David: Karen, I’m thinking about a family travel game we used to play called “The Good About Bad About” game. Do you remember that? Seems like a long time ago.

Karen: That’s when we had four kids in the car who were getting restless. So we had to desperately come up with a game we could play to keep them in shape. The what’s good about what’s bad about game.

Intro: Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David: Now I don’t think anybody will recognize the what’s good about bad about game because it was a private thing but it occupied a lot of miles and actually did a lot of good.

Karen: It was surprisingly effective. So the concept was we would go around, parents included, this of course is when we’re driving a car with four kids and tell what was good about each one and what was bad about each one. Who wants to go first?

David: Everyone got to give their opinions.

Karen: Gave their opinions and we did everyone in the family.

David: Yeah, I usually came out worse than anyone because everyone had the what’s bad about Dad. Not too much what’s good about Dad.

Karen: No, I don’t think that’s really true. You may have felt that way.

David: Yeah, that’s how I felt.

Karen: The beauty of the game is everyone knows that everyone is going to say about that person, that child or that parent, what’s good and what’s bad. So if you come down hard on your brother or sister or parent, you know… They’re likely to return the favor. So that was kind of the leveler in the game. It turned into just a delightful exercise.

David: Yeah, it was very beneficial. I remember one of the kids, every time we’d come to his turn, he’d start it by saying, uh-oh.

Karen: But what was beautiful about that, it sort of evolved and improved. But we didn’t just say, well, what’s good about Joel and what’s bad about Joel, for instance. But when the family would name things like you never pick up your room or things that were obvious, then the next thing was how can we help you? How can the family help you do better in this area? Everyone feels like this is an area where you do need improvement. But let us help you.

So what could we do to help you improve? And that, I think, was what pulled a whole family thing together. And it became more of a gentle exercise and it was fun. We laughed a lot. I mean, there were funny things. The kids had wonderful sense of humor and they responded in that way. But it was an extremely fruitful family exercise for us.

David: Well, that was a long time ago. We haven’t played that game. I don’t know that we could revive it because gone are the times when the family’s all in one car together. I don’t know if the kids have done it with their kids or not. I haven’t asked.

Karen: I haven’t asked either. But it was an exercise in what is called self-examination.

David: Okay, that’s a big transition you’ve just made.

Karen: Yeah, going into the adult Christian exercise. And I don’t remember really having been taught about this in the fundamentalist Baptist Church that I was raised in. It seemed to be something they came out of more of the monastic life. And it actually has a name called the examen, E-X-A-M-E-N. And that word and that exercise was started by Ignatius of Loyola in the 1500s.

David: You’re more conversant than I am.

Karen: He was the founder of the Jesuit Society. And he developed a system whereby at the end of the day, not just then, but the monks who were part of his order developed this habit of examining themselves before the Lord. And then of course in that system there’s a system of open confession. And when you found something you would confess it to someone who has called your confessor, and I was raised in a background that disapproved of that. So, I never had experienced that until we began to launch out into other elements of Christian faith. And in the Anglican tradition, and we were part of a very fine evangelical Anglican church for many years, that was open to those who wanted to make an open confession.

You would do it with the pastor or an elder in the church. So, I still practice this examen, or going to… I’m not great at night, but in the morning I’m fresh.

David: Yeah, that’s when I do it in the morning. I don’t call it that. I could, but I’m basically saying what’s good and what’s bad about it yesterday. And how are your thoughts about me? God doesn’t talk out loud, but he makes you aware.

Karen: Oh, there’s a nudge of the Holy Spirit that is just absolutely undeniable. In fact, that’s more my prayer format, is if there’s anything in me that I’m not recognizing that needs to be changed or that I need to confess, please convict me. And he very gently does it. If we don’t pay attention to it, the little conviction gets louder, and louder and more insistent.

David: I would say that people tend to go to that in their mind, the negative side. But there’s also the positive side. “I really like the progress you’re making in this area. This flaw has not shown up in your life for quite a while. Good for you, David.” I sometimes find myself saying, “God, did you notice? Did you notice that I’m not the old David I used to be in that regard? I’m doing better regarding my tongue and so on.”

Karen: You had to work on judgment. That’s something you really struggled to overcome. And I find you to be extraordinarily in your later years accepting and non-judgmental. It’s a beautiful quality. I have a story about this that perhaps out of my personal life.

David: Is the story about me? Oh good, your personal life? Praise the Lord. I thought I was back in the, what’s bad about David?

Karen: No, I had an unusual experience. The first Sunday, which was the last Sunday, we attended church physically. I did because the kids were home and you had plans with them. And this church meets on Saturday evening. They don’t have a building of their own.

