Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of ordinary discipleship Podcast. I'm Chris, that's Jacob, that's Jesse, and today we are going to be talking about, when do you speak up? Maybe it's in a relationship, maybe it's your husband or your wife, and they say something kind of disparaging, and you're like, Should I check that person. Now, should I just eat
that comment? Should I go to bed resentful? Maybe it's something happened at work, and you're coming back home and you're on the couch watching some Netflix, and you go to your spouse and you say, Man, should I should I say something to Jerry? Because Jerry's getting a little out of control today, we talk about knowing when to speak up. And with that being said, I think Jake, Jake, you said, We've got to have God, God's eyes, God's heart, God's tone, God's timing. Jesse developed a special card
to walk you through it. Man, what an episode today.
Jessie CruickshankSo this is actually, this actually is in the book ordinary discipleship. And it comes and I comes out of a lesson that I learned in life. I have the ability to see things, to be aware of stuff. You know, I it's just part of how God made me. And when I was in charge of the wilderness ministry, like I would, gosh, that person has this problem that person needs like they're fearful here, they don't trust God there. Oh, wow, that's an unhealthy dynamic they have with
other people. And I thought, because I was like the disciple maker in those relationships, that it was my responsibility to talk to everybody about their stuff. My I thought it was my responsibility to bring it up, to point it out. Well, you know, hey, I'm just going to show you your blind spot right now. And that's kind of the language that people use. And it didn't go
well, like, ever, right? Ever. In fact, one of the my co leaders, the only fight we ever got in was around a situation where something perceiving something, and I talked to somebody else about it, because I'm like, Oh my gosh, we got to talk to this person, because this is a big deal, and we need to, we need to figure out how to deal with it. And he comes in and he's like, that's not your place. That's not your right. You're wrong. Actually, you don't even understand what's
going on. And this is like a super sweet human who never yelled at anybody, and he's yelling at me, and I just couldn't understand. I'm like, Oh my gosh. Like, this is I'm actually for this other person, right? I see something that's bad. I care about them enough to want to do something about it. And I was really confused. So I go and talk to my mentor, and I'm like, Hey, I see this thing that's not good. I brought it up to somebody, right? Thought that's what I was supposed to
do, and it blew up in my face. In fact, now I'm in relational rift with someone who doesn't even like, like, I must have really hurt him, because he never gets in a relational breath. And my mentor goes, Okay, well, you think you're seeing what God you think you've seen what God has seen like you think that what you're seeing is accurate. And I'm like, yeah. He's like, Okay, so do you love this person? Do you care about about who they are? And I'm like, Yeah, I really care about
who they are. He's like, okay, is God showing them this situation? And I said, when no, like, that's why I needed to go talk to them about it. And he's like, Wait a second. Do they hear from God? Do they pray? Do they follow God? And I was like, yeah. He's like, okay, so if God's not talking to him about it, why are you Oh? And I was like, oh, oh, like, like somebody had just punched me in the gut. I was like, wait, wait,
wait a minute. What? Like, I thought that was my job. Like, I thought that that God was telling me so I could go talk to them, because obviously they're not listening to God and they're not paying attention. And so he has to tell me to be like his wingman, because he's not getting through so I got to do it. And my mentor was like, yeah, no, no, wow. In fact, he said, If you ever talk to somebody about something that
God is not talking you are actually being disobedient. And I was like, Oh my gosh, like I had to rethink so much about my leadership, about my conversations, about the way I thought I loved my friends well, and I created this mantra to help me know how long to keep my mouth shut. And so for me, it's that, you know, do you have God's eyes? Do you have God's heart? Do you have God's tone? And added that one because, like, oh, wait, sometimes God's really gentle and sometimes
God's a little severe. So I also need to be with him so much that my tone. Tone matches this Holy Spirit's tone. So even though I'm angry or upset or am intense, the Holy Spirit is gentle. I gotta be gentle, and so timing. And then when I have all of those together,
then I can speak up. I just I'm thinking back to what your mentor said to you in the questions that she or he, I'm not sure who it was he was talking to you about. He's like, so do you love this person? You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is this person like talking to God? Like, is praying to God, speaking to God, hearing from God? And I'm just curious, like, if that answer would have come back, like, No, I don't
