Brian Cropp: Well, good morning! If you are new to Hope Church, we have been in a series of messages over the past couple of weeks called True to Real. In this series, we’re looking at seven summary statements that are particularly found in the New Testament. Or, they are summaries of things we find in the New Testament. They are also found throughout the entire Bible. These summary statements that are put together speak to the core of who we are as Hope Church, but also speak to the core of how followers of Jesus Christ are to rightly relate to one another according to God’s ways and team together as a local congregation in order to fulfill the mission that God has given them. We call these summary statements the Heart Attitudes.
So far in this series, we’ve looked at the first one, which is “putting the goals and interests of others above my own,” and the second Heart Attitude, which is “to live an honest and open life before others.” Today, we’re going to look at the third Heart Attitude, which is to give and receive Scriptural correction. In getting ready for this series, if you’ve been watching any of the other messages in this series, you’ve seen me sit down and talk with different Hope members about how these Heart Attitudes have applied in their home life—with their marriages, with their parenting—at work, and in other ways. In the same sense, finding out how these Heart Attitudes have moved from their true category. We know they’re in the Bible, and they mean nice things. To becoming real—these are real things that I’m really going to start practicing in my everyday life.
As I was conducting these interviews, I asked everybody, pretty much, the same question of “When did you know that you were experiencing the Heart Attitudes?” It was possible that if they had been coming around Hope Church for awhile they were experiencing the Heart Attitudes, but they weren’t necessarily aware that they were experiencing them. Almost to the person, it was when they started experiencing spiritual correction or what we’ll look at next week with clearing up relationships. At that point, it’s when things move from the true category to the real category, as they saw people. You’re actually going to do this correcting and clearing up thing. I think it’s largely because we don’t often find ourselves in a place where we are correcting one another. Well, I take that back. We correct each other all the time. We’ll look at how that works a little bit better or worse, but certainly in the world of church, this is not a normal thing that we do.
I want to look a little bit at what the Bible says as to giving and receiving Scriptural correction. The most memorable time that I remember of when I received spiritual correction was not long after I was on staff at Hope Church. My wife, Glenda, and I started coming around Hope in 2001, and then I was hired on staff in 2005/2006. There’s a longer story there. I’d been on staff for about a year, and I was aware of the Heart Attitudes. My wife was aware of the Heart Attitudes. She was working here part-time, as well, and over the course of that year while we were trying to practice the Heart Attitudes, we weren't all that versed in them. We had allowed some grumbling and complaining to creep into how we were talking with people, in particular, grumbling and complaining about other staff members to people that we were leading. One day, that my wife and I lovingly refer to as “the day,” Pastor Harold sat both of us down and corrected us according to God’s ways. I didn’t enjoy it at all, but I’m grateful for that.
There were three main things that I got out of being corrected by Pastor Harold. The first one is that correction does not necessarily involve or have to involve a lot of hot emotion—red faces, yelling, and screaming. There was none of that when Pastor Harold corrected us. Secondly, it doesn’t matter how far out of alignment you are with God’s ways, being corrected hurts just a little bit. When Pastor Harold confronted me with how I was using my words, it’s not how I saw myself. I didn’t think I was out of line, but as he showed me, according to Scripture, how I was out of alignment with God’s ways. And, it hurt a little bit. Third, it’s better to be corrected than to not be corrected.
Because of that meeting, “The Day,” with Pastor Harold, Glenda and I learned a lot about how to better ask questions of our leaders and how we can communicate to those that we are leading about those that are leading us. We found out that Scriptural correction isn’t going to kill you. It’s a necessary and good thing. There’s a verse that a lot of folks at Hope have already memorized. If they’ve been around the Heart Attitudes for awhile, they’ve memorized this verse, and it speaks to the core of this particular Heart Attitude. It’s our memory verse for this week. You’ll find it on your listening guide, and it comes from the third chapter of Hebrews. This is what it says: “But encourage one another…” This is a command that we have from one Christ-follower to another to “...encourage one another daily, as long as it is called, ‘Today,’ so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”
Why is this even a thing? Why do we need correcting? It’s because every one of us, you and me included, do what makes sense to us even when it doesn’t make any sense at all to anybody else. We’re going to do what makes sense to us. Because of that, we have some blind spots in our lives, and we need some outside perspective from time to time, so that we can do life according to God’s ways, as well as possible. I alluded earlier to the idea that we experience correction throughout our days, and in some regards we don’t think anything of it. We don’t really get our dander up over it. We kind of take it. We expect it, and we sometimes even ask for it. Parents are constantly correcting their children. We have coaches that are correcting their athletes, directors who correct their actors. We have police officers who correct citizens, and for those of us who are walking with the Lord, we all have the Holy Spirit, who is often correcting our words, our thoughts, and our actions.
