Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] You know, some of you may wonder, you know, why Elam, you know, how did I end up here? What wrong turn did I make? You know, that I, that I ended up in this situation. And, you know, I don't like the way this is done. I don't like the way that is done. And I, you know, why, Elam, the thing you have to realize is that your gift has been given not for your good, but for the common good.
[00:00:27] And God may think Elam as crazy as you are, and that's why he put you there. There, right? Because you need to be a part of this thing. Because this thing is where your gift is going to have the kind of impact that I'm trying to have. And I'm going to do the things that. That I need to do in that way.
[00:00:52] Welcome back to season two of the well, this week we will be hearing from Pastor Mike Kavanaugh, who from one of our regional conferences. We hope that you enjoy his powerful message.
[00:01:04] Okay, look what the passage says. For to one is given the word of wisdom through the spirit, to another word of knowledge according to the Spirit, to another faith, by the same spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one spirit, to another affecting of miracles, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues. But look at verse 11.
[00:01:26] But one and the same spirit works all these things, distributing to each one just as he wills.
[00:01:37] So what he's saying here is the reason we have differences is not because your mommy dropped you when you were little.
[00:01:46] The reason we have differences is because God has distributed to each one individually, just as he wills. He has given these different gifts and different views and different approaches out to everybody. He is the one who has done this. So you don't need to blame a person.
[00:02:10] You've got to blame God, right? If you're dealing with a person and you say this person sees the world very, very differently than I see the world, you can't go, you know, bad, you know what I mean?
[00:02:25] You got to go, okay, God, God is the one who put them, you know, in here. And God, right? And God, here it is. God is the one who's created this person as different, right? This is, you know, so as a pastor or a leader, you've had this kind of experience.
[00:02:46] Somebody comes up to you and says, pastor, it looks like I'm going to be leaving the church. Oh, really?
[00:02:51] Why did you decide to do that?
[00:02:54] Pastor, this church just does not pray enough.
[00:02:57] We need a greater spirit of prayer and I heard this church down the block over here, they just really got a spirit of prayer, and so I want to go there now when they tell me that I understand what they're saying. They're saying, I want to go to a church where everybody sees things the way I see them, right? That's what I'm looking for, a church where it's like me. They're not asking the question, did God put me in this church? They're not asking the question, is my gift that I've been given there for other people, not necessarily for me. They're not seeing the master's hand in the whole thing. They're just looking at it, and they're saying, I want to go to a church where people are like me.
[00:03:36] And, you know, you'll hear it a lot of different ways, right? The church isn't friendly. I'm going to leave and find a church centered on relating. The church is not thought out enough. I need to find a place that values planning more. You know, the church never really does anything. I want to find a church that takes action in some kind of way. You know, our differences are not an accident.
[00:04:01] And if you reject our differences, you're not rejecting people, you're rejecting God's order, God's plan, God's way of doing things. So you got to get your eyes, you know, off of flesh and blood and your eyes onto the spiritual things that are going on. You know, maybe God sent you that analyzer because he's out to transform you, right? And he knows that that analyzer is irritating to you and that you're going to have to work through that irritation and see the value of what that person has to contribute. And. And you're, you know, you're going through this changing process.
[00:04:45] Paul goes on and he says to us, number three, to experience unity, we must believe that the Holy Spirit has put us together.
[00:04:55] For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all members of the body, though they are many, are one body. So also is Christ.
[00:05:05] For by one spirit, we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one spirit.
[00:05:15] God is the one who joined you to the body of Christ, right? God is the one who put you there.
[00:05:22] You know, coming to that place where you realize that your church experience is not simply a matter of your choice, right?
[00:05:34] We've been so trained in the consumer mindset that we approach our spiritual decisions like this, you know, So I said, okay, what church should I be Going to. What church should I go to? Let me put down here. I'm going to put down all the different churches right here. And then I'm going to put here across the top all the different qualities I want in the church that I, that I go to. And now I'm going to go down and I'm going to check every, you know, to see, you know, the church that has the most of the qualities that I want. And then it'll be a simple decision. I'll just go to the church that has the most qualities that I want. It's not that simple, right? It's not that simple. Because God places you for. By one spirit you were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greek, whether slaves or free. You know, some of you may wonder, you know, why Elam, you know, how did I end up here? What wrong turn did I make, you know, that I, that I ended up in this situation.
[00:06:30] And you know, I don't like the way this is done. I don't like the way that is done. And I, you know why, Elam? The thing you have to realize is that your gift has been given not for your good, but for the common good.
