A Process of Healing — Matthew 25

0:00 Alrighty. Good morning. Good morning. So this is the first time doing this. When I had all...

0:08 I'm gonna share my testimony. When I had all my thoughts together and I started to write my intro. I was like, what the heck should I do? And so I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna wing it.

0:20 Right? And so I decided to wing my intro, but then I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna talk about me winging my intro. So I guess I ended up like not winging the intro. So that was the intro.

0:33 You're welcome. Alright. So so I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home where the center of the household and the overall focus was to model what the Bible said and the outlines for worship and how children were were raised. That's how... That's what we were growing up to follow the Bible.

0:58 Right? So it's no surprise that I accepted the Lord as my savior at a pretty young age. So I became... I came to accept the Lord as my savior at the age of 10. I remember the passage we were reading talked about the the gnashing of teeth and the eternal torment that hell brings to those who reject god and our devotions are not all like to instill fear into us.

1:26 It's it was just this one time. It's it just stuck with me and that night I was I was laying in bed and I was thinking about trying to imagine what hell would be like and how horrible it would be and and it made me cry how... Made me cry just imagining it what it be like. And so from Hebrews ten thirty one, it kinda highlights... Kinda captures how I...

1:49 Like how I felt about hell because it says, it is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. And so I came to know the Lord through the fear of His wrath. And so throughout middle school, and I think through freshman year, I worked to be a good person, you know, church, Wana, but I think that during that time I wasn't mature spiritually, I wasn't trying to live my life for the Lord, I was just trying to do good works and be a good person. But it wasn't until the summer going into sophomore year, my relationship with the Lord truly began to mature and grow because due to two fellow linemen taking me in under their wing. I didn't know them very well prior to sophomore year, but I had asked one of them for a ride to the stadium and as I was getting to the car, he said that he hopes I don't mind listening to Christian music and I was pretty excited to not be alone on the football team.

3:27 Their names were Jack and Andy and... They're... I've been there. They were seniors last year, and they just did so much for me. We instantly became best friends, those two and I, and I would go to youth groups at Providence Wednesday nights and something through our school called FCA.

4:10 It was a fellowship of Christian athletes on Monday nights. And there's one time I slept over at their house and we played video games till two in the morning. And then we had a bible study till three in the morning and turns out I'm just an idiot because I had football lifting at 05:45, so I got two hours of sleep that morning. But it was so amazing to have someone that I could look up to because we all had that same goal that was to live lives pleasing to the Lord. I don't know why I'm crying so...

4:54 But Jack and Andy were seniors last year, and they they go to Ohio State now. But we still stay in frequent contact, but I miss them a lot. And so now I don't I don't have that pure companionship to fight the traps of this world. A huge motivator to me now is to be a good example to my little brothers. Because I know that going to a public school, have that same crap thrown at them that was thrown at me.

6:41 The lord no longer to me is someone to be feared but respected. I no longer must worry about his wrath because he has chosen me to be a child of God. I'm saved by grace and not by words that I may not boast. He loves me enough to send his only son to die on my behalf, and all he wants in return is fellowship and to live my life for his glory. I don't know I don't know what I want to do with my life yet, and I I don't know what he wants to do with my life yet, but I can rest assured knowing that that I can completely hope in Christ alone and know that he has a plan for me.

7:28 And so lastly, I wanna read from Psalms 23. Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters.

7:42 He refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

8:02 You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows. Surely, your goodness and love will follow me and all the days of my and all the days of my life, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. So thank you.

8:28 I know he's been an encouragement to see him and to see anybody else. When you see the Lord work in someone else's life, honestly that is for me the greatest, not just encouragement, but evidence of him. So that's what we're trying to do. We're apologists up here giving our testimony. We're showing evidence.

8:57 Oh man, you just made my notes wet. The tears. Alright, so well I didn't have many notes anyways. Let's pray first. Dear Lord, pray that you will, your spirit will guide in the rest of this meeting and thank you that it has and I pray that you'll bless the words to all of our hearts.

