Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign church. We are thrilled you decided to listen to our teaching on your favorite podcast app. If you made a decision to follow Christ today, would you let us know by visiting yes.newlife Gillette.com Here is this week's teaching.
[00:00:26] All right, let me say welcome to those of you who are watching on church307.com I see there there's a lot of you on there today. To the guys over at the prison, to our friends at the jail, and those of you who are here in the room, you may have seen, we have a new podcast. Brooklyn is doing a new podcast called In Between On. If you want to go access it, you can go to church307.com she's only done a few episodes and they're phenomenal. It's primarily for the ladies in the church, but I'm watching every episode and loving it. And it just so happens that this week what the passage that she was reflecting on on that podcast is same passage that we're going to be talking about today. We didn't plan that, but that's just how God does things. And so let's read it together. It's in Psalm 103, it says this.
[00:01:17] The Lord is compassionate and merciful.
[00:01:21] This is an Old Testament passage. Just so you know, even in the Old Testament, the Lord is compassion, compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing. We say unconditional love.
[00:01:37] He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever.
[00:01:43] He does not punish us for all our sins.
[00:01:47] He does not deal harshly with us as we deserve.
[00:01:53] For his unfailing love towards those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens. How high is that above the earth?
[00:02:03] He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west.
[00:02:10] The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him.
[00:02:18] For he knows how weak we are. He remembers we we are only dust. When you think about God, especially the God of the Old Testament, do you picture that kind of forgiving, gentle, gracious God?
[00:02:33] Everybody, when they think about God has a different picture. We just kind of all. Maybe it has something to do with the books that you read growing up. Maybe you read the Left behind books or you saw the comics or something about the angel and the demon and all these weird things. We all kind of have a different picture of, of God when we think about God. What do you picture?
[00:02:55] Some people picture like God as this angel floating on a cloud and he's just kind of weak, you know, maybe Playing a harp.
[00:03:06] May. Maybe he's a God who's just constantly begging us for our attention. You need to pray for me more so I feel better about myself type of God.
[00:03:15] That's not. That's not God.
[00:03:18] Others of us kind of swing the pendulum, and we think about God as this angry, vengeful God who is always just excited about judging us for the sins that we can, that we commit. He can't wait to punish us.
[00:03:33] Some of us picture God up in heaven with a list of our sins.
[00:03:39] You guys remember printer paper like this?
[00:03:41] Yep.
[00:03:42] Took me a while to find some, but it's still there.
[00:03:46] We picture God standing up in heaven, watching our every move, taking notes of our sins.
[00:03:56] And God, every once in a while, just because he wants to remember how bad we are, goes back through the list of sins.
[00:04:06] Well, Mike, 1992, I see you were playing dominoes with your aunt and she beat you, and so you cussed at her.
[00:04:17] True story.
[00:04:21] 1993. Got in a fight with your twin brother over who was going to be the lead singer in your band, and you hit him with a guitar Stand.
[00:04:31] Still has the scar to prove it.
[00:04:33] True story.
[00:04:36] 1994.
[00:04:39] Sin after sin after sin. I see. 1994, you learned how to cheat on tests. Good job. Mike used that one too many times.
[00:04:49] The sins start getting darker, though. Mike, 1995, you discover pornography for the first time.
[00:05:01] Have you ever had one of those sins that you commit? One time, and you know it was the wrong thing to do, but it seemed like it awoke something inside of you. There were some endorphins that were released or something happened, and you decided, even though you knew you shouldn't do it, you go back to it again, and you go back to it again.
[00:05:22] And then it becomes this temptation that's just constantly nagging at you, pulling in that direction.
[00:05:28] And the desire just kind of grows for it.
[00:05:31] And it takes a little bit more of it to fulfill that desire. And it just kind of gets harder and harder and harder to resist until it's not just a habit anymore. It becomes an addiction. Now you've got to have, like, a whole plan to remove it from your life.
[00:05:48] You ever had one of those?
