Why You Can't See your Own Blind Spots | Even When You're Looking
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For the last few weeks, we have really been looking at practices that are personal, and ways that we can slow down and stop and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal things to us. But what I wanna do today is talk about this, about community. Have you ever been out to breakfast and you're digging into a delicious eggs benedict?
So good. And you've talked to people, and you're smiling at people, and hours later, you go to the bathroom. You know where this is going. And there, right in the front of your crooked front teeth, is a big old piece of spinach And immediately, or is this just me, you start dissecting your day. Oh, my goodness, I had that entire conversation with that girl.
Oh, my goodness, I smiled at that guy. We are beginning to understand why I am still single, I think. But seriously, your immediate thought is, "Why didn't somebody tell me?" See, if I had a friend who i- And it would be embarrassing, I think, just for a moment, if someone said, "Hey, Ruth, you've got something green in your teeth."
I'd be a little bit embarrassed, but I wouldn't be angry. I'd be very grateful. Grateful for a friend who was willing to, love me enough to point it out. Now, of course, at the end of the day, it's just spinach. We all recover, don't we? Maybe. But, and eventually, I'm gonna get to a point in my day where there is a mirror and I can see myself.
But what about the things in my life that I can't see about me? What about my blind spots? Now, most of you would be familiar with that phrase, blind spots, from driving, and you're on the M one and you are just sailing down, aren't you? And you're checking your mirror, you're even checking, the little side mirror, and you go to merge, and suddenly it's like beep, and there's a car right there.
You looked, but from the angle that you were sitting at, you couldn't see it, and that is what a blind spot is. The problem isn't that you're not looking. The problem is that you couldn't see it from where you were sitting, and that's true of our lives. There are things in my life that I can see. There are things that the Holy Spirit shows to me and reveals to me as I journal and as I do my SOAK devotions and as I fast and as I sit in silence.
And then there are some things that I can't see from where I'm sitting. That's what makes them blind spots. Other people might be able to hear the defensiveness in my voice when I react to something and I can't. Other people might see my, I don't know, impatience that I don't recognize. Maybe the way that I'm speaking to or addressing my family members.
Maybe they can see every time that person's name comes up, I get... I just react in a way that I haven't seen yet. And on the other side, blind spots aren't necessarily all negative. Maybe someone can see in me a gift that I haven't seen yet. Maybe they can see courage or leadership.
Maybe they can see compassion or gifting or growth. And from the angle that you're currently sitting, you can't see it. A blind spot is simply something about me that is visible from a different perspective, but not currently from mine. And that is why we need a healthy and a grace-filled community just like this.
Because the truth is that we need people who are gonna be willing to hold the mirror up for us when we can't, and that is community. But this here is the very tension that so many of us live in, isn't it? We want real and authentic community. We are designed for it. We know that about ourselves. We need it.
And yet, as much as we wanna be known, there's also this tendency to hide- Because being fully known is actually a little bit scary, because it actually requires vulnerability and it requires me allowing other people to see in me the non-shiny bits. The bits that I haven't got it together yet.
The version of me that is struggling, the version of me that is stuck, the version of me that is perhaps drifting from where the Holy Spirit would have me be. And I've done this before, and maybe you have as well, when somebody in your world says, "How are you going?" And you just do the, the response, right?
"Good. I'm great." We might tell a friend, "Oh, work's just really busy at the moment," but on the inside we're like, "I am barely holding it together, and I'm about to not make it, and I need help." We even as Christ followers, we can do this with our prayer requests, can't we? We give the, the prayer request that we know others will hear, okay.
I just need prayer for my family." And really you're like, "I don't know what to do. We're at breaking point." And so we've developed this ability to be almost honest, to share enough that it feels real and authentic, and not enough to actually put ourselves at risk of being truly known and truly vulnerable.
And obviously I don't need to state the obvious here, but you don't need to have that level of vulnerability with everybody. Not everybody in your world needs to know everything. But somebody, a small number of people need to know the real you Jesus even had different levels of, ability of relationship with people.
And so you do need wisdom with vulnerability, but somebody needs to know the real you. Otherwise, we end up in a place with blind spots, drifting away without somebody being able to call them out in us. And so the practices that we've been exploring over these last few weeks, the practices of silence and of fasting and of reflection those are so very necessary in our lives, but so is a grace-filled community.
So are people in your world who can hold the mirror up for you when you can't. And so this morning, what I really wanna do is just to unpack a couple of passages, a couple of scriptures that I've been looking at over the course of this series, and I hope that they will be a blessing to you. And where I want us to start is the Book of James.
