With All Your Heart

Preached by Kyle Eastman on 8/4/24

Transcript

0:09

Hello, and welcome to the Kalamazoo church of Christ podcast. Thank you so much for listening. We're startup church. We just planted in September, 2020 and at the Kalamazoo church, we believe that Christianity is done best when it is done together. And so if you live in the Kalamazoo area, we would love to connect, be it coming to a Sunday service, one of our small groups, or even just grabbing coffee with a member to learn more. You can visit kalamazoo.church in order to do that. We pray that you are inspired by what you hear today. You can only give a man that much leeway so long before something crazy happens and it's on you. First of all, if I could say a baptism slash pool party sounds like, like a part, I'm like, should we, we should always bring your swimsuits every time you don't know what's going to happen. That might drive people away actually. But my name is Kyle. My wife is right here. She's holding baby. I give it a 43% chance. She has to leave because of my, my youngest. We love being here with you. We get to come at least once a year. I wish we could come more and perhaps we'll be able to in the future, but I feel like we're building great relationships with you guys. I want you to feel like we are available to you. We spent some great time with Jaron and Bianca this weekend. Part of the reason we're here is that we, we get the honor of kind of helping Jaron and Bianca lead the church. Really what that means is like the blind leading the blind, if that encourages you. We're, we're kind of in it together. And so like last night we spent like almost three hours talking about the church and their lives. I just want to encourage you. They asked us, we had been with them for a couple of days and they asked us, you know, how do you feel like we're doing in our parenting? And I just, that's just a great example. Like you want to be led by people like that. Let me know how I'm doing. And don't just give me the good stuff. Like I want to hear it. Like that's a really great thing. And perhaps, perhaps it's more rare than we think it is. It's really beautiful. So I just really appreciate their leadership here and, and their friendship. They're so easy to be friends with. I just really enjoy you guys. And I just love the atmosphere of the church. Like I love small church. We, we are also part of a small church. I love the aftermath. It's just like, hey, I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. How am I doing? You know what I mean? Like you don't see that in a bigger church. It's like sort of not allowed-ish. But in small church, it's like who cares, whatever. Like anybody else have any thoughts? You know, I like that about small church. I want to, two things before I start is I want to just, just introduce my kids. So on your left is Noel. I'm not telling the story of Noel today, but she's had quite a journey. She sees herself right now. She is a delight. And she has changed our lives more than probably anything else in our lives. And not just because she's a delight, but she's been through a lot and then therefore we have. And so we're so grateful for her. And then that's Rowan and Kathleen. Rowan's seven, Kate's five. They have a beautiful friendship and a lot of personality. And I'll often tell people, we have a lot of dance parties in our house. I feel like we fit in well with the Cowboys. Like pool parties. That resembles a dance party. They all feel like they work together. And Rowan's the best dancer in the house. And sometimes she does dance moves that I'm not used to. But I'm actually not allowed to display on video. I'm still trying to teach that into them. Just like, I don't think you can do that in public. So that's enough. I'm glad you're safe here. I want to introduce one more thing. If you've heard me speak before, you know I have a facial tic. And this is in the beginning of some weird joke. Like it's a real thing. And actually, it's been great. But about five minutes ago, it got bad again. So I wanted to mention something about it. It's just something that I battle with. I share it when I go visit new churches. Or not new churches, but churches I'm not in right now. And it's just something that I battle with. Because it helps people feel secure with sort of their interaction with me. So they're not like, is everything okay? Like, everything is okay. It's just like, we're figuring it out, working through it. It's actually been really good. But it does get me in trouble sometimes. I always tell a story. I have a new story this year about a way that's got me in trouble. Obviously, it manifests as like a really aggressive head nod. Like I'm aggressively saying, yes, I agree with you. This gets me in trouble when people ask me questions. So the other day, I was at the gym. I actually don't like, I really don't like this exercise. I find it very painful. It is emotionally painful. Because I can barely lift anything. And so like, socially, it's more painful than physically. Because I'm like, other people are just like, is that it? Like, is that your warm up? It's like, this is the real thing. It's like my natural thing. And sometimes at the gym, when