Mighty to Save

SERMON: 2015-03-29--mt2115--mighty-to-save SOURCE DURATION: 01:04:28.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The entire provided audio segment constitutes a continuous sermon, starting with an introduction using current events and concluding with pastoral application based on scripture. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- I want to begin this morning by drawing your attention to three stories that have been in the news in the last two and a half weeks. The first is legislation tabled in the Ontario legislature on March 11, a couple of weeks ago, by the NDP member of the provincial parliament, Sherry De Nova. The bill that she has submitted is intended to make it illegal to engage in what is known as reparative therapy, sometimes known as conversion therapy. And reparative or conversion therapy is understood to be the process whereby you seek to straighten out, if you will, somebody's gender identity. And so let's say that you're a counselor, a teenager comes to you and they're confused, am I a boy, am I a girl, am I in the right body? The bill proposes to make it illegal for you to counsel that person to find what would be known as a straight identity. Just before the legislature in Ontario, the provincial health minister, Dr. Hoskins, has gone on record as supporting that bill. We don't know if that's going to pass, obviously, but it reflects the spirit of the age and the reason that is given, of course, is that it is hurtful and harmful not to accept where somebody is at. And I've got a picture here of the news conference, Ms. De Novo is the person that you see in the red closest to the front of the picture. She is, by the way, an ordained clergywoman. And she is a member of parliament pushing this particular kind of agenda. That's one story that I want to call your attention to that's just been in the news. One story that has been in the news as of March 17 is a decision on the part of the Presbyterian Church USA. This is one of the largest Presbyterian churches in the United States ratifying their decision of a year ago to change the definition of marriage to include same sex relationships. And so it was ratified originally, proposed last June, it's gone to all the presbyteries, and in the week of March 17 they reached a majority vote saying that this was now their official position. So keep that in mind, still a third story that was in the news just this past week is a bus campaign in Edmonton run by the Society of Edmonton Atheists. And they are eager to demonstrate that people can be good without believing in God. And it is a poster campaign that is going to run on ten buses for four weeks. And it includes this modified picture of Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. Take a look at that. That figure in white is of course God the Creator, missing from the picture. And the caption there says godless with a question mark, good. They're trying to prove to themselves, I suspect, and maybe to the rest of the world, that you don't have to believe in God to be good. Kind of ironic, I thought, after I saw that picture I got McLean's Magazine at our door yesterday in the current issue says the science is in, Jesus saves, seriously. And the byline says controversial new research says children raised to believe in God are safer, happier, and healthier. Isn't that really interesting? I thought the timing of that was kind of unique. So I tell you these stories this morning, not to alarm you or to cause you to shake your head, but to draw your attention to an underlying issue that is increasingly an issue for the church. And that issue is this, it's a threefold question that I have for you. Number one, is Jesus still mighty to save? Is he able to take sinners and make them saints? Is he able to change to the uttermost that which is broken or wounded inside a man or a woman or a boy or a girl? That's a very relevant question. And the answer is by no means guaranteed even in the church because increasingly people do not believe that he has the power to change the deep places of the human heart. I mean, how many times for all of us sitting here don't we wonder sometimes is Jesus big enough for what I know is wrong with the inside of me, isn't that true? So that's the first part of the question. If the answer to that is yes, then what is the church's role in ministering the healing power of Jesus today? And then the third part of that question is how do we do that in a world that is increasingly hostile to the Christian message and a world that increasingly take that which the Bible would call sin or brokenness and we call it normal and we increasingly are forbidden to call sin sin or hold people accountable. It is fascinating to me the way the word abuse gets thrown around in today's culture. For you to disagree with what lives inside somebody particularly in this day and age of gender confusion now gets you called to be an abuser. And increasingly Christians are being boxed in so that we cannot let our Christian influence be made known. Quick example and then we'll move on with this. The Christian Mental and Dental Society is an association of about 2,000 Christian physicians and dentists. My younger brother Hendrick who is a doctor has been actively involved in it. They've just gone to court to appeal a decision by the College of Surgeons and Physicians requiring them to give effective referrals and in some cases to perform procedures that are contrary to their moral, ethical, and religious beliefs. In other words, the College of Physicians and Surgeons has now ruled that if you have a particular medical issue and you go to your doctor and your doctor says I cannot go, let's say that you want to be euthanized because that's where this is coming from and you go to your physician and the physician says I don't want to have any part of that and I don't want to refer you to somebody else who's going to do it because it is against my convictions. The College of Physicians and Surgeons has now ruled that that is illegal and you will be charged under the law. You cannot operate