REVIEW: The Courage for a Mirror Moment

The Third of Seven

Never skip step one: Remind. It isn't enough to simply know who we are. We have to tell ourselves that story every day, and pass it on to the generation behind us. Identity can't just be a concept in our heads; it must live in our souls.

Only when we are grounded are we ready for the second—and hardest—step: Review. We have to look our reality in the face.

When the high priest’s secretary reads the newly discovered Book of the Law to King Josiah, his reaction is not defensive. It’s not dismissive. It’s not, "Well, that was then, this is now." His reaction is visceral. 2 Kings 22:11 says, "When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes".

In that culture, tearing one's robes was a public act of the deepest grief, horror, and repentance. The Word of God became a mirror held up to the soul of the nation, and for the first time, Josiah saw the massive, terrifying gap between God’s holy standard and Judah’s lived reality. He saw their polluted worship, their neglect of the poor, their rampant injustice, their spiritual apathy, and it broke his heart. He didn't make excuses. He didn't blame his ancestors, though he could have. He mourned the deficit.

This kind of honest reflection is terrifying, but it is the only path to health. Consider the story of another massive turnaround. When Alan Mulally took over as CEO of Ford Motor Company in 2006, the company was on the verge of collapse, projecting a $17 billion loss. He quickly discovered a corporate culture that was deeply dysfunctional. The company was structured into competing fiefdoms, and most dangerously, everyone pretended everything was fine. It was a culture of fake harmony.

Mulally instituted a mandatory weekly "Business Plan Review" meeting. Every senior leader had to present the status of their projects using a simple color code: green meant on-track, yellow meant caution, and red meant there was a problem. For weeks, every single chart presented was green. Green, green, green—even as the company was bleeding billions of dollars. No one was willing to admit failure, fearing they would be fired. Ever seen something like this before? Certainly. It's human nature.

Finally, an executive named Mark Fields, who later became CEO himself, bravely put a red mark on his chart for a major issue with the new Ford Edge launch. The room went silent. Everyone expected Mulally to explode. Instead, Mulally started to clap. He said, "Mark, thank you for that visibility. Now, what can we do as a team to help you?"

That single moment shattered the culture of fear and denial. Suddenly, "red" was not a mark of personal failure; it was a catalyst for collective problem-solving. By creating a culture where it was safe to be honest about the problems, Mulally was finally able to review the reality of the company's situation and lead one of the most remarkable turnarounds in corporate history.1

Do you see the connection? Mulally’s applause created a culture of grace. Only in that safety could the truth emerge. It is no different for us. Josiah’s profound repentance was met immediately with a word of grace from God. Through the prophetess Huldah, God said, “Because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the LORD… I also have heard you” (2 Chron. 34:27). 

God’s grace makes it safe for us to be honest about our failures. We can afford to look in the mirror of God’s Word and see the "red" areas because we know that in Christ, our sin doesn't lead to final condemnation, but to forgiveness, restoration, and help. Without the Gospel, honest review is terrifying; with the Gospel, it is liberating.

Let me ask you personally: When was the last time you let the Word of God make you uncomfortable? When did you last allow it to reveal a 'red' area in your life—your pride, impatience, lust, love of money, or apathy toward your neighbor? True repentance begins when we stop making excuses and, like Josiah, allow our hearts to break over the gap between our lives and God’s call.

As a church, we must have the courage to conduct a 'Bible-in-hand audit.' Let’s hold up the mirror of the New Testament’s 'One Another' commands:

• Are we truly loving one another as Christ has loved us?

• Are we bearing one another’s burdens?

• Are we forgiving one another as we have been forgiven?

• Are we stirring one another up to love and good works?

• Are we speaking the truth in love to one another?

This isn’t even a complete list, but the question must be asked: Where are our 'red' areas as a church family? You know they’re there. It isn’t easy work; if it were, everyone would be living out the 'One Anothers' perfectly. We can’t fix what we are unwilling to face. If we want to please the Lord as Josiah did, we must have the courage to Review.

You can't bypass any step and expect to achieve renewal. To assist with this 'Mirror Moment,' I've created a self-assessment tool, which includes the 'Sinful One Anothers' to help pinpoint vulnerabilities. You can view and download by clicking the button.

One Another Evaluation

I pray we take a hard look at ourselves, see the gap, and mourn the deficit. But let us also take heart in the grace of God, seeking to close the gap between who we are (identity) and how we live (reality)."

1. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/organizations-fail-when-employees-afraid-bring-problems-robert-glazer/

REMIND – Reclaiming Our True North

THE SECOND OF SEVEN

It’s not easy to look honestly at ourselves. In fact, it’s one of the hardest things we’ll ever do. True self-examination can be painful because it forces us to face uncomfortable truths — to see what we’ve become. And often, what we see is someone we don’t like, someone we never meant to be. So instead, we hide behind the image we project, believing our own carefully crafted propaganda.