James would have to be, I think, one of my favorite books, and I think it's because there's this theme that weaves the whole way through James, where he is saying if faith is real, it's gotta show up in the way that you live. It can't just remain theoretical. And we're gonna start in James 5, and it's a beautiful passage, I think, that talks about this, talks about community.
So it says, "Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord." And we still do that, don't we, as a community? And if you're new with us and you're visiting with us, like this is something that as a body we still do.
And it says that, "The prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well, and the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven." And so James in this passage, I think, is describing community. He's describing- What it can look like. If you're hurting, you say so. If you are celebrating and you're happy, you say so, and others can celebrate with you.
He's saying, "If you're sick, let people know and allow them to come around you." But it's the verse after this that I actually want to unpack today, and it's got special meaning, I think, for me because when I was in youth here many years ago this was one of our sort of life verses that we learnt.
And one of those verses where years down the track you still ima- you still hear it in the version that you learnt it in? And so for me, I always hear the earnest, heartfelt, continued prayer of a righteous man or woman makes tremendous power available, dynamic in its working. That's the amplified version.
I love the extra words. But for years, it's almost like I put a highlighter through that part of the verse, and I just skipped over the part that comes just before it. So we're gonna take a look this morning. It says, before... And just so you know, I still believe all of that about prayer, and the earnest prayer of a righteous man or woman, it is powerful and dynamic.
I believed it then, I believe it now. What I missed for many years was this: Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. It's pretty simple what he's saying about community here. He's saying, "If you've sinned, don't hide."
And if someone shares something with you, what is your response? Pray. Pray with them. Bring your actual life into community. That is what he's saying. Now, when I hear the words confess your sins to each other, I realize that I've had a picture, which I've probably picked up from movies or something, about a confessional box, and it's dark, and there's a curtain and a veil, and it's private, and it's what?
It's anonymous. And that is the opposite picture, isn't it, of what James is telling us here. Not anonymous, relationship Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other, one another. It's mutual, it's relational. It's people who know one another saying, "This is what is going on in the well of my life.
This is what is going on in me." And what is the response? Not confess your sins to each other so that the other person can give you advice. Not confess your sins to each other so that the other person would tell you what you should have done It's not about fixing each other, and it is certainly not about judging each other.
As the person receiving someone's vulnerability, I don't have to worry about what I'm going to say. My job is to listen Our role is to pray and to point them to Jesus. So when somebody trusts you with the unedited version of their life, just be for them. Be for them. How do you receive someone's vulnerability?
You listen, and you stay, and you love, and you pray. And maybe in this passage, James is trying to remind us or tell us that confession is not a place that you go, but a people that you belong to. And of course, it goes without saying that I confess my sin to God, and it's in Him that I am forgiven. I don't earn my forgiveness by telling somebody else what I've done.
Forgiveness and grace is from God alone. It's secure there. But James is saying that there is something that God has designed in that place that's gonna happen horizontally as well. Confess to each other, pray to each other, so that what? You may be healed. Whoa. Those are not three independent statements.
They actually relate to one another. And as we just read in the previous verse, James has been specifically speaking to physical healing, right? So absolutely, physical healing is a part of the context here, and thank you, Jesus, for that. But James, in this passage, has also talked about suffering and sin and forgiveness and confession and restoration, and what I think it l- means to us is that healing is so much more than just our physical healing.
God cares about the entire person. He cares about our restoration. And so sometimes healing looks like confessing something and seeing shame lose its grip on you. Sometimes when we confess to someone, healing looks like a relationship beginning to mend. Sometimes healing looks like isolation ending. And sometimes healing looks like that lie that you have believed about yourself, that others have spoken over you, it looks like that lie being brought into the light and being, made true in what Christ has said about you and whose you are, not about your past, not about what you've done, but whose you are.
That's healing. That's restoration Our friends are not our healers. Jesus is. We know that. But sometimes Jesus chooses to bring healing into the body through one another, through his body. And our walk with Jesus has always had a one another dimension, hasn't it? All throughout the New Testament, we read about the one another.
And there are absolutely things that God does when I am alone with him. There are absolutely things that he shows me and healing that takes pass-- place in my heart and in my life. And that has been the purpose of this series, to understand what some of those practices look like. They're not rules, they're not laws, they're tools to help us reflect and help us give time for the Holy Spirit to reveal things to us about us, and we need them.
But private interior work has a ceiling, and that ceiling is our blind spots, and that's why we need authentic community like this. Because the safest place for me to share the truth about the real me should be with other Jesus followers, shouldn't it? Because their response is not judgment, and their response is not, "You shouldn't have done that, and here's what you should do."
