Personality Weaknesses 

Romans 8:26

By Ernest O'Neill

About three or four years ago, we bought an old cottage at the lake, and my wife said, well, you know, love, we'll have to do some things to it, and like all us men, you know, I said, ah, yes, love, I know, we'll have to do some things to it. I understood her to mean we'd wallpaper it a little and paint a little here and there, put an odd nail in for a picture, that kind of thing. So I then discovered, of course, that she meant pull every wall down in the house and rebuild it from the inside, and that was all right when I got to about my third wall.

I was beginning to get reasonably expert at it, but the first wall was a disaster. It was the wall that we eventually put our kitchen on, and I just went right to it with a lot of enthusiasm, with a very pure motive, and an absolute determination to please my wife and have the most beautiful kitchen that you'd ever seen. But I just went for that wall. 

I went with the old hammer, hauled the other thing down, pulled the two-by-fours out, and I had a miserable little level like that. Some of you know, you know, a level that was about that size, really, to put two-by-fours up vertical. You need a level that size to get any kind of angle, right? But I went at it my way and up went the wall, and I think I probably spent three weeks of work trying to make the angle of the wall right that had, of course, got wrong. 

And the wall, I think, lay over like that. It was a poor fellow that eventually put the kitchen cabinets in! You set a glass on the front and it just falls out. But it was an example, you know, of the silly old creature wanting to do the right thing, but not doing it the right way. 

And, of course, it was very obvious to me that it wasn't enough just to want to do the thing, or want to please your wife, or want to build a good house. You had to know how to build a house. And so, it's not just a matter of having the right motive, but it's doing the thing in the right way, with the right power, and the right ability. 

And I think I'm a very different carpenter now to what I was three or four years ago. And the results, I think, are a bit different. Now, it's the same, loved ones, with the Christian life. 

What we're involved with here is personality weaknesses. I don't think for one moment we're talking about downright, outright sin. I don't think we're talking here about people who do not want to glorify Jesus, or do not want to transmit Him to others. 

I think we're talking about people like ourselves who want to get Jesus over to our friends, but aren't doing it the right way. And so, the result is not Jesus that they see, but it's us that they see. The result is not a beautiful, harmonious whole, but it is, in fact, something that is off balance, something that distracts them from Jesus instead of drawing them to Jesus. 

I think that's what we're discussing when we discuss personality weaknesses. And you remember last Sunday, we used some examples of it, of personality weaknesses by which people were distracted from Jesus rather than drawn to Jesus' life. And you remember in the old diagram, I likened it to that kind of situation, that it was as if Jesus' Spirit came into your spirit. 

This is our spirit, you remember, and our soul, and our body. These are the functions of the Spirit, you see. And it was as if Jesus' Spirit came in there and wanted to get out, really wanted to get out to the other person, but came up against a soul that had for years been pre-programmed by a self that wanted to exalt and deify self. 

And so, the Spirit of Jesus came up against that and, of course, could not get out at all. In other words, we had this love of Jesus within that wanted to get out to people, but we tried to use the normal brute force of our personalities, the normal raw energy of our personalities. So, often as an ex-school teacher, I've found myself, you know the way school teachers are trained to say it one way, draw it another way, act it out a third way, and then say it over again a fourth way, then question all the children a fifth time so that they understand it, then give them a test, and then still assume that they haven't heard. 

And as a school teacher, you're trained to do that. And so often, you know, my wife has said, I got it, I got it, as I've been going through it the third time, because she knew there were another four times to go. And really, what was coming over was a soul, a psychological apparatus in me that had been programmed to get truth over in a certain way, and in school teaching it was all right.

But as when it came to transmitting the life of Jesus, what came over to her or to other people was this fellow who wanted to get over his information, rather than that sensitive touch of Jesus' life. I've laid myself out there, so I think I can take the example of my dear friend, I don't know if he's here, but he is a Sear's manager.  And a Sear's manager is a go-getter. His job is to sell, and he knows that he has been dealing with the same thing as I was dealing with in Jesus. All right, you can sell the tractor this way, or you can sell the clothes this way, but selling Jesus is a different thing. 