according to your conscience in this field and the temptation is always for us to say of course well this doesn't apply to me but you see eventually it does because at the beginning stages of these transformations they promise you the whole world but when push comes to shove your liberties are increasingly being restricted. I mean think back to when Sunday shopping came in, remember that? Remember how everybody promised that if you're a Christian and you didn't want to work on Sunday they would make allowances so you didn't have to work on Sunday? Will anybody try to apply for a job with that kind of prohibition in place? Did you get the, no you did not get the job because that's the way it works in a society that becomes increasingly cost. So the question for us this morning is not only the question of how do we get there as a society but just as importantly what can we do about it and in the time that remains I want to say some things about it and then Valerie is going to come up and she's going to share some of her story which puts a lie to the lies that we are being told in our society today. So how did we get as a society to this place? Well we've talked about it before, I can be brief about it. It has everything to do with the fact that it starts with rebellion. It starts with rebellion. We've talked about this a lot. The biblical story can be summed up in the words creation, fall, redemption. You can add restoration. God created us to have a relationship with him and to be subject to his authority. Out of that comes an ability to love God and to love your neighbor. Along comes Satan early in the opening chapters of scripture. Adam and Eve fall into sin and they rebel against God. They are alienated from God. They come under the rule of Satan who feeds them the lie. God isn't there or God cannot be trusted. You've got to look after yourself. That's what that S stands for, everybody becomes selfish to the core and eventually society spirals down into destruction. As I've talked about before, Romans chapter 1 outlines for us that process with devastating clarity. It starts off by a rejection of God's authority, a willful rejection of God's authority, a refusal to bow before him in the pride of the human heart. It then leads to a darkening of our understanding. We become confused. That confusion leads us to an inverted value system so that instead of worshiping God, we now begin to worship creation. And part of worshiping creation is God turns us over to same-sex attraction. Let me say again, it doesn't mean that every person who struggles with same-sex attraction is wicked or evil or that that's because of their own sin. It does mean that the further we wander away from God, the more confused our identity becomes because it is God who names us. And when we disagree with God naming us and we start naming ourselves or letting other people name us, we become whatever is currently in vogue. And that in turn leads then to a value system that ultimately is totally turned upside down. As you know, the book of Romans chapter 1 ends with this verse and it's a powerful one. Well they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things, and he has just listed a whole lot of things that sinful people do, anywhere from slander to murder to hatred and all of those kinds of things, they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death. They not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. And I've talked about this before, it's one thing to do something that is wrong and know that what you're doing is wrong because then you can still be fixed. But when you get to the point where you're doing wrong and you no longer think it is wrong but you think it is right, now you're really stuck, aren't you? Because who's going to fix you up when you don't think you need fixing? That's where rebellion against God leads to. And if you want to understand what is happening in our society today, understand that the more we say God is not there, the more we say God has no right to tell me what to do or how to do it, the more we will spiral down into confusion and brokenness. And that is what is happening worldwide on every level. But there's a second stage to this that I think we really need to understand with regard to the culture in which we live, and that is this. The key process is, one of the keys to the process is that Satan capitalizes on the pain, listen to me carefully, Satan capitalizes on the pain that sin produces. Here we were created to be in fellowship with God, and in fellowship with God we were created to be in fellowship with each other. That's why that McLean's article says that people who serve God have healthier kids than people who do not serve God, because there is a stability that comes from knowing God that translates into having relationships with each other. And the more we reject that authority, then the more confused we become, the more we spiral downward and even you and I as Christians living in a fallen world, we're not immune to that. And so life spirals down and it produces pain, huge pain, because we discover that we no longer have the capability to do what needs to be done, or to control what needs to be controlled. Let me briefly talk about it in this fashion. If you've read my book, Blessings and Curses, you will know this diagram plays a very significant role in the healing journey that we believe Jesus takes people on. And as I said in a few moments, Valerie is going to tell you her story of how this has worked out in her life, but let me give you a very brief overview of the process of how life works from God's point of view. We're created spirit, soul and body, ordained by God, and this line represents the trajectory that God intends for our lives to take. We start as babies, we grow old, eventually we die. We develop our personality, we develop our giftings, and each one of us, unique, fearfully and wonderfully made, the key to growing up is a thing that I would call grace relationship. Grace relationship means that in order for us to grow, we need to be loved for who we are, we need to be