Persist

“Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.”  1 Timothy 4:16 (ESV)

I suspect most, if not all, of us have heard part of the purpose of education is to help us learn how to think, rather than what to think.  Critical:  both what and how are important.  Balance is also important.  People who win on Jeopardy have what mastered.  There are probably few how questions on Double or Final Jeopardy.  Much of our spiritual thinking is how over what. 

How over what leads me to self-awareness.  How we see ourselves and, importantly, others, is beyond important, it is vital!  Paul knew this well enough in the scripture above to admonish Timothy to be sure to “keep a close watch on” himself and that watch would be of salvific value, to Timothy as well as those interacting with him. 

This watch keeping is to be more than occasional, Paul encourages persistence.  To be persistent is to be doggedly engaged in this “close watch” for an extended period of time.  I liked doggedly.  It implies a tenacious spirit. 

Vital -- Self-awareness hinges on reflection and how we integrate this reflection into our own emotional intelligence.   

Emotional intelligence is our own reflections in terms of our own knowledge about our emotions, and our ability to observe and draw meaning from the emotions of others.  There is in this a “what” (reflection) that leads us to deeper understanding of how (we relate to others and ourselves.) 

David Foster Wallace sounds like Paul when he said in This is Water: 

“Learning how to think" really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.  It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.

A person with high self awareness, high emotional intelligence, is one who makes their own choices rather than operating from some internal default setting.  A derivative of this level of self awareness is remembering to listen, think, speak, rather than listen, speak, think.  For many, our default setting is listen, speak, think.  This is low self awareness, low emotional intelligence. 

This reflection leading to a better understanding of self and others is arguably more important than pure facts and figures, dates and heroes, theorems and formulas. 

We absolutely need what to be a success in the world, but how we are in relationship is also critical.  A positive relationship with ourselves, and with others, leads to success and our success depends on our ability to properly read other people and react appropriately to them.  Remember Paul?  Keep a close watch on yourself. 

To keep this watch, we must look, in as well as out. 

Now here is the paradox in all of this:  we learn a lot by failing.  That great bard of life truths, Anonymous, once said: “Those who have never failed have never attempted anything.”  There is no shame in failing, the shame is not learning from it, and not conducting the inventory afterwards of what was learned. 

Brené Brown, writes in Rising Strong:  “We need more people who are willing to demonstrate what it looks like to risk and endure failure, disappointment, and regret—people willing to feel their own hurt … willing to own their stories, live their values, and keep showing up.”

She nails it:  feel our own hurt but at the same time own the story from the hurt, the pain.  To live our values, we must reflect enough to know what those values are, and to keep showing up.  Key is that single idea from Paul -- persistence. 

Selah, Pastor Dennis