The Habit of Self-Examination

Habits of a Healthy Heart  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  25:31
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Self-Examination

Today we are starting a new series, based on a Life Church series called, “Habits of a Healthy Heart.” To kick us off, I am curious as to how many people would admit that they have ever told a lie? A friend of mine has been dealing some people who have been telling him consistent and blatant lies. The other day he was telling me some of the things he has been told and it got me to wondering about things I might have said in the past that weren’t completely true.
Maybe I didn’t want to face the consequences of the truth, or maybe I didn’t want someone to think bad of me, or maybe I wanted something to go my way, or maybe I just wanted to put a little twist to the truth to make it sound good. It also made me wonder who I would be willing to tell a lie to. A stranger? Kids? My boss? Friends?
What about you? Who do you think you lie to the most?
Maybe you called in sick to work when you weren’t sick. The kids kept nagging for something so to get them to quit you said, “I’ll think about it,” even though you know that it’s never going to happen. Maybe you told your parents, “It wasn’t me!” I saw a video online a while back of a guy who was messing around with a soccer ball in the house when he lost control of it and it smashed into a shelf full of breakable stuff. When he heard his wife coming, he darted around the corner, leaving his kid standing there to take the heat.
A friend called you up needing help moving, but you said, “Oh man! I am busy that weekend.” How many times do people lie on social media about something. They post a message about how happy they are, when in truth they are anxious, depressed, or lonely? C. S. Lewis put these little lies into perspective when he said, “A little lie is like a little pregnancy—it doesn’t take long before everyone knows” (C. S. Lewis).
Who do you think you lie to the most? The surprising truth to that question is that the person you lie to the most is YOU! We even talked about this a few months ago. Studies show that we lie most often to ourselves.
Think about it, is there something that you really want to do so you tell yourself that you will start tomorrow, even though you know you won’t? You tell yourself that you can stop any time, but you can’t. You tell yourself that you are fine when you are not. Maybe someone hurts you but you shrug it off and say “I don’t care,” when in truth you really do care. Have you ever told yourself that “it’s no big deal,” when it is.
If you have your bibles, go ahead and turn to chapter 17 of Jeremiah. In this passage, Jeremiah speaks about the ways of the human heart. The Hebrew term for the heart is understood a little differently than what we think of today when we talk about our hearts. To Hebrew readers, the heart refers metaphorically to a person’s inner life—the will, thoughts, motivations, and emotions. Jeremiah is addressing human thoughts and feelings when he said…
Jeremiah 17:9 ESV
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
One of the main reasons we fail when we say that we will start tomorrow is because we are focused on changing external habits and external behaviors. Then my promise to myself becomes a lie because it doesn’t happen. When we think of habits, we often think of New Years Resolutions. Same thing, these good intentions fail because we are focused on changing external habits and behaviors.
I’m going to get more organized. I’m going to quit procrastinating. I’m going to read my bible. I’m going to eat better. I’m going to stop yelling at my spouse.”
The problem is that we are focused on external behaviors, but behaviors are born in the heart. You’ve probably heard this call to action before…
If you want to change your life, change your habits.
But we often leave off the most important part…
If you want to change your life, change your habits.
If you want to change your habits, let God change your heart.
Pray
The Habit of Self-Examination
The Habit of Simplicity
The Habit of Solitude
The Habit of Sorrow
The Habit of Slowing
This is a five part series that will challenge us to develop good habits by starting in our heart. Focusing on our inner life, as opposed to trying to form good habits by focusing on the external. To get us started we are going to do some heart healing with a little self examination. Over the next four weeks we will develop habits that will help us recognize when less is better (the habit of simplicity), when your mind won’t stop (the habit of solitude), get rid of your guilt (the habit of sorrow), don’t quit to early (the habit of slowing).
Let’s talk about the Habit of Self-Examination. If we continue reading from that last verse in Jeremiah, God jumps in and says this…
Jeremiah 17:10 ESV
10 “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”
God searches our inner self and He knows us. David knew this about God, and that’s why he prayed this prayer at the end of Psalm 139
Psalm 139:23–24 ESV
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! 24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
God, search my heart and test my mind, and lead me so that my ways will be like your ways. Why would David pray this prayer? Over time, David started to understand that he had a propensity to lie to himself. David faced the same problem that we all face when we let a little lie slip by. Just as C. S. Lewis said, we bend the truth a little and it seems insignificant at first, but given time it grows and becomes obvious and the truth can’t be hidden any longer.
Unfortunately for David the metaphor was more literal. By the time he realized that he was lying to himself and destroying the people around him, that pregnancy had already reached full term and been born. When David prayed for God to search his heart, test his thoughts, and change his ways to be more like God’s ways, he was at the lowest point in his life.
We’ve talked about this story a lot, so we won’t spend too much time here, but to remind us of what is going on let’s look at 2 Samuel 11:1.
2 Samuel 11:1 ESV
1 In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.
