Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Welcome to the Chroma Charge podcast.
[00:00:06] This message is called Stop the Pulpit. I want to get off.
[00:00:12] Anyone ever felt like that?
[00:00:15] Not many of you, or you're just all shy.
[00:00:18] When I produced yet, and some of you remember, back in the day, we used to produce, you know, CDs of our messages that you could buy. I know some of you don't know what they are, but.
[00:00:28] And the COVID I said, I asked the designer, I said, can you design a pulpit with wheels that looks like it's got an exhaust pipe?
[00:00:38] And so that's what I want to talk about, you know, and just to make sure that it fits in with the theme, I thought I should start with Aaron, who had a problem.
[00:00:56] And when the people saw that Moses delayed the Exodus 32. When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, come, make us a God who will go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him. And Aaron said, tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me. Then all the people tore off the gold rings which are in their ears and brought them to Aaron. He took this from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf. And they said, this is your God, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. Now, when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. Aaron made a proclamation and said, tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.
[00:01:44] So the next day, they rose early and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and to drink and rose up to play.
[00:01:53] Then the Lord spoke to Moses, go down at once for your people, whom you are brought up from the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made for themselves a molten calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, this is your God. And, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. The Lord said to Moses, I've seen this people, and behold, they're an obstinate people. Now then let me alone, that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them, and I will make of you a great nation.
[00:02:31] And what have we got? We got Aaron, who is under the pressure of the opinion of his people that causes him to build a golden calf, another God, another idol.
[00:02:48] There's probably a whole other preach that even as I read it, I can see jumping off the page at me of a completely different preach.
[00:02:56] But. But what you have there is a man who, under the pressure of being a priest, ends up, because of the grumbling and the moaning and the criticism of the people, he ends up doing something which I'm sure earlier in his life story he never would have dreamed of.
[00:03:18] And as I, as I observe and continue to observe ministry, and to be honest, not just ministry, but I'm talking to leaders of Levites, so I'm going to stay there.
[00:03:37] This is a very unusual way of life.
[00:03:40] And now here's how I usually describe it as a pastor, because I've struggled at times, if I'm being honest, it fascinates me because of all the careers that I know, the most likely to have a sabbatical is pastors.
[00:03:57] But it's also the most likely that I'm going to have the conversation about having a burnout.
[00:04:03] Anyone else thought that?
[00:04:06] No? Or are you just quiet on a Saturday?
[00:04:09] Are you missing brunch or something?
[00:04:11] Or am I the one that's. It doesn't, it, doesn't that seem strange to you?
[00:04:16] That we have a career that has sabbaticals and we have burnout has been a part of. And that doesn't seem right to me.
[00:04:28] It just doesn't. And so, you know, I've wrestled at different times over this. Why is this? You know, and you know, at times, you know, I might have been a little offensive about it and thought, look, I've done a real job.
[00:04:41] I've done an 80 plus hour a week job being a prison governor, you know, and it wasn't all, you know, fun and games.
[00:04:51] It was tough, challenging.
[00:04:54] So what is it? And I came to this conclusion that being a church leader, minister, pastor, whatever title you want to put on it is not probably at one level the hardest work, but it is the most complex.
[00:05:13] Now, I know some of you work hard, so don't judge me on what I'm saying. I'm just trying to illustrate. There are people out there who work really hard, okay?
[00:05:23] But they don't have the same complexities that you have. So here's by way of an illustration.
[00:05:33] When I ran a prison, I needed my staff to do a few things for me.
[00:05:39] And all I needed was come to work on time, don't be drunk, don't be using drugs, don't break the rules while you're in the prison.
[00:05:49] And that's about it.
[00:05:52] I was not responsible as a leader for their spiritual Life.
[00:05:58] I didn't feel any responsibility for their spiritual life. I didn't feel any responsibility for their sex life.
[00:06:06] What they did after work, how many wives they chose to have, not my problem.
[00:06:12] I didn't feel a responsibility for their finances.
[00:06:15] I didn't feel a responsibility for the way that they conducted their families, etc. Etc.
[00:06:23] But as soon as you step in, particularly, I would say, into church ministry, all of a sudden you have this feeling of, I've got some degree of responsibility for all these dynamics of people's lives of their. Their money, their family, their sex life, their, you know, how much they drink, you know, etc. Now, don't get me wrong, it's. We got to manage our responsibility. But you know what I'm saying, don't you?
[00:06:51] You're shepherding a flock, you're taking care of flock. And so it does, I believe, become more complex.
[00:07:00] I remember it. It's not directly related, but I'll never forget I was deputy governor of Feltham Young Offender Institution. A fun little place, one of the toughest prisons, probably still in the country in many respects. 1500 young offenders. And I was left in charge of it by my.
[00:07:19] A man who became, to be honest, my only real spiritual father before I went out to Bethel.
