. And what you're really saying is you got to do your part. I need you to step up and do this. Have to get done. And and here's the thing. When we have those tough moments that can turn into discussions as I like to call them, a lot of times they start this way. They start with they come with you with something rough. And you know, sometimes some of us get hysterical in those moments. Some people do. But all of us tend to get historical in those moments.
So when they come with something tough, you're like, yeah. Fine. But what about and then you give this list of stuff that you're frustrated with. As if that you might be a 100% right. But what does that have to do with the validity and truth of what they're saying?
We use it as a shield, like it's Captain America's shield. I'm blocking your truth and I'm throwing my shield at your neck. And and and it's like, will kill you so you'll stop telling me the truth.
I'm gonna stop it. And that's how why you have the same arguments over and over and over again over and over again. And and and you become historians and your list get longer. And here's the deal. Here's what it should be. You should be saying how.
How? How do I deal with this? How do we handle this? How do we make this right? How do I do this? And what you do is if you do have this defensive list, sometimes that's just defensive.
Sometimes you're responding the way the person come to you. Because if someone walks in as a prosecuting attorney to you, what do you instantly become? A defense attorney. That's true. Someone's gotta stop being the attorney in this situation. But the how is, okay.
That's valid. But I do have some concerns too. This brings up this desire. Let's add that to the list, and let's work through the list together. It's not my val my valid claims disqualify your valid claims. That is two little kids and you're both being stupid. And it's not gonna get you anywhere.
You you need to be willing to be held accountable. And it doesn't matter who. Is what they're saying true? And the truth is most of the time the hurt we feel that we don't wanna listen to the truth is the who that's saying it. It makes us mad that that person told us something that was true.
But David was able to handle it because he was a man after God's own heart. And you know what blocks us? You know what I think makes us make it about the who? Is there's two roadblocks, two primaries. And it's like in Star Wars, the Sith, there's always two. A master and an apprentice. And here they are. Master,
apprentice. Pride and fear is what will always stop us. See, pride says, I can't admit I failed. And if I have this pride that lives by comparison, why I go to the who is I feel like in comparison, I'm still better than you. So I can't allow you to speak into my life. Because if I do, then I'm fearful
that I've admitted that I'm not what I thought I was. And so we get stuck in this trap and we won't listen. We grow. We won't do it.
Now some of you are still saying, okay, that's all true. Everything's so true, but why? What's the point of all? Why would God why would we want to live in this accountability? And I think there's three primary reasons and they all come out of a proverb, which our next series on proverbs, we're gonna little taste right now. I got these three proverbs
and the first one is proverbs twenty seven seventeen. And it says, as iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend. So iron sharpens iron. Have you ever sharpened knives with the knife sharpening the metal that sharpens it? Anybody ever do that?
There's three things you notice about it. First, it's like dumb and dumber when you start doing it. You're like, you wanna hear the most annoying sound ever?
My wife is very sensitive. Ears like, you know, chalkboard, fingernail. The sound like so her her dad, he'll come, I'll sharpen all your knives. He likes doing it. She can't be in his in the presence of it because it makes that annoying metal on metal screechy sound.
So same thing. In a friendship, in someone that you invite to be held you accountable, you're gonna it's gonna be a hard talk. It's gonna have awkwardness to it. But the second thing about it, as I trip, the second thing about it is it's not only annoying and hard, the second thing is it creates friction.
There's gonna be friction involved. And out of that friction is gonna come heat, which sometimes you'll see sparks. So it's gonna be an annoying hard talk that's gonna be have some friction intense moments, and sometimes it's gonna feel very warm, hot, and sparkly. And and and here's the problem with that.
A lot of us in this room, any conversation you've ever experienced in your life that was like that was in the form of abuse. I'm not saying you take abuse, but don't mistake and think those three qualities always equal abuse. If two friends, you love each other,
you're gonna have to have a hard talk and it's gonna be hard and friction to listen to and sometimes it's gonna feel hot and sparkly. But don't run away from it. Don't let pride and fear make you run away. In other words, what this is saying, the point it's making is you're more likely to see the whole picture
when you have friends that will do that. When you allow that, you allow them to do that. You will you don't just the second someone tries to challenge you, you're like, well, time to get new friends.
It's it's just you're willing to dive in. You're willing to to do that in a communal way. You know why? You'll see a little picture. We have a power of self deception. There's three sides of us when we're in a relationship. There's the side I will let you see. There's often the side I won't let you see.
And then there's a side that I can't see without you.
So if you don't allow real community, you're gonna miss out on two of them. You're gonna hide part of you that you know, and that's usually a part that you're ashamed of. It's that's the 10%. The part that you won't share in community is often the 10% that's really causing 90% of your struggles in life.
You'll talk about all these problems, but you won't get to that addiction you have. You'll talk about all these things, but you won't be honest about that failure. You won't be honest. You'll talk about the struggles in your marriage and wanting to fix it, but you won't actually share the emotional affair you're having at work right now. You think you can fix everything else and leave that alone.
So you hide that. And then there's part of us, there's a side of us that only other people can see that we can't. So if you don't allow this, you're never gonna grow. You're never gonna get to what God built you to be. And it's just gonna just and you're gonna have you're not gonna have really any good relationships.