So I went going back to church thinking. This is after COVID, you’re talking. After COVID. Oh, it’ll be so good to take the Eucharist again and to be in the body of Christ. And I sat there with a very discontented feeling, which I was not prepared for. And I’ve actually heard different people talk about this displacement after the COVID months of isolation or insulation from other people. But I wasn’t prepared for it. And I sat in church and I thought, what is it? Why am I feeling so negative about being here? And this sermon was okay, but nothing I thought about again.

And usually this pastor is a very good sermonizer. When I went home, I just was out of sorts. And I was the next day, which is very unusual. Sometimes when I get that way, I’ll think, well, are you just overtired? You’re probably just overtired. For a whole day, I was negative about that church experience. In fact, I had a tie that I was going to put in the offering. I forgot to do it.

And I thought, well, I’ll write a little note and I thought, yeah, that’s really nice to complain the first Sunday you’re back in church. No. And I analyzed it. I felt like this church, it’s a good church. Lovely people in it. Many of them teach professionally at a nearby Christian college. So, I began to sort of assign the fact that they were all in kind of a bubble. I figured that was why I was discontent with them all.

David: Because you obviously were not in a bubble.

Karen: I don’t live in that bubble. We deal with liberty, chose not to live in that bubble. And so the negativity went on. I had said to the Holy Spirit, if there’s any hidden error in me, please show it to me. So, I have a Bible that I contributed to that was asked to contribute with a lot of other women. It is called the Grandmother’s Bible. It’s because all the contributors, apart from the work of the Bible itself. And there were a whole lot of gals who contributed that.

I think they were trying to rectify something, but they’re all women. And so I’ve been reading through Luke just looking at teaching words of Christ. And those have impacted me in a very deep way. I’ve asked the Lord to give me the gift of falling in love with Jesus again. I feel that has really happened. But there was this discontent about being in church and me trying to focus why I was so unhappy in that particular church on that particular day. And I looked across the page, casually open to Luke 7. I had been reading about the wise and foolish builders. But across the page was a little article that was written by one of the grandmothers titled Something Stinky Beneath the Wires.

David: I’m getting ahead of your story, but I’m assuming that you knew this grandmother.

Karen: By Karen Burton-Mains.

David: Okay, good. I want to hear what it says.

Karen: The big red ace hardwood garbage pail I used to hallway garden debris that won’t compost quickly had overwintered in the new bed I had been cultivating for the last three years. This is in the spring. When I checked at one cool morning this spring, I distinctly saw what I thought was the top of some animal submerged beneath the deep accumulation of rainwater.

Yeah! I thought to myself, I couldn’t bear to face the task of emptying the garbage pail with this disgusting contents. This is called avoidance. David, I called.

David: Oh my goodness.

Karen: Do you remember this?

David: I don’t remember it, but I believe it happened.

Karen: Yeah. Some animal has drowned in this garbage pail. Would you take it out to the woods and empty it for me? I don’t have the stomach for this. No wonder my husband hates garbage. gardening.

This isn’t this little Bible. For many of us, something dead is stinking and moldering beneath the waters. Most of us do not want to take that dreaded look. Avoidance again. Self-examination is the cure for our default reaction of looking away.

David: Okay, you’re going fast. Read that again.

Karen: Self-examination is the cure for our default reaction of looking away. In self-examination, we sit still, take our Bibles, and see if any scriptures pop out. We ask the Holy Spirit to bring anything rank and poisonous to our attention. If something becomes clear, if we glimpse the top of that head floating around, we confess the fact that we have found a dead thing stewing in its own poisonous soup sending up putrid bubbles from the depths of our souls.

Then we ask, what is it about me? Why have I left it to stew so long? What is wrong that I haven’t been willing to face this dreadful dead thing in me? The regular task of self-reflection is a cure for avoidance. And if we are quiet, the Holy Spirit will make things perfectly plain. He may even help us empty the big red garbage pail.

David: Okay, well, I guess you’ve finished the article. Now, how does that relate to what you were talking about?

Karen: Well, I came home from church the first service I went to after the COVID requirements were lifted, and I was just terribly discontent with it. You would think I would have been joyful getting back to church with people at small church to 60 folk, and I didn’t feel that way. I felt restless. I felt sitting there in the chair as the service was going on. Well, what’s wrong? You know, why am I not responding? Why do I feel critical?

David: Which is unusual for you.

Karen: Well, not always, but yes, in that place it is. So, I came home and I woke up the next morning feeling that way about that church. I thought, well, we really don’t have a prayer movement in the church at all. There’s so many gifted people and so many educated people in it that we are capable of doing church without being dependent upon God. There isn’t a prayer base that I know of. There’s certainly not notices about a prayer base because we’re attempting to carry out a vision that is beyond our human capacities.