[00:06:44] And God may think Elam is crazy as you are and that's why he put you there, right? Because you need to be a part of this thing. Because this thing is where your gift is going to have that kind of impact that I'm trying to have.
[00:06:59] And I'm going to do the things that I need to do in that way.
[00:07:04] I find it's like again, going back to marriage, you know, my wife and I, we would have seasons in our marriage where we did not get along very well.
[00:07:18] We were, you know, we both came from single parent homes, so we had lousy examples, you know, especially when we. Lousy examples of, of marriage from our families. When we first got married, as I was 23 and she was 20 and for a lot of years we had some really challenging times.
[00:07:43] So challenging that there would be times that I would daydream to myself, how do I get out of this? What do I need to do? This is like, you know, but we had this one thing that bound us and that was when we got married. We both had come from divorced homes and we both looked at each other, we made a promise and we said this. No matter what happens, we are not quitting on this marriage.
[00:08:16] A lifetime of misery is possible.
[00:08:21] Quitting is not possible.
[00:08:23] All right? Quitting is not possible. We are going to stand through, we're going to stick with this thing, as a result of that decision, we discovered something. Maybe you probably, if you're still married and you're here, you discovered the same thing.
[00:08:39] We would press up against a season where it just seemed like nothing, like it was just going to blow to pieces.
[00:08:47] Then we would break through and we would find a new level of relationship that we had never known before. And it was like a powerful new experience, you know, a powerful new thing. And this happened. I wish I could tell you it only happened one time. This happened multiple times, right where we were pressed against the wall, it just seemed like this. There's no way this thing is going to work. I know. And we push through and bam.
[00:09:13] It was like, wow. I didn't know it could be this good. This is so fantastic. I'm so happy with what's happened. Well, that same thing happens in church, right?
[00:09:23] You're a part of something and you make the decision. I'm going to now understand. I want you to.
[00:09:29] We don't want to stretch this out where it's ridiculous, right? If we're talking in a marriage, if I was abusive or something, I think it's totally valid for my wife to say, forget this, I'm getting out of this situation, no problem.
[00:09:42] But I'm saying that's not the case in most of our situations. In most of our situations, we're just looking for our preferences. We're looking for our comfort. We're looking for what fits us, right? You know, kind of thing. We're looking for wanting people to be the same as us, think the same, you know? But what I found in church is that when I came to that place, and let's say. Let's say, just as I've described to you, happened in my marriage, maybe there have been seasons in my time with Elam, right, where I came up to a point and I just said to myself, this is ridiculous.
[00:10:18] These people are ridiculous.
[00:10:21] Let's do something, you know what I mean? My doer person, you know?
[00:10:26] And then all at once I just said, but I'm committed. This is my family. I can't go anywhere else. And bam. I've come through. And I would be at a whole new level and relating to people, a whole new level in church and the whole experience, okay, so, you know, Paul is talking us through this. He's trying to help us understand, number four, to experience unity, we must accept our personal difference.
[00:10:54] To experience unity. Now, let me try to say this another way, maybe make it a little more clearer.
[00:11:01] We think that the big enemy of unity Is people rejecting me or rejecting one another. People rejecting one another. What Paul says to us, the big enemy is you rejecting yourself.
[00:11:20] Okay, let's look at it. He says this, he says, for the body is not one member, but many.
[00:11:25] If the foot says, because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body, it is not for this reason any less a part of the body. Okay, so catch the picture now.
[00:11:37] So the foot says, because I'm not a hand. You know, the foot. Foot is down here. Foot is like, like, I don't like being a foot.
[00:11:47] You know, it's dark down here and it's moist. Yeah, it smells, you know, it smells. It smells down here. I want to be a hand.
[00:11:56] Look at the hand. Everybody sees the hand. The hand moves around. It's got an opposable thumb. You can pick things up. I can't pick things up, you know, the hand. I want to be a hand. And so what he's saying is the foot is self rejecting. The foot is saying, I don't want to be a foot. Maybe you have ever felt that in your life at times that you have self rejected, right? Maybe you're an analyzer and you've thought to yourself, why am I an analyzer? You know, why can't I just be like the relator? You know, the relator just like, oh, yeah, you want to do that? Yeah, let's do it, you know, and the analyzer, the analyzer is going, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what about this? And how much is it going to cost? And how are we going to do that? And what are you going to put? You know, and you think to yourself, I'm just tired of being an analyzer. I want to be an analyzer. I just want to be a happy relator. You know, I just.
