I’m really excited about this new series. I know I say that every time, but it’s true. This series is very, very practical. These next four weeks we are going to talk about what to do when making decisions you didn’t want to make or didn’t plan to make And we are going to learn four questions to ask to help you make these kinds of decisions. There will be one each week and we will review and add on each successive week. Decision making is a fact of life. Part of our LifeGroups is people sharing their stories. We learn from one another’s life and journey. Everyone’s story is a sequence of decisions that brought the situation to fruition. As we listen to one another the thought comes to mind, “Wow, that was a huge decision, but they had no idea how big a decision it was until after the fact.”
When we hear those stories, if your anything like me (no offense) but all the what if’s of those decisions fill our mind…good or bad. What if they hadn’t done that? What if they’d waited? What if we never met and this story never impacted my life? The possibilities are endless. Many of these stories tell of decisions that are defining moments – they and we didn’t know what hung in the balance. We didn’t and don’t know the significance of those decisions. It’s like watching your kids make decisions, they can’t see the result. They have limited or no experience in so many areas of life. So we have the advantage to learn from the decisions others have made in life.
History teaches us the importance of decisions. Take for instance George Washington. He could have been King. The people wanted to make him king, but he decided, that in the best interest of this fledgling country, that two terms as a President would be better. But what if he hadn’t? History would be completely different. How about the Generals of Adolf Hitler? They could have stopped him early on if they had known or could have seen ahead, but they had no idea what that madman had planned. And by the time they had an idea they were too afraid or calloused to do anything about it. Our decisions have far reaching consequences that we cannot see, especially those we never planned to make or have to make quickly.
Life is a sequence of these kinds of decisions: How do you decide? How do you see the results? We are going to learn four questions to help us in these unforeseen circumstances. The first one is the hardest one – “Am I being completely honest with myself?” Some people won’t even consider this question. It’s too hard. It’s too threatening. “Am I telling myself the truth about why I’m inclined to go this direction?” But it is a very, very important question. Because here’s what I know about you and I know it about me – you are an expert at selling yourself on something you really want to do whether you ought to do it or not. Yes, that’s why you laugh. You are an expert at selling yourself on something. Buying stuff, selling stuff, moving stuff – we all know it’s true, it’s easy to do and we do it too much.
Here’s an example we can all identify with, especially in light of New Year’s resolutions. It’s easy to talk yourself out of exercise and into dessert. “Well, I got home from work later than I planned, so I can start tomorrow.” “I didn’t have dessert the last 3 days, so a little here is okay.” “She went to all that trouble to bake for me, so I’ll work out extra later this week.” “I certainly don’t want to insult the host!” Do you know what drives that type of decision making? No, not chocolate. We feel compelled to convince ourselves of the option that has the most emotional appeal. The heart wants it, so the heart tells the brain to go find some reasons, then we start believing our own made-up reasons. It’s quite the arrangement. You laugh, but if this were not true, we would all be healthier and wealthier. You would have more money and less weight. We would all own a lot less stuff and have more deep relationships. How many ways can we say it?!
Our biggest problem in decision making is that we are not on a Truth quest, we are on a happiness quest. “What will make me happy? Brain, go find me happy things today.” Every decision we justify and start to believe our own stuff – I think that’s called a delusion. Take for instance marriage – people get married and divorced for the same reasons, “He makes me happy,” “she doesn’t make me happy anymore.” People start and stop habits of all kinds because of this, “I like the way it makes me feel. I DON’T like the way it makes me feel.” Self-delusional, that’s what we humans really are! And it’s all our own fault, because we don’t ask this question, “Am I being completely honest with myself? Am I telling myself the truth about why I want to make this decision? Why am I doing this REALLY?” We don’t ask this question because it is convicting and uncomfortable. But, as they say, “No pain, no gain.”
There’s another thing that makes this difficult. And it’s not meant to be insulting, but some of us will take it that way. There’s something wrong with you – and with me. Yeah, there is something wrong with you and with me. So, our lesson today centers around a man named Jeremiah. And he’s going to tell us, through the words God inspired him to write to Israel some 3,000 years ago, what exactly is wrong with us. When that happens, I believe we will all begin to see the importance of the first question we have posed today.
Jeremiah was a prophet around 600 B.C. to the Kingdom of Judah. You can read all about him in the book of Jeremiah, but also in the book of 2 Kings 24. He was a prophet during the time that God was judging the nation of Israel. God and Israel had a covenant. God had said, “If you obey me and follow me I will bless you. If you reject me and go your own way I will abandon you,” really meaning, you will live out the consequences of your choices on your own. That was the nature of their relationship.