9:19 We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen. Roger asked me to give testimony and I asked what and I forgot what he said but it wasn't just getting saved. So he gave me some latitude, whatever the Lord Spirit puts on my heart. So my testimony is that I was in a Christian family and at age four or five, I can't even remember, I heard a gospel message and I got saved. So I'm done.

9:45 I can I can? You can... No. I'm just... Well, my testimony is probably mostly about after I got saved.

9:58 What did it afterwards? So heaven came down the glory. Know what? It didn't actually, I didn't have necessarily that experience like, I just kind of, you know how you imagine, get saved and then everything's good afterwards, and you're kind of floating through clouds and, you know, seeing the glory and all that. You know, even after I got saved, I would say that I had a hard heart and a hard hiney.

10:56 Have no doubt that I was. I do remember fiddling with the paddle to see if I couldn't do something, I broke it, and then I taped it back together.

11:10 That made it even worse because it slapped really hard.

11:14 Be sure your son will find you out. I was constantly testing my parents and I was constantly testing my entire family and it was just the way it was even after I got saved. I remember, I mean the Lord uses things to kind of make you aware of your sin and my parents definitely were used that way. They reminded me. We kept them in the scriptures to renew the mind and affect the heart and the will.

11:54 I remember one time I got so angry at my brother that I threw a hand saw, one of those big hand saws you cut wood with and they have the thick two teeth marks. I remember throwing it like this, spinning and hitting my brother Nathan. And I watched as, you can still see it in slow motion, I can to this day, as that saw spins and those teeth raked across my brother's arm and you saw like furrows up and down his forearm. And that is, I mean, it reminds me of my kids today. I caught one of my kids chasing the other with a hammer.

12:31 I'm picturing young serial killers, but sorry. I mean, it's the heart of man. It's my heart, you know. My same broken heart, I pass it on to my kids. And I'll get to a little bit more my story as a parent and how the Lord continues to work with me, but definitely as I read the scriptures...

12:57 Definitely as I read the scriptures, I see stories of some of the greatest patriarchs totally failing with their kids. I think to myself, How can I ever? Like what chance is there for me? Know. I mean certainly the first one ever, the one who knew God intimately before there was sin.

13:20 He... His his first born son, Cain, murdered his brother. And so I'm I'm dependent on the Lord's grace and mercy and I can only have faith and seek him. I remember at age probably five, I mean God works in different ways. There's little moments in your life, know.

13:48 And so I mean even this is just maybe an encouragement to everybody, your kids know and they understand probably a lot more than you think. And then the old group that we went to, were very conservative and all of the kids, they would stay in these sometimes 2,000 or 3,000 people in a single conference hall. They'd all get together and the kids would all be with the families and you would go to meetings all day long. None of this fancy fancy conference stuff they have these days where you get two conferences in a single, two meetings. No, I was like, if you didn't have eight hours of teaching in a day, that was, I'm pretty sure, that's how I remember anyways.

14:27 But I

14:31 remember a speaker to this day when the Lord touched my heart and he was talking about David, telling the story of David and his failing with Bathsheba and how he... The man after God's own heart also committed adultery, hid it and lied about it, and then killed this man, this godly man. And and told the story and I remember him just making this statement and this is at five, I still remember to this day because every once in a while you become enlightened, know what I'm saying? Every once in a the Lord reveals truth to you and it always seems kind of like when the clouds are dark and then like a ray shines through and boom, you know, and that's then you're like, woah, woah. And I just remember sitting there in my little heart at five and telling this story and then he said, this is...

15:34 I forgot exactly the words, but it was something like, you know, this is the essence of a man after God's own heart. It's not that you don't sin, but it's that when he was convicted, he responded in a way that was wholehearted in repentance. I started to realize, you're pretty messed up and you need to respond that same way. I wish I could say that again, I'm done, story done. I'm good now.

16:53 We grow up with these things that happen to us and again, it probably wouldn't be appropriate to go into detail some of these things, five, six, seven, both decisions I made, things that happened to me, but I started to realize some things about me and one of those things was that number one, I didn't love people very much. Noticed some things like, wow, I am constantly resentful and it's hard for me to acknowledge that. And I started to realize stuff like, I can't connect to anybody, what's going on? Like why can't I connect to people? Even the people I love, I struggle to connect with.

