(HP 2001) In Training

In Training

July 29th, 2001

Hello, my name is Josh Kelley and I am a preacher in training. Today’s service will be recorded for quality assurance purposes. From time to time my supervisor may interrupt us so that I may provide you with a quality sermon. Thank you in advance for your patience.

There is a key to success that all of us know about, but that we have a hard time doing.

If you have this key, your opportunities will be nearly limitless, without it there will be a constant wall between you and success.
It is second nature to us when we are young and becomes more difficult as we get older.
We expect it in others and are annoyed when they lack it, but seldom realize that we also lack it.

What is this key? It is being open to critique, being trainable, allowing other people to teach you.

Through elementary school, high school, and college we are used to learning, we are used to having our work critiqued.

· In fact in college we pay people to do so. But after we get out of school it becomes much harder to be teachable, the more established we get the harder it is to change.

But it is crucial that we be open to critique, that we be trainable, especially as Christians who is seeking to become a better representative of Jesus.

The book of Proverbs is a wonderful book, full of profound, pithy pieces of insight.

The theme of the whole book is wisdom.
But all of that wisdom is absolutely useless if you are not teachable.
For that reason, Solomon spends the first several chapters of the book talking about the importance of being teachable and able to receive wisdom.

That is what this sermon is about, being better learners, or put another way, being trainable. I know that this subject is a standard fare. Spend enough time in church and you will hear several sermons on being teachable.

· But it is because it is such an important topic that it is covered often. I know that it is something I need to be reminded of frequently. Just ask my family or the people I work with.

· Besides that, I am hoping to give a different slant on the subject. I am going to focus on the importance of being able to receive critiques and advice, regardless of where it comes from.

· By the end of this sermon, it is my hope that you will be better equipped to allow other people to speak into your life.

· I want to be clear that I am drawing a distinction between being critiqued and being verbally abused; I do not think that God calls us to injured by someone’s words

We are critiqued; we do get criticized.

· Some of it is solicited; some of it is unsolicited.

· Some of it is well meaning but useless; some of it is malicious but useful,

· The majority of it is some combination of those.

How do you respond to it? Do you filter out the bad and use what is valuable or do you ignore the whole thing?

Proverbs talks about these two responses:

Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you; rebuke a wise man and he will love you. Instruct a wise man and he will be wiser still; teach a righteous man and he will add to his learning. Proverbs 9:8-9 – NIV

Look at the different responses: the mocker hates the person who rebukes him, but the wise man eats it up, as if he cannot get enough correction!

· People who are wise are able to become wiser because they are trainable, but people who think that they are smart will stay stupid because they are not willing to learn.

Whenever we are unwilling to be critiqued, we prevent God from being able to speak into our lives through others.

Now, if you’ve read the book of Proverbs much, you know that Solomon had little patience for fools. There is a passage in Proverbs that talks about being too “smart” to learn. I love this passage because of its punch line; so don’t read ahead.

Like cutting off one's feet or drinking violence is the sending of a message by the hand of a fool.

Like a lame man's legs that hang limp is a proverb in the mouth of a fool.

Like tying a stone in a sling is the giving of honor to a fool.

Like a thornbush in a drunkard's hand is a proverb in the mouth of a fool.

Like an archer who wounds at random is he who hires a fool or any passer-by.

As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.

Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him. Proverbs 26:6-12 – NIV

Whenever we are unwilling to be critiqued, we prevent God from being able to speak into our lives through others.

Why do we have such a hard time being open to critiques? Do you think that maybe it is because of our pride? And don’t you think that pride is usually just a mask for our own low self-worth. So what happens is that we confuse who we are with what we do, don’t we?

· We think that our value, our worth is dictated by our tasks.

· And so we will fight tooth and nail to keep from having what we do from being critiqued.

· And when we are criticized, we hear it as, “You are a bad person.”

On the staff we have a couple running joke. Something I think is humorous. The joke goes like this: If I give something to Ken Ekle to be proof-read and he returns it covered with read ink, I may respond one of two ways. I may say:

· “Why do you hate me?” or

· “I am too a good person!”

· And that joke is one of the most insightful things that I have learned working here.

Don’t you think that most of the time that we defend our work, we are actually defending our value as a person.

· The fact of the matter is that I really do want Ken to help me write well, I want to do the best that I can.

· I don’t want to look like an idiot because I can’t spell “of.”

· But it is very easy to get my feelings hurt, stop asking for help, and I stop learning.

But my value does not come from what I produce. It comes from who I am as a child of God. Our value does not come from what we do; it comes from who we are.

Ken, why do you hate me?

When I was talking to John Birk about this stuff he brought up this idea of a “theology of being” and a “theology of doing” and the importance of being able to separate what we do from who we are. We are God’s children, dearly beloved by God:

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! 1 John 3:1 – NIV

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, [this includes our own stupidity] will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39 – NIV

When all this is established in our hearts, we can work on doing better. If I am no longer concerned with protecting my ego, I can actively seek to do better in all that I do.

· For instance, I can either view my preaching as a chance to teach and spread the Gospel, in which case I will want to receive input so that I can get better.

· Or I can view it as chance to be validated, in which case I will only want to hear how good I am doing and I will be crushed if someone offers a critique, no matter how loving.

· I really do view this pulpit as a chance to preach the Gospel, my highest goal up here is really to effectively communicate God’s word so that he can use my teaching as tool to bring change to people’s lives, so that God may be glorified.

Since this is my desire, I must be open to criticism;

I must be trainable, willing to get better.
The moment that my preaching becomes something I use to validate myself as a “good person,” I slam the door shut on ever getting better
And I begin preaching to glorify myself.

God has given all of us gifts. He has given us skills, personality, our position in life. These are tools that he has given us to use for his glory. We have a choice,

· Either we can seek to sharpen those tools, make ourselves as effective as possible. To do so we must not only accept critiques and learn what we can from them, but we should also actively seek learning experiences.

· Our other choice is to use those tools to validate ourselves, to glorify ourselves and in doing so we will reject learning opportunities and let our tools remain dull.

We either sharpen our tools to the glory of God or leave them dull because we are glorifying ourselves.

So here is your challenge:

Next time you are critiqued, ask God how He wants to sharpen you through it.

· And if you are really brave, you can actively seek correction. Ask people close to you help you “sharpen your tools.”