[00:05:51] Maybe it's just a bad habit. You've just been trying to break it for so long. You just can't break that bad habit. And you ask, God, please give me strength. Can you please help me?
[00:06:03] He doesn't help you.
[00:06:05] You go back. God, I'm asking again.
[00:06:08] Paul talks about having a thorn in his flesh.
[00:06:12] He talks about Going back to God over and over again, asking him to remove it.
[00:06:16] God doesn't remove it till eventually you just.
[00:06:21] You pray a prayer. Like, got it to me again.
[00:06:27] I did it again. I screwed up again.
[00:06:30] I failed again.
[00:06:33] Are you even listening?
[00:06:37] Is it even worth it?
[00:06:39] Is it even worthwhile to keep asking you for forgiveness? Like, at what point do you just give up on me?
[00:06:48] At what point do I just quit praying? Because I'm not beating this thing.
[00:06:52] I can't move on. The list of sins is just getting longer and longer and longer.
[00:06:59] Are you done forgiving me yet?
[00:07:03] I think sometimes we pray this kind of prayer because we assume God is like us.
[00:07:09] We assume that God's capacity to forgive is similar to our capacity to forgive. And at some point, if somebody keeps doing the same thing, it keeps sinning against me in the same way over and over again. Eventually, my capacity to forgive runs out.
[00:07:25] Eventually I just say, okay, enough is enough.
[00:07:30] Just saying you're sorry isn't going to cut it anymore.
[00:07:33] I'm going to need to see change.
[00:07:36] And we stop forgiving.
[00:07:39] But our inability to forgive should not make us believe that God also has an inability to forgive. In fact, scripture tells us that God's mercies are new every morning.
[00:07:52] Every morning is a fresh start. Every morning is a new beginning.
[00:07:58] So when we come to God and we say, God, it's me again. I did it again. I think God kind of looks at us. He's like, you did what again?
[00:08:10] I don't. I don't quite understand. I have.
[00:08:13] I have here that you do need to ask for forgiveness. Like, let's have that talk. Let's deal with that sin. But you're talking about past sins. I don't remember those sins. I have no recollection of you committing that sin in the past.
[00:08:28] Why? Because God forgives and he forgets. God wipes the slate clean. His mercies are new every morning.
[00:08:39] That seems too good to be true.
[00:08:43] Mike's got to be one of these, like, mega church pastors that just is trying to talk about God being this overly gracious, peaceful God, and that's too good to be true. He doesn't forget our sins. He might forgive our sins. There's no way he forgets them, right?
[00:08:59] Jesus says this.
[00:09:01] Jesus says, I will forgive their wickedness and I will never again remember their sins.
[00:09:14] One of my greatest gifts is also one of my greatest weaknesses.
[00:09:20] And it's that I have a terrible memory. I can forget anything. It's not just names, numbers, things that happened. Where were we when what happened? You know how you have those arguments with your spouse where you're like, nuh. It was on this day and this place that event happened? I just have to say, when was it and where was it? I have no idea. I cannot. I have a terrible memory.
[00:09:43] My whole life, I've done a lot of bragging about how good I am at forgiving people.
[00:09:48] Like, I'm just this naturally gracious person, and it's so easy for me to have grace with people. But then it dawned on me one day. It's not because I'm just such a forgiving person. It's because I forget you sin against me. I just totally forget it. Like, you do something wrong against me, I'll just totally forget you did it. In fact, my wife has got to hold me accountable sometimes. If I keep trusting somebody who keeps doing something to me over and over again, she's like, okay, Mike, let's have some wisdom here. And how much faith you put in that person, because I just forget.
[00:10:21] All of us, throughout our lives, have these temptations that we return to over and over and over again.
[00:10:29] And although it is good for us to learn from the mistakes that we made in the past, it is not good for us to allow the past sins that we've committed to become our identity.
[00:10:41] We cannot allow them to define who we are.
[00:10:45] Because if they build up too much in our minds, we begin to assume that there is no way God can keep forgiving us.