I agree that in most of those correcting situations that I just detailed we’ve asked to be corrected. It’s possible that we’ve seen something that we’re deficient in, and we’ve asked for some input in our lives. We’ve asked to be corrected. You might have hired a business coach or a fitness trainer because there are some goals that you have, and you’re not meeting them. You can’t figure out why, so you’ve asked for that input. It doesn't mean that you’re going to take the input and actually apply what you’re getting. But, you’ve at least taken the next step of shelling out some good money for someone to tell you where you may be out of step with reality. The rub comes for us when we are corrected, and we don’t ask to be corrected. It’s at that point that we get very bristly. “How dare you!” And, those kinds of things…
When Pastor Harold corrected me and Glenda, it was just another day at work. He sat us down, and I didn’t initially appreciate it at all. Everything within me wanted to stand up; stick out my tongue; say, “Fine! Have it your way!” and then storm out of the room. I was in my thirties then, so that would have really highlighted all of my maturity at that moment. I decided I was going to sit there and take it. I took the correction. I asked questions, and I tried to apply the things that Pastor Harold showed to me. Over time, God has really grown and matured me in the areas that I was corrected in, and I really am very grateful that Pastor Harold took the courage to sit me and Glenda down and correct us.
First, I want us to take a look at what correction isn’t and then a little bit about what it is. If you’re going to correct something, anything, you’re going to need a standard in mind of what you’re correcting to. If I’m a coach and I have my athletes out on the field of play, there’s a certain play that I want them to master. I have a version of that in my mind or on a sheet of paper. I’m going to correct my athletes until what I see out there on the field matches the play that I intend for them to do. When we are involved in correcting somebody, we have a standard that we’re correcting to. There are some better or worse standards to use. One standard that’s really easy for us to gravitate to is our own personal preference.
This is how I like things. I see that you’re doing things and not the way that I would like them, so clearly you’re wrong. Clearly, you need to do them my way. I think the classic marital example of this is you have one partner who likes to squeeze the toothpaste from the middle. The other partner likes to squeeze it all up to the top, kind of like a pastry bag, and squeeze the toothpaste out that way. Despite the correct answer to this is to buy a second tube of toothpaste, oftentimes the husband or the wife will start correcting the other one, so they will match their own personal preference. I can guarantee you this never goes well in the marriage relationship.
Another standard that is easy for us to gravitate to would be tradition. This is the way that we've always done it around here. Depending on the tradition, that may not be the best way to correct somebody. There’s a story that I’ve heard a lot. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it sounds like this is likely a real scenario that has happened. We have a mom who is making a ham for some holiday meal, and before she puts it in the oven, she cuts off both ends of the ham. Her daughter is watching her make this meal and says, “Mom, why do you cut off the ends of the ham before you put it in the oven?” She says, “I don’t know. It’s just what my mom always did when we made the holiday ham, so that’s just what I’ve always done.” “Well, why do we do that, Mom?” “I don’t know. Let’s call Grandma.” We get Grandma on the phone, and they say, “Why do you cut off the ends of the ham? What does it do for the cooking of the ham?” She says, “It does nothing for the cooking of the ham. I had a very small oven when I was raising you, and the pan that would fit in the oven was usually too big. So, I had to cut off the ends of the ham for it all to fit in the oven.”
This whole time, out of a tradition that the mom didn’t quite get, she was correcting her ham for no benefit at all. This isn’t to say that tradition isn’t good. The Bible is full of all kinds of different traditions, but when the tradition has no meaning and you don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing, you might need to figure out if this is a tradition we need to keep or not. Those are some ways to correct that aren’t necessarily the best, and when we talk about this Heart Attitude we say, it’s to give and receive Scriptural correction. We are correcting according to the standard of Scripture. When you have an adult...and I’m speaking adult to adult at this point. When you have a friend or a co-worker that you can see has a pattern in their life that may be out of alignment of God’s ways, then you need to know if that is sin. Is that a pattern according to God’s ways? Is that out of alignment to the point of sin? How do I back that up, according to Scripture?