It was the time of year when KINGS would go out to battle, but what did David do? He sent someone else. David stayed home. Think about all of the small little lies David tells himself over the course of this tragic story. First, he tells himself, “I’ve fought enough. I deserve a break. I am important right now, so I should stay safe.” He is in a place he shouldn’t be.
One day, he was getting tired of sitting on the couch. Apparently he made it to the end of all of his favorite shows, so he decided to go stand on the roof. You and I, we might go stand on the porch. Same thing. While he’s out enjoying the air he sees a beautiful woman bathing. Bathsheba. The Hebrew word used here is pronounced “Raw-aww.” You can’t even say the word without bobbing your eyebrows. That is exactly how he is looking at her, “Raww-awwwww!”
I’m not hurting anyone. Just looking. Just enjoying God’s creation.” Then he starts wondering who she is. “Can’t hurt to find out more about her. Without some back story this is just a picture book.” After he learns who she is he lies to himself a little more. “She should come over so we can talk. I’d like to learn more about her. We could be good friends.
After he sends for her things get more physical. Maybe he lied to himself some more about being the king and one more woman not hurting anything. Just one wild night and it will all be over, no one will find out. Except that she ended up getting pregnant. Now what’s he going to do? In David’s deceptive heart he decides to stage this whole thing to look like it never happened.
In his panic he decides to bring her husband, Uriah, home so that it will look like it’s his baby. The problem is that, unlike David, her husband is actually an honorable guy. He refuses to be with his wife or even sleep in his own house knowing that his men are sleeping in a field. This new lie wouldn’t work, so David steps it up. As that little lie keeps getting bigger and bigger, David decides the only thing he can do is kill Uriah.So David sends him to the front lines where he was sure to die.
David abused his power. He violated Bathsheba. He committed adultery. He wrecked a family. He murdered Uriah. After all of this, Bathsheba has David’s baby, but the baby eventually got sick and died.
Looking at this story from the outside you might find yourself screaming at the pages like people watching a scary movie trying to warn the character that the bad guy is right behind them. “David, what are you doing?” David didn’t recognize his sin. We are all masters of self-deception.
Psychologists have a term for it. They call it “Cognitive Bias.” The Bible calls it “flattering themselves/deceiving/deluded heart.” In fact, Psalm 36 says that sin whispers to wicked people deep within their hearts, but…
Psalm 36:2 NIV
2 In their own eyes they flatter themselves too much to detect or hate their sin.
Craig Groeschel says there are five major ways that self-deception tends to manifest…
Addiction to Distraction
Manic Cheeriness
Judgmentalism
Defensiveness
Cynicism
First, we distract ourselves from the truth about ourselves. Experts call it Addiction to Distraction. This happens when we know that we are doing something wrong, yet we find ourselves unintentionally distracting ourselves by anything that keeps us from facing the truth about ourselves. It might be an addiction to social media, the news, or talking bad about people. It might be an addiction to something that’s very bad like pornography, alcohol, or drugs. It’s an addiction that distracts us from facing the truth about ourselves.
The second way it manifests is in a manic cheeriness. This is the person that isn’t actually happy but pretends to be happy all the time. You just go around pretending that everything is great and showing this great life on social media, when the truth is that you might actually be depressed, or discouraged. You are facing a bunch of bad stuff in your life, but when you are in public you make sure someone can hear you singing the Lego song, “Everything is awesome!
For many people, instead of their self-deception being more internal it will target other people. You may find yourself judging others. We have something wrong with us, but we point out the faults in other people. We point out the speck in their eye when we have a log in our own eye. Often times we will judge others very harshly about sin in their life, when the reality is that we are vulnerable to that very sin in our life. We judge in others that very thing that we dislike in ourselves.
We can also be very defensive. It offends us for someone to make any suggestion that we have a problem. It’s not our fault! We don’t have a problem! It’s his fault. I am the victim.
Finally, our self-deception can convince us that everything is wrong. It’s not me, it’s something else that is to blame. It’s everyone else’s fault. I am not the one with the problem.
Whatever it was that caused David to continue to deceive himself, it tore his life apart. All of the little lies snowballed into big ones and hurt many people, including David. By the end, the Lord sent the prophet Nathan to David in chapter 12 of Second Samuel. Nathan told David a story about a little lamb. Their were two men, one was rich and the other poor.
The poor man had a little lamb that was very dear to him. He took great care of it and it was like a child to him. One day the rich man was entertaining a guest and didn’t want to kill one of his own animals to feed the guest, so he took the poor man’s lamb.
This made David furious. He said, “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard. That man should be punished. He should be put to death!” Then Nathan looked at David and said, “Attah Ha Ish!” “You are the man!
2 Samuel 12:7 (ESV)
7 Nathan said to David, “You are the man!...”
If you want to change your life, change your habits. If you want to change your habits, let God change your heart. Along with the five ways self-deception manifests, Craig shares three warning signs we can look for to see where we may be deceiving ourselves. If David had have been looking for the warning signs that God put in his heart, he may have avoided all of this nasty mess. It’s not easy to do. It’s not easy to invite God in to search your heart, know your thoughts, and change you when there is a problem. Lead you in the way everlasting. First…

