(I ended up teaching on this topic on Sunday.  I’ll post a link to the video/audio when it is uploaded by our media team)

 

The last two weeks have been intense weeks inside my spirit. Here’s what I mean; I’ve received news that three people I respected, compromised their integrity and are now no longer in their positions of influence.  I also had a very intense dream that I believe was clearly from God.  These things have caused my spirit and heart to be heavy over the last two weeks as I process the sadness from the news and the lessons that can be learned.

 

Before I tell you more about the situations with each guy, I want to be clear that I don’t write this to judge them.  I am honest that my heart breaks for them.  It really does.  That old saying keeps going through my head, “But for the grace of God, there go I.”

 

The first person was a prominent worship leader (maybe even the most prominent in the last few years).  The news came out he has been having an affair for four to five years.

 

The second person was one of the teaching pastors at the church I attended in college.  The church has over 10,000 weekly attendees and is very influential in their area.  I found out he was fired because he had been going to prostitutes for years.

 

The third person was the coach of the Ohio State football team.  It has come out the coach lied about breaking rules and it seems like there might be more negative information still to come.  I know most of you will read this and feel like I’m not being honest about respecting Jim Tressel but it is true.  I’m not an OSU fan because I was raised in Michigan, but I respected the character and witness that Jim Tressel seemingly modeled. (The only reason I list his name is even if I was vague, you would know exactly who I’m talking about)

 

After I found out about the first two guys I had a very intense dream.  It was one of the most realistic dreams I’ve ever had.

 

In the dream I was walking at night.  It was more than just dark though; it was foggy too.  As I was walking, I somehow knew there was going to be steps going down that were ahead of me.  As I got close to the place I thought the steps were, I started to use my foot to feel for them.  I found the first step and slowly lowered myself until I felt the top of the next step.  I then repeated that process to locate the next step.  The third step was different though.   No matter how low I got, I couldn’t feel the next step.  I decided to sit on the second step and just wait for some reason.

 

After some time, the fog all of a sudden lifted and when I looked down there wasn’t another step.  Instead, I was about 100 feet off of the ground.  It was terrifying.  It felt as real as anything I’ve ever experienced.  The reality came rushing into my head that if I had taken that next step, it would have certainly cost me my life.

 

I gripped the landing behind me and slowly pulled myself up.  The whole time my mind was racing with the thought that I almost died.  That’s when I woke up.

 

As I laid there in bed thinking over the dream, God instantly brought back to my mind the news of the two guys failing morally.  God said to me, those guys would not have taken that step if they fully believed it would cost them as much as it did, the same way you wouldn’t take the step off the cliff knowing it would cost you your life.

 

The dream seemed to be very much directed at my own relationship with God and my integrity but I couldn’t shake the idea it was also intended for LCC.

 

The three guys who compromised their integrity have lost so much.  I don’t know if any of them will ever fully recover.  They might get other jobs but each of them was in a place at the top of their profession.  It would seem that any other job at this point would be a lesser job and a constant reminder of all they lost.

 

Their situation reminded me of the story of Esau and Jacob.  Read below the account in Genesis.

 

Genesis 25:29 Once when Jacob was cooking stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was exhausted. 30 And Esau said to Jacob, “Let me eat some of that red stew, for I am exhausted!” (Therefore his name was called Edom.) 31 Jacob said, “Sell me your birthright now.” 32 Esau said, “I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?” 33 Jacob said, “Swear to me now.” So he swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob. 34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew, and he ate and drank and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.

It’s a simple story with profound meaning.  Esau in a moment of hunger/desire sold the most precious thing he could ever have, his birthright.  It not only represented power and wealth, it also represented his legacy.  He gave it all away for a bowl of stew!  It seems like such a stupid decision it’s almost hard to believe.  It’s only when we evaluate the decisions that we make every day and also look at the decisions people make like the three examples I’ve given, that we realize we all make stupid decisions on par with Esau.

 

I heard Andy Stanley (a pastor in Atlanta, Georgia) say a powerful statement about Esau’s story.  This is a paraphrase, but he said:

 

“If I could go back in time and talk to Esau I would say to him, ‘If you make this trade (your birthright for a bowl of stew) you will lose the opportunity to forever be remembered in a powerful way.  If you don’t make this trade, you will have 12 sons and they will become the 12 tribes of Israel.   In a few hundred years, God will introduce Himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Esau.  In the book of Matthew, it will track the genealogy of Jesus from you.  But if you take this deal, you will lose it all, along with your power and wealth from your family.”

 

Esau’s story is our story the same way the other three guys’ stories are our story.  In moments of fog, we trade things of incredible value for things that make us happy in the moment.

 

We lose control in our anger, in our passions, in our greed, in our desire for power, and in many other ways for a moment of pleasure or satisfaction only to lose so much more than we gain.

 

I think we make bad decisions for a number of reasons.  Here are some possibilities:

 

1. We don’t think we will get caught.
2. We think it is a one-time thing.
3. We think this is just a season and we will eventually come back to integrity.
4. The payoff seems too valuable to miss.
5. We’re selfish so we rationalize our behavior.
6. We don’t acknowledge we are really addicted.  We think we still have control.

 

The problem with each of those reasons is they are an illusion.

 

Instead of falling for the illusions, we need to ask ourselves some hard questions.  I believe the answer to these hard questions will lift the fog that hides the true outcome of our decisions.

 

Here are some better questions to ask:

 

1. What does God want me to do? (This one is the most important and yet most ignored)
2. If my secret behavior became publicly known, what would the consequence be?
3. What is the worst-case scenario if I make this choice?  If that happened, what would I say to myself then?
4. If I were to go to Esau or the other three guys I listed previously and ask them, “Was the momentary pay-off worth what it eventually cost you?” (I would say with near certainly they would all clearly say “NO!”)
5. In light of all that is valuable to me and what I still want to accomplish in life, is this the wise thing to do?

 

 

Each of us has so much potential with God.  That potential will not be realized by taking a shortcut.  God’s plan requires us to take the full path because the path is the plan.  On that path, satan will try to create “fog” to trick you to take a step in another direction…a direction that will eventually cost you everything and give you nothing.  My prayer is for you to allow the Holy Spirit to bring clarity and courage so you will not trade it all for a bowl of stew.