it's really full, someone will walk up and be like, hey, can I work in with you? And the idea is that like, can we just switch back and forth because nothing else is available? And you know, you don't really say, nobody says no to that. Even if you really don't want to, you say, sure. The guy that walked up to me looked a lot like this. He's like, can I work in, can I work in with you? You know what I mean? I'm like, you didn't sound like, I'm making that up. Like, but he was huge. He was like a Viking, like a Nordic Viking. And of course I'm like, sure, sure, you can work with me. And I just had, I didn't have a lot of weight on me. So I'm like, this guy is massive. And I didn't say anything about it. And I'm like, I'm just not going to, let's just see what happens. So I get done with my exercise. I go get some water. I come back, he's done his, and he's like, hey, you want to add more on this? And I tick. And he's like, cool, how much are you thinking, and I was like, whatever you think. I didn't say like, oh, you know, it's a weird way to start a conversation, like, oh, sorry, I had a facial tick, like, I didn't mean to say that, like, no, that's weird, you just accept it. It's like, it's just guy culture. So I was just like, yeah, put it on there, and I was hoping he'd walk away, he just stood there and watched me. So I'm just like, he's like, great job, man. He gets up, he's like, duh, duh, duh, and I was like, thanks, I'll see you later, I hope I'll never see you again. Do you want to come to church? I did invite him to church. He said yes, but they never came, which is, you know, par for the course, that's fine. God's solid, right? So yeah, it helps you know a little bit about me, and it helps you feel secure in, like, what's happening, right? In Matthew 22, I thought the communion was very appropriate, and the songs as well, because there's a lot about loving God. I know you guys spend a lot of time in the Old Testament going through thread, which is great. I want to just share a sermon that's meaningful to me about what it means to love God with all your heart. Matthew 22, verse 34, the Pharisees and Sadducees, they come to Jesus and they say, what's the most important commandment in the law? The Pharisees says this, and Jesus says, you know, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, right? Or your strength, depending on the version you're reading. And he's quoting from Deuteronomy 6, a Jewish prayer called the Shema, which is all about the Jewish prayer. They said every day, Deuteronomy 6, verses like 1 through 4, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength. And Jesus adds in, and the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself, like a freebie on the side. You also do this. What does it mean to love God? I'd like to have a practical conversation about what it means to love God, because I think loving God with all your heart in particular is very difficult. And I want to talk about why that is. Because when we think about heart, you think about the heart as the center of your feelings. Now we're not going to go into it, but l'vav is the Hebrew word in Deuteronomy, and it means it's the center of your emotion, your feelings, and like your being. But when we say like, when we talk about our feelings, we often attribute it to the way our heart feels, right? Oh, I love that person. Most people think that what they're really saying is, I feel like I love you. But love is a lot more than that. Love is about surrendering those feelings to God. And sometimes it's harder to surrender our feelings than our actions. And I want to talk a little bit about that. So what does the Bible have to say about loving God with all your heart? So there's a lot of things. We're only actually going to look at one. I'm going to briefly discuss the first two, because they lead to the three. So just really one point today. This is the discouraging part of what God says about the heart, all right? But I promise it'll end on an encouraging note. The darkness of the heart is that it's very difficult to understand. Perhaps you've felt that before. It must be guarded, because it's very vulnerable. And it actually instinctively cannot be trusted. This is discouraging to the average human. The Bible discusses this a lot. And what's interesting is that this is very countercultural. Our world increasingly is about follow your heart. Listen to your heart. Search your soul. That's an old song. Celine Dion, maybe? I don't know. Something like that. She's great. It's do what your heart feels is right. This is horrific advice. But it's the way we tend to instinctively operate, right? The heart's hard to understand. Some proverb says very quickly, the purposes of a person's heart are deep waters, and who can understand them? In Jeremiah, it says something similar. You can't trust the heart. Who can understand the heart? No one can share the heart's joy, because only you understand it. And you might not even understand it. Have you felt that before? Have you seen this before? This is the emotion wheel. It's very overwhelming for the average human. Especially like the sort of stock standard stereotypical guy. He's like, what do you feel? I feel