Their response is, "How do I lead Ruth closer to Jesus? Let's pray." That is a beautiful picture of authentic community. And if we really believe the gospel, if we really believe that there is no con- condemnation for those who are in Christ, and if we believe that righteousness is not earned by what we do and what we see one another do, then the family of God, the body A gathering like this, whether you're on the roo- in the room or online, a village.
It's what we call our small groups. A, a gathering around a coffee table where you're doing SOAK devotions with one another. Those are the places where we should be fully known. Fully known, praying together, crying together, laughing together, celebrating together, carrying each other's burdens, being known in grief together, being known in unanswered prayer together, and in doubt.
Celebrating when answers come and even when answers don't come, and trusting that in the middle of all of that, Jesus is doing what only Jesus can do Okay. Sorry, I get a bit passionate about this. But I've got another passage that I want us to look at, and if you've got your Bible with you, you can flick back to Proverbs.
It's been our key verse across this whole series. Maybe you can even open up on your phone if you've got it. Proverbs 27. Pastor Kev did a devotion of thi- on this verse, and that kind of birthed this series. Proverbs was, much of it associated with Solomon. Solomon was the son of King David, and what he's really famous for was the fact that he asked God not for power, not for money or wealth, but he asked God for what?
For wisdom. Yeah. And so the Book of Proverbs writes down these observations, if you like, and they say, "If you do life like this, then it might go like this." They're just helpful. And there are two of them in verse, in chapter 27, that sit really close to each other. They're only one verse apart.
And as we were preparing for this message, and Kev had shared that story about stilling the water, I read just before it and thought, "Oh, this is interesting. These are placed very close together." Let's start verse 17, one that probably many of you are familiar with: "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another."
I don't know about you, but when I am anywhere near a kitchen when someone is sharpening a knife, I actually shudder. It just gives me... Ugh. Yeah, the heebie-jeebies. It's not nice. You can hear the noise, can't you? Ooh. It just makes me uncomfortable, and it's because I think there's friction there, and there's resistance, and there's pressure.
But the thing about this is that it does actually work. The friction is not damaging the blade. It is actually refining the edge. And so Solomon, as clever as he wasn't actually giving us a lesson on metalwork. He was telling us about how this relates to people. "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another."
He's saying, I think, that there are things that God does in us through other people that wouldn't happen alone. Sometimes I need encouragement. Sometimes I need somebody to remind me what is true. Sometimes I need somebody to pray with me. And sometimes I need someone who loves me enough to say, "Ruth, here is what I'm seeing in you, and it's not good."
If every relationship in my life only ever affirmed me- And nobody ever challenged me, then maybe I'm not being sharpened. Maybe I'm just being agreed with. And to be honest, I have I- AI for that who does a lot of agreeing. Like you need people, don't you, that are gonna push back a little and do the tension stuff.
It requires friction. It also requires proximity 'cause I can't do that with somebody who's sitting across the auditorium, across the room. It requires friction. Sometimes the friend that I need is the one who doesn't tell me what I want to hear, but what I need to hear. And those conversations make me a little bit shuddery too.
It's the same as the, the knife being sharpened. It doesn't mean criticism. Like Paul tells us, "Speak the truth in love." Because truth without love can really wound. But also, love without truth, it can leave us really blunt. And so when we speak truth in love, that's the happy place. That's the place where we are sharpened.
And here's the interesting thing. So we start there. Iron sharpens iron, we sharpen each other. Skip down literally two verses to verse 19, "As water reflects the face, so one's life reflects the heart." We are being reminded here, as we've learnt over the last few weeks, that our life, our reactions, our habits, our words, our priorities, all of those things when you look at your life are a reflection of your heart.
And that's why we need the still waters and these practices that we've been exploring to help us still the waters enough to see that But we also need people to help us see the drift. And so verse 17 reminds us that people sharpen people, and verse 19 reminds us that your life reflects your heart.
Maybe, just maybe, when Solomon was writing down all of his wisdom, he realized that there was some wisdom that he needed to impart to us, and that was that I do need to pay attention to what my life is showing me, but I also need people around me who love me enough to show me the things that I can't see for myself.
So sometimes God shows me what's happening in my heart through the mirror of my life, and sometimes He shows me what's going on because somebody else is holding that mirror up for me. When you look at a space like this and you see a whole bunch of people sitting in rows, it's wonderful. We have worshiped together this morning.
We've opened Scripture together. We hopefully are inspired, and we can receive things, and we can learn, and we are encouraged. But some of the one another's that we learn about in the New Covenant, in the New Testament, they can't happen in rows. They need to happen in circles. They need to happen when we circle up around a table and have a meal together.
And they need to cir- happen when we circle up in a lounge room, when we circle up over a conversation, when we circle up in villages, which are really just our small groups. They even happen when we say things like at the end of the service, and we say, "The ministry is about to continue," and we encourage you to head out and to circle up around a table and have a conversation and share and grow in relationship with one another.