[00:07:25] And he was a Jew, wonderful man. And Ivor Ward, I loved him to bits. And so I was in charge. He was away. We didn't have all the technology in those days, so when the boss went away, he went away.
[00:07:38] And I was sitting in his office one day, and this guy rushes in and he goes, it's terrible. People are spreading rumors about me. And I don't think you could do what I'm about to tell you as a minister, but it's just an illustration. He comes there, people are spreading rumors about me. They're saying I'm having an affair with such and such a person. And those rumors have got to my wife.
[00:08:01] And I just looked him in the eye and I said, are they true?
[00:08:06] And he goes, yes. I said, get out of my office.
[00:08:10] It's nothing to do with me. It's not my problem.
[00:08:14] It was a lot easier because you can't do that, I don't think. Can you?
[00:08:26] You're not sure.
[00:08:29] So here's the thing. Do you get where I'm coming from?
[00:08:33] Here's what I want to talk about is I want to talk about.
[00:08:36] And it's a phrase that Steve Backlin, my. My good friend out in Beth door and I kind of coined, which was. Is becoming believable because I actually think that, you know, a lot of the stresses and a lot of the strains are really a lot to do with how we take care of our inner man and our lives.
[00:09:02] And once we really take care of those, it helps us. And honestly, the last two or three years, we have been through some ridiculous stuff, sue and I particularly. Three scenarios, two very clear, you know, church scenarios, which I was very closely involved in. Very painful, very, very difficult.
[00:09:24] And then another different scenario, but it was a betrayal, and it was a violation of my privacy.
[00:09:31] And we've come through them. But a lot of coming through them is that you are true to you and that you walk in your own personal trust and integrity. It's a great book. It's one of the best books of. Of its kind. It's called the Speed of Trust.
[00:09:48] It's written by Stephen Covey Jr. His. His dad is seven habits guy. Stephen Covey, Senior. Speed of Trust is a brilliant book. If you read it, you realize I stole half of the stuff.
[00:10:01] But.
[00:10:03] And really, the. The reason I.
[00:10:08] I start with this in terms of, you know, this stop the pulpit, this pressure, this, you know, and there are so many other things that are being thrown at us these days when, you know, when we do stand up here, this is a really dangerous place to be because this thing will make a hypocrite of me.
[00:10:29] Because the reality is, I mean, we're all also caught, aren't we? We're caught between. Like when Gemma Hunt came and spoke to us. Do you ever know who Gemma Hunt is?
[00:10:39] You know, she comes and speak to us. She's a very, very successful woman, and she says, look, you cannot escape the fact that there is a degree of performing in what you do as a preacher.
[00:10:52] It's not a performance.
[00:10:54] But if I stand up here and I look bad, and I'm a really bad speaker, and, you know, I don't dress well, I don't take care of myself.
[00:11:04] You know, then I am not going to communicate that which the Lord has given me to communicate. So I need to learn to perform, but it mustn't be a performance.
[00:11:15] I need to be good at what I do. In other words, does that make sense?
[00:11:19] And so, you know, this thing will make a hypocrite out of me. We're also living with not just the local, you know, typically in the past, a pastor who had taken care of his flock.
[00:11:32] He was aware of the pain and the bad news in his flock.
[00:11:36] We're now aware of the pain and bad news in the world.
[00:11:41] The sheer weight of Pain.
[00:11:45] We're also exposed to so much comparison, so many images of how everyone else is doing it better than us.
[00:11:56] And that weight is piling on and piling on.
[00:12:03] I personally, one of my theories, it's only a theory. There's probably some clinical psychologists and geniuses in here who would know more or tell me I'm completely wrong.
[00:12:13] But one of my theories is that one of the biggest problems in our world today, which is causing so much anxiety, depression and breakdown is double mindedness.
[00:12:23] And this platform will cause that.
[00:12:27] And if I say something up here that I don't live, I live in double mindedness. And a double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
[00:12:37] So the place I try and start talking about this is self trust.
[00:12:46] Do you trust you?
[00:12:50] I love the Velveteen Rabbit. All the strengthened people got a copy of Velveteen Rabbit. It's children's book. If you've never read Velveteen Rabbit, buy it, find a child, read it to them, and then realize it's for you.
[00:13:03] It's the most incredible page in the book where it talks about what it looks like to become real.
[00:13:10] You know, it says, you know, your limbs get a bit wobbly, you, your hair falls out, your eyes, you know, because it's about a rabbit, a toy rabbit. And of course the toy rabbit becomes real. And you know, being real, see, being real is really about self trust.
[00:13:31] Do you trust you?
[00:13:33] Now, I don't know whether the context of the quote I'm about to give you is a good context or not. I just like the quote, okay?
[00:13:40] But Shakespeare said, to thine own self be true.
[00:13:44] Now somebody might tell me the context of that was something else going on. I understand that.
[00:13:49] But to thine own self be true. Can you be true to your own self? Are you true to you?