[00:10:53] Because God's problem is not that he has a bad memory.
[00:10:56] It's that he has chosen to forget our sins. Why? Because he did everything necessary to accomplish our forgiveness.
[00:11:04] He did everything necessary so that they could be wiped clean.
[00:11:09] So he has chosen to forget them.
[00:11:13] And if we keep going back to them, we are doing the opposite of what God wants us to do. And within us, that builds what is called shame.
[00:11:24] If you are going to become spiritually and emotionally healthy, you have to learn how to defeat shame in your life.
[00:11:35] I got two jars here.
[00:11:37] Both of these jars have a clear liquid in them.
[00:11:41] This one is water.
[00:11:43] You drink this gives you life.
[00:11:47] This one, this one is hydrogen peroxide.
[00:11:56] You drink this one, it'll kill you, right?
[00:12:01] Which is weird because they look the same.
[00:12:04] What's different about them?
[00:12:07] Well, you look at them on the molecular level, you realize water is H2O. And hydrogen peroxide is like the same thing.
[00:12:15] You just add a little oxygen in there, right?
[00:12:19] H2O2. It's like the same thing, right?
[00:12:23] But that one little difference is the difference between life and death.
[00:12:32] I think that's what shame can do in our life. It doesn't seem like that big of a deal.
[00:12:38] It's just this small little part of my life. It's just a small little part of how I feel about myself.
[00:12:45] But that one little difference can lead you to self destruction.
[00:12:51] Shame can lead you to bad decisions.
[00:12:55] It can lead you to bad relationships.
[00:12:59] Shame tells us a lie.
[00:13:02] That lie is this. The lie is that your past defines you, or that your mistakes define you, or that your weaknesses define you, or that your desires define you.
[00:13:18] But that's a lie.
[00:13:21] I never knew this before, but about six months ago, my counselor. Yes, I have a counselor, highly recommend it. I know there's, like, this weird thing, stigma about counseling, and especially guys we're not supposed to go to counseling. C.J. made me do it, and I did it. And it's been phenomenal. It's been awesome. I would have never said I needed counseling, but it's been so incredibly helpful in my life. And my counselor revealed to me that most of the destructive behaviors in my life are a result of shame.
[00:14:00] That I feel about my past, about mistakes that I've made, about ways that I've failed people in the past.
[00:14:11] And that shame keeps. Keeps leading me back.
[00:14:15] And it's hard for you to see it in and of yourself. You need somebody else to help you see it about yourself.
[00:14:20] But that shame can make you return to destructive behaviors.
[00:14:26] When Jesus wants to point you forward, Jesus wants to set you free. He wants you to have a new life.
[00:14:34] I've always been jealous of Adam.
[00:14:37] In the garden. Adam.
[00:14:40] Genesis 2 says, now, the man and his wife were both naked. That's not why I was. I'm jealous of Adam.
[00:14:49] The man and his wife were both naked, but despite being naked, they felt no shame. That's why I'm jealous of Adam.
[00:14:57] He felt no shame.
[00:14:59] Really. We're all ashamed of something.
[00:15:02] Like when he looked in the mirror. They didn't have mirrors back then. When he looked at the reflection in the water. I don't know. He had to be, like, not, like, something about himself, right?
[00:15:13] She had to, like, be insecure and feel shame about something, right? No. No shame.
[00:15:21] Why no sin.
[00:15:26] I was driving with my kids in the car the other day, and I was listening to them talk in the backseat. And my youngest son, Titus said to my older son Lincoln, hey, Lincoln, I think the clouds could beat the Satan.
[00:15:43] Lincoln said, how could the clouds beat Satan?
[00:15:47] The Satan is big and strong and the clouds are smoke. Like, there's nothing And Titus said, no, the Satan fights with fire and the clouds fight with water.
[00:16:01] And I sat there as they started arguing in the backseat about who could win between the clouds and the Satan.
