The Church of Eleven22 - Healthy is Hard Work - It Doesn’t Make Sense Wk. 2

Episode Date: November 19, 2023

We have to use the gospel to beat down the negative scripts the enemy is whispering to us. But before we can do that, we must identify them. You can’t surrender what you don’t know you're holding onto. You can’t lay down what you don’t realize you’ve picked up. - The Church of Eleven22™ is a movement for all people to discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ. Eleven22 is led by Pastor Joby Martin and based in Jacksonville, Florida, with multiple campuses throughout Jacksonville and the surrounding areas. To support The Church of Eleven22 and help us continue to reach people around the world, visit https://www.coe22.com/donate

Amen. Amen. It's good to clap because God's good. Amen. Amen. It's good to see you, church. I'm Ryan. I'm one of the pastors. I'm excited to continue in this week two of it doesn't make sense. The series we've been in discussing emotional and mental health and taking a biblical worldview on it. And so excited to continue in that. But before we keep swimming in the deep end, I do want to be one of the first to say, happy Thanksgiving. I hope you have a great one. I hope you have plans with your family and your loved ones. And, you know, really, Reach over and fist bump your neighbor and tell them happy Thanksgiving. Just give them a fist bump. Tell them happy Thanksgiving. If you're joining us online, you can put a fist bump in the chat. All right, while you're at it, tell your neighbor what is your favorite food for Thanksgiving. What is your favorite Thanksgiving food? Tell your neighbor out loud.

Don't lie and say things like Brussels sprouts or salad. I know better. Tell the truth. All right. I know I'm with my people because I hear a lot of people saying things like macaroni and cheese in Jesus' name. You know, you're into it. All right, here's what I want you to do. I want you to imagine that you are right now sitting in your seat at the Thanksgiving table.

And I want you to look down in your mind's eye at your plate of food. You haven't taken the first bite yet, but everything's there. Let me ask you this question. why is that plate of food organized the way that it is? Do you allow for the different foods to touch? Do you just slop it all together because it's all going to the same place anyway? Cover it and gravy. Gravy and my family growing up was a love language.

And so we just put it on everything. Do you save the biscuit for the last so you can just sop up the good stuff at the end? Do you put salad on a different plate? Are you one of the weirdos that eats your salad after? you've eaten your entree. Based on how your food is organized and how you're going to eat it, let me ask you this question. Do you know why you did it that way? What are your instincts that would cause you to make those choices?

Why do you have that set of preferences? Why is one person choose this way and another person chooses that way? Where do those instincts come from? Where do those preferences come from? That's where we're going to spend a lot of our time talking today. If you're new to 1122, if you're just here visiting family or this is your first time with us, welcome. We're so glad that you're here. There's a couple things you need to know before we dive in.

Number one is that normally I'm not the pastor that preaches. That's normally Pastor Jobi Martin. And he started this series for us last week and did a great job giving the heart and the why behind while we're having this conversation and why it's so important. I highly encourage you to go check that out. And he's way better looking than I am. And so you have that look forward to next time. Second is that normally when you come to 1122, we teach the Bible book by book and verse by verse. And I love that about our church.

Today is going to be a little bit different because today I'm mostly going to share in testimony form. And I'm going to tell some things that I've been through in my life. Really, I'm going to spend the next 35 minutes unpacking the last 25 years of my life, but primarily some learnings that have been helpful to me in regards to some challenges. that I've faced in regards to mental and emotional health and what God's been doing in my life, what he is doing in my life, in no way am I saying or will I say any version of I'm there yet, that I've got it all figured out, that everything's always healthy and happy all the time, because the truth is in my story that I've walked through what the church fathers would call

dark nights of the soul many times. Many times I've walked those roads. I've had many sleepless nights. I've had many seasons where it felt like I, if I could just get my feet out of the bed and onto the floor, I was accomplishing something significant that day. And on some of those days, that was a significant accomplishment. I've had moments in my life where I've had panic attacks. My last panic attack was in 2020. And so I've walked through some personal challenges, and I've walked through some personal history and growth.

