How To Identify the Five Types of Clickbait [Clickbait Mini-Series #2]

Alright, well here we are, I guess to episode two of this mini series with clickbait. I hope you enjoyed the first one. If not, take a moment right now, stop. Go check that one out. It's it's important. You gotta get all of that content. But as I get into the second episode, I really want to look at the clickbaits. And this is really, really huge. This is actually something that I can say I owe to the family business. The family business, my mom, my dad, people, uh my elders in the church, in our organization, they help me pinpoint all of these different things at different seasons of my life. And through personal study and my own experience, I realized, man, I bought into a thought at some small level, some lie that's right, that flies right in the face of God's truth. And I'm wondering why I'm not liking the harvest. I'm wondering why I'm not liking my life. It's like, oh my gosh, I gave into clickbait in one of these five areas. So those five areas, again, are the clickbait of offense, just getting offended at people, the clickbait of reminiscing, spending way too much time looking backwards and not recognizing. We got to put our feet right in today and look forward. The clickbait of self-diagnosis, this is really dangerous. Uh, you didn't make you, so you don't know what you are. You know, God made you, only he really could. Clickbait of maybe. This is, I could spend probably 18 years trying to discuss the clickbait of maybe and how dangerous it is. And then lastly, the clickbait of self-pity. And no one ever wins anything by feeling sorry for themselves. So diving into this one, I want to look at the clickbait of offense for a little bit. Uh, it's probably the one that everybody would say, like, yeah, being offended isn't good. Although these days, who knows what people think about being offended. People wear it like a badge of honor. Uh, but the truth is, you know, there's so much in the word about forgiveness that to walk around offended, you you've actually labeled somebody else as somebody that needs your forgiveness, which means you've labeled yourself as somebody who can kind of give out a righteous judgment. Like I'm the one that gets to decide uh whether or not you're in good standing or not. And there's a lot of real, there's a lot of danger in that uh because the truth is we are the ones that are people who need forgiveness. That's who we are. You you cannot operate in this life without being somebody who needs forgiveness. And ultimately, God, as the righteous judge, has forgiven us. So it doesn't make sense that you and I would walk around as people who have been forgiven by the righteous judge, claiming to be a judge who gets to decide whether or not other people are worthy of our righteous judgment, our forgiveness. You see, that really we get into some murky water there when we choose to get offended. In the book, I break down something quite funny about The Office. And I'm so sorry if you are not a fan of The Office. You probably won't like my books because there's just so many different references to the show in there. It's I'm kind of obsessed with it. I've been a huge fan, seen it 75 times maybe. Uh, but any office fan knows Angelo Gradti. He's the guy who, whenever he goes to the meal, he's like, I want this on the side. And if it does not come on the side, I'll send it back. And it's really funny because Michael, you know, he gets all kind of uh discombobulated and uncomfortable around Angelo Gratti because he's so confident and he knows if you don't send me what I like, I'll send it back. And so Michael Scott tries to be that way, but meanwhile, they bring him the wrong meal and he's just gonna like, you know, I'm just gonna sit there, I'm just gonna eat it, I'm gonna take it. Uh, I'm, you know, don't tell anybody, please don't tell the waiter that this is the wrong meal. And we all have Angelo Gratis, and we all have Michael Scott's in our life. We are all one of those two people. My grandfather was an Angelo Gratti. Uh, I say in the book that he sent back enough soup to fill a rather large lake. And we all just dealt with it, you know. There were times where the soup wasn't hot enough because it didn't burn him, and he would send it right back, and we'd be like, Papa, it was because you let it sit in front of you for like 25 minutes. And that was always the kitchen's fault. And it was hilarious. And we just loved whenever he'd get into that stuff because it's who he was. He wanted his food a certain way, and it was it was perfect. My grandmother, on the other hand, was a Michael Scott. Whatever was brought to her, she was just gonna eat it, she was gonna deal with it, whatever it was. Um, and that's kind of how I became. I became very nervous to ever send food back because God forbid, like, what would that waiter do with my food? Or uh sometimes we all struggle with like, what am I gonna do with my life if some random waiter has like a less than perfect opinion of me? And so we we I use this analogy of Angelo Gratti, who wants to send everything back, and Michael Scott, who just wants to deal with it. Believe it or not, when it comes to the clickbait of offense, it's really important to be the Michael