[00:16:09] And the whole time sitting there thinking, like, what? I want that imagination.
[00:16:15] I want to think like that.
[00:16:17] Because the truth is, we all live in a world where there is an unseen battle going on every day. Spiritual warfare all around us. Good versus evil. Not just like in. Not just some ideological good versus evil, like active good versus evil spirits fighting against each other all around us. And the evil spirit spirits are constantly attacking you, trying to get you to return to the evil that is from your past. The sins, the mistakes that you've made. And the more that they can get you focused in on them, the more they can tell you lies. That we will get you to retreat from the goodness that God has called you to.
[00:16:59] The more we allow them to be victorious.
[00:17:02] And this is what happens in the life of Adam and Eve.
[00:17:06] Adam and Eve are living a life without sin.
[00:17:10] They feel no shame.
[00:17:13] They live in paradise.
[00:17:16] Yet temptation, free will creeps in.
[00:17:22] And they choose to try to be God's rather than to submit to God.
[00:17:27] And as a result of their sin, what happens?
[00:17:31] Genesis 3 says, when the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden.
[00:17:39] So they hid.
[00:17:42] It's important.
[00:17:43] This is what shame does.
[00:17:46] So they hid. Can you go back? Sorry.
[00:17:50] So they hid from the Lord God among the trees. Now you can go forward. Then the Lord God called to the man, where are you?
[00:17:59] Adam replied, I heard you walking in the garden. So I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.
[00:18:09] Shame is always the result of sin.
[00:18:14] It might have been your sin that you committed, or it might have been the sin that somebody else committed against you that has caused you to feel shame. But shame is always a result of sin. And here you see the first sin committed by a man.
[00:18:32] And the first result is shame.
[00:18:36] If we would never sin, we would never feel shame. But we all sin.
[00:18:42] And what did it cause them to do? It caused them to run away from God.
[00:18:48] We instinctively know that sin has no place in the presence of God.
[00:18:54] So when we sin, we feel this need to separate ourselves from God. Because we think that he thinks like we think that he would want to be separated from us.
[00:19:04] And so we feel this need to run away from God when we sin.
[00:19:09] And he wants to forgive us. He wants to heal the relationship. He wants to be brought back into unity with Him.
[00:19:16] But shame deceives us. And causes us to break the union, to break the unity between us and him. Why? Because guilt. Guilt says I did something bad.
[00:19:30] If Adam and Eve only felt guilt, they would have returned to God and they would have restored the relationship. But shame goes deeper. It goes to the heart. And shame believes I am something bad.
[00:19:43] That's when the real damage is done.
[00:19:45] We feel guilt for what we did, but we feel shame for who we are.
[00:19:51] You might be ashamed of your financial situation and the decisions that you made that put you in that financial situation or the things that somebody else did to you that caused you to be in that financial situation.
[00:20:04] You might be ashamed of your sexual past, people that you've been with, your past relationships.
[00:20:13] You might be ashamed of a habit that you've developed in your life or an addiction.
[00:20:19] Or maybe for you, it's something that you have hidden down deep. And you just hope that nobody ever finds out about that deep, dark secret that you've got to do whatever it takes to keep that hidden.
[00:20:34] Do you know what that deep, dark secret does inside of you?
[00:20:38] It will tear you apart.
[00:20:41] We need to bring light to the secrets. This is why Jesus constant prayer for us is that we will be unified, like in a healthy life group, where we come together and we shine light into our lives by being transparent, by being vulnerable, by being honest. Scripture calls this confession.
[00:21:03] We confess our sins to each other and then we give grace to each other.
[00:21:09] If we're going to be like Christ, this is how we live our lives. We confess our sins and then we receive forgiveness.
[00:21:15] Why? Because we have to eradicate sin from our shame, from our lives. Shame has this way of making me feel disgusting and makes me want to cover up more and hide more. This is why Adam and Eve decided that they had to start wearing clothes they needed to hide, put the bad parts of themselves from everybody else.
[00:21:36] Shame made them want to separate from people.