[00:12:51] This is not working for me, you know, and so what happens is you self reject.
[00:12:57] You reject who? God has made you the gift that he has given you.
[00:13:05] And he wants to say it so strongly to us that he actually repeats the same idea twice. Here he says, if the ear says, because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body, it is not for this reason any less a part of the body. So now we have the ear.
[00:13:25] And the ear is going, I don't like being an ear.
[00:13:30] I want to be an eye. You know, people say the eye is the window to the soul. Nobody ever says the ear is the window to the soul. You know, nobody says things like that.
[00:13:40] People say things like, I want to look into Your eyes. Nobody ever says, I want to look into your ears, you know, Nobody ever says that, you know? Yeah.
[00:13:49] And so, and so, you know, there's this self rejection that's happening again. He says, because I'm not an. I am not a part of the body. It's not for this reason any less apart. He says, if the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But now God has placed the members, each one of them in the body, just as he desired.
[00:14:11] If they were all one member, where would the body be? But now there are many members but one body.
[00:14:20] Okay, so, like, for myself, I.
[00:14:32] I rejected who God made me, especially when it came to being a pastor.
[00:14:38] I felt my first 10 years of being a pastor, I thought to myself, I thought, I am constantly disappointing these people because these people, they're looking for a warm, fuzzy, pastoral person.
[00:14:55] And I'm like a doer.
[00:14:57] I'm a doer. Worse than that, I'm a doer analyzer.
[00:15:01] I'm like a general. You know what I mean?
[00:15:04] It's like.
[00:15:07] And so, it's like.
[00:15:09] So people struggled, you know, relating to me. Things would happen, it would bring me down. I remember one time I was in another city, and I was coming out of a. Of a hotel, and this couple was coming in, and they, and, and they said, pastor Mike. And I looked at them and it was like, you got to realize I'm in a different city, different place, different everything else. And I looked at them and I, I didn't know who they were.
[00:15:35] They went to my church.
[00:15:37] Not like, once. Like, you know, they had gone to my church quite a few times, but it was a different situation, a different context, a different thing. And I just didn't place them. And they could tell in those first few moments I was hesitating that I didn't remember who they were. And they ended up quitting the church.
[00:15:57] Came back, they said, that guy doesn't even remember. We've been going to this church for a year, and he doesn't even know who we are. You know, which wasn't exactly true, but it looked that way for sure.
[00:16:11] And, and, and so I'm saying to myself, you are such a disappointment.
[00:16:17] You are such a. You are so bad at this. You know, you, you, you know, somebody's dog dies, you know, and they're like, looking for empathy, and I'm like, I don't have it. You know what I mean? I just, you know, it's like, bury the dog and let's get on with life. You know, there are things that need to happen here, right? Life goes on, right? Kind of thing. And for all of you that are dog lovers here, please don't take that negatively.
[00:16:44] But I'm just trying to express to you, I'm just trying to express to you the self rejection, right? You might be here right now, maybe you're self rejecting, right? You're looking at, you're looking, you're looking at you saying, ah, things would have turned out different if I had just this kind of person. If I was that kind of person, this would have been that way or that. You know, what I've discovered is in the context of church, every one of these four, I don't know what you'd call them, four characteristics has its day, it has its season.
[00:17:17] And you just have to realize that sometimes it's not your season, right?
[00:17:23] And you know, for example, you know, prayer week comes.
[00:17:28] We would do prayer week at the beginning of the year, you know, every year. Prayer week, right? And prayer week, you know, the prayers were like, finally, finally, Pastor, we would have prayer meeting, you know, morning, noon and night for a week, you know, and they were like, if we did this all year long, every prayer problem would go away. There would be no problems in the church.
[00:17:51] We just need prayer week, you know, and then.
[00:17:55] Thanks.
[00:17:58] Yeah, we know, we know.
[00:18:00] And then of course, the relators, right, Prayer week would come and they would be like, okay, prayer week. That's good, that's good.
[00:18:07] We'll just like sit in a circle and we'll all share, like what we're going through, what is happening in me, what is going on, you know, and then when we've shared, we'll pray for each other.
[00:18:21] Laying on hands, right? We want lots of hands all over each other.
[00:18:29] Lots of hands laying on, you know, so they find their, you know, and then the analyzer, the analyzer comes to me and says, pastor, I realize we have prayer week coming up. I've been doing some thinking about this. I've put together a strategic prayer map that has identified all of the demonic spirits over the various cities around us.