And my heart is to share my story, and hopefully that it'll encourage you, and hopefully that'll give us all some things to think about that may draw us deeper into a relationship with God and help us to have a bit. better understanding of ourselves. But more than anything, what I want for our church through the course of this whole series is that you would know, wherever you fall on the spectrum of these things, that you would know that God loves you. And that his love is the most important thing about us. You'll hear me say that many times today. As a church, we've been studying in John chapter 10 for more than a year. And it's been the foundation of everything we've done as a church. John 1010,

specifically, which says, Jesus says, the enemy comes only to steal, kill, and destroy, but I have come that they would have life abundantly. And this invitation of Jesus into the abundant life is what we've been studying. And if you fast forward in the New Testament, the Galatians chapter 5, you run into some character traits, what the outworking from the inside out is of the abundant life, as Jesus defined it is divine by scripture. And so Galatians 5 says this about the abundant life. It says, the abundant life is when the fruit of the spirit in your life.

life, what God is growing in you, that you're felt and lived experience is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. And that sounds awesome, right? Who wouldn't want all of their relationships marked by these things? Who wouldn't want to get to the end of their life and people give testimony to say, you know what, they practiced love, that they were filled with joy, that they were faithful in all things, that they had self-control? Of course, this sounds amazing.

And I came to a crossroads in my life a handful of years ago where there was a big gap between what I believed is true of the abundant life as offered to me by Jesus and what I was experiencing in my actual life. I believe that all the things that Jesus said was true, but in my actual life, I didn't feel them, I wasn't thinking them, and this was not normative of my life experience. My actual life was filled with tension. I had tension in my body, I had tension in my body,

I had tension in my neck. I had sleepless nights regularly. My appetite would come and go. I had tension in my relationships. From the moment that I woke up to the moment I went to bed, I just felt tense regularly. I was frustrated in my life. I was frustrated with myself because I couldn't just do better. I thought that if I could just do better, then things would finally be better.

And so I was regularly frustrated. I experienced all different kinds of things. versions of anxiety, and I don't say that word lightly, because I know there are a lot of different kinds of anxiety that people experience them. There are some people in this world that never really have any significant battles with anxiety, and praise God for that. And there's other people that anxiety comes circumstantially, that you find yourself in a season, and there's just a lot of anxiety involved in that circumstance, and that's always tough when we walk through those words. And then there's others who have physiological diagnosis and mood disorders, where they are on the front line of the

battle against anxiety and depression every day all day. And it requires medical professionals and trusted counselors and people to get involved that are a part of your life for a very, very, very, very long time. And wherever you fall on that spectrum, again, I just want you to know that God loves you, that God loves you. We're glad that you're here and we believe that God has good things for you. And I found myself in my life overcome with anxiety regularly. I experienced a great deal of disappointment. What I had was not what I wanted. And I was always trying to figure out why what I wanted was so far from what I had. I was regularly disappointed in myself, and I had a lot of angst. There was like this emotional turmoil underneath the surface and in my mind where I was just

wrestling it. I was just trying to hold it in and hold it down, hoping that it would not seep out and land on the people that I loved the most. I always felt hurried. I felt like I was going to disappoint people that I had somewhere to be. I remember when my children were very small, we'd be walking down the sidewalk, going nowhere, and I would be 10 feet out in front of them in a hurry. Driving like a bat out of hell? I'm still working on that one, by the way, but why? Why do I feel so unrested, unsettled in my life that I would miss the opportunities that God has around me? And ultimately, my normative experience regularly was that I felt joyless, that I felt joyless. There was a gap between my actual life and the abundant life. And so why the

gap? Why the slow or no growth? Why did I feel so far? Why did what I want feel so far from who I was? I thought the issue in my life was pressure, that if I could just change the kind of pressure that I had and relieve it, then I would feel better and things would change. I would look at responsibilities like they were burdens and things like my job and things like my family. They weren't given. They weren't that I was enjoying, they felt like burdens on my life. It just seemed to me that around every corner, I was stuck. And it's important to note that at this point in my life, there was no blatant sin issue going on. It wasn't like I was regularly yelling at people. It wasn't like that I was stealing money or abusing drugs or alcohol or looking at porn. There was no blatant

sin issues on the external. I was actually the opposite. I was working hard. I was working here as I began to learn these things. I was trying to love my family well. I was trying to provide. I was trying to be a good person. But the truth is that I was stuck in discontentment. I was stuck in joylessness, and I was stuck in restlessness. And I had been for some time. And so what happened? What were some of the aha moments where God began to like graciously and gently lead me to revelation and to better understanding? Well, there were a lot of them. And, and two, I'll share with you today is is one that I was, this was seven or eight years ago. I come home from work and I'm just being heavy. You know, the temperature in the house is just rising around me. I'm, I'm frustrated with

myself and so I'm acting frustrated with the people who are closest to me. And my wife, she stops me in the kitchen one day as I'm just being heavy and I'm rolling my eyes and I'm huffing and I'm puffing and nothing's good enough. And my wife, we've been married for 17 years. I love her. She loves me. That's a huge part of her being helpful is that I know she loves me and I know that she wants good things for me. She stops me in the kitchen and she says, Ryan, I love you, but you are completely joyless right now and you're making everything harder on us than you should be. And it just stopped me dead in my tracks.