angry. No, no, no, no, no, no. What do you feel? Do you feel? I'm trying to read it. I don't like to feel. Yeah, do you feel let down? I don't know. If you do, what do you really feel? Do you feel resentful? I don't know what that word means. I don't know the difference. Your emotions are actually quite complicated. Just so you know, that's not a complete emotion. This is like the dumbed-down version. Go online and look at full emotion. You're going to be like, ah! You know what I mean? I'm capable of so many things. What's crazy about the emotions is you often feel something before you know why you feel it. This is how the body works. You get put into an anxious situation. Maybe you didn't know there was a pool party going on. And you show up, and you're like, I don't know if I'm ready for this. Have you ever been put in a situation where you feel uncomfortable or scared? Your body reacts before your mind knows what's going on, especially if you're a verbal processor. Verbal processing is when you don't know what you feel until you say it out loud. This is a very dangerous thing to be, depending on who you process with. The heart's very complicated. Sometimes we don't understand it, which makes it very confusing. Two, the heart must be guarded. Above all else, the proverb says, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it. Your heart is vulnerable. We're going to talk mostly about how it's vulnerable internally, but it's certainly vulnerable externally as well. And what do I mean by that? People can hurt you. Everyone's vulnerable to hurt. And what a lot of people do is to stop themselves from getting hurt, they close themselves off to a relationship. But that brings a whole other level of hurt. Your past can haunt you. You ever had dreams? You're like, I can't believe I'm still dreaming about that. I still have these dreams about high school. I don't have 20 years or more in high school. I had dreams that I missed the math class for the whole year, and I remembered last day. What is wrong with me? Why does that happen? Perhaps it's when you see somebody you haven't seen in a while and you panic. I struggle to walk into Panera because there's a certain individual that has caused me so much grief. If I walk into Panera anywhere in the country, I'm afraid he will be there. This is not logical. I know that, but I feel it. We all have those things, right? Perhaps if you're a Star Wars fan. If you're a Star Wars fan. I know, I got you, I got you. Has anybody, and it's okay, you're safe in the Kalamazoo Church. Can you just raise your hand if you've never seen a Star Wars before? Okay. You get a free pass for sure. You're good. Come on, man. You know what, though? You tried, you tried. I won't go into detail, but what you're looking at is a planet-destroying weapon called the Death Star. The Death Star was created by the Galactic Empire. And you're feeling it, right? I'm with you, bro. The Death Star looks like an impenetrable fortress. It's supposed to be. The Death Star has a problem, though. In the first Star Wars movie ever made, not the first Star Wars movie chronologically. Don't get confused. The first one ever made, like in the 70s. They discovered a vulnerability in the Death Star. There was basically a tunnel that had a breach point outside, a hole in the Death Star. If you dropped something far enough down and it hits the button, it explodes the whole thing. This is very convenient. Star Wars fans struggled with it for 30 years because they were irritated by it. And then Star Wars fixed it by making another movie and telling us why it happened. Which is actually one of the best Star Wars movies ever made. Your heart is like this. All of you have vulnerability. Most of us have ways that, like, you can't hurt me. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. Most of us are like, no, words can hurt pretty bad. You know what I mean? Maybe you have vulnerability with your family. You're a great Christian and then you go home and you forgot you were a Christian. You had that before? You're like practically Jesus on Sunday. And then Monday comes around and you walk into work and you're like, I might be Judas. You know what I mean? We have certain people, certain stressful situations. We have those things. You're vulnerable, which is why your heart must be guarded. But you're actually more vulnerable to yourself than anything else. Because the heart cannot be trusted. And we're going to sit here the whole time, the last 15 minutes or so. Did you know that the heart has an almost infinite capacity for self-deception? Almost infinite is your heart's ability to deceive you. What is self-deception? When you know the truth, but it's too painful to accept, so you smother it. When the implications of a truth are so traumatic that you give in to a clever lie created by yourself to avoid that painful reality. The Pharisees encountered this with Jesus on almost a constant level. We're going to spend a lot of time. I'm just going to have them up here. Matthew 23 is kind of a scary set of verses, but an important one because Jesus is constantly battling other people's self-deception. Their inability to see their sin, which is hurting not only them, but