MOT Session1 SeriesIntro

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This is On Target Institute, building men of character, men who will live a life that demands an explanation. And now, founder and president, Vince D'Acchioli. Men, how you doing? And welcome to our Men on Target curriculum. It's such a joy to be able to be with you.

Our session one is what we're going to enter right now, and the title is Character Defined. Are You Aligned? Where are men today? I want to start with that. I believe men today are suffering from what I call moral schizophrenia.

Moral schizophrenia is truth learned on Sunday that cannot be applied on Monday. Here's what I mean by that. We go to church and our pastors are so great at bringing us great truth every week. We have our Bible, we learn, and hopefully we're growing. But then what happens is when we go to work on Monday and get into the real world, all of a sudden we're being compromised in that we can't really live that out.

Because if I really live that out, I might not get that promotion. In fact, I might lose my job, and I might not be looked at as being cool in the workplace. So there's a tendency, if we're not deeply grounded, to compromise. And that's what I mean by moral schizophrenia. The result of that is that I believe in our culture today there's a real lack or absence of godly character.

And I don't know about you guys, but our world is so desperate for seeing the real deal today. My friend Ed Cole, before he passed away, had a great quote. He says, character is an internal quality that is fed by external sources. In other words, it's kind of like the old garbage in, garbage out. The stuff I put in ultimately determines what's going to come out of me.

He goes on to say this. He says, the best character is in constant need, however, of checks and balances from without. It requires stimulus from without so it won't fail in development. Character deteriorates over time unless it is fed from external sources. It requires that stimulus.

And he says, the purity of the external source determines ultimately the strength of our character. I love 1 Corinthians 1533. It says, do not be misled. Bad company corrupts good character. In the early stages of my development, I did not live by that.

I hung out with guys. And listen, I want to tell you, you become like the people you hang with. And sometimes that's not a healthy thing. Richard Foster has a great quote. He says, superficiality is the curse of our age.

The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people or even gifted people, he says, but for deep people. So what is the problem? How did we get here? I like to go back to something I discovered many years ago as I was sitting under the teaching of the brilliant Stephen Covey. Stephen Covey had an illustration he would use to define organizational behavior and organizational culture.

He used an iceberg, and many of you have probably seen this illustration. He says, the bulk of an iceberg is really unseen. It's underneath the surface of the water. It's only the tip that you really see. But the bulk is the substance of the culture or the organization.

And at the base of that is its vision or mission, which ultimately informs its core values and operating principles so that the things you see on top behaviorally, if you are lined up, then you're doing a good job. Let's use a retail organization as an example. Let's think about Nordstrom's, for instance. Nordstrom's is an incredible retail organization. They have a vision or a mission, which informs its core values and operating principles so that when you and I walk into one of their stores, hopefully the behavior we see, the things we see as we're there, are consistent with their core values, operating principles and their vision and mission.

Now, if we overlay this and talk about it in the context of character, character can be assigned to an organization, as we've just seen, or to an institution like a church. But in our case, let's talk about a personal character, godly character, and let's take it personally. And let's look at that model again. Godly character is a one-to-one relationship between my Bible, my beliefs, or core values, and my behavior. So, if I look at that model again, with this as kind of a backdrop now, the iceberg, the core of who I am, at the base of that is my Bible, the foundational truth that I ought to be living by in my life.

It informs my belief system, the things I believe to be true and my core values, and ultimately, as a man, I should be living that out with my behavior every day. The behavior is the things people around me see every day, or the things that my wife sees and experiences with me in our relationship, the things that people at work, your neighbors, see of you. But here's what happens, guys. Again, we tend to chip off the top of the iceberg and float it off on the newest fad or technique or whatever it is I need to do to be cool and to be hip and to compromise oftentimes so that I can get that promotion or get the things that I need to get out of the world today. There's this disconnect.

So, what happens here is we struggle. It begs the question, why? Why does this happen with us? Why can't we just learn these principles and behave consistently? I believe it has to do with our inability to bring about effective changes in our life.

Years ago, I came up with what I call the six principles for change, and let me kind of help you understand what these are. The first three are called event, awareness, and decision. I call this the cycle of hopelessness. Here's why. What's an event?