[00:21:42] And when we can remove shame from our lives, it makes the opportunity for further connection, for deeper connection with God and with others.
[00:21:53] Brene Brown said this shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.
[00:22:06] Something we've experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection, unworthy of connection.
[00:22:18] Because we all sin.
[00:22:21] We all have to learn how to defeat shame in our lives.
[00:22:27] Shame leads me to fixate on the way I look or to fixate on how well I perform.
[00:22:34] My shame leads me to try so hard to impress everybody because I know there's some bad things in me. So I Got to look really good in the areas that are visible to everybody else. And then at some point I realize I just can't do it.
[00:22:48] So I feel ashamed.
[00:22:50] It's this. I feel ashamed. So I try to behave better and then I can't behave better and then I feel more ashamed. And it's this terrible cycle because we believe a lie, that our past defines us.
[00:23:05] So if this is the lie, what's the truth?
[00:23:08] Here's the truth.
[00:23:10] Jesus died.
[00:23:12] He died for everyone.
[00:23:14] So that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead they will live for Christ who died and was raised for them. For them, for you.
[00:23:29] The problem is we feel inadequate or unworthy or sinful.
[00:23:36] And there's some truth to that. We are inadequate, unworthy and sinful.
[00:23:41] But if all of my attention in my inadequacies is pointed on myself, then inevitably the thing that will be in focus in my life will be my inadequacies. So what does this tell us to do? Scripture tells us so instead of focusing in on yourself and your inadequacies and your mistakes, set your eyes on God.
[00:24:06] If all I'm doing is looking at myself, of course I'm going to get insecure and I'm only going to see the flaws.
[00:24:13] But that's not what Christ wants for us.
[00:24:17] God doesn't want us to be self sufficient. God wants us to be reliant on him, surrender to him, make him the Lord.
[00:24:29] So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view.
[00:24:35] At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now.
[00:24:42] Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.
[00:24:49] The old life is gone and a new life has begun.
[00:24:57] The only way to be healed of shame is to move the focus away from what I am, not to who Christ is.
[00:25:07] I have to move the focus away from what I am, not to who Christ is.
[00:25:15] So picture Jesus hanging on a cross.
[00:25:19] He's been tortured, spit on, beaten, hanging naked on a cross.
[00:25:28] And here's what Paul says about Jesus as he's hanging on the cross.
[00:25:34] It says, let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.
[00:25:39] How we do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.
[00:25:51] Because of the joy awaiting him.
[00:25:55] He endured the cross, disregarding its shame.
[00:26:03] As Jesus hangs there on the cross, he has all of your shame on his shoulders.
[00:26:12] And what is he?
[00:26:14] He defeated death.
[00:26:16] He is the conqueror.
[00:26:19] He is the champion of your faith who defeated your shame on the cross. As he hangs there naked, taking all of the shame that could possibly be taken by a human being.
[00:26:31] And he defeated it when he defeated death.
[00:26:35] That means that I am not the champion of my faith. It is not my job to save myself. I cannot do it. So I set my eyes on Jesus.
[00:26:46] So let's do what Adam and Eve did not do.
[00:26:52] We say, devil, I reject your lies. I reject your shame. I put my faith in Jesus. I take my attention off of my inadequacies and on his perfection because he is the perfecter of my faith.
[00:27:10] When you came in today, you were handed a card.
[00:27:13] And I want to ask you to pull out that card and you're going to fill in the two blanks. On that card, the card says I am not. And on that blank, you're going to say whatever it is that shame makes you believe about yourself. Whatever lie the Satan wants you to believe about yourself.
[00:27:32] And then on the second blank, you're going to write the truth. What God speaks over your life, what God makes possible in your life.
[00:27:40] I am not. But because of Christ, I am.
[00:27:44] So here's some examples. If you're watching online, you can just write this in the comments or post it on social media.
[00:27:52] You might write, I am not disgusting because of Christ, I am made pure.
