March 8th Sunday sermon

To view the online message, click on this link.

By Rev. Dr. Ed Hird

Passage: Psalm 139:13-24

Today we continue our Lenten series on the Rule of Life. Today we examine the fourth principle: the boldness of our spoken witness in Christ.

My Sermon today is about self-awareness in evangelism. Can greater self-awareness help us better share our faith?

“The unexamined life is not worth living” is a famous dictum supposedly uttered by Socrates when he was sentenced to death. This is recorded in Plato’s Apology (38a5–6).

Through nine years of listening to Bishop Peter Klenner’s sermons, I have become more self-aware of the need for self awareness. Have you noticed that that is one of Peter’s key themes? The word Aware” originates from the late Old English Germanic gewær (meaning watchful, vigilant). To be aware and to beware are closely related. How many remember being rather naive and unaware as a teenager, sometimes with painful consequences? Have you ever like myself ever rushed in where angels fear to tread?

How self-aware do you think that you are? Being truly self-aware is one of the hardest things to actually do. Research (notably from organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich) shows a remarkable gap: ~95% of people believe they’re self-aware, but only about 10–15% actually demonstrate it to others.

Greater self-awareness comes through the Lenten discipline of self-examination in a community context.

Self-awareness comes through embracing the gift of community and regular church attendance.  No one is an island. Lone rangers are usually blind rangers. Non-self-aware pushy evangelists give evangelism a bad name.

What does Ash Wednesday, the first day of the 40 days of Lent, teach us about self-examination? It helps us become more aware of our mortality: ‘Dust you are and to dust you will return.’  This is not a popular form of self-awareness.  Our culture is both in denial over death, and yet obsessed with death as the solution for suffering. 

Speaking of death, yesterday, Janice and I attended two funerals/celebrations of life, the first one for Lisa Webb which many of you attended, and the second one in North Vancouver for our long term friend Marina Ireland. At both, the gospel was shared, which doesn’t always happen in BC. My late friend Pastor Owen Scott said to me, “Brother Ed, nowadays many people don’t go to church, except for weddings and funerals.  At weddings, they are so distracted by the bride that they are not listening. But at funerals, they sometimes pay attention, so I always share about Jesus at funerals. Make sure that your future funeral includes Jesus. You may want to formally write what you want to happen so that your family doesn’t leave Jesus out.

After two funerals, I went to a political event in White Rock where I was able to share my conversion story with someone.  I simply asked them if they had ever been to church. They said that they used to, but still shared the values.  The pub was so noisy that it was hard to hear any one speak, but I met one person who seemed interested spiritually, so I asked them if they went to church. Then I asked him to tell me his spiritual journey. It was a fascinating story, far more interesting than the other political discussions that night.  When you ask people about religion and faith, I recommend like with the Alpha Course that you be unshockable and let them speak. Don’t interrupt them. You never know where the conversation might go.  The Alpha Course which we did thirty-one times in our last church proves to me that if people feel safe, they may open up spiritually. And sadly, there are very few safe places to talk about faith in our culture. If we want to reach more people for Christ, what if we each practised being a safe, listening, caring person? When they don’t want to talk about faith either at all, or not any more for the moment, change the subject. You don’t want to win the argument and lose the moment. As Nicky Gumbel thoughtfully says on Alpha, no one likes being pressurized. 

In 2 Corinthians 13:5, Paul says,  “Examine yourselves to see if you are in the faith; test yourselves .

Speaking of self-awareness, we just went to see the remarkable movie I Can Only Imagine 2. The lead singer for the Christian band Mercy Me Bart Millard self-examined himself over his writer’s block and a struggle to show love to his diabetic son Sam.

Self-awareness is not about narcissistically navel-gazing but rather seeing ourselves through God’s eyes so that we can better share his love with others.

Self-examination often reveals unflattering truths about ourselves (perhaps we’re more controlling than generous, more insecure than confident). This new awareness may trigger cognitive dissonance and discomfort where your sense of reality is challenged. We may be tempted to default to avoidance or defensiveness rather than curiosity about how we might grow and even change.

Does anyone know what a confirmation bias is?  As shown experimentally by Dr. Peter Wason in 1960, it means that we are tempted to notice evidence that supports our existing world-view and ignore what contradicts it.

In Vs 13, David said to God: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

Don’t you love the beauty and wisdom of the Psalms? Whenever there is revival historically, people turn to the psalms which gives us healthy self-awareness of God’s deep love in creating us.

In vs. 14, David said to God:  

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

Psalm 139 protects us from the two sins of self-hatred and self-exaltation. Because we are all made in God’s image, we all have inherent worth and value from conception until natural death.  We are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made. CS Lewis said. “Next to the Blessed Sacrament yourself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your sense, …for in him also….Glory Himself is truly hidden.”

Islam by the way lacks the concept in the Koran of our being made in God’s image. Because of sin and rebellion, 95% of us, to quote Bishop Peter,  are broken and flawed. ;), the image of God in us is broken, and the other 5% are truth-challenged 😉

Jeremiah 17:9 warns us that our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked. Who can understand them? Do you agree? That’s self-awareness!

Dostoevsky said: “Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”  That’s self-awareness!

“Martin Luther said:  “The recognition of sin is the beginning of salvation.” That’s self-awareness!