And if you go at it the same old way, then you'll often put people off by the sheer strength and force, or even the skill of your sales technique. Jesus' life is something that is so sensitive that, loved ones, it has to cut its own channels. It has to cut its own channels anew in the soul. 

It has to make new ways through our psychological apparatus. It has to cut for itself its own methods. It's finer and more important that it cuts its own groove than it is for a quadraphonic sound. And you know how important it is that that is precisely correct. 

It's far more important than that, that we allow the Spirit of Jesus' life to cut new channels in our psychological apparatus. Now, that's, I think, what we were trying to deal with when I used the illustration last day, that probably many of us have experienced, where you wanted your friends or your relatives to experience God the way you have.

You wanted them to sense the movement of God's Spirit the way you have. You wanted them to sense the security that you have found in a real relationship with the Maker of the world. But you started to use the raw, brute force or the overkill of your own personality to get them to come to church. 

And so you'd invite them to come to church, not once, but two or three times. You'd offer them rides to church. You'd make subtle hints about the restaurant or about Fish Enterprises or about the preacher. 

To you, they would be hints. To them, they were raw, brute force of personality. And what came over to the dear ones was not the quiet life of Jesus that has accepted you as you are and loves you as you are. 

But what came over to them was you wanted them to do what you wanted them to do. And secretly, you judged them for not doing it. And what can so often come over to them is the domineering force of your personality rather than that quiet, sensitive love of Jesus.

And I think that was the example we used last day. The example in the Scripture you saw today where Peter had been pre-programmed in his mind and emotions and will to preserve life at all costs, keep yourself alive at all costs. And Jesus, of course, was explaining that he would have to die and old Peter comes in with his pre-programmed psychological forces and abilities and he says, Lord, be that far from you. Don't die. Keep yourself alive. I suppose, thinking in his own mind that more people would hear Jesus. 

And do you see, loved ones, that Jesus regarded that worldly wisdom and that common sense of the personality and that force, that raw, brute force of the psychological equipment in Peter, he regarded that as so opposed to himself that he actually said, Get thee behind me, Satan. 

And loved ones, what I'd love you to see today is that though your ways are just due to deception and not to evil motive, I know that, when you ask your dear son or daughter or your roommate or your friend for the fifth time to come to church, boy, there's no evil in your aim or your desire or your motive. I know that. 

There's nothing sinful or evil in it. But do you see that if it is used, if your soulish powers operate that way independent of the control and the discipline of Jesus' Spirit, then you can end up doing the very opposite of what you really intend to do. And Jesus can be forced to say to you, Get thee behind me, Satan. 

So, loved ones, it's vitally important not only to have the right motive, but to be sure that you are not using raw, brute force of personality to execute that motive. 

In other words, there's a real need for us to see that the Holy Spirit is at work in our friends. The Holy Spirit is at work in our office.

The Holy Spirit is at work in our business and in our school. We're not there alone. The Holy Spirit is working, and he has a certain plan operating there. 

And he's hoping that we'll regard him as the general and that we look to him and say, Holy Spirit, how can we cooperate with you in what you're already doing in my friend? And that's what he wants. He wants us simply to begin to see that he wants to direct and discipline and control our minds and emotions so that we actually end up cooperating with him and not opposing what he's doing. 

So, it's very important to see, you know, that personality weaknesses themselves, such as talking too loudly, domineering in conversation, being willfully oppressive for the best motive in the world, that personality being facetious, personality weaknesses are not evil and sinful in that sense that other sins are. They are rather inexpedient. They're not the best, and actually they can prevent the life of Jesus coming through to people. 

And you can often appear to someone as an expert propaganda producer. 

You can often appear to someone as an expert ideologist, so much so that they sense nothing of Jesus' quiet peace and love. So, it's important to see that. Then it's important to see the other side of it.

The Bible doesn't encourage us to be passive. It doesn't encourage us to try to annihilate the mind and emotions and the will and not use them at all. Loved ones, there is just no way for that Spirit of Jesus to get out to this world out here except that he goes through your personality. There is just no way. 

So, Jesus never encourages us to make our minds passive or blank the way the transcendentalists do or the way those who practice Eastern religion do. He never encourages us to try to annihilate the powers of our soul or to become zombies or some kind of automatons.