know, you know. Like, I wonder with because it's interesting, because, like, Jake's dad, of great pastor, Paul, would always say, if somebody is not aware of like, their sin, you got to hammer them with the law and make them feel like the guilt of what they've gone through. But he goes, most people know that they're sinners, and so that's why we've got to share the gospel with them, like we've got to be graceful and show them the
gospel. And it's only in those like and I think back to a time Jake and I had to visit this one kid in prison who had murdered his mom and buried her in a church and and it was like the first big time prison visit I ever met. And I walked in, and I sat down, and I could just feel like the I could feel the pain of all the souls in that building. And it was just so dark. And I sat down, and he sat down, and it's like 12 hours, 24 hours after he had murdered his mom, and he goes, Yeah, they're
calling me famous in here. And I'm like, Oh my God. Like you're famous because you killed your mom. I like your card system. I like the ability to to sit down and say, Oh my gosh. Am I mimicking the voice of the Holy Spirit? Am I seeing that person as somebody that is God's creation, Am I doing it in a loving way and walking beside them? That's really important.
And I think what a wake up call, and what a punch to the gut when you thought as a young Christian that I'm actually speaking as I'm the voice, I'm like, ushering in the voice of God. And they're like, Yeah, you're really not. You're just kind of impeding the whole process. So chill out, Jacob. What do you think about this whole thing? Yeah,
I think what came to my mind as Jesse was talking was there's a way of talking about ministry that I picked up in a community I used to be a part of where we said it's about coming into agreement with the Holy Spirit, okay? And so it's about discerning what God is saying in the moment. And then I don't actually have to have to say anything new. I just have to say
what God is saying. And so like, the image in my mind is like, if there's me and the person with whom I'm ministering, and there's God, it's about trying to bring those, the three of us into alignment. So like, if it's somebody who's in need of a word of hope, I don't have to conjure one. I just have to help them hear God's word of hope by agreeing with the Holy Spirit. If it's somebody who needs confrontation, I don't have to bring the confrontation, like you said, they're already
experiencing the con, like the condemnation of their sin. I just have to come into agreement with the reality of the moment, fair and so. So I think what it does is it takes pressure off, because I don't have to show up and and do something. I just have to, I just have to find a way to come into alignment with what the Spirit is doing. So how do you do that? God's eyes, God's heart, God's tone, God's timing. No,
Jessie Cruickshankso Chris, you would ask to ask the question, what if they weren't hearing from the Holy Spirit, right? And, and I kind of wrestled through that a little bit in the conclusion that I got to is like, who am I to judge? How? How do I know what God is saying to them in their heart, in their innermost being, God's dreams, like, I don't like, I don't get to judge that actually, in fact, like, it even
bothers me when other people are like, well, I don't know. Maybe that was just you and and, look, I'm for testing a word, but I'm not for and validating the way that somebody else. So my answer was, I can't judge their part. All I can do is sit with the Lord and work through my part right, which is eyes, heart, tone and timing. And so when I'm struggling to answer the question, Do I speak up or not? Do I say something here? I actually just use them as journal prompts and say, Okay,
I'm going to sit with the Lord. What do I do? I have God's eyes. What do I see? And Holy Spirit, what do you see? And are those in alignment, like Jake said, God's heart. Do I love them the way that God loves them? Because if I'm just trying to fix them, then I don't love them the way God loves them. If I'm if I'm annoyed, if they're. Frustrating me, if they're inconvenient, if I feel triggered or harmed, I am not loving the way them, the way
that God loves them. And so like that one, that one doesn't check off, you know? So I just use them as journal prompts and and sometimes I've come to the conclusion that I'm too in this situation. I'm too affected by the situation to be the person who speaks up, because I can't get to the place where I can just be in alignment with the Holy Spirit and not be upset in this situation, and the tone is something I can't figure out how to get to. Now I'll keep doing my work with the Lord to get
there and forgiveness processes and things like that. But it may sometimes, I'm like, God, you got to send them somebody else, because it's just not me. Yeah, it's not me. I can't do this. Then I can turn that into praying for them and just saying, God, you gotta, you gotta send somebody else.
