40 Day Prayer Challenge Lead Us Not Into Temptation G: Chip Johnson, Colorado pastor J: 40 Day series. Pray the Lord’s Prayer G: 1. God does not tempt James 1:13-14; Matt 4:1. J: 2. Deliver us from Evil. Matt 6:13 Praying two things. Evil. Definite Article: the evil one. Bible footnote. 1 Pet 5:8: be watchful. G: 1. Pray for deliverance from temptation: not just sin. Deep humility, power of sin. J: Acknowledge weakness: calories. Greg’s weight loss. You can’t hang out in donut shops. Weekday no desserts. Those navigating breaking addiction: you can’t go to the same parties, hang out with the same people. G: friend: juggle coals. Prov 6:27 J: 2. Dig up roots. Buffle grass. Uproot sin and temptation. Fight temptation. Don’t flirt with it. G: 2 Tim 2:22; Rom 13:14: flee! J: Run! Away from. And toward. Where is sin crouching at your doorstep? Envy: social media. Lust: internet access, filter. Anger/fear: news. Greed: shopping access. Gossip: conversations with certain friends. G: 3. Pray! We can’t do this ourselves! 2 Pet 2:9: we need the HS. J: We need Jesus. Baptism: declaring they want to be one with Christ. I am not of this world. Pastors Greg Lavine and John Beeson teach a series on “40-Day-Prayer Challenge.” This week’s teaching is on “lead us not into temptation.” Sermon begins at 21 minutes on the video. www.newlifetucson.org .

Recently one of the members of our connection group courageously poured out her heart. She felt disconnected from God and bruised by a challenging season of life. “How can I feel like God isn’t so distant?” What a profound question.. The next day I was texting back and forth with another member of the group who was also struggling spiritually. “I’m working through some stuff,” he said, “and it’s not going very well. I figured it probably best for me to put my head down and stay busy. I’m kind of a mess and don’t want to get any of it on anyone else.” I hear and feel that. When I am discouraged and struggling, I tend to act just like this brother. I pull away from relationships. I withdraw and try to sort out my mess until I’m ready to re-emerge. Most American Christians tend to think about spiritual disciplines and formation in a private context. We think about our quiet times (or you might call it devotional time or time in the Word) as a solitary affair: just us, our Bible, and God. Certainly, such alone time with God is an essential aspect of our spiritual life. Jesus, after all, “…would withdraw to desolate places and pray” (Luke 5:16). This is a practice that we ought to practice. And yet. We have tended to over-individualize our spirituality in the West. For many of us, the most vulnerable parts of our faith are separated off from community. As I read the Bible, it seems to me that most of the spiritual practices are done in community. As I read In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, for example, I see Paul inviting us together to be built into “a holy temple in the Lord,” (Eph 2:21b) “a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Eph 2:22b). It is through the church “the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known” (Eph 3:10). It is in the context of our relationship with “all the saints” that we “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:19). For the purpose of “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4:3) that Christ gives us gifts. As we faithfully offer our gifting to one another we “attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood” (Eph 4:13). We speak truth in love to one another, exposing the ignorant schemes of the world. In community we encourage one another, and we forgive one another. We reject the corrupted patterns of worldly living and speak into one another God’s truths “in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord.” And in all of these things we submit “to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph 5:21). Community is the context of vibrant and growing faith. God doesn’t tell us the only way we ought to be praying or reading his Word is individually. On the contrary! God invites us to step into community. Studies show that people are much more likely to follow through on commitments to exercise and eat healthier when they do so with a partner. I’ve found the same to be true for my spiritual disciplines. While I daily read the Bible alone and pray alone, I find tremendous joy in reading the Bible as a family and praying as a family. Let me offer a few tips to help you make your devotional time communal, depending on your age and stage of life. For singles: I have several single friends who have daily or weekly Facetime calls with close friends to read the Bible and pray together. I know other singles who meet up weekly for coffee and time in the Word. I know of others who have group text strands for the purpose of prayer and biblical encouragement. Don’t feel like you have to do some big production to make this happen. Just open up the Word, start reading it to one another, talk about it, and pray through it. For just marrieds: I would recommend you protect time over breakfast or dinner to open up the Bible and pray together daily. For young families: Usually bedtime is the perfect intimate setting to read the Bible (I recommend Sally Lloyd-Jones’s The Jesus Storybook Bible or Kevin DeYoung’s The Biggest Story or The Action Bible). Find their gospel love language. Sing songs together and pray over your children each night before they go to bed. Make sure your children feel the joy and warmth of the gospel. So much more important than content is that they feel the loving embrace and care of their Savior. For growing families: Once your kids hit eight and older, coordinating schedules becomes more challenging. Evening commitments and activities can make nighttime routines tricky to navigate around. I know that these were the most challenging years for us as a family to have regular times in the Word and prayer together. You might want to consider waking the kids up 15 or 20 minutes earlier to have family devotionals over breakfast.. For families with teens: Similarly, the growing number of commitments can be an obstacle to creating healthy rhythms. For our family, devotions over breakfast protect our time in the Word, prayer, and worship together. I know other families who protect one evening a week for a longer time in the Word and worship. For empty nesters: Re-set rhythms together, whether in the morning or evening. Find ways to make spiritual disciplines fun and fresh. Use your freedom to enjoy times of prayer in nature and with new groups. If you are financially able to do so, make travel plans to Israel or Europe that place you in the steps of those in Scripture. I offer these encouragements to you not as an obligation, but as an invitation. We aren’t made to walk this world alone. Christ has given us himself, his Word, and one another. Let us lean into Christ together, growing in faith and trust in community.

No matter who we are we must find an answer to the ultimate question of life: “Who is Jesus?” Why is this the ultimate question? Because Jesus made some extravagant claims about himself which, if true, can have a life-changing impact. And not just for individuals, but for nations, as history has shown. When asked who Jesus is I come up with three answers that seem to me to be most important. If these things are true about Jesus then we must wrestle with what that means in our lives. Discovering who Jesus is is not simply an academic exercise. It is much more. So, allow me to give you my three answers and then three ways we must examine the claims of Christ if we want to see a radical change in our lives. Who is Jesus? He is the Son of God He is the Savior He is the Lord Jesus claimed to be the Son of God (Matthew 27:43; Mark 5:7; John 10:36, 14:28). The Jewish leaders who heard him understood Jesus’ claim to mean that he was equal with God (John 5:18). This is an extraordinary claim, unequalled in the world’s religions. But for an extraordinary claim to be proven true, extraordinary evidence is required. Jesus produced that evidence through miraculous hearings never before seen, like the blind and the lame being instantly cured (Matthew 11:5; Luke 7:22; John 9:32, 10:38). His final proof of his identity came when he was raised from the dead (Acts 17:3,31; Romans 4:25). If Jesus is the Son of God then certainly that means something significant. He means he is endowed with authority that no one else has. It means that if he requires something from us we would be foolish to ignore him or put him off. Indeed, he does require something from us, he requires something extraordinary from us. He requires that we believe in him (John 3:36; I John 3:23). Jesus is our Savior (II Peter 2:20; John 1:29; I John 4:14). The term, savior, is a particularly Jewish concept. We’ve heard it so much in our modern day that we simply think of a savior as one who saves someone from something bad. But under the ancient Jewish context from which the term comes it means something much more. Savior refers to a blood sacrifice for sin. The terms has its root in the Old Testament passages that prescribe a system of animal sacrifices to atone for sin. By calling Jesus our savior we are effectively saying that he is the sacrifice for our sins. That is, in fact, precisely what the New Testament writers claimed (Romans 3:25, Hebrews 2:17; I John 2:2). Jesus is the Lord (Romans 10:9; II Corinthians 4:5; Colossians 2:6; Hebrews 13:20; II Peter 1:2) . What does it mean to be Lord? It essentially means that he is a ruler, a king. But he is not just any king. Jesus is the king of kings, the king over all creation (I Timothy 6:15; Revelation 19:16). Jesus claimed lordship for himself after his resurrection when he told his disciples, “ALL authority on heaven and earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18). If logically follows that if Jesus is lord, then he has authority to demand anything from us. To use a word from days of old we can say that Jesus is lord and we are his subjects. Before I move on, stop for a moment and reflect about these three claims of Christ and what they mean. Jesus is the Son of God who has all authority. How did he exercise that authority? He died for our sin, becoming our savior and commands that we believe in him. These claims are extravagant, but his command is also very simple. Believe in him. If we refuse to believe in him then we deny his saving role, his lordship, and his deity. Finding Personal Meaning In Jesus’ Claims There are many people the world over and through history who have believed in these three claims of Christ, but his claims did not change their lives. That is because knowing who Jesus is is more than an intellectual exercise. Remember the words of James who said the “The demons believe and tremble” (James 2:19). There are three areas of our lives in which we must come to a right understanding of who Jesus is. When we do this our lives begin to radically change. When we do this we will know and experience God’s love and forgiveness. These there areas are: Intellectually—This means that we must get to know the claims of Jesus and information about his life, death, and resurrection. We must know what are sometimes called the “true facts” about Jesus. But caution is in order. A knowledge of Jesus is not enough. We need more than intellectual knowledge. Emotionally—When we really discover what Jesus has done for us, suffering on the cross for the payment of our sin, we should be hit in the emotions. We should feel shame and guilt for our sin and what it drove God to do in order to save us. Discovering the truth about his resurrection should give us joy knowing that his death was not in vain and that through his resurrection we have an eternal hope. But even if we experience both an intellectual and emotional change, having strong feelings about Jesus is not enough. Responsibly—Knowing and experiencing is not enough. It is what we do practically in the world around us that demonstrates that our intellectual and emotional change is a real spiritual experience. The person who calls himself a Christian and even uses flowery words to describe their faith, but do not openly live for him are not Christians in the right sense of the word. James said, “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works” (James 2:18). The Apostle John said, “Whoever says, ‘I know him’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked” (I John 2:4-6). Conclusion Have you answered the ultimate question? Have you grappled with the abundance of evidence for who Jesus is? A true understanding of who Jesus is will transform a person. It will transform you.

Big books full of Scripture, theology, and quotations from people long dead don’t normally sell well. Yet to my surprise, and the publisher’s, over a million copies of my 2004 book Heaven have sold. Innumerable readers, including pastors, have told me their views of the afterlife have radically changed. Why? In an age when people try to make doctrines more appealing by ignoring or twisting biblical truth, here’s the irony—the true biblical doctrine of Heaven is far more attractive than the dull, inhuman view of the afterlife that has long prevailed in evangelicalism. That off-putting perspective still imprisons many believers. Based on countless interactions I’ve had with readers of the book and others over the past sixteen years, here are eight persistent misconceptions about Heaven. 1. “We will spend eternity in the clouds.” After the final judgment, God will remake the universe itself and then relocate the present Heaven to the New Earth, where He will live with His people (Revelation 21:1–4). The promise of Heaven on earth shouldn’t surprise us, but it’s shocking and suspicious if we’ve always believed something else. Many throughout history understood this biblical doctrine, including more recent Reformed theologians such as Herman Bavinck, Cornelius Venema, Anthony Hoekema, and Albert Wolters. Sadly, the great majority of evangelicals have not read their books. Even those who have don’t always grasp the implications. At Bible college and seminary, my last New Testament classes ended with the final judgment in Revelation 20. In eschatology, we examined the pros and cons of a mid-trib rapture, and discussed the millennium, but we never talked about the New Earth, the central subject of Scripture’s last two chapters. So we paid zero attention to the place where we will live with Jesus and each other forever! Pastors who have read Heaven often contact me to share that their education was nearly identical. As humans, we’re no more drawn to a vague angelic realm than we are to eating gravel. We need to recover the biblical doctrine of Heaven, culminating in the New Earth. 2. “The Bible says very little about Heaven.” A Christian leader once visited my office, asking what I was researching. “A big book on Heaven,” I answered. He replied, “First Corinthians 2:9 says, ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.’ So what will you write about?” I gave my usual response: “You didn’t complete the sentence: ‘but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.’” When God reveals otherwise undiscoverable truths to us, we’d better pay attention. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever” (Deuteronomy 29:29). The Bible’s substantial information about the world to come belongs to us—and the Bible provides far more information than most realize (for example, Isaiah 60 is quoted twice in Revelation 22, suggesting it’s about the New Earth). God wants us to anticipate what awaits us. That’s why Peter says, “According to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13). 3. “We can learn about Heaven from people’s claims of going there.” A television network once called my office and asked, “Has Randy been to Heaven?” Our receptionist answered, “If he has, he’s never mentioned it. But he did do years of research in the Bible and church history.” The conversation ended abruptly: “We want to interview people who have actually been there.” Too often, people view accounts of visiting Heaven as gospel. Obviously, God can show someone the afterlife if He so chooses. But “it is appointed for man to die once” (Hebrews 9:27). Since these stories are told by people who will “die twice,” it seems likely that they did not truly die the first time, even if vital signs weren’t measurable. A person’s memories under heavy sedation—and his or her ability to distinguish dreams from reality—aren’t reliable, but God’s word is (John 17:17). The apostle Paul, who had been to Heaven, said, “This man was caught up into paradise . . . and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter” (2 Corinthians 12:3–4). Many books, however, claim to divulge secrets that, sadly, some readers believe instead of Scripture. 4. “Heaven now will be Heaven later.” When Christians die, they enter the present Heaven. “Grandma’s now in Heaven” refers to a temporary period between life on earth and the resurrection. Though the present Heaven is wonderful, “far better” than earth under the curse (Philippians 1:23), it is not the place we’re made for. Our destiny is a resurrected life on a resurrected earth: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. . . . I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them’” (Revelation 21:1–3). Heaven is wherever God dwells and His throne is, and God’s dwelling place and throne will be on the New Earth (Revelation 22:3). God’s ultimate plan is not to take us up to live with Him in His place (which happens at death). His plan is, rather, to come down after the resurrection to live with us forever in our place, the New Earth. As Jesus is God incarnate, so the New Earth will be Heaven incarnate. 5. “We’ll live forever without a body.” Plato believed that material things, including bodies, are evil, while immaterial things, such as souls, are good. What I call “Christoplatonism” infects many churches, teaching that human spirits are better off without bodies, and Heaven is a disembodied realm. Our inability to appreciate the physical nature of the resurrection robs believers of excitement for Heaven. God’s future plan of a renewed physical universe means we will live, eat and drink, laugh and play, rest and work, exercise our gifts as God’s image-bearers, and most importantly, be with, worship, and serve King Jesus. Jesus spoke of the “renewal of all things” (Matthew 19:28 NIV). Peter preached that Christ will remain in Heaven “until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets” (Acts 3:21). Yet somehow, we’ve overlooked an entire biblical vocabulary. Reconcile. Redeem. Restore. Recover. Return. Renew. Resurrect. God plans to physically restore His entire creation, including us, earth, and animals (Isaiah 11:6–9; 65:17, 25; Romans 8:19–23). 6. “Heaven will be boring.” Believing that eternal life consists of endless harp strumming furthers Satan’s strategy “to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling” (Revelation 13:6). Thinking that Heaven will be boring betrays a heresy—that God is boring. Nonsense! God made our taste buds, adrenaline, the nerve endings that convey pleasure to our brains, our imaginations, and our capacity for happiness and excitement. “No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him” (Revelation 22:3 NIV). Servants have things to do, places to go, people to see. Our most common everyday activities will be worship, punctuated by the joy of joining the multitudes to praise Him. First Corinthians 10:31 will apply just as much in eternity as it does now: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” We can worship God now by working, painting, playing, reading, writing, and enjoying every other innocent activity. How much more on a New Earth where righteousness reigns? 7. “We won’t be us anymore or remember our former lives.” The idea that we’ll lose our identities in Heaven is Hindu, not Christian. Resurrection will forever reestablish us as glorified human individuals. Christ’s resurrection is our prototype. He proclaimed, “It is I myself” (Luke 24:39). When Thomas said, “My Lord and my God,” he knew he was speaking to the same Jesus he’d lived with for years. Job said, “After my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself” (Job 19:26–27). You will be you in Heaven. Who else would you be? Since we’ll give an account of our lives on earth, we must remain us, and our memories will have to be better, not worse. Scripture gives no indication of a memory wipe causing us not to recognize family and friends. In fact, if we wouldn’t know our loved ones, the comfort of an afterlife reunion, taught in 1 Thessalonians 4:14–18, would be no comfort at all. 8. “Heaven will be a spiritual realm with no human culture.” A Bible college professor took offense at my suggestion that culture—including inventions, concerts, drama, and sports—will likely be part of the New Earth. But if we will be God’s resurrected image-bearers living on a resurrected earth, why wouldn’t they be? We’re told Heaven is a city (Hebrews 11:10; 13:14). Cities have buildings, art, music, commerce, science, and technology. And of course, cities have people engaged in gatherings, conversations, work, and play. Heaven is also a country (Hebrews 11:16). Countries have land, animals, rulers, and citizens who are both diverse and unified. We’re told “the kings of the earth will bring their glory into” the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:24). Culture is the natural, God-intended product of His calling for mankind to rule over creation. If we believe Scripture’s teaching that mankind and earth will exist in physical form, as the entire doctrine of resurrection dictates, then culture must continue. How could it not? Best Is Yet to Come Since the resurrection awaits God’s children, we haven’t passed our peak happiness and never will. There’s no need for bucket lists, because our new universe adventures will far exceed this life’s. We really will live happily ever after. That’s not wishful thinking. It’s the blood-bought promise of Jesus. We should daily look forward to a world without evil, suffering, or death, where God will live with us and wipe away our tears forever (Revelation 21:4). Anticipating the glorious realities of the resurrected earth has breathtaking implications for our present happiness and our sense of the far-reaching scope of the gospel message. Let’s live upon Heaven’s joys now, jettisoning unbiblical and unworthy views of Heaven, and believing that the best truly is yet to come. Browse more resources on the topic of Heaven, and see Randy’s related books, including Heaven. Randy Alcorn (@randyalcorn) is the author of fifty-some books and the founder and director of Eternal Perspective Ministries.