encouraged, we need to be disciplined, we need to be corrected, but we need to be loved, we need to be moved forward, and that grace relationship needs to come first and foremost from God who is our creator because he knows us the best, and secondarily, it comes through our parents who are vehicles of God's grace and God's training. And for those of you here this morning who grow up in good families, not perfect families, but you know, families where your parents wanted you, your parents loved you, your parents carried you, they encouraged you, they disciplined you, well, you just grew up, and the process was so automatic that I bet you, you don't even half understand how incredibly complicated that is until you meet up with somebody for whom it didn't work so easily. Let's put that chart back up again for a moment because you see, what happens in a fallen world is that we don't all experience grace relationships. We experience traumas that shut us down. Some people are born physically deformed. You know how hard it is to do life when your body will not respond to you? Some people are born spiritually confused and way down, and in this day and age particularly, a lot of people have a lot of emotional baggage. And the earlier that we have encountered that kind of emotional baggage, the more likely the pain has shut us down. There are some of you here, you weren't wanted by your parents, and all your life you have struggled, do I have the right to exist? There are some of you that experienced early hospitalization, you were confronted by pain or abandonment that you didn't know what to do with, and everything inside you said, I'm not going to open up my heart to anybody, and you don't know why your relationships are so difficult. Some of you, you've been abandoned by people you had opened your heart up to, and everything inside you says, it is not safe for me to live the way that I need to be able to live. You know, we've often talked at staff and at council, one of the negative side effects of the controversies that we've gone through with classes and with some other people is that for all of us, there has been a tendency to shut down our hearts and not live openly because it hasn't been safe to do, and one of the things that God wants to do is open up our hearts so that we can be who we are called to be and flourish before the face of God. Don't you think? That's what God's after, and that's what God's doing. So when you run into these places where you can't do life, whether that's physically or emotionally or spiritually, the result is that you get shame and you get anger. Shame says there is something wrong with me, I am not normal. Nobody likes me, nobody wants me, I don't know how to do relationships, I'm always saying the wrong thing, my temper gets out of control, I gravitate towards whatever that I ought to be into, and then the result is anger. In the news this past week, the story of the German wings pilot, right, flew that airplane right into the mountain. People have been looking into his background, what's beginning to emerge, a number of things. One is that he's had significant mental issues, that he has hidden from virtually everybody around him, certainly his employer. Now the latest reports, and you never know how accurate those will turn out to be, is that he's been doctoring because of vision problems, and his ex-girlfriend is saying that the big disappointment of his life was that he would never be able to become a captain in the airline because of his mental and his physical issues. And so what happens, he gets angry, and he not only kills himself, but 149 other people with him. That's an awful thing to contemplate. But in a lesser fashion, that plays out in how many people's lives that you know. And see, so when our society goes around saying you can't push anybody's buttons, you can't do reparative therapy, as it is called, they are saying, listen, this problem of shame and anger is so intense that you drive people to despair. And a lot of us know about that, even as Christians, we know about the despair of knowing we're not what we are to be. So without spending a lot of time on it, and this is written up in a lot more detail, as a lot of you know in the book Blessings and Curses, what happens is that in the places where we get stuck, we develop coping mechanisms trying to get around the pain and the failure. And for some people that is a rejection of self. If I can get rid of the bad things that I feel inside, then I will get beyond the pain. And so some people drink themselves to stupors, some people slash and cut and do all kinds of stuff more than we can talk about today. Other people, they go into rejecting of others. Every terrorist that you hear going out to Syria or Iraq to blow themselves to smithereens, and a lot of other people with them, I can guarantee you are people who are frustrated with anger. And in their anger, they are rejecting self, they are rejecting others, and then they are eliciting rejection from others. I've said before, ISIS is doing what it is doing because they want to drop the rest of the world into hating them in the hope that this will bring about the coming of the new kingdom. But remember, not everybody, not everybody gets stuck in this cycle of killing the pain. A lot of people do, but it doesn't go anywhere because tomorrow it's back. But the human personality is incredibly resilient. And no matter how broken you are, what a bad background you come through, there's always a peace inside you that says, I still want to experience life. It doesn't have to be this way. So what a lot of people do then is they grab hold of the little bit of strength they have, and they begin to lean into it to try to overcome what they know is wrong on the inside. And so some people become the most pleasant people in the world, not because they're so pleasant, but because they want to be loved. And if I can only give you what I think you want, then maybe you will love me. Other people, they go a step further and they draw on their big size and their strength, and they have learned that when