Honesty...

Have you noticed how many people stand on the stage of the American Idol reality TV show ? Do you see what I see? It’s interesting and sad to note that many of them are convinced they are the best singers in the world when everyone else knows that they can’t sing if their life depended on it! The tragedy of modern people is that they do not have people in their lives who love them enough to tell them the truth; to be frank and open with them; to be honest with them. Everyone is aware of what needs to be said but no one has the courage or enough love to share with them. So year after year, they go on without anyone sharing what needs to be told. The Bible says to speak the truth in love [Ephesians 4:15]. An honest answer is the sign of a true friendship. That’s fellowship. In the end, people appreciate honesty over flattery. Healthy relationships are built on honesty rather than false pretense.

Do you have someone who will tell you that you have a blind spot? I mean do you have someone who loves you and cares for you enough to point out what everyone else can see but you can’t? If you want to grow spiritually, you definitely need someone like that in your life. You won’t grow without them. Why? Because healthy relationships allow expressions of frustrations, bitterness, anger and all sorts of closed up emotional baggage that lives within us.

Some may say, “We don’t want any anger in our group. We want it to be nice.” If this happens, you’ll never get to the real issues because no one is willing to express deep felt feeling and sometimes that feeling is anger. Other times, it’s guilt. As your pastor, I wish I can only share nice things with you, but as I had to last week, we had to deal with some stuff. Why because my love for you demands that I am honest with you and be able to share things that may be difficult to hear at times. And as your pastor, I am saying it’s okay to express anger in your group. It’s the only way we are going to grow together. In fact, conflict is your friend in growing deeper relationships. There is no such thing as intimacy without going through the door of frustration and conflict. When you go through the conflict door, everything in your body will say “don’t do it! Go around it!” Bit if you want to leave fake, tireless accolades behind to find real deep Christ Centered relationships, you must enter this door. When you take real issues of life into a fake and shallow community, people get upset. And people start to cover things up to remedy the issues not by dealing with them but by sweeping them under the carpet. And the group will remain fake and phony. But if you’ll stay in it and go through it with love and gentleness, this door of conflict is where the relationships are built!

Bible says that iron sharpens iron [Proverbs 27:17]. There are sparks flying when an iron hits another iron as it tries to mold and shape each other. There is no growing and molding when those sparks are absent. Likewise, there is no deep relationships without conflict because we are human beings who all have our own opinions. And when we care deeply about something we are going to butt heads; if not, that means we are not really sharing anything deeply rooted in us. People are scared to death by conflict so we try to avoid it so nothing ever gets resolved, nobody grows, and we just are...

Loving honestly is an evidence of care. If you don’t care, you don’t say anything. Proverbs 27:5 | 5 Better to correct someone openly than to let him think you don't care for him at all.

This is why getting together in growth groups is so important. Remember few weeks ago we said that number one need in developing deep relationship is frequency. That is the first building block. Why? Because if you don’t spend enough time together you can’t build any trust. And if you don’t build trust, you can’t ever be honest with them. You can’t be honest with anyone you just see once a week or once a while. You can’t deal gut level issues when you are just acquaintance. You have to earn the right to be frank. And that happens over time!

THREE RULES FOR BEING HONEST WITH SOMEONE:

1. Praise Publicly but Correct Privately.I don’t care if it’s your kids, your wife or someone in your group. Compliment and praise in public, correct in private.
2. Correct when they are up and not when they are down.
   You don’t hit a person when they’re down, when they’re emotionally low. You don’t correct right after your husband/wife had a hard day. You don’t correct when your kids are just about to hit the sack. Ask God for wisdom so your timing is correct! Sometimes, in correcting, timing is everything.
   
3. Never offer correction until you’ve proven  you’re open to it yourself.
   I mean you have no right to correct anyone until you have proven that you are open to it yourself. That’s why humility, which we talked about before, comes before honesty! You’ve got to be open to it first.

”Thoughtless words can wound as deeply as any sword, but wisely spoken words can heal.”  The Bible tells us in Galatians 6:1 “Brothers and sisters, if someone in your group says something wrong, you who are spiritual should go to that person and gently help them make it right again.”