Don’t Let Shame Destroy You Levi Lusko A couple of things. The first is that next week is Mother's Day and we invite you back. Fresh Life Church is a place to be Mother's Day. Very special worship experience planned. So don't miss out on that. Then secondly, two weeks from now we're going to be kicking off a brand new series that we've been gearing up for a while called Thank You, Next. Thank You, Next. And we're going to be with a little help from Ariana preaching a series that's all around this idea, this thought. What's the context to some of the most famous passages in scripture? And we're going to be looking at some of those verses that a lot of us know, a lot of people around the world know. And we're going to be trying to understand them in their natural habitat. We're going to be like getting our Steve Irwin on. And we're not going to go to the zoo to look at them, we're going to go to see them in the Savannah. We're going to go see them in the Australian Outback and see what the verses around them or even the whole chapter kind of helps inform what they actually mean versus just them being plucked out and put on a board and hung on the wall. Thank You, Next is gearing up. So we invite you back for that. And then lastly, big news. Movement Conference is coming 2022 summer, August 4th through the 7th. And this Wednesday is a big day for a Movement Conference. There's a price jump on Wednesday at midnight on the 4th. The price jumps from $200 to $250. So get your registration in before that. And while we're talking about Movement Conference, we're excited that we have also added to the lineup Phil Wickham, who is going to be with us for Movement Conference, live and in person in Big Fork, Montana. Phil has been a friend for a long time. And God is just using his life in extraordinary ways. And we're really excited that he's going to be coming out with his band and part of a Movement Conference. Man, if you're not like listening to Phil or listening to Crowder and throwing some Kari Jobe together and Cody Carnes getting your Movement Conference playlist on, you're crazy. These guys are unbelievable. Their songs, it's just going to be incredible. So if you're keeping track, that is an amazing lineup for Movement Conference. The whole thing here, I mean it just keeps getting better and better and better-er-er-er-er. Fresh Life Worship and Chris Quilala. And y'all, we’r e not even done yet. Look at that square, still TBD. We know it, you just don't know it yet. And it's going to be sick. So get signed up. All right, grab your Bibles. Thank you, team. We appreciate you. And we're going to be in this message continuing a conversation that we began on Easter talking about shame. And if you have a Bible with you, turn with me to Psalm Chapter 34. Title of my message is don't let shame hold you back. Want to talk to you about how to break free from the grip of shame. Because it is one thing to believe that shames power was canceled. And it's a whole different thing to live functionally out of that. Because you can know something and not live out of it at the same time. Now by way of recap if you weren't here with us when we began this conversation, shame is basically guilt's evil little twin. Guilt takes you on a trip and the trip that you can end up on, even after guilt power has been canceled by the cross, is called shame. Where guilt deals primarily with what you have done, shame wants to talk about who you are. Guilt says if you're listening to it, I did wrong. And that's a good thing. By the way, conviction is a gift. The awareness of guilt is to know that you're not a sociopath. That you can feel wrong. You should be thankful if the Holy Spirit lets you know that there's guilt in your life because then you can do what you need to with that guilt. It's a wonderful thing. I did wrong. Oh my goodness. Oh, thank you, God. Now I can do something about it. Shame is completely different. Shame doesn't say you did wrong, shame says you are wrong. Shame doesn't say you did bad, shame says you are bad. I am bad. I am wrong. I didn't make a mistake, I am a mistake. Do you see what I'm talking about? Guilt primarily deals with your legal standing where shame concerns itself with your identity. Guilt can be understood, the facts of guilt can be understood by a newspaper reporter. Anybody who's into journalism understands the who, what, when, where, why, and how. That's how you figure out guilt. What you did, when you did it, why you did it, who was with you when you did it, and what was going on at the time, right? Shame is far less logical. Shame doesn't have to make sense on paper. As you write the story of it shame doesn't always even have a direct one to one correspondence. You can end up in shame for something that actually on paper you shouldn't feel shame for. But try telling that to your emotional self. Shame doesn't make sense and it doesn't need to because it's essentially an emotional trauma. Where does the stuff come from? Because shame is bad, right? It's like they don't want that. I'm hearing that I'm like, I don't want that. We don't want guilt either, but guilt is in our lives as well. But fortunately guilt can be taken care of. But what we need to understand is that long after guilt problem has been solved there can still be the lingering effects of shame. And so where does it come from? It comes from, of course, sins that we commit. It also comes from sins that other people commit, things that people do wrong to us. We did nothing wrong, but now we can end up walking in the smoldering lingering effects of shame years and even decades after the event is over. And that's because of sin other people have committed. But then you can also just accumulate wounds and nicks and bruises from living on a fallen planet. And consequently, now you can be dealing with shame through no fault of your own or someone you know, but just because life can be brutal because it's fallen and because it's cursed. There is a sense in which this world is not what it was meant to be. And now you just are dealing with what you had this blood disorder, you had this issue, you got in this car accident. You didn't ask for the drunk driver to hit. You didn't ask for this to take place. You didn't know there was going to be black ice. And there's almost not a week where I don't get a letter from someone just dealing with pain and learning to find power in it, which is always God's plan. But you can if it's not carefully treated develop shame and now your identity is somehow linked to this brutality. We're just recapping here. I like what Daniel Dewitt had to say on the subject. This is profound. You might want to take a picture of this quotation. He said, "Guilt is the wound. Shame is the scar. Guilt is isolated to the individual. Shame is contagious. The child whose father is imprisoned, the wife whose husband is unfaithful, the daughter whose mother is abusive, they all share in the shame. They feel their self-worth is lessened. Shame wraps its arms around their ankles tightly, allowing them to walk but never to run. Shame says, you need to hide. You're no good. You deserve to live in darkness. Come with me, I'll lead the way". Powerful. And if you're not careful and if you don't face it and if you don't take the tools that God has given you to deal with it, shame will continue to haunt you long after guilt shadow is no longer on you. Long after your guilt has been dealt with, you can still be bound up in shame. And what I think we need to discover in order for shame not to hold us back is to discover the sound of shame. Because just like a healthy soul has a sound, and by the way, that sound is praise. That sound is a song. That sound is worship. So the idea of shame in our life will always have a sound. What does shame sound? Like it sounds like I can't because. I would if I fill in the blank. It sounds like I am defined by my worst day. You don't understand, if you had been through blank you wouldn't blank or you would blank as well. Or it sounds like I am only as good as my last accomplishment. I'll probably fail you when I need you or I'm not good enough. Or I don't deserve blessings because. Or I will never That's what shame sounds like. And where does shame lead? If we follow shame on this trip that guilt began and now we are on, where will it go? The answer is the grave. Shame only ends in death. Like the man in Proverbs who was invited to a party, he was excited to get an invitation. He's like Oh my gosh, I got invited to a party. And he takes the invitation, and he shines his shoes, and he gets this outfit on only at the end of the chapter to discover that he was invited to a banquet in the grave. And that only Proverbs 9:18, "The dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell". Proverbs, as you might know, is personifying wisdom versus foolishness. And while in Proverbs 9 the actual invitation was from a foolish woman, we could substitute that for a shameful woman. When you listen to shames voice, when you follow it will feel seductive at the time because of victim mentality or living out of a wound or living out of sin at times can feel in some sort of a sado masochistic kind of way like appropriate. Like I'm suffering and I deserve to suffer. I'm just paying for the sins of my past. Or I'll never see my grandchildren say because if I'd have been a better grandfather earlier on or whatever we might say might feel right and somehow feel good. To listen to her voice is always to end up at a party in the grave. A grave that's the death of a relationship, the death of a calling, the death of a dream, the death of what Jesus wants for your life today to feel like. So I don't know about you, but I think shame has got to go. God has so much more for us. When we think about the choose your own adventure path of shame, because here we are saved, free from guilt, no longer needing to continue on living lives of shame. We see that fork in the road so vividly when Jesus rose. And I said on Easter that the Resurrection, which today is still very exciting the thought of life over death, that when he came out of the grave he did so to open up for us lives freed from shame. Not just guilt but from shame as well. And I think there's a lot of Christians who have been saved for decades but are still bound up in that shame. But we see this picture. Here's Jesus who's come out of the grave and all 12 of his disciples let him down. We know that they all forsook him, they fled him. Only John had the courage to show up at the cross. And yet, what a vivid contrast if you take the 11 and then you take Judas and what the difference was between those two. Now, we know they all hid. We know they all found their way to cope with the shame before the 11 eventually found the freedom from shame they needed in Jesus. And then could be filled with the boldness and could be filled with the confidence. Because friends, on the other side of your shame is you being a bright light in a city on a hill. Truly saying I've got nothing to be ashamed of. And now I can get on shining my light like I'm supposed to. But Judas feeling the same feelings of I'm a disappointment and I let Jesus down. I'm not just cowardly, I am a coward. I didn't just commit betrayal, I am a betrayer. He, the Bible says, took his shame and instead of bringing it to Jesus to deal with he took it to where? The grave. That's what shame sounds like. And where does shame lead? If we follow shame on this trip that guilt began and now we are on, where will it go? The answer is the grave. Shame only ends in death. Like the man in Proverbs who was invited to a party, he was excited to get an invitation. He's like Oh my gosh, I got invited to a party. And he takes the invitation, and he shines his shoes, and he gets this outfit on only at the end of the chapter to discover that he was invited to a banquet in the grave. And that only Proverbs 9:18, "The dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell". Proverbs, as you might know, is personifying wisdom versus foolishness. And while in Proverbs 9 the actual invitation was from a foolish woman, we could substitute that for a shameful woman. When you listen to shames voice, when you follow it will feel seductive at the time because of victim mentality or living out of a wound or living out of sin at times can feel in some sort of a sado masochistic kind of way like appropriate. Like I'm suffering and I deserve to suffer. I'm just paying for the sins of my past. Or I'll never see my grandchildren say because if I'd have been a better grandfather earlier on or whatever we might say might feel right and somehow feel good. To listen to her voice is always to end up at a party in the grave. A grave that's the death of a relationship, the death of a calling, the death of a dream, the death of what Jesus wants for your life today to feel like. So I don't know about you, but I think shame has got to go. God has so much more for us. When we think about the choose your own adventure path of shame, because here we are saved, free from guilt, no longer needing to continue on living lives of shame. We see that fork in the road so vividly when Jesus rose. And I said on Easter that the Resurrection, which today is still very exciting the thought of life over death, that when he came out of the grave he did so to open up for us lives freed from shame. Not just guilt but from shame as well. And I think there's a lot of Christians who have been saved for decades but are still bound up in that shame. But we see this picture. Here's Jesus who's come out of the grave and all 12 of his disciples let him down. We know that they all forsook him, they fled him. Only John had the courage to show up at the cross. And yet, what a vivid contrast if you take the 11 and then you take Judas and what the difference was between those two. Now, we know they all hid. We know they all found their way to cope with the shame before the 11 eventually found the freedom from shame they needed in Jesus. And then could be filled with the boldness and could be filled with the confidence. Because friends, on the other side of your shame is you being a bright light in a city on a hill. Truly saying I've got nothing to be ashamed of. And now I can get on shining my light like I'm supposed to. But Judas feeling the same feelings of I'm a disappointment and I let Jesus down. I'm not just cowardly, I am a coward. I didn't just commit betrayal, I am a betrayer. He, the Bible says, took his shame and instead of bringing it to Jesus to deal with he took it to where? The grave. So what do we need to know? We need to know that in order to not let shame hold us back, we need to be able to find our light. To find our light. Spoiler alert, the light that is meant to shine from you does not come from you. The light that's meant to come out of your life is not something that can originate inside of you. So in order for us to be the light, we have to stop staring at ourselves. Who or what do we stare at then? That's why we've turned to Psalm 34. King David is going to show us how. Now we're going to not just read the Psalm, and we won't read it all because of time, I encourage you to read the remainder of the verse on your own time. You are allowed to read the Bible when you're not in church. Brand new law, just got passed. So amazing week. Psalm 34 verse 1 starts out, "I will bless the Lord at all times". But notice there's a heading. Back up and above it you'll see it. Look at right there on the screen. You get context clues. This is a geotag. This is like when you go in your iPhoto library and you swipe up on a photo and it tells you what kind of settings were being utilized and if you've allowed it in your geolocation, where it was taken, and even faces that were in it, right? This is pretty cool. We're told this Psalm was written when he pretended madness before Abimelech, who drove him away and he departed. This is interesting. This is a sorted event in the life of David, much earlier than when he was driven out of the kingdom by his own son Absalom, who staged a rebellion and tried to take the throne from him. His father-in-law, Saul, had done the same thing to him when he was a young boy. Just after he had slain Goliath and then led in many different battles, the children of Israel into victory and into success. And for his efforts he had been given Saul's daughter Michael as his wife. And he had been given many rewards. Saul began to grow jealous of David. Saul began to see David as a threat. Instead of celebrating that someone had done all this, that he had raised up and given opportunity to, he began to despise David. Literally the Bible says, "His eye began to grow suspicious toward David". How you look at things dictates how you respond to things. And David began to be eyed by Saul, who began to give in to the green-eyed monster of envy and was dealing with his own unprocessed shame as well. No doubt. And as a result, David who refused to lay a hand against King Saul, ended up having to live on the run. A chapter of his life repeated many, many different times. And during that time he kept trusting God, kept following God. And he refused to kill Saul even though he was given many opportunities. And finally it seems David had grown tired, because he first told a number of lies at a place called Knob. And then he finally decided, this is exhausting. I'm going to leave Israel and go live with the Philistines. David living in the land of the Philistines is unthinkable. It's like Batman and the Joker subletting an apartment together in Harlem. It's like what is going on? Like dude, you can't go to the Philistines. And it just seems David just was tired and run down. And we all have these kind of days as well. And once there he was quickly arrested, quickly put into custody, and then he realized in panic that he was going to get killed by the King of the Philistines. And so he pretended he was crazy. He led his saliva run down his beard and he started acting like a stark raving lunatic because he knew the Philistines had this weird superstition about putting crazy people to death or even being around him because they thought he was contagious. And so David does an incredible act. And the Academy award goes to David for acting like he's insane. And they boot him and evict him out of the country. This is just awesome. Like these stories are just like, what the heck? Like David and Goliath I know. Saul, all I knew a little bit about. David pretending he's crazy and beside himself, I did not know. But he's back in Israel now and he's feeling terrible. Terrible for the lies. He's feeling terrible for not trusting God and going to the Philistines. And then having a lie to the Philistines to get out of it because you know what? Lies are contagious too. Tell one lie, then you tell another lie. Then you have to keep track of which lie you told what version to. And eventually you end up like legion, many different versions of yourself. You're not united in your own person. David, you could have pictured him in a cave. And what's happening now? The shame is setting in. Big man after God's own heart you turned out to be. Oh yeah, sweet shepherd of Israel. The shame. The shame. The shame. And what does he do to deal with his shame? Notice, let's read together. "I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make its boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear of it and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord and he heard me and delivered me from all my fears. They looked to him and were radiant. And their faces were not ashamed. This poor man cried out and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all of his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear him and delivers them". What a promise to think about in your home. "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who trusts in him. Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, there is no want to those who fear him. The young lions lack and suffer hunger, but those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing". And then if you jump down to verse 15, "The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their cry". So Father, we thank you for this Psalm. We thank you for this Psalm and the knowledge of the circumstances under which it was written. And we pray like you wrestled David out of the jaws of shame, you would do the same for us as we consider how to not let shame hold us back. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, since we want to be salt and light and we know shame will always stop us from that because shame makes us hide. And as Jesus said in Matthew Chapter 5, we are not meant to light a lamp and then put a bucket over it. We're not meant to hide that light, which is what shame is intending for all of us, to not be the light that we're meant to be. What do we need to do on a daily basis to get past shame's power? Write this down. Number one, you need to constantly remember your new identity. My new identity. Because shame is trying to speak to a version of ourselves that we no longer are. The reality is at times shame speaks things that are true or talks about things that are true. Talks about sins that did happen. And it wants us to see ourselves through the lens of who we no longer were. Now this also involves things others did to us and just all just complete boldface lies. I'm unworthy of love. I'm damaged goods. No one would ever want me. But at times shame also does say, you are this because you did this. And when you think, well, I did do that, it's tempting to give into it. So what you have to constantly keep doing is remembering your new identity. Ephesians 5 verse 8, "For you once were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light". So what this means is you have to remember regardless of what you've been through or regardless of what you've done or what's been done to you, the moment you trusted in Christ you became a new creation. And God looks at you through the lens of the imago dei, the image of God that is inside of you. So shame is speaking about all these different things. Don't blur the issue. Remember, regardless of anything you've done or that's been done to you, who are you? You are now a child of God. You are now a new creation like Paul told the Corinthians. Now this was a screwed up place full of, we know just some of the things we know of going on, an incest just on a Friday night. Incest, orgies involving men with men, men with women. We know people having soirees with their mother in-laws and their sons-in-laws. I mean, just unbelievable stuff. And the gospel is preached. And Paul didn't ever say get yourself right. Get your sexual ethic right. Get your life sorted out and then you can be saved. He just went in and said, here's what Jesus did for you. Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Would you like to receive salvation? And those who came to Christ knew that there was going to be changes, but they knew that after they began to know Jesus. And so Paul in the books of 1 and 2 Corinthians is having to sort all this stuff out. Not as a way to earn salvation, but showing them who they are on the inside and now what that means for their daily life. And so he makes this radical statement in 1 Corinthians 6. He says you know that no murderer, no adulterer, no fornicator, no homosexual, no unclean person it's going to be in heaven, right? And it's the shocking statement. It sucks all the oxygen out of the room. And then he says, and such were some of you. But he has saved you. He has watched you. He has changed you. He has justified you. The point is Paul was saying all that as a gotcha. Because the moment he chose no adulterer is going heaven, well, it was nice knowing you. All right. I've put things ahead of God. No fornicator is going to be? What a provocative statement. There will be no greedy person in heaven. Right. No one has ever told the lie is going to be in heaven. And you go oh my God, there's no liars in heaven? I'm done for. No adulterers are in heaven? Screwed, right? All of us are, because Jesus even took it a step further and said, have you lusted after a woman in your heart? Newsflash, that's spiritual adultery and there are no adulterers in heaven Paul says. And such were some of you, but he has saved you. He has washed you. He has cleansed you in the blood of Jesus Christ. Meaning you are not those things, even if you did those things yesterday. If you do any of those things tomorrow. It's not who you are. You can't lose through bad behavior what you didn't earn through good behavior. So the motivation to live like God wants us to live isn't to earn a standing before or to get rid of shame that's still lying about us. It's remembering we are not those things. We are children of the King. Such were some of you, but we're not darkness. We're light. That's how God sees us. So what is the process of remembering your new identity to combat shame on a daily basis? It's you seeing you like your God sees you. Write that down at the top of your journal. I need to see me like God sees me. And if I'm a Christian, what does God see when he looks at me? He sees Jesus. Because on the cross he saw me. And so now in me he sees Jesus. He doesn't see your sin. So how dare you hold yourself in shame that God doesn't hold you in? Levi, I know God might be able to forgive me but I can't forgive me. How dare you think that your opinion matters more than God's opinion? Because he doesn't hold you accountable to those sins anymore, so why would you? So what does that mean, your new identity? It means on a daily basis stopping the scripts that shame speaks over you in their tracks. 2 Corinthians 10:5, "Casting down their arguments, casting down every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God thinks it's better than him, knows more than him, and wants to belittle the significance of the cross". What do we do? We bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. I'm not joking when I say that you should begin to verbally stop yourself. That's not true. It's running through your head. Speak to it out loud. That's not true. In the name of Jesus, that's a lie. I don't believe that. I don't agree with that. Shame has no place on me. Come on, take off that old garment. Take off those shame clothes. We are learning to shed the garments of shame by walking in our new identity. As verse 13 of Psalm 34 puts it, "Do not let your tongue speak evil". Here's the truth, Psalm 103:12, "As far as the east is from the west, so far he has removed our transgressions from us". Shame wants you to feel unworthy, but the truth is because of Jesus Christ you are worthy. Worthy of love, worthy of care, and that's exactly what you've been given. That's why our second way to not let shame hold you back is empathy. We're going to lead ourselves with empathy. Did you know that Romans chapter 2 verse 4 says that it's the goodness of God that leads us to repentance? Another translation says it's God's kindness that leads us to salvation. Meaning no one has ever been saved because someone was so harsh and so argumentative that eventually they said uncle and got saved. It's that kindness of God that causes us to repent. And repentance literally means a change of mind. A lot of the shame is in our minds. A lot of the shame is in the thoughts that we think, which is why we have to constantly be combating that with thoughts about our new identity. But we need to do so with ourselves gently, because we will not be able to get ourselves to change without that kindness, without that empathy. And a part of empathy is common ground. And relating, hey, what are you feeling? I get that. It's not crazy that you feel that way. I understand if I'd have been through what you've been through, I might be tempted to feel shame as well. So we need to be kind with ourselves. This involves me saying I understand, Levi, why you would feel the way that you do. I understand what you're saying. I hear what you're saying. It does make sense. Because what I'm trying to get you to see and my counselor told me this, you can never fight shame with shame. So I can't shame myself into not feeling ashamed. It's the limbic brain fighting the limbic brain. It's all emotion. It's all feeling. It's all panic. It's all fight or fright. But we have to calm down enough to listen and to care and to hear what we're feeling and to pay attention to it and ask those questions. Where is this coming from? How old does this feel? What developed this shame mechanism? What developed this tendency to want to hide? To want to armor up? To want to belittle myself or want to lash out to make it a self fulfilling prophecy so that you treat me like I suspect you will in the end anyway because of my shame? So when we lead ourselves with empathy, we talk to ourselves the way that we would talk to someone we love. Imagine someone you love came to you and began to articulate shame to you. What would you say to them? Would say to them tenderly, dear heart, that makes sense what you're saying but here's the truth. And you would lovingly speak to it. Why are you so much meaner to you than you would be to someone you love? Jesus says that as we love ourselves we are to love our neighbors. So that means we do need to love ourselves. And if God loves us, then we need to love us. And see there's value in us and tenderly care for and shepherd ourselves. That's why David was telling himself to bless the Lord at all times. To keep God's praise always in his mouth. He was leading himself with empathy. The third, jot this down, community. If you want to break free from shames hold on your life you need other people. Did you catch it? What David said in the Psalm chapter 34? "Let us exalt his name together". David was feeling the shame but he said to the other people, "Magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name". He was in the cave, but he didn't stay in the cave alone. His mighty men came to him. His friends came to him. Other people who would defend him, they came to him. He had a posse. He had a crew like Jesus Christ who had Peter and James and John. David had his giant slayers. And he didn't have to face that battle with shame alone. So why would you think you would be victorious when you're meant to do so with two or three gathered together, united together in the battle against shame? Write this reference down. 1 John 1:7, "But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanses us from all sin". It's a powerful thought to think about us together breaking free from shame's power by no longer struggling in the dark with this battle that we're facing of how unworthy we feel and how difficult it is when there's an incredible strength that comes from the community of the fellowship. The Church of people that we can admit we are weak to and have them say, you're not crazy and I feel that too. Brene Brown, shame researcher and prolific author, said that shame needs these three things to grow. She says if you get these three things mixed together in a Petri dish the result of it in the science experiment is always going to be shame. Secrecy, silence, and judgment. And the devil wants you to keep your sins a secret so he can strangle you with them in silence. And then you begin to judge yourself, which is the voice of the accuser. One of the words for the devil is Satan and Satan literally means accuser, accuser of God's presence. He's accusing, you do this. The moment you sinned, which he tempted you to do. He's like, do this. You'll feel great. Do this, it'll be awesome. And you're like, all right. And you do it and he's like stupid. God, look what he did. You can't show your face around here. And so what does man do? Man hides. You're right. I don't deserve. It's really a tale of three trees, isn't it? Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We took the fruit from that tree. So what does Adam and Eve completely start doing when the enemy accuses them? They go to the other tree and pull the fig leaves and they hide among the trees. As God comes, God wouldn't want to walk with me anymore so they hide from God. And so what does God do? He sends his son Jesus to hang on a tree and have the shame paid for so that we can take off the garments of shame, take off the fig leaves, and no longer in secrecy say to one another, this is me. This is my struggles. This is my fight. So we can all say to each other, me too. Come on, I got your back. I'm weak too. I've been there. I've been there. I've been there. I've been there. I've been there. I've been there. I've been there. But we get to speak our new identity over each other. That's why you logged on today so we can say to you, you are a new creation. Come on, you're a love child of God. Come on, you're worth fighting for. You're not the bad things that you've done. You're not the hard things that you've been through. Some of those things may have consequences that are going to be a process. Paul the apostle, it was a limp that he walked with every time he thought about Stephen's face. He was there when Stephen was stoned to death before Christ. You don't think that was a part of his testimony? You don't think Paul, who told us to take every thought captive, didn't have to exercise that? Every time as he was falling asleep he saw the look on Stephen's face in his mind. You don't think there was a temptation to see and to feel that shame as he would describe himself as the chief of sinners and a tendency at times to go back into that shame cycle and to feel despair? But what did he do? He told us his story. He says, I was a blasphemer. I was an insolent man. He says, I tore down the Church of Jesus Christ. And every time you tell your story, you break shame's power. Every time you pipe up and say, here's where I've been. Here's what I've done. Here's me at my worst. I was taken advantage of. I was treated badly. I developed a shame mechanism. I'm telling you it breaks shames power to speak about it. It cannot handle. Nothing sanitizes like sunlight. And this is not a church where we all have to keep our shame a secret. This is a church where we can say, here's what I'm struggling with. This is me. This is what God's doing in my story. And when we open up in this community, we become a church presided over by someone whose name was the friend of sinners. Someone who is willing to touch and to be touched by those who need his love. And then fourthly, and we're almost done and we're going to pray for God's power to hit that hard reset in our hearts. That like Paul's selfishness scales would fall from our eyes. Holy Spirit in me, write that down. How do I break free from shame's power? Yes, this new identity and empathy and community, but it's the Holy Spirit in me that if we listen to his voice, because shame speaks like a tornado. Shame speaks like an earthquake. Shame speaks like a fire. But there is still, small voice of the Holy Spirit who only has one thing to say to you and it's this. You're my son. You're my daughter. You're my son. You're my daughter. And there is nothing you can ever do to make your father stop loving you. Romans 8:15, "You did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear". What kind of spirit did you receive? The spirit of adoption. "Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out Abba, Father". Tell me there is a greater picture of true love than adoption and I'll tell you it's not true. I love all my kids, but I didn't know what I was loving when I got them. To adopt a child is to know what you're getting and want it. And to say, I choose you. Your father adopted you. He saw you and he didn't hope you'd get it together. He saw you with your brokenness. He saw you with your pain. He saw you with your trauma. And he said I choose. You and every time you're tempted to say, I'm not worthy. You avert your eyes. You don't look him in the eye. You don't want to show up at church. You won't be around your Christian friends for a while because you feel unworthy. You feel dirty. You feel damaged. If you listen to the Spirit, he's saying you're my child. You're my child. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. So shame is not where your story ends. And if you find your light, that's what you do when you take a photo if you're a model. You find the light and then you work your angles. Find your light, work your angles. Find your light, work your angles. Find your lights. David said, "I will magnify the Lord. I will sing to the Lord. I will bless the Lord. And they who looked to Him," verse 5, "were radiant. Their faces were not ashamed". You know what's funny about looking away from the light? Shadows start to collect. But when you look into the light, there is no shadow as I look at it because the light drives away all the shadows. The shadow of shame can't stay when you're looking into the eyes of your Heavenly Father. And I love the way the story of Peter illustrates this so well. I'll never let you down, Jesus. He's a guy identified by his accomplishment. Don't worry, God, I got this. Brings a sword to that, Jesus said, I'm going to get arrested. Well, I'm packing heat then. Conceal carry or not, I'm bringing it, right? And he shows up in the garden and he tries to defend Jesus. And he ends up running away. And Jesus rebukes him. Some people think that Jesus's rebuke stung and that was a part of the shame for Peter of him in the fire of the high priest, the courtyard of Caiaphas' house denying Jesus three times. And the shame he would have felt after I let Jesus down. I denied him three times. The rooster crowed. And he said, I'm going fishing. I'll never be... he can forgive me, sure. I know he forgave me. But the shame. So now he's fishing, which is what Jesus called him away from, by the way. Jesus comes to him in John 21 and he does this amazing miracle where the fish get multiplied, get huge catch fish. And then he cooks Peter breakfast and the rest of the disciples. You're not mad at me? You don't want to berate me? You don't want to tell me I'm out? He says, come eat. And that's what Jesus says to you today. Come and eat. Come eat with me. Come hang out with me. Look me in the eyes. And there he says, I have a question for you. And he's like oh, here comes, right? Why'd you let me down like that? How could you? Are you ashamed of yourself? And instead Jesus says, Peter, do you still love me? Do you love me more than these? Which I think he's speaking to the fish. You love me more than what I called you away from still? Are you still willing to follow? Do you still want to follow me? Do you want to be used as a preacher? Peter said, are you kidding me? There's no way you could ever want me to be a preacher after I let you down like that? He says, do you still love me? Are you still interested? Because if you are, I am. It's as simple as that. If you are, I am. Follow me. Go feed my sheep. Go take care of, nothing's changed. You think you let me down? You didn't let me down. I knew this was coming from before I ever called you. Look me in the eyes, see I'm not mad. I made you breakfast, bro. Hang out with me and then you got some sermons to do. This changes nothing. All the things that you think are a barrier to you shining the light of the Father is why he picked you. He wants to overcome those thorns. He wants to overcome those weaknesses and to use you. So when you keep your eyes on him, when you find your light it dispels the shadow. And then you can illuminate the world with a light that's borrowed. Because like the moon, we don't have any light all our own. That's why Jesus said, you're the salt of the world. How many of you love the taste of salt? Nobody. We love what salt brings out. Salt is like the moon. It's not about it, it's about what it brings out and what's his worth. So as we keep our eyes on Jesus, we have that light to shine to the world. And that is why today is the last day shame has held us back in Jesus' name. And Father, we thank you. We thank you for the calling to glow, to shine, to season. To no longer be hidden by shame, but to walk with you. To eat with you. To receive from you all you have for us. If you're listening to this message and you would say I respond to this, I don't want to let shame hold me back anymore. Could I just ask you to raise a hand up in the air? Just honesty. I resonate with this. I hear shame's voice speaking and I'm going to take those thoughts captive. Speaking my new identity in community with empathy as the Holy Spirit leads me. Thank you, Father. Bless these. Bless these. Set them free. May you anoint them with oil. May you cover them. May you be their shield and exceeding reward. May you pull them under your wings. You could put your hands down. And I want to invite now those who have never made a decision to follow Jesus to do so. Today's your day of a new beginning. If you never accepted Jesus into your heart or having known some verses and known some things about God but having wandered, today is your day to rededicate your life to him. I'm going to pray a prayer. And I'm going to invite you to make this your faith. To make this your faith moment. Your salvation as you invite Jesus into your heart. Say this with us. Church, pray with us: Jesus, I accept you as my savior. Your blood is the payment for my sin. Your resurrection, my source of power. I turned for my sins. I turned to you in faith. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for new life. I give you mine. Your sins don’t define you, and shame has no power over you. Learn about how your identity is found in Jesus’ sacrifice, not in your failures. Main Scripture: Psalms 34:1-10 , 15

As a leader, you probably think your people are the biggest obstacle to change in your church or organization. Ready for a surprise? Sometimes the biggest obstacle to change is you. And the longer you’ve led, the more that’s true. Why? Two reasons. First, you’ve led for a while, which means you’ve settled into patterns and ways of doing things that feel comfortable. And that makes it harder to change. Second, you may have had success doing what you’ve done in the past. I realize these days, given several years of crisis, that success may not be what it once was. But at least you knew you could do it. Success is wonderful, but it also makes you conservative – less willing to take risks and adapt. The more you have, the less you’re willing to lose. That’s true in money and possessions. It’s also true in leadership and growth. Nobody wants to roll backward. Currently, we’re preparing for some of the biggest changes in our company since we started it a few years ago. Over the next few months, we’ll be rolling out not just a brand new podcast network, revamped website, app, and brand, we’ll be changing our entire business model. Hopefully to serve leaders even better (I think you’re going to love what’s coming). But, to my surprise, I found myself resisting some of the change and a few ideas my team was generating. What’s going on? I asked myself. I ended up embracing the change (with enthusiasm), and generating ideas of my own to help advance it, but in the process, I uncovered some questions to ask yourself when you’re leading change. Once you answer these questions, you can see past any smokescreen between you and the future. And then you’ll be free to seize the opportunities in front of you. Success makes you less willing to take risks and adapt. The more you have, the less you’re willing to lose. 1. Why am I saying no? It’s one thing to say no. It’s another thing to figure out why you said it. In redesigning our website, we’ll be turning off our post-share counter and comments. I really resisted these changes. Some of my posts have been shared tens of thousands of times, and it’s a signal to a reader that the content is popular. I also resisted turning comments off my posts. But the team had a point: Privacy changes over the last year or so by Google, Facebook, and Apple have made tracking new posts far less reliable, and the plugins we use to track shares create other problems on our website. In addition, because of all these changes over the last year, almost all the share counting has been inaccurately low. And, how people share content has changed. Understanding all of that was true, I’d still look at posts like the one below with 25K shares and 1600 comments and think, “Why can’t we just get back to the way it was?” Then I realized I was starting to sound as old as the two or three decades in age that separate me and most of my team. It took some more team discussion, but I finally realized why I was resisting these changes: I use the number of shares, the post traffic, and the comments to help me (and the team) figure out what’s resonating, what’s not, and what the leaders we serve are thinking. I didn’t realize that until the third round of discussion on this, but once I did, everything clicked – for the team and myself. While we don’t know how to fix the share issue (so that’s going to disappear), we’re going to move comments to a much better forum where I can continue to monitor what people are talking about and participate in the discussion in a more meaningful way. In addition, we’re going to set up some custom Google Analytics reports to track what’s resonating and what’s not so we can figure out how to better serve our audience with future content. Problem solved. Once you know why you’re resisting change, you can stop resisting it. And, of course, if there’s a good reason not to change, you’ve just unearthed it. 2. What am I holding onto? Usually, if you’re resisting change, you’ll realize you’re hanging onto two things: past success and what you know. It’s easy to get into headspace where you think you’ve mastered something because you had to work your way from the ground up. You know this better than anyone and you’ve been successful with it in the past. There’s a grain of truth in that of course. Maybe a few grains. But what you miss is that clinging onto past success will ruin your future. You end up being the person still trying to sell CDs in the age of streaming, or trying to get your audience to come to you so you can fill up a building, rather than going to them so you can meet them where they’re at. If you’re holding onto the past, you won’t have much of a future. www.careynieuwhof.com

- What do you think is the difference between those people that are really fulfilled in life? And when I say really fulfilled, I mean they have great and meaningful relationships. They're strong financially and generous with people around them. They're fulfilled in life, and they have very meaningful ministries. They love their life. What do you think is the difference between those people and the rest of the world? Those who are struggling relationally, just trying to hold their marriage together or keep their kids off drugs. Those who are struggling financially and don't know that they could be generous. They want to be, but they don't feel like they could be. Those who know there's something more in life, but can't quite find it. Those who feel empty. What is the difference, do you think, between those who are really fulfilled and the rest of the world, who's so often struggling? Well, let me tell you what it's not. It's not what a lot of people think. The difference is not their intelligence. It's not their talent. It's not even their appearance, because we've all seen smart people who are miserable, right? We've seen talented people that are broke. We've seen attractive people that can't hold a relationship. Some of you might say, "I dated that person." Don't point at them right now, but you know what I'm saying. What do you think the difference is between those who are really making a difference, those who are really fulfilled, and the rest of the world? I would say that it really all boils down to our decisions. It boils down to our decisions. Our decisions are incredibly and indescribably important. In fact, I would say it this way. That the quality of your decisions determines the quality of your life. You make your decisions, and your decisions end up making you. The problem is that, most of us, we are not good decision-makers. Right? We want to eat right, but then we decide to eat more than we should. We want to be wise with our money, but we decide to buy things we can't afford. We want to be wise with our words, but we decide to say things that we regret. We want to do the right thing, but we make decisions to do the wrong thing. We want to love the people around us, but unfortunately, sometimes our decisions end up hurting the people that we love most. We want to be good-decision makers, but the problem is most of us aren't. In fact, would you like for me to tell you the story of the first time that I really realized I wasn't a good-decision maker? You want to hear? Like, I don't need to tell you. You want to hear it? You can type in the comments, "Tell us why you're so stupid, Pastor Craig. Tell us why you messed up." The first time I realized I was really a bad-decision maker was when I was newly married to Amy. I was a full-time pastor at First United Methodist Church, and I was a full-time seminary student. That alone was stupid. That's way too much. And this was way back in the era, if you can imagine, just before people started getting personal computers. And so I used something at the time for seminary known as a typewriter. Now, for those of you that don't know what a typewriter is, I will show you what a typewriter looks like, and I stayed up really, really late typing a 15-page paper for a seminary class. I went home from my office, and went to bed, and got up the next morning to drive an hour and a half to seminary, when I realized I left my paper at the church office. Now, this was before you could email yourself the paper. There was one copy in the world, and it wasn't in my presence. So I rushed up at like six AM to the office to get my paper, but what I didn't realize is the little key card didn't work at six AM. It was programmed maybe to start at 7:30 or whatever, so that's when I made the first of a series of bad decisions. What I realized is that, since my office was way up high on this historic building, I always left the window unlocked, because no one would ever climb in it, and that's when I thought, "Well, I could climb the outside of the wall." Now you may have seen the most recent Spider-Man, and I don't want to give you any spoilers, but if you know the Spider-Man 1 or 2 or 3, I was the prequel, okay? I decided to scale the outside of the building like Spider-Man, and I was climbing up it when I got to a very dangerous point of no return, and I realized this wasn't a good decision. I climbed all the way up to 1 Pre-DecideBCBL_1_Transcript the outside of my office, literally hanging on maybe a ledge this big, up to my window like this, and I've tried to lift the window, and lo and behold, someone had locked it. It was at that moment that I realized I was in big trouble. I couldn't turn around. It's six something in the morning. There's no cell phones back in this day. You can visualize this guy in pleated khaki pants with penny loafers, trying to get inside the building, and couldn't get down. I had to wait until some guy walked by at maybe seven AM, and holler for help, and this was before mobile devices, so he couldn't go and just call someone. He had to go find a payphone. Now, if you don't know what a payphone is, I want you to understand what a payphone is, and he had to call the fire department who came to get Pastor Craig down from a third-story window. And that's when I realized we're not good decision-makers. Have any of you ever done something you regret? You made a dumb decision? What we're gonna do over the next few weeks is we're gonna talk about the power of our decisions, and I want to start with answering the question, why is it that we struggle to make good decisions? Why do we want to do the right thing, and we end up doing the wrong thing, and I'm gonna give you a long introduction today and then we're gonna look at a lot of God's Word in the upcoming week. Why do we struggle to make good decisions? I see at least three reasons. One is we are overwhelmed with choices. We're overwhelmed with choices. In fact, some studies show that we'll make upwards of, are you ready for this? Around 35,000 decisions a day. From the moment you wake up, what do I eat? What do I wear? When do I look at? Do I scroll, tap, tap? Scroll past, comment? Look at this, look at that? How do I drive to work? What do I say to people at work? All day long. And what happens is, because we make so many choices, our decision-making muscle literally becomes fatigued. In fact, cognitive scientists have termed the phrase decision fatigue, decision fatigue. Essentially what happens, as the volume of decisions increase, the quality of decisions decrease. Because we're making decisions day after day, moment after moment, all day long, our decision-making muscle gets really, really tired, and that's why you may make difficult and wise decisions all day at the office, and then you come home and decide to binge eat at night. It's because you got tired of making good decisions. Or you make wise financial choices, and you're saving and you're paying off debt and you're doing the right thing, and then you make some stupid purchase out of nowhere, because of decision fatigue. We try to make good decisions, but because of the volume, the quality starts to decrease. The second big problem is, for many of us, is that we're afraid of making the wrong choices, and this is especially true for those of us that are Christians, because we don't want to miss God's will, and so a lot of times we'll analyze something and say, "Well, I'm not sure that's the perfect school," or, "I'm not sure that's the perfect job," or, "I'm not sure this is the perfect person to date," and since we aren't sure, sometimes we just don't make any decisions at all, and this is a real challenge, because we have to understand that indecision is actually a decision, and I tell our team all the time that indecision is the enemy of progress. Why do we struggle to make good decisions? Well, we're overwhelmed with all the choices, we're afraid of making a wrong choice, and the one that I want to really drill down into is this one. We let emotions overrule logic. This is where so many of us struggle and our decision-making process breaks down. We let emotions overrule logic, which is really, really interesting, because on some decisions, we spend way too much time analyzing. You probably do this. You might spend more time analyzing what series to binge watch than you actually do binge watching the whole series. You look at everything and we'll overanalyze a lot of decisions that don't really matter, and then we just make impulse decisions on the things that do matter. An example of over-analyzing. I researched for three weeks a trailer, a stupid trailer, like a thing that you pull junk on, and I researched and analyzed and studied and researched and analyzed and studied, and I knew everything about 2 Pre-DecideBCBL_1_Transcript trailers and the difference between the one that was a starter trailer and the bigger one was maybe a couple of hundred dollars, and I didn't want to spend that, so I was gonna find the right one, and I analyzed and I studied and I researched all over the world, I finally bought the trailer, and I hooked it up to my car, and I backed up my car and jackknifed the trailer into the back of my car, and did $3,000 damage to my car. The good news is the trailer is okay. The bad news is I overanalyzed something that didn't matter, and when it comes to important decisions, I often don't analyze it all. I just let my emotions take over and react in the moment. And you know how this plays. Your kid upsets you, and logic says, "Be patient," but emotion says, "Yell as loud as you can," right? And your emotion tends to take over. Or you have some unexpected temptation, and your logic says, "That's dangerous," and your emotion says, "Let's party, okay? I like the looks of that." And so often it's the emotional decisions that end up hurting us or hurting others the most, and that's why I tell my kids all the time, whatever