they speak loud and look ugly and mean, people move out of the way. Now, I can conquer and I can overcome, they feel like Goliath on the battlefield. And so they scare the snot out of people and they use that to their advantage. Other people, well, they just sort of blend in with the woodwork. They never have an opinion, they don't want to be seen, they don't want to be identified. As I said, they blend in with the woodwork because, see, as long as you never have an opinion, nobody can criticize you. And if you never participate, then nobody, what is it, the book of Proverbs says even a fool is considered wise if he keeps his mouth shut. And there are people who make that a policy of their lives. The problem is, of course, that that requires an enormous amount of energy. Other people have to make up for what is missing in you, you are not contributing yet, and it takes an enormous amount of energy to stay on top of it. And so the reason that all of this eventually collapses is that you cannot sustain it. And you will find people after people developing crises when their old coping mechanisms work no longer. And the big question from a Christian point of view is what can be done about it? Is there healing? Now, remember, increasingly the world says this is just the way it is. In fact, what the world will do, the world will honor you for these wonderful coping mechanisms because it helps you rise to the top in society. In fact, most people who are leaders in industry or in politics, even often in religion, are people who have significant broken areas and they have to prove to themselves and to everybody else that they are okay. You know how wearisome that is? And how much energy that takes? And how many people have to be roped into supporting you to keep you moving forward? That's why eventually it all falls apart. Now Christians, they're a really funny lot, I have to tell you this, because how do you think Christians, see, you can't go to church for very long or you can't read your Bible for very long before you know that some of these characteristics are probably not very good and you can't live around other people very long before you discover that this sort of stuff causes all kinds of relational issues, isn't that true? I mean, after a while people tell you to stuff it because you're not God and I don't want to serve you anymore. Work with me a little bit here. Do you see any of this? So here's what Christians do, because Christians are people of prayer. And Christians will say, "Lord God Almighty, I believe all of these things about the Bible, so won't you please change what I hate about myself? Won't you please change how this relationship works? Won't you please change my desire to please people or my bossiness or my shyness?" Isn't that true, what Christians do all the time? Well, how's that been working for you? I can guarantee you that most of the time it does diddly-squat. You know why? Because God's not interested in picking the leaves off the tree and he's not interested in pruning the... You know what happens when you prune a tree? No, it bears a lot more fruit. So the more branches you pick off and the harder you try not to be so angry, the harder you try not to be so unloving, the harder you try not to be so invisible, the worse it gets. You know why? Because the Lord doesn't want to deal with symptoms. He wants to deal with root causes. And how does he do that? What he wants to do is he wants to take you back to where your life got off track, to where you shut down. He wants to fix that place. He wants to infuse your true self with his grace and with his power, lead you by his spirit so that you're burning the wax and not the wick. And out of the stability of life and relationship with him, led and empowered by the Holy Spirit, you begin to flourish and you have an ability increasingly to love God above all and your neighbor as you love yourself. That's where true transformation of the human heart takes place. That's the gospel message. That's the ministry. I believe with all my heart the Lord is calling us to as a church. That's the model of ministry that God wants to present to the world. And that's what he wants to give us faith for so that collectively we can just trust God to come down with his Holy Spirit and do the impossible by his power. Would you agree with that? Would you agree with that? Would you believe that with us? Just to show you how that works in real life, I'm going to ask Valerie to come up and she's going to preach. Last time I was up here I was preaching a mile a minute talking about the birds of prey and actually I want to pick up just really quickly on that a little bit because I want to share, I think if I look at all of this and I know what I've experienced in my own life I think that really is whacking away the birds of prey. That's what this all is really so I want to share a little bit of my own journey as it relates to what Pastor Joan was talking about because if you remember when I talked about the birds of prey I talked about how when God had set out the pieces of the covenant in order to cut covenant with Abraham before somewhere between the intent of that covenant and the fulfillment of it these birds came down and they tried to stop not only what God had for Abraham in his relationship to him but also the inheritance that God had for Abraham and by extension us. So this is important stuff because if we don't deal with these birds of prey we miss out on the relationship that God calls us to but also the fullness of the inheritance that he has for us. So as Pastor Joan said Satan capitalizes on the pain that's produced by sin and brokenness and that is what actually cuts us off from the resources that we need to grow and with and we need to learn to do life with. So as we look at the diagram that little spot I haven't got enough hands to use the pointer so I'm going to use my finger that little spot in the middle where the trauma occurs that's the blockage that's what actually stops our lives unfolding the way they should and the trauma is made up of either bad things do happen