And then you wonder like, I thought we were great friends. No. You weren't. You were acquaintances that said nice things and try to avoid anything tough, which actually brings in this next Proverbs fifteen thirty one to 33.
It says, if you listen to constructive criticism, you will be at home amongst the wise. If you reject discipline, you only harm yourself. But if you listen to correction, you grow in understanding.
Fear of the Lord teaches wisdom. This teaching wisdom, wisdom is not just knowledge. Wisdom in the Bible means you took knowledge and you were teachable and you applied it.
So you need fear of the Lord, meaning I need to not have the fears of my life. I need to be more concerned about what God thinks than all of my doubts. I need to trust him, and then I will be able to apply this truth. And the only way I'll do it is humility precedes honor. David was humble, Saul was not. Plain and simple.
And you will never understand the power of accountability that comes through community, the willingness to allow yourself to be challenged, unless you're humble. You'll always have an excuse. You're too busy. You won't be available. You can't do this. Whatever.
In other words, the point of this is you're less likely to stumble Because people will see the parts that you don't see and they'll help you before you see it. And like in my meeting, they saw something I didn't see and help me cut that off at the pass. In other words, if you're humble, you're less likely to stumble. Okay?
And then the last one, Proverbs 20 seven:five-six, this is the problem most of us have with what we think of as friendship and community. We do the wrong side of this. An open rebuke is better than hidden love. The wounds from a sincere friend are better than the many kisses from an enemy.
So an open rebuke, someone that's willing to challenge you, is better if you have a friend that they do love you, but they often don't show it, but they are at least willing to challenge and help you. That is better. It's better to have that than the other. Than someone who
expresses love, says nice things to you all the time, but will never rebuke or challenge you. He says that's worse because you get a false sense of security about things. And he says the reality, it comes down to this. Wounds from a sincere friend wait. Where'd it go?
There we go. Wounds from a sincere friend are better than the many kisses from an enemy. Guys, a lot of what we call community, and this I'm gonna challenge you guys. If you're in a home group, especially if you lead it, talk about that this week at your home group.
Are we really doing this? Or are we doing the many kisses of an enemy? Or a friend that or we're friends that we love but we won't do the open rebuke. We will run after the kisses of an enemy, someone that doesn't really care about us.
Than about the actual growth. That's part of my preaching style. You gotta understand from what I see scripture being and what my job is, I could talk in a way that we could probably get even a bigger crowd here and everyone feel good and happy and all nice and in love. Or I can throw punch you.
That's my job, is to tell us what we need to hear. And the reality is, I let every one of these messages preach to me before I preach it to you. This one kicked me in the throat. Not just punched me, kicked me in the throat. So if I get punched, you get punched.
And what this is really saying, now we can go. There we go. I said this is what it's really saying, sweet. My bad, Joel, he's in the back. Not likely to get away with sinful and unwise behavior.
You see, when you're in community that's just all about the kisses and the love and saying what you wanna hear, you're gonna continue to be stupid. And then you come and you complain about your spouse if it's a guy's group or a women's group, and they're gonna tell you what you wanna hear.
You're not really seeking advice. You're not even getting advice. You're getting allies. And that will not help your marriage.
No matter how it'll make you feel good that you got to dump on them, but it's not you know what you need? You need a friend to go, why are you talking to us about this? Have you talked to your spouse about this?
Go try that. And if that doesn't work, we'll pray for you this week. You have a week. We're gonna hold you accountable. You have to sit down and talk to them by next week. Try that. And if they make excuses, then you really don't want to be in the right relationship. You just wanna sit around and be told you're right.
And if you want it and then if they say, tried. Was terrible. I go, well, will they be at least willing to sit down with a qualified Christian counselor, a pastor, somebody that can help them navigate a little bit? That is what community does. They say, oh, yeah. He's a jerk. She's terrible.
I'll pray for you that God will change them.
You're praying and talking about changing the only person that's not in the circle. When you're in a circle, you hold each other accountable. You're responsible for each other, not the person on the outside, you. Now you pray that as you do that and you change yourself, I pray they respond to this.
That's why this matters. That's why it's so important. In other words, we need community.
We need others. That's why I constantly say, don't just sit in a row, get in a circle. Do you have this kind of community in your life? And that's why I say, go evaluate your own home group. And if it's not being that way, you're not in community. You're just in another bible study, taking another night out of the week that's stressing you out. Maybe you look at each other. Let's commit to being this.
Let's give ourselves And if you don't even have that at all, comes the challenge. Man, you're gonna walk out here, nod in your head and then throw your spear at me once you get in your car.
Walk out there afterwards, go to the new hair, start here and say, need community. Admit it.
And you're like, well, I'm not available. I have too much time. I don't have enough time. Well, then there's something wrong with your schedule because we were built for this. We were called to this. Do it. Promise. I promise if you do it and you find a group of people that will do this with you, it will change everything.
It will. Otherwise, we're just playing a game. We're just coming to the pep rally. We're all at the pep rally, and then we don't show up at the game. We we we gotta get into it because I understood this. I learned this. Matter fact but I learned in that story that I started with on how hard it is.