you do, don't make permanent decisions based on temporary emotions. Don't make decisions that are gonna impact you for years to come based on the emotion that you feel in the moment. Why do our decisions matter so much? Because the quality of our decisions determines the quality of our lives. We make our decisions, and our decisions make us. Long introduction to the theme that we're gonna study for the next few weeks. One of the best ways to live a forward-looking, people-loving, God-glorifying life is to decide before what you will do later. One of the best spiritual tools you can do is to decide now what you want to do later, and that's why I call this the power of pre-deciding. The power of choosing ahead of time before you're in the moment. And our goal, with God's help, as followers of Christ, is to ask God to help us make some pre-decisions, to decide ahead of time what we're gonna do in the future so that we honor God when we have decisions to make. And I love what Proverbs 16:3 says, that, Whatever you do, scripture says, commit it to the Lord. "Commit to the Lord whatever you do." If you're dating somebody, commit your dating relationship to the Lord. If you're married, commit your marriage. If you're parenting, commit your parenting and your children to the Lord. If you're making financial decisions, commit your financial decisions to the Lord. If you're making professional decisions, relational decisions, friendship decisions, what to wear decisions, what to eat decisions, commit everything to the Lord, and scripture tells us that, "He will," watch this, "establish your plans." When you seek him first and his kingdom, his righteousness, Jesus said, "Then everything else will be added unto you." So when we commit to the Lord and there's no better time than to do it at the beginning of the year, when we commit our entire year to the Lord and we seek the Lord for our decisions, he will help give us plans, so we can pre-decide what we will do later and make that decision now. And here's how it will play out in our lives. With God's help, we're going to determine our course of action before the moment of decision, and it will look something like this. Whenever faced with this scenario, whatever it would be. Should I look? Should I buy it? Should I reach out to this person? Should I respond? Should I yell? Whenever I'm faced with this scenario, I have pre-decided to take this action. We decide ahead of time with God's help by the truth of his Word, what we'll do in any given situation. So later on, if you know you have a problem with impulse purchase, and you're go on there, "All it must be God's will. It's 10% off," okay? We're gonna say whenever I'm tempted to make an impulse purchase, I have already pre decided I wait three days before I buy something. When you're always worried about something, and you know anything could go wrong and you could just lose your faith in God and just start worrying, we're gonna pre-decide, the moment I start to worry, instead of going to people, instead of going to the bottle, I'm gonna go immediately to God and I have pre-decided I pray to God. I take my burdens and I cast them on him. Someone cuts you off in traffic. We're going to pre-decide in the moment to pray that 3 Pre-DecideBCBL_1_Transcript they go to heaven instead of telling them to go to hell, right? You're number one, buddy. You're number one. We're not gonna do that. We're gonna pre-decide how we respond in the moment. And when you look at scripture, what's so much fun to me is you see example after example after example of God's people pre-deciding in the moment, in the now what they will do later. You see it over and over again. You see it in Genesis 22. When God told Abraham, "Hey, I want you to sacrifice your son Isaac." And Abraham's looking on, thinking, "That's ridiculous. Nobody would do that. That makes no sense whatsoever." But in the past, Abraham had decided about the future that, "My God is always trustworthy, and so whatever he asks me to do, I have pre-decided that I will obey and honor him." Same thing with Ruth. You can read this in Ruth chapter one. Made a very strong commitment to Naomi, and decided ahead of time that whatever happens in the future, "No matter where you go, I'm going. Your people will be my people. Your God will be my God." Daniel. We'll talk more about him in upcoming weeks. This guy was the king of pre-decision. He and his friends were taking essentially hostage to a foreign land, and they were brainwashed, and you have to think the way we think and be educated the way we educate our people, and eat the food we eat. That would have been dishonoring to God, and in Daniel 1, chapter eight, the scripture says this. "Daniel resolved." We could say it this way. He had already decided, he pre decided, "Not to defile himself with the royal food and wine." He didn't wait until he got in the dining room to make the decision. He had pre-determined, "Because of my faithfulness to God, I won't be weak in a future moment. I've already pre decided to honor God." Why? Because he knew who and what he valued. I want to ask you this. As you move into a new year with a perfect chance to honor God, what do you value? What do you value? What's the most important thing or things to you? When people talk about you or think about you, what do you want them to say? What do you want them to think? What do you want to be known by? What do you want to be characterized by? When people describe you, what do you want them to say about you? What do you want your reputation to be? What do you want, even despite your reputation, what do you want you to know deep down matters to you more than anything else? I want you to think about it, and I want you to talk about it in your life groups, and I want you to pray about it and commit everything to the Lord, so he will establish your plans based on the values he's put in your heart. What do you value? You might say, "I value integrity." I hope you do. Or you might say, "I value faithfulness. I want to be faithful to my God and faithful to my friends or faithful to my spouse." You might say, "I value purity. And in a world of filth and lust, I want to honor God with a life of purity." You might say, "I value generosity, that I want to be... God so loved the world he gave. I want to be a giver. I want to be just like God. I want to be a giver." And you clearly determine your values. Why does this matter so much? Because when your values are clear, your decisions are easier. When you know what you value, you can decide ahead of time, whenever I face this situation in the future, I've already pre decided based on God's Word and the values he puts in my heart, this is what I am pre determined I will do. Again, we'll look at it on the screen. Whenever I'm faced with this situation, because of God's truth, because of what I value, I have pre-decided to take this particular action. Now... How will this play out? What I promise you is it'll play out again and again and again and again, and it'll save you from situations or unwise decisions that you might regret for the rest of your life. Here's what happens. Decisions determine direction, and direction determines destiny. Our unwise decisions tend to compound negatively, and our wise God-honoring decisions tend to compound in a positive and God-honoring way. So as you look at what you value, ask yourself, are your decisions moving in that direction? I want to ask you a big, big question to think about, and that is this. If your life is moving in the direction of your decisions, do you like the 4 Pre-DecideBCBL_1_Transcript direction your decisions are taking you? If you don't, it's time to take your life back. It's time to pre-decide to do something different. Pre-decide. When I'm faced with this situation, because of who my God is and because of what I value, I'm not gonna wait until I'm in that situation to make a decision based on my emotions or whatever I'm feeling, or if I'm weak instead. I'm gonna predetermine, before I ever get there, when I'm faced with this scenario, I have determined that I will take this action. Why is this so important? If I can be really real with you, it's because I've noticed six negative qualities about me, and truthfully, as a pastor, most of these qualities are true about most of you. What do I know? Real talk is that I'm inconsistent. I want to be consistent, and I start off doing the right thing, but sometimes I get tired and I end up doing the wrong thing. I'm inconsistent. I'm often unprepared. I have a spiritual enemy. His name is Satan, and Satan is attacking, and I often have my guard down. I'm unprepared. I also can be unintentional. Instead of being proactive and prayerful and intentional about my decisions, sometimes I'm kind of hands off, laissez faire. I let life come at me rather than coming at life for the glory of God. I hate to even say this out loud, but by nature, I'm selfish. I don't want to be, but I am. When there's a photo with eight people in it, I'm not looking at seven. You know what I'm saying? How do I look? I'm looking at me. I want to know, how does this impact me? What do I get out of this? What's it gonna cost me? I hate to say it, but by nature, I'm selfish. Another problem is I'm really shortsighted. I'll often do what feels good in the moment and not think about the long-term consequences. And then I know about you, and I know about me, is some of us, whenever things get tough, we tend to quit. We tend to give up. We tend to walk away. So over the next few weeks, and I want to try to compel you, I'll beg you, motivate you, whatever it takes to be a part and experience these next few weeks of teaching, and we're going to make six pre-determined resolutions about who we are. When you know who you are, you'll know what to do. When your values are clear, your decisions are easier, so because we know where we're vulnerable, we're gonna pre-decide that we are actually six things, and I want to show you what we're gonna cover over the next six weeks. We'll start over to the left, and we're gonna cover this next week. When the devil attacks, we're not gonna be unprepared. We're gonna be on our guard. We're gonna watch and we're gonna pray, and we are going to be ready. Somebody say, "I'm ready." When it's easy to be inconsistent, on one day, off another day, with the help of God, we're gonna be consistent. Somebody say, "I'm consistent." What are you? I am... - [Congregants] Consistent. - In a world where people often stray from God and lose their passion, and the devil tempts them to take God for granted, not be students of his Word, not be glorifying him, we're gonna be devoted to God. What are you? Somebody say it with me. I am... - [Congregants] Devoted. - In a world that tends to be selfish, we're gonna be God-honoring. We're gonna choose ahead of time that what I have belongs to God, and I'm gonna be generous. What are you? You are... - [Congregants] Generous. - We're gonna decide ahead of time, in a world where unfaithfulness seems be the norm, as followers of Jesus, we are not the norm. We are faithful. What are we? We are... 5 Pre-DecideBCBL_1_Transcript - [Congregants] Faithful. - And finally, Jesus said on the cross, "I did everything the father sent me to do." He said, "Teletestai." He said, "It's finished." We honor God with excellence. We don't back down. We don't back off. We don't walk away. We are finishers. What are we? We are finishers. What I want you to do is, if you wouldn't mind, just declare this aloud. Say, "I'm ready." What are you? I am... - [Congregants] Ready. What else are you? I am consistent. What are you? I am... - [Congregants] Devoted. I am... - [Congregants] Generous. - I am. I am. One more time, with God's help, we are pre-deciding, as we enter in this year, we are not what the world says we are. We're not with the devil says we are. We're are not what we did in the past. We are not what anybody else thinks about us. We are who God says we are. and when we face a certain situation, we have pre-determined, here is who we are, and here is what we do. What are we? We are ready, we are consistent, we are devoted, we are generous, we are faithful, and we are finishers. And so one day, when you're tired and you're overwhelmed, or maybe you're angry, or you feel emotional, or maybe you're discouraged, or you feel depressed, you don't know what to do next. In that moment, you'll recognize you are more vulnerable, but the good news is your decision won't be based on the emotion in a moment, but on the values God has placed on your heart, because when your values are clear, your decisions are easy, and some really good news, since we're not good decision-makers, is I want to tell you about Jesus. The good news is that we are not saved by the quality of our decisions, but we are saved by the grace of God, and our Savior Jesus pre-decided in a garden called Gethsemane that no matter what comes his way and no matter what price he pays and no matter how hard it is, and no matter the pain he endures, he pre decided, "Not my will, but your will be done," and he gave his life so we could have the life of God on earth. And so, because of that, because God loved us that much, what are we gonna do? We're gonna commit it all to him. We're gonna commit everything to the Lord, and he will establish our plans, so ahead of time, we already know, we will honor God in the moment. We determine the course of action before the moment of the decision so that we can honor God in all that we do. Are you with me? If you're with me, say, "I'm with you." - [Congregants] I'm with you. - I'm inviting you for the next six weeks to step in, press into the goodness of God, let his Word go deep into your heart to burn the values of the kingdom of God inside of you, so you will know who you are. You pre-determine who you are, because when you know who you are, then listen to me, church, you will know what to do, and the world needs us to be that light shining bright, so let's do it. Happy New Year. God is doing a new thing. He's doing a new thing. Forget the former things. Don't dwell on the past. Our God is doing a new thing. So Father, do that. Stir within your church, God. Give us the wisdom, just like Jesus pre-decided to serve you no matter what, to commit everything to you. As you're praying today at all of our churches, I'm gonna ask for an unusual and big commitment and that is six weeks of your attention. It'll take an hour a week, and hopefully you'll join us at a physical location, or you may join us online around 6 Pre-DecideBCBL_1_Transcript the world, but I'm gonna ask you as a new year to commit at the beginning of the week an hour to worship and to hear God's Word, to let his word conform you to the image of his Son, so you can pre-decide. Six weeks. I'm gonna ask you, and don't raise your hand 'cause you feel guilty, like, "Oh, I gotta raise my hand, I'm in church." Will you embrace this message for the next six weeks? I'll come to church. I'll watch online. I'm gonna take this in because I want to start my new year committing everything to God so he can establish the plans of my heart. If you'll do that with me, would you just lift up your hands right now? You can type it in the comments section. "I'll be with you every six weeks." Just type that in. And Father, I pray that by the power of your Word, your Word would do in us what we don't have the power to do, so we could serve you and honor you. May the decisions that we make be based on the truth of your Word, and not the emotions we have in a moment. Give us wisdom, God, to commit to you and establish our plans. As you keep praying today, the really good news is that our standing with God isn't based on the quality of your decisions, because we've all decided to do things that are wrong and sinful, but our standing with God is based on the goodness of God, and let me tell you how good he is. He loves you so much that he sent Jesus, his only Son, who was perfect in every way, who died for the forgiveness of our sins. God raised him from the dead, and our response is to simply decide. Decide. Do you want to stand before God based on your own righteousness? Or do you want to trust Jesus? Because when we trust him, his righteousness is imparted to us. We're forgiven not because we're perfect, but because he was perfect, and that's why the Gospel is called good news. Today, wherever you're watching from, those of you would say, "I really don't know where I stand with God." The good news, is in one moment, one prayer, would you trust the goodness of Jesus, because of who he is, would you decide to follow him? We are going to pre-decide that we want to be disciples of Jesus. When we follow him and surrender our life to him, he forgives our sins and we become brand new today. Wherever you're watching from those who say, "I want to choose to follow Jesus. I want his forgiveness. I want his grace. I'm stepping away from my old life. I'm letting go of my sin." Guess what? We're forgetting the former things. We're letting them go. God's doing a new thing. His new thing is in you. His name is Jesus and Jesus makes all things new. Wherever you're watching from, those who say, "Yes, I need his grace today. I surrender. Jesus, I give you my life." That's your prayer. Lift your hand high now all over the place and say, "Yes." Oh my gosh, we got hands going up in all of our churches. Somebody tell God thank you. For those of you online, you can just type it in the comments section. "I'm giving my life to Jesus." Just type it in, "I'm giving my life to Jesus." And as we see people across the world, we're gonna pray. Nobody prays alone. Would you just pray aloud with those around you? Pray heavenly Father. - [Congregants] Heavenly Father. - Forgive my sins. - [Congregants] Forgive my sins. - Jesus, save me. - [Congregants] Jesus, save me. - I trust you. - [Congregants] I trust you. 7 Pre-DecideBCBL_1_Transcript - Fill me with your Spirit. - [Congregants] Fill me with your Spirit. - So I can pre-decide. - [Congregants] So I can pre-decide. - To follow you. - [Congregants] To follow you. - To show your love. - [Congregants] To show your love. - In all that I do. - [Congregants] In all that I do. - Thank you for new life. I give you all of mine. In Jesus' name I pray. If somebody's worshiping, worship loud. Welcome those born into God's family. 8 Pre-DecideBCBL_1_Transcript Do you ever wish you knew how to make decisions that would help you reach your goals? What if becoming the person you want to be starts before you make a decision? Before you click “buy,” or before you take one more bite. Can the decisions you make today help you live the life you want tomorrow? Let’s learn in our new series, Pre-Decide.  www.lifechurch.tv/open .