[00:13:59] I'm not saying it's everybody, but I do think that some insomnia is caused by not being true to yourself.
[00:14:07] The reason being that in the night, sometimes the brain is trying to make up for the work that you should have done during the day.
[00:14:17] Because during the day you should be walking clean and true to yourself. And if you don't walk true to yourself in the night, you might find your brain's waking you up because you need to do some work on yourself.
[00:14:31] Matthew 16:26.
[00:14:33] What will a man be profited if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? In other words, he's not true to himself.
[00:14:42] He's gained everything, but he's not true to him.
[00:14:46] And I watch many successful people that are torn apart they look incredibly successful but their lives are torn apart.
[00:14:59] And I've already said it, you know, this can make a hypocrite of you.
[00:15:04] And the word hypocrite comes from the word actor.
[00:15:07] And Jesus had some very clear things to say.
[00:15:11] You white walled sepulchers, you're dead on the inside. You look very pretty on the outside, but you're dead on the inside.
[00:15:21] There's hypocrisy.
[00:15:24] Jesus is very clear about it.
[00:15:29] I don't know about you, but I'll go into an environment, I've had it very recently actually go into an environment and you meet with somebody and you walk away and you go, I can't put my finger on it.
[00:15:44] Anyone ever done that?
[00:15:46] Something doesn't add up with that person, I can't put my finger on it.
[00:15:51] And I'll pretty much guarantee that what you're identifying is a problem that that person has between what they say and what they do or what they say their motives are and what their motives are. And it will be that thing that you are walking away.
[00:16:09] And that in many respects is really one of the big keys that we all need to walk in in our lives.
[00:16:18] That when you meet me, you meet an integrous me, you don't walk away and go, something about Paul. I can't put my finger on it, but it will usually be a gap between what I say and what I do. In other words, I'm not believable, I'm not trustworthy.
[00:16:42] Because you're not sure whether you can run with me because you've got a feeling that I say one thing and I do another thing and I'm walking in that place.
[00:16:55] And one of the things that I believe is that as leaders we need to narrow that gap.
[00:17:02] Because this particular area of double mindedness amongst all the other pressures that we face that can contribute to burnout, anxiety, depression, et cetera, et cetera, and all of the pressures that we've got on us and the pressure that Aaron had on him that caused him to end up building another God. Which is a joke, isn't it?
[00:17:24] Which some of what I'm watching in the world today is a joke.
[00:17:28] And leaders under the pressure of public opinion and other people's opinions are building false gods in their ministry under the pressure of public opinion. And some of it's a joke, it's ridiculous, it's laughable.
[00:17:45] And the tragedy is that the best of people can end up in that place.
[00:17:51] So let me start with narrowing the gap between what you say and what you do.
[00:18:00] I've already quoted this to somebody, but there's a story in the Speed of Trust about Gandhi. And Gandhi spoke and came and spoke to the House of Commons. He spoke for an hour and a half, no notes.
[00:18:15] Man came up to him at the end and said, how did you do that?
[00:18:18] You spoke for an hour and a half with no notes. And he said, oh, that's very straightforward.
[00:18:25] You see, what I say, what I think and what I do are all the same thing.
[00:18:32] So I don't need notes.
[00:18:36] It's integrity, complete integrity with what he says, what he does and what he thinks.
[00:18:48] We need that.
[00:18:50] We really need that.
[00:18:53] Sometimes it might even have been my notes last night. Sometimes I think that we can find ourselves preparing notes that aren't who we are.
[00:19:06] I think Steve's already mentioned this in a humorous way, but I'll mention it in a more serious way. Don't ask AI to prepare your preach, because the last time I checked, AI doesn't have the Holy Spirit.
[00:19:22] And I'm very serious.
[00:19:27] There's a beautiful story. It's one of my favorite stories, but out of the book is Andy Roddick. Where's the tennis fans?
[00:19:39] I forget the date. Let me find the date.
[00:19:42] 2005, Tennis match in Rome.
[00:19:47] Match point.
[00:19:49] Match.
[00:19:54] Andy Roddick is receiving and the ball's called out.
[00:20:03] And Andy Roddick says, no, the ball wasn't out, was in.
[00:20:07] Told the umpire the ball was in.
[00:20:09] It was match point.
[00:20:11] He forfeited. Not just that point, he forfeited the match, the final, because Andy Roddick would rather sit in the dressing room and have lost and done what's right than won and done what's wrong.
[00:20:30] It's a stunning example of a man on the stage all before all the Hawkeyes and all that stuff.
[00:20:40] And we lost the line judges this year. What's up with that? Wimbledon.
[00:20:45] It just doesn't look right.
[00:20:51] It's about integrity.
[00:20:53] See, Roddick knew the truth.
[00:20:56] See, integrity is about being, is congruency. It was Gandhi's congruency.
[00:21:03] What he says, what he does, what he thinks, they're all the same.
[00:21:11] It's about humility.