and Pastor Joan talked about some of those or good things don't happen that's trauma either bad things do happen or the good things that are supposed to happen don't happen and I would say I probably had both of those things operational in my life. First of all bad things did happen I've shared my a little bit of my story in this regard but I was conceived after a very traumatic birth experience that my mom had with my sister she almost died in that process and was told at the time that she shouldn't have any more children but six months after my sister was born I was conceived and so that already my little growing system inside of my mom was flooded with the anxiety that that my mom was experiencing and and also when I was born I was a breach presenting birth and I that and I was actually presenting to be born with a leg and a shoulder coming first so as you know that can't happen so what they had to do is they had to push me back in into the birth canal and turn me meanwhile my mom had to be put out totally with general anesthetic so again flooding my system with all kinds of trauma and because of the poor condition that she was in at the time of my birth we were separated there was a number of days that I wasn't with her and because of that then that crucial early stage of bonding that is one of those beginning lifeblocks that we need that didn't happen for me so that was that was that my pre birth and birth experience and also in my early knife I experienced some abuse and happened several times but caused a lot of shame but one of those times particularly it caused a particular shame on the inside for me that actually changed my life because it happened because I've been disobedient and so on the inside I knew that this what I had just experienced this awful abuse was my fault and so it closed me down in that place and so from then on just because I had cracks in the foundation of my life I seem to be seen over the years by those who used power to abuse and I it just I was the target of misuse and abuse by people in positions of authority over and over again through my growing years and into my early adulthood and that pushed me further and further inside of myself so bad things did happen that was the part of the trauma but secondly the good things that was supposed to have supposed to happen didn't happen being separated from my mom as I said in those early days meant that no bonding no early bonding happened for me and that was a trauma that damaged the very necessary early developmental stage where healthy dependency should be developed where basic trust should be developed so that didn't happen for me basic trust didn't develop I didn't learn what it meant to trust properly I didn't develop any relationships with safe authority figures I didn't learn how to express my need properly and I didn't learn how to get those needs met appropriately so from very early in life I was effectively cut off from the outside of myself resources that I needed that actually everybody needs in order to survive and those sources as Pastor John says at the very least is our parents and the other authority figures in our life but ultimately it's God for me basic trust that initial building block of life was broken so all of that trauma led to a place where my sin nature had an excuse to rule and rule it did I did a really really good job of allowing my sin nature to rule my sin nature had an excuse to rule because life was painful and confusing on many many levels so I decided somewhere very early and very deeply that actually self-sufficiency was the best way to manage life the best way to keep pain away the best way to keep confusion away and I began what I call self-parenting I was my own parent however the trouble with parenting yourself when you're a child is that you do it with a child's wisdom so it actually leads to unwise choices unwise decisions that then sets you up for further trauma and further brokenness so that's what happened for me and when it led to this further trauma in my life Satan was very very happy to reinforce my wrong conclusions that self-sufficiency was the safest way to live my sin nature also found an excuse to live in the way that I judged that the love I was being given wasn't good enough I just judged that it wasn't good enough because there wasn't enough of it remember I was broken there was some brokenness on the inside so I was extremely needy child and it sounds like I was a bit of a miserable kid because the word over my life was that if I'd have been the first there'd have been no more so that sort of says kind of what my parents had to go through but in that place where I judged the love that was there I judged it because it could never be enough to feel this huge broken need or hush this ever-present anxiety that was on the inside of me my judgments were that they weren't doing it right and that caused a chosen now withdrawal from the very thing that I needed which is good parenting and good discipline and good authority in my life I chose to withdraw so that was how my sin nature ruled and I I know now that it was a wrong knowing if I can say knowing but but I knew very early and very very clearly because of all of this all of the above things all of that trauma that I wasn't safe in anyone else's care except my own I had this huge and growing all the time just distrust of authority that led to a life where I was not only my own parent which is bad enough but more significantly I had set myself up as my own God where there was no higher authority in my life other than me and I know that sounds kind of dramatic but really it was how I lived my life for many many years and I think it probably even looked quite good but it really really wasn't it was really bad so without acknowledging or dealing with these basic root causes I started to manage life by doing what I would call the pain workarounds which is what you see in the behaviors in the chart where I don't put the chart back up for me you see those in the chart all of those behaviors first of all I'm going to do the behaviors at the top I I was