[00:28:01] What is it for you? What lie are you tempted to believe about yourself? But what is the truth?
[00:28:06] You might write, I am not addicted.
[00:28:10] I'm not going to be conquered by anything.
[00:28:13] I've surrendered to God. His mercies are new every morning. I am not addicted. Instead, because of Christ, I am free.
[00:28:23] You might write, I am not sick because I am more than my body.
[00:28:29] I am more than this illness or this desire or this issue in my life. Because of Christ, I am healed. I have eternal life.
[00:28:40] You might write, I am not unwanted because of Christ. I am loved.
[00:28:50] This is what I wrote.
[00:28:52] I am not enough.
[00:28:56] I'm tempted to always try to be everything everybody wants me to be. Enneagram3 I gotta perform. I gotta impress everybody. I gotta make sure that everybody's needs. I am there for everybody.
[00:29:06] I need to know I am not enough. But because of Christ, I am able to do the things that he created me to do.
[00:29:16] One of the hardest parts of my life is trying to so hard to please everyone. But I just can't do it. I disappoint you guys all the time. And it's so hard for me because I take it personally. If I can't be for you what you want me to be for you, I take it personally. And I begin to feel ashamed of my failure.
[00:29:33] But I know that because of Christ, I can do everything that he created me to do. So I set my eyes not on myself, but on the mission that he gave to me. I set my eyes on the purpose for which he created me.
[00:29:49] And I cannot end today without inviting you. If you do not already have a personal, intimate relationship with God.
[00:29:57] Today's the day. Why put it off?
[00:30:01] Why wait? Why would another day be better than today?
[00:30:05] Have you allowed your shame to come between you and God?
[00:30:10] Have you allowed a lie that you cannot change, that you can't have a new life?
[00:30:18] Have you believed? Is there a little lie that the Satan has told you over and over again that you've just kept believing and that lie has kept you from God?
[00:30:29] Today's the day to just say, it's done.
[00:30:32] I'm receiving the mercy of Jesus.
[00:30:35] I'm accepting his forgiveness.
[00:30:39] You know, when God interacted with the people of Israel in the Old Testament, there are a couple times or quite a few times when big traumatic things would happen in their lives or big victorious things would happen in their lives.
[00:30:56] And then God would call them to a new season, a fresh start.
[00:31:00] And he would tell them that they're in the wilderness, wherever they are, were that they should build an altar.
[00:31:08] Build an altar, light a fire and sacrifice to God. Bring your attention to God.
[00:31:16] And I think in our lives so often we get fixated on the past. I gotta fix all the mistakes. I gotta reunify with people in my past, or I've gotta solve all these problems of the past when God's calling us to something better, the future.
[00:31:33] And so sometimes we need to build an altar and say, today I'm drawing a line. The past is gone.
[00:31:40] His mercies are new. This morning I'm starting fresh. I'm starting over. I'm letting the past go.
[00:31:50] And I'm going to say that today starts a new life, a new beginning.
[00:31:57] Usually in your life that means you're going to need to start some new habits.
[00:32:01] You're going to need to replace the old habits.
[00:32:03] You're going to need to build some boundaries that keep you from returning to the things of your past.
[00:32:09] But today can be the day where you say, no more. I am changing today. That identity that I think I have doesn't have to be my identity in the future.
[00:32:21] The weaknesses that I've just kind of allowed to define me don't have to be my weaknesses in the future.
[00:32:28] Instead, I'm going to step into the purpose that God created me for and become the person he created me to be.
[00:32:34] If you're ready to begin a relationship with Jesus and you haven't done it yet, there's a card in the chair in front of you that says next steps. Would you fill out that card and say, today I'm beginning a new life with Jesus?
[00:32:45] If you're watching online, you can go to nextsteps.church307.com and do the same thing. Let today be a fresh start.
[00:32:52] God, we thank you that you've done everything necessary for us to be adopted into your family to become the people you created us to be. We love you and thank you. In Jesus name, Amen.