So, I became very critical. Well, I opened my Bible to Luke and then here was this piece that I had written on the other side after I had prayed somewhere that weekend. Lord, if there’s anything hidden in me, bring it to my attention. It’s pretty clear, right? I had some work to do. So, then I went to the Holy Spirit and said, “Okay, I’ve asked you this before. You’re obviously stirring up something in me, but I don’t know what my flaw is here.” It became very clear throughout a variety of circumstances I won’t go into now and take the time to go into that although I’m a woman of prayer, I have 50 huge binders filled with my prayer journals on one row in a shelf in my closet and I’m going through them now and reading them and then tossing them away.

There’s no reason for them to stay around. But I began to realize that I was projecting the area of my own insufficiency, not a lack of prayer, but a lack of a certain kind of prayer. I wasn’t doing and this is called projection. This is a psychological term, but it’s something we do all the time. So, when I looked at that, I thought, well, Lord, why am I just content with them? If it’s something that’s missing in me, is there something stinky beneath the waters of the surface of my mind? He was obviously saying, “Yes, you don’t just open your Bible to read and there’s something you’ve written in it.” And so I began to just let him teach me what that was and your passion has been for revival in the country. And I know from your studies that that does not happen unless there are people who give themselves to concerted a prayer. It always starts with this kind of prayer that begins to build among one individual maybe and then it leaps to others.

It’s like little flames that we’re seeing leaping around in the California fires. You know, they burst spontaneously into the trees. That we can take it out of its negative context and talk about that being the prayer base, but I wasn’t doing that kind of work and you’re my husband. Now, I pray, but it is not doing this kind of intercessory urgent prayer that I feel we need to be doing because our country is in very desperate shape right now. If we don’t know that, we’re not paying attention. And you and I continually say, “Where are the churches that are rising to the challenge?”

I think there are churches, but we are not aware of them. And so this concern, I just have been negligent in sharing with you. I’ve asked the Lord to really give me a passion for that the way it’s a passion for you. So it’s not just an academic interest on my part and I’m interested in it because you’re interested in it, but I need to join with you and with others who have that feeling of unless we pray, unless we pray earnestly, we will not see this movement of God in our land.

David: I’m not your confessor, but I’m listening very intently and I say, “Thank you, Lord.” I think that’s wonderful and that’s true for many, many people’s lives and many, many churches across the country.

Karen: So, what we’re saying in this podcast is any Christian who undertakes the journey into self-examination should always ask the Holy Spirit to reveal his truth about who he or she is, the good and the bad. Sometimes there are many of us who just focus on what’s wrong with us and we don’t see how we’ve grown or improved.

David: I think there’s an awareness, almost a fear sometimes of what the Holy Spirit is going to say if you give him too much opportunity to mess around in your life. I think that’s a good thing and it’s a brave thing. You know, “Search me, oh God, know my heart.”

Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults. That’s the Psalmist, that’s Psalm 19. And then this verse I memorized long, long time ago. Not because I was so spiritual, but because if you memorized X number of verses, you got to go to Camp Free. And I was one of those guys who did it. “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, oh Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.” So, let’s go back just for a second and it’s kind of saying, okay, “God, I’m here in your presence. What’s good about me? I need to hear that.

What’s not real good about me? I need to hear that as well. And I’m asking you to be open with me, be gentle with me. You will be. Commend me where I’ve done well. And at the same time, change me where I need to be changed.”

Karen: And we might even say, “Don’t let me forget the prayer that I’m feeling at this moment as I get caught up with the busyness of the day.” What’s good about what’s bad about game is a game we might like to play with ourselves or even introduce to our families or our grandchildren. The children in the teens will get into it too. But the purpose of that is to help us develop a comfortability with this concept of self-examination.

Self-examination is the holy act and we need to do it and give the Holy Spirit a chance for us to give him our attention. I haven’t found that he overloads us. He says, “Well, this is what’s wrong with you and this is what’s wrong with you and this is and then by the way.” There’s one thing usually that he’s trying to get insist that we pay attention to and work to improve.

So it’s not overwhelming. And there are times in our lives when we weep about our sins. There’s a conviction that comes that is when we have been sinful and negligent and we have harmed other people and we have defied God. And that’s kind of a different thing than what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the ordinary give and take of living, of improving our sensitivities to the Holy Spirit’s urgings and then to be opinion when we hear what he says to us.

David: You said that it would be more personal as we talk this time and I said, “Okay, you talk as much as you like.” Did you come up with a sentence?

Karen: This is when I worked out a Christian who undertakes the journey into self-examination should always ask the Holy Spirit to reveal his truth about who he or she is. In the suggested response, I wrote that out too, what I want people to do is ask the Holy Spirit to be the friend. It’s like a good friend who comes beside you and says, “You know, I love you, but I need to point this out to you. You don’t know what you’re doing.” That’s really good. You know, that’s what good friends are for.

So like a friend, ask the Holy Spirit to be the friend who always tells us the good truths and the sometimes hard to hear truths about who we are. Yeah, good. Thank you for sharing.

David: Good visit.

Outgo: You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters, hosts@beforewego.show.

If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2021 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.