really good at pleasing that was probably my coping mechanism of choice because I was very resourceful and I could use my sweetness and my smarts to be or do or agree with anything that the powerful people around me wanted me to be or do or agree with I would do it all I would do anything I was as I say very resourceful as long as I didn't experience anyone's displeasure or rejection I'll just do it I'll just keep on doing it conflict was a terrifying prospect for me and because that would mean displeasure from somebody else and I would compromise many of my values internal values just to keep the peace and this pleasing thing was a horrible horrible trap for me because my anxiety at the thought of losing people because they were displeased with me was ever building and it caused me really to lose my sense of self in some very significant ways and I in some ways lost my own soul for safety in those places secondly if you look at that the diagram where it talks about intimidating I seem to gravitate to these kinds of people to people who were the intimidators both men and women thinking that they were strong because I knew that I was weak and I knew that I thought they had something that I needed and the name of the game with intimidators is that they do control and with those kinds of people control actually is the name of the game and they use other people in relationships in very manipulative and harsh ways and so I would gravitate to that thinking that was strength and then find that I was hurt one more time so that was that and then denial denial I would say was another go-to of my choice here I was I pretended that everything was fine I used to actually call myself Valerie Wimp Peters I'm not that anymore but I was and I would say that if you were looking at passage on talked about you know how people like this would fade into the background I would say I was almost beige I there was never a problem I had to make sure there was never a problem everything was fine I I wouldn't let myself need anything from anybody else because I knew that my need would never be met so this was a place of avoidance a place of withdrawal and a place where I would say I won't be here and I won't need anything I won't contribute anything but I'm just going to stay neutral and pretend that everything is fine and then I won't have a problem so here I was beige I was a kind of a non-person and then I go to the then you go down to the bottom behaviors there and this I think is the the darker and sadder places where we try to cope with the pains of life first of all that place where we reject ourselves if something went wrong or if I got hurt or rejected or if I couldn't manage to find the skill to make life work somehow self-hatred would rise up in me and I was sure that if I was just different if I could just not be me somehow whatever was going wrong wouldn't be happening but I was me and I wasn't enough and I couldn't manage life so this led to times of depression that circled around and around and around in self-hatred and rejection and I felt stupid here because I just couldn't do life right and so there was this awful rejecting of myself secondly that's up that place where you reject others and for me there was that times where that sense of rejection was so huge that I would make a very clear determination not to need anybody here the pain and the anxiety would mount to the point that I couldn't manage the pressure of it anymore so swamped with pain I would reject others secretly or not so secretly I would blame them for the pain that I was experiencing and then of course there's the it gets worse and you elicit rejection sometimes that pain of rejection or the pain of my unmet needs would mount to the point where it got to be too much so I just couldn't care anymore I couldn't manage the pain of caring anymore and so would actually elicit rejection by behaving in some pretty miserable ways I knew that nothing I could do would ever change what I was receiving from people so I just didn't care actually in those days I was a really good door slammer and that was one way that I it was a bad behavior and it would actually elicit more rejection but I there was something that was so angry on the inside here so I would elicit more pain from others so remember for me and for anyone all of these behaviors are developed to manage the pain of some underneath trauma and for me it was a trauma that really said it wasn't okay to be me I didn't know why but I did know that who I was just being me was somehow the cause of this incredible pain and confusion that I was experiencing and having cut off any authority in my life that could have helped me make sense of it all or even help me manage some of those big emotions that I had there was just this huge shame about who I was and with that a primal terror and I'm really mean terror attached to that that actually threatened to sink my life and it got driven deeply underground because I just couldn't manage it except for the occasional eruption when the pressure was on and then some behavior would sort of come out of me that would not only dismay me and make a mess but it would probably dismay other people around me and nobody could kind of figure what the heck and where did that come from so and when that happened what I would try to do was overcompensate now I had to do it more and do it better and try harder and be better all the time and so you can imagine they the energy putting into being put into keeping this all afloat was huge and I think because it was driven so deeply and continued to be traumatized and driven deeper and deeper it came became actually a splitting of my personhood into the me that could manage to do life and did it really well which is the me you probably all know and then there was the me that couldn't do life and didn't know how to manage the circumstances of life which was the me that became hidden and I hated that me and I did all that I could to try to kill that and hide it and shut it off I just wanted to hide from it and I just didn't want anyone to know it was there and even