What he is trying to say is, instead of this soul operating the way it used to and the way it was programmed to do, would you allow it to begin to be disciplined by my Spirit? Would you allow it to begin to come under the control of my Spirit? So that maybe what your mind worked out was the wisest thing to do before, maybe that's not the wisest thing to do now. Loved ones, I'd push you yourselves. Isn't it true that you are very different people in the way you tackle things now, to the way you tackled them maybe when you first came to know of God? You're very different. 

You have a great deal more wisdom. Now, that's what Jesus' Spirit is pleading for, that his Spirit would be allowed to begin to control your mind and emotions and your will. And really, that's what we're talking about when we're talking about personality weaknesses. 

Now, it's that soulish life then that Jesus is talking about whenever he discusses the process experience of coming into perfection. There are several pieces in the New Testament where Jesus talks about bearing the cross daily. Several places where he talks about being on the cross once for all with him, but there are other places where he talks about bearing the cross daily. 

Now, loved ones, this is the process experience of coming into perfection where you're dealing with these personality weaknesses. Now, I'll show you in the Greek why that is so. Luke chapter 9. Look 9 and verse 23 it is.

"And he said to all, if any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it." 

For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it. Now, loved ones, let me tell you what the word for life is in Greek that is used there. And those of you who don't understand Greek will understand that. The word for life there is the same word as the word for soul. 

That's where you get psychology from. It's the same word. In other words, Jesus is saying, whoever tries to save his soul life and tries to use the natural powers that he has had from he was young without allowing them to be controlled by my Spirit, whoever does that will in fact end up losing those powers. 

You only have to look around at our world to see it happen. You see us all losing the individuality that we used to have. The commercials on television are built on that assumption that people will cease to be themselves, that they'll all begin to buy the same car, they'll begin to use the same Alberto V05, they'll all be able to have the same sex appeal, they'll all be able to look at the same television set. 

Our whole commercial establishment is built on the hope and belief that people will lose their own souls, they'll lose their own individuality, and that's what Jesus is saying. That if you try to preserve the old natural powers of your own personality instead of letting them come under the control of my spirit, you'll in fact end up losing them. But if you're prepared to lose them, if you're prepared to give up directing them yourself and allow them to be directed by my spirit, you'll end up saving them. 

And so that's how important, loved ones, Jesus sees this business of personality weaknesses. That the personality weakness, the personality strength, the raw brute force of the personality unrestrained and uncontrolled by his spirit, the personality overkill that so many of us live in the midst of and use against other people, that will eventually be destroyed completely unless we bring it somehow, bring the soul and the personality under the control of Jesus' Spirit. Now, what do we do in order to have that happen? What is our attitude? Well, you know it's in Romans 8:25. 

"But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. You remember we took that word "apekdechomai", which is the Greek word for wait. And it doesn't mean that we just say, all right, my personality weaknesses, these are they, and I have to put up with them for the rest of my life. These are just the limitations that I have in God's service. These personality weaknesses, they're here, I have to just wait. 

If the Greek word is, I look eagerly for, I wait expectantly for the working of the Holy Spirit to deal with these personality weaknesses. In other words, I live day by day expecting God's Spirit to deal with me about these areas, by giving me revelation about them, about places where I'm pushing it too much. Instead of letting Jesus use my personality, I'm pushing with my own powers, allowing the Holy Spirit to break those powers as I go through life day by day. 

It's in doing that that we're to wait expectantly. And you remember the other part of the verse is, we wait for it with patience. And you remember the word for patience is "hupomone" and it's split into two. 

It means "remaining under the circumstances" or the personal relationships or the career situation that God is using to break my personality strengths and weaknesses and transform them by his own Spirit. That's why I think you have to be really careful if you're in a tough career situation, you know. I think you really have to watch it if you're in a non-pleasant living situation. 

You really have to be very careful, loved ones, that God has not allowed you to come into that in order to break some of that natural strength of your personality that you still have. Some of that self-confidence, that confidence in self's ability, instead of the confidence in Jesus in you, that confidence in self that comes over to others as arrogance or as pride. You have to really watch that God is not saying, look "hupomone", or stay under this situation until I can reveal and break these powers. 

