Minimizing the Damage

Christians try to live lives filled with blessings. And doing what God says is a great way to build a great life. You will avoid a lot of damage that people in the world incur. However, problems are still a part of this life. Even believers see damage in their lives. Maybe it is relationship trouble, maybe economic woes, or health concerns. Sometimes it is our fault, sometimes it is not. The question is, how do you handle that? Do you know how to minimize the damage? I want to tell you a short golf story to help you see how to make things worse, and then encourager you how to make things much, much better.

- Why does faithfulness matter?

- Do Christians still have bad things happen?

- What are mistakes people make when they are angry?

- How can we learn from a teenage golfer?

- Are you ready to take control of your problems and minimize them?

Transcript

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Hello, welcome back for season two of the Excel Stillmore Podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson, and I'm here to encourage you with tips and strategies to help you deepen your faith, build stronger relationships, and do the most with your life in Christ. Thank you for joining. Let's get started. Thanks for being here today. I'm excited to talk to you about minimizing the damage. That's our episode title. And it recognizes a reality for us all. Sometimes get messy. Sometimes things go wrong. Maybe it's other people's bad behavior. Maybe it's mistakes you and I have made, or just the way that life has gone. Sometimes there is damage. And what you and I need to do is be sure that we minimize that damage. We don't want a bad thing to get worse. We don't want something awful to happen, but because of the way we react to it, something else, even more awful, happens. That's what our episode is ultimately about. I have a story to tell you from this week. It includes my 16-year-old son. He will probably not enjoy that this story got told, but it does show some things about his growth, and it has a decent ending. Maybe not the one he wanted, but a good one, I think. Before I get into that, let me talk about something else for a moment. Because living a Christian life is not just about minimizing all the damage, it is also about avoiding a lot of damage. Yes, you need to know how to maintain control in a moment when you could make things go from bad to worse. But what if you could live a life where there weren't so many bad things? Now, I know there are a lot of things out of our control, but I wanted to speak to this for at least a couple of minutes. Listen, being a Christian is the elimination of a lot of problems from your life. Your decision to serve God, to believe on the name of Jesus, and follow the Spirit's characteristics, love and joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, it will help you not even incur a lot of the damage that people in the world find in terms of broken relationships and consequences. Then if you take the advice of Scripture and you surround yourself, your inner circle with godly people, with encouragers and helpers, that will help you steer clear of a lot of bad situations and outcomes. In addition to that, I would like to think that these episodes have helped with that. We've had something like 120 episodes since January of 2019, all of which are designed to help us just do a little bit better, create better situations, improve relationships, you know, the whole intro jingle. And so I would say I don't think God wants your life to be filled with damage, and then you just listen to an episode and figure out how to handle it. A lot of being a Christian and learning and growing is living a life that minimizes the occurrence of problems. And I really hope that that is what you are experiencing. And if you have a lot of burning buildings, maybe more godliness in your life, more worship in your spirit, more of the word in your day can help that to happen a whole lot less. And I believe that to be the case. However, it's not all going to go away, is it? People in your life can do things that hurt very badly. Economic woe, job loss, health concerns, political junk. There are a grand variety of things that can really infuriate us. What we want to do, to borrow from our COVID-19 language, is flatten the curve. We don't want it to spike beyond where it had to be. Now, here's the reason I started the episode by saying let's avoid a lot of damage. I think that sometimes the blessings can become a curse in the life of a child of God, where you try to live a pretty good moral life and put yourself in good positions. And so a lot of the problems that the world has you don't have, and that's all great. Except when something does hit you, if you aren't ready, if you haven't learned how to handle that, then your whole life will fall apart in a moment. We see dramatic meltdowns, maximizing the damage by people who've lived fairly pampered lives. Like me, I think, and maybe you as well. Speaking of people who've lived lives like that, let me tell you a story about my 16-year-old so that I can actually introduce to you the three best things to do in a crisis to make things worse. And then when we just reverse those three things, we'll be a lot better off. Like I said, he may not enjoy me telling this story, though there is an outcome to it one day later that makes me pretty proud of him in his process of growth. So here it is. Last week, Summer and the kids and me went to watch my son Luke play in a golf tournament. A two-day event. 