could pretend to myself that it wasn't there but the trouble was life continued to be painful because of all of this particularly due to the fact that I hadn't grown any skill to recognize real danger either in people or situations so more trauma kept on happening meaning that I had to cut off more and more of myself in order to make life work and that's what I did slowly closing down more and more of who I was until along came Jesus. Jesus who says that he came to give life and give it abundantly and amazingly Jesus came for me he came for every part of me not just the part of me that knew how to do it right and could manage to make life work but more particularly for the part of me that didn't know how to do life and was hidden and broken and extremely sad he came for that part of me too because he came to give me life abundantly. If I think about it now the verse that became significant in the early days of my walk with Christ was Ephesians 2 10 and most of you that know me know that it's my favorite verse and it says we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus with good works prepared that we may walk in them and I had no idea how profound a verse that was for me at the time because at that time I would have said I am my workmanship created by Valerie Peters to do whatever it takes to keep myself safe to avoid any threat and to have someone love me and take care of me and so as over the time the Lord worked the truth of that verse deeper and deeper into my life I see that here actually is the first principle of the way out in the principle of being his workmanship not my workmanship I had to own it and that's the first step of the way out I had to own that I actually was as much as I didn't like to say it and tried to hide from it and deny it I actually was a sinful broken black hearted rebel who had tried to be my own God I had tried to create or recreate a me that could manage the pain of life outside of the provision that God in Christ had put in place for me I was a rebel and I say this was the hardest part of me because to face my own brokenness and rebellion even would be to say that there was something wrong with me and remember I had fought my whole life to get away from anything that was wrong with me but again I actually began to see it really really see it and that was in that what I began to see was that there was something very wrong indeed on the inside and even though I saw it first of all I didn't know what to do with it except to just keep hiding it or keep trying to make it better because now I even knew what was expected of me by from God so that made it even worse anyway as life went on one night when I knew that life was slowly but surely falling apart I was praying and I was asking God to give me a word of hope in the face of the terror that now seemed always just a breath away and I was led to read Jeremiah 427 where it says this as I turn to that scripture it says this is what the Lord says I will ruin the land but I won't destroy completely and I thought wow I asked for a word of hope that that was not what I was expecting but and I did see that it was hope later because in the second part of that verse it says even though he's going to ruin the land he's not going to destroy completely and actually in the darkest of the dark days of walking through this I hung on and clung on to the hope that he had given me in that he wasn't going to destroy me completely but almost immediately that's what he started to do he started to ruin the land which is a very painful business because I had constructed very carefully and very thoroughly a world that would keep me away from pain at all costs pain you see was my biggest enemy because it had the power to capsize my life so everything was constructed to keep me away from pain and it seemed to be in everything everything that I did and in every relationship that I had everything that people demanded of me and I demanded of them that this was there but it all started to come down my faithful covenant God who promises to bring to completion the work that he begins in us began the ruining process in my life it was awful it was terrifying actually and something that actually only one or two people know the fullness of what this terror was but he used all kinds of circumstances all kinds of relationships as pressure to bring me to the end of myself the end of my ability to keep it together and as I look back now I can actually see that pain instead of being my worst enemy was actually my greatest friend because it really did bring me to the end of myself even though I was incredibly resourceful and put up a really good fight and as I say eventually I came to the absolute end of myself and he was the second principle when I came to the end of myself what God needed to do is what I call sanctuary me and I'll tell you how this happened I was sitting with pastor John in his office and I had absolutely nothing left I couldn't fix me he couldn't fix me God wasn't interested it seemed in fixing me and nothing that I had tried to do could fix me and I was really really done so I sat there just sort of desperately at the end of myself and I was in a mess and pastor John just sat there and waited and we waited and all I can tell you is that all of a sudden I experienced yeah a stillness or a harsh both inside and outside of me that I can only say now was the Holy Spirit enveloping me somehow I just knew that I was in the sanctuary of God somehow I hope that's okay to say but it was just him and me and the only words that I have for it is that I was sanctuaries somehow God in his sovereign grace put his authority around me or something and it was pretty amazing and although it took quite a few skirmishes till the battle was really done this moment I think was the beginning of my walk towards freedom because now that I had been sanctuaries the set the sense of that actually has never left me to this day I just know I am sanctuaries it seemed that I needed to go back to the beginning and get reconnected to the resources that I had needed in the first place the authority