“Manipulation is your sin, if you allow it.”

--Steve Brown-- Manipulation is your sin if you allow it. Let's talk about it on Key Life. --Guest (Male)-- If you're sick of guilt and manipulation and if you're looking for an honest and thoughtful presentation of biblical truth, you've come to the right place. This is Key Life with the founder of Key Life Network, Steve Brown. Keep listening for teaching that will make you free. --Steve Brown-- If you were listening yesterday, I was talking about an agent I once had who told me how wonderful I was. Until I realized that he was making a lot of money by telling everybody else I was wonderful and that I was being manipulated. And only because I had a brother who was honest enough with me, was I able to overcome it. My brother said, "Steve, don't listen to that man. He's hustling you." Well, we're talking about manipulation and I guess it'd be good to define what we mean by it. In a negative sense, manipulation is using deception, fear and guilt, coercion and dishonesty to achieve a desired outcome for the manipulator. The positive side of that sometimes smells like manipulation and it isn't. A different kind of manipulation uses love, wisdom, compassion, kindness to achieve a desired outcome. Fred Smith said that the difference between manipulation and motivation is that motivation is for our benefit and manipulation is for my benefit. That's helpful. Makes me feel better when I, for instance, praise friends for doing the right thing. So they'll do more of it. Or when they do that for me. In fact, parents should want to motivate their children, pastors, their congregation, teachers, their students, employees, their employers, their employees, and friends, their friends. There are strong leaders in the church, business and academia and that strength isn't manipulation but leadership motivation. What follows is a lot about manipulation and very little about motivation. But seek a certain outcome and that's where the comparison stops. We saw how God set aside the tools of manipulation and the implications of that gift. There's a sense in which God is the example for believers in our relationship with others. In so far as it is possible, God's simple and unconditional love is what the Christian faith is all about. God didn't manipulate us, He just loved us without giving us a list of what we must do in order to obtain that love. He is making us more like Him but then He's God and we're not. Given what it means to be human, there is no way we can have God's totally pure motives. There are very few if any pure motives. To one degree or another, we all practice a kind of manipulation. In the case of that agent I told you about, who was a friend, I pointed out his mixed motives. And we often laughed about it. The truth is that for anything we do or say to be pure, it has to be as it were, good for goodness sake. Paul in writing to the Corinthians about what C.S. Lewis labeled as Protestant Purgatory talks about the solid foundation which is Christ. Let me read it to you. It's First Corinthians 3:12 through 15. "Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay or straw, each one's work will become manifest for the day will disclose it because it will be revealed by fire. And the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If anyone's work is burned up, he'll suffer loss though he himself will be saved but through fire." In other words, we're going to go to heaven but our clothes are going to smell like smoke. It is a normal human proclivity to manipulate or motivate others. A student sitting in the front row of a classroom, the clothing we wear, our smile and the compliments we give others are all examples of either manipulation or motivation and are relatively benign. But that should not send us on a guilt trip. In those examples and a thousand others, our motives are mixed. A mix of selfishness and sometimes benevolence. It should be remembered that God, even with our sin in general, and our mixed motives in particular, uses forms of manipulation and motivation to accomplish His purposes. When Joseph's brothers who had sold Joseph into slavery realized that the gig was up, Joseph said to them not to worry. Because you meant it for evil and God meant it for good. And when Paul pointed out that the hustlers who used the gospel for their own purposes, he said he was glad because the gospel got preached. And so when we get into manipulation, be careful that it's not another guilt trip. You think about that. Amen. --Guest (Male)-- Thank you, Steve. What a fascinating look at manipulation. It's insidious sometimes, right? Be careful out there, folks. Tomorrow, we'll continue our exploration of Steve's new book called, God's Not Mad at You. That book was just released this week and you can get your copy now at keylife.org/notmadbook or at Amazon. More tomorrow, do join us. By the way, have you been working hard at getting better? How's that going? If we can be honest for a moment, struggling to get better on our own is tough. Steve spoke about this in a sermon called, Getting Better. Take a listen to part of that message then I'll be back to tell you about a special free offer. Here's Steve. --Steve Brown-- You're getting better and better every day and every way. Well if you are, I praise God for that and I'm glad and you don't have to listen to this sermon. But if you struggle, if you think sometimes you're getting worse than you were when you started, I'm here to help. I have a missionary friend who wrote me last week to tell me about the family pet gerbil. His name is Jerry. Jerry got out of the cage not too long ago and they couldn't find him. The kids are screaming, "Daddy, we got to find Jerry." They're afraid they're going to step on him and squash him or the cat's going to eat him. And for three days Jerry stayed lost. And my friend said, "I was getting ready for bed one night and looked at my pillow and Jerry is sitting on my pillow grinning at me." Jerry evidently was lost because he wanted to be lost. And when he wanted to be found, he knew where to come to me. He was tired, he was dirty and he was hungry but he came to me. If you were here last week and listening, you never listen to me. You know that we talked about being lost and how to be saved and that it has to do with God's grace and that alone. Colossians 2:6 says, "As you received Christ", in other words, as you came forward, as you prayed the sinner's prayer, as you leaned in on Jesus, as you rested in Him and felt forgiven and loved and promised. So walk in Him. If you remember, last week I gave you four truth propositions that had to do with being lost. And since Colossians 2:6, or 6:2, I'm not a navigator, I'm doing the best I can. Because of the teaching of that particular text, those four truth propositions have to do with getting better too. The first you remember was dead people hardly do anything. Eric Guzman, who's one of our colleagues at Key Life has been reading a book this week by Chuck C. It's called, A New Pair of Glasses. It's one of those books written by a recovering alcoholic. His story is a dynamite story. He got drunk one time, absolutely plastered, almost died and his doctor said, "You do this one more time and you're a dead man." And he managed to stay sober for a little while and then he fell off the wagon and for four weeks he was in a coma. He said when he came out of it, he thought, "I'm dead." And he decided, as Paul said, "Reckon yourself dead. I'm dead. I don't have any ego anymore, I don't have any needs anymore. My life is gone. It's over." And for the first time in his life, he said he was free to love and serve and not give a dink what anybody thought about him because he was dead. This is what he wrote, "I'm convinced in my own mind, totally and completely convinced from my toenails to the top of my longest hair that there's only one problem in this life, one problem that includes all problems and one answer that includes all answers. I'm totally convinced that the only roadblock between me and you and God is the human ego." --Guest (Male)-- Listen, if trying to muscle your way toward getting better has left you spent, I think you're going to get a lot out of this sermon. We put that entire message on a CD that we would be happy to send to you today for free. Just call us at 1-800-KEY-LIFE, that's 1-800-539-5433. You can also email Steve at keylife.org to order that CD or go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses for the US and Canada. Again, ask for the free CD called, Getting Better. Last thing, if you believe in the work of Key Life, would you give today to help us continue that work? Giving is easy, just charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope or you could give safely and securely by text. Just pick up your phone and text KEY LIFE to 28950. That's KEY LIFE, one word or two, doesn't matter. Text that to 28950. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and Forcey in Canada and Key Life is a listener-supported production of Key Life Network.