“And if you’re
not willing to get there, you’re always going to live at a level that’s real
shallow because it’s intimacy that ‘opens’ you.
“David, when he was confessing his
sin, said, ‘Behold,
thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou
shalt make me to know wisdom.’
“Paul writes in
Colossians, ‘Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man
with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge
after the image of him that created him.'
“Give your loved ones permission to tell you the truth no matter what. You teach each other to lie when you identify areas that when you tell the truth, you get whacked.
“If you’ve taught
someone to lie to you because they know there are areas where they can’t tell
you the truth because of fear of punishment. . . . I don’t just mean physical;
I mean psychological punishment; the shame, the rejection, the demeaning, the
ridicule, the anger. They’d rather not tell you the truth, and then brood over
it, than be open to you because of the reaction.
“Tell yourself,
‘It’s more important for me to minister to them than it is to be ministered
to.’ Grace allows acceptance; it’s the only thing that does. With performance
systems you’re always going to fail.
*****
“There are four
negative interactions that will poison your relationship if you let them run
rampant. I call them the Four Horsemen in reference to the Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse who, in Revelation 6, go out and bring destruction in the earth.
“I can list them
for you because they’re so common. It has nothing to do with anything unique
about you. They’re common to your old sin nature and they’re typical strategies
that NEVER work. They destroy; they don’t build up. And yet they are a part of
our arsenal; almost instinctively by nature because our ‘taker rule’ expresses
itself with them.
“They are: 1.)
Selfish demands. 2.) Disrespectful judgments. 3.) Angry outbursts and 4.)
Independent behavior. You’ll see them in any person; any Believer who’s in
reversion.
“They’ll be
making selfish demands. They want it their way. When they don’t get it, they
make disrespectful judgments, blaming someone else. It will escalate into
anger. And then it will seemingly resolve itself. It doesn’t resolve itself,
but it brings a modicum of peace and withdrawal.
“Instead of
searching for mutually acceptable solutions, abuse wants to impose a solution
to the other person’s disadvantage so we can have our advantage. And, friend,
the only issue there is control. You just want to be in control—behavior,
attitudes, opinions.
“Again, a
perpetrator rarely acknowledges it. You hear all kind of excuses, all kind of
justifications. But when you hear them, something that’s justifying one of
those Four Horsemen—your ‘taker’ self starts talking you into believing that
you have a right for it, you’re looking out for the interest of the other. You
think, ‘Really they’re to blame anyway; I’m innocent.’
“If you’re the
other person, just don’t believe that stuff. Just say, ‘By faith, I know that
ain’t true!’ and don’t buy into them.
“Put off selfish
demands. I mean, who wants to live with a dictator anyway?! Bossing you
around?! Here’s a definition: ‘Commanding someone else to do things that would
benefit you at their expense with the implied threat of punishment if refused.’
Do you do that?
*****
“As a way to
solve problems, selfish demands sure make sense to your ‘taker rule.’ And if
your (friend or loved one) is in ‘the giver mode,’ you know what they’re going
to do? They’ll reward you because their rule is, ‘Make you happy even if it
makes me unhappy.’
“So if you’re in
‘taker mode’ and the other one’s in ‘giver mode,’ WHEW! You’re going to get what
you want so demands look like they work. That’s WHY they seem to work so often!
And they’ll work often enough that they’ll become a habit. And it’s a habit
that’s almost impossible to break.
“So think about
how do you ask others for favors? Do you just tell the other what you want them
to do? Do you just order them? ‘You should do this!’ or do you say, ‘Could you
do that?’ See the difference between ‘should’ and ‘could’? You’re just changing
one word in your vocabulary. You think about how you do it.
******
“The instinct of
making demands when you’re frustrated, and the habit of making demands even when
you’re not frustrated, makes them real difficult to break. Now if your (friend
or loved one) is in the ‘giver mode’. . . but what happens if they’re in the ‘taker
mode’? Whoa! World War VI breaks out because your (loved one) isn’t ready to
quit.
“They say, ‘You
want what you want; I want what I want,’ and you go to war. But you know the
fight that results won’t stop your ‘taker mode’ from making demands the next
time. Why? Because your ‘taker mode’ lives by the rule, ‘I need to be happy,
and if I’m not happy, make (the other person) make me happy,’ and you take
whatever you need to take to be happy.
“So if I got to
fight someone else’s ‘taker mode,’ well, then, ‘I just need to be a better
fighter than they are,’ so I develop skills—not at solving problems, but at
winning wars. You think that’s gonna work?! When it comes to fairness, you can
never trust your ‘taker mode,’ so what do you trust?
******
“I suggest that
in Philippians 2 there’s what I call a ‘Grace Policy of Joint Agreement.’ I’m
going to tell you, you need rules to force yourself into confronting these
things and making choices.
“Faith is an
action you take out of a positive volition. It’s a positive choice and there’s
time in your life when you need to have situations that force you to make
choices so that when you come to that, you’ve caught yourself; you’ve checked
yourself.
“The habits
aren’t just mindlessly flowing through your life. ‘Boom, here’s a choice!’ and
you can consciously bring yourself back under control. It’s called ‘a belt of
truth.’ That girdle of truth Paul talks about where you take truth…the
soldier’s robe would flow out but he put that belt on and got it all under
control. But you can’t just carry the belt; you got to put it on and cinch it
up.
“Philippians 2
says, ‘Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of
mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his
own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in
you, which was also in Christ Jesus.’ WHOAH!
“Proverbs 13:10
says, ‘Only by pride cometh contention: but with the well advised is wisdom.’
So don’t let anything be done by strife or vain glory just to get your way.
That is lowliness of mind.
*****
“Where’s your
mind work? In your emotions or . . . ? What are you doing? You’re esteeming.
You’re developing a value system that tells you how you think and how you make
decisions. And what is it? ‘I’m going to esteem others better than myself.’ Now
does that sound like the taker or the giver? Who is it really? It’s the new
creature!
“But see how
close the giver can be to that? But when the giver does it, why is the giver
doing it? So he can feel good about doing good? When the new man does it, why
does he do it? Verse 5: ‘Let this mind be in you which is Christ Jesus.’
“You see why it’s
so much of a catch thing there? And the reason why that is, is when you fail,
what does your new nature do? It doesn’t cast you into psychological guilt and
shame and rejection. It says, ‘Wait a minute.’ You get objective guilt. You say,
‘I made a mistake; it was wrong and now I can fix it because the Cross has
equipped me to.’
“You can
successfully deal with failures under grace, where with the ‘giver mode,’ all
the ‘giver mode’ does is what it did with Adam and Eve. It sends you into all
the psychological guilt. Things that paralyze you and make you unable so now
your ‘taker mode’ takes over because the ‘giver mode’—he comes to his/her
rescue to say, ‘Come on, I’ll take care of you. I’ll make you happy.’
“And when you put
off all that thinking process, it becomes, ‘I’m going to esteem others better
than myself because that’s what Christ teaches me to think.’ ”
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