The Darkness of a Broken Family Transcription The Darkness of a Broken Family - 1 Samuel 24 - Skip Heitzig Welcome to Calvary Church with Skip Heitzig. We're so glad you joined us for Darkroom. In this teaching series, Pastor Skip shows how God often develops his children through hardship, the dark times in life. Here's Pastor Skip. Good morning. How are you today? This just makes me miss film photography every time I see this Darkroom setup. I'm glad you're with us today. Would you turn in your Bibles to 1 Samuel, chapter 24. That's in the Old Testament, 1 Samuel. Easy to find, it's right before 2 Samuel. If you have trouble finding it somebody next to you could point the way. But it's important you turn to 1 Samuel chapter 24. And just a little word about Israel. Last time I checked the country is still there. And we are planning to visit Israel in May, at the beginning of May, May 4th. We plan to go over there till about May 15th. And you never know what's going to happen in the world from year to year, right? So they're open and they're receiving tourists. So we have signed up to go. We've had people since last announcements, a few others sign up. So I just want to get that announcement out to you. Wouldn't it be great to walk the shores of Galilee? Perhaps get baptized in the Jordan River. See the city of Jerusalem and have communion on the last day of our tour at the Garden Tomb, the place where many believe Jesus conquered death at. There's just nothing quite like it. It's a great worship experience and we invite you to come. 1 Samuel, chapter 24. Let's pray together. Lord, thank you for the body of Christ gathering together to put you first, to tell you that you are worthy, to honor your name. That in and of itself gives us strength. It re prioritizes our lives. It centers us the way it should be. And now, Father, we invite your Spirit to speak to us through the word on a very, very important issue that we find here in the text about families. We pray, Lord, that you will bless, that you will sanctify, that you will heal the families represented here. We ask it in Jesus's name. Amen. So there's a family called the Smith family. They were very proud of their heritage because they could trace their ancestry all the way back to coming over to the States on the Mayflower. So they were pretty proud of that. And many important people came from their family, senators, clergymen, Wall Street wizards all came from the Smith family. Well, the family wanted to get a history together. They wanted to hire a researcher, historian to compile a family history. They could pass that history on down as a legacy to their children. And so they hired somebody to do that. The only problem was, what are we going to say about Uncle George? Uncle George was a member of the family who was convicted for some pretty severe murder charges and was put in the electric chair. And through capital punishment his life was taken. Well that was a blot in the family history. So they didn't know what they were going to do with that. The historians said don't worry. There's a tactful way for me to retell that story. So the book was written. It was published. And the family immediately turned to the section to find out what they said about Uncle George. And so the historian, with a lot of ingenuity, said this, George Smith occupied a chair of applied electronics at an important government institution. He was attached to his position by the strongest of ties and his death came as a real shock. You might say. You know, everyone's family is a bit wacky. Now all of us have somebody in the family that will cause us to roll our eyes over. It could be a weird uncle or a crazy aunt or a creepy grandpa. I read about one girl who said, I thought every family was like my family. She said she had an uncle, who every time they went to a restaurant, took a piece of silverware home from the restaurant, like a fork or a knife or a spoon. And she said it wasn't until I had grown up and went to a friend's house and noticed that all their silverware matched that I had the weird uncle. Remember the show on TV, The Addams Family? So that whole idea was taken to an extreme. You've got Uncle Fester who can put a light bulb in his mouth and it lights up because he has an electrical charge, or Grandmama who makes potions and flies around on a broom, or Pugsley who hangs from tree limbs with his teeth. I mean, it was a weird family. Well that takes us to what I want to show you in 1 Samuel chapter 24. This is a message I'm calling, the Darkness of a Broken Family. We're in a series. We call it Darkroom. And by now you understand the idea behind it is how God takes the negatives of our lives and develops us and does some pretty positive things through our lives, even though we have had some pretty bad experiences. We began by looking at the life of Joseph. And we saw the dark room that he was in, a dark room of jealousy and hatred by his brothers, a dark room of misunderstanding, false accusation, a dark room of imprisonment, but how the Lord developed his life into him being second in command over the world, the prime minister of Egypt, and came up with an ingenious plan to save the world from famine. God developed the negative into a positive. Then we look at the life of Moses and we saw that Moses chose his dark room. That's what the Bible says. He chose, rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin. He refused to be called the son of pharaoh's daughter and rather he identified with the people of God in suffering, but how God developed him into that great deliverer of the children of Israel out of bondage. Today I want to draw your attention to David in the Bible. Everybody knows about David. This is the dark room of a broken family. David had a broken family. And I want you to see that. And I want you to see how he handled a very difficult situation, a life threatening situation. Now you might be wondering, why is it that we have chosen to do a series where we examine people in the Bible at the lowest moment of their life, the most difficult season of their life. Why do we do that? Well I'll put it to you in the words of a proverb, and old woodsman's proverb, that says a tree is best measured when it's down. A tree is best measured when it's down. You want to see who a person really is? Examine their life when they're down, when things fall out from underneath them, when they are in a period of darkness. Examine that life and you will see how shallow or how great that person is. Moreover, you will see how great their God is at those times and how God can rise up like a hero and take the worst situation and make something great out of it. Well David, David is one of the heroes in the Bible. He's an a-lister. He's on the a-team. When people talk about people they know in the Bible that are famous, who are great in what they accomplish, David comes to mind. David and David alone is called a man after God's own heart. David was anointed from his youth. He was the guy who goes out and kills a giant of the Philistines named Goliath. Perhaps that's what he's most famous for. He becomes the commander of Saul's armies. He becomes the subject of a national song. He becomes the sweet psalmist of Israel and eventually the second King of that nation. A city was named after him, the city of Jerusalem. And to this day, the flag in Israel still bears the sign of the Star of David. The Star of David, they still pay tribute to that man to this day, even though David was far from perfect. In fact, he was highly imperfect. In fact, boy did he make a lot of dumb choices. In fact, I would say that David later on went into the dark room of bad choice. We don't have time to look at that today. But he committed adultery then he committed murder, then he was a passive father and his own family fell apart. But that's later. Now I want to show you an episode in David's life in this chapter, 1 Samuel 24, a season of David's life where David is a fugitive. He's running from the King, who also happens to be his father-in-law. His father-in-law is trying to kill him in this chapter. I'm so glad I have a good relationship with my father-in-law. What I want to show you in this chapter briefly are four principles for resolving family conflict. I'm not a therapist and I'm not going to give you all the ways to do it. There are so many approaches to that. But I want to show you from scripture, because I am a Bible teacher, four principles of resolving conflicts in the family. I'm going to do that by making four comparisons-- four comparisons, that one thing is better than something else. So I'll begin with the first. Blemished is better than broken. Blemished is better than broken. Everybody has a blemished family. Not everybody has a broken family. And so if you have a blemished family, do everything you can to stop short of it being a broken family. So in chapter 24 1 Samuel, we begin where it says in verse 1. "Now it happened, when Saul had returned from following the Philistines, that it was told him, saying, "Take note! David is in the Wilderness of En Gedi." That's down by the Dead Sea, one of the places we'll visit if you come to Israel. You'll see the very caves where this took place. "Then Saul took three thousand chosen men from all Israel, and went to seek David and his men on the Rocks of the Wild Goats." This is a period in David's life, it's about 10 to 14 years where he is fleeing from King Saul. King Saul, who at this point his own father-in-law. So just think about that. They are in-laws who have become outlaws. Unfortunately in families that sometimes happens. In-laws can become outlaws. Somebody once said, you know the difference between in-laws and outlaws, right? And the answer is, it's because outlaws are wanted. That's the difference between in-laws and outlaws. Outlaws are wanted. I heard about a man who so hated his mother-in-law he didn't know what to do. One day he's walking on the beach. He finds a bottle. He rubs it, out comes a genie, grants him three wishes. And so he's thinking, what could I have? Now the genie then says, now I want to warn you. Whatever you ask for I'm going to give double to your mother-in-law. So he goes, well, I wish for a billion dollars. Genie says, OK here. Gives him a billion dollars. But I'm giving your mother-in-law $2 billion. So he continues, he goes, well for my second wish I'd like an island off the coast of Greece. Genie says, fair enough, but your mother-in-law gets two islands off the coast of Greece next to your one island. So he goes, oh boy. So he thinks about it, thinks about it. And finally he says, I'd like you to beat me half to death. There's a guy who really didn't like his mother-in-law. And again, I'm so glad I have a good relationship with mine. David was the poster child of a broken family. He goes from one bad family into another bad family. It's my belief that David's original family that he was raised in was relationally-cold-- relationally-cold. You may not read this when you read the Bible. But if you look at it closely you will see it. You remember the story, how the prophet Samuel comes to Bethlehem to select the next King. He goes to the House of Jesse. Jesse has eight sons. The prophet says, line up all your boys. One of them is going to be the next King of Israel. He lines them all up except one. Who's that? David, David's out watching the sheep. Dad didn't even think David was important enough to be numbered as one of his own children in the lineup. Well he's the one that gets picked. But Jesse doesn't put him in that room. I think that the brokenness of David's family is hinted at in Psalm 27 when David says, "when my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me," I think he knew he had a family that was pretty busted up, pretty blemished, pretty dysfunctional. And he knew that father and mother had somehow forsaken him. But he knew that the Lord was in charge of his life. And I just want to say, your own family may have overlooked you. Your Heavenly Father will not. God knows you. God sees you. The Bible says the eyes of the Lord go to and fro throughout the entire Earth, that he might show himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are loyal toward him. God's got you. He sees you and he wants to use you. Well David goes from that family, Jesse's family, into this family, Saul's family. From a relationally-cold family to now a relationally-callused family. Now, how does he get into Saul's family? Because he marries Saul's daughter. Saul the King said whoever beats the Philistines, this big giant guy named Goliath, whoever beats that guy gets my daughter. Now there's a little bit of insight into a dad. A dad is willing to give away his daughter to whatever soldier wins a battle. And you might say, well, that was always done in ancient times. Maybe so, but not in Israel. This is-- this is God's people. These are people that are devoted to God. And the Torah, the law of God, was to govern the kings of Israel. But Saul is willing to give away his daughter. And he does, to David. That's how David gets in the family. Something else about Saul. We read in the scripture that when Saul's own son by the name of Jonathan is in a battle, that because Jonathan gets a bit of honey-- not the candy bit of honey, a handful of honey, and revives himself during a battle, when Saul finds out about it, when dad finds out he goes, I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill my son for having honey in a battle. Because I said nobody should eat anything till we win this war, which is dumb anyway. He finds out his son did that because he didn't hear the order. But he won the war. But that's OK. Dad didn't care if he won or not. I'm just going to kill my son. Then David, who worked for King Saul, was playing music for him. And on two occasions Saul tried to play pin the spear on the musician. He chucked a spear twice in David's direction to pin him to the wall. And so David flees. He runs. And that takes us to this period. For a decade he is running from his father-in-law, who pursues him to kill him. Now when he runs away, two people help him. Number one, Saul's daughter, now David's wife. Number two, Jonathan, Saul's son. Both kids helped David escape because they know their dad is a wingnut. He was a wingnut. Because when Saul finds out that his two kids have helped David, here's his words to his daughter in chapter 19 verse 17. "Why have you deceived me like this and sent my enemy away so that he has escaped?" And then he says to his son, Jonathan, in chapter 20 verse 30, "You son of a perverse, rebellious woman." That's a father speaking to his son? "You son of a perverse, rebellious woman." If you have the New Living translation it's even more crass. "You stupid son of a whore." That's the family David is now in. Welcome to the family, son. He said again to Jonathan, "You son of a perverse, rebellious woman. Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother's nakedness?" So here's what I want you to see. David goes from one family where he is marginalized to another family where he is terrorized. This is a broken family. You may have a blemished family. This is a broken family. One author said there's three marks of a broken family. Number one, broken families do not trust. Trust has been broken. They don't trust each other. They don't trust anybody. Broken families do not trust. Number two is broken families refuse to talk about their brokenness. They don't admit it. Nothing to see here, nothing wrong here. Number three, broken families do not express their feelings. Very low when it comes to emotional intelligence. They don't talk about how they feel. So whatever dysfunction or baggage or shortcomings or blemishes your family might have, don't let it get to the point where it is broken. Broken meaning spirits are crushed and relationships are severed. That's broken. We are all humans thus we are all sinners. Thus we all manifest imperfect behavior. But let me say, blemished is far better than broken. And if you have a blemished husband, an imperfect blemished husband, do everything in your power, wives, to keep that husband from being a broken man. Refrain from overly criticizing him and put-downs that make him feel lower and lower and lower. Or husbands, if you have a blemished wife and she drives you crazy with those antics of hers, do everything you can to make sure she doesn't end up broken. Try to manage the conflict. Now, I'm not here to give you all the ins and outs of that, except to say there's a few ways that will help you do that. Number one, it's called forgiveness-- forgiveness. Be big on forgiveness. Be ready to forgive. Jesus taught us the Lord's Prayer, "forgive us our debts as we forgive those who are debtors against us." But then he said this, "If you refuse to forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father in heaven forgive you yours." Forgive. Another added thing to that, I would say, is learn to look for good traits. If they're driving you crazy and all you can see is the flaws in your mate or your relationships, learn to spot the good traits. 1 Corinthians 13, "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails." And then the third tip I would add to that is make the first move. If there's tension, make the first move. If there's a wall, make the first move. If there's coldness, make the first move. Matthew 18, "Our Lord said if your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you will win over your brother." So blemished is better than broken. David is now in a very broken family system. The second principle-- the second comparison is that respect is better than revenge. Respect is better than revenge. So get the scene. David is fleeing from Saul. Saul has 3,000 men. David has 600 men. He's outnumbered 5 to 1. Saul finds out he's down by the Dead Sea and Ein Gedi. Saul goes to chase him. Now the story gets a little bit humorous. Verse 3, "So he came to the sheepfolds by the road, where there was a cave" and it says, "Saul went in to attend to his needs." You know that is, right? I don't have to explain that to you? He went in to attend to his needs. He's using the restroom. David and his men were staying in the recesses of the cave. So this is funny. Saul's there and he goes, excuse me. I got to go use the restroom. He goes in the restroom not knowing there are 600 soldiers in the restroom. Then David-- "Then the men of David said to him," remember, they're in the darkness of the cave. "This is the day of which the Lord said to you, Behold, I will deliver your enemy into your hand, that you may do to him as seems good to you." And David arose and secretly cut off a corner of Saul's robe. Can you picture this? Saul's in the darkness on his haunches taking care of business staring out of the cave. David comes sneaking up, snip, cuts a little piece of the robe off. Verse 5, "Now it happened afterward that David's heart troubled him because he had cut Saul's robe." Now his men are saying, cut his throat, never mind his robe. But he feels guilty that he took a little piece of his robe off. "And he said to his men, "The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my master" Watch this-- "the Lord's anointed, to stretch out my hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord. So David restrained his servants with these words and did not allow them to rise against Saul. And Saul got up from the cave and went his way." This is David's golden opportunity to take revenge. And as he gets close to Saul maybe all of the feelings of the past start coming to the surface. Like he's remembering those two times when Saul threw a spear his way. And his blood starts to boil. And he thinks, now is the time to take revenge. I don't know what feelings he was struggling with or overcoming. But he didn't take revenge. Now, revenge is pretty easy to take. We feel justified when we do it. I'll guarantee you we feel justified. In fact, we feel good. Revenge is a lot of fun. When somebody cuts you off on the road because they don't like your driving and swerves in front of you and gives you the one way to heaven sign only with a different finger, you got to understand, they feel really good when they do that. They got something off their-- they told you. To them, it's satisfying. It's dumb but it's satisfying. And eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth brings a level of satisfaction with-- I heard a story about a gal who worked for a family. She was the maid for a long time. Took care of everything. Washed their dishes, took the kids to school. The family fired her and she didn't understand why. The job was everything to her and she was shaken by it. But the family said, don't want to talk about it. Just pack your bags and get out. So she's about to leave. The front door-- she opens the front door. And then she takes a $5 bill out of her purse and throws it to the family dog. And the family said, why are you giving our dog $5? She goes, I never forget a friend. That's for all the times your dog helped me clean your dishes. See, revenge. Just a little-- that dig, felt so good to say that. But David does not take revenge. Instead, David is very respectful, respect over revenge. Respect is better than revenge. The queen of soul, Aretha Franklin, sang it so well. R-e-s-p-e-c-t, find out what it means to me. What it meant to David is I don't touch the one God has raised up, the Lord's anointed. Soldiers are taught to salute their superior officer even if they hate their superior officer. And here's why. They will tell you, you salute the rank, not the man. You always salute the rank. Whatever you feel about that person is irrelevant. They are still at a higher rank. David is saluting the rank. This is the one the Lord has raised up. And can I just make a quick plea to all parents raising small children? Please teach your children respect. There is no excuse for being disrespectful. Please teach them that. Teach them to respect you, mom and dad. Because if they don't respect you they're not going to respect their teacher. They're not going to respect police officers. They're not going to respect authority. And you see it all over the place, not just on every filthy branch of social media, people mouthing off and spewing off to each other, but you're seeing it now in public. It begins at home. One man said, when I was a kid there was no respect for youth. Now that I'm old, there's no respect for age. He said, I missed it coming and going. Well the way to get it is to give it. Be the kind of person who is quick to give respect. Respect is better than revenge. Let me take you to a third principle. Light is better than darkness. Light is better than darkness. In verse 8, "David also arose afterward," now watch this. He went out of the cave. So now he's in the light, the sunlight, broad daylight. "and called out to Saul." Now Saul is now done with his business. He's outside of the cave. He's ready to move on. So they're both outside. He calls to Saul, saying, "My lord the King!" and when Saul looked behind him, David stooped with his face to the earth, and bowed down." It might seem incidental to you, but to me it's not. David