of places of God and others that I needed to have in my life so the next step for me of this way out was a decision that I had to make about who owned me this was a really hard battle because actually all my life I had owned me and it's a longer story that I'm going to tell you another day I hope but to suffice it to say that the Lord used again much pain lots of relationships as well as the pain that we experienced here over the last numbers of years to put the pressure on me and make me respond to that question who owns you Valerie Peters and I had to every other authority every other ruler every other person that felt they had a right to own me had to be gone this church didn't own me you didn't own me the CRC denomination didn't own me my leadership didn't own me none of my relationships I had to lay that all down until I had to make the decision that God and God alone owned me and when that happened I had to make that decision and mark that decision with an action that at some point I'll be able to share with you I'm sure so anyway that was that and then my final decision because now I had been reconnected with God and the authority that he had in my life because he now owned me now the next the last thing was that I had to be connected to the earthly authorities that God had put in place for me and I that was another very big decision for me because I didn't really trust anybody but I had to trust that the authority that God had put in my life the person that God had put in my life to help me walk through this I had to make the decision that this person was good not perfect but good and that that he would use his power and his authority for me that was a very very significant decision but once that was made I think it was game over because now it was safe to acknowledge my needs properly and learn how to get them met properly I could be wrong and be corrected because being wrong didn't threaten my existence anymore and being corrected didn't cause a swamping of shame that had always been there but more precious than any of that I think was the fact that my ears and my heart were opened to know my heavenly father in a way that I never ever dreamed was possible and it's really hard to tell all of the ways that this has impacted everything that I do I know that no not only can I know others and see others I could always know others and see others but now I can allow others to know me and to see me and that's intimacy to know and be known to see and be seen and I also know that life isn't full of constant anxiety that pressure of me trying to keep it all together and it's actually I'm actually kind of enjoying myself in life right now at this point and I have to say it's it's quite an incredible adventure to know his voice in some very significant places and I really can say I know the voice behind me saying this is the way walk in it we hear the term born again hey and I think I'd always come to understand that meaning to be in terms of our salvation but born again for me here meant that I had to go back to the beginning I had to be reconnected with my heavenly father and reconnected with my earthly authorities so that I could relearn some of the things I never learned and because I never learned them I could never do life right so that's what what needed to happen for me and just a really quick little thing in the very ordinary ways God is showing me just how to live just this past week after that wonderful service last weekend I was flying high and I was so excited because to me this Sunday is the first Sunday of the rest of our lives that's how I'm feeling about going forward right now and and yet on Tuesday I woke up and I had this really heavy feeling and I thought oh no there it is again and so I got up I went and had a shower and as I got out of the shower I just really heard the Lord say you know this is attack right and it was like yeah right it is and and on I went immediately that heaviness left lifted and little things like that I had a another thing this at the end of this past week where I just got a real whack in a place of where my heart was wide open and instead of going round and rounded in my mind and trying to sort it out and make it right what I actually did was went to bed and when I woke up in the morning there was an email from somebody that I've really grown to love in this congregation who had given me a song and written and sent me a song and as I listened to the song it was precisely the song I needed to hear and so I emailed her back and I said I owned my need I said you know I've had a pretty awful day would you pray for me and so there it was right there I could own my need ask for my need to be met and over the course of that day that awfulness just lifted off me so in those little ways maybe seem insignificant but just every little thing that I do life is being done differently somehow and it's absolutely wonderful and it's a it's a lot of fun I have to say that and this past week at our pastoral care meeting Rene shared psalm 27 and when I went home I reread it and I the last part of the psalm says this I want to read it to you as I close it says I am still confident of this I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living wait for the Lord be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord and I want to encourage us as a community in those places where perhaps for you or somebody that you know has been long fighting some deep and dark battles on the inside wait patiently let's let's learn how to wait with each other because I think Jesus is on the move and he is about healing us and he is about restoring us so that we can take this message to a world that is desperate to hear it because there is lots of people that are living lives of hopeless desperation trying to make it look good on the outside and I want you to know I really am seeing the goodness of the Lord [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 01:04:22.900; remove through 01:04:28.000] in the land of the living and it is absolutely wonderful. 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