Now let me add this before you get the wrong idea – that was THEIR relationship and agreement, not ours. We don’t live under the covenant where God takes off every time we disappoint Him or fail to follow Him. We live under the covenant of grace – forgiveness given us by Jesus death and resurrection. They lived to please God so that God would be happy with them. We live to please God because we are grateful for His forgiveness and for letting us into God’s permanent family. That was just to clarify the difference between then and now.
Around 605 BC, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon conquered Egypt, and on his way back to Babylon he conquered all of Israel as well. Nebuchadnezzar set up a local king named Jehoiakim to take care of local stuff. Jehoiakim was not a real king, however, he was a subjugated king. He couldn’t make too many decisions on his own. He had to answer to Nebuchadnezzar. So God sent the prophet Jeremiah to Jehoiakim to explain the truth of the situation, “We are in this situation because we rejected God. So God has put Nebuchadnezzar to rule over us until the time that we decide to return to following God. And until that time, you would do well to just live with it, because the main issue is NOT who the king is. The main issue is who are we going to worship, the pagan gods or the real God? Just do what Nebuchadnezzar asks and one day God will rescue us.”
Jeremiah, as God’s prophet, is trying to get the nation to turn back to following the one, true God. That’s his only concern. But after a while, Jehoiakim get a little big headed and he gets tired of sending taxes to and taking order from Babylon. He decides that “I’m the King, I don’t have to take this anymore.” So he was going to raise an army and overthrow the Babylonian rule. And Jeremiah tried to warn him, “Dude, this is a really bad idea. God has put King Nebuchadnezzar into power and you will not be able to overthrow him.” But Jehoiakim wouldn’t listen – he was too puffed up and self-convinced. Jehoiakim launches an attack on Babylon. It was like a toy army taking on the U.S. Marines, and they were quickly squashed; Jehoiakim was thrown out and Zedekiah was put in his place by Nebuchadnezzar.
Nebuchadnezzar tells Zedekiah – I’m the King but I’ll let you rule over Judah and pretend to be the king as long as you send me taxes and a percentage of all the crops. But remember, I’m the real King. So a couple of years go by and Zedekiah begins to think, “What would make me happier, being the pretend king or being the real King over Judah?” He decides to make an alliance with Egypt and plan to overthrow Babylon. Jeremiah hears of this and goes to Zedekiah to say, “This is a really bad idea. It’s a bad idea because you cannot win. God is judging the nation, and until we return to worshiping God we are being punished. Don’t do this! It’s not a matter of how big your army is, it’s all about who is on your side – and God is on Nebuchadnezzar’s side right now.”
But Zedekiah had already convinced himself, sold himself, on the glory and success of this plan. Jeremiah kept coming around and warning him to the point that Zedekiah had him thrown into a well to get him out of the way. Jeremiah continued to prophesy even out of the well. Can you imagine walking by and hearing, “Repent, repent!” “This is a dumb idea!” “You can’t win!” “God is not with you!” Then Jeremiah gets kidnapped from the well and taken somewhere else. (The prophet’s life was rough because they usually only brought bad news.) Anyway, Zedekiah refuses to listen and goes ahead with his plan to attack Babylon because that’s what made him happy. Do you know the results? They squished their enemies between their toes – they being the Babylonians. Zedekiah is captured, his family is killed before his eyes, his eyes are gouged out and then they take him to Babylon to be put on display as an example to anyone else who might decide to rebel against King Nebuchadnezzar. It was not a good idea to rebel against Babylon. But Zedekiah wouldn’t hear it and couldn’t foresee it because he was not completely honest with himself.
During that time of history, Jeremiah watched these kings make all sorts of bad decisions. He tried to warn them over and over again. And they ignored him over and over again. This was the period of time in which he wrote the whole book of Jeremiah. In these writings he makes a statement describing something that’s true of you and me, just like it was of Jehoiakim and Zedekiah. He makes this statement about the human heart (we call it the soul – our thinking, our decision making and our emotions) and why it cannot be trusted. Here it is -
Jeremiah Jeremías 耶 利 米 17:9
9 The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked (beyond cure).
9 Más engañoso que todo, es el corazón, y sin remedio;
9 人 心 比 万 物 都 诡 诈 ， 坏 到 极 处 ，
That means that your heart, your children’s hearts, your momma’s heart, (“No, not my momma!”) your grandchildren’s hearts, your spouses’ heart – don’t get off focus here, this is about you – the human heart is the most deceitful of all things. And, get this, it’s incurable! It’s desperately wicked. It’s beyond fixing! I know that sounds harsh and unbelievable, but just look at the world around you. Look at the politicians, the salespeople, the dictators. Take a look in your school, at your work or in your family – it’s true. And, most importantly, take a look at YOUR own heart: what do you think about? What decisions are you making for you and you alone? What emotions have you so wrapped up that you are willingly or unknowingly blind to the truth? The Amplified translation really fleshes this out in a way that I think is helpful -
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly perverse and corrupt and severely, mortally sick!