dealt with the problem between he and Saul in the daylight, in the light. David does nothing in the darkness of the cave for two reasons. Number one, he's not going to touch God's anointed. Number two, anything done in the dark cave would be less than optimal. Anything done in the darkness of that cave would be less than optimal. There's a lot of things David could have done. David could have killed Saul in that cave. David could have scared Saul, boo! David could have taken him by the neck and forced confession by putting a knife to his throat, forcing a resolution. All of that is less than optimal. None of that would have done any good. He waits till Saul leaves then he goes outside where you can see plainly and clearly, and deals with it face to face, eye to eye. In case you might be thinking I'm making too much out of this, I was reading this week a story of a man who, at one time in his life, frequented bars and clubs. And he was talking about that lifestyle. And he said, you know, I always noticed that bars are dark. Clubs are dark. And he said, I always wondered why that is. Why are these places always dark? They never turn up the lights. They turn down the lights. And he guesses it's because it makes people less aware of themselves, less self-conscious. Listen to his words. "Darkness hides things. One is more inclined to approach a woman at night in a jam packed room with loud music than in broad daylight in a quiet coffee shop. It's because self-consciousness is low or absent completely. Darkness heightens anonymity. The mask of darkness allows one to act other than themselves." Did you know that when you communicate to another person, 55% of what you communicate is through facial expression? Facial expression. So in the package of communication, what people see in your face, 55% is communicated through facial expression. A full between 70% and 90% is body language. So facial expression, what you do with your hands, if you point with your fingers. All of that is conveyed. More is conveyed by what you see than the words you hear. So tightness around the mouth and the eyes, lowered eyebrows, frowning, scowling, glaring, sweating, crossed arms, all of that conveys anger and disapproval. Whereas relaxed muscles, gently closed mouth, slow breathing, arms uncrossed, low, steady tones of voice, all of that communicates reassurance and a desire to resolve. Now, you can't see that in the dark. You can't see that in a text. You can't see that in an email. You can't even see that on a phone call. All of those are sub-par levels of communication. The best way to communicate, especially to resolve a conflict, is bring it into a well-lit room where you can actually see that person eye to eye, body language, facial expression. Light is better than darkness. I'll take you to the fourth and final one. We'll close on this. Truth is better than triumph. Truth is better than triumph. So in verse 9, David said to Saul, another in the broad daylight, David said to Saul, "Why do you listen to the words of the men who say, Indeed David seeks your harm? Look, this day your eyes have seen--" That's very important, too, the last point. "Your eyes have seen that the Lord has delivered you today into my hand in the cave." Because he has that little piece of cloth. "And someone urged me to kill you. But my eye spared you and said, 'I will not stretch out my hand against my lord, for he is the Lord's anointed. Moreover, my father, see! Yes, the corner of your robe in my hand!" That's what he is there to see, nonverbal communication. "For in that I cut off the corner of your robe, and did not kill you, know and see that there is neither evil nor rebellion in my hand, and I have not sinned against you. Yet you hunt my life to take it. Let the Lord judge between you and me. Let the Lord avenge me on you. But my hand shall not be against you." Down in verse 16. "So it was, when David finished speaking these words to Saul, that Saul said, "Is this your voice, my son David?" And David lifted up his voice and wept. And then he said to David, "You are more righteous than I." True. "For you have rewarded me with good, whereas I have rewarded you with evil. And you have shown this day how you have dealt well with me. For when the Lord delivered me into your hand, you did not kill me, or if a man finds his enemy, will he let him get away safely? Therefore may the Lord reward you with good for what you have done to me this day." That is what David wanted to hear. David was more interested in winning over Saul than he was in winning the argument. Truth to David was better than triumph. David didn't want to walk away and said yep, I got him. He wanted to win him over. He wanted to resolve the conflict. Now I want you to see this, when I say truth is better than triumph, David still believes he needs to confront Saul. And he does. He waits till they get outside. And though he respected Saul and though he had a sensitive conscience, he still confronts him with truth. He didn't kick back in the cave and stay in the cave and say, I'm going to wait until Saul leaves. And I'm just going to go my own way. He'll never know I was here. He goes out and has an honest confrontation-- an honest confrontation. Some of you hate the sound of that word, confrontation, even honest confrontation. But Jesus said, I remind you again, "If your brother sins against you go tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother." Psalm 27 or Proverbs 27 says, "Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful." Ever think about that? Faithful are the wounds of a friend. A friend will wound you the right way. Think of it this way. An enemy stabs you in the back. A friend stabs you in the front, carefully, lovingly, gingerly, respectfully. But he tells you the truth up front in your face. He confronts. Nathan will confront David later on. He will say, you're the man. Honest confrontation. Later on, Paul the Apostle will confront Peter for his hypocrisy before the Galatian Christians, honest confrontation. Some of you hate confrontation. In fact, I would say most people hate confrontation. In fact, I'd say you got to have a screw loose to actually love confrontation. There are some people who actually love it. But they have a screw loose. But most of us hate it. But conflict delayed is conflict multiplied. Conflict delayed is conflict multiplied. Confrontation will help you stop the conflict. You say, you know what? I hate conflict. But you know, let's have this out. Let's talk this out. Let's throw down right now and get this over with and resolve the issue. You know the name Corrie ten Boom. I've told you about her over the years. She was a Dutch girl raised in a home that was hiding Jews so the Nazis couldn't find them in their home. Family was arrested. The girls were thrown in a concentration camp, then another concentration camp, then another concentration-- for years, abused, starving. Eventually the war ended. They were let out of the concentration camp. Corrie ten Boom traveled around and spoke at different places. I heard her speak at my church years ago before she went to heaven. But she tells a story that after she was released, at some place she was speaking at, a man came up to her and put his hand out to shake her hand. And she recognized him as a prison guard in the Nazi concentration camp. And she saw that hand and saw that face and went, [GASP]. She was repelled because he was the most cruel, little tyrant, made their life miserable. And she didn't want to shake that hand. She did not want to resolve that conflict. She didn't want to deal with that. Listen to her words. "I stood there with coldness, clutching at my heart. But I know that the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. I pray, Jesus, help me. Woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me and I experienced an incredible thing. A warm reconciliation seem to flood my whole being. I forgive you. For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard, the former prisoner. I have never known the love of God so intensely as I did in that moment. To forgive is to set a prisoner free and to discover that the prisoner was you." Set the prisoner free. Set it free. Resolve the conflict. Talk it out. Decide to forgive. Mechanically, woodenly, go through the motions if you have to and watch God change your heart. Whatever blemish your family has does not have to be like this, broken. And if it is broken and if you feel broken today and you just, even, loathe the system of difficulty that you have in your family. Ah, then you are-- you're in the right place. Because that's God's territory. In fact, God's specialty, you might say, are broken things. It's like he takes special delight not in new things but in broken things. We, whenever we have something that's broken, we usually throw it away. It's broken. It's chipped. Throw it away, get something new. We do that with people. Throw them away. Get something new. We do it with relationships, marriages. Throw it away. Get something new. God does not. God takes that which is broken. The sacrifices of God are a broken Spirit, a broken and contrite heart he will not despise. You let God into that heart. Because you'll find that he'll take your brokenness, your family's brokenness. He'll work on it. And then he'll use you. And so you come as you are. You don't have to be fixed to be a follower. You don't have to be a fixed-- yeah, I'll get my act together and then I'll come to God. No, you come broken. You come broken. You come as you are. And you let him in. Let him superintend the process of the healing and the mending. Father, thank you for that sure promise that you have chosen the foolish, the broken. You are the mender. You are the restorer. You are the healer. All those things we say about you, all those things that are revealed about you and your word, all of those are true. We are wandering without you. We are hopeless and helpless without you. Left to our own devices, we self-destruct and we don't have the capacity to fix problems that are so much bigger than we ever anticipated. But you can. And I pray that some here would let you into their lives. Maybe their own personal life is broken and they realize they need a Savior who will forgive them and receive them and restore them. And I'm speaking to some of you who feel that way. You feel broken. You feel used. You feel shattered. You feel like you have no strength. But you're here and you're not here by accident. You're here by appointment. The Lord has an appointment with you. And He's calling you. And you know He is. You sense it in the depth of your Spirit right now. So if you have come to this auditorium this morning or you're watching online, I'm going to encourage you to give your life to Christ, to give your life away, to let him in. If you want to do that, if you are willing to give your life to Him or to come back to Him because you've wandered from him, I want you to raise your hand up in the air. Our heads are bowed. Our eyes are closed. But raise your hand up. Keep it up for just a moment. God bless you, and you, and you, and you. Around the auditorium, just raise that hand up. I'm going to pray for you in a moment. Anybody else, raise it up high. Balcony? Back row? God bless you. In the family room, anyone over there? Just raise that hand up. God bless you. Yup. If you're outside, there's a pastor out there. Raise your hand up. Let them see. If you're online there's instructions on your device or computer in that little chat room of what to do. Father, we want to thank you for the honesty of those who might feel broken right now, the honesty expressed in a raised hand. And Lord, we know what that feels like. We know what it feels like to have pain and anguish and brokenness and come to the one who can heal us and fix us, set us right, to forgive us. Give us the power to forgive others. So Father, I pray for those who have raised their hands and pray that they'll now walk with you and follow you in obedience. Fill them with your Spirit in Jesus's name. Amen. Let's all stand. We're closing with a last song. As we sing this song, if you raised your hand, I'm going to ask you right now to get up from where you're standing. Find the nearest aisle. And stand right up here. I'm going to lead you in a prayer when you come down here in just a minute. A prayer to receive Christ as Savior. Come on down, come this way. Yep, come right here. Yeah. [MUSIC PLAYING] Strong enough to make you. So I run. Come running to the breakthrough. Where every fear is shattered by the one true-- Come on, it won't take you long. I saw hands go up in different places. Cause you are near, come running to the breakthrough. Come out of the shadows. Come into the light. Come out of the cave. Come into the light. Where just one touch is strong enough to make you. So I run. I come running to the breakthrough Where every fear is shattered by the one true. Cause you are near. I come running to the breakthrough. Oh, the breakthrough. We're so ready to clap, even if people are, like, leaving or coming up to be counselors. But I love that. I love you your willingness to be so encouraging. Anybody else? I saw different hands go up. And I do think it's important to make a public statement of your faith, a public walk of faith. It's sort of like a clean break from the past and a new commitment in the present and in the future. Anybody else? Some of you've just waited far too long for this. And pandemic's on its way out, it looks like. So let's celebrate with a clean start of commitment to Christ. Anybody else need to make that commitment, come now, come on. Those of you who have come forward I'm going to lead you now on a prayer. I'm going to ask you to pray this, after me, out loud. I want you to say these words from your heart because you're just talking to God. So say this, say, Lord, I give you my life. I know I'm a sinner. Please forgive me. I believe in Jesus. I believe he died on a cross, that he shed his blood for me, that he rose again from the dead. I turn from my sin. I repent of it. I turn to Jesus as Savior and as Lord of my life. It's in his name I pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much for joining us for this message from Calvary Church with Skip Heitzig. We would love to know how this message impacted you. Share your story with us. Email mystory@calvarynm.church . And if you'd like to support this Bible teaching ministry with a financial gift, visit calvarynm.church/give . One of the darkest rooms anyone can enter is dealing with a broken family. To be part of a family that is fragmented and malfunctioning feels bleak and miserable. The by-products of being in such a family are feeling unwanted, unloved, and isolated. But did you know that many people in Scripture came from such families, including David? The good news is that God is in the business of fixing broken things, including broken families. David’s darkroom of family difficulty is what we consider here. www.connectwithskip.com

At some point every human has thought, “What happens when I die?” It’s one of the most ubiquitous and mysterious aspects of humanity. Where do we go for answers? To the Bible. The Christian can say at a minimum that when he dies he will: Be with the Lord (Luke 23:43; Rom. 8:38-39; 2 Cor. 5:8) Have a body like Christ’s resurrected body that is: Glorified (Rom. 8:30; Phil. 3:21) Resurrected (1 Cor. 15:49; 1 John 3:2) Live for eternity (John 3:16, 11:25-26) Not experience grief (Rev. 21:4) How does this happen? It happens by the power of God (1 Cor. 15:24-27, 43) Why does it matter? It matters because every Christian will face the judgment seat of Christ. Let’s break these two questions down by looking at 2 Corinthians 5:1-11: “For we know that if our earthly house, the tent we live in, is dismantled, we have a building from God, a house not built by human hands, that is eternal in the heavens…” The Christian has both a present body (earthly house–tent) that is distinct from a future heavenly body (building–1 Cor. 15:42-44). This future body is realized in the heavens. “…For in this earthly house we groan, because we desire to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed, after we have put on our heavenly house, we will not be found naked. For we groan while we are in this tent, since we are weighed down, because we do not want to be unclothed, but clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life…” A Christian lives with an inexorable groaning because while he exists in a present body (not perfect), he knows that it is not his ultimate and glorified future body (perfect–Phil. 3:21). A Christian is a walking conundrum. “…Now the one who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave us the Spirit as a down payment…” The Christian’s future heavenly body is made by God, and is guaranteed by the the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. If God can fail, then we don’t have a promise of eternal life with Him. Since He cannot, we have… “…Therefore we are always full of courage, and we know that as long as we are alive here on earth we are absent from the Lord—for we live by faith, not by sight…” The Christian’s first response to these truths is good courage while living with the conundrum of an earthly body. The reason is because his confidence in having a future heavenly body is based on God’s character. The word that defines the Christian’s perspective is “faith”, because he hasn’t seen his future heavenly body yet. He’s trusting God for it. “…Thus we are full of courage and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord…” The next response continues his good courage, and adds an understanding of the dimension (preference) of a Christian’s groaning. To be with the Lord in a future heavenly body is better than living with a present earthly body. “…So then whether we are alive or away, we make it our ambition to please him…” The third response is to please the Lord. There is no “waiting” until I’m older to honor God with my life. Why? “…For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be paid back according to what he has done while in the body, whether good or evil…” God will reward the Christian for his deeds done in his present earthly body. “…Therefore, because we know the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade people, but we are well known to God, and I hope we are well known to your consciences too.” As a result of knowing a judgment day for the Christian is real and imminent, he persuades others to know the Lord. In sum… The Christian has an earthly body with the hope of a future heavenly body. The future heavenly body is: (1) better than the earthly body, (2) guaranteed by God, and (3) provides direct fellowship and nearness to God. The present earthly body is the testing or trial grounds out of which the Christian will receive rewards in the future (with God in a heavenly body). Ergo, while in his present earthly body, the Christian walks in faith, aiming to please God, knowing that he will be rewarded, and therefore persuades others to know the Lord. Therefore… “…we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve like the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also we believe that God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep as Christians.” 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 (NET)

For the first ten years of my marriage, I struggled with the fear of abandonment. My father and my first pastor had both left their wives for younger women. Because of what I had experienced, I allowed fearful thoughts to linger unchecked in my mind. They didn’t yell; they whispered.  Eventually all men leave. Don’t let them get too close. Then they can’t disappoint you.  This kind of thinking caused me to even resist small displays of affection. When John hugged me, it wasn’t long before I’d start patting him so I could pull away. One day after one of my “pat-and-pull-aways,” John asked me point blank, “How long will we have to be together before you realize I’m not going to leave you? Are you going to wait until we’re seventy?” I was stunned. “I’ll wait as long as it takes,” he continued, “but we’re going to miss out on a lot of fun in the meantime.” I realized I was making John pay for the disappointments I had with other men. I thought,  Why should John have to pay for their shortcomings? That’s not fair. In an effort to protect myself, I am sabotaging our relationship.  My fear of losing John in the future was robbing both of us in the present. I decided then that I would rather love John completely, even at the risk of losing him, than love him halfway and look back with regrets on what might have been. Fear and distrust keep us from thriving in marriage, for fear tenaciously clings to the past while refusing to believe something better can arise in the future. If we want God to do a new thing in our marriages, we must choose to abandon fear and accept what love would forecast for our futures. Fear expects failure, while love can never fail. Fear is a spiritual force in direct opposition to God’s love and protection in our lives. It is the opposite of love, for both love and fear operate from belief in the unseen. Love challenges us to doubt what we see and believe for what we cannot. Fear urges us to believe what is seen and doubt the unseen. When faced with the fear of failure or the hope of love, we can choose to believe one or the other, but never both. Fear displaces love; love casts out fear. …Perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other because he loved us first. ( 1 John 4:18–19 ) Love’s ability to transform is greater than fear’s ability to ensnare. The perfect love that expels fear is only found in the experience of God’s love. Through the power of His love, we can forsake concern for self, because we know that God will faithfully tend to our needs. But if we don’t spend time in God’s presence, we cannot have an intimate knowledge of His loving nature; for His faithfulness manifests in His presence. Without knowledge of God’s true nature, we will live in constant fear of abandonment by Him or by spouses, which is a twisted form of punishment. As we grow more and more secure in God’s love for us, we can become free from fear and offer selfless love to our spouses. …Let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. ( 1 John 4:7–8 ) The stronghold of fear is what causes us to say things like, “If my spouse ever cheats on me, I will never forgive him.” Such vows, which are intended to shield us in the future, keep us from embracing the power of God’s love today. We must learn to trust God to care for our hearts, even if a spouse wounds, rejects, or betrays us. God has asked us to surrender our fears to Him. Refusal to do so tells God we don’t believe He is capable of directing our lives. We cannot submit to Jesus’s lordship without surrendering our fears. What fears are you holding on to? Dear one, let them go and watch the love of God transform you from the inside out and free you to step into your destiny. On the other side of your fear, you will discover the life you so deeply long for.   The Story of Marriage . Grab a copy  here .