I'd just like to take one step more today. I wonder, is any of you asking, but what happens while I'm coming into this kind of perfection? What happens while I'm trying to come into a breaking of these personality powers and strengths and weaknesses? What happens while I'm doing it? What happens to the poor souls, for instance, that I'm trying to witness to? Should I stop witnessing? Should I stop witnessing and not do anything until I come into some kind of perfection in this area? And that's why the next word in the next verse is likewise. See it there in Romans 8:26.

Likewise, It's a Greek word, "houtos", and it means similarly or in the same way. And so really what God is saying through Paul is, if you wait expectantly for the Holy Spirit to reveal the ways in which your personality are putting people off, and if you look with patience for his breaking of those powers, just in the same way that you do that, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. 

That is, he helps us in those very weaknesses. For we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. In other words, loved ones, if you will not ignore those weaknesses, but will look expectantly for the Holy Spirit to be breaking you of those things day by day and the circumstances in which you're placed, then the Holy Spirit himself will, in the light of that, circumvent your soul and get through to people. 

In other words, if you will walk in the light that God's Spirit is giving you about these personality weaknesses, while you do that in the same way that you do that, the Holy Spirit will circumvent your soul at least temporarily and will get through to those people. That's why somebody can walk up to somebody else and thrust a tract into their hands and say, you're going to hell and you must be saved, brother, and the dear brother can be saved that moment by a miracle of God. Because the dear fellow who says it has not seen the light about that approach in his personality. 

He has not seen it yet, and he's walking in all the light that he has received, and because he is, the Holy Spirit is able to circumvent his personality. But, loved ones, if the Holy Spirit has begun to show you that you're far too willful, or that you are facetious, or that you play around with some thoughts that you know you shouldn't play around with, or that you do try to domineer people a little in conversation. If he has begun to show you some of those personality weaknesses, then he will require that you walk in all honesty about those. 

He will require that you stay under the circumstances that he is using to break you of those powers, and he will require that you accept the revelation that he is giving you, and that you begin to walk more closely with Jesus' Spirit yourself, if he himself is going to circumvent your own personality powers. And so, loved ones, it really is in the light of your attitude to the Holy Spirit's revealing and exposing of your personality weaknesses that your ministry of Jesus' life will depend. It isn't on coming to absolute perfection yourself, but it is having a pure intention to come through on these things in some way.

And so, you can see how it would work in prayer. Many of us, I think many of us here, pray that Jesus will come quickly, and we pray that the end of the world will soon be here, and we pray it with the best motive in the world. But it's the wrong prayer, of course.

Jesus wants all the time he can possibly get for the two and a half billion dear ones who do not know him yet, and he wants us to be preoccupied with those dear ones who do not know him, not preoccupied with him coming. He has given us that assurance to establish us in confidence, but he doesn't want us all preoccupied with his second coming and praying for his second coming. He's going to come whether we pray or not, and what he wants us to do is to pray and begin to be preoccupied with the two and a half billion people in our world who do not know that there's a loving Father in charge of the universe. 

Now, insofar as we do not know that, insofar as we're doing it because we think that's a very pious prayer to pray, Lord Jesus, come quickly. Insofar as we're doing that in deception and in ignorance, the Holy Spirit knows our real desire is for these dear ones to be brought to Jesus, and so he will pray within us with groanings that are deeper than words, and God will in fact look at the real desires of our spirits, whatever we're praying up here. And so that's what Paul says will happen if we walk in honestly. 

In other words, loved ones, the most important thing in regard to this dealing with our personality weaknesses is an honest spirit. That is really what God begins to answer in prayer, the honesty of our spirits. That's why you can see it's quite important that if we pray here in our souls that our children will be conformed to the image of Jesus. 

It's very important that that's really what we want in our spirits, because God will answer the real desires of our spirits. But if we're praying that our children will be conformed to the image of Jesus in our souls and in our spirits, we really want them to make a successful marriage or to have a successful career or to become wealthy, then God will answer the real desire of our spirits. So it's very important not only in our desires for our children, but our desires for ourselves to be aware that it's the spirit that God answers. 

And yet you can see what we're saying today. God's desire is that our personality would begin to mirror exactly what our spirits experience and feel. And God's desire is that the spirit of Jesus within us would begin to bring our minds and emotions and our wills under his control, so that we'd begin to be able to sense where our roommate was. 