17:37 My dad, I struggle to connect with him. My brothers and those were the easy ones. The friends, like I didn't have relationships like I saw other people have. I was like, what's going on here? Why can't I connect?

17:49 Why can't I relate to these people around me? Why am I so proud and why am I so judgmental? Of course, there's lot of this is just sin, right? Just plain sin and sometimes it's sinful choices, sometimes it's just a burdened heart, sometimes it's an injured heart. Things all work together.

18:06 Sin can cause injury in our hearts and minds. And I've searched many places. I've looked in psychology. I've read a lot of books and believe there's wisdom in many areas. The Lord gives grace to the good and the evil, right?

18:33 And there's healing. But I would say that through... I would say it's actually the hard times, it's the difficult things that as the Lord has kind of combined his truth in the scriptures with then experience like he uses his truth and he uses us obeying to worship him to bring healing in our hearts. And so it's been a process, would say. Certain moments, probably four or five years ago.

19:18 I mean, or five years ago, and I'm sorry, I'm not a little bit more detailed or together, I wasn't even sure what I was going to talk about when I came up here, but four or five years ago I think I had like a nervous breakdown. I remember crying in my wife's shoulder, you know, and crying to my dad and crying to other people and breaking out crying in the middle of Chipotle. Was ordering my Chipotle and I started crying, just weeping and sobbing because I don't think things are going to work out. And the... So I guess I'm making the point that maybe at that point in time it didn't seem like heaven had come down and glory was filling my soul.

20:08 It doesn't seem like that sometimes. Okay? There's low points and there's high points. And there was a point in time when I... I can't even give you like time, but I started to realize like, Lord, I don't love you.

20:27 I struggled from early like when I was saved through, you know, teenage years, I'd have opportunities to share the Lord. I knew what the truth was, but I struggled to share the Lord. I really did. And I got to the point where I was just afraid to and I didn't want to. Okay.

20:48 And I didn't realize that maybe I didn't have a whole lot to share at that point in time. I had the truth but in terms of an actual experience of like an overflowing of joy to share with other people, I didn't... I couldn't acknowledge it at that point in time, I... Looking back, I didn't I started to kind of get little understanding. I didn't have that to share.

21:43 And if you don't have his love, then you're not really having the benefits of your salvation here on earth that you could have, you know? And that's why I prayed to him. I I said, Lord, I don't love you. I'll just be honest. And, it's something like this, you know, I don't love you And obviously, if I wanted to love you, I would.

22:10 So I don't even want to love you. And so I'm going to acknowledge this and could you just change my heart? And and so, I prayed that prayer and it and I would say, I won't claim that I have his love all the time but what I have seen is he started to change me, like when you find yourself in a certain place, if it was just an action you could do, you could change yourself, right? But if the Lord's transformed, you have to ask for his help and it was a conversation I had with my dad, It was about the the blind man who had been blind from birth. Was it blind...

22:49 Blindness, right? He had been blind from birth and then Jesus healed him and then it was the one where he he was brought in. The Pharisees questioned him and his parents. His parents didn't want to have anything to do with it because they want to be thrown out and then, he kind of gives the the Pharisees a hard time and then afterwards, Jesus meets him, finds him in an alley, you know, by himself and says, hey, do you believe in the son of God? Who is he that I might believe?

23:19 I am here or something like this and then he says, Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. And I always remembered that and I think it's something my dad kind of pointed out to me like, when your heart's not where it should be, you can't change it but you can ask the Lord to help you. Amen. Okay?

23:38 And so that truth hit my head and I realized it needed to touch my heart, okay? And so I prayed and I said, Lord, my heart is not where it should be. Please help me love you and and help me do that. I don't even want to, help me do that. And, I don't...

24:13 I didn't realize at the time but there's some other truth around this that I started to see after this happened because I don't know if you... The bible talks and I can't... I wish I could give you like the chapter and verse, it says... It talks about the eyes of the heart, right? I started to see these verses come out in the Bible that I had not noticed or become aware of beforehand and they were verses about truth, verses about revelation, verses about seeing things.