Yet, remember this. We are not the sum of our actions. It's not decided who we are, based on our behavior, or lack of it. Neither are we what other people have said or think we are. 

We are who God says we are. You are who God says you are. Period. 

God’s viewpoint, His statements, His calling, and His working for you is what counts. That is where you get your identity. When God called you to become His child through the sacrificial death and resurrected life of His son Jesus, and you repented and believed, you entered a new sphere of eternal existence and participation in the divine nature, that nothing can change or take away. As Paul’s letter to the Romans states:

³¹ What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³² He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? ³³ Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. ³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? Romans 8:31–35 (ESV)

Just in case you are not sure of the answers to all of these questions, they are: “no one” and “no thing.” 

Paul then tells us why all this is true as he wraps up this section of the letter. 

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:37–39 (ESV)

We never lose God's favor because of the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. That will never change. But we can forget it.

The world is dominated by the belief that our identity is bound up in how we look, what we own or what we can buy, what we can do or what we have done. We're bombarded with these beliefs continually. This is why we must remind ourselves whose we are before we can identify who we are. Therefore, Remind is the first of the five steps to renewal. 

This brings us back to Josiah, the young king of a nation that had forgotten their assignment to be a light for God to the world. He had a humanly impossible task before him. The first thing we’re told about Josiah is astounding. 2 Kings 22:2 says, “And he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and walked in all the way of David his father, and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left”.

Pause and consider the gravity of that statement. His immediate heritage was a spiritual catastrophe. His grandfather Manasseh had filled Jerusalem with pagan altars and even sacrificed his own children to false gods. His father Amon continued this wicked legacy and was assassinated by his own officials. Josiah came to the throne as an eight-year-old boy with no godly father, no godly grandfather to model his life after. 

So where did he get his "true north"? The text tells us. He reached back. He skipped a generation, and then another, and he anchored his identity in his spiritual ancestor, David. He reminded himself of his covenant identity. He knew he belonged to the line of David, but more importantly, he belonged to the God of David. His obedience didn’t flow from a list of rules he was trying to keep; it flowed from a deep, settled sense of belonging. The Chronicler tells us that in his eighth year as king, at just sixteen years old, Josiah “began to seek the God of his father David”. His reform didn't start with activity; it started with identity. He first had to know whose he was before he could know what to do.

We see this principle in the modern world as well. In the mid-2000s, the coffee giant Starbucks was in deep trouble. After years of explosive growth, its founder, Howard Schultz, who had stepped away as CEO, wrote a now-famous memo to his leadership team. He warned that in their relentless pursuit of expansion, the company was losing its soul. The focus had shifted from the craft of coffee to the efficiency of transactions. The warm, inviting smell of roasting coffee had been replaced by the smell of breakfast sandwiches. This, he said, was leading to the "watering down of the Starbucks Experience".

When Schultz returned as CEO in 2008 to turn the company around, his first major act wasn't financial. It was an act of identity. He did something that Wall Street thought was insane: he closed all 7,100 of his U.S. stores for an entire afternoon to retrain over 135,000 baristas on the art of pulling the perfect espresso shot. It cost the company millions in lost revenue, but it was a powerful, symbolic act. He was reminding them of who they were. He was saying, "We are not a fast-food chain. We are not just about transactions. We are about the coffee. We are about the experience. This is our core identity". The historic turnaround of Starbucks began with a return to its true north. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/business/27sbux.html

What does this mean for us?

Personally, who are you? I mean, who are you really? Before you are a husband or a wife, a parent or a child, an employee, a neighbor, or a citizen of this nation, who are you? If you’re in Christ, your primary identity is this: You are a beloved child of the living God, bought by the blood of Jesus, sealed by His Spirit. Do you live from that identity? Or have you allowed your job, your political affiliation, your successes, or your failures to define you? 

We must constantly preach the Gospel to ourselves and remind ourselves of our core identity. We are not what we do; we are who God says we are. We obey God not to become His children, but because we are His children. That simple shift changes our motivation from fearful performance to grateful love. It changes us at the core of our being, our soul. 

And corporately, as a church, what is our identity? We are not a social club. We are not a political action committee. We are not an entertainment venue. We are the body and bride of Christ, a family of disciples on mission, called to make more disciples of Jesus. Every ministry we run, every program we launch, every dollar we spend must flow from that core identity. Renewal begins when we Remind ourselves who we truly are.

This is a good thing, but I didn't say it was easy. What will it take for you to truly align your self-identity with how God identifies you? Ponder that for a minute. 

If we believe, and I mean really believe the Bible is the Word of God, we can believe what it says about us, God’s covenant children. Once we get a vision of this and accept it as reality, we can live it. The more you know; the more you can believe and then, the more you can change. 

Several years back, Dr. Neil Anderson, a theologian specializing in practical theology at Talbot School of Theology, authored “Victory over the Darkness.” Among his contributions in this book is a section on “Identity.” This has aided many in REMINDING themselves of who they are and in reclaiming their true direction. You can download a PDF of this below.

