3 Ways to Silence Openness and Honesty
Why is it that openness and honesty are rarely seen today? It’s not that we don’t need them or that we don’t suffer when we don’t have them. What pulls us to keep things inside and keep them hidden? Why are we often more concerned with the sins of others than with our own? Here are 3 reasons.
Pride
Whether we admit it outright or not, pride is a huge reason we hold back from being honest with ourselves, those in our lives, and with God. We get a taste of success, accomplishment, position or notoriety, and our prides slowly take the place of humility, grace and confession of our weaknesses and sins to those closest to us. Pride convinces us that we are better, smarter, more accomplished, or more valued than before. It diminishes our need for God and for others. Pride alters our entire sense of who we are. This happens to people in ministry - whether vocationally or as a volunteer - as often as it does to those that aren’t.
Paul David Tripp says “If ministry knowledge, experience, success and position have begun to distort your sense of yourself, if they have caused you to forget who you really are and what you daily need, you will not be quick to admit your sin, weaknesses, and failures to yourself or to others. Pride and confession are enemies.”Reduced View of Sin
Most people tend to think that their sins are not really too serious. We fall into the “Well, at least I didn’t do what THAT person did. I’m not THAT bad!” mentality. We skew things, like calling anger “just sticking up for ourselves” or “passion for a cause” (though usually the cause is clearly ourselves and our opinions). We relabel being power-hungry as leadership. We excuse what we know in our hearts is wrong for long enough that we begin to shift in our belief that what we are doing is wrong at all.
Pursuit of Respect
Accolades and encouragements are great. They help us to keep going and to improve. They can, however, quickly cause us to divert from one mission or cause to another more dangerous mission or cause. The danger? Caring too much about what others think about us. We want to be liked. We want to be heard. We want to be respected. It feels good. But what happens when we care more about what people think of us than what God thinks of us? We begin to let the acceptance and respect of others control us, our relationships with others, and our relationship with God.
So, let’s break the pattern. Let’s stop looking down on ourselves or others for being open and honest about struggles. Let’s push back on pride by remembering daily what God did for us, and WHY. Let’s confess our sins to one another and to our Savior. Let’s prioritize caring what GOD says about us in His Word instead of what this world may think - or not think. Let’s build the type of relationships with those in our lives where honesty, openness and confession are allowed, celebrated and valued. Then, the places God will lead us to together will be life changing.
@jonpeacock
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