24:44 And I started to see the stories, they come together as I read through the bible of how when people have hard hearts, they can't see even the most obvious truths oftentimes. And if your heart is soft, then that is when God reveals to you spiritual understanding. There's the seen and the unseen and for those who are breaking a bread, I I had mentioned that that that when we seek to worship the lord, we worship the lord that we can't see with our eyes but we but we see him with the eyes of our heart. We see them and we acknowledge that there is a truth that is just as true, in fact more true than the reality of what we can touch, what we can see with our eyes and what we can hear with our ears and smell and taste. The lie from Satan that is easily received by a hardened heart is that this is all there is.

26:22 Dare I say God? It needs God. We need God. We need his love. We need his healing.

26:29 And let me see if I can look it up. In Proverbs, there's the verse that says, I believe it's early in Proverbs, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Not just the knowledge of the Lord but the fear. And I don't believe it's like the anxious kind of fear but the fear in terms of very specific, he is everything or I have given my entire focus to him, okay, a care almost, an understanding of his greatness. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

27:29 Why is that? See, knowledge happens in the head, right? It's in the mind. Fear is something in the heart. And of course, when we know the Lord, he always says fear not, right?

27:39 So that's one of the interesting things about fear of the Lord. He takes away our fear and he brings love. But we can't see him very well when our heart is hardened, when we're full of anxiety, full of the cares of the world, full of the pleasures of this world. We're seeking those things, He becomes dim. Okay?

28:11 And we sang a song this morning, the breaking of bread, Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full on His wonderful face. And what does it say? The things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. There's something that I learned to do. I learned that I was told by somebody, Hey, if you do the first thing in the morning, if you want to really wake up better, go look at the sun.

28:43 And it'll help kind of reset your brain. And I got a chance to talk to Dave Asbury who is, for some of you guys, he's kind of like a biohacking person at a seminar and he said, I asked him like, hey, the sun gets late, I can't wake up that late, is there anything else? He suggested grabbing two five hundred watts lights that you would find like on a troubled light, like halogen bulbs, they're super bright and just shine that at your face for a few minutes in the morning that will reset you biologically and help you wake up better in the morning, reset your time. So I tried that, it worked so well, it reset my time clock an hour and a half earlier, I couldn't do that first thing in the morning, started getting up at 04:30. So, but the interesting thing was that when you took that light and I would bring it down to my dim basement, it didn't have very good lighting and I stuck it and I'd shine it on my face while I did some other things and man, like when you had that thing shining at you, you couldn't see anything.

30:00 Everything became dim. You were like blinded. We talked this morning earlier, previous, at the breaking of bread service, about the transfiguration of Christ and how he was like the sun shining, right? And so, our vision has changed. I'm trying to bring it down.

30:18 Our vision has changed when we let our hearts be softened, when he fills us with his love, okay? It's a thing that happens where we can see him better but then he also opens up our mind to see his truth better which then changes our heart. So it's softer. So there's a thing that happens where we stay in the scriptures, we stay in his truth and then it helps our hearts see more. Generally it changes our will, we make decisions differently.

30:56 And then we see more with our mind. And I would say that and then our hearts change more, right? There's this process that he uses and normally right in that process there's some pain, some difficult experiences that we have to go through that validate hopefully the knowledge and the truth that we've learned and improve our character and give us the joy, help us understand that there's a lot of decisions we can make. Satan would have you think that the things that happen, what we feel is all there is. Okay, so this bad thing happening to you or this difficult experience is all there is.

32:06 He calls us to look for a hope that is above this world and we know that as we do this, can be closer to Paul. We can hopefully say like Paul said, when he was towards his last years of life. He said, I believe he was in prison and this is either Philippians one or Ephesians one, is it where he says, To live is Christ and to die is gain. Philippians one, he says, To live is Christ and to die is gain. And he was contemplating his life, the end of life.

32:49 He knew the time was near, it had already been prophesied and the Lord had told him, right? He knew he was going to die a violent death and yet while still in prison he had a mission so strong. He had a calling on his heart and his mind. He wrote those words. What he was doing is kind of contemplating like, if I go on, to die is gain, right?