We'd begin to discern that far from having any interest in coming to church, they still wonder if there's a God or not. In fact, they're still watching us to see if the life of Jesus is a consistent victorious spirit. And we'll have the discernment to see that. 

And we'll be able to give up all this business of trying to talk them into coming to this meeting or that meeting, and we'll be able to let the Spirit of Jesus' love flow through us to them. Loved ones, it would help husband and wife relationships immensely if we would let the Spirit of Jesus bring our minds and emotions and our wills under our control. I don't know what you dear husbands face, but I know my poor wife faced the preacher who wanted to preach at home as well as preach away from home. 

And I sometimes think that whether we're plumbers or carpenters or bosses or directors, our poor wives often face the same thing. And loved ones, it's true with our children and our parents. So often they face some fellow whose has had three courses in philosophy and is prepared to unload it on his dad on vacation. And that's what they face and they don't meet that dear Spirit of Jesus. 

Some of you are from St. Paul Bible School and you know what kills half the vacations is that you're not only ready to convert the family but the whole town. And you come home with all the techniques and all the approaches. And what a difference it would have been if your mind and emotions and will had been under the control of Jesus' sweet Spirit and you had just loved your parents and you'd just loved your dear friend who now gets drunk every night. If you just would have accepted him what a difference it would have been to have the Spirit of Jesus come through.

Now Loved ones, that's the kind of thing I think that God's Spirit is trying to do with us. He's trying to say; Look I'm in you would you let me out so that your friends could see me? Because they are tired of seeing you and your version of me. Now would you let me begin to  discipline and control your mind and emotions and your will? 

And loved ones, the only way he can begin to do that is by bringing you into breaking experiences where for the fifth time you'll turn this poor fellow off and you wanted him to come to church and you wanted him to believe in God and now he's further away from it than he was when you started on him. For the 17th time in the home, the moment will come when the Spirit of Jesus would keep quiet. But not you, you know better. You plunge right in there and you say let's have a sensitivity group and get this all out. For the 17th time it happens and it ends up hell. And that's God bringing you into another breaking experience to show you: would you shut up and let me begin to control your mind, and emotions and your will.

Loved ones, the stories could just be multiplied. You know how many times you've blown it at the office, how many times you've blown it at school. It's not because you wanted to but because you have a soul there, a psychological apparatus that God is trying to get under the control of His Son's Spirit. The only way you can do it is by that continual breaking, breaking, breaking and a revealing to you of what is happening until you begin to want to walk so closely with the Spirit of Jesus that you will not let go of that dear hand.

We have a horrible little fellow. At least all of Fish (Enterprises) hate him. He's a Yorkshire Terrier. He's 5 pounds in weight and he's that size. And you know little dogs get very attached to their owners and so if I'm here, he's at my heels all the time. If my wife's there, he's at her heels all the time. But oh it was so good to see what faithfulness is. It's so good to observe a little creature that was afriad to move anywhere where its Master did not move. It's was interesting to observe such a little living thing that wanted to be not just half a mile behind but right at your heels. Now Jesus's Spirit is trying to get us to have that attitude to Him. 

That's it...and that's an inner working that he is doing in you through these breaking experiences. And loved ones, that's what He wants. He wants a disciple who is afraid to be more than a half a step behind him. That's really it. Let's just pray. 

Lord Jesus, we know that you are infinite wisdom. We do know Holy Spirit that you express the infinite wisdom of our Savior and of His Father our Creator. Holy Spirit we know that you want us to be in instant obedience to yourself. And we know that this is an attitude that needs to be worked in us. We've thought so often if we got general directions from you, we could work out for ourselves how to carry those directions out. Now so often Holy Spirit we've spoiled and perverted the directions by our own methods. We've done it so often that Holy Spirit we want to know not only what you want us to do but we want to know the way you want us to do it.

We ask you dear Spirit of Jesus not to leave off until you have broken these soulish powers of ours and brought them under your dear control and redeemed them with your life. We ask this so that we not only do God's will but we do it in God's way. And now the grace of the Lord Jesus and the love of God and the fellowship with the Holy Spirit be with you now and thoughout the coming week. Amen