[00:21:14] It's about doing what's right rather than being right.
[00:21:20] And it takes courage.
[00:21:23] But we need to learn to do this.
[00:21:30] See?
[00:21:32] How do you.
[00:21:35] How do you live in integrity?
[00:21:46] One of the things I try really hard to do is to walk in integrity.
[00:21:54] It means I have nothing to hide.
[00:21:58] I work really hard on it.
[00:22:00] Can you give me your phone?
[00:22:04] You take mine.
[00:22:06] Can you text you on my phone?
[00:22:12] The phone's Locked. Sue's phone. My phone's locked.
[00:22:19] I'm now in Sue's phone. She's in my phone.
[00:22:25] I'm not going to ask you to put your hand up, but if you don't do that with your wife, I want to challenge you.
[00:22:34] It's called integrity.
[00:22:36] I have nothing to hide.
[00:22:39] Well, I actually have one thing to hide. The amount of money I'm going to spend on her birthday present.
[00:22:52] You see, if I don't live like that, and I'm constantly churning something over inside myself, I'm trying to walk in integrity. I've given her permission. She can tell me anything she likes about me.
[00:23:09] She'll tell me what was wrong with this. Preach.
[00:23:14] She'll say, that illustration is not a very good one.
[00:23:18] She'll tell me that.
[00:23:20] Sometimes I say, well, I thought it was okay. Yeah, just improve it a little bit.
[00:23:25] She doesn't say it like that. We say it. What I'm trying to say is if. If I put on a show here, but I don't live it.
[00:23:37] I know this is kind of personal, but I want to really encourage you. We got to live like this.
[00:23:42] There is nothing on my phone that she can't look at.
[00:23:46] Nothing.
[00:23:49] I've developed some other things. If I have somebody that is behaving towards me like a spiritual daughter, before I will in any way step into a closer relationship, I will say to them, you need to be a daughter. To my wife, I have spiritual sons. I don't have very many really close spiritual sons. To be honest, probably three.
[00:24:18] My sons know them.
[00:24:21] Why is that important? Because when I talk about spiritual sons, I don't want my sons to feel second to the spiritual sons. They need to know them.
[00:24:31] Some of them have been at family birthdays in restaurants and just treated as one of the kids. You know, in fact, sue the other day texted one of them and said, wrong son.
[00:24:43] Literally. That's what she said. She texted the spiritual son and she put wrong son.
[00:24:48] All I'm just trying to do is illustrate.
[00:24:51] What we try and do is empower each other to live in integrity.
[00:24:56] Now, my wife. I don't need the kind of. I know some denominations have had that, you know, a man should never be in a car on his own with a woman. I get that.
[00:25:06] But you only need that control if you have an absence of integrity in your relationship.
[00:25:12] Because actually, it doesn't make any sense for me not to sometimes give a person of the opposite sex a lift in my car.
[00:25:21] But if I walk, does this make sense?
[00:25:24] Like, do you trust you do or you know, have you got that kind of a connection and relationship?
[00:25:34] Can your wife unlock your phone?
[00:25:37] Not out of control, you know, And I actually know it one way round. I've met people and it's like, yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, I can unlock my wife's phone.
[00:25:54] They don't work.
[00:25:57] It doesn't work.
[00:25:59] It's not out of control. It's out of submission. It's out of love.
[00:26:05] It's out of the genuine fear, I would never hurt her.
[00:26:11] I don't want to. I want to live that way.
[00:26:14] It's integrity. It's walking in genuine, honest integrity. And we're priests.
[00:26:20] Steve told us last night, remember, we're priests.
[00:26:25] Only two of you muttered priests of the most high God.
[00:26:29] We've been given the great assignment of representing God before the people and representing the people to God.
[00:26:38] And if we're doing that and we're messed up and we're not walking in integrity.
[00:26:44] The weird thing is that sometimes God still blesses broken priests.
[00:26:49] I haven't quite worked it out yet. I've chatted to him about it, questioned some situations, and he hasn't given me a very good answer.
[00:26:58] But all I know is, as for me and my household, I want to walk in that place because all of this other stuff, you see, if I've not got that basic integrity in place, the pain, the bad news, the comparison, all of these other things are loading on me. The weight that I'm carrying of my people is loading on me and it's loading on a broken vessel, and that's when it cracks.
[00:27:29] And we need to learn integrity. We need to narrow the gap, you see?
[00:27:36] Do you trust you?
[00:27:38] When was the last time you went to the Trust Gymnasium and checked out something? Now, here's a personal story. And I went to Reinhard Bonnke School of evangelism in September 2012.
[00:27:55] I don't watch pornography. I never have watched pornography. But I walked into a hotel room and I pulled the plug out of the tv.
[00:28:03] I just walked in, I said, I will not put that on for a week.
[00:28:08] I've come to this school of evangelism. I've come to Bonnke School. I'm a privileged man. I've been sent here.