[00:18:52] And so we can pull them all down by name.
[00:18:58] We have the name of them all right there.
[00:19:01] And so, you know, and then of course, the doer, the doer is like, prayer week.
[00:19:11] Prayer week. That's a nice idea.
[00:19:13] When is do something week?
[00:19:17] When is do something week? Because I see we got prayer week, but I don't see do something week around this place at all. I just see praying Happening, you know. And then of course, we would have home groups. You know, you're trying to launch new dimension of relationship in the church and you go to set up home groups, you know, I remember I was in a group meeting. We're all kind of sitting there in a circle and a prayer walks in, prayer walks in, gets down on their knees, puts their face in the crack of the chair and their butt out toward everybody else in the circle.
[00:19:49] And so that goes on for a little while.
[00:19:51] And then I say to them, I say, bill, I said, let's.
[00:19:57] Why don't we join together? Join us. Now we're having fellowship time. We're going to talk to each other and connect with each other and stuff like that. I promised the Lord I would begin every meeting with a prayer and I want to pray and, you know, right. So these things happen. These things happen, you know. Then there's the relator, of course, when you start, say you're going to have home groups, the relator is like in heaven, right?
[00:20:25] This is like I built a room on my house for this.
[00:20:30] I have benches all around the outside of the room. We can come in there and we. I mean, it will just be. We'll just spend time with each other and lay on hands. I mean, a lot of hands. Hands all over the place, you know. Then you have the analyzer.
[00:20:51] Pastor, I thought this idea of small groups was a great idea. And so I put together job descriptions for everybody in the group. Right. If you're the leader of the group, I have a job description for you. If you're the hostess or host, I have a job description for you. If you're the, you know, and they lay out there. If you're going to take an offering, I have a special method for us to pull that off so that we can make sure everything is held accountable and they work the whole thing out.
[00:21:16] Of course, then you have the doer.
[00:21:19] The doer is like, oh, this is good. This is good.
[00:21:23] Sit in a circle and sing Kumbaya.
[00:21:27] The whole world is going to hell, but we got one more round of Kumbaya going out around air and, you know, and they just blow up, you know, they just. Just too much for them.
[00:21:42] Okay. To experience unity.
[00:21:45] I must love those who are different than I am. Now, this is what maybe we would have thought Paul would have started with. He starts out talking about self rejection, but maybe we thought he should have started out talking about this. This is what he says. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you or again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you. On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary. And those members of the body which we deem less honorable on these, we bestow more abundant honor. And our less presentable members become much more presentable, whereas our more presentable members have no need of it. But God has so composed the body and giving more abundant honor to each member that lacked so that there would be no division in the body, but that the members have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. If one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now, you are Christ's body and individually members of it.
[00:22:52] So jump up here, he says, verse 22. He says it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker. He doesn't say they are weaker.
[00:23:03] He says, through your shaded glasses, they seem to be weaker. He says the members that you look at and they seem to be weaker, he says are necessary. And those members which we deem less honorable, he doesn't say they are less honorable. What does he say? We deem them less honorable on these.
[00:23:24] What's he tell us to do? To bestow more abundant honor. And our less presentable members become much more presentable. So he says, if you look at somebody and you see them as weak, he says, I want you to actually give them more honor.
[00:23:42] I want you to lift them up in some kind of way, you know, strange in them. Recognize you're a part in this thing, in this way.
[00:23:57] God does not create any perfectly balanced people, right? There was one perfectly balanced person that ever walked on the planet. His name was Jesus Christ, right?
[00:24:08] We all love him, we all care about him, but all the rest of us have been tweaked. Tweaked.
[00:24:14] We're a little.
[00:24:17] A little goofed up, right?
[00:24:21] Because, you know, sin and living in a sin planet and everything else, you know, we have Christ in us.
[00:24:28] I'm not saying that. But we're tweaked. We're messed up. So here's the deal.
[00:24:34] The only way the world ever sees a conflict, complete picture of Jesus Christ again, is when we honor one another, care for one another, and lift each other up, right? Give, you know, lift each other up. When we do that with one another, then the world has a chance to see the analyzer and the relator and the doer and, you know, the prayer sees what can happen when these four things, these four elements can find their way back together in that way. And so we need, we need to, we need to realize how important it is for us to honor each other in our differences.
[00:25:24] Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of season two of the. Well, we hope that you enjoy, enjoyed the message that was shared and we would love it if you would take a minute to like and subscribe. See you next week.