Well, I do events all over North America. I do events for men. I do events for couples with my wife and leadership events for pastors, promise keeper rallies. They're events. Many of you men have been to a lot of different events.

I like to say sometimes I think in our culture we have a tendency to event people to death because events by themselves don't transform. What they do do is they bring about awareness. I go to an event and I am aware that something needs to change. My wedding was an event. It was not a marriage.

We men wish it were that easy, but it doesn't work that way. It's a process. It takes time in order for that to work the right way. So an event brings about awareness and then I make a decision. By golly, I'm going to do this.

Well, if you look up the difference between decision and commitment, it is huge. A commitment with every fiber of your being committing to a new course of action. A commitment means that I am making a determined effort and I'm going to enter into the next stage we call process. But commitment though is the bridge you must cross to transform the old man into the new man. And if I can make that commitment and enter into process, and here's the part we don't like, process is behavioral change over time.

We don't like that. How many of you find yourself standing in front of your microwaves getting impatient? We just wish we could take a pill and change would just happen. It's all about quick fixes. It's all about sound bites.

We watch commercials on television that in 30 seconds or 60 seconds can tell a story sometimes. It's so compelling it can bring us to tears. Everything is so abbreviated. We don't like paying the price of going through the process for change. Do this with me for just a second.

Let me illustrate. Fold your hands. And with your hands folded, how many of you, when you look at the way your hands are folded, you would say you fold your hands the way I do. If you notice, I fold my hands with the right hand first finger on top. Some of you fold your hands that way and 50% of you roughly, this works out in every large crowd, 50% of the time you're going to find people fold their hands the opposite way.

Now go ahead and reverse it. And I would just ask this question. How does that feel? Obviously it's awkward. Why do you fold your hands that way?

I want to tell you, nobody really knows why you fold your hands that way. It has nothing to do with being right brain, left brain, male, female, Italian or just ordinary. I always like to slip that one in. It has to do with the fact that when you were little boys and you saw mom and dad fold their hands one day, your hands came together. And whatever way they came together that first time, over time you form what is commonly referred to as a habit.

But scientists will tell you, you can't replace that habit. If I asked you to start folding your hands the other way, there'd be no reason for you to do that. But if you were to consciously practice folding your hands the other day for about 20 or 30 days, you will replace that habit with a new one. But it's the process that would have brought about the change. I remember when I was a young boy, my dad bought me my first set of weights.

I was a skinny, scrawny 10 year old boy. I ended up getting my weights from underneath the Christmas tree, you know, and I pumped iron for about 10, 15 minutes, ripped off my shirt, ran to the mirror and looked and I went, what is this? These weights don't work. I mean, I was frustrated. I expected that to happen right now.

And of course we know it doesn't happen that way. It's the process we need to enter into in order to ultimately bring about the desired result which is the change. Okay? The other thing I've discovered is this. It's hard for me to change on my own.

It takes a relational environment in order for truth that I'm learning to become transformational. And by saying that, let me take you to a quote by Gary Collins that I discovered a while back and he says it this way. Leadership is less about setting vision, reaching goals, motivating and inspiring others. Important as these can be. He says leadership is more about helping people create environments where they can experience community with others and loving relationships that move everybody forward.

Ephesians 2 10 is one of my favorite verses. It says this, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God has prepared or beforehand ordained that we should walk in them. The word workmanship in the Greek is poema. It's where we get the word poem. It is saying literally we are God's poetry.

The Bible says also if we're in Christ that we are a new creation. We are like a butterfly and no one is ever referred to a butterfly as a converted worm and neither will we do that with you and me. We are not converted worms. We are new when we are in Jesus. So as we conclude these sessions every time we're going to do two things.

We're going to talk about life implication and we're going to talk about life application. Let's talk about life implication first. What is the takeaway here? Well if my life is not properly aligned then two things are going to happen every time. One my ability to reflect who Jesus is will be limited and number two I will have difficulty holding up under life's pressures.

Okay now let's move to life application and this is the important part for you now. We're getting into our discussion questions. Number one how would I rate my current state of alignment? Number two am I willing to make a commitment right now to stick to a process for change? And finally number three what are some practical things I can do to start this process?

My prayer is that in your time together in your discussion times with other men that God will visit you powerfully and help you understand the things that you need to do. For now don't forget about it. We'll see you next time.