Our Advice: Availability is better than Advice [S2.E7]
Sometimes life throws us curveballs, and it can be all too easy to leap into problem-solving mode when someone we care about is hurting. But let's hit the brakes for a moment! This episode is all about the beauty of just sitting in the mess with our friends when they’re going through tough times. Instead of offering advice or trying to fix things, we chat about how it’s way more powerful to simply be present and share in the heartbreak. After all, sometimes the best thing we can do is to lay down with someone in their pain and remind them, “Hey, this isn’t forever.” So come hang out with us as we share some laughs and dig deep into the reality of God’s grace, especially for the most broken among us!
Chapters:
- 00:02 - Confession and Faith
- 03:12 - The Edge of Decision
- 06:31 - The Illusion of Anonymity in Nashville
- 10:12 - The Power of Community Support
- 12:35 - Understanding Human Fallibility
Takeaways:
- Sitting in the pain with others is way better than trying to fix them up.
- Sometimes, just being there for someone is the best thing you can do.
- When folks are about to jump, they just want someone to catch them, not lecture.
- Grace is about loving people in their mess, not cleaning them up first.
- We all have junk; it's about falling into grace, not out of it.
- The best advice is often to just listen and say, 'I'm here for you.'
Transcript
It's one thing to say, yeah, I'm a sinner.
Speaker A:It's another thing to confess your sins.
Speaker A:My faith is weak.
Speaker A:It is God's faithfulness that is strong.
Speaker A:Dig deep and talk about that stuff.
Speaker B:In the history of revivals, it always goes in tandem with the confession, the reckless confession of horrific sin.
Speaker B:The thing that drives that in revival is the free, unadulterated offer of grace.
Speaker B:And people throw themselves and all of their junk.
Speaker C:Somebody on social media attacked me yesterday and said, who wants any of this?
Speaker C:My response immediately was, a little punchy.
Speaker C:The person who wouldn't darken the door of your church.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:But I will tell you this.
Speaker C:I do know who wants it.
Speaker A:You're listening to the misfit preachers, Talian Chavigian, Jean Larue, and Byron Yan from ProdigalPodcast.com.
Speaker A:we're plagiarizing Jesus one podcast at a time.
Speaker A:Now here are the misfits.
Speaker A:I was at a nightclub one night with my adult son, one of my adult sons and one of my.
Speaker A:My adult daughter, my only adult daughter, to see a DJ that we wanted to see late one night.
Speaker A:An old friend who my kids knew.
Speaker A:We know his wife, we know his kids was there that night.
Speaker A:And I hadn't seen him in years, and he had had a lot to drink, and we're all giving each other hugs.
Speaker A:He's hugging my kids, they're hugging him.
Speaker A:Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker A:It's kind of like this.
Speaker A:Hey, you know, it's the.
Speaker A:It's sort of a fun atmosphere.
Speaker A:And so we're catching up as best we can.
Speaker A:And then I walk to the bar to get a drink for me and my son and my daughter.
Speaker A:And I come back and they're like, dad, what's the deal with what's his face?
Speaker A:And I said, why?
Speaker A:He's like, well, I just saw him over there making out with some girl.
Speaker A:And I'm like, what?
Speaker A:And I knew he was still married.
Speaker A:I'm like, what?
Speaker A:So I'm like, I don't know.
Speaker A:It's none of our business, honestly.
Speaker A:Plus, I don't want to be distracted by that stuff.
Speaker A:And I'm having fun.
Speaker A:And then he comes back to me and he's like, dude, it's so good to see you, man.
Speaker A:I've missed you and bought out, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker A:And he said, man, I gotta get together with you soon.
Speaker A:He's like, see that girl over there?
Speaker A:I was like, yeah.
Speaker A:He's like, man, she's an old friend.
Speaker A:We just recently Got reconnected.
Speaker A:I haven't been happy in my marriage for a while and I'm just.
Speaker A:I'm feeling alive, but I know it's.
Speaker A:I know I shouldn't be doing it.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:I gotta talk to you.
Speaker A:At some point.
Speaker A:I was like, bro, of all the people you can talk to, you know, you can talk to me.
Speaker A:Non.
Speaker A:Blinking, not shocked.
Speaker A:It's okay.
Speaker A:Let's just enjoy the night.
Speaker A:Call me tomorrow.
Speaker A:So we're driving home, it's like 2:00 in the morning, out 2:30 in the morning.
Speaker A:Me and Jenna and Nate are driving home and they're like, dad, what do you do with somebody like that?
Speaker A:You know?
Speaker A:And I responded to them and said something like this.
Speaker A:When someone is that close to the edge, they've already decided to jump and there is absolutely nothing you can do or say that will stop them.
Speaker A:So your job is to stand at the bottom and be there when they fall.
