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At Become New, get 10 minutes of spiritual formation every weekday with John Orberg.
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We are given up condensation for what.
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Now, you might be saying yourself, but I don't have a problem with that.
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I never condone anybody.
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Let me stop you right there.
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I was out of walk with my good friend, Mark Yesterden, and he was telling me about a friend
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he used to have when he was at the University of Leeds who periodically in a conversation
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Maybe to introduce a new thought, maybe to challenge, maybe to encourage, or just took
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me by the arm from him and said, let me stop you right there.
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So that's what I want to do today because here's the deal.
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Those wills all run towards negativity.
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We can all experience disgust.
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We all judge other people in ways that Jesus commanded us not to.
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It's just that we have different ways of doing it.
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Some of us are sneakier.
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Some of us are more subtle.
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Some of us are more direct.
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So what I want to do for these few moments is to walk through six styles of condemnation
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and invite you to find what is your own style.
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That's the way in which you condemn and then we'll come back around to how might I
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be open to learning more and changing about that.
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I'll try to shift back and forth if I remember to do it.
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The first style would be a pretty open condemner.
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So we might just say it's the aggressive style.
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And here you just let condemnation fly.
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So Neil Warren writes in his book, Make Angier Ally about a man in Bellevue, Washington
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who is driven to autoside by a winter storm.
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That's a Bellevue police major Jack Killam called a strange case of an irate motorist who
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beat then shot his car after it got stuck in snow.
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Police said the man became so angry when his vehicle got stuck, he pulled the tire iron
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from the trunk, smashed all the windows, then he hauled out a pistol, shot all four tires,
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loaded, and emptied half a second clip of bullets into the car.
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Killam said it's a case of autoside.
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He said the man was sober and rational, but very perturbed.
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So this man is condemning his own car.
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We can condemn life, we can condemn experiences, but of course, most seriously, we can just
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directly and aggressively condemn people.
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I remember years ago taking our little dog, Winston, to obedience school and the teacher
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said, now, you always have to reinforce power so the dog knows who is in control.
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So when you are giving commands to a dog, you never get down at eye level.
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The dog's down there.
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If the dog wants to go outside, scratches the door, you never respond to that.
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You make it do a trick first.
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You're always reinforcing, I am above you.
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I am in power over you.
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And that's what this aggressive style does.
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It's constantly reinforcing the people and it will get often fear based compliance, but
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not genuine change or closeness.
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One of the word about this one is gossip.
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To speak or write about others in a condemning way with malice can leash unspeakable hell.
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So that's the first style.
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It's pretty obvious.
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The second one is much sneakier.
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And it looks a lot less unspiritual and that's the science, silence style.
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This is from Paul Ternier's wonderful book, Guilt and Grace.
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Sometime ago my wife and I were lunching in France on the menu as ox tongue is France.
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My wife said to the server, I don't like tongue.
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Can you give me something else instead?
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During the meal, naturally we spoke about guilt, my current subject of study.
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Do you know my wife said, it made me feel guilty when I asked for that change in front
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You always eat whatever is put before you, I have the impression that you think me capricious
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But I did not say a word.
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No, she answered, but your silence was most eloquent.
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My immediate reaction was to defend myself, what?
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I said, I make myself the champion of everyone's right, even as duty to be himself, reservedly
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and without pretense.
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You of all people do not dare to show your desires, not being afraid of my criticism,
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In my troubled silence during her conversation with the server, that judgment was indeed
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present, hardly conscious it is true, but enough for her to be intuitively aware of it.
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There's a researcher at University of Sydney, Lisa Zadrow, I think it is, who talks about
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I walk out of a room and do it in kind of a dramatic way, not going to talk to you more
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and I'm condemning the person in a pretty obvious way, or it can just be kind of avoidance
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of eye contact and silence or redirecting who it is that I'm talking to, and she writes
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about how we can often think, this is not a big deal, because it's not as dramatic as
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direct words, but it can be unbelievably painful in a relationship.
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And of course, I intend it to be almost Swedish introverts, so sometimes my silence technique
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is not all that different than just my normal way of related to somebody, so I might take
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a while for them to get it.
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But we use silence to condemn people.
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Jesus was talking to a group of religious leaders when he wanted to heal a man, he says
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it better to do good or to do ill on the Sabbath, to take life or to give life, and they were
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And he knew that meant they wanted to condemn him and they wanted to condemn the man that
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he wanted to heal, and it filled him with a right kind of anger.
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So that sounds, the next one, I can pronounce condemnation on people, you're my perfectionism.
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This is the person who constantly has the highest standards in the world, and so nothing
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is ever quite good enough.
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I'm always a little disappointed in you.
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A lot of people associate this one with God, David Benerites, when he asks people, when
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you think about God's heart towards you, what's the first word that comes to mind for many
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folks is disappointed.
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Nothing you do is good enough.