crushing the people around them. This is what self-deception does. If you have a good friend or just a friend, it may be hard to have a good friend that's very self-deceived, that doesn't realize how they affect other people. It's very hard to know what to do with that. The Pharisees, he says to them, woe to you teachers of law and Pharisees to you hypocrites, blind Pharisees. First clean the inside of the cup and dish and then the outside will be clean. He says you're so focused on other people, you can't see yourself. You're blind to yourself. He says this a lot. I want to give you three examples, some funny with an increasing level of seriousness. So St. Patrick's Day in our family has become like a fun event. And we, Chris and I, like to lean in to what we call pleasant fictions. So we would think pretending leprechauns are real is a pleasant fiction to us. Other people don't feel that way, and that's totally fine. But we lean in hard. I don't have time to show you the video, but I took a two-minute video of convincing my children leprechauns are still real, and it was a delight. And I have no problem with it. Talk to me afterwards if you want to about that. This is a direct quote from my son. My son is seven. He's quite bright. And leading up to it, we were just seeding the ground a little bit with him. We were like, hey, I don't know. What do your friends say? What do the kids say about leprechauns these days? And he's like, oh, that they're not real? I'm like, oh, we'll see. And he'd be like, what do you mean? I'm like, I don't know. And he'd be like, okay. You know what I mean? Just kind of like tantalizing bit of information. We left for church one day, and I had my friend come over. And Rona and I, I was like, just in case leprechauns are real, let's set up a trap because they love gold. And we don't have a lot of gold hanging around, but we've got a fake necklace. And we'll set up a trap with magnet tiles. You've seen these. They're like magical toys. And the leprechaun will pull it, and it will fall, and it will trap the leprechaun under a laundry basket. And so we had fun making it. I was like, Adam, don't get your hopes up. I don't even know if they're real. Maybe they are. Maybe they aren't. And we come back, and the trap has been sprung because I had a friend come over and spring it. So I had plausible deniability. So he could say, did you do this? And I said, I did not pull that necklace. Very directly, I can tell you that. So it comes over, and it's gone. I wrote a poem from the leprechaun. And it was actually, I thought, quite good. And it was all about he, he, he. He tried to catch me, but maybe next. And he was like, this is real. But he's seen my writing. I have pretty distinctly bad handwriting. He knows what it looks like. And he looked at it, and I could tell in his heart, he's like, I want this to be real so bad. I want this to be real. I'm just going to believe this is real. And he told me, Dad, this looks nothing like your handwriting. In my mind, I was like, I didn't ask him if it looked like my handwriting. That's how hard he was leaning into the fiction. He was like, this is not, it must be real. So like, don't think, like my son's here, right? Don't think, don't be that guy. You know what I mean? He'll be like, I heard the story. I'll be like, come on, man. He, that's a fairly innocent deception. But Rowan engaged in a self-deception there. Did you catch that? He's kind of like, yeah, you know, like I want to believe this. And sometimes that's fine. Other times it's not so fine. I was recently in a situation where I was tasked with a kind of difficult conversation with a former friend of mine who I had to share some really hard things with. Because they were engaged in a conflict. And the person that was kind of interceding in the conflict asked, he was kind of a mentor in my life, said, I really need you to go back and say this thing to this guy. And I was terrified because he was kind of an authority figure in my life. I didn't want to say, it would be like going to your dad and saying, like, you really hurt me in all these ways and I never said it. And we talked and I totally chickened out. I didn't do it. This is earlier this year. And I'm not, I wouldn't call myself in general socially a coward, but I had a full coward moment. And I was kind of reporting back to my mentor about how it went because he's working with him. And my initial response, I knew I didn't do a good job because of Kristen's response after I described it. And then I shared it with Jeff is the guy's name who was helping me out. And I said to him, I think I did my best at some point along the way. That's what I was thinking. And he was like, you didn't do your best. You didn't do the thing. You just made our lives twice as hard. You were cowardly. He said this to me. He said it like four times. You are selfish. You made this decision for self-preservation. I mean, he was just like, let's get it. You know what I mean? I was just like, you know. Kristen was sitting next to me just like, oh, it's pretty rough. And it was so good for me. It was life-giving for me. But I give in to a self-perception that I did my best when I didn't do my best. We do