Every time we make a decision we have to remember that we have the ability to deceive ourselves. Jeremiah said, “deceitful,” not dishonest. There’s a huge difference. We’ve all met people who were so dishonest that you knew that the moment you met them. People you’ve met and you just knew they were lying. But deceit is a whole other thing. Deceit means I’m going to take a little truth and little bit of untruth and mix it all together, so that when you make a decision you won’t really know what’s true or not. Flat out lies are fairly easy to see. Deceit is so much harder. And deceit is what Jeremiah says our hearts are expert at. Our hearts will fool us with half-truths and justifications to make the decision our heart wants us to make, based on what will make it happy. That’s why our hearts sell us on some of the dumbest ideas imaginable, only for us to look back and say, “I should have seen that coming.” Your heart, as wonderful a person that you are, is deceitful and it is beyond cure. And if that wasn’t enough, listen to how he finishes this verse -
Jeremiah Jeremías 耶 利 米 17:9
9 The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked (beyond cure; incurable). Who can know it [perceive, understand, be acquainted with his own heart and mind]?
9 Más engañoso que todo, es el corazón, y sin remedio; ¿quién lo comprenderá?
9 人 心 比 万 物 都 诡 诈 ， 坏 到 极 处 ，谁 能 识 透 呢 ？
Who can know it? Who can figure it out? Who can even know themselves? It reminds me of college when our professor said he’d be offering a course in the Psychology of Women. And we, being the brilliant 19 year olds that we were, wondered what man was arrogant enough to believe they had figured that out?! Well the heart is the same way. How arrogant it is to think we can figure out or heart. How ridiculous to think that you, above and beyond anyone in all of history and in all time, could figure out your own deceitful heart. This is why we look back at purchases we’ve made and say, “What was I thinking? Why did I ever do that?” Or you look back at relationships and wonder, “What was I thinking? Why would I think that, say that or do that?” You look at your business and the decision that cost you a good partner, or brought you a terrible one and you wonder, “Why did I ever choose him or her? How could I be so foolish? How could I be so dumb?”
And Jeremiah answers us this way, “It’s because your heart – your mind, will and emotions – is deceitful, incurable and basically unknowable.” And if you don’t take time to ask this question, “Am I being completely honest with myself” then your heart will simply run in the background, looking for the things that make you emotionally happy, looking for reasons to justify the things you treasure and value and running your life on the autopilot of selfishness and self-indulgence. Just like we talked about last fall –
“The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be and end up being, and it is stored in your wicked, deceitful heart.”
The heart (the soul) runs in the background of our psyche like a virus on a computer or like a trojan gathering and dispersing information – you may not know it’s there, but really, it’s controlling everything. Our hearts are focused on what we have put in them – values, principles, treasures, money, power, emotions. The heart will manipulate us and fool us into making the wrong decision as often as it is able. We must be on alert.
This is especially important when it comes to making quick decisions or decisions we don’t want to make or didn’t think we’d have to make. The intensity of a decision, the immediacy of a decision, is often a hot-bed for the heart taking over rather than a rational and spiritual seeking of God’s will. We will often fool ourselves a thousand times before we ask the question, “Am I being truly honest with myself?” “Why am I doing this, really?” We’ve all watched successful people, who seem to have the whole world by the tail, and suddenly they self-destruct. And you and I think to ourselves, “What happened? Why would they do that? If I had that much money, if I was that famous, I wouldn’t have made that decision.” But the truth is, you would – you will, and I would – I will, because we are emotionally pulled by our hearts to do whatever makes us the most emotionally satisfied. So instead of getting healthier and wealthier we continue to eat and spend emotionally. Instead of living for God and for others, we continue to think about us and ours. Instead of living responsible in or relationships, we live in the moment and just hope we don’t get hurt again. That’s what a wicked heart leads us to.
It’s seems kind of hopeless doesn’t it? What a great way to follow up last week’s call to vision and action, huh? Yet nobody’s really flinching and saying, “That’s not true at all.” That’s because we know it IS a problem. We all know how quickly we can convince ourselves that our decisions are great. We all know that we were born with this ability to deceive and justify ourselves and our actions. This is why the question is so important. I’m going to give you a little exercise in just a minute. But before that you should know that if you ask yourself this question here’s what you will experience. This question is both liberating and terrifying at the same time.
