So here's a woman who never cut her hair in her whole life. She'd never worn make up in her whole life, never worn jewellery in her whole life, never wore slacks in her whole life, never went to a movie in her whole life. If she knew that I was at the movies she would pray earnestly that Jesus would not come back while I was in there [laughter] because Jesus would never go in there to get me out. [Laughter] She got saved five times a day and the reason she chose five times a day is she broke her waking hours into three and a half hour spans. Every three and a half hours she would have a moment where she would confess the sins of the last three and a half hours to God so that she wouldn't run the risk of forgetting any. This was a crazy sort of bondage system. I was messing with her on her 85th birthday. I said listen granny, I'm taking you out for your birthday. I used to take her out on a date. I'd take her on a date about once a week or so because she was by herself. Granddad had died. I work for myself so I could organise things so I'd take her out on a date in the middle of the day.
I'd take her into a nice restaurant and I'd tell everybody this is my date and she's smiling and you know, she's got her walker and [laughter] she's in there. So one time I said granny, after dinner I'm taking you for a makeover. She said what! I said I'm serious, I've got it all set up. They're going to give you a nice hair cut, they're going to spruce everything up, got you some jewellery organised, I've got you a nice outfit. This is going to be fantastic granny! The fear of God came over her! [Laughter] She said no! No, no, no, I can't do that. She said I wouldn't want to send myself to hell and she said maybe someone else too. I said granny, how are you going to send anybody to hell? She said I'd hate to give a man a lustful thought. [Laughter] I'm like you're 85! Like nothing's in the right place, are you kidding me? Like a lustful thought? [Laughter] So here's someone who - and being around my granny, granny was hypersensitive to people who struggled with those things. Why? Because we preach our weakness, so I grew up in that environment. So somewhere deep down in my heart, somewhere deep down in my heart if I messed up bad enough when I lay my head down at night I wonder if God likes me. I wonder, I struggle with that hard so when you listen to my preaching what does it focus on? It's a lot of grace and a lot of wait a minute, Jesus is nice and a lot of this stuff.
I sort of go over the top with it. I sort of go over the top with it. Why? It's because of my own weakness and my own guilt. Now is focussing on the grace of God a bad thing? No, if you're going to focus on anything that's probably a pretty good thing to do, but everybody ministers and everybody - this is my point: everybody ministers and everybody leads out of their weakness. So whatever you're feeling guilty about secretly, I promise you it's coming out in how you're leading. If anybody's paying attention they can tell what you're struggling with by how you lead, by how you lead. You cannot hide this stuff because it's coming out of your heart alright, so guilt has the attitude of I owe you. Now here's a consequence of that. The consequences of that are this: number one, a culture of suspicion, a culture of suspicion. Everybody's wondering is someone out to get me? Is someone - what's their motive there? And this could be simple things. This is where on a staff in a church this will kill a church, this will kill an organisation.
If Steve says today Dave, I'm going to go meet with so and so in the church. I'm going to have lunch with so and so in the church, so Steve leaves and then Dave calls a meeting with you three and you and says Steve's going out with this guy. Now I wonder what he's trying to do? I wonder what his motives are? Once we start assuming that Steve has improper motives we destroy the unity in the organisation. Now listen. If you've fazed out listen here, this is so important. The Hebrew concept of unity is this word: ahad. Ahad. That is a Hebrew word that means compound unity, compound unity. It's a special word. For something to be a - I'm not a scientist so forgive me if I'm using the wrong words here - for something to be a homogenous sort of thing where it's one [that's one thing, 00.22.19] but for something to be compound, in other words it's got many parts but it comes together as a whole, that's the idea of ahad. It'd be like saying the All Blacks played together as one okay? You've got however many people are on a rugby team and they're playing together as one. That's ahad.