Who I Am In Christ

THE LIGHT IN THE ATTIC

THE FIRST OF SEVEN

This is the first of a seven part blog series focused on church renewal. I believe I have some wisdom on this subject. I've served on staff of one church and been a pastor of three other churches for 22 years. In the pastorate, two of the churches were new and grew rapidly and prospered. The other church was a legacy church that had been losing a 100 people in attendance a year for seven years in a row (yes, -700 in seven years). Reminds me of the lean years in Joseph’s vision concerning Egypt from Genesis. Anyway, we were able to stop the decline but could not bring about the renewal that was needed. Honestly, when I left that church after six hard years, I was in severe burnout. 

In between pastoring these churches I served in several denominational capacities. This allowed me to also minister in churches as a transitional pastor. I've completed 13 transitional pastorates in my ministry so far. Each of these has been a bit different, but also fruitful and successful. None of them were the same; some were actually fun but some were also challenging; as you may imagine. 

You may ask, “Why write about this subject of church renewal now?” Well, glad you asked. It's because in the Baptist association I serve, most of my churches need it. Some of our growing churches may not see the need, yet they're mainly growing from transfer growth. In other words, they are not growing by conversion of the pagan population. I’m not saying all our churches need renewal, but most do. What is sad, is that most will not see the need themselves. 

Of course, this is a problem. To paraphrase Mark Clifton, “How is a dying church a testimony to the power of the Gospel?” Well, it’s not. People see a disconnect when we preach that the Gospel has power to defeat death, the devil and rescue souls from hell but can’t keep a local church from closing. Something has gone wrong, terribly wrong. 

We shouldn’t blame society, because the Gospel has progressed in worse places and is thriving now in worse places. We shouldn’t blame the Gospel itself, because if we are faithful to it, we should see transformation on both a personal and corporate level. This should be widespread, but it's not. 

Casting blame isn’t going to solve this problem anyway. But looking into what the Scriptures say about it may, if we will look honestly and then when changes need to be made, we turn decisively. 

So if you are still in on reading this, I want to first engage your creativity. 

Now we get to the heart of this blog.

I want you to imagine something with me. Imagine you’ve inherited an old family home. It’s been in your family for generations, but for the last 50 years, it’s been neglected, maybe rented out to careless tenants, and has fallen into disrepair. The paint is peeling, the garden is overgrown with weeds, and the inside… the inside is cluttered with generations of forgotten junk, dust, and decay. It’s your history, but it’s a mess.

So you decide to begin the long, arduous task of cleaning it out. You start downstairs, room by room, filling trash bags, sorting through what’s valuable and what’s not. Finally, you make your way to the attic. It’s dark and musty, and under a pile of old, dusty blankets and broken furniture, you find a small, locked chest. You pry it open, and what you find inside makes your heart stop. It’s the original deed to the property. But more than that, tucked inside is a letter from your great-great-grandfather, the man who built the house. In his own hand, he details his vision for the home—a place of hospitality, a beacon of warmth in the community, a refuge for the weary.

Suddenly, your work is no longer just cleaning. It’s restoration. You’re not just getting rid of junk anymore; you are reclaiming a vision. You now have the blueprint. You know what this house was always meant to be.

That is precisely what happened in the nation of Judah in the 18th year of a young king named Josiah. The nation was a spiritual ruin. It was cluttered with the junk of idolatry, inherited from Josiah’s grandfather Manasseh—arguably the most wicked king in Judah’s history—and his father Amon, who was just as bad. The house of God, the temple in Jerusalem, was so neglected that it needed a complete renovation.

And in the middle of this simple "house cleaning," the high priest Hilkiah found something that had been lost for generations. Underneath the rubble of neglect, he found the Book of the Law—God’s blueprint for His people. And when that book was opened, a light was flipped on in the dusty attic of the nation’s soul. For the first time in decades, they saw the dust, the decay, the rubble of their own hearts.

Some messes, you see, can only be seen when the light is on. And for the people of God, the light is always the Word of God. The question for them, and the question for us is this: When God’s Word exposes what really is, will we look honestly and turn decisively?

When God’s Word exposes the truth of our condition, God’s people must look honestly and turn decisively—personally and corporately. If we don’t, we will suffer the consequences. We learn this from the story of King Josiah in 2 Kings 22-23. We will explore this more in future blogs.

The theme for this series is a verse from the prophet Jeremiah, who was ministering during this very time. It says, “Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the LORD!” (Lamentations 3:40, ESV) 

To do that, we are going to walk a five-step pathway of renewal that King Josiah modeled for us. It’s a cycle of renewal that we can apply to our own lives, our families, and our church today. 

The five steps are: Remind, Review, Refocus, Refine, and Reform. There will be a separate blog on each of these five steps using the story of Josiah as the backdrop, with perhaps a final seventh blog wrapping it all up. 

I hope you’ll follow along. But I pray more than anything that there will be something here or something in the Scriptures that will inspire you to test and examine your ways and the courage to look honestly and turn decisively.