Scott. Now, I I say something in the book about whenever somebody is doing something to hurt you and to offend you, refuse to let it become a you problem. Let it stay a they problem. And what I mean by that is when something is brought to you that isn't necessarily what you ordered, sit and deal with it. Don't avoid it. Don't make it somebody else's issue. Don't, if somebody hurt you, don't, don't put the onus of getting it right on them. You see, that's not what, that's what Angelo Gradti does. I don't like this, so you have to fix it. Michael Scotts, they're more like, is this what I ordered? No. I don't, I don't want you to hurt me, but I have to deal with this, so let's talk. I'm not going to let myself get offended because when I get offended and I label myself as somebody worthy of being above you because now you're somebody not worthy of my forgiveness, we just get all discombobulated with God. Why would I let anybody else get in the way of my relationship and my standing with God? And there's a lot in the word about God not even really like hearing our prayer while we're sitting around harboring unforgiveness. So the truth is it's good to be a Michael Scott and to say, look, I'm not gonna get offended by this. We're gonna deal with it. What's going on? I refuse to let this become a me problem. This is this is a you problem. You did something, and so we're gonna deal with it. But I'm not gonna take it personally. I'm not gonna internalize it. And I'm definitely not going to let the enemy isolate me because if you were to look at any particular nature show about what's going on with preys and and predators and all that kind of stuff, man, they're always looking for the isolated prey. Normally that isolated prey comes as a result of being sick, tired, or hurt. I'm not gonna let the enemy do that to me because then I'm isolated. And isolated is not, isolation is not introversion. A lot of people think, you know, they're kind of the same. No, they are not. Introversion is a whole lot different than isolation, and we can't ever let the enemy isolate us, which is the goal of the clickbait of offense. And the other one I want to look at is the clickbait of self-pity. And this might be the one that hurts the most. When I had a friend uh hurts to read this content or even hear this, it is the one that's kind of the most vulnerable. When I had a friend read this, uh, I kind of gave him a Google Doc so he could put comments on the side without affecting the content. And when we got into self-pity, that's what he said, oh my God, you're out for blood, man. And I'm like, ah, sorry. Like it didn't mean that. But I remember my dad walking into my room years ago saying, Hey, you're never going to accomplish anything when you feel so sorry for yourself. And those words have rang so heavy in my head. And it it it's really defined. Self-pity is defined as obsessing over one's own problems. And when you read the word and you see the promises of God that are available to every Christian, not just the good Christians or the old Christians, you know, to everybody that puts their faith in Jesus, when you look at the promises of God, it's hard to obsess over your own problems. I mean, there are countless stories in the word of a prophet going to a widow who had lost everything, and Elijah's asking her to, you know, give me, bake me some bread. It's like, I don't have anything. How do you ask that person to give you something? Well, maybe at a very base level, it's showing that person that you still have something to give because it's never good for us to label ourselves as somebody who can't give. If it's better to give than to receive, then we have to always be people who can give. And so maybe it's just that, or also maybe it's a faith thing. But I do know what it is for sure. It's not letting that person obsess over their own problems. Sadly, even though Elijah had seen that at a couple of different turns, having to go and work with widows who had nothing and watched God use them and sustain them, Elijah had forgotten this truth altogether. When you really get to the crux of his story, after this great moment on the mountain, the Mount Carmel, where God literally provides victory right in front of his face. He runs to the cave and he's like, Hey, take my life, God. It's over for me. I'm the only one left. And the weird part about that story is the chapter before the big showdown on Mount Carmel, Elijah meets Obadiah, another prophet, and he's like, bro, I've hidden a hundred prophets away. And I'm having to feed them left and right. So you've got a hundred prophets who are living in some cave because they're there literally, there's people out to kill them, and they're waiting for a man to come back to a cave to feed them. That's a pretty hard life. Obadiah's putting his life at risk because if he if he was caught, first of all, he is a priest, so he's probably going to be killed the minute they he delivers Elijah over to Ahab. But on top of that, he is risking his life by saving a hundred, and somehow a day later, after the biggest victory, I mean, in scripture almost, like that is one of the coolest stories ever. Elijah's like, I'm the only one left. And when you obsess over your own problems, you get to this