And as she said these words, I couldn't even defend myself because she was right. And the second was this that a couple of years, maybe a year after that happened, my father, whom I loved very much, he passed away. And when he passed away, I felt this overwhelming sense of relief. And I wasn't relieved because my dad and I had a bad relationship. I loved my dad very much. I was relieved because he had been sick for a very, very long time, and I had just been bracing for impact.

And 20 years earlier, I had buried my mom of a disease that led to death, and I never dealt with it. And so for all these years, I had just been carrying around emotional weight and baggage and grief. And as I'm going through the process of grieving my father's death, even before he dies, when it finally happens and the moment comes, it was almost like weight was lifted off my life. And the reason this jumped out at me and it scared me was because for more than a decade, I had been carrying this weight around and I had no idea.

I had no idea that I was carrying this around all this emotional baggage. It had just become my normal. And that's the emotional equivalent of taking a hundred pound dumbbell dropping it in a book bag and then going out and trying to run a marathon and calling your life. It's just exhausting. It's just exhausting. And I had come to a place where I was just emotionally and mentally exhausted. So after my dad died, I was reading the scriptures and studying and I had given my time and some energy to counselors and I'm beginning to try to unpack with trusted professionals what's going on in my life. And God leads me to this scripture in Matthew chapter 15. And

God spoke to me through it. And it starts in verse 10. and it's Jesus talking and it says and Jesus, he called to the people and said to them hear and understand. And I would say, yes, Jesus, I would like to do both. It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person but what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person. And then the disciples came and said to him,

do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying? One of the things I've learned about being a follower of Jesus in all categories of life is that I've got to be okay with him offending me sometimes. That nobody can do surgery like Jesus but when he does it, he gets way beneath the surface. And if you'll let him in there, the surgery is always worth it.

But sometimes it's painful. Sometimes it's painful. They said, do you know the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying? And Jesus answered in verse 13, every plant that my heavenly father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone. They are blind gods. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit. But Peter said to him, explain the parable to us.

And he said, are you still without understanding? do you not see whatever goes into the mouth, passes into the stomach, and is expelled. This is Jesus doing potty talk here. And then verse 18 says, but what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. Three things illuminated for me in this text in this season. Number one is that for me, the issues and the opportunities for growth that I was facing were not external things. It wasn't what people around me were doing or not doing, that my issues and my opportunities

for growth were on the inside. Number two, that while this text, Matthew 15, is contextually about legalism and Pharisees, it was obvious to me that I, in the case of me, was the blind leading the blind. That I could not take myself somewhere I had never been before. That I was the blind, leading the blind, in relationship to myself, and so I needed help. And the third thing was this, is that there were these things growing in me that did not come from my Heavenly Father. Verse 13, says, every plant that my heavenly father has not planted will be rooted up. I found that there were these things, these weeds growing in my life that were coming from seeds down deep in my subconscious. And these weeds seemingly were growing faster than the fruit of the spirit. And they had a strong grip

over the things that the spirit was trying to grow like love, joy, and peace was being choked out by tension and frustration and anxiety. And so there were these things growing in my life that needed to be found, they needed to be named, and they needed to be dealt with. And so if some of these things growing inside of me did not come from the Heavenly Father, where did they come from? It's about this, in the same season, I'm teaching at this, like, many leadership conference, and one of the, the host asks me a question. I'm on stage with the lady named Katie Cole, and Katie's kind of Christian famous, and she's a very influential leader in the church, and they They asked me the question, like, Pastor, how have you found ways to stay healthy in the midst

of high demands on your time and schedule? And I answered the question with what I thought was a very helpful and healthy answer. And the host moves on and asks somebody else to question. My friend Katie leans over to me, and she says, hey, have you ever read emotionally healthy discipleship by a guy named Peace Causeero? And I was like, no. And she was like, you should probably check that out. Because evidently, my answer wasn't quite what I thought it was.

And so I grabbed this resource, and so at this point in time I'm seeing counselors. I get my hands on some helpful resources like this book. And there was a resource inside of this book. One of the things this book does is it focuses on family history. And there's a tool inside of it called a genogram. And what a genogram does is that it helps you map your family history and shows you where there's some pains and where there's some people and experiences in your life that have left a significant mark on your subconscious. and they have gotten down at the foundation of your thoughts,

and they have now become the filter by which you process information in your life. The genogram, now, it took me weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks to work through this. Most of what I'm going to point at today in regards to what could be helpful is not something that's going to happen like this. God does his best work over time. And so we lean in and we found that he has drawn near to us. And so through the genogram, I begin to lean into my family history. And I began to uncover some things that I previously didn't know and didn't understand. And so I want to just briefly, I want to introduce you to my family and show you some of the results of a genogram.