[00:28:15] I pulled the plug. I'm not having no distractions all week. Now, what would my distractions be? They would be sport and the news.
[00:28:23] That's what I would if I didn't watch it.
[00:28:26] I pulled the plug out and I made a commitment to me.
[00:28:30] I am not plugging it back in. And I Didn't.
[00:28:34] Why am I telling you that? Because it helped me. I can trust me.
[00:28:44] And we need to make sure that we can trust ourselves. I would encourage every one of you set yourself a personal trust assignment in an area of your life. It doesn't have to be anything necessarily painful, just some discipline.
[00:28:59] One of my personal problems in. Problems, maybe wrong word. My whole life feels like it's been shift work and travel and lack of routine.
[00:29:10] And I've made it an excuse that I don't have routines because my life doesn't allow routines. And the last few months, with the help of sue, you know, I had a conversation with her, she said, well, do this every morning. So now if I can, if it's not raining and you know, it makes sense, I get up and I go for a four mile walk, prayer walk every morning. Now Steve does this. He has a dog. I haven't worked out, I haven't got the dog, so I do it without a dog.
[00:29:38] Now I'm not saying that for everybody, but for me it just became something. I need to deal with this because I'm making excuses and what I need to do is I need to develop disciplines and I need to learn to trust me.
[00:29:52] And you see, if I fail, which, you know, I haven't these last two days, I haven't done it. It doesn't quite work out here for me very easily, but it doesn't. I'm not saying, oh, I'm a failure. I just know that I can trust me because I'll pick it back up on Monday morning.
[00:30:08] So I'd encourage you take a trust exercise.
[00:30:12] I come across people and they, you know, it's funny, it almost feels like their moral fall or their crisis suddenly came from nowhere. It probably doesn't come from nowhere. It comes because they haven't built up self trust.
[00:30:26] And so I would just challenge you to work on it, to work self trust.
[00:30:36] How well you trust you.
[00:30:38] Do you make decisions that are about doing what's right, not being right?
[00:30:46] Do you follow through with the integrity?
[00:30:49] I teach a thing about leading me.
[00:30:54] See, if I came and worked for Steve, which he has tried to get us to move to Leicester, but we haven't, we got two grandsons and I'd be a hypocrite to my grandsons, really. I mean, it wasn't, I forget how old they were. Was not that long ago, was it, when one of them in the car said to us, shouldn't family live in the same country? Or something like that. Didn't he say, I was like, ah, stank the heart, you know, kind of thing.
[00:31:21] But if I came and worked for Steve up here, I'm. I'm really easy to lead, honestly, I'm easy to lead if he said, paul, I want you to give four hours a week to stacking chairs in the auditorium as part of your job. I'll stack chairs for four hours a week.
[00:31:38] I'm not being funny. It doesn't matter to me.
[00:31:42] I'm here to serve. I'm easy to lead.
[00:31:48] But leading me by me, that's the challenge.
[00:31:55] How easy is it for you to lead? You like, are you predictable or unpredictable?
[00:32:03] Because if I was working with Steve and I become unpredictable, he's going to challenge me. He'll get me back into line. But if you're unpredictable to you, do you bring you back into line?
[00:32:16] Is this too painful? Am I going too?
[00:32:19] You're priests. You're representing God before the people and the people before God.
[00:32:27] See, there are four things about leading me that I teach about. Is this number one. Do you believe trust, rely on your story, the sovereign work of God through your life. Do you trust it that you can lean on it? Like Jacob's staff, He leant on his staff. Can you lean on your story with God, not someone else's. Yours.
[00:32:53] It's what Steve was talking about last night with the new word in the English language, which he brought to our attention.
[00:32:59] The Littlewigs.
[00:33:04] Probably going to become a children's book series, I think.
[00:33:08] But can you lean on your story?
[00:33:16] Lean on the story of working your way up through the ranks, of casting out little demons to bigger demons.
[00:33:28] Do you believe your story?
[00:33:30] Because when you believe trust, rely on your story, warts and all.
[00:33:37] It's where your authority comes from.
[00:33:40] It's literally where your authority comes from. Sue and I minister. Infertility is one of the things we minister. We minister together and we see tons of breakthrough. We have authority because she was healed of infertility.
[00:33:52] We believe our story, we lean on our story, we trust our story.
[00:33:59] But you know you.
[00:34:00] How well do you know? You see, if I came and worked for Steve and maybe a church in town came along and they needed some help with a strategic plan, he would know to send me in, but actually I know to send me in because I know me.
[00:34:17] When you know you, it's where your confidence comes from.
[00:34:24] See, leading you is a key.
[00:34:26] It's an absolute key.
[00:34:29] How on earth can you expect to lead other people if you can't lead yourself?
[00:34:34] You don't trust yourself. You don't Believe your story. Leading me, the third leadership is managing me.
[00:34:45] I talk about the fivefold body, soul, spirit, wallet, relationship.