place where again you isolate and you forget what other people are going through. And it's weird to me that 1 Peter 5, Peter is telling us that one of the ways we resist the devil and stand firm in our faith is knowing that our brothers and sisters are going through the same kind of things all over the world. So somehow, when I when I feel sorry for myself and I obsess over my own problems, I'm not resisting the devil and I'm not standing firm in my faith. So you see, it's the clickbait of of self-pity is really dangerous because of what it cuts me off from. And when you look at everything the word says about being, you know, more than a conqueror, that you are the head and not the tail, that you are above and not beneath, that he wants to give you the desires of your heart, that he formed you, he made you, that the Holy Spirit is your advocate, your helper. When God is the God of all comfort, when you look at all of the truth, the fact that Jesus gave his life for us, when you look at all that truth, it's really hard to obsess over your own problems. And so sadly, obsessing over your problems and buying into self-pity, sadly, it it flies in the face of all of God's truth. And I don't think that's a place where any of us want to be. Your problems are legit and God takes them seriously, which is why we don't have to obsess over them because God is. And so these are just some of the clickbaits, and I'm really excited for you to dive into them because reminiscing is a tricky one. You know, we have to wrap up everything in gratitude if we're gonna look back, because if not, we'll start to believe that somehow yesterday was better. And even though on the surface, for some of us, yesterday was a little bit better because we were fitter, we had more energy, or whatever that may be, you never win by going backwards because you can't. You only win by looking towards what you want and using today to get there. So there's no room for looking backwards that way. At the same time, you know, self-diagnosis is a killer because you'd have to be an expert in everything in order to correctly self-diagnose. Doctors have gone to school longer than all of us combined, and even they are very careful to give out a diagnosis because it could be a lot of things. Sometimes they spend more time telling you what it isn't, they have to test you for what it could be to find out what it isn't before they ever tell you what it is. Because diagnosis takes a lot of work. And yet we're all walking around diagnosing ourselves, saying, I know what I am, I know what I am, I know what I am. I'm the type of person that. And it's like, wait a minute, are you an expert in everything? Because if you're not an expert in everything, you can't really self-diagnose yourself. There's been so many stinking people born and lived on this earth throughout the course of history. It's kind of hard to think I'm somehow an expert in humanity, that I can know who I am. See, only God gets to tell me who I am. I don't even get to tell myself who I am. And there's a lot about identity in that chapter that I hope you dive into. And then the clickbait of maybe, I spent some time in the last chapter talking about it, the last uh the last podcast, but I'll tell you, this is the one that I think gets me the most energized, the clickbait of maybe, because it it's the opposite of faith. And when you look at a particular story of uh Sarai, I was interested to find out that that's how you pronounce uh Sarah's name before it was changed to Sarah. But when you look at her story, you see why Ishmael got here. And it was because she bought into the clickbait of maybe. And while it's hard for me to say it's ever a bad thing that a child is born, you know, the Bible actually prophesies uh God tells Hagar what Ishmael's life will will be. And when you think that that was all the product of somebody just buying into the clickbait of maybe, you see that when we think certain things are faith and they're not, man, they they birth some some harvests that we don't want. And that's that's the reality of what happens when we buy into things and we call them faith, but they're not. Sometimes we think we're Abraham leaving everything we know, but in reality we're Jonah fleeing the exact place God told us to go. So these are the the five different clickbaits, and there's a lot about how to deal with them in that chapter, what they look like in each chapter, but we're gonna really dive in in the next one to the solutions. I'm the type of person I think every sermon, every message, every book needs to have a connection point, needs to have a problem, needs to have a solution. And it's really important to know that these five clickbaits aren't the only clickbaits out there. In fact, I have three I'm working on on right now that aren't even in this book right now. So these aren't the only problems, but it's good to illuminate these five because it at least gets you started in managing the war for your attention and your thought life. So thank you for being here for episode two. I hope you watch the next one and the rest because I think clickbait is really gonna bless you. Thanks for listening to the Family Business Podcast with the LSTs. 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