And when you look at this, you've got to just toss out of your mind the ideas of fair and unfair. That's got nothing to do with it. You can't even think about it in terms of right and wrong. Really, what we're talking about is history and impact on the present. We're talking about healthy and unhealthy behaviors and thoughts that are learned. A little bit about my family, all of my grandparents, which I grew up in very close proximity to these people. It wasn't like I just saw my grandparents on the children. weekends. I spent as many nights at their house as I did at my own house. We lived together. Week in and

week out. I spent a lot of time with them. All of my grandparents were born in what is known as the silent generation, which means they all experienced the Great Depression and the Second World War. My grandfather, he actually fought in the war. He fought in the Pacific. He never graduated high school. He dropped out because his family was so poor. He had to work to help provide. And then he went to the war after the war on the GI Bill. He got his GED. He was very much a self-made man. He died in 2001. He was 71 years old. He died of heart disease.

He grew up in poverty. He always kept cookies on top of the refrigerator, a huge jar of cookies. And I remember one time I asked him, Pop, what are these cookies about? And he was like, I didn't have a cookie until I was an adult because we were so poor. And I decided that's not ever going to be the experience of our family. I'm like, my man, so I love cookies. It worked out good for me. He was perseverance, strong back, strong neck, driven.

He loved his family. And what I mean is that he would just. work himself and so that his family never had to have the same experiences that he grew up in. He had a deep fear of God and a healthy love for our country. But my grandfather, probably largely based on how he grew up in the environment he grew up in, he was emotionally distant. I never heard anything encouraging come out of his mouth ever to anyone. I never heard him say words like, I love you.

We would leave his house and we would say, I love you, pop, and he would say, thank you. And that was what I grew up around. He had diabetes and he had. heart disease, his fifth major heart attack got him. He was tough as nails. One time we grew up on a farm and the family was out laying fence and the barbed wire got pulled too tight and popped and he caught a piece of barbed wire in his eye. And he pulls it out and his eyeball dislocates with it. Okay? And so he pushes it back in his face and then he makes the family keep pulling the fence for another 80 yards before he lets them go to the doctor. That's different, bro. These are

the men that stormed the beaches of Normandy, man. It's just different. It's just different. It's just different. He was an alpha male. He dominated every room he walked into and he was a workaholic. He would work 17, 18-hour days at the office. Then he would come and do the same thing all weekend at the farm. And this is what I thought strong men and male leadership looked like because it's what I saw. And his wife, my grandma, she's awesome. She's still alive. She's quiet and caring. She's a servant. She's faithful. She talks with this deep, southern, slow draw. I talked to her on the phone this past week. Our conversation was 30. minutes and we said 11 words. It was unbelievable. And so she's just slow and methodical.

She's very set in her waves. There were times in our family where she would be given a false narrative and she would believe it and there was just no changing her mind and this would create dissension and tension. She experienced a great deal of loss in her life. And so her general demeanor was sad and understandably so. Her heart has been hurt a lot throughout the course of her life. On the other side, my granddad, he died of early onset Alzheimer's when he was 61 years old, and this was before I was born. And I know very little about him, which says a whole lot because every time that I would ask my father about his father, he would either not answer me or he would only say things in short sentences. Why? Because my dad did not know how to deal with

the pain of losing his dad at an early age. My dad did not know how to deal with the pain of the dysfunction that was present in their relationship. And so you just don't talk about it. And so what I learned from an early age is when things are hard, you don't talk. You don't about them. You just keep them close to the chest and you just tough it out. And then my grandma, she died in year 2000. She was smart, helpful, witty, just a towering woman. She was aggressive. She was not to be trifled with. I remember one time we were at a meal at her house and she's going around. She loved angel food cake. And so she's putting angel food cake on everybody's plate and it comes to my time and I'm like, I don't want any because I don't like angel food

cake because I smell it. I feel like my teeth are going to fall out because it's that rich. Right? So I'm like, no, I'm good. I don't want it. And she takes two or three steps past where I'm sitting and then she turns around and she goes, what's wrong with you, boy? And I'm like, well, nothing's wrong.

I just don't want the angel food cake. She takes her teeth out and she sets them on the counter and she turns and looks at me and she says, are you some kind of communist? Would you like to fight? I still, honestly, today, I don't even know if she was kidding. Like, my toothless grandma calls me a commie and challenges me to a fist fight. Like, I don't even know what to do. Stuff leaves the mark, man.

