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If you like our content, we have an exclusive seminar for business leaders, March 11th to the 13th. Check it out on livinginfluenceleadership.com. Welcome to Living Influence. I'm your host, Scott Boyd. I'm here with Bill Thrall, my friend and mentor. And last week we talked about Bill's recommendation to professors with the students that would come to their college

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so that they would learn to not hide, to not hide anything. I got some questions and I got some stories, but before I'll throw it to you, Bill, but I learned about the power of being vulnerable and open, and then it quickly became something I needed to do

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And it was interesting. There'd be people that I would share my life issues with, my struggles. And sometimes they wouldn't reciprocate. They'd go, oh, I'm sorry. And they would stay closed. And it's like I'm bleeding on the floor, and they're not, like, helping at all, you know. Or the other experience I would have is I'd share a life issue, and then someone would, like, go into fix-it mode. Oh, well, have you ever thought of doing this?

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And both of those things end up causing you to go, well, I don't want to ever do that again. The question is, how do you create a place where people learn to hide nothing? It's a great question. And it's a hard question and a hard answer, but I'll start this. What if we're right? What if we know that a person becomes a believer and they bring with them?

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their propensity to hide because of their shame. What if we already knew that, Scott? What if we already knew that because that was true about us? What if we knew it about them because it was true about us? Yeah, isn't that interesting? Because often we think we're really bad and...

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What's true about me isn't what's true about you. Yeah, but just the opposite is true. Right. Yeah, there is no one that has not been affected by sin. There is no one who, because of that, has not been affected by shame. There is no one who lives without hiding something. Oh, my gosh. Well, what if we already knew that?

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So what if we created a place where these new believers could hear our stories? What if they could hear our stories about what it was like for us to let someone love us? What was it like for us to trust somebody with who we really were?

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What if they learned or could hear us tell what we were hiding and how damning it was to who we were and to who we were affected? And they sat there and they listened and they went, sounds just like me.

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Sounds just like me. I don't do this to tease these professors, but I know in advance many of these professors themselves have not learned to stop hiding. Many pastors have not learned to stop hiding because they themselves have not found a safe place.

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sometimes I teasingly say on these podcasts, I'm now using my screaming voice. I'm screaming as loud as I can. Could you all just pause for a minute and understand something?

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There is no one who comes to Christ that has not been affected by sin. There is no one who comes to Christ who hasn't experienced shame. There is no one who comes to Christ who isn't hiding. What they need is a place that's safe enough where they can be loved, where they can be trusted and trust, and where they, here's the key word, where they can be known. As our friend John Lynch says all the time, this is one of his great lines.

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What if I told the worst about me and I was loved more for the telling of it? Right. That's the environment we're trying to create. And somebody would say, well, Bill, that's going to get real messy because we're all screwed up. Well, let me tell you something.

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Your environment may not be messy, but I can promise you something. No one is dealing with being screwed up. But I want to promise you something. It is messy. Does this connect to the parable of the splinter and the log? Yeah, sure it does, doesn't it? Yeah. Of course it does. Jesus says if you see a person with an issue, first take the log out of your eye.

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Right. But really take the log out of your eye in front of them. There you go. There you go. I love that. I love that addition. So as we talk about this process of maturing, what if the church or the community or the house or wherever you have people, what if it was a safe place where I would demonstrate that?

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that I am no longer afraid of being known. Scott, I can tell everybody, for many, many years, I lived in the hiding of this truth. I was making choices that were screwing me up royally, and therefore I would never let you trust me because I did not want to infect you with what I was doing.

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Yeah. I want to hear that. So how do we create a safe place? We create a safe place where we're not afraid to do two things. We're not afraid to trust, and we're not afraid to be trusted. Mm-hmm. You sound like Bill that nobody's afraid to be trusted except everybody. This is a big deal. This is a big deal. Why would anyone be afraid to be trusted?

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because they are aware of what their life choices are doing to them. So how in the world do we introduce a new believer to an environment where some of us are experiencing love, where some of us are experiencing trust, where some of us are experiencing no longer having to hide? Here's a byproduct of all of this. You create hope.