I'm telling you, it is hard. Matter of fact, it's hard. We decided to let an AI bot write us a poem about hard it is to challenge your challenges. So we had it write this poem for it and we said, use the word challenge as much as possible.
And when I read it, you're gonna say, I think it was a Seuss AI. It was a Doctor. Seuss AI or something. Because here's what the the the AI, the artificial intelligence is gonna tell us about this.
Challenge your challenge, challenge it well. For if you don't challenge your challenge, who will? A challenger's challenge is to challenge himself and to overcome challenges is to conquer oneself. So challenge your challenge until it's challenged enough. And you'll find that challenging challenges is really tough.
And you know what? We should listen to the truth of the AI because in a few years they're gonna be our evil overlords anyways.
And when we live in a Wally type of world and we're too stupid to remember anything, at least remember this.
But seriously, challenging our challenges is very tough. I get it. I get it, but it's a tough we have to be willy nicked to go for. Don't say I agree with truth until it hurts. Embrace truth when it hurts. That's the most important time because that's when you need truth. See, feelings are real, but they're not always right.
Did you hear me? In other words, feelings are real, but they're not always true. If you listen to your feelings, you're gonna go against truth over and over and over again. You have to deal with them because they are real. They make you feel some way. But the way what they tell you to do is not very often right or true.
In other words, when I was in that meeting and I'm sitting there
and I told these guys, go, here's what I told them to do. I go, okay. You guys have permission to interrupt me. If I'm ever in a meeting, I'm doing this thing. What I was doing was we'd have a be talking about something and I'm already on d part of the plan. But there's an a b c to where we got and a lot of these people would be, hey, we weren't even there. So you're just assuming we were there through this whole process. So I'd get impatient when they're asking a questions and b questions. I'm already on d, so I take over the room. I think I'm giving this inspirational,
hey, I I feel like they're fighting me.
So because they should already know this. So I'm trying to do the take the hill kind of locker room speech when they're just asking honest questions because they weren't there. And when I do that, it shuts down the discussion. The room shuts down, everyone gets quiet. I think I'm giving this great impassion into the Hoosiers movie type of thing. And really, I'm discouraging everybody and making them go, here
he goes. So I said, you're right. I had to be honest even though it hurt. And I said, I give you permission if I remember doing this raise your hand, interrupt me. Eighteen hours later, we're not even a full day.
We're in a meeting, we're talking about something. I went to D because I felt like everybody I didn't realize not everybody was there. I started doing this again. Room got quiet. I kept going. I thought I was being inspiring. And all of a sudden,
Josh raises his hand when she gets embarrassed, he's sitting right there. Raise your hand, Josh. Let's reenact it. There he is.
And ironically, he was in this circle sitting right in front of me like he is now. And he raises his hand and I'm going. I'm like, why is he raising his hand? Does he need to go to the bathroom or something? I'm like, what do you need, Josh? What's the problem? He goes, remember yesterday,
not even twenty four hours ago, you said if you were doing that thing remember, you said if you were doing that thing that we should just raise our hand and interrupt you and tell you that you're doing that thing. Remember, you've told us to do that? I go, yeah. So what? He goes, you're doing that thing right now.
And I don't wanna kid you. I literally just did this.
Josh reminded me I did it twice. And you know why I did that twice? Because I was sitting in in my heart going, challenging your challenges is so very tough. Allowing myself to be challenged is so hard. Because even though I invited it, I told it, I admitted it, I said I needed it,
I had to take those breasts because I wanted to fight with them.
I wanna say, no. No. No. I get what you're saying about what I do, but I'm not doing that right now. You see, this is one of those moments that we all just need to be here and and you need to catch up. I was trying to act like, I'm just giving us this rally thing. We're gonna all get killed if we don't get over here. It's all that and I was misreading the whole scenario. It was one of those sides of myself I couldn't see without them.
But I wanted to act like, no, I know exactly what I'm doing. That's what I wanted to say, so I had to stop. I had to make a choice. What am I going to do in this moment? So I just said, you know what? Help me out here. Here's what I think. I'm sorry. Let's get back to let's talk about this.
And what I'm gonna do is I'm not gonna talk again until you guys ask me to talk again. So we'll discuss it and when you wanna ask me a question or invite me back into the conversation, that's when I'll come back in. I won't say a word until you do, okay? And they said, okay.
Six years later, they finally asked me to talk again in a meeting, but that's another story. No, it's probably six minutes later.
Challenging your challenge is very tough. And the real challenge for us is allowing ourselves to be challenged. Father God, I thank you Lord. I thank you that you love us. And I thank you that we can even be challenged and we can grow because of your grace because you came and you died for us.
You brought truth, but you brought it with love. So Lord, I pray that we could hear your truth in love, but still hear your truth. And we don't only listen to it until it hurts, but when it hurts. And so, Lord, may we all be humble. May myself, everyone in this room, everyone online choose humility
and choose to accept the challenge of allowing ourselves to be challenged and then to humbly use wisdom to deal with it. I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Hey. Love you guys. Thanks
for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on the We Are Rock Point app for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.