If you see someone doing something that’s just not up to your preference or your tradition, but it’s not sin, I don’t know that I would step out there and correct that person. You want to make sure that if you’re correcting someone according to the standard of Scripture that it rises to the level of sin. That’s exactly what Pastor Harold did when he sat me and Glenda down on “the day.” Because he wasn’t using his own personal preference or the tradition of Hope Church but was calling us to the standard of Scripture, then I couldn’t get mad at Pastor Harold. Well, that’s not exactly true. I could have gotten mad at Pastor Harold, but really I was getting mad at God because God was correcting me to His standard. Trust me. I would much rather be corrected by God and by the standard of Scripture, and by other followers of the Lord who are wanting me to succeed in my relationship with God than to be allowed to run wild and be way out of alignment with God’s ways.
The book of Proverbs, chapter 27, verse six says that “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.” I would much rather have a friend’s wounds than an enemy's kisses. Let’s look at just a little bit about receiving correction. There’s a danger for the receiver, and that is that we can buck against the correction that we’re getting. According to the verse that’s our memory verse for this week, that can harden our hearts and allow sin to continue to deceive us. We can harden our hearts to future correction that the Holy Spirit wants to give us. Sin’s end goal is our destruction, not just that we are deceived but that we’re destroyed. So, it would be wise for us to hear and heed correction.
Who has the authority? Who has the right to correct me? That’s a big question, I think for us. One is our authority figures. Whether they are what we would call our “spiritual leaders” or not, all of our authorities have been put in their authority role by God. So long as what they are asking us to do does not violate God’s ways—we looked at that several weeks ago. If leaders are not asking us to sin, then what they are correcting us to we can follow that. We can be corrected, and that would be good.
Secondly, other believers can correct us. We are all in this together. We all want us to be successful in our walk with the Lord, and so other believers can step in, just like Pastor Harold did with me, and correct us. But then third, people we may not like or who may not like us also have the ability. The Holy Spirit can use them to correct us, as well. There’s an account in the book of Numbers, chapter 22. I’m not going to go into any depth right now, but you can look it up on your own. In that story, there’s a donkey who corrects a man, who is out of alignment with God’s ways. The donkey was correct in giving his correction to the man. It didn’t mean that the guy like it, but even a donkey can correct somebody according to God’s ways.
There’s also an account of King David, who is running out of town (out of Jerusalem). His rebellious son, Absolom, is working on a coup, and as David is getting out of town, there is a critic of the king, who is yelling all of these criticisms at him. One of David’s soldiers says, “Hey, do you want me to go kill that guy?” This is how David responds: “Leave him alone, let him curse, for the Lord has told him to. It may be that the Lord will look upon my misery and restore to me his covenant blessing instead of his curse today.” That’s not really the response that I would have, but David was open to even this guy who didn’t even like him to offer correction to him.
Pretty much, according to the Bible, if our attitude, if our heart’s angle of approach to life is that we are open to the Lord’s correction, anybody can correct us. Now depending on who’s offering the correction, we may want to pray about that and see if the Lord agrees with that correction. Or, check with a faithful friend (another Christ-follower) and see if that same pattern of sin is evident to them. Really, anybody has the right or the ability to correct you. At the same time, we have the ability to correct anyone else, as well.
One of the ways we’ve talked about this around Hope Church in the past is that everybody, every member of Hope Church, is sort of given a referee’s whistle. We can call each other’s fouls. It sounds like anarchy where there’s just whistles going off all the time, but the reality is that it makes my correction of you much more intentional because there’s the great possibility that you’re going to blow the whistle on me. So, I want to be very sure that I am offering good, Scripturally-based correction. I want you to hear right now from some of those members of Hope Church that I mentioned a little bit ago and portions of the interviews I conducted about how they have experienced this particular Heart Attitude.
(Video begins) Elizabeth McWilliams: “Pretty early on I was in… We used to have home fellowship groups at Hope. I wanted to say that we were probably talking about the Heart Attitudes, and at the time, I didn’t realize how big of a deal they were. I had heard what they are, and I thought, ‘That’s good. They sound great. Those sound like great ideas.’ My experience up to that point had been that you learn these things, but people don’t actually, truly do all those things. They’re good, and if you can do them, great, but it’s not a huge deal if you can’t. I remember in the home fellowship group I was in, and Doug and Kara Symes were leading it. I remember saying something to one of the group members, and they corrected me very kindly. But, they corrected me. That was my first experience with like, ‘Oh, they’re serious about the Heart Attitudes. They’re really doing this thing. This is something that they’re doing.’ That was my first experience. I can remember the person, where we were, and it was obviously not fun to be corrected, but at the same time almost refreshing that they were taking this seriously. It wasn’t just, ‘We’re going to do a study on it, and then never talk about it again ever.’
