Condemnation-Conviction After Hours

Hello, this is Matt Slick from the Matt Slick Live Podcast, where I defend the Christian faith and lay out our foundations of the truth of God's Word. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. Announcer Coming to you from an entrenched barricade deep in the heart of central North Carolina, Masculine Journey After Hours, a time to go deeper and be more transparent on the topic covered on this week's broadcast.

So, sit back and join us on this adventure. The Masculine Journey After Hours starts here now. Matt Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours, and we are talking this week about the topic of condemnation versus conviction. And like a lot of our times when we do the regular show that we just came from is we spend a whole lot of time on one part of it, and then we leave just a little bit of time for the other part, right?

And so you'd think that we do it intentionally. Darrell So, you listener out there that listens regularly, you get that. Matt Yeah, you know how we work.

You know how we work. Darrell Except if they listen to the show and don't come here, they miss it. And the people that are hearing what we're saying now are the ones that aren't missing it.

So, moving right along. Matt Okay. Darrell So, you're trying to say they may not listen to both shows because one's on the radio and one's on the podcast, but they're both podcasts.

Matt Yeah. So, the podcast listeners listen to both. All right, but the radio show listeners just listen to it, and they don't get this part, so they miss out. So, that's on them. Condemning them.

I'm condemning them now, I guess. Darrell To tell you the truth, I don't know what I listen to. Matt All the more reason I get signed up for a podcast, right? Darrell That's right.

That's right. So, Andy. Matt He's on his phone. Darrell He's on his phone.

Matt Yeah, that's why I was waiting for the mic to come back, actually. Darrell He's trying to condemn you. Matt That's why I'm going with that. Darrell That's why he wants to condemn you. Darrell I wasn't going to.

That's why I said Andy, so it'd get your attention. Matt Yes. Darrell Uh-huh. Matt Yes, sir. Darrell Yes.

So, you had a, I don't even know what to say. Matt Epiphany. Darrell Epiphany?

Eh, it's kind of strong, really. Matt Yeah. Darrell He had a thought. Matt He had a thought. Darrell He had a thought. Matt Okay. Darrell Yeah. Matt I was musing. Darrell Yeah. Well, go ahead, share it about the difference between condemnation and conviction. Matt Yeah.

I just kind of strong-armed my way to this, but I just felt this was on my heart since Sam came up with the topic and threw it out there. You know, we think a lot of times we hear conviction and condemnation, and, you know, to simplify the words, you know, take out the I-O-N's at the, off of, you go to the root words, convict. What's that mean? Convict. The judge convicts somebody guilty of something, tells them they did something wrong, and there's a certain punishment, but usually it's pretty straightforward.

He deals with the issue and moves on. Condemnation to me and the way I just see it, and you can, this isn't an exact, you know, representation, but condemn means, okay, condemn, there's, not only are you like condemned to whatever that punishment is, but there's shame that goes with that, and we're just going to keep you there. And that's kind of how I saw the difference in convict and condemn.

And convict obviously being an idea, I mean, a move towards reconciliation and dealing with somebody's fault, but not holding against them. And condemnation, keeping somebody in that place, keeping them bound up to where they can't really break free and move on and get healing. And that would be the opposite of where we usually go with a new name.

New name is usually a good thing. It comes from God that lifts you up, and the condemning is a shameful name that's going to tear you down. It's going to live with you. It's a stigma that you carry and carry and carry, and it becomes a burden. And again, it gets to identity. Yep, exactly. And if you've seen the movie, whatever it is now, I can't think of it is. Ask Jim. I did that earlier. Yeah, you did.

The kid. Actually, I've never seen Les Mis all the way through. Yeah, I've seen one of them, and that was enough.

Not the one where they sang, you know, but the one that had Liam Neeson in it, right? And so when you think about him standing at the door of the priest's house, right? And he's in condemned mode. He's been convicted of a crime, right? But the condemnation is you're never going to be more than a convict. Yep, he's a thief.

Right? It's an identity thing. So when we're dealing with condemnation, personally, right? If you're having a discussion, and we'll call it a discussion versus an argument, with someone, if you're having a discussion with them and you start using the words always and never, I promise you, when you look back and see what you said ahead of that or after that, it's always a condemning statement. Or it's often. I shouldn't say always because that's condemning. It's usually. Virtually always. Yeah, it's usually a condemning statement, right?

And it's attacking the identity, which we talked about in the first show. You know, Andy, you're always late, which is not a true statement. I'm just saying as a thing, you know, you're always this, you're always that. You know, what's going to be your first response to that, Jim, if I say you're always this, Jim? Yeah, well, I don't like it because I'm not always anything.