Our self-awareness is limited and often distorted by our own sin, pride, self-deception, and blind spots. The log in our eyes first blinds us to our own faults while highlighting other people’s seemingly more serious specks in their eyes. Are you ever tempted to remove the specks from other people’s eyes? How did it go?

Accurate self-knowledge comes from being known by God—this humbles us, exposes hidden, often ulterior motives or “offensive ways,” and potentially leads to transformation and growth in the “everlasting way.”

I then had Janice & Mike Inch come up and share about their coming to Christ through Pastor Bernice Gerard and what that taught them about being a safe place as key in evangelism

In vs. 15, David said:

My frame was not hidden from you

    when I was made in the secret place,

    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Where’s the secret place?  Abortion is massively reduced when parents view an ultrasound of the unborn baby.

In vs 16, David said:

Your eyes saw my unformed body;

    all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Seeing is believing. Vs 16 teaches that God’s eyes see all even in the womb. Unlike our disposable culture, God doesn’t discard us like junk. God doesn’t make junk. God shines through cracked pots like you and me. He’s even records the days of our lives in his book of life. Because God doesn’t discard us, we should not discard others in our prayers. Charles Spurgeon commented, “Winners of souls are first weepers for souls.” Do you ever weep for the souls of your lost family, friends, coworkers and neighbours? Prayer is vital in effective evangelism, especially when no door seems to be open.

In vs. 17, David prayed:  

How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them!

How much smarter is God than AI, than even Einstein? How many thoughts have you had so far this morning?

In vs. 18, David continues:  

Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand—

    when I awake, I am still with you.

Have you ever counted the grains of sand at Crescent Beach?  Scientists estimate there are approximately 7.5 x 10 to the 21^st  sextillion grains of sand on Earth. God has way more thoughts than even that? Often we don’t realize how easy it is for God to outthink us. 

19-22 If only you, God, would slay the wicked!

    Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!

They speak of you with evil intent;

your adversaries misuse your name.

Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord,

    and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?

I have nothing but hatred for them;

    I count them my enemies.

In vs. 19 to 22. Is David just momentarily slipping into the blame game or is he more likely expressing genuine grief at the pervasive evil in the world? Is this David’s intense cry for justice? Was it perhaps an early version of scream therapy?  I have secular friends whose vs 19-22 equivalent is to start swearing a lot religiously and/or sexually.  There is something about anger that makes a lot of us talk about sex and religion. God only knows why this happens. You too can be honest with God about your various emotions. You can tell Him. He can take it. He already knows!

In vs. 23 to 24, David powerfully prayed:

Search me, God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

David here calms down, refocuses, and wisely returns to the opening theme of Psalm 139.

This week I saw a 106.5 Radio bus stop poster right by a Gurdwara Sikh Temple on 152^nd. It memorably said: ‘you’re already someone Jesus loves.’ The heart of our prolific evangelism during the Jesus movement was telling people that Jesus loves them. Part of Jesus loving us is his searching and knowing our hearts. Jesus is deeply interested in each of us. We deeply matter to him.

In vs 23, we pray: search me, know me, test me, not superficially but at a heart level. I give you my anxious sometimes worried thoughts. Are you willing to do that? As 1 Peter 4:7 puts it, I cast my cares on you for you care for me.

Might self awareness through God-awareness helps us to face our spouse’s offensive ways? Our parents’ offensive ways? Our family’s offensive ways? Perhaps our own offensive ways. 😉

What might be potential offensive ways in evangelism? What about manipulation, double-speak,  fear-mongering, guilt-tripping, commercializing, exploiting, or deceiving?  Eugene Peterson warned about being shop-keepers rather than shepherds. Evangelism must never be about appearances and the numbers games. It is about caring for people as Jesus does.

What if as Jesus taught, in evangelism, we let our yes be yes and our no be no? Pretending and lying is deadly in genuine evangelism. Fyodor Dostoevsky said that a man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies become unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself or others.

What if we honestly admitted in our evangelism that the Christian life is not a bed of roses, that God never promised us a rose garden without the thorns of real life? Bishop Peter often teaches about our embracing our suffering. Dostoevsky said in Crime and Punishment that: “Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.”

What if in our evangelism, we emphasized honesty and transparency about our real-life experiences with Christ? What if our greatest failures and struggles might become a key to reaching others when we stop pretending? What if we renounced holier than thou attitudes, looking down on others as worse than ourselves? What if we showed genuine love to those whom one disagree with politically or morally? What if effective evangelism is 90% active listening and asking really thoughtful non defensive questions?

In BC, there are many people who don’t want to hear the good news. The good news is that there are still people in BC who are open to the gospel. 1 Peter 3:15 tells us to always be ready to give an answer to those who ask for the reason for your hope, doing it with gentleness and respect. Pray that God will lead you to people who are willing to ask.

Might a genuine curiosity about the other person’s life actually help us be better witnesses for Christ? I will never forget when one of my sons was reaching out to another young man. His father, who I was able to minister to, strategically asked me if his son was a friend or a project. We never want to dehumanize others by treating them as projects.

Giving up our idols especially during Lent makes us more effective in sharing our faith with others. Anything that I have to have especially right now is usually an idol and a distraction from seeking first God’s Kingdom.

In conclusion, what kind of idols would you like to give up this Lent so that you would be more effective in reaching others for Christ?

Let us pray.