Rows help us to hear truth. Circles help us live it And it's so important. You cannot one another alone. It doesn't work like that. And that's why the writer of Hebrews says this. He says, "Let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another."
Consider one another, spur one another on, encourage one another. You can't one another alone. It's part of the way that God designed his people to live. Showing up matters, not because God is taking some kind of attendance list, but because you need people and other people need you. And so for me personally, one of the highlights of my week is going to my village.
We circle up in a lounge room, and we learn, and we're real with one of... with- real with one another. And for those of you who are like, "What is this village she keeps talking about?" It's just an intentional group of people living on mission and sharing their lives fully with one another. They might gather weekly.
They might gather fortnightly. And if you're exploring Jesus, and you're thinking like I don't even know about all of this stuff," there's space in a village for you too, because you bring your questions. We don't come with everything figured out. We come as we are. We come and we bring our whole lives, and we do it together.
We don't have to pretend to have all of the answers. And this series has been super heavy on application, hasn't it? Every week we've been given something that we can take home and put into practice, and so I thought I'd keep that going this week. Two questions I have for you this morning to go and ponder about.
My first one is this: Who knows you? Not of you. Who actually knows you? The real, unedited, authentic version of you. Who can ask, "How are you going?" And you get beyond the good, and you actually share authentically, vulnerably with them. Who knows you? And secondly, who has permission to tell you? This one's a bit harder.
Who have you given permission to, invited into your world to speak up when they notice a little bit of drift in your life? Maybe it's someone that can say "I've seen this about you," and instead of your default being to automatically shut them down, you actually invite that feedback and you listen.
Who have you given permission to hold up the mirror in your life? So this week, that's two questions, but only one thing I'm gonna ask you. Two things to think about, one thing to action, and that is to have an honest conversation. Maybe around point number one, maybe you need to tell somebody something that you've been hiding, something that you've been keeping in the dark, and you wanna bring it into the light 'cause you want healing.
And if you're on the receiving end of that conversation, then you know your response is to what? Listen, love, and pray. So maybe it's telling someone something, or maybe you need to ask someone or tell somebody that they have permission to speak into your life and that you will receive it. Because it's gonna be said in grace, not in judgment.
Ultimately, though, what I wanna just finish with is this thought, and that none of this growth and, holding up a mirror, none of that happens when you find the perfect group of people. It actually starts with Jesus because before I can have the courage to let somebody see the real me, I have to know that Jesus already sees me Before I can share, or have somebody identify my blind spots to me, I need to know that He already sees every single one of them, that He already sees every hidden thing, that He sees every failure, that He sees every fear, and He still moves towards me.
And that is the gospel. In Jesus, I am fully known, and I am fully loved. I am fully loved. And if you are here today or you're listening online and you're still figuring out what you think about Jesus, then maybe that is your starting point Knowing that he knows you and that he moves towards you in grace and in love.
It's not about joining a program or trying harder, as Kev said, to be a better person. It's about the love of Jesus, trusting the one who already sees you completely and loves you anyway, invites you into his presence, invites you to come close. And for all of those of us who already follow Him, imagine just for a minute what community looks like when we start living this out, when we sit in rows, but we also find circles to be a part of.
When we notice drift, and we hold up the mirror, and we remind one another of the grace of God that is for each and every one of us. And through it all, Jesus continually just keeps shaping us more and more into his likeness. That's not a program. That's just what it means to be part of the body of Christ, and that is welcome for all of us.
So I do want friends who tell me when I have spinach in my teeth. It's important that you do that for me. I will smile across the table at you, and you can be like, "Yes." But more than that, I need to give permission to people in my life who would hold up the mirror for me and tell me where I've started to drift, to tell me where I've started to maybe lose sight of the best way that God has for me to live and to walk.
And you do as well. We all need people who will hold up the mirror when we can't hold it for ourselves. So who is holding the mirror for you? Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, this morning we thank you for your love. We thank you for your grace. We thank you for your mercy. And we thank you that grace and that love draws us close.
And God, that you see us- And you still wanna be close to us, Heavenly Father. And I thank you for the way that you have designed life for us, that we were not designed to do life alone, but that it could be done in community. And so this morning, Holy Spirit, I pray that you would give us the courage to invite somebody in our world to hold the mirror up for us, and to develop relationships with people that can sharpen us, and pray with us, and point you back to-- point us back to you.
Continue to work in and through us, Holy Spirit, as we seek to love you and to serve you with our entire hearts and our entire lives. And may we be transformed day by day into your likeness. And we thank you for that in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.
Amen.