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You create hope. You literally create an environment where people have the hope that this could also be true about them. So what's the hope you're creating? What could be true about them? What could be true about them? If it's true about you, Scott, if you went through all of this, you'd do something for me. You'd give me the hope that it could be true about me. And I'm desperately wanting to be known. I'm scared to death of being known.

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When I meet people, and they sit across the table, so to speak, with me, I already have an awareness of dynamics that are alive in them. I'm meeting with a man right now, and it's a great time. But he keeps saying to me, Bill, give me something to do. Give me something to do. Give me something to do. And I am giving you something to do.

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Well, what are you getting me to do? I've told you that I would like you to do this, this, and this. Oh, but he said, oh, that's just, man, that doesn't feel like I'm doing it. It feels like I'm, you're asking me to just trust somebody? These are hard dynamics, God. Yeah. They're hard dynamics. Talk to me about the piece you said that just triggered me a little bit. Sure. I won't let you trust me. Yeah.

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Because I don't trust myself. Exactly. I won't let you trust me. So if I'm living as a person not wanting others to trust me, what does that look like? I will manufacture a view of me that I believe you need in order to like me.

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That's what I'll do. I'll manufacture a view of me. Yeah. Because I desperately want to be liked. Yeah. But I am afraid of being trusted. So see the dynamics there? See that conflict? It's a huge conflict. So how in the world does a guy like Bill Thrall, who desperately throughout his developmental years, did everything he could to be liked? I was very bad at it. I was a bad friend.

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until I mature in enough to the point where I'm able to trust God with what I was hiding, I'm able to trust others with who I am, and now I'm able to be a person where I'm willing to let you trust me. Those are huge words, Scott. Those are not just little pity words. Those are huge words. It is so much easier, Scott,

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for Christians in environments to work on their sin issues than it is to work on their trust issues. It's so much easier to work on their behavior than it is to work on being loved. But working on your sin issues and your behavior never produces life. Not only doesn't produce life, it doesn't nurture the life that you have. Love does, trust does. So we add another dynamic to this whole thing.

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So because I know they're struggling with shame and I know they're struggling with hiding, I know they're revealing something.

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I know they're revealing how deeply wounded they are. And so we address this topic, the me-centered, healing the needy individual. Why? Because sin really wounds us. I meet, Scott, you and I together in our cohorts. We meet with 50, 60, even 70-year-old Christians. And often in the process of these two or three years with us, people who have been Christians for 30 or 40 or more years, for the first time in their life, are biblically dealing with their wounding.

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Which means they've carried the scars for decades. What if we could create, back to your question, what if we could create a safe place where one of the issues that could be addressed early in their development is the depth of their wound hair?

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What if we could be a vehicle for them to understand there is nothing that has been done to them? There is nothing that they have done.

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that is beyond the reach of God's redemptive blood. Nothing. Yeah. Nothing. Nothing. So that's a powerful word. That's a very powerful word. Yeah. Because I've had people, they don't believe that. Exactly. Because they've not been taught it right, Scott. They believe it theoretically. Oh, he died for all sin. Yeah. But they don't know how to apply the reality to it.

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So as we said in a couple of our podcasts, is that what if this was part of God's amazing grace? What if young believers could be at a place where they learn to trust the blood of Jesus Christ in real time to cleanse them of what they've done?

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What if they could learn to trust the blood of Jesus Christ in real time through forgiveness to cleanse them of what others have done to them?

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Why do we have to wait 10, 20, 30 years? Why aren't we way up front doing something, recognizing there is no one. There is no one, Scott, who comes to Christ who doesn't come to Christ wounded because of sin. Nobody. Yeah. So another answer to the question I was asked, what does it look like?

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When someone's not trusting themselves? Here would be an answer I think would fit.

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they are often very busy justifying why they've done what they've done. Good for you. And so they have a lot of story to tell about why. And it's like they're scrambling to find a place where they can stand. Exactly. When Jesus offers us the only place to stand.