18 holes one day, eighteen holes the next. You don't have to know a lot about golf, by the way, to get where this is going, so please hang in there with me, even if you're not a golf fan. Seventeen of those holes went by and he was playing great. He'd had almost no problems, no damage, no danger. He was shooting around even par, having a great day. And then he got to hole number eighteen. He hit a drive a little bit right, unfortunate where it ended up. His second shot out of there ran into some trouble, and he hit his third shot into the little pond in front of the green. And then he lost it. I don't think I've ever seen him like this before. He had this great round, he wasn't prepared for damage, and when he received a little bit of it, he flipped out. He started yelling at himself. It was a crazy chaotic 20 seconds. I don't think there was any profanity involved, but there was a lot of loud, angry words. He slams his club into the ground, he pounds the side of the golf bag with it, he marches angrily up to the water hazard, drops another ball, and very quickly pops it into the water again. More anger, more tirade, drops the ball, knocks it over the water, nearly over the entire green, marches around to the green, slams his bag down, walks to the back of the hole, barely even reads the putt, and pounds it about halfway. He ends up three putting and making a ten. A ten on a par five is not good. And he was inconsolable. Not like I was trying to console him. I was just waiting till we got home to have a conversation with him. And once we got home and were able to talk about it, I made sure he understood. I don't care about the ten. The problem is it should have never been a ten. At the worst, you should have made a seven at the worst from the water. But I said, Luke, once you got in trouble, things went wrong. You made three vital mistakes. And this is what I hope that you can use as well. We will invert these to make the points that we want to make about minimizing damage in your life. Number one, you lost your cool. Your emotions took over, you burned with anger, you've shown it to the people around you, everybody's watching you. You gave up control over your good senses and your abilities. When you have an outburst of anger like that, you're asking for even more trouble than you had to begin with. That was mistake number one. Secondly, you started rushing. What he should have done is gone up to the drop zone, found the right spot, dropped the ball, set up the next shot, knocked it on the green close to the hole. But he was so angry that he just drops the ball and hits it, and into the water it goes. The second mistake was reckless rushing, acting too quickly, not calming yourself down and not thinking it out. And then the third thing that kind of wraps around the first two is he just stopped caring. He told me right afterwards, he said, I didn't even care. Now what's interesting about that is he was at about even par and in a position to maybe win the tournament. And he still had to come back and play the next day, and both scores would be added together. On what planet would you not care about the difference between dropping the ball out of the water, putting it on the green and making a six or a seven and a ten? Well, in that moment he didn't. And that's why he rushed up to that putt and hit it and didn't even care where it went. At least not until he got home and realized he had to go tee off the next morning. Now I do want to tell you about the round the next day and the infamous eighteenth hole. Hangin there, we'll get to that at the end of the episode. His chance at redemption. But first, do you notice those three mistakes when things go from bad to worse? I'm thinking about marriage, someone says something unkind, there's a little cut, a little damage. And instead of it being handled properly, these mistakes occur, and now we're off and running to see who can burn the largest portion of the house to the ground. This can happen in a lot of ways, but the solutions are all the same. Number one, no matter what happens, bad breaks, your fault, someone else's fault, there is just no room for outbursts of anger. Yelling and hitting things and just generally losing control of your faculties never helps anyone. It may feel good in the moment, but even that is short-lived and unfulfilling. Have you ever noticed? The Bible very clearly talks about outbursts of anger as the work of the devil. It is that poor reaction to something bad that makes everything worse. So, what's our number one solution? You must keep your cool. You may be furious. Justifiably, unjustifiably, you're feeling it no matter why, but you must keep it under control. It needs to stay managed. The first step is controlling emotions so that you can properly determine what to do next. Because the second mistake is acting too quickly. It's rash. It's not thought out. And it's usually just an expression of your anger as if it is justified because it is an expression of your anger. I gotta tell you, popping that second ball in the water and three putting, those were swift, not thought out, and unwise. And in the moment he was happy to do them because they showed the world how mad he was. Well, I gotta tell you, looking back on it, he did not feel really great about all that. So what's the second thing that you must do? Not just control your emotions, but take some time to process your next move. Collect yourself, make a plan. Take a few minutes. It could be anything. Maybe you find out about a serious health issue and you or in your family and you're upset and you're broken and it's damaged and it may not be fully repairable and you're just