Accountable Friendship

Timothy – Letters to a Young Man: Accountable Friendship
Sycamore Creek Church
September 29 & 30
Tom Arthur
2 Timothy 4:3-4

Peace friends!

The other day I was working out in the yard edging the driveway.  If you know me at all, you’ll know that I really don’t like doing yard work.  I live on a corner lot so there is at least twice the amount of sidewalk to edge than the average house in my neighborhood.  I’m not really having a very good time.  Tabitha, who lives with us, walks out to her car at just about the time that I’m fed up with the whole process.  If you know Tabitha, you know that she’s super bubbly.  She is an encourager at heart.  She looks at what I’ve done and says, “Looks great!”  I respond, “Another hour of my life wasted.”  She catches the attitude and says back to me, “You could always use that hour to pray.  That’s what I do in my cleaning job when I’m cleaning toilets and don’t like it.”  Ouch.  At first my defenses went up.  I thought, “Who are you to tell me when to pray?”  Slowly but surely God’s Holy Spirit worked conviction on my defensiveness, and I realized that the pastor had just been held accountable.  I also realized I had an opening illustration for this message!

The Problem
Here’s the problem I want to deal with today: We don’t give or receive correction well.  I’m no better than anyone else when it comes to this.  I get defensive even if there is truth in it.

When was the last time you received correction or guidance from someone and actually accepted it well?  When was the last time you gave correction or guidance to someone (especially in a touchy situation) and they received it well?

The Point
Today we’re wrapping up a series on Paul’s letters to Timothy.  Paul is the first Christian missionary and Timothy is a young church leader that Paul is mentoring.  They are spiritual friends.  With an eye toward eternity and the things of God, Paul is helping Timothy to live and lead well right now.  Today we’re going to see how Paul holds Timothy accountable and guides him and how he instructs Timothy to do the same with others.  What we’ll find is this: True spiritual friends do more than just listen, they also guide.

The “books” of 1 & 2 Timothy are actually not books.  They’re letters that Paul wrote Timothy.  Here’s one section where Paul guides Timothy about his own leadership of guiding others:

2 Timothy 4:3-4
For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.

Paul is essentially saying: It’s hard to receive guidance and correction.  When push comes to shove, we tend to seek out people who agree with us rather than seeking out people who will challenge us.  This comes in every facet of life.  Throughout the two letters, Paul speaks to Timothy about the content of the teaching he is teaching others:  “Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching” (1 Timothy 4:16).  He talks to Timothy about money: “Love of money is the root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10).  He guides Timothy about sin: “People will be lovers of themselves” (2 Timothy 3:2).  In each case, Timothy is to teach and guide in the way that Paul has instructed him, in the way that Paul has received guidance and correction from Jesus.

Guiding and Correcting
Or course, saying you should guide and correct is much easier than the real thing.  I asked some friends for examples of when they had received or given guidance or correction.  I ended up getting two stories about eating disorders.

Alice McKinstry was at one time an Aversion Therapy therapist.  She helped people get over bad habits like smoking or overeating.  She actually met Mark, her husband, when he came in seeking help to quit smoking.  Her job was to give him an electric shock as he picked up a cigarette!  I guess it worked.  And she got a husband in the process!  One day she had a Jewish woman come to see her who had been in a concentration camp.  This woman had an eating disorder.  When Alice found out her background, she told her something that she wasn’t supposed to say in her job: she didn’t need Aversion Therapy; she needed to focus on the trauma of being in a concentration camp.  I was intrigued to find out that the woman ended up agreeing and sought out another kind of therapy.  It was a risk that Alice took on several levels to guide this woman to find healing.

I also heard back from Krissy Brokenshire about people holding her accountable through guidance and correction.  Krissy is a young mom of two kids in our church.  She wrote to me:

I have a long history of eating disorders that started when I was eleven years old. For the most part I have not had a major relapse for at least the past ten years, but a lot of that had to do with the people I love watching out for me. It was the worst in high school and between my parents and several close friends, they kept me honest about what I was eating and that I was making good life choices. Without nearly 24-7 accountability on the body-problems I would not have had the strong foundation needed to develop new habits and work on the head-problems.

I’m struck by the courage of both Krissy and Alice to receive and give guidance in a culture that is more interested in keeping everybody’s business private.