I think giving and receiving correction is a big thing we get to talk to our kids about when we correct them. ‘It’s okay. You’re going to get corrected. You’re going to mess up, and you’re going to need to be corrected. I mess up. I need to be corrected. Daddy messes up. He needs to be corrected.’ So, it really helps us set the pace for them in being corrected and share those stories of our own lives when we’ve had to be corrected and when we still need to be corrected. It helps us talk to them about it. It’s not okay to do the wrong thing, but the reality is you’re going to do the wrong thing at some point. So, you just need to be able to receive correction on it. That has really drastically changed how we talk about when things go wrong and we need to address it.”
Kurt and Lydia Laughbaum: “Like the other day...I can’t remember specifics but...I was about to approach a situation with one of our children, and Lydia… I can remember what was the exact, but… Was it at work? It might have been. Oh, oh, oh…that I had come across pretty harsh. I can’t remember. That kind of thing. It stung a little bit, but I knew in my heart she was right. The correction she provided really helped me see how I’m treating other people, especially this relationship. That does have an impact, and I needed to hear it because I was just seeing it from my point of view rather than from other people. Even though she was outside the loop of what was occurring, she could see what was probably going through this other person’s mind.”
Brian Cropp: “I’ve got preschoolers, so let’s say applying Scriptural correction is very tangible. There is behavior that is either harmful to them or to somebody else, or they’re not following leadership. It’s very direct. ‘You didn’t do this. Stop doing that.” ...kind of thing. I’m told that changes from direct to more of a coaching, so what has that looked like?”
Kurt & Lydia: “That’s a good...I like the way you phrased it. Yes. One thing that we are trying is to not give advice until we’re asked for some advice. That’s really hard. So, that’s one thing.”
Brian Cropp: “You’ve had all those years of giving advice.”
Kurt & Lydia: “Yes! Yes, along those lines, now that Rebekah has a husband, there will be times that internally I want to say something. I’ve gone to Lydia, and that’s part of the other one, correction. Should I say this? Over and over it’s been, and I sense it from the Lord also, not just from her input, that no, this is not my role. They are a new family. Only when we are asked, so there have been times when we’ve been asked. We’ve answered carefully. We usually go to one another and say, ‘Is this appropriate?’ Trying to just guide our conversation from maybe, ‘This is what we’ve experienced,’ or not giving input like, ‘You should do this.’ We’ve avoided that. It’s been more like you said—coaching.” (Video ends)
Brian Cropp: I want to say one more thing before I tell you a little bit more about how you can start practicing this particular Heart Attitude. This attitude talks about giving and receiving, and we’ve talked a little bit more about receiving. Those times become a little bit more memorable. I certainly remember the times that people have taken the risk and corrected me, and I don’t know that I remember as well all the times I’ve given correction. I think some of the times I’ve corrected people I didn’t know I was correcting them. The Holy Spirit used the context or the words that I used, and people took that as correction. And, that helped them, but I don’t always remember the times that I actually, Scripturally corrected somebody. But, there are better or worse ways to correct somebody if we are in a moment where I am intentionally stepping out to correct.
The first is just, don’t. Don’t correct somebody. You can pray for that person and ask that the Holy Spirit would talk to them and correct them. He is a much better Corrector than you or I are ever going to be. You can also pray that the Lord would send somebody else to correct that person. Maybe, there is a different person out there than you who can offer that correction, and it would go better. But, this is not to be an excuse to abdicate correcting someone. If the Lord is saying, “No, you’re the person that I want to correct this person,” you need to step up, spend a little of that relational capital, and offer that correction to somebody. All I’m saying is that when you correct somebody, don’t take it lightly.
Another way to correct or keep in mind in correction is to encourage right behavior. Instead of just harping on all of the stuff that they’re doing wrong, you can build a track record of being for somebody, of being for their success in walking with the Lord. It’s possible that as you are encouraging what they’re doing well, that they’ll double down on that stuff, and then the sinful pattern will fall out of their lifestyle. But either way, they will have known that you are for their success and not just waiting for a moment to correct them. But if you need to have that hard conversation, please, please, please, check your tone. There’s a huge difference between being right and being RIGHT! We’ve all been corrected by both kinds of being right, and often the difference between those two is the tone and the approach used in the correction.