Leaves the mark. She was aggressive. She was impatient. My mom. She died in 1996. I was 14 years old. She died of cancer. She was diagnosed when I was 12.

She was 42 years old. She was fun. She was hopeful. She was empathetic. She connected on a heart level with everybody, me and my brother, included regularly. She was a leader. People looked at her. People always came to her, but she lived under the constant pressure to perform somewhere in her life.

She began to believe that her significance is what she could do for others. And so she began to perform for them and lived that way. She repressed frustration. I never, ever heard my mom and dad argue, ever. And you say, well, that sounds pretty great. And, okay, fine. I mean, sure, there's a lot of light to that. There's a lot of good that came from that.

The shadow of that was that when I got married, that was my ex-examined. that was my expectation of marriage. And so that lasted for us for about three hours. My mom was supportive at all cost. This relationship, this trauma that I experienced through her cancer, this passing at a young age, the inability to deal with it, the fact that we had nobody around us

that had any tools in the toolback whatsoever to point us in healthy directions, this has been so defining of my life on so many levels that I can't even begin to explain it. my father. He's a good man, godly man, faithful man, served God and his family well, wise, intelligent, disciplined and faithful. He struggled with approval-based anxiety his entire life. Me too. My brother, too. Approval-based anxiety, you should see me 20 minutes before I came out here to talk about all this, right? These are to get my truck and drive to Waffle House than come out here and do this.

And then I thought, you know what, even if they do all think, even if everybody here thinks you're totally jacked up, the good news is, they're all jacked up too. And so we'll all be we'll all be jacked up together. And so my dad was codependent on my mom. They fell in love when they were in high school, married early in college. When my mom died, my dad was completely lost. And somewhere in that process,

he made the decision to remarry five months after my mom died. And while I love my stepmom, I think she's fantastic and thank God for her. These were very formative experiences in my life. My dad was conflict avoidant even with us, and he was defined by early failures in his life. And ultimately, as I was doing this work,

and I was beginning to think about how these behaviors impacted my behaviors, how these thoughts impacted my thoughts, I was able to narrow in on a couple of thoughts that had gotten into the foundation of my life, and they had become the filter by which all other information and relationships were passing through in my life. And so two thoughts that were seated deep down in the soil of my subconscious that I had to unearth in order to begin to deal with them and to grow from them.

Thought number one was this is that suffering and loss is just around the corner. If you go back to my genogram, if you kick back to the genogram, what's the one thing that stands out to you? Well, it's that almost everybody's dead. Somehow grief had grabbed onto my subconscious and become defining of my life. And this thought that was coming out is that suffering and loss is just around the corner. And another thought that was a statement of significance that really had formed an identity for me is that pain is what makes you matter.

Your ability to tolerate pain, your ability to withstand pain, your ability to just be tough and handle whatever life throws at you, that that's what makes you matter. And so all you need to do is just be tougher. Be tougher. And if these are the thoughts that are at the foundation of your life and they're the filter or by which information and relationships are passing through, if you think you will lose what you love at any time and you believe that your purpose in life is to suffer,

then what grows out of that? Fear and control does. You try to control anything that you can in order to not experience the emotions of losing the things that you can't control. And so you just start grabbing for control. All of my tensions and unhealth in my life are the result of fear. these unhealthy patterns of thinking, these unhealthy tendencies, these powerful emotions that were at work, just beneath the surface of my life, they had created in me a shadow self. And what that means is that there was the version of me that I was trying to project in the world.

There's what I wanted you to think was true about me, and then there was what is actually true about my real life and in my closest relationships. And this shadow self was at work within me. And this shadow self, when you realize it, it's real. It's scary when you find it, and it absolutely must be uncovered if we want to grow in health in our lives. These are not my words. These are words that you will find in any Christ-centered emotional and behavioral health resources. Now, as I've learned these things, there's some choices that I have to make. Here's my dilemma.

I've got some learning. I'm beginning to identify the roots and the seeds that are growing. unhealthy patterns of thinking in my life. And so I can now tell you where this unhealthy comes from, but what am I supposed to do? Do I blame God? Well, that didn't seem like it was going to lead me in a very good direction. Do I blame my family?

No, I love them very much. I'm so thankful to have been born into my family, even with all the hard and hurt. I'm thankful for them. I love them. I'm not going to blame them. Do I just throw my hands up and say, well, this is just how it is,

and everybody else has just got to deal with it. I am who I am. Well, that didn't seem very loving or kind that it would lead to a healthy place. And so blame shifting was not a reasonable choice for me because blame shifting is as old as sin, literally. And excuses weren't the path because those only have ever led to isolation in my life.