It’s liberating because, if you will ask yourself that question, it will allow you to stop the lie. Any time you carry a lie it grows and gains energy and power over you. The reason we lie to ourselves is that the lie that gives us energy and power to push ahead and do what we’ve put our heart to. But, if we admit that we are lying to ourselves, that energy and power is diminished and we lose the momentum in making a bad decision. This is a biblical principle that is used every day, around the world, to help addicts quit using. This principle is used every day, around the world, to help gamblers quit gambling. This should be a step in all of our lives, to help us recover from whatever sin and delusion controls us – when the power of the secret, the power of the lie is broken, the forward momentum towards destructive and selfish behavior is slowed. That’s what makes it liberating to ask the question, “Am I being completely honest with myself? Why am I doing this, really?”
At the same time this question is terrifying; terrifying because it makes you accountable – to you. Notice we have not said today that you have to admit to someone else why you are doing what you are doing. We haven’t told you to go into a confessional relationship and spill your guts. YOU need to be honest with YOU first, and that’s a scary thing. There will be no more excuses. If you ignore the truth you know for certain, then you are really in a predicament. Don’t you hate violating your own principles and standards, even when no one else knows? Yes! We all hate that. We don’t want to be wrong in our own eyes, much less God’s. It is a terrifying thing to be honest with your motives and actions. But it will free your life like nothing you have ever seen before. It will liberate you decision-making by giving you a clear picture rather than a rose-colored picture. “The reason I want to move is so my family has a better opportunity at school. The reason I want to move is the neighbors are bad.” “No, the real reason I want to move is that I’m insecure and I want people to think I’m successful or wealthier than I am or more connected than I am.” That’s the truth. And that can be terrifying.
The reasons why we think certain things or behave certain ways is important. “The reason is…I’m just lonely. The reason is…I want my dad’s approval. The reason is…I think I’m not pretty enough or smart enough or whatever enough.” We manufacture in our hearts and minds, reasons to justify all sorts of things. And it can be and probably will be terrifying to come to grips with reality. “Maybe NOW I’ll be happy if I let him move in. Maybe NOW my father will be proud of me. Maybe NOW people will think I’m successful.” But none of that is true. It’s all manufactured by our deceitful hearts – it’s all a figment of our happiness quest rather than a Truth quest. There’s great news, though. Absolutely the best news you will ever hear. When you face the terrifying reality of this question, ” Am I being completely honest with myself?” That is when you open your heart to God’s…amazing…grace. That’s when you’ve come to terms with the fact that you cannot cope on your own, you cannot power your way through this – but God can.
If you really want to deal with those heart issues here is your assignment- you need to get alone, face a mirror and ask yourself the question. There’s something powerful about speaking the truth out loud. It’s not like magic or casting a spell, but our ears often penetrate our brain when our eyes won’t. Hearing makes a huge difference. When we really listen it’s like a slap on the back of the head – “Hey! Wake up!”It will liberate you. It will set you free. You will learn to quit lying to yourself. You will learn to tell yourself the truth. And then, when you hear yourself trying to convince your mom, your dad, your boss, your spouse of something, you will begin to hear the real reasons. “The real reason I want to move is…. The real reason I want to go to that school is…. The real reason I want that job is…. The real reason I filed for divorce is…. The real reason we’re moving in together is.” That is the heart issue – “what’s the real reason?”
The first 3 steps in any recovery program, and frankly in anyone’s step to knowing and serving God, are “I can’t. But God, you can. So please, go ahead.” I can’t! God, you can. So, please God, I know I’m delusional. I know I’ve been lying to myself. I know I can’t be good enough or do enough to earn your love or the approval of people, so please, God, go ahead. Take over my life and my heart. Those three steps can help you kick a habit, break and addiction or stop a cycle of destructive living. But they can also bring you eternal life.
You say, “what do you mean, Tim? How?” When we face the reality of our own selfishness, self-deception, self-motivation and sin, God invites us to admit it – “I can’t (fill in the blank) – go on, be honest, be happy, work out my own payment for my sins. But, you, God – you sent Jesus to pay for my sin by dying on the cross. And you raised him from the dead to prove he was ENOUGH to pay for my sins. So, right now, right here, I’m saying to you, God – “I can’t. But you can. So go ahead:” forgive my sin, be my leader, show me how to love you and others – honestly.”
Now THAT’s worth the terrifying possibility of self-examination, isn’t it? Eternal love and life in the future; forgiveness, strength, peace and purpose for life right here and now. So, are you being completely honest with yourself? Why do you do what you do – really? I hope today is a new beginning for all of us in some arena of our lives. And if you decided to take these steps towards God today – the Bible says that your faith in doing so makes you a child of God. I’d love to know that and pray for you as you begin your new journey of faith. So let me know, and I will join you on that journey. Let’s pray.
Dear Father,
I’m amazed at how self-deceived I can be. I think we all have that sense when we examine our hearts closely. I’m even more amazed that you want to help us overcome that deception with the Truth. Thank you for giving us direction and forgiveness, hope and faith, to grow as people and as your children.