[00:34:52] It's the real fivefold. If Paul had worked it out, he'd have said it.
[00:34:57] In other words, it's my body, my soul, my spirit, my wallet and my relationships.
[00:35:02] If Steve invites me up here to speak on one of those and it's evident to all that I don't live it, I have no integrity, why would you listen to what I have to say?
[00:35:16] I mean, honestly, you know, there are different reasons why people are overweight. So I don't hear a judgment in what I'm about to say. But if I sat up here, 300 pounds weight or whatever, that would be in stone. I lived in America too long, but I'm seriously overweight and I sit up here on a panel about physical health and fitness, I would expect you all to walk out because there's no integrity, because I'm not doing what I'm saying I'm doing.
[00:35:50] I use that because it's an obvious example. But it'd be the same with money.
[00:35:54] It's fascinating, isn't it? A number of people, and I know one person in the last year, one of his primary teaching subjects is money.
[00:36:05] But he was walking in brokenness, in his management of his personal finances and his world crashed.
[00:36:15] Believing my story is where my authority comes from. Knowing me is where my confidence comes from, managing me is where my integrity comes from. And knowing where I'm going, having a vision for my life is where my followers come from.
[00:36:33] See, the Christ stopped the pulpit. I want to get off. It's like, you know, Aaron really sort of cried out to God and said, stop the pulpit. They're moaning, they're complaining. He should have stopped and listened. What do you have to say? God?
[00:36:49] He would have told him what to do, but he didn't.
[00:36:53] And he ends up on that reckless journey. And so many people do that because instead of addressing themselves and managing themselves and knowing themselves and leading themselves and believing their story, they end up because of the pressure of life and the pressure of ministry and double mindedness and end up going down paths that they never would have dreamed they would have gone down five, 10 years before or even five weeks before.
[00:37:31] We need a commitment to ourselves.
[00:37:35] I was in Toronto. We were very privileged to go there, 2011. I always joke that it took us 17 years to get there. We heard the sound.
[00:37:45] Took us 17 years to get to Toronto.
[00:37:48] Although the only thing that's different was when I got there, I was the opening Night speaker in their Catch the Fire conference, which I still think is funny, and just super privileged to be there. And I was. I preached my. I just published my first book, what on Earth Is Glory? And I. I preached on it the opening night. And I was good. I was. I was happy with what I preached. And I laid down on the floor by the. By the side of the stage, and I was just, you know, in Toronto, doing what you do, lying on carpet, you know, and I said, God, tomorrow you have me speaking. This is Toronto on the gift of administration.
[00:38:35] And I said, are you sure about this? This is Toronto.
[00:38:40] You sure that's what you want me to preach?
[00:38:44] And it's one of those moments when I really did have the strongest sense of God. He said, you know what?
[00:38:49] If I'd wanted someone else's bag, I'd have invited someone else to come.
[00:38:55] You better embrace your bag, your bag of ministry.
[00:39:01] I stood up that Saturday morning in Toronto and I preached drunk on the gift of administration. There's a video.
[00:39:09] I was holding the pulpit.
[00:39:13] It was just a lesson. Embrace your bag, Manwaring.
[00:39:20] I always use this illustration. Sometimes it goes wrong, and sue says, I said it wrong. But my wife has never lost her handbag, and 99% she knows exactly what's in it.
[00:39:39] Now, sometimes it requires the iPhone light to come on and look in the darkest corners of her handbag to find whatever it is she's looking for.
[00:39:49] What's the point?
[00:39:51] If you view the bag of your ministry like my wife views her handbag, you'll never lose it and you'll know what's in it.
[00:40:02] That was a better point than that response, like, do you know what's in your bag?
[00:40:10] Do you know what you're carrying?
[00:40:15] It's really important.
[00:40:19] It's how we learn to walk in integrity, how we learn to walk in confidence, how we learn to walk in authority, how we have people following us.
[00:40:31] We did a. We were at a wedding recently, and we'd been asked to do. Well, I actually was doing the.
[00:40:39] I did the message, which is great fun. It was a real, real, real, real, real privilege beyond that, such a privilege.
[00:40:46] And we were in St. Paul's Hammersmith, and.
[00:40:49] Curious story. You know, my dad was baptized in that church a hundred years ago, so you get how it makes you feel.
[00:40:57] And we were doing the prayers afterwards, weren't we? They'd asked us to do the prayers, and I think there were five or six of us doing the prayers. And sue came and stood next to me, and the first couple had, like, notes on their phones, you know?
[00:41:11] And sue nudged me and she goes, I don't have any notes.
[00:41:16] And I just said, you're the mother.
[00:41:19] Like, she's not literally, but she is the mother.
[00:41:23] You are the mother.
[00:41:25] I tell you, I know that that couple remember her prayer because she knew who she was.
[00:41:32] She didn't prepare nice words for them.
[00:41:36] She opened her heart for the couple.