so upset. But acting it out in that moment without thinking about what it means to God or to the people around you or for your future can lead to things that you may regret for the rest of your life. A second most important thing to do is collect yourself before your next move. It would have saved my son a few strokes, but that's a golf game. Who cares? More importantly, it may save a marriage, it may save a church, it may save your job. There are any number of things that can be saved by thinking before you act. And then thirdly and finally, I think Luke would tell you, he just didn't care. In that moment, he didn't care if he won or lost, he didn't care if he shot a hundred. And of course, while these scores are recorded forever on the interwebs, more importantly, he had to add the next day's score to that one. It mattered. He would later tell you it definitely mattered, but in the moment he still didn't care. When we stop caring about what we do, when we stop caring about how it affects people, when it just doesn't matter to us how much trouble it creates, the devil is free to create just a whole lot of trouble. Keep caring. Keep caring about what you do. Keep caring about who you affect or where you're going or who you are. I had to remind my son, man, you're a Christian. That's who you are. And you want to care about that, even if you don't care about a golf game. Maybe that could be true for you. Things that happen, damage, problems, hurt. Even in that moment, if you don't care about what happens there and then, always care about Christ and care about who you are. So those were the three lessons I learned from watching the last five minutes of a four-hour golf round. That bad things sometimes happen. Maybe they're not even your fault. Maybe they are. They stink. We try to avoid a lot of that stuff, and we do as Christians, but sometimes life hurts anyway. Three things you can do to turn a bad thing into a disaster, to turn damage into destruction, lose your cool, act too quickly, and stop caring. But the opposite is also really powerful. What if I controlled my emotions? What if I processed the situation and planned my next move? And what if I kept caring about how it all worked out or who I was or how I affected people? A lot of times we can repair the damage instead of making it worse, but even if we don't, even if we must live with what happened for the rest of our lives, we will have done what we could to minimize it. Alright, so let me end this episode by taking you back to the golf tournament and into day two. Truth be told, first place was out of the question with that big ten to end day one, but he had a great chance to get second place if he played a good round. And for seventeen holes he did. He was around even par one or two over, doing really well, and he had second place locked up with just a par on the par five eighteenth hole. It was just a couple of days ago, but I can really vividly remember Summer and I glancing at each other like, here we go. He hits a drive. This time it goes a little left, not too bad. Walks down there to it and it's stuck in some tree roots right next to a tree. He has to punch it out, goes in a bunker, hits a shot out of the bunker, and then approaching the green with his fourth shot, it goes in the water. Yesterday it was his third shot that went into the water. Today it was his fourth. That's worse. And I did not know what he was going to do. I know it hurt. I mean, he's 16, it hurt. And he let out one grunt, one of those pain grunts that we all possess, and I waited to see what would happen next. Here's what happened. He stopped grunting, he walked up to the water, he pulled out another ball, he stepped back to a good distance, that's a legal move, and he dropped the ball on nice flat ground, measured up the shot, hit it onto the green, putted that one close, and tapped in for an eight. Sadly, that eight meant that he dropped from a lock for second place down to fourth place. And yeah, he was super disappointed with that. But I wasn't. I hated that it went so badly at the end again, and I would have loved to tell you some story about how he birdied the last hole and won first place, but you know, that's not the way it always goes in life, is it? Sometimes the damage is real and you can't get rid of it, but you can minimize it. And I was proud of him for that. The fact that he kept control of himself, planned out his next move, and kept caring until the round was over. So to me, it was the best eight I've ever seen. Because it could have been so much worse, and it shows that he is growing as a man. I don't care about the golf. He's growing as a Christian man. So we get in the car after that, and it was a totally different scene. He was upset for like ten seconds, and then he said, Dad, I think the devil's doing this to test me. And maybe he was. And while the damage was too much and he didn't beat the other boys today, I think he did defeat the adversary. And in the end, that's the only victory that matters. So listen, I hope you don't hit any balls in the water and you don't get any bad breaks, and no one does you wrong. But when it does happen, take a few simple, powerful, important steps and minimize the damage. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you enjoyed the program, please remember to share with your family and your friends. Also, you can go to excelstillmore.life to sign up for emails, order the three month journals, or just catch up on old episodes. So until next time, let me leave you with this. Whatever you choose to do today in the name of the Lord Jesus, excel stillmore.