33:20 I get to go to heaven. Right? I get to I I get to be glorified. No more pain. No more suffering.

33:28 But to live is Christ. To live is to live abiding in Christ with the with the meaning and understanding so that even with manacles on his hands, even with possible tons from a soldier, even knowing that he was going to go in front of Nero, I think, was it Nero at the time? I thought someone said Nero, but maybe not. He was going to go in front of somebody who was probably going to kill him because he could and he was known for it, right? Even knowing all these things, because he was abiding in Christ, there was a spiritual reality.

34:13 There was a new understanding. He could just sit there and think about, Well, I'd like to go on but to live is to live in Christ. So here I am in the cell, here I am in. I think we can all say that. Here we are, we're all called to carry our cross in our different things.

34:33 Some of us are full time ministry, some of us are not. That does not mean we're not carrying our cross because we're called to do all things as unto him. So he gives us the sufferings, he tells us this in Romans, what's the verse where he talks about count it all joy? That's Philippians. Peter, apparently there's several verses on that, I thought it was Romans.

34:59 Yeah. Count it all joy. I don't, I've struggled with count it all joy, right? But I believe, because the reality is sometimes you wake up, sometimes you lose it, sometimes you scream at your kids and yell at them when you shouldn't have, sometimes you're really down and you don't know how you're going get through the day, right? The truth is still the same though, okay?

35:31 And His grace is still the same and so sometimes even when you lose it, you don't have to lose faith, right? You totally lose it whatever... In whatever way, whether you get angry, get super sad, you physically speaking, it might not even be your fault, right? Something happens to you. You're in a sinful world and you have a sinful body.

35:55 God still has grace in that and that verse he said is still true. So then in the morning it says, man, memory is not that great, but in the morning it says, in the morning... The morning...

36:16 Slow your sleep.

36:17 No, it's a verse where it talks about sometimes you lose a whole night's sleep and then in the morning God gives grace in the morning or something like that. Mercies morning. Mercies are new every morning. We... There is a new day.

36:31 There's actually science behind that by the way. When you dream, they say it's actually, God's given therapy. It kind of removes the trauma of the previous day and you can wake up not totally down if you're dreaming properly. I'm sorry. Just...

37:40 And I've noticed that as I do this, I actually have this little timer in the morning, I'll set it, and ten minutes of singing, thirty minutes of reading the Bible, ten minutes of prayer. It's my little process. But as I've done it, as he's moved me to do it, what I've noticed is that some of the best times of my day are in the morning, sometimes lose it after that. I'm like, Lord, I'm praising Him and I'm worshiping Him and after that, sometimes the day doesn't go as well, but the next morning I get to do it again. As I become more intimate with Him, I noticed something.

38:27 When I was growing up, people would make fun of me for being too nice or too earnest, sincere, you could not let your emotions show, you had to hide it. That was something, the kids were cruel, right? Adults could be cruel too sometimes. You learned, at least as an American, to not let people see who you are, okay? That's a wound.

38:53 And guess what, when it comes to loving the other people in the body as he calls you to, to greet each other with a kiss, as it comes to loving God, we learn that we can't do this. I started noticing, wow, this is, I'm really enjoying the Lord. I'm really enjoying Him, I'm starting to enter into things about Him that I had not before. He's starting to show Himself to me and then, but the interesting thing is, I was growing, I think He was growing me right, He was healing me, suddenly something starts happening. For instance, I was noticing with my, I'm going be completely honest, with my wife I was starting to notice I could not pray with her in the same way I could pray by myself.

39:40 There was an intimacy that I had started to develop, okay. And I was like, what's going on here? Like, why... It was bothering me. I'd mentioned it to her a couple times and you know, it's actually something we're still working on by the way.

39:59 So it's a process right, but I was like why is it that I can't be intimate like this? And I was like I'm even more intimate with guys like at the prayer meeting, pouring out my heart to God, then I can be with her. And this is not about Janelle, it's about me, right. It's healing in me, but I'm trying to tell you this, not to be overly telling secret things, but to show like God works in people's hearts to process. And so like, as I became closer to God, started to realize there's closer ways I could also be with people, like he was healing my heart.