Speaker A:Period.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:So any attempt on our part to try to talk anyone out of jumping over is not.
Speaker A:I mean, God can intervene.
Speaker A:Yes, thankfully, he does regularly in many lives.
Speaker A:But nothing we say, nothing that we can counsel is going to convince someone who's already determined to jump not to jump.
Speaker C:I'll tell you why.
Speaker C:Because sin is a white noise in the conscience.
Speaker A:Yes, it's exactly right.
Speaker C:Drowns out wisdom.
Speaker B:Discernment, in my experience in those situations is that most often, like, if you.
Speaker B:If you take your jumper analogy, right?
Speaker B:So the guy that shows up to help the jumper is going.
Speaker B:Jumping is wrong.
Speaker B:If you jump, it will hurt you.
Speaker B:We're not allowed to jump.
Speaker B:And the guy's like, yeah, I knew all that when I climbed on the ledge.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And what they're doing is if I can just make sure they know the law.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Then they won't.
Speaker B:And the truth is, standing at the bottom, I love.
Speaker B:John Sartel was my senior pastor for so many years in Memphis, Tennessee.
Speaker B:And he used to say, when you understand the gospel, you know that when Christians fall, they fall into grace, not out of it.
Speaker C:To quote the great theologian Chris Stapleton, falling feels like flying until you hit the ground.
Speaker C:Yeah, right.
Speaker A:Beautiful.
Speaker C:Falling feels like flying until I want that.
Speaker C:I was walking.
Speaker C:What's country?
Speaker C:I know you're not.
Speaker A:I'm not a country music guy, but I love the line.
Speaker A:I love the line also.
Speaker C:I won't get into music again.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:I was walking down the street on Broadway in Nashville.
Speaker C:I was down there doing during CMA Fest.
Speaker C:Country.
Speaker A:Yeah, I know that.
Speaker C:I don't know why I was down there there are a hundred thousand people.
Speaker C:It's the heat of summer.
Speaker C:I'd been invited down there for something in the middle of the day.
Speaker C:Nobody who lives in Nashville goes to Broadway, right?
Speaker C:No one, no.
Speaker C:So I'm walking down the street and coming at me is a pastor from the institution that I graduated from and the church associated with it on staff and both.
Speaker C:And he's coming at me.
Speaker C:It's huge crowd and he's holding hands with a woman who is not his wife.
Speaker C:I know him and I know his wife.
Speaker C:They are, he's still married to his wife and I can see him.
Speaker C:And as the crowd breaks, we cross paths.
Speaker C:His head goes down immediately.
Speaker C:Their speed picks up.
Speaker C:He snatches his hand back away from it.
Speaker C:Two days later, I get a call from this individual.
Speaker A:From this guy.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:On staff at the seminary in this year.
Speaker C:And he's trying to explain what you saw.
Speaker C:It isn't what it is, but it is what it is.
Speaker C:And he was there in the city because of anonymity.
Speaker C:What he didn't realize is Nashville invented Christianity and shipped it out to all the world.
Speaker C:So there's no being, there's no anonymity.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And go to Manhattan when you're in.
Speaker C:The midst of all this, you, you have a false sense of anonymity and these sorts of things.
Speaker C:Spiritually, you think you're never going to get caught.
Speaker C:No one's ever going to see it.
Speaker C:So when he called me a couple days later, he was trying to convince me.
Speaker C:He said, please don't, I'm going to end it.
Speaker C:Because I wasn't buying it.
Speaker A:Sure, of course.
Speaker C:But held it in confidence with him.
Speaker C:To be honest, I don't know what happened with.
Speaker C:But my response to him was surprising.
Speaker A:Which was, your secret safe with me.
Speaker C:Your secret safe for me is a complicated process to get there and this is long before anything happened to me.
Speaker C:But I will tell you in self righteousness, I did think to myself, I will never be there.
Speaker C:I said to myself, that is freaking insane.
Speaker A:Yeah, I believed the same thing.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You don't know until you're in it.
Speaker A:I, I, I've read this quote so many times in different places, but it's a, it's an amazing line.
Speaker A:It goes back to what I told my kids in the car driving home that early morning.
Speaker A:And I think it's very wise counsel to not only give, but to take ourselves.
Speaker A:When somebody falls apart, don't try to put them back together.
Speaker A:In fact, don't try to reassemble them at all.
Speaker A:That's not your job.
Speaker A:Instead, lay on the ground with them and scoop as many of their broken pieces into your hands and every now and then whisper to those pieces, this is not forever.
Speaker C:Never.
Speaker B:Who wrote that from?
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:The Samson Society.
Speaker A:My friend Nate Larkin's organization posted it, but without a name.
Speaker A:And I loved it when I first saw it.