When Glenda and I sat down with Pastor Harold, he had a very firm tone. He had all the authority of Scripture behind him, but he also carried with him a tone of “we all mess up sometimes.” We all need correcting from time to time, and there’s a very interesting verse that I ran across in the book of Titus that speaks to correcting, but in a tone that is helpful. Titus was a pastor. He was a guy that the apostle, Paul… He was a guy that was on the apostle, Paul’s, ministry team, but Paul had left Titus on this island of Crete to start some churches and to raise up some church leaders. The people on the island weren’t really living according to God’s ways, so there’s a whole lot of correction that Titus was going to have to do.
Paul lists in chapter two a bunch of what he’s going to have to encourage these people to do. At the end of that chapter, he says this to Titus. He says, “These, then, are the things you should teach…” ...the list that he has given… Then, “...encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you.” He needed to rebuke and to rebuke when necessary, and he had the authority to do it. But, he needed to do it in a way that people didn’t hate him, didn’t despise him. Every child’s picture of a parent or a teacher is this scolding, authoritarian person. I’m not saying that if we rightly apply this Heart Attitude that that picture is going to be erased out of people’s minds. I think in that moment that you’re being corrected, it’s always going to feel a little like scolding. But, we certainly, if we’re on the giving side, should be intentional and conscious to take an empathetic tone.
Like Elizabeth mentioned, as she approaches her kids, sometimes mommy or daddy need to be corrected, too. You’re going to need to be corrected. It’s just a thing that we do. That tone of compassion and empathy goes a long way as a person is processing that moment of correction. Then, once the correction has been given, your stewardship about the issue is over. You’ve obeyed God. You’ve delivered the message that He wanted you to deliver, and then it’s up to the person whether or not they’re going to obey God and realign their life according to God’s ways. Kind of like Kurt and Lydia mentioned, as now their kids have grown up, they’ve moved from being a director or their kids to being a coach of these adults that they have raised.
It can be stressful as you’re watching somebody, wondering will they or won’t they align according to God’s ways in their life. But regardless, at the end of the correcting, someone should know “A.” They should know what the standard of Scripture is and how they are out of alignment, but too, that you really are for them. I want us to look at some quick ways that we can start taking some steps toward applying this particular Heart Attitude.
The first is to get into a group, actually, and here’s why. Every group this fall is going through Pastor Harold’s book on the Heart Attitudes. You get a free copy, and it’s the only place that you can get this particular book. There is a lot in the chapter on giving and receiving correction that I cannot get into given our time today. But, it talks about the context of giving and receiving correction, and it gives some helpful phrases that you can use when giving and receiving correction. There’s a lot of helpful, additional information in there. Being in the group, you can talk with other people, and you can see what their stories about this Heart Attitude are, as well. So, you can jump into a group.
Second, if the Lord is asking you to correct somebody and you haven’t, then you need to step up and be the man or the woman that God is asking you to be and to correct that person. You need to step up, help a brother or sister out, as they’re wanting to be a success in walking with the Lord, as well. But then, also, if someone has corrected you and you haven’t taken those steps in realigning your life according to God’s ways, then I would encourage you to do that, to take those next steps to align your life according to His direction. One of the images that the Bible gives for a group of Christians together is that we are a family. We are the family of God. Healthy families really are rooting for each other. They are hoping that everyone will be a success in life. So as we as Hope Church move forward in the future, may we be a people who is for each other, who is encouraging each other to do life God’s ways, so that as one another, we will not be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.
I want to pray for us, and then we will wrap up. Lord, God, surely You are faithful to us. Surely, You do the work of realigning our thoughts, our words, and our actions to Your standard. We confess that we often need Your correction much more than we realize. God, as best as we can, we ask that You would correct us, that You would help us to realign with Your ways. We confess that we are open to the deceitfulness of sin and the hardening of our hearts, and unless You correct us, we are in great danger of being taken out and dishonoring Your name. Help us to be people that You can correct, and where You ask us to correct those around us, please give us the opportunity, the words, the tone for Your correction to be heard. Preserve us in Your fear and favor, and in the end, bring us, mature, into Your everlasting kingdom. In Christ Jesus, amen.