Give Correction or Guidance
Of course all of us have stories of giving correction or guidance and it not working out quite so well.  And it never will work out well all the time because no matter how well you do it, the person has to receive it well too.  So how do you do you give guidance in a way that will create the fewest obstacles possible?

Giving guidance is an art more than a science, but let me offer a bit of science to help you.  It comes from the science of marriage.  Julie Gottman and her husband John have been studying couples over several decades.  They video tape them arguing about something and then follow up every couple of years to see how their relationship is progressing or digressing.  Here’s a brief video of Julie Gottman talking about what the healthy couples do when they give one another guidance or correction:

Even though this is about marriage, I think it can be instructive to any situation where you’re attempting to hold a spiritual friend accountable.  I’d sum it up in these ways:

1. Complain, don’t criticize.
2. Start your sentences with “I” instead of “you.”
3. Talk clearly about what you need.
4. Be polite.
5. Express appreciation.

Don’t forget to spend some time in prayer before you bring it up.  This might be a brief “breath prayer” in the moment or it might be a more extended time of prayer before the moment.

Receive Correction or Guidance
So what about being on the receiving end of correction or guidance?  What should you do if someone attempts to hold you accountable?

One thing the Gottmans focus on in their research is helping couples accept influence from one another.  I think this is a helpful emphasis for everyone.  Most of us have a gut reaction against accepting another person’s influence.  Most of us get defensive the moment someone attempts to correct us.  If that’s your default, then seek God’s power to change your default so that your default becomes: maybe there’s something I can learn from this person’s guidance or correction.  Maybe God can teach me something here.  Maybe there’s not and their guidance or correction is completely frivolous, but if you don’t begin with the default that there might be something of worth here, you’ll never really know.  You’ll only get defensive.

I’d suggest that your next step should be to be curious and ask questions about what the person is seeing or noticing.  Instead of defending yourself, get to see yourself from that person’s perspective.  This past week I had a meeting with a colleague who didn’t like something I did.  This person sent me an email about it, and I suggested we meet to talk about it face to face.  When I got the email, I was at first defensive.  But I held back the defensiveness when we met, and I spent the first twenty minutes just asking questions.  Then I summarized what this colleague felt.  I learned something new about myself in this process.  I also won over this colleague.  At the end of the twenty minutes of me just listening and asking questions and summarizing how they felt, this person apologized to me for sending the email!  I didn’t see that coming.  I think the door opened for reconciliation in part because I was willing to accept influence and ask questions.

A third step I’d suggest you go through is seek other input.  Does more than one person notice this about you?  Someone recently told me that the messages each Sunday were getting too long.  Then someone else told me the same thing.  Then I went to a conference where they essentially said the same thing.  Then I went to another church where the pastor’s message was just as long as mine.  It was too long.  Ouch.  So I’ve been working on getting them tighter.  Hearing the same thing from many people suggested to me that there was some real truth I had to grapple with here.

Lastly, make sure you pray about it.  Give God’s Holy Spirit an invitation to seek your heart and mind and show you your own brokenness.  Allow God to convict you and hold you accountable too.  Psalm 139 says:

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

A Community of Spiritual Friends Guiding and Correcting
What might a whole community of spiritual friends look like who were open to holding one another accountable through giving and receiving guidance and correction?  How would it not devolve into just being a big group of very judgmental and defensive people?  Well, I received a glimpse of what it might look like in an unlikely place: a karate black belt test.  Recently I went to see Justin Kring, a newly baptized member of our church, test for his second degree black belt.  His sensei is Mark McCloud, who is also a member of our church and owns the Karate Dojo in Holt.  I was deeply moved watching the panel of senseis preside over the tests.  The spirit in the room was not a spirit of being judgmental, but it was a spirit of accountability.  You had either mastered the kata techniques or you had not.  Mark doesn’t actually let anyone test who he knows won’t pass.  There are clear standards that one is held accountable to, but the community is one of support and encouragement and love.

That’s what I’d like to see happen here at SCC.  I’d like to see us be a community where spiritual friendships thrive and part of that thriving is that spiritual friends are holding one another accountable to truly following Jesus by giving and receiving guidance and correction.  If a karate dojo can pull it off, I think we can too.

Prayer
God, help us to be a community that creates environments where spiritual friendships can thrive.  Give those spiritual friends the courage to give and receive guidance and correction so that we more faithfully follow Jesus.  May we have these things by the power your Holy Spirit working in us.  Amen.