that. I mean, at least I did my best. Did you do your best? Perhaps only you know or the people you let in close enough. I did that. I let myself give in to that deception because I didn't want the consequences of the truth, which is I have to say this to this guy. I didn't want that. A more extreme example, in World War II at the end of the war when we were liberating German concentration camps, a place called Ordu. This is where this is taken. That's General Eisenhower there. Most concentration camps were very close to villages because they would need them for supplies. They'd roll through them. They'd actually often bring the prisoners through the village. And so Eisenhower, after he had been there for a long time, almost every village he encountered acted like they didn't know. I had no idea. And we're talking about these are one, two, three miles away, and they could hear the screams. And Eisenhower got so fed up with this in this town called Ordu that he made every man, woman, and child get up and walk with him to the camp. And he made them clean up the bodies. He'd clean up the refuse, and he made them look at what they had allowed to happen. And I know this is sensitive, but I think it's part of the story. Later that night, the mayor and his wife were found having taken their own life. Why? Shame. They knew what was going on, and they could not face it. Not only could they not face it, they were so terrified of the consequences of the truth that they avoided it and allowed this horrible evil to happen. This is obviously a really intense story, but perhaps you know where I'm going with it. Self-perception is everywhere from innocent to horrific in your life. Right? And we use two primary tools to rationalize our self-perception. But it's very important to understand that the hardest concern with self-preservation, not God, is your instinct in your heart is to preserve comfort. Your heart doesn't want to do the hard thing. You have to know that about your heart so that you can guard against self-perception. Two primary tools we use. The first thing we do is we blame shift. This is perhaps the first indicator that you may be self-perceived. At one point, Jesus is just healed a blind man. It's John chapter 9, a really beautiful chapter about this blind man interacting with the Pharisees. The guy has been blind since birth. The blind man is standing with the Pharisees, and he says, nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a blind man. He's kind of testifying about Jesus to this Jewish ruling group. And he says, if this man, Jesus, were not from God, he couldn't do anything. And to this, the Pharisees replied, you were steeped in sin at birth. How dare you lecture us, and they threw him out. They can't handle the truth about Jesus because it threatens their power and their influence. And so they shift the blame. Well, you are a sinner, they say to him. You were steeped in sin at birth. Get out of here. That's their response. And of course, you're like, what? That's absurd. But when we are so afraid of the truth, this is what we do. We blame shift, and your heart is great at it. All of you, all of us, instinctively, we're great at it. And we will get into this. The second thing we do is we do what's called virtue signaling, kind of a fun word. Going out of your way to draw attention to our good character or moral uprightness, often as a way to distract from our moral failure. So let me give you an example. Jesus says to the Pharisees, woe to you, Pharisees and teachers of the law. You're like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of bones. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside you're full of hypocrisy and wickedness. Like, whew. He is just saying, look, you look great on the outside. You call a lot of attention to the outside, but inside, it's disgusting. Right? We virtue signal. Let me give you a story to bring it together. There was a young boy, seven, six years old. And his dad was like, hey, you can play for 30 minutes, and then we're going to do a show. And the boy said, great. And he's like, hey, you can play the piano if you want. His son wanted to play the piano. He's like, but you've got to clean up first, because the boy asked to use the plastic or the paper bags from the grocery store. And so he's like, I want to play with these paper bags. And dad says, that's totally fine, but don't do anything until you clean them up afterwards. Dad comes down 30 minutes later, and the bags are everywhere in shredded mess. Of course, never experiences my kids. They never disobey. They're perfect. They never play with things they're not supposed to. I can't relate. Bags are everywhere, and the son is playing worship music on the piano. And the dad says, what are you doing? The son says, I'm worshiping God. And the dad says this, you have no business praising God while you live in disobedience. See? Yeah, maybe too hard, maybe. What's his point? The boy is like sanctifying his disobedience by like baptizing his action. Does that make sense? He's doing this thing that I guess is good, and he's making it, he's covering up his disobedience. It's called virtue signaling. Yeah, I didn't tell the truth, but I