11/1/98 TALKERS, NONTALKERS AND OTHER
INTERESTING THINGS
About six weeks ago
we began a study of a single phrase
in the 3rd chapter of Philippians.
In Phil. 3:10 Paul tells us
that he has gladly exchanged
everything else he might have gained in life
in order... that I may know Him, and the power of His
resurrection and the fellowship of His
sufferings, being conformed to His death;
And it has been that first phrase, "that I may know Him..."
that has held our attention
for the past month and a half.
We started out by recognizing that
one of the reasons Paul makes that statement
is because it is only through the knowledge
of Christ
that any human being can gain
a correct,
accurate,
healthy knowledge of himself.
Apart from Christ
the only reference points we have
for attempting to figure out who we are
and why or if we have value
are the people around us.
We look to them
to try and understand
who we are.
This approach has two major flaws to it
right from the beginning.
First of all,
they don't know who we are.
They have no knowledge of our unique,
special design.
At best we tend to believe
that the other people around us
are pretty much like us.
And second,
not only do they not know who we are,
but they don't really care who we are
because they, like us, are frantically trying to figure
out their own life
by looking at us.
I'll give you just one example
to help illustrate what I'm trying to say here.
I have been involved in a number of conversations
recently
that have reminded me once again
that we human beings
seem to divide up into two distinct
groups -
there are the talkers
and the non-talkers.
Maybe it would be better
to say the verbal and the nonverbal.
Obviously these are not scientific terms,
but I'll give you a little description of the two
groups
and maybe you can better identify
which group you're in.
The talkers or the verbal people
use speech as their primary tool
for emotional contact with their world.
They can and do articulate their feelings
and their thoughts quickly and easily.
But its more than just that.
They refill their emotional tanks
through verbal communication.
The greatest terror of the talker
is silence.
Three minutes of absolute silence
is a terrifying experience for them.
If a talker is with another person
and a silence of more than a few seconds occurs
the talker will find something to say -
anything!
They'll talk about the pattern of the carpet,
or the height of the tree in the front yard,
or the population of Anchorage,
and they urgently want
verbal response back
from the people around them.
And here is the important thing to remember about
the talkers -
when they talk
they are not really talking
about whatever they're talking about.
When the talkers talk
they are really asking two urgent questions:
1. Are you there for me?
2. Do you care about me?
In other words,
they are using a flood of verbal communication
to continually validate themselves.
And it is through that verbal communication
that they refuel their emotional tanks.
That, of course, is why silence is such a terrifying
thing for the talker -
silence while in the presence of another person
gives the talker the message:
"I don't matter,
I'm being emotionally abandoned, I'm not
loved or accepted."
Then there is the other half of the world -
the nontalkers.
Whereas the talkers are refueled through talking with
others,
the nontalkers are drained and exhausted by it.
For the nontalker,
not only is silence not an enemy,
it is actually a friend.
Silence is like a warm, cozy, soft blanket
into which a person can snuggle.
Silence is safe.
Silence is friendly.
The nontalkers are drained by social contact,
and they must have blocks of isolation
built into their lives on a regular basis
or they quickly become emotionally
exhausted.
One of the best ways to communicate love to a
nontalker
is to be with them
without requiring them to talk.
Nontalkers stand in awe of the talker's ability to
think of so many things to say.
And, when nontalkers are with talkers,
they tend to view themselves
as rather dull,
uninteresting people by contrast,
sort of like God forgot
to equip them with a personality gene.
I brought all of this up
just to illustrate the massive problems
we face in attempting to understand
ourselves
by looking to those around us
for validation.
I personally think
it is almost impossible
for the talker and nontalker groups
to understand one another.
Talkers will always believe
that nontalkers really could plunge into the
exciting world of verbal communication
if only they would try a little harder.
They look at it as a growth issue,
a will issue,
a try-a-little-harder-and-you-can-do-this-too
issue.
I was in a conversation recently
with a talker
discussing a nontalker we both knew
and the talker made this statement:
"Well, of course that's where they are right now,
and I can accept that,
but they need to have the courage to grow
and overcome those fears."
I responded by saying,
"NO! That's not WHERE they are,
that's WHO they are by God's design.
It isn't a flaw,
it is a beautiful part of God's careful
craftsmanship of them
as a special and unique creative
work of His."
But the talker just couldn't accept it.
And apart from the work of God in their lives,
nontalkers are no better.
They will have just as much difficulty
accepting the talkers in their world.
They will have a strong tendency to look at the
talkers around them
as compulsive noise machines
running in terror from the great Silence
Dragon pursuing them.
The nontalkers cling to a secret hope
that the talkers in their lives will eventually run
out of words
or find a few seconds of inner harmony with
themselves
so that the endless flood of words will cease
and the world can finally know
just a few moments of peace.
(And the most amazing thing
is that the two groups
tend to marry one another...)
Now, those are obviously
exaggerated presentations
of the two groups,
but my point here is that
it's no wonder we have such a terrible time
attempting to figure out who we are
by looking to those around us
because those around us
will tend to view us
as defective reproductions of themselves.
"If only you were a little bit more like me..."
It is only through the knowledge of Christ
that we can begin to gain an accurate knowledge
of ourselves.
And then through what we have studied so far
we have seen 3 major barriers
to a correct knowledge of ourselves,
three barriers
that Christ seeks to remove
in the lives of those who come to Him.
1. First of all He seeks to correct
our preconceived ideas about who we are.
We have spent our lives
staring into cracked and distorted mirrors,
trying to figure out who we are.
Our Lord seeks to tell us the truth,
about our eternal value to Him,
about our dignity
and our significance as His child.