Jesus says it like this in Matthew chapter 7. It says, how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when all the time there's a plank in your own eye? There's something growing out of your mind that is defining your life in unhealthy and unhelpful ways. And until you deal with that, it's going to be really, really hard for you to be in meaningful relationships.

Does all of this give me a reason to make excuses? Maybe, but not helpful. Does all of this explain me to me? It does. But information alone is not breakthrough. We can be as self-informed as we want to be, but being self-informed is not the same thing as self-denial. And self-denial is exactly what Jesus calls us to.

In Matthew chapter 16, Jesus says it like this. He says, and Jesus told his disciples, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Now, self-denial is not about self-punishment. Self-denial is not about ignoring self and ignoring history and ignoring tendencies. It's not about forgetting about yourself. Self-denial is about surrender. It's about knowing who you are, about knowing what's going on inside of you, and bringing it all to Jesus and saying, want you to be the Lord over everything, including every thought and every step I've ever taken.

Surrendering unto Jesus is the call of self-denial. And when we surrender to him, we realize as we give him all of ourself that he has given us all of himself. And what a gift he is. It's really hard to lay down at the feet of Jesus, which you don't realize you've picked up in life. It is really hard to surrender what you don't realize that you're carrying. And it's understanding these things and identifying these where a lot of the hard work comes in. Jesus, he never speaks condemnation over his children. Isn't that good news? Because he did not come into the world to condemn the world.

No matter what we've been through, no matter what we're going through, Jesus never speaks condemnation. He always gives an invitation. And the invitation of Jesus to you and to me reads like this in Matthew chapter 11, verse 28 through 30. He says, come to me, all who are weary and heavy burdened. will give you rest. Take my yoke upon me and learn from me.

For I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Jesus says, learn from me. It doesn't happen overnight. It happens over time. Learn the easy yoke of Jesus. Here's the thing that Jesus believes for us and Jesus proves to us. It's simply this that God loves us.

Jesus is the proof that God loves us. And trusting Jesus is the Lord over every part of our life is to say, God, I receive and believe your love for me. And I want to believe on every corner of my life that that's the most important thing about me, that I am loved by you. The shadow self that was at work within me is the accumulation of untamed emotions,

of less than pure motives, of thoughts that while largely unconscious, have strongly influenced and shaped my behavior, throughout the course of my life. The shadow is the damaged but mostly hidden version of ourselves. So when our shadow goes to work in our life, it can reveal itself through sinful behavior and choices of self-destructive behavior and decisions made for sure. But our shadow may simply reveal itself through unhealthy behaviors like being self-defensive

or aggressiveness towards others inappropriately or being generally distrusting of others because you're afraid that they might hurt you. The shadow is not simply another word for sin. It is most often identified through the way we try to protect ourselves from feeling vulnerable. As I've grown and I continue to grow, I've began to learn the behaviors that come out that reveal that there's unhealthy at work underneath the hood. So, for example, when I act out inappropriately under pressure, and what I mean by this is like, if I come home and my wife's like, hey, did you pay that bill? And my response to her is, no, what do you think I've been doing all day? I'm so sorry to disappoint.

And I'm just overly aggressive for no reason at all. Why? Why? Well, the reason is because I'm disappointed in myself. And the idea that someone else would be disappointed in me reinforces to me what I believe to be true about myself, and I just don't have the emotional ability to handle it. So I just act out inappropriately when I feel a little bit of pressure.

Things like being triggered by a person or a circumstance and then saying things that I later regret, disregarding my spouse or a coworker when they bring up difficult issues about my behavior and I begin to explain to them all the reasons why they're wrong and all the things that they don't understand. When I find myself doing the same thing over and over again, even though the consequences remain negative,

when I choose to get busier rather than more reflective when I begin to feel anxious about anything. I idolize people who seem to have it all, together even though I don't know the whole story. When I make negative comments to others about those who frustrate me rather than go to them directly, these are some of the behaviors that have shown themselves. And if you think of it like you're driving a car, if I look at my life like a car and I'm driving down the road, what I want is the tank to be full of peace and restedness and joy and

love and healthy thoughts. and I don't want any of the dashboard lights to be going off because I want everything to be operating in the way that it should be. But if I'm driving down the road and the tanks empty and the lights are going off, what it reveals to me, these behaviors are like the lights on your dashboard that are revealing to you something is going wrong underneath the surface. These feelings are revealing to you that there's some thoughts underneath the surface because every feeling comes from a thought.