I was a part of a discipleship community. I mentioned it before, like a mission team I was a part of for a year, and so we were in teams of seven, and we traveled together, and we served together, and we often lived in the same place together. So we spent a lot of time together, but we had, like, a regular practice of feedback a couple
times a week, and we had a couple of rules. One was like, if somebody gave you feedback, the first thing you had to say was Thank you, and if you had a reaction, you couldn't give it right. Then that was an initial rule. It got a little we flexed on that one a little bit eventually. But then the other rule was the 24 hour rule, which was like, if you have something
to say, you have to say it within 24 hours. Now, the expectation was that you were using the time to prepare, and that would be like we didn't have this language in that community, but that would be when you're journaling God's eyes, God's heart, God's tone, God's timing, and you're preparing to offer the feedback to the other person in a way that you're hopefully coming into alignment with what God is already saying to them in my community now, like as a part of
a church, I don't see people nearly as often as I did when I was on that ministry team. So I don't use a 24 hour rule, because I just don't see them often enough, but I will give myself a deadline, like, I need to have this conversation before x point, or I know we have this meeting coming up, I need to
have a one on one conversation before that meeting. And that'll that gives me some accountability to do the work I need to do to make sure that what I'm communicating is being communicated with God's eyes, God's heart, God's telling, God's timing.
Jessie CruickshankSo I think about doing this like in a work right? Because, because most of us have jobs, and most of us are out there and like, this is a big deal in our work environments. Like, what do you what do you say? What do you you know, do you stand up for yourself? Do you not? Do you just absorb it? And like, Oh, they're having a bad day, right?
And so using these journal prompts with with family and coworkers, for me, has been super helpful, because, like, like, Jacob said, I'm like, okay, maybe I'm supposed to hold space with this, but I want to do that because God has asked me to not because I don't think that my opinion or perspective is valid or valuable, right? I don't want to absorb it because I'm somebody's punching bag. I want to absorb it because I stand with Christ, who died on the cross, and I can say, You
know what? I can, I can, I can take this and give it back to Jesus. So I don't resist saying something because I agree with a narrative that's not true. I resist saying something because I'm agreeing with God's story. And God's story says, Wait, hang on, I've got grace for you in this. Or God's story is like, you know what? It's time to say something, and there's grace to do it with his tone, and he's showing you that timing. And the
timing is, usually they bring it up first. It's, it's hardly ever like 1% a confrontive, you know, blind spot kind of conversation. Usually I wait for the teachable moment or for them to say something, and I'm just confirming because that's a life giving conversation while punching somebody in the face with their blind spot or something they did in an accusational way. That's not a life giving conversation. God's got to redeem that
right? So when to speak up, when to hold back. God's heart, God's eyes, God's mind, God's what I almost got it, God's eyes, okay? God's tone and God's timing. That's how you do it. Right there in the middle of that delightful sticker is the huology logo. I think that's gonna do it for this episode. I think we've kind of hammered it out. I think we've got it figured out now. So thank you guys so much for joining us to for the ordinary discipleship podcast. And if you liked this
episode, make sure to share it on your socials. Make sure to review it. Make sure to give us five. Of stars and Jesse. If they want to know more about the amazing work you do with the kingdom through hoology, what can they do? We're
Jessie Cruickshankgoing to share out Jacob's cell phone and email address so they can just reach out to him anytime he's available. 24/7, especially for counseling problems and church hurt conversations. So if you want him to come talk to your pastor, please give him a call. He's really good at that. But if for whatever reason, that number or that email address just don't seem to be working, you can always find us@houology.co that's W, H, O, o, l, o, G, y.co.
Awesome guys, thank you. Jacob Jesse, we will see you next time on the ordinary discipleship podcast. God bless and we'll talk to you soon. Bye. You.