And I'm never always nothing. I was going to say something entirely different. Okay. We said it the first show pretty much like this, but after Andy's verbose explanation of his not quite epiphany, we want to look at the words very simply as the conviction is you did something and the condemnation as you are something. Yeah. And that's an epiphany. Going back to never always see when I call Wayne a loser, I didn't say you're always this is not helping.

You're never a loser. Yeah. As we were talking in the, uh, between the shows, I think you're about ready to get some charity from Wayne. And if you don't know what we're talking about, go listen to the other show. You're open to understand Opie's charity case that he had. But yeah, it's, uh, as we talk about this topic in the whole conviction thing, we talked at the end of the show is it's speaking truth and love, but that has to come from a trusted relationship. Now, Wayne, you were, you were sharing a little bit that, you know, you were, you tried to do that and someone has to want to listen to it, right?

Yeah. They've got to be open to hearing it. Um, uh, recently just now working with a couple, um, sharing a lot of different things that we've gone through me and my wife with them. And they were truly in the condemnation mode. It was he, and she, he did the, she made back and forth, back and forth.

And, and doing that where we were constantly asking them questions and trying to pull them into to be able to see and show them scripture. Well, this is what love looks like. Is, is this where you're at? And, um, if they're not open and, and us, if we're not open to hear it, if we're, if we're in that midst of just constantly beating ourselves up in the moment, we can't hear the conviction on the other side of that. No, it's just that straight condemnation. Yeah.

And when you get into one of those arguments and one person becomes condemning, the other person usually follows suit, right? It becomes this, this, what's that defense mechanism. Throw up that wall and, um, you know, you're going to do whatever you can do to, to defend yourself. Oh yeah. You pull the sword on me. My sword's coming out.

Oh yeah. You go on the offensive pretty quick. I don't need swords. Usually you pull out the gun at the sword fight because you want to win. It becomes a confrontation.

Yeah. It's all about winning. Isn't it? It's about me. It becomes about winning. It doesn't become about the issue anymore. It becomes about I'm going to win this and it's about, who's going to win it.

Cause it's about me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You focus so inward at that point in time, you know, you, you, instead of caring about the other person, worrying about what they're going through and where they're at and trying to understand them, it's like, no, I'm going to be understood here. That's what's going to happen.

Good. But even that comes back to identity, right? I mean, you don't know who you are. You don't know who father sees you as and all that he's forgiven you of. So it's hard to see that in others. Jesus said it whenever the woman came and cried on his feet and wiped her tears away with her hair, right? She she'd been forgiven them much.

So she was thankful for much, but I guarantee you that woman loved like nobody else in her village. That's a great point. The, the concept, if I ask you, you know, being the mouthpiece of the enemy, you've talked about that on, on shows, but what does that really mean? Jim, if I ask you to articulate that to space, what are you talking about? Well, we could have good intentions and be speaking for the enemy is what I hear in that. And I was thinking my relationship with my wife, unfortunately, she doesn't listen to the after hour show very often, but I am often the voice of Satan with her because, and it can be something minor, but because of my ability to wound her because of our love for one another, a very minor comment can be a terrible blow and be condemnation when it may not even be meant as conviction. It might just be a, you know, Oh, I saw this happen.

And it turns into something awful because of what we are expecting to receive. And that was one of the points I wanted to get to is when you're feeling condemned, look at first, look at the person that's relaying that to you. Is this their nature to want to condemn me? And if it is, then you could blow it off because, well, that's a wimpy attack from the enemy through this person that doesn't like me anyway, but more often it comes from a loved one. And if you recognize, well, this person loves me, so I doubt they're trying to condemn me. So why am I reacting to it that way? And that's, uh, the self-reflection there.

I'll keep you out of a lot of trouble. It does this whole condemnation thing. I remember John Eldridge talked about one time at one of the camps that I was at. He's like, he said, be alert to the feelings you get when you're around somebody, whether you know them really well or don't know them at all, because often what you'll feel is you'll feel their warfare. Right? And so you'll feel like dismissing them, or you'll feel like being short with them. And you often find that's been the story of their life. People dismiss them. Right? And so being alert, you know, to not, how am I feeling when I'm around somebody to say, okay, I need to be walking with you guys in this to say, okay, what am I feeling here?

How should I handle it? I watched somebody very close to me that this person's whole life, I've known a lot of people that know them. They've been treated very dismissed, like what you have to say is not important. And I watch people close to them and people that don't even know this particular person treat the person that way continuously. And that is a warfare that surrounds that person. Right?

And so we can be sucked into that even unknowingly. You know, what I was really thinking about initially is when we kind of step into it and we start with the always, the never, the statements, we attack somebody's character. Right? Instead of dealing with the issue at hand. Your conviction is dealing with the issue at hand in a loving way. Right?