mean, think about the way I serve on Sunday. And you're like, we're not talking about that. I'm very grateful for that. But why didn't you do this? Well, you know, whatever. You draw, I'm not Hitler. Like, that's the ultimate, you know what I mean? Like, the ultimate virtue signaling. You're like, okay, like, is anybody? You know what I mean? Like, if that's our comparison, we're in trouble. And this is what we do. Oftentimes, self-deception comes up when we have to make a choice. And you know the right choice, but you don't want to make the right choice. And so we say, I prayed about it. We say, I prayed about it. We like sanctify our knowing bad decision by like praying over it. And what do I mean? Of course, prayer is very powerful. However, prayer is like cookies. You need the right ingredients. I do love a chocolate chip cookie. I love ice cream more, but that's a whole other sermon. Chocolate chip cookies, there are a lot of essential ingredients. I think there are probably two primary essential ingredients, sugar and someone that can keep an eye on them. Because the ingredients may all be there, but if you over bake it, bad. Two ingredients that are super important, right? I think in prayer, there are two very important ingredients, humility and honest people. I'm going to close with this thought, okay? If you make a cookie and you put salt instead of sugar, terrible. I've done this before. And they kind of look, you can make, that's a real mistake you can make. Like a lot of people that put their sugar and their salt in unidentifiable like cylindrical ceramic bowls look the same. And when you look at sugar and salt, they look very similar. This is a mistake the novice baker can make, right? But if you make this mistake, it has devastating consequences. Your cookies are unedible. There are some times where you're like, oh, you put a little too much, but it's okay. You don't do that. It's hard to fake through a salt cookie. Hey, how is it? It's different. It's more like I can't do it. I can't eat this. It's not a preference thing. It's just bad. I think that escaping from self-perception requires two ingredients. The ironic thing about self-perception is that you don't know if you're diseased for the most part. You can be innocent and good hearted and be self-deceived. It's not always malicious. That makes it terrifying. Because you're like, how do I know? This is how you know. Humble, fair, and honest people. So I think that without humility, prayer is a way just to confirm your own bias. So I think that if you're not truly humble in your prayer, and I'll give an example of what I mean. What happens is that you make a decision. And so that you can feel justified in that decision before God or people, we say a little prayer. Oh God, I pray that you'd help me do the right thing. But we both know you don't mean that. You know what I'm saying? We both honestly want to know what God thinks. You want to preserve your life and your comfort. And so you pray to kind of just, you kind of baptize that thing. But that's not even prayer. That's like a journal entry. That's different. Humility is, you must. And the thing is that I prayed about it, it's like a get-out-of-jail-free card. It's kind of like, I studied it in the Bible. You know, like, oh, I studied it. Well, so have millions of other people and arrived at different places. So I studied that thing. It's not enough. There has to be more. I think a humble prayer looks like this. Psalm 139. Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. That's a really humble prayer. That's like, God, I want to do what's right. I don't know if this decision is right. I know what I want to be right. But I'm not sure what I want is what you want. Pray that you would help me to want what you want. Or at the very least, make it clear what you want. And I'll do it anyway. You know what I'm saying? Sometimes we're like, I'll do it when my heart's there. That's not Christianity. Jesus says all the time, he's like, you're not going to want to do it, but you're going to do it. Oftentimes our actions actually, our heart follows our actions. You choose to obey, and your heart catches up. Because your heart moves pretty slow when it comes to what it wants. But your heart can be changed. Humble prayer is the first key. And secondly, you've got to get people permission to speak into your life. You've got to have people be honest with you. We're a very dishonest culture. Here's what I mean. Is you can say like, hey, how did you, like I could say to someone, hey, what do you think about my kids? And if they know that I can't take their critique, they're going to be like, they're great. I love your kids. But what they really think is, I can't handle it. I'm going crazy. Or, hey, what do you think about my cooking? How honest do you want me to be? Those cookies were filled with salt, yeah. You know, we're not a naturally honest culture. Most people aren't looking for honesty when they say, oh, how was the bed that you slept in last night? It was great. No one wants to hear, like, you need to buy a new one. You know what I mean? Like, what do you think about, how do you feel like I'm doing right now? I feel like you're doing good. But