The words sound strange
when we first hear them,
they sound like the are being spoken
to or about someone else.
We have heard so many other voices
saying very different things
and at first the truth is hard to hear.
This is getting a little off track,
but obviously I'm going to be off track all
morning,
so what difference does it make?
But I just want to state
one of the most basic principles of life: for the child of God the truth is always our
friend.
There are times when the truth
appears to be terrifying -
something to run from,
to avoid at all costs.
That's especially true
when it comes to the truth
about the wrong choices we've made
or lies we've believed
about what we think we need
in order to be happy.
But for the child of God
the truth is always our friend.
It is the key to freedom
and the rock solid foundation for hope.
Of course our Lord said it so much better: John 8:32 and you shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free. "
Some of you here this morning
are afraid to believe that.
There is some area of truth in your own life
that God has been nudging you towards
for some considerable time.
It may be some aspect of truth about your past,
or about some painful part of your life right
now.
And from where you are this moment
the thought of facing that truth
strikes terror in your heart.
I can't make that process any easier for you,
and I certainly can't go through it for you,
but I can tell you with absolute certainty -
that truth is not the doorway to death,
it is the doorway to freedom.
You see, for the child of God
the truth is always our friend.
2. Well, our Lord not only tells us the truth about
who we are,
He also tells us the truth about who we should
be.
He doesn't carve out
a universal religious mold
and try to cram everyone of us inside it.
He skillfully creates for each of us
a place,
and a work,
and a set of gifts and abilities within us
that match His unique design for each of us.
Paul says it so well in Ephesians 2:10. For we are His workmanship, created in
Christ Jesus for good works, which God
prepared beforehand, that we should walk
in them.
I hope you can hear what's being said there.
Before you ever came to Christ,
before you even entered this world
God was thinking about you,
carefully designing you for Himself,
and then designing a place and a calling
for you as His child.
It's easy for me to preach that now.
There were many years when it was not.
Have you ever gone to the Home Show?
If so, you know how it is.
The sports arena is packed full of all these booths,
and each booth has someone in it
who's all excited about there THING.
One person is all excited about his heating system,
and another about his foundation system,
and another about new septic system.
Well, for a number of years I felt like I was destined
to live my life at the Christian Show.
I kept visiting all these different booths -
I went to the Presbyterian booth
and the Covenant booth,
and the Baptist booth,
and the Charismatic booth
and the Free Methodist booth
and the foreign missions booth,
and a bunch of others as well.
I tried so hard to make some of them work.
But they didn't fit.
But in His perfect time,
in His perfect way,
He brought me
to the good works, which God prepared
beforehand, that I should walk in them.
3. And then last week
we talked about the third step
in our Lord's process of introducing us to
ourselves.
We talked about the way He helps us
to face honestly the areas of evil within us.
And just to sum up what we did last week,
Paul's teaching in Romans 7
is given to us to free us from the fear and
self-condemnation
and from the accusations Satan uses
that so often paralyze the child of
God.
Paul tells us in Romans 8:29, For those whom He foreknew, He also
predestined to become conformed to the
image of His Son, ..."
In that verse Paul is telling us
that the primary life purpose
for ever Christian who has ever lived
has already been predetermined by God.
We are predestined by Him
to enter into a character rebuilding program
that conforms us more and more
to the image of Christ Himself.
And the first step in that program
is allowing our Lord
to introduce us to the areas
that need rebuilding.
Or, in the terms we were using last week,
giving us eyes to see
where our body has been mistrained.
Where are our emotional responses
inconsistent with truth?
Where are my reasoning processes flawed?
Where are my priorities
and my life value systems messed up?
Where does evil dwell in me,
the one who wishes to do good?
And the concept we looked at last week
was given to us by our Lord
to free us from the terror
that so often accompanies
the discovery of that evil within.
Following that study
several questions came up about how to fix the
problem -
how do we go about retraining our bodies
so that the evil within them
does not dominate our lives.
Those are great questions,
and my answer to them may seem unsatisfying.
We retrain the body
by allowing our Lord
to lead us one step at a time,
one day at a time,
one issue at a time,
through our own personal growth program with the
King for the rest of our lives.
If you've been around here for a while
and have a good memory,
and want to link this up to another area of
study we were in a few years ago,
Peter describes that process
in II Peter 1:5-8: 2 Pet. 1:5 Now for this very reason also,
applying all diligence, in your faith supply
moral excellence, and in your moral
excellence, knowledge,
2 Pet. 1:6 and in your knowledge, self
control, and in your self-control,
perseverance, and in your perseverance,
godliness,
2 Pet. 1:7 and in your godliness, brotherly
kindness, and in your brotherly kindness,
love.
2 Pet. 1:8 For if these qualities are yours
and are increasing, they render you neither
useless nor unfruitful in the true
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Obviously that passage
like many others in Scripture
is calling Christians
to a moral rebuilding process in our
lives.
But that process cannot even begin
until we can first look honestly
at our own moral corruption.
As long as I'm content
to paste on my Christian facade once a week
and trot off to church,
or hide myself behind
my little pile of favorite Bible verses,
or keep my attention focused
on what other Christians should do
to improve their Christian life,
in other words,
a long as I am determined
to run and hide from my own growth issues
true, practical righteous living
will never become a reality in our
lives.
And the teaching we looked at last week
in Romans 7
was given to us by God for just one
purpose -
to free every child to God
to be able to say along with Paul, Rom. 7:21 I find then the principle that
evil is present in me, the one who wishes
to do good. For only when we can honestly admit
the existence of that evil
can our Lord then begin
to break its power in our life
and bring us into the freedom
He longs for us to know.
Truth is always the friend of the child of God.