[00:41:38] I'm your mum.
[00:41:41] And she gave a mother's blessing.
[00:41:43] What's in your bag?
[00:41:45] Don't try and be someone else. Don't try and compare what's in your bag.
[00:41:56] You know, when it comes to growing in this, you need a commitment to yourself.
[00:42:03] But also one of the best things you can learn to do is to stand for something.
[00:42:12] Find something to stand for.
[00:42:15] We all need it. It helps us see if I'm all over the map and you don't know what I'm standing for, I'm not held to anything.
[00:42:29] I need to be held to something. I need to be held. If I say something about what I believe, I need to be held to that. What are you standing for?
[00:42:38] What is a place where you have put the stake in the ground and saying, I'm standing for that?
[00:42:47] I was known in one particular prison. I gained a reputation that I was known for, and it's odd in a prison, but I was known for justice, that I would speak against injustice in the prison.
[00:43:02] I got known for it because I campaigned for prisoners.
[00:43:05] I was a prison governor.
[00:43:08] If it was wrong, it was wrong, and I was going to deal with it. There was a prisoner situation. It was really weird situation.
[00:43:15] He was imprisoned in England.
[00:43:18] He was from Gibraltar and he was in prison. He'd been extradited from Gibraltar for trafficking tobacco on the high seas.
[00:43:27] Like, we have some crazy laws, okay. And the language is weird. All right, so he's sorry. Pirating piracy of tobacco on the high seas. That was what it was called. And he was released.
[00:43:40] He was extradited.
[00:43:43] He has no passport.
[00:43:47] He has no money.
[00:43:48] He's going to be released.
[00:43:51] Okay.
[00:43:52] And I said, well, how are we getting him home?
[00:43:58] I don't know. You just open the door and let him out. I said, no, I'm not doing that. I refuse.
[00:44:05] That's wrong.
[00:44:06] We chose to extradite him. We should get him home.
[00:44:10] I got that man home on a piece of headed prison notepaper with a photograph and my signature, and I wrote it to whoever it was in Gibraltar, and I called an airline company and I got him on a plane, free only because it was wrong.
[00:44:30] And I got A reputation. I'd walk into the admin office and they, and they'd like almost go, hey, we got a case for you. Like, can you take care of this? This seems like something's wrong. What are you standing for? What are you known for standing for?
[00:44:42] Because it will stretch you, it will flex your integrity muscles and then the integrity gap. Do I do what I say? But then there's the motive gap.
[00:45:00] Are the things that I say are my motives, my real motives.
[00:45:06] It's really important that we have this because this place can make me a manipulator of people.
[00:45:17] I don't want that.
[00:45:19] I'm a priest.
[00:45:20] I'm representing you to him and him to you, give or take.
[00:45:26] So what are my motives?
[00:45:30] What I want for you.
[00:45:33] Now, first of all, I need to examine my self motives.
[00:45:39] What are my motives?
[00:45:41] What are my motives being here? What are my motives in any meeting, any situation?
[00:45:49] You know, somebody asked to speak to me, maybe they're upset with me, maybe I've said something I don't quite agree with. What's my motives to prove that I'm right or to hear what they have to say.
[00:46:03] It's relatively simple. Now I can tell you, I battle with being right because I want to be right.
[00:46:08] You can check, she'll tell you, she'll text you on my phone if you like, but check your motives.
[00:46:23] See, just in the same way as you can grow the self trust muscle by giving yourself some exercises to learn to build trust. Because trust in your organization is self trust is first, and then secondly it becomes relational trust. But it's self trust. First it goes to relational trust and then it actually goes to organizational trust.
[00:46:47] And if you want to impact society, you've got to go through the stages of self trust, relational trust, organizational trust, before you step out into society and you get the trust of the region, of the city that you want to influence.
[00:47:01] And you can flex and train your trust muscles, but you can also narrow the gap between your motive, what you say your motive is, what your real motive is.
[00:47:13] And one of the ways to make sure that you stick to that is to declare up front what your motives are. If I sit down with somebody now, it happened here yesterday, two young people that will probably be lifelong friends because we had such a great conversation, they didn't like something I said. So we went and had a conversation and it was a little bit. We didn't have a ton of time, but I hope that they felt heard by me and that I listened and that I used that to learn to grow and because I want to make sure I narrow the gap and they're thanking me for having a conversation. It's like I would be a hypocrite if I didn't have a conversation with you.
[00:47:51] I don't know any other way to live. So declare your motives up front when you meeting with somebody because then it helps you to stay accountable for that meeting. Don't think about it right at the end and realize you spent 59 minutes of an hour long meeting trying to prove that you were right.
[00:48:08] But if you start the meeting off by saying, hey, I really want to hear what you have to say, I want to understand where you're coming from, then if you say that up front, you're more likely to have a meeting that has an agenda of you listening to them than you have a meeting that you're controlling and they're listening to you declare your motive up front. But this is the one that I really, really love so much and that is that if we create a culture of abundance, there's not a problem.