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I went to speak at church one time, and the guy who was kind of running the service took
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a look at me and said, you're going to wear that?
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And actually it was quite a neutral question, but we laugh about it all the time, because
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that kind of statement, you're going to wear that, you're going to do that, you're going
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to say that really, for the perfectionist that becomes a little tool of condemnation.
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Now it's important to understand there's a difference between being perfect and being
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To be perfect is to be whole, to be mature, to be complete.
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A perfectionist is somebody who is driven by fear or pride, is afraid of shame, and is
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really focused on performance, and it's an exhausting way to live.
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God is not a perfectionist, but we see this one in the Bible, Paul writes to the church
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of Corinth, some of you all say about me, his letters are waiting and forceful, but in
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person, he is unimpressive, and his speaking announced to nothing.
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Really, Paul's speaking amounts to, yeah, so that's the perfectionist, all right.
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Then another method of condemnation, which can be a little bit sneakier, is sarcasm,
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The Bible's word for that kind of person is a mucker.
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Someone says, blessed is the one who doesn't sit in the seat of the mucker.
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And the thing about using humor in this way is, it's kind of safe, because if the other
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person takes offense and addresses you directly in counterattacks, he's, I was just joking.
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Can you take a joke?
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We have friends, and she went south one time for the first time to spend some time with
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her in-laws, and noticed how often people would say, bless her little heart about somebody,
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whose heart they were not going to bless.
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And her comment at the end of the day was, now I know why it takes other women so long
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to take off their makeup, they have to watch both their faces.
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Now that in itself, kind of funny, but can be a statement of condemnation.
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And I think about how devastating ridicule can be.
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I think about somebody I know who grew up in a church and didn't fit the stereotypes
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of masculine, athletic persona.
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And the words that were used to ridicule him and the friend of his have done damage that
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is indescribable in the last decades later.
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And I don't think the people that did the damage knew very deeply because there was not
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And of course, when we're in the condemning business, we're not in the empathy business.
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And again, just think through it, do I use this one?
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How much of this do I use?
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The next one is what might be called conditional acceptance.
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And so now in this one, it looks like I'm accepting you, but really, I'm only doing
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it as long as you're giving me what I want.
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Families can do this.
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As long as we can leave together to think we're the greatest family, then we accept each
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But if you ever start to question that system, then there's trouble.
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Or at work, I kind of lost it as long as you are useful to me, then I will give you
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acceptance and celebrate you.
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But when you cease to be useful, now it's not just about work productivity, but just
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I had no time for you as a person.
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Or therapist, because I pay my therapist to accept me.
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So loose me says, we can spill all our beans to our therapist without having to worry
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they will throw us out.
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You would like to shoot your mother-in-law through the head, interesting.
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Oh, you want to sleep with your sister-in-law?
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Yes, of course, I understand.
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No, I don't think it's terrible if you don't want to sleep with her.
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And now, of course, we need therapists who will accept us.
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Sometimes that becomes a financial arrangement.
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There's actually a kind of a smile that's called the Pan Am Smile, because it was an airline
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Pan Am and their flight attendants were trained to smile all the time.
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But it turns out that if it's a manufactured smile, it doesn't involve the eye muscles.
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It's run by the motor cortex, whereas the Duchenne smile where the eyes are also smiling
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is run by the limbic system.
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And so that's a conditional acceptance.
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I'll accept you as long as you're giving me what I want from you.
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And then when you stop giving that to me, then the condemnation comes.
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And then finally, this is a real sneaky one is the style of the martyr.
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Now in this case, I'm condemning you, but I'm using my misery, my suffering, my
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pain, to make you feel bad about you.
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Peter Wagner used to talk about this in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul writes, and saying,
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if I don't have love, he's contrasting that with other things.
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And he says, even if I give my body to be burned.
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And so Peter says, based on that, some people think that martyrdom is a spiritual gift,
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but it's the gift you can only use one time.
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A good friend of mine was telling you recently about how he worked with a woman that kind
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of condemned in this way, and she would just complain about stuff.
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And one time, he was trying to help her solve the problems she was complaining about.
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And another friend said, no, that's not going to be helpful here, because it's not about
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This is about giving vent to her martyrdom in order to condemn this place or this person.
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Negativity, just chronic negativity, people experience, but when we're with somebody
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and we receive that, we experience that as condemnation.
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So here's the styles.
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This is probably my preferred style.
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Perfectionism and high standards that nobody can live up to.
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Sarcasm, humor, be funny, Bob and weave.
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Conditional acceptance, give you a lot of love and affection as long as you give me what I want
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or martyr my victimhood.
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And as you walk through the day, just allow periodically the Holy Spirit to interrupt you,
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take you gently by the arm and say, let me stop you right there.
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I just love that it was, let me stop you right there.
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And is that become more aware of what my style is to be able to let it go?
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Ask God for help, because there is now, therefore, no condemnation.
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