So digging underneath the hood and doing the work. And so some things that I'll share with you that I've put into practice. And again, I am not there yet. I'm still on a journey that I believe wholeheartedly that he who began a good work in me will be faithful to complete it unto the very end. And that it's hard to do the work. And I found it hard to do the work because I have to admit weakness to do the work. And that is hard for me to do.

But I have found that the more I admit weakness, the more God is faithful in the truth that it is in my weakness that his strength has made perfect. So here's some of the things that God has done and is teaching me some of the work that I've been doing and I continue to do, that help me walk in and continue to pursue a healthier thought pattern and a healthier way of life. Number one, as I do the work, is that I seek trusted feedback. I meet with counselors. I've met with counselors. My wife and I'd go to counseling. There ain't no shame in that game for sure.

I would highly encourage maybe a healthy next step for you tomorrow would be to pick up the phone and call a counselor. You can go to CUE22.com slash care, and we have a vetted resource list that can be very, very helpful to you in your journey. Seek trusted feedback from people, counselors, pastors, Christians who are a step ahead of you, people who are Christ-centered that are just a little bit ahead of you in life, and listen to what they have to say and receive their wisdom. This is one of the reasons why active participation in the local church is so important. It's because we need each other.

We need each other. And we need to be under the gospel of Jesus Christ all the time. and allow God to lavish his love on us over and over and over again. So seek trusted feedback. Second is to tame feelings by naming feelings. What do I mean? Well, if you were to ask me, Pastor Britt, how are you doing an hour to say, I'm doing good? What does that mean?

What does good mean? That I'm not doing bad? It has to mean more than that. So what does it mean I'm doing good? Well, it means that I'm operating from a place of rest. I'm operating from a place of peace in between my ears. I'm regularly practicing rhythms of Sabbath. That I'm not feeling in patience, that I'm not overly worried

or I don't have misplaced worried in my life. I'm doing good means a lot more than, yeah, things are fine. These are signs of health that show that the tank is full. If you were to say, Pastor Britt, how are you doing? I would say, I'm tired. What does that mean? That I didn't sleep good last night? Or does it mean more than that?

Does it mean that there's impatience, that there's frustration, that my mind is full, that my anxiety levels are high? Yes, that's exactly what it means. And I just use a simple word like, tired, but until I get in there and do the work to define what these things mean in my life, that I have no idea what's actually going on in my life. Life is happening to me instead of me happening to it. Taming feelings by naming feelings. The next is to engage the past in order to enjoy the present.

I would highly encourage you to go online, go buy emotionally healthy discipleship, do the work of family history through a tool like a genogram. But here's the thing. If you step into it, you've got to step all the way in. If you're going to commit to the work, it takes time and it takes energy, and it's not the easiest work in the world. But the fruit is absolutely worth it in my experience, and I believe it'll be helpful for you too. Let me just ask you this. If it's true that the enemy only comes to steal, kill, and destroy, is it possible that he started trying to kill you 10 generations ago? Is it possible that he was trying to sow seeds of thoughts and unhealthy ways of living in your family 10 generations ago so that now as you're living that things that these unhealthy patterns are living are growing and they're stealing purpose, they're killing passion, they're robbing joy.

Is it possible that he hates you that much? You bet it is. You bet it's possible, but I'll tell you what's more powerful than anything you tried to do today or 10 generations ago, and that's the blood of Jesus Christ. that one drop of blood of Jesus Christ can break any generational curse, any generational sin, or any generational seed that might be planted in there that would rob us of the life God has for us, and we can over and over and over again by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ plead the blood of Jesus, and there's plenty to go around. Engage the past to enjoy the present.

And the last, identify the negative scripts at work in your life. Identify the negative scripts. Remember, I shared the two thoughts that were down at the foundation of my life and had become the filter by which information and relationship for passing. Well, what I mean by identify the negative scripts is identify them and then bring them under the lordship of Jesus Christ and under the power of the gospel, because as strong as my emotions may be, as high as my thoughts may be, God's love is stronger and God's thoughts are higher.

So I don't want to just think about me according to me. I want to think about me according to him. Thought number one that I had that was robbing so much joy as such. suffering and loss is just around the corner. And is it understandable why I would think this way? Yeah, of course it is. Of course it is. But there's a higher thought that's more significant, which is in Romans 828, it says,

and we know that for those who love God, all things, not just some things, not just the easy things, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose, that somehow for those of us who are in Christ Jesus, the tragedies we experienced in this life will one day be revealed as glory that the traumas that we go through will be worn as triumph in Jesus' name and in his total victory. Somehow all things are working together for the good of those who love him, and I believe that, more than I believe suffering and loss is just around the corner. Or at least I'm trying to. One step at a time. And thought number two is an identity statement, that I believe that pain, this is what made me matter and gave me significance.

