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What My Behavior Is Teaching Me About My Values

I live in what is arguably the golf mecca of the world. If you live in Augusta, Georgia you have to be at least a little bit of a golf fan, so Sunday afternoon I watched the last hour of the U.S. Open. It was quite a finish. JJ Spaun — a relatively unknown golfer on the PGA tour — won in stunning fashion. His last shot was a 64-foot putt, which he sank, and I think no one was more surprised than him.

This win was huge for him on multiple levels. A year ago last July, Spaun was on the verge of losing his place on the PGA tour. He wasn’t making the cut in tournaments; his game was way off. In an act of desperation, Spaun hired a sports psychologist. Not a golf coach, but someone to help him work on his mental game, because he was pretty sure he knew how to play golf but his mind wasn’t connecting with his game. That decision paid off. By early fall last year, he was winning tournaments or placing in the top 20 or so.

Let me say that again: When he got his brain lined up with his game, his performance was transformed.

That disconnect between our internals and our externals … that disconnect can be devastating. Jesus talked about this. I’ll give you two passages as an example. In both of these, Jesus is pretty harsh or at least very direct in the point he wants to make, but what I really want you to notice is the principle at work beneath his comments.

In Matthew 15:1-8 (NIV), we read, “Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”  Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?  For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’  But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’  they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.'”

And then again in Matthew 23:3 (NLT) Jesus says, “Practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach.”

Jesus, of course, is pointing out their hypocrisy, but today I’m interested in these comments because they are a good example of what Jesus knows to be true about the human mind. When our thoughts don’t match up with our behavior — much like a golfer’s game — the disconnect can be spiritually damaging. Or when the behaviors don’t match the stated values … again, that disconnect can be spiritually damaging. No wonder Paul said, “Take every thought captive,” and “be transformed by the renewal of your minds.”

The mental game is every bit as important as the behavior.

I don’t follow golf closely enough to have known JJ Spaun, the guy who won the U.S. Open on Sunday, but his story fascinates me. It is amazing to me that he became a better golfer not by working more on his swing but by working more on what Christians might call “the renewal of his mind.” That teaches me something about the incredible synergy that can happen when the internals and externals line up, and also about how the externals reveal the internals.

As a leader in the Global Methodist Church, I’m thinking a lot these days about what we value as a denomination. To talk about values we realize we must talk about beliefs, and to talk about any of it we need to talk about behaviors, because values create behavior. And maybe more than that, behaviors reveal values. So maybe I as a local church pastor say I value connectionalism but if I lead our church to act congregationally then do we really value connection? We may say we value the authority of scripture, but how does that get lived out? What behaviors reveal that value?

“These people honor me with their lips,” Jesus said, but if you want to know what they really value, watch their behavior. I’m convinced Jesus said that because he gets it that when the internals don’t line up with the externals, that can be devastating to the mission and damaging to our witness of the gospel.

Tod Bolsinger, in his book called Invest in Transformation, writes, “Your actual values are revealed in what you actually do. Values are what is already true about you and are based on what you have done or are already doing. Your actual values are no less inspiring, but they are not hopes for what you could be but an expression of who you actually are.”

So all this has me wondering not what we aspire to but what we are actually doing. What does our behavior say about what we actually value? Do you see places in the Global Methodist Church where our behaviors don’t necessarily line up with what we say we value? How about in your own life? What does your behavior say about what you value?

Wouldn’t it be something to hear Jesus say of us — all of us, “Practice and obey whatever they tell you, but even more follow their example. For they all — every Global Methodist — practices what they teach.”

Carolyn Moore

I follow Jesus.

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Holiness is at least this: a design of life that exposes us most fully to the heart of a good, loving and creative God.