Watch for what others have tried to tell you.

If more than two people who love you tell you that you have a problem, then it might be time to pause and do a little self-examination of the heart. Time to pray and ask God to make it clear to you. Guys, your spouse counts as two people, so if your wife tells you that you have a problem twice, then you better get to praying.
When you ask God to search your heart, watch out because He may send others to tell you. He may send a Nathan to tell you a farm story. Second…

Watch for what you rationalize.

It’s shocking how good we can be at rationalizing. Watch out for the things you say “it’s no big deal” about. “It’s not hurting anyone. I can handle this. I don’t have a problem, I know what I am doing.” Rationalizing sounds like such a small and insignificant thing, but in David’s case it got people killed and turned a king away from God.
Watch out for what others are telling you, watch out for what you rationalize, and third…

Watch for where you’re most defensive.

What do you get defensive about? When someone says they think you have a problem with something, do you immediately get frustrated and deflect or snap back. “I don’t have a problem. Leave me alone. It’s none of your business!
In the devotional book “My Utmost for His Highest” Oswald Chambers wrote…
“The reason we see hypocrisy, deceit, and a lack of genuineness in others is that they are all in our own hearts… most of us are much more severe in our judgment of others than we are in judging ourselves. We make excuses for things in ourselves, while we condemn things in the lives of others simply because we are not naturally inclined to do them”
In other words, we go easy on ourselves and hold others to a high standard. Craig Groeschel says it this way…
The more convinced you are that you don’t have a problem, the more likely it is that you do.
God wants to lead you in the way everlasting. He wants to change your heart so that you can develop healthy habits, but here is the bottom line…

You cannot change what you won’t confront.

Having healthy habits starts with the habit of self-examination. It starts with a moment of truth between you and God, searching your heart, knowing your thoughts. Praying for His guidance. “God, search me and know my heart, test me and know my thoughts, see if there is anything offensive in me, and lead me.
What is God saying to you? What is He showing you? We shouldn’t be afraid of God, He already knows. We should be afraid of what sin and self-deception will cost. We should run to Him, not away from Him.
Psalm 51:10–12 (NIV)
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me… 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
If you want to change your life, change your habits. If you want to change your habits, let God change your heart.
Pray
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