Deborah Mitchell, a popular CNN blogger and confirmed atheist, claimed that raising children without God is better than raising children with God. Mrs. Mitchell lists seven reasons why she raises her children not to believe in God. These reasons are: God is a bad parent and role model God is not logical God is not fair God does not protect the innocent God is not present God does not teach children to be good God teaches narcissism   I’d like to briefly address each one of these objections to God’s existence (or character). Keep in mind, however, that though I will present biblical answers to these challenges, many readers will likely not like the answers. In every question we have about God, in every challenge we have about him, we must remember that God is sovereign. He does what he wishes, when he wishes, for his own purposes, and he is not obligated to give us the feel-good answers we seek. We, however, are obligated to accept God’s answers since we are the creature, not the Creator, and we are all accountable to him for what we think, feel, say, and do. God is not accountable to us or to our ideas of right, wrong, or fairness. We are accountable to him.   God Is A Bad Parent And Role Model   Mrs. Mitchell states, “If God is our father, then he is not a good parent.” Mitchell’s first mistake, which carries through to the rest of her article, is the assumption that God is everyone’s father. But the Bible, which she criticizes, does not tell us God is everyone’s father. Relationally speaking, he is only the father of those who have been adopted into his family through Christ ( Romans 8:15 ). Anyone who does not have Christ does not have the Father and therefore is not God’s child in special relationship to him ( I John 2:23 ).   She goes on to stay, “Good people don’t stand by and watch horrible acts committed against innocent men, women and children.” I would tend to agree with Mrs. Mitchell on this point if it refers to humanity. But the scripture actually recognizes that we are not good ( Luke 18:19 ). In fact, the scripture condemns us for not doing good when it is in our power to help someone ( Deuteronomy 15:7 ; I John 3:17 ; James 2:15-16 ).   Even though the scripture requires us to act, God is not obligated to intervene supernaturally on behalf of anyone. This is because God cannot be obligated by us. He is God, we are not. Secondly, Mrs. Mitchell conveniently forgets that God has already acted when it comes to worldly injustices. He has done this in two ways: First, God gave us a law in Exodus through Deuteronomy that specifically tells us what to do when evil is committed against others. We are to act. It is our responsibility to act, not God’s. We are made in his image and it is we who have been charged by God with the care of the world and society ( Genesis 1:28 ). Man’s failure to act does not oblige God to make up for man’s rebellion and sin.   Second, God did act to begin the process of correcting the injustices of the world. His second chosen action was to send Jesus who modeled life for us, then paid for our sin (all manner of moral injustices) so that we could be forgiven and begin the process of changing our lives to become more of the person God intends for us to be. Our most critical need is to deal with the sin issue that we all face, through which we all commit various kinds of injustices. The Law of Moses did this, partially, but the sacrifice of Jesus was necessary to deal with the issue more fully.   Though many injustices seem to be unanswered now, this does not mean that God is not going to correct those injustices in the future. The Christian lives in hope that at the end of days God will, to put it in an oversimplified manner, even the score. The scripture recognizes this delayed justice. “Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who carries out wicked schemes. Cease from anger and forsake wrath; do not fret; it leads only to evildoing. For evildoers will be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land. Yet a little while and the wicked man will be no more” ( Psalm 37:7-10 ).   God is not on our timetable when it comes to righting the world’s wrongs.   God Is Not Logical   Ironically, I agree with Mrs. Mitchell’s point about man’s responsibility to address evil. She says, “If there is a good, all-knowing, all-powerful God who loves his children, does it make sense that he would allow murders, child abuse, wars, brutal beatings, torture and millions of heinous acts to be committed throughout the history of mankind?…The question we should be asking is this: ‘Why did we allow this to happen?’ How can we fix this?”   I agree with her that it is man’s responsibility to address these issues. However, just because evil exists it does not automatically follow that a good God therefore does not exist. All of us are evil. In fact, we are evil to the core though we have some ability to do good things ( Matthew 19:17 ). The Bible tells us how evil we are ( Jeremiah 17:9 ). Mrs. Mitchell’s statement that a good God cannot exist if evil exists is not logical. Mrs. Mitchell is evil. I am evil. Everyone is evil. But we have the capacity to do good things ( Matthew 7:11 ).   God Is Not Fair   Mrs. Mitchell asks, “If God is fair, then why does he answer the silly prayers of some while allowing other, serious requests, to go unanswered?… If God is fair, then why are some babies born with heart defects, autism, missing limbs or conjoined to another baby?” These are issues that man has struggled with for all time. For centuries Christians have tried to answer this issue to the satisfaction of the unbeliever, hoping that person will see reason and come to Christ. But there is one problem with this approach that is undeniable.   Life is not fair. God never promised life would be fair. God is not obligated to act according to our definition of fairness. The Apostle Paul addresses this in Roman’s 9:20-21, “Who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?”   God told Job something similar when Job sought to justify himself before God. In Job 38 God essentially says to Job, “Who do you think you are?”   This is not an answer that we like. Tough. That’s just the way it is. God is not obligated by us to say or do anything for any reason. We may think this is unfair, but none of us have the long view of history or humanity that God has. He knows our beginnings and our endings. To those who love him there awaits a great reward of seeing him and serving him forever. But to those who reject him, he will also reject. Why is it that we think God is obligated to right all our wrongs right now when we spit in his face? Clearly, God is not unfair. We are the ones who look at God and want to put unfair conditions upon him.   God Does Not Protect The Innocent   Mrs. Mitchell asks, “Why can’t God, with all his powers of omnipotence, protect the innocent?” She makes a leap in judgment by connecting the suffering of people with an inability to act on God’s part. But God has acted, as stated earlier. He acted through Law, giving us responsibility over the injustices in the world. “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” ( Micah 6:8 ).   He Is Not Present   This, of course, is Mrs. Mitchell’s assumption throughout her article. If God does not do what we want him to do then, she reasons, God does not exist. This is foolish. A person born out of wedlock who never meets his father cannot reason that his father does not exist because he did not have his presence. So too, the unbeliever who rejects God because he doesn’t feel his presence assumes too much. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” ( Psalm 46:1 ). Only those who know God through Christ can know his abiding presence.   God Does Not Teach Children to Be Good   Mrs. Mitchell states, “A child should make moral choices for the right reasons. Telling him that he must behave because God is watching means that his morality will be externally focused rather than internally structured.” Mrs. Mitchell cannot have it both ways. First she asserts that God is not present, then she criticizes the notion that an external God urging good behavior is a wrong way to teach good morals. But as we’ve already seen, man’s heart is wicked ( Jeremiah 17:1 ). Goodness, therefore, does not come from within, it comes from without. We have the capacity to do good, but we cannot conquer our own evil apart from Christ. Only the indwelling Holy Spirit can work out a new morality from within. God promised this in Jeremiah 31:33 , “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”   Mrs. Mitchell’s logic is also flawed in this claim. All good that we learn is learned from outside us. We learn if from our parents. We learn it from our teachers and peers. We learn it from the laws in our society. We learn it from philosophy. Her claims in this regard hold no water.   God Teaches Narcissism   Here Mrs. Mitchell claims, “Telling kids there is a big guy in the sky who has a special path for them makes children narcissistic.” On the contrary, telling children that they are specially created by God to be like him inculcates the idea of responsibility, something to measure up to, a standard to be realized. God says in Leviticus 11:44 , “Be holy because I am holy.” That is not narcissism, that is a higher purpose to achieve.   Jesus said, “You are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect” ( Matthew 5:48 ). This is not narcissism, this is a recognition that we have something to live up to. But all of this is to be done with an attitude of humility. “I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment” ( Romans 12:3 ). The Apostle Paul also says, “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others” ( Philippians 4:3-4 ). This is not narcissism by any definition.   Conclusion   Psalm 139:13-16 : “For you created my inmost being;    you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;    your works are wonderful,    I know that full well. 15  My frame was not hidden from you    when I was made in the secret place,    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. 16  Your eyes saw my unformed body;    all the days ordained for me were written in your book    before one of them came to be.” NIV No one is beyond redemption. If you are struggling with a wayward adult child, remember that he or she is never out of God’s attention and is being surrounded by God’s love all of the time. Be one of those reminders. Finally, pray. King David tells us God inhabits the praises of His people and He hears and answers your prayers. Take time every day to praise God for what He has done and and what He will do in the lives of your children.. Bring your requests and concerns to His feet, lay them there and let go knowing that He can care for your children better than  you ever could.

You married with the hope of sharing your life with someone who’s as pumped to make the most of it as you are, so how did the two of you end up here? Maybe the turbulence of the recent months – with lifestyle disruption, threat of COVID and economic uncertainty – is taking its toll on how you both feel. Your daily activities are no longer what they used to be, and while there some changes you enjoy, your marriage feels worse than before. Lockdown has amplified all the annoying habits of your spouse. He chews his food too loud. She never gets out of yoga pants. You wonder to yourself, if you ever need to be quarantined again in the future, is this the person you want to be quarantined with? As a divorce attorney and mediator, I’ve walked with hundreds of people who’ve left unhappy marriages. If you’re like many of us, you’re not dealing with a harmful or toxic marriage, but an unhappy one. The line between harmful and unhappy is not black and white, and you may need to reach out to someone wise you trust to help you discern the difference. If you’re like most unhappily married people, when your disappointment feels strong, you wonder whether you’ve signed up for a lifetime of misery. I get it. There are times every marriage feels hard, even impossible. In today’s blog, I’m asking you to set aside your cynicism, your disappointment and your disillusionment for a few moments to ponder a few thoughts about separating . Why am I writing? Because I’m so grateful there were people, including friends, speakers, authors and counsellors who I listened to and learned from while our marriage felt like it was breaking down. Carey and I now enjoy a thriving marriage we wouldn’t dream of leaving. Who knows? Maybe one of these 3 things will help you start to move out of your distress, too: 1. Your Victim Story Will Blind You Let me guess – so you think it’s all your spouse’s fault your marriage is so hard? For many years when Carey and I had heated arguments, I would withdraw. I would slip off into my own little world and go silent and become basically unreachable. But going silent wasn’t Carey’s wiring and it drove him crazy. I would insist he leave me alone while he persistently tried to draw me back into some kind of engagement. I labeled Carey’s behavior as aggressive and this dynamic carried on over time only led us into bitterness and resentment. Years in without realizing it, I was telling myself a victim story that threatened to derail us. It was a tangled version of I can’t do this anymore and if only he would also fight for peace and leave me alone… Turns out, my victim story distorted the truth. When I slipped into silence during an argument, I wasn’t simply ‘fighting for peace’ – I was also stonewalling. There were times when I withdrew into my self-made fortress and treated every advance by Carey as an attack. It was only after I absorbed the wisdom of counselors, engaged in some serious self-reflection, and developed the maturity to face my own blind spots that I could see my role more accurately. My victim story was clouding my vision. When it comes to relationships, if there’s a victim, there’s a perpetrator. When you adopt a victim mindset especially in marriage, the psychology of ‘we’re a team’ breaks down. Then you feel divided and disconnected from each other. The vast majority of my family law clients saw themselves as having been victimized by their spouse in some way. Most people who were leaving said their spouse was emotionally abusive. That label has really caught on. A victim narrative is problematic because it takes relational dynamics with inherent complexity and oversimplifies them. You, like me, will have a human tendency to oversimplify the story in your favour, to help you avoid pain and cause you the least personal discomfort. A victim narrative is problematic because it takes relational dynamics with inherent complexity and oversimplifies them. Is there a subject you and your spouse avoid because one or both of you gets triggered when you broach it? How to get the other to stop being so negative? How to fight clean instead of ‘dirty’? How to solve that nagging parenting problem? How to handle your growing money problem? How to fix your failing relationship? How much sex? Chances are, you both believe the other person’s to blame for the unsolved problem(s) in your relationship. You too, may have a victim story running in the background, blinding you to your own part in whatever your problem may be. But if you walk away without trying to spot your own role or offense, you’ll leave believing your part truth, part fiction victim story. If I’d walked away when my victim story spoke to me the loudest, I would have carried the same stonewalling-under-the-guise-of-peace tendency into my next relationship. Maybe after two or three partners, the part of my story that was fictional would become more visible. I’m grateful it didn’t happen that way. And you don’t need to wait for the passage of time and experiences of life to open your eyes to the whole truth, either. As long as your marriage is unhappy and not toxic, you are not a victim. While the ‘blame’ for the struggles between you may not even out at 50:50, and perhaps your spouse is 90 % responsible – you still have your 10% to own. Make yourself a promise to look for your part. Avoid passively allowing time to teach you. Search for the fictional part of your victim story, with humility. When you find it, own it, apologize for it, and start taking steps to make it right. 2. You May Be Listening to the Wrong Messages Your friends will influence you either to lean into or away from your marriage. Research shows how much your marriage decisions are influenced by the people around you. In recent years, neuroscientific research has uncovered fascinating insight into how our brains respond to the influence of the brains of the people we surround ourselves with. Moran Cerf, a neuroscientist and professor at Northwestern University, has done research into the social aspect of decision-making. As one reporter says of Cerf’s research: So long as we make the right choices, the thinking goes, we’ll put ourselves on a path toward life satisfaction. Cerf rejects that idea. The truth is, decision-making is fraught with biases that cloud our judgment. People misremember bad experiences as good and vice versa; they let their emotions turn a rational choice into an irrational one; and they use social cues, even subconsciously, to make choices they’d otherwise avoid…” His neuroscience research has found that when two people are in each other’s company, their brain waves will begin to look nearly identical. Says Cerf, “This means the people you hang out with actually have an impact on your engagement with reality beyond what you can explain. And one of the effects is you become alike.” Cerf’s research findings don’t strike us as counterintuitive; in fact, our life experiences have already taught us that people tend to rub off on each other. We become more like the people we keep company with. If the norm among your friends or social circle is to get a divorce when the marriage feels over, then according to the research, divorce becomes a more likely outcome for you too. But it doesn’t have to be. You already know that you choose the company you keep and the voices you listen to. Look around you. Are the people you’re closest to cheering for your marriage? Or are they cheering for you to walk away? Look around you. Are the people you’re closest to cheering for your marriage? Or are they cheering for you to walk away?  While you need friends who will be with you through the ups and downs, you may need to be selective about who you receive advice from. Do the messages of your friends bring you comfort, or wisdom? If you were choosing between two job offers or two cities to relocate to, I’m guessing you would weigh the pros and the cons. You would try to see both the risks and the benefits as objectively as possible. You might also visualize what life would look like down the road for each option. But for me, during our rough season of marriage, that kind of objectivity was hard to grasp through desperate emotions. Your pain will push you to give up, and may even cause you to visualize what a new chapter of love might look like. But add your pain to the voices or influence of people around you who have left marriages, and you may do what you never would never do with any other major life decision. You may be drawn by your emotions and the social influence of your friends to only see the pros and not the cons of walking away. What to do? If you’re feeling stuck and unhappy in your marriage, you need to seek out some other voices to give you informed perspectives about your options. Commit to spending more time with people who value their marriage and yours. Invest in a relationship with a couple who have gone through unhappy seasons but are now deeply satisfied. Combat your internal resistance toward finding a qualified marriage counselor who comes with great reviews from couples who were distressed but aren’t anymore. Sign up for a marriage course, retreat or marriage support group. There are people who have invaluable messages for you while you’re struggling with your marriage, but chances are they won’t just show up. You need to make the effort to seek them out. Choose to listen for wisdom over comfort. 3. You Won’t Feel the Costs of Leaving Until You’ve Left Ever witnessed a divorce that seemed hasty and premature? After dotting the I’s and crossing the t’s on the divorce settlement, I had a few clients who said, “If I’d only known then what I know now, I would’ve tried harder to save my marriage.” There’s no way around it: splitting isn’t going to look or feel the way you imagine. I walked through divorce with many clients who were shocked by the gap between what they expected after separating and what they experienced. They had a hard time coming to terms with it. If you’ve been married any length of time, and especially if you have kids, even an out-of-court divorce will be harder and more complicated than you imagine. Many of the parents I advised told me the primary reason they were walking away was to stop the negative impact of their fighting or their indifference toward each other on their kids. Either through your own experience or that of others, you’ve seen the other consequences of divorce. Maybe you’ve helped a friend through the grief of their marriage breakdown. Maybe you’ve seen how the demands of making divorce arrangements pushed other priorities such as work or personal health further down the list. I’m sure you’ve heard about the financial loss people suffer when they divide the family income between two separate households. The costs of separating only become stark reality when you take the real steps. Please don’t hear me say that divorce is never an option. In some cases, the divorce is hard but spares the family from further harm. However, don’t make a hasty decision to split. Listen to wisdom first. Choose the hard work of facing the fictions in your own victim story. Chances are, your courage combined with action will keep you from the regret of wishing you’d tried harder. You may believe it’s your spouse who needs to do the hard work, not you. But this decision is high stakes, and you have more influence than you think. www.careynieuwhof.com .