40:48 I was... He was saying, okay, I'm going break my barriers down between me and you and in doing so, now you understand what it's like and you can be closer to other people the same way. And so we have had some breakthroughs. We had some conversations, my wife and I. And I'm still learning, you know, because there's hurts you have even from marriage, right?

41:14 Early on, there's little thingies, little things you pick up. Now they become barriers, you feel stuck, like you can't say something you'd like to. You can't share yourself emotionally in an intimate way. And I think we're called to move closer in love as a body to each other. But when we pursue him, he enables us to do that more.

41:50 He helps heal us. Okay. And so as we learn to trust him, he helps us move those barriers out. As we learn to forgive because he calls us to, again, we can release those things and we can move closer to people. And he calls us to move closer.

42:13 So there's an element of obeying in the Christian life to forgive, to deal with issues. There's that triangle that you've if you've ever been to any marriage seminars a lot of them share it where they God's at the top, you're at you're on the for me it'd be the right hand side, you're on the left, I don't know. Anyways, you're on one side of the bottom and then the other. In the marriage context, it's the women or the other person, not the woman, whoever else, you relate it to yourself and it's the other person, right? And so if God's in the top and you're one way, if you move up one side of like the pyramid and they kind of move up with you, the closer you get to God, the closer they get to you as well.

43:03 It's the unity. And I don't know if my kind of ex like how my story, like I started to realize like as I get closer to God it really does change who I am. I have a better ability to connect to this other person. Another thing that I think God showed me was when Jesus talks about... He's asked what's the most important commandment.

43:27 What does he say? To love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and spirit, I believe. And the second is like unto it, to love your neighbor as yourself. They're they're compared. Right?

43:43 We... And and they're they're very close, which... Wait. Why are they so close though? Why are they like each other?

43:49 Because God is very different than man. How is it like loving the Lord your God to also love your neighbor as yourself? One of them obviously is that it's a command. If you love me, will obey me. And so if you love God, that's commandment one, you will obey him in loving your neighbor, but also I started to realize when you obey him in love, it's it's somewhat...

44:19 You're making yourself vulnerable. Anytime you love anybody, I can put my hand out to you and you can take your hand back. Guess what? That's rejection and it hurts. I put myself out there a little bit.

44:30 If I say I love you, which is a bit past the norm if I

44:35 say it to another guy and it's certainly past the norm if I say it to a girl

44:38 who I'm not married to, but if I say it purely, right, it's past our cultural norm. We don't say that to people very often. Most... A lot of people don't even say it in their intimate relationships, right? But when we choose...

44:58 When we choose to love others, we choose to move closer in our relationships. We know that barriers in our relationship can actually stop prayers. What verse is that? There's a verse that basically says, so that your prayers not be hindered. Yeah.

45:19 We know that that can actually stop prayers. Another thing we know is that there's a story that Jesus tells about people coming to Him and He actually says, he actually, he talks about at the final judgment, there's going to be people that were by all pretty much Christians and those Christians, those so called Christians, he's going to reject them and why? Because when he had the opportunity to clothe Jesus or the least of these, he... They did not do it. When they had the opportunity to love their fellow man they didn't do it.

46:10 And then there was other ones who didn't really, they were surprised to know that they had actually fed and clothed Jesus and and I understand there's probably things that I'm not getting at here, but the idea being that when we serve our fellow men, we're actually serving God. We're loving our fellow men, we're actually loving God. It is a huge priority of the Lord. And so, I guess in closing, I just took all your time and I hope that the Spirit could use something in somebody else's life that's hearing this. But in closing, I guess I'm thankful that the Lord is showing me some things and He's healing me and He's helping me to be better closer to His Son.

47:38 Dear lord, I just thank you for who you are. Thank you that you love us, that you care for us, that you want to be involved in our lives and bring healing to our hearts. And I just pray that you would bless everyone here. I pray for our chapel also that you will bless us and give us love and joy every single person here. You will grow us each individually and as a chapel as well.

48:08 I pray this in the name of Jesus, Amen.