But condemnation is the absolute opposite of that. It's dealing with the situation in a way that attacks them as a person at their identity levels we talked about in the last show. Andy, I want to go ahead and go ahead and get this clip in because I want to talk about how God does conviction. Right?

So if you want to set up this clip. So this is from the movie, The Shack. And if you've seen the movie, or if you haven't, Mac is, he's, he's a man that's pretty hurt and beat up. And God takes him to this place called The Shack and it's actually an introduction to God. The Godhead, there's three aspects. And in this situation there, he's going with the Holy Spirit figure to this garden and that garden is actually a picture of himself. And as they're going through it, you know, there's a lot, a lot to this, a lot of spiritual lessons to it. But the thing I wanted you to focus on is just notice Mac in the, in the fact that the Holy Spirit figure here is really asking him questions to pull out what is in Sam's heart. Sam's, his, his daughter had been abducted and, and murdered.

And he's got a lot of anger. You mean Mac? Mac. Yeah. How did I go over to Sam?

Sam is the actual, the name of the actual actor. Sorry about that. That's all right. I was like, wow. Yeah. We pulled you in. Okay, go ahead. But, uh, the clip though, really there's, there's a lot to learn just from, you know, how God go, uh, takes his time to walk us through and process something when he's trying to bring conviction or change in our lives. Suddenly it contains incredible healing properties. Let me ask you, how confident are you in your ability to discern good from evil?

Usually pretty obvious. And your basis for something being good is what? Well, if it helps me or the people that I love. And evil?

It's harmful. If it hurts someone I care about. So pretty much you are the judge. Yeah, I guess. Have you ever been wrong?

Or changed your opinion over time? Sure. And there are billions like you, each determining what you think is good and evil. And when your good clashes with your neighbor's evil, arguments ensue, wars break out because all insist on playing God. You weren't meant to do any of that.

All on your own. This was always meant to be a conversation between friends. Yeah, there the conviction, I mean, it's just God being so patient to walk him through. I mean, to ask the question, um, you know, why do you feel that way? Basically, how do you know that you're right?

Doesn't your opinion change over time? And God is so gracious in the fact that he will take that time with us if we allow him and allow him to ask those questions. Because a lot of times we've got, well, we're being convicted, we're sinning, we're trying to become the God of our world and getting our needs met and living a false life and not really knowing it. And for him to bring us into the truth, he has to ask us questions at times. Sometimes it's just that gentle nudge of the Holy Spirit when we know, because we have his Spirit in us, that we've done something wrong. But maybe we don't know why we did it wrong. We're doing something wrong.

We don't know why that we respond the way that we do. And I think it's, you know, he's just gracious in that way. If we allow him, if we open up, I think somebody was at you, Wayne, that said, if we just open ourselves up to actually be open to being open to being challenged in the way we think.

I think this clip illustrates what Opie was doing as well. You can't yell someone into changing behavior, permanent change, right? They may change what they do short term. I mean, and they may be obedient to what you do, especially from a parent to a child, right? But the true change has to come internal, right?

It has to be desire that I want to do myself. And that's where the conviction comes in. It's those questions, those questions that prompt your heart and it lets God prompt. And he prompts with questions that lets you decide for myself I want to change, right? Conviction leads to a changed outcome, right? And it may take three or four or five or 150 times on conviction for you to get there, but it's still leading to a changed outcome, right? Because I'm changing as a person because I'm choosing to change and walk with God in this, right? Where condemnation is never going to drive that behavior.

Yeah. At work, you think about that kind of relationship you have with things where you're, you basically try to condemn others into acting and feeling and doing things that you want done. A lot of times, you just, you just hear it in the relationships that work so often where people have broke down and they can't get along. And there's, to me, that's just a very ripe environment.

So that's where I can go to very easily to where you've worked with people for quite a while. You've made up your mind. This is where their heart is at in this. And they'd, you know, whether it's positive or negative, you just, you end up judging, you know, like Mack was there, you know, you just get that point where it's like, that's, that's where I'm at. And I'm a judger. I know I am. I do it all the time.

And it's a big part of my life. And I have to really wash myself in that, that whatever I'm thinking internally doesn't come out the mouth because it's so easy to start just to say that always or never, and this is where they're at, this is what's going on. And basically, no matter what they say, what they do, it doesn't matter that I have them already in that corner.

And it's just hard. I just have to make sure that I really watch and listen to this conversation right now versus all the past conversations that I've had and letting that just steer up my current thought. One of the things that I just hit me with very hard is when we are in a situation where there's somebody bad in our midst, we're going to tell everybody and let them know it and go after them, right? I mean, and I was looking at Jesus, why did the rest of the disciples not know that it was Judas that was going to turn him over? It's because Jesus loved him and did not. I mean, what he said, what you do, go do quickly, really should have been a conviction, not a condemnation. And apparently all along in their journey together, there wasn't condemnation for the one that was condemning him to death. But he was performing the role he had to, but he would have been lynched by the other disciples if they knew what was going to happen.