[00:48:38] Because most situations that we step into feel like they're a fight over resources.
[00:48:46] But if we believe in abundance, there's enough for all of us.
[00:48:50] It's the classic example. You know, if another minister comes to Leicester to plant a church, it can be very easy to go, oh, someone else decide they're going to plant a church in Leicester? Well, I don't know how many. 300,000 people I think it is in Leicester. 300,000 people in Leicester, there's only 1500 here.
[00:49:08] Like there's room for another church.
[00:49:12] And choosing abundance will solve lots of problems. So if the motive is no, I've got to protect my flock, I'm going to be the best, the biggest church in Leicester. No one else is going to come here, then you don't choose abundance. But if you choose abundance, then you'll find that there's another church that comes here and that church might grow and you might grow and together you'll grow in relationship and you'll change a city. But because you chose abundance, checking our motives, checking the why we do things, because there definitely are enough souls in your city for another church.
[00:49:52] Trust you, trust you.
[00:49:55] Have you got a gap in trusting you?
[00:50:00] Are you exercising trust? Are you walking integrity? You walk in integrity with the person closest to you in life. If you're married, that's your spouse.
[00:50:14] What are your motives in what you do?
[00:50:18] Can people taste something wrong when they come around you?
[00:50:25] What do people say about you? What's your reputation? What Are you known for. What do you stand for?
[00:50:37] What I believe we need to do is, as we grow in there, what will happen is we will learn how to restore trust with other people around us.
[00:50:49] It's one of the things we really need in our world today.
[00:50:53] There's so many places of broken trust.
[00:50:58] Sue and I, we have walked through some painful situations, and there's undoubtedly some people that don't trust us as a result of three situations, broken relationships. I'd love the opportunity to restore trust with them.
[00:51:14] It's really hard to not send emails and say, hey, can we sort something out? But so far, that hasn't felt like it's the thing to do, but to believe that it is possible to restore trust, to rebuild trust with people where our relationships are broken.
[00:51:32] The book the Speed of Trust tells just a beautiful story.
[00:51:37] It's the story of Jefferson and Adams, and they were very, very close allies. They were central figures in the American Revolution, worked side by side on writing the Declaration of Independence.
[00:51:49] But as the years went by, politics divided them, and they found themselves on opposite sides of, really the first rift of Democrats and Republicans, with Adams aligning with the Federalists. And it became awful and ugly.
[00:52:08] And late in life, something happened, they say. At the encouragement of A mutual friend, Dr. Benjamin Rush Adams reached out with a letter to Jefferson. Jefferson replied warmly. A correspondence began, an exchange of a dozen letters over the last 14 years of their lives.
[00:52:26] And they said, we didn't agree on everything. What we discovered beneath the political divide, a friendship that should never have been broken.
[00:52:38] And, you know, their story is unusual because I actually think one of the best things about the history of America is that in the early days, if you were. If you ran for president, like if I ran for president against Steve. Yeah.
[00:52:53] And I won. He became my vice president.
[00:52:57] Fascinating.
[00:53:00] That broke down.
[00:53:02] The reason I love this story is because it gives me hope that the most fractured relationships can be restored.
[00:53:09] But the foundation must be that you trust you.
[00:53:14] And that's really what I want to encourage you in and encourage you to spend some time thinking about yourself.
[00:53:24] You're a priest.
[00:53:27] How do you react to people?
[00:53:29] How do you react to the pressures of ministry?
[00:53:33] How do you respond to the great court of public opinion that's thrown at you all the time?
[00:53:41] How do you respond to the pressures that people put on you in their lives, their very complex lives that you have a sense of responsibility for because you're their priest?
[00:53:57] Are there ways in which you react that you'd like to change?
[00:54:02] Are there areas of your life where you need to grow in trust.
[00:54:07] See, if you say you're going to do something, do you do it?
[00:54:14] Or do you do it for a couple of days and then it drops off the page?
[00:54:19] I believe what I'm giving you are some keys.
[00:54:22] Some keys to stay healthy, to stay well, to walk clean before God and man.
[00:54:31] I think they're relatively simple, but I believe we need them.
[00:54:36] And trust is such a core of our faith, isn't it?
[00:54:52] As is believing.
[00:54:58] It's what it's all about, isn't it?
[00:55:00] Trust in the Lord, your God, with all your heart.
[00:55:03] Trust.
[00:55:05] And we're known as believers, aren't we?
[00:55:09] And yet we probably wrestle more with believing than anything else.
[00:55:14] And if you throw in faith, we struggle with that as well.
[00:55:19] Thanks for listening to the Cromer Church Podcast. If you enjoyed this message, you can like and subscribe. You can also join us in person or online every Sunday at Cromer Church. For more information about us, including our ministries, events, worship and how to donate, visit our website at Crema Church.