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this whole thing about sin, I mean, don't we need to work on that? And it's like, well, we can't. But pause there for a minute, because that's a powerful statement. What if we could, let's just say, I keep looking as if there were two non-believers, Christians sitting here, but let's assume they're, what if we could say to them, do you know that you can never work on your sin to become something?

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Only Jesus can work on your sin, and he's already made you something.

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Yeah, then I wouldn't have to justify. You wouldn't have to justify. I wouldn't have to defend. Exactly. I could just actually be. Exactly. I mean, there's so much potential peace in that, like, I could just, I could rest. I could kind of just let my card down for a moment. And again, those things you just said, those last three or four, those are examples of hope.

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You know what happens to people when they're in an environment, where they're never known? They lose hope. Now, this is an interesting phenomenon. The human being has incredible emotional elasticity. Incredible. Human beings can come back from a lot until they lose hope.

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And so when they lose hope, what they do then is they begin to be seduced by wrong life choices. Again, to justify the fact that nobody cares about them.

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So we're going to keep saying that. We're creating a safe place where people can experience hope so that the hope that they experience lays a foundation in them of what could be. Yeah. And they start learning to be defined by what could be, not what has been.

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Yeah. If I don't understand grace, my life will be defined by what has been. Yeah. If I understand grace, my life will start to be defined by what could be. I'm going to live in the hope of what could be.

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I've learned, Scott, the dread of living in the life of what was. Yeah. I know that pain, that agony. I know that reality, not only in me, but in literally by now hundreds of people I've met with. So we're back to this process, the me-centered healing. And so there's another key element here. They've learned to trust Jesus with their sin or they wouldn't be a Christian.

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Right. As they mature, we want to lead them into something. We want to lead them into trusting Jesus with their person, not just their sin. And we want to lead them into trusting Jesus with their person because there's a new identity that is theirs to discover and live into.

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The identity of who God says you are. I'm pretty cautious to say to us, you've got to do this well over time. People have a propensity to assume because they know something, they've trusted what they know. So what will happen is if you give new believers all of the truth about who God says they are, they'll know it cognitively.

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but they'll never know it experientially. So what we want to do is we want them in their early development to know that God can be trusted with their person and he has for them a new identity. Yeah. And the question they should be asking is, well, how do I discover this new identity? Aha, great question, Charlie. Now you're ready for the next step.

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rather than dumping all the theology we know on them before they even can begin to understand anything you're talking about. So, how do we do that? Here's my answer. Could I begin teaching them

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the significance of who Jesus is and the significance of what he did at Calvary as a foundation to their understanding of their identity. Right. What if I could do that? What if that's what they needed more than anything else at this point in their development?

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And an awareness of who Jesus is and his work at Calvary. And they have to experience that, right? And they experience that through another's love. Love? Through his love? Yeah. Through trusting him with what he's done? Yeah. What if a new believer was introduced to the significance of the person of Jesus so they would learn to trust him?

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Yeah. What if a new believer was taught the profound significance of the work of Jesus at Calvary so they could trust that work? And oh, by the way, one of the evidences of that profound work at Calvary is that he's made you a new creature. Yeah.

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And so this maturing is a discovering. It's a discovery process at every step. It's discovering being loved. It's discovering trust. It's discovering not hiding. Yeah. It's discovering an answer to my woundedness. Yeah. It's a discover an awareness of the person work of Christ. It's a discovery of the significance of my new identity. But it's all a discovery process.

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Yeah. Not a doing and earning. Not a doing and earning process. Right. And not everybody will learn all of those at the same straight line. Yeah. But it leads us, Scott, then into our next session, which is what if I am experiencing all those things? What happens next? I start to mature. That's the foundation for my maturing.

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Yeah. And then what happens, as I said earlier, the evidence of that maturing is the way I treat you. Yeah. Shows up in loving others. So let's do that next time. We'll do that next time on Living Influence. Thanks for being with us. We're going to continue this discussion on the process of maturing. And we'll see you next week. Thanks. Thank you for listening to the podcast. We're really glad that you're here.

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We'd love to know that you're here. And so if you could leave a comment, we would appreciate that. But more importantly, if you know someone that should listen to this or hear it, we would love for you to share it with them. Thanks again.