even honest people struggle to be honest with those questions. So if you really want to know what your character is like, what people think about you, you've got to choose who you're going to ask. You can't ask the flatterer. You can't ask the person that, like, doesn't have a backbone. They're very sweet. They're very gentle. They're very kind. But they're not brutally honest. That's probably not the best person. You talk to that person when you're struggling, and that's fine. We need the Barnabas and the turkey. But you also need the Paul or the Jesus, who's just like, you ready for this? You know what I mean? You're like, I don't know. You know what I mean? Like, am I ready for this? You do need that in your life. And sometimes the only way to get it is to give people full permission. Sometimes you've got to tell people, and I feel this in any form of leadership too, in any organization or capacity. If you want people to give you loving critique, you have to open the door hard. You've got to be like, look, I want you to tell me what you really think. Like, I want you to tell me what you're telling your wife on the way home from church. Maybe be a little gentle. Do you hear what I'm saying? Like, with your spouse, with your best friends, with your mentor, that will guard you against self-deception. Make a good choice, pray, and then be like, I want you to tell me the thing that you think I can't take. Like, I can take it. I can take it. But then when they say it, you need to take it. Because if you crumble, they're not going to do it next time. You're like, it's so hard. Like, I thought I could take it, but I can't. You know what I mean? Like, what that will show is that when you ask for it, you don't really mean it. Why? Because you're not willing to take it. That's a lack of humility. Self-deception is a very real thing. I've needed to be guarded against it. I mean, there's so many things that I've had to work through. Even with my tic with Kristen, there are times I wanted to avoid the conversation about it because I was so embarrassed. Socially, it's such an embarrassing, unfortunate thing as a minister. What do you do? I do a lot of public speaking. Bummer. You know what I mean? Like, I do a lot of one-on-one interaction. You know what I mean? It's not like I just work at a desk all day. I'm with people all the time. It's very difficult. I feel like for a long time, I kept acting like I was fine. I totally wasn't fine. I just didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to open up about it. And I didn't want people to tell me how it affected them. So I just never grew because I was never able to take it. We've got to be ready to take it, right? So if you want to love God with all your heart, you can't give in to the self-deception, which means you've got to know yourself. So the action points for you today are one, have a great prayer where you really ask God to expose the parts of your character you are blind to. And specifically ask him to do that through specific people. Think of the person that you're like, ooh, they're going to say it. Talk to that person. Have the conversation with your spouse. Perhaps with your children, if they're old enough to give you a coherent answer. What do you think? How do you feel like I'm doing as a dad? Whoa. I've started to ask that of my son, and the answers are actually pretty enlightened. Think of who that person is and ask the question. Amen? So good to be with you guys. Thanks for listening, for being here. I love you. I love being here. I love this church. I love that you're just like we baptize people, and we do pool parties, and we talk to each other during service. It's just we're hanging out. I love it. And congratulations on the great baptism. I'm so excited for you. This is a beautiful thing. So let's close with a prayer, and then I believe we will be dismissed. You can go get your kids and have a great day. Sounds good? Father God, we love you, and we're just so grateful for you. We're grateful for your provision and your love. Guard us against self-deception, Father. Help us to have the courage to hear, not only to hear what other people have to say, but to say what other people need to hear. And to help us to accept that, because we want to be close to you, because being close to you is more important to us than appearing spiritual or put together. None of that matters. All that matters is you. We love you. Thank you for this church. I pray that you continue to bless the church in incredible ways, God, in every way, in maturity, in fruitfulness. I pray for the children in the church to grow up and to just love you and to have this beautiful vision of you, to see very clearly. I pray for those that even today are coming for the first or second or third time. I pray this will just become home. We love you so much. Amen. You are dismissed. Love you guys. Great to be together. Thank you so much for listening to the Kalamazoo Church of Christ podcast. If you're in the Kalamazoo area, we'd love to get connected. Please go to kalamazoo.church and fill in your information to come to a Sunday service or any other event that we have going on. In any case, you'll be hearing from us next week.