Speaker A:And I think when we're discussing an issue like this, it's very, very tempting, given where we've been, what we've seen, and what we've experienced ourselves, even for the three of us to want to warn, fix, solve the problem before it happens.
Speaker A:And I see our role as something very different than that.
Speaker A:I see our role not so much as the people who are warning you against doing what we did.
Speaker A:I see our role as befriending those who are about to do what we did.
Speaker C:Preventative.
Speaker C:We are somewhat of a preventative measure in that regard, would you agree?
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:Preventative in the sense that if we're open about our stories, maybe someone will say it'll click.
Speaker A:99% of the time.
Speaker A:I look at myself as the guy on the bottom just waiting for the fall and sitting with them in their blood and guts, period.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:My experience, when somebody says to me, like, I'll get a phone call and somebody says, hey, listen, my pastor told me I should call you and talk about my marriage, I was like, oh, you must be really screwed up.
Speaker B:And they always start laughing.
Speaker B:And I've never heard the announce, like the falling, the whole thing you're talking about, just to be there at the bottom.
Speaker B:But I mean, I think that's the deal.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:We have a.
Speaker A:We have a group of men that meet here.
Speaker A:I'm part of it.
Speaker A:And it's a blessing to be the pastor of this church and be a part of this group.
Speaker A:Not as a leader, not as a facilitator, just as a participant.
Speaker A:It's called the Vault, and it's basically like a recovery group, but not for anything in particular.
Speaker A:We go around the room, everybody introduces themselves.
Speaker A:They give.
Speaker A:They give us.
Speaker A:They give the room one thing that feels like a win in their life and then one thing that is a present struggle.
Speaker A:And so there's a lot of rawness, a lot of honesty, a lot of F bombs, a lot of.
Speaker A:There are no rules.
Speaker A:No rules.
Speaker B:You do it to her.
Speaker B:You just.
Speaker A:No, I know.
Speaker A:No, no, I do it.
Speaker A:And I do it, too.
Speaker A:Everybody in this church is.
Speaker A:Everybody in that room has heard me say the F word multiple times.
Speaker A:They've heard me.
Speaker A:They've seen me cry, they've seen me yell, which is huge because, you know, as pastors, we were always told, you need to find a group of people that you can be honest with, but make sure they're not people in your church.
Speaker A:I have that group in my church, which I think sets this place apart in so many different ways.
Speaker A:But one of our rules, there's no restriction on language.
Speaker A:There's no restriction on anything you can say.
Speaker A:Whatever is said there stays there.
Speaker A:But the one rule that we do have is we are not here to counsel you.
Speaker A:We are not here to solve your problems.
Speaker A:We are not here to fix you.
Speaker A:We are here to listen and bear your burden with you so that you don't feel as alone as you feel.
Speaker A:And I have taken that approach to ministry as a whole and to relationships across the board that it is God's job to change people and it is my job to love them, period.
Speaker A:And when you believe that, it simplifies your relationship with everybody on planet Earth.
Speaker A:I don't gotta fix you.
Speaker A:I don't gotta convict you.
Speaker A:I don't have to.
Speaker A:I just have to love you.
Speaker A:Whether you're at the top and you walk away from the ledge, or whether you're at the top and you fall flat on your face, I'm there to love you, Period.
Speaker A:And so this thing right here, in essence, is us looking at those people and in this particular case, pastors and going, we're not here to do anything except to love you.
Speaker A:I expect fallen people to fall down.
Speaker A:I expect broken people to break down.
Speaker A:I expect sinners to sin.
Speaker A:Which is why I'm not shocked by any confession.
Speaker A:When this whole thing with Steve happened, I was sad because I've been there and I know what that feels like, and I know what he's about to experience.
Speaker A:But I wasn't shocked at all.
Speaker A:I mean, I'm like, dude, this is.
Speaker A:I don't care what.
Speaker A:I don't care what people thought about this guy.
Speaker A:I know myself well enough to know he's not that much different than me or any of us.
Speaker A:And we are all incredibly capable.
Speaker A:In fact, my friend Jacob Smith says that all of us are.
Speaker A:Are three bad days away from being the next tabloid headline.
Speaker A:And most of us are already on day two.
Speaker C:I'm going to make an observation.
Speaker C:I'm going to make an observation which I think is in the mind of many listeners.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Now, when you said you know him well enough to know that he's no different than you.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker C:There are people out there right now saying that is not true.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:That what?
Speaker C:That the two of you are not the same in that respect.
Speaker C:In terms of humanity.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I would say the proof is in the pudding.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Look at what happened to him, look at what happened to me.
Speaker C:And that's the fact that we have to fix.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You've been listening to the Misfit preachers like subscribe and share more grace centered resources@prodigalpodcasts.com that's prodigal P R O D I G A L podcasts with an s dot com.