Yeah, they would get him a lot of charity. Yeah. So this is the after hours. And this is the time we make it more personal.

And so I'll kick off. There was a time with my oldest daughter, out of no intention was I trying to be the voice of the enemy, right? As my kids were growing up, I didn't ever call them stupid. I never called them any negative name, any negative condensation. I just, I avoided that.

I may tell them something they did was stupid, but I never called them stupid. There's a huge difference there, right? And so I was very intentional that probably stuff from my childhood, I don't know. God's still unpacking some of that stuff, right? But my oldest daughter, I remember one time she did something and I can remember playing his day of sitting in the kitchen in our house in Indiana. And I said, you know what, that really disappoints me. And she started crying. And she's like, I'm a disappointment. That's the words that came out of her mouth. And fortunately, God, I started walking in this message and stuff and God said, No, no, no, no, no, no, stop, stop, stop, stop.

I'm like, and that's why it doesn't stop, stop, hold on, hold on, hold on. I never called you a disappointment. That's the furthest thing from the truth. You know, you're my joy. I love you.

I love you with all my heart. I'm disappointed in the choice you made. There's every bit of a difference there. I mean, it's a drastic difference, right? But if you don't recognize what's going on, and fortunately she articulated it and just didn't absorb it, or she would have walked away thinking, my dad thinks I'm a disappointment. You know, and I was just trying to deal with the issue at hand, right?

And so being careful and being intentional and letting God lead you through it is a key thing. You know, I know when God's very convicting for me, it's almost always through questions or humor. You know, like I'll do something and he'll kind of go, yeah, that really wasn't your brightest moment.

Yeah, probably not. You know, the conversation starts to occur. And so, you know, again, it's through some of that, just the placing things on my heart, feeling him say, you need to go revisit this, or you need to go apologize to how you made them feel. You know, and again, walking with him through the midst of that. So throwing it out to you guys for any stories that you might have.

The one that actually my wife prompted me to share when she heard of this is a beloved brother who knows better, was basically ticking off all the ways he's been a complete failure in his life. And I usually, when I'm responding to something like that, will go with questions. But in this case, I basically argued with him. No, you're not a failure.

No, that's not true. And sometimes we do have to be direct. But that's not normally me. And that was, I think, God going after his heart through me in that moment.

And I think it helped. But, you know, we all can get to that place. I mean, like I said, this is a man that knows God's Word, knows God well.

They are friends. And any of us can get to that place where we're feeling the condemnation and we're agreeing with it. And it gets back to that we can't make those agreements.

And he had. And then when you're talking about identity, I think a lot of that is, you know, where are you with yourself? So that's where I'm constantly trying to evaluate during the conversation, where am I going?

What is my intent with this conversation? And what am I going to, am I in it just for myself? Or am I in it for some something bigger than myself, whatever that happens to be. And that's one of the things where, again, when the condemnation sets in, I do often hear that it's like you did this. And I've been really trying to track and keep track of, okay, what do I hear? And the other day when during, I've just moved, so I've had all kinds of reasons for conviction and condemnation, all kinds of stupid things happen.

There's just so many things that are way outside your purview, but the way God comes through for you is just amazing. Because I was getting to watch it for about the last three weeks of my life. And when things would happen, it was like stupid something, I'm such an idiot or something like that would come into my mind. It was kind of like I was joking and laughing, but it was, I was like, oh, there is an I.

So I can say it to myself. And I could kind of roll with it and go, yeah, that was a stupid act. That was not really the brightest thing to do. That probably wasn't very smart.

One of the things that I did was we were moving a bunch of junk out of the house to throw away. And I hooked the trailer up, but I forgot to put down the latch. Yeah, that was something that was stupid. And my son said something to me about it. It's like, man, you didn't, that's the first thing you do. And I'm like, that's the same thing.

Yeah, I'm such an idiot, but I was kind of laughing to myself saying it because I wasn't saying it out loud, but I was kind of laughing. It was like, I could feel the relief of, okay, I did something stupid. I can live with that. I can go on.

I'm okay with that. And it just was, it felt so good just to be able to release it real quick, not carry it. And that was the difference.

It didn't become your identity. Right? And that's so easy to slip into. There's so much more to this topic and we can probably do more on it, but honestly, what I'd ask you to do is just kind of listen for the key words, listen for always, never, listen for you versus I, listen for those things. And when you're approaching someone, ask God, God, how can I approach them with a loving heart that will help melt them down to where you can convict them in this, right? And try to stay away from that condemnation. Go to masculinejourney.org, register for the bootcamp coming up the 18th through the 21st.