Rob Bell – The One Thing I've Never Heard Someone Talk About That Has Changed Everything for Me – #ppp09

Rob started this session by telling a story of someone who wrote him a letter telling him that he was defending him from all the criticism that Rob was receiving on facebook and various blogs.  He told him that people were saying that Rob was heretical and the messages were full of fluff and irrelevance.  “But I defended you.”

Rob said, “That right there is a chocolate covered turd.”  I didn’t feel good after this person told me this …

It’s the nine and the one – you may receive nine compliments and one criticism but of course you remember the one.

We need to learn how to forgive (not the mass of people but the actual person/people)

Become a student of forgiveness

We want to control how people respond to our words, not just control the words we actually say // every head nodded when he said this except for those who gave up a long time ago.

“You are not an ecclesial punching bag hired to take the blows.  You are a collective resource.”

You get a paycheck to deal

with our unhealthiness”

It’s ok to guard yourself (your leadership) as a resource.

– It can take hours of your life arbitrating toxic needs

You lose your creative energy, your prophetic abilities … you start losing yourself …

You find yourself holding, creating lists and labels, wanting revenge.

Forgiveness means being freed from all this.

You are absorbing the debt, taking the cost of it completely on yourself, instead of taking it out on the other person.  It hurts terribly. Many people would say it feels like a kind of death.

// Obviously the great title kept a lot of us in some kind of anticipation.  I mean “one thing”, really?  I was pretty sure that it was going to be something pretty fundamental like “The one thing is the She’ma, to love the Lord with … and …”.  I lost 20 imaginary dollars to my wife on that bet.

Forgiveness. It seems like it would be theoretically true.  If you can take each crass word said about message, the mocking of your mannerisms, the story that someone interpreted to actually disprove your point, and the weekly comments you might get about not wearing a tie, all the tough moments and actually forgive, release and be liberated from their sting then I suppose that would change everything.