And what the gospel has to say about that is that it was because he was, but he, Jesus was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him. And by his wounds, we are healed. By his wounds, we are being healed. By his wounds, praise God, because of God's grace, we will one day fully and finally be healed. So if this identity statement is true based on my experience. no doubt about it, but God's thoughts are higher.

So I'm trying to trade mine for his every day. I'm trying to trade mine for his every day. I want to close with this. One of my favorite pastors throughout history is a man named Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and he's one of the most influential preachers that ever lived. It's a serious man of significance, and he struggled out through the course of his life with what he called the melancholy.

And he used to tell a story about, a lady who came to his church late one afternoon, and he was getting ready to leave, and she comes in, and she says, she says, Pastor, I need some help. And she was an elderly woman, and you could tell she didn't have a lot of means. And she's sitting there, and she's like, I need a lot of help. I'm in a bad situation that I don't have any money. I don't have the ability to get a job. And I'm about to get evicted from my apartment. And if I get evicted, I'm surely going to die if I have to live homelessly. Will you please help me?

And the Pat Spurgeon talked to her for a little while, and he prayed with her, and he sent her on her way. And then he went and learned some things about this woman and saw that there really was great need. And so he figured out how to help her. And so maybe two days later, he goes over to her house and he knocks on the door, but nobody comes to the door. Day after that, he goes back again, and he knocks on the door,

but she doesn't come to the door again. third day he goes to the door and he knocks on the door and she doesn't come he's like i know she's home she doesn't have a job she has no means to get anywhere i know she's home i wonder why she's not coming to the door and then sunday came around and he saw her across the church and he makes his way through the crowds and he comes up to the lady and he says he says ma'am i came to your house this week i have this free gift for you we're going to help you and i knocked and i came three days in a row i came and i knocked and and you never came to the door and she just sheepishly puts her head down and says,

Pastor, I heard you knocking, but I couldn't come to the door because I was afraid. I thought you were the landlord and you were coming to evict me. I didn't realize it was you. And if I'm honest, that's how I lived my life emotionally

for many, many, many, many years. It's that the Holy Spirit would knock on my heart and he would invite me to take one step, to take a baby step, to try on a different thought, but I was afraid. It was easier for me to hide from the things that had happened in my life and from the unhealthy tendencies that I had than it was for me to face myself. And that fear had taken me captive and was keeping me hidden from the free gift of God's grace that would lead me into a deeper relationship with God and a healthier understanding of who I am and the life that he's called me to live.

So I believe that today that the Holy Spirit in each of us in different ways that's knocking on our minds. is knocking on our hearts and he's inviting us into a next step. It may be to reach out and call a counselor. It may be to fill out a respond card in the seat back in front of you and connect with one of our groups with other Christians to receive care from our care team. It may be to sit down and start to do the work. Whatever the step is that the Father is leaving you to take, I would encourage you to do it one step at a time,

knowing that he's got you and he is with you because he loves you. So we're going to respond like we always do. and respond in prayer. And I would invite you over the next five to seven minutes. You can't go and do all this work immediately and everything and the way we think and everything, the way we behave, just be different. That's not how it works. But what we can do for the next five to seven minutes is to put ourselves underneath the

love of God and receive it and believe it, as though it's the most important thing about us because it is. So we're going to pray. I would invite you at all of our campuses to come to our altars and to put your body in the posture that you want your life to be lived, which is underneath the love of God. We're going to sing, and we're going to sing some version of these words over and over and and over and over again, God loves us.

God loves us. We're just going to say it over and over and over again. Then we're going to bring like we always do, bringing our first and best back to God because he gave his first and best to us through Jesus. Let me pray for us. Father, we love you. We trust you. We need you. We invite and receive and believe your grace and your love. I pray that in this time that you would help us to take steps, one step at a time. God, that you would help us to see things. Maybe we've never seen. before, that you would give us the courage to step into things that maybe we wouldn't have

stepped before. And Holy Spirit, we hear you knocking and we want to respond appropriately and we just ask that you would help us. Father, I pray that as we continue this conversation in regards to to help from the inside out, Lord, that you would help us to fix our eyes on you. As you are our hope and you are our redemption. We love you and we pray all these things in the victory and in the beautiful name of Jesus. And all God's people said, amen. Amen. Would you stand? with me as we respond to the good news of Jesus.