You Asked For It | Part 4

Hey there, how's it going? Excellent, excellent. Hey, you know, when we've been in this marriage series, you asked for it, what we've been talking about reminded me of something that happened a few years ago when my oldest daughter, she was already out of high school, and

yet her and some of her friends, they wanted to go up to Fossil Creek and jump in the water and the rocks and all that, but they wanted to take our good car. And so she came to ask me, but she walked in and she asked all wrong. I mean, the entitlement, like,

Dad, give me the keys to the car, I want to take it. You know, kind of like that's what I remember hearing. But it was this whole idea of just expecting that I should just hand her the keys to our good car,

and I reacted to her tone, and I'm like, Hey, I don't negotiate with terrorists. So I was like, my first reaction, mean, she's out of high school, she's 18, she's responsible,

she's a great kid, but I'd also been up to Fossil Creek before, and I realized it gets crowded up there, I thought, You know, she's going to scratch the car. It's her mom's car. It's the nice one. And so I immediately said no. So then she argues with me, which by the way, if you're a younger person living at home,

arguing with your parents in a demanding way has never worked in the history of time. So She starts arguing, I'm like, This is making me less This makes me want to take the keys from your car. I said no, so she storms out of the room, and then I hear Carrie call her into the other room.

And then they start talking. And she starts telling her, hey, you understand, you just approached your dad all wrong. You know, the way he's wired and what he's like, you've got to approach him different than that. You need to go in and create it like a dilemma, not a demand. And you need to make your dad the hero.

He wants if you make him the hero, he'll go so she's coaching her

on how to approach me. And the reason I know what's being said is when I said the other room, the house we lived in at the time, it only had a half wall separating the rooms. And I was sitting on one side reading, and she called her into the couch right on the other side. So as she's giving her this advice, I go, Hey,

I'm right here. I can literally hear you guys talking about me. And so I hear this pause for just a second, and then Carrie goes, So anyways, here's what you need to do.

And she just keeps telling her what to do, even though I'm listening to the whole thing. So then it's quiet after she's done, and about a minute later, in comes Micah again. She's like, Dad, I'm sorry. I had a bad attitude. I know you don't need to give me the car,

but here's the deal. Our good car, the person can't go. So now we're going to to take two trashy cars. To be honest, I feel like I'm the best driver. It'd be safer, and I just knew you'd be cool. Just thought, you know, I just don't know what to do. What should I do? And you know what? Even knowing that she just got coached,

I found myself, I'm powerless against this, and I handed her the keys. I was like, have fun. You need gas money. What's going on? What just happened? I just got hypnotized. How is this working? And and and and the reality is what I'm trying to say is the things we've been talking about the last few weeks actually works.

It really does. And it it that did not work. I'm not saying that the things we've talked about is about how to manipulate and and and and deceive your your

spouse into doing what you want them to do. The reason that worked was because my daughter was a good kid. There was no reason why I wouldn't let her take the car. A car is just transportation. I'd rather her be in the safer car. I'd rather just go. And then when I heard my wife explaining it to her,

I heard my wife's heart. She had no problem with her taking the car either. So that's why that worked. I had mellowed out when she came back in. Was fine with it. So when we learn how to communicate, when we learn how to understand how your spouse is wired, it really helps the relationship until it doesn't.

See, some of you are sitting going, I get that part. But here's the deal, I'm trying to apply all these principles. I've heard these sermons before. We've been to counseling, we've learned these things, and yet we're still struggling.

Or I still lost my marriage, or this still didn't happen. And that's what we want to talk about today, the last week of the series. We want to unpackage the basically what I believe is if you take an iceberg, what we've been talking about is the part you see. We're going to talk about today is the bigger part that's under the surface of what's really, really driving

the problem. And so what I mean by that is we've been talking about this idea of how to communicate, and the reality is we were saying you don't want to put on combat boots, because when we communicate, we have one of two ways we go. We talked about this last week, hopefully you're here.

One way to go is you put on combat boots. And so when you start to have a problem, you put combat boots on, you are marching at an enemy.

But then some of us put on running shoes, which is I just want to avoid the whole thing. And the problem with that is you never really avoid it. You just run around in circles. And there is nothing more dangerous and scary than a runner who's decided to stop running and run at the problem. Because they're not really running at the problem. Guess what they're running at? You. And then it's carnage in World War I. Trench warfare, nothing ever happens. It's bloody and messy. But last week we talked about how do we speak truth in love? How do we really communicate? And it's really this idea of putting on hiking boots.

They understand the issues in my marriage, the places we go. We understand that we are supposed to walk side by side

on a journey to hike to get someplace new. And hiking has some treacherous parts. Sometimes it's really steep and it's hard and it's difficult, but I've to go on this hike. And that's what I'm talking about with this unpacking the way we're wired, the way we word things. And like I said, but what happens when this doesn't work? And that's because I said there's still one more part we need to talk about that's actually really two thirds of the issue.

It's like this three legged stool here. See, you're going to put your hiking boots on this stable thing, what happens if one of these legs is missing? Or two of them? Or one or two of them are really off, one's longer than the other or not? It's going to unstable and it doesn't matter if

you have the hiking boots. It's still going fall apart. Well, everything we've unpackaged for the last few weeks is only dealing with one leg. It's the hours leg. It's us together. But you realize there's two other legs to this relationship. There's mine, there's yours, and there's ours.

And when you have a relationship with anybody, not just the marriage, there's mine, yours, and ours. If we're going have a relationship together, that's the ours stuff. But what we're realizing is there's the mine and yours.

In other words, here's the big idea we're going to unpackage here today, to finish this, and it's simply this. What I bring into my marriage will affect my marriage. What I bring into my marriage will affect my marriage, good and bad.

Meaning, like, we've been talking about how marriage is like two colonies starting to try to form a country.

And I bring in customs and baggage and things from my native land, and some of them are good, some of them not so good. And what we're going land here today is what I feel is this is the most critical one for many of us here. You've heard all the stuff we talked about before. Maybe you've been counseled about it. You've been, and you're like, Hey, I've committed to this,

but it's still not working. It's probably because of what we're going talk about today. And this will be great even if you're not married, if you've been through a divorce, you're in a broken relationship, this apply today will help you with the healing process.

But what we're going to say here today is a lot of you that are struggling is because what we're talking about today is the problem in your marriage might not have anything to do with your marriage at all.

And the things you're fighting about and the hopelessness you feel is not because you're married to the wrong person. It's the our issue is really generated by the mine and yours that we brought in.

Now before I bring my wife up here, to read a Bible passage that sets the stage for where do we get this from. And in Romans chapter seven,

Paul is talking, and I just got to set the stage. He's talking to this church in Rome and those Roman Christians, and he's trying to unpackage what it means to be a follower of Jesus, real deep theology kind of stuff. But really what he's trying to say is the mistake he had made as a Jew was he took God's law and he thought he could just live out the law and that would make him right before God. See, got the list of the dos, I can go do the right things, and then God, that justifies me. I'll be just before God. God should love me. God should be nice to me because I've earned this.

And he realized that doesn't work. And so he's trying to encourage him. So the reason I want to share this with you is this applies to our marriages, and if we don't understand what's going on scripturally, we're going to think everything we've talked about so far is just a spiritualized self help.

It's like just apply these principles and help yourself. This is not self help. And that's what Paul found out. This idea is called legalism, the seminary word,

the deeper Bible word, this idea of legalism is that I earn my salvation. I earn my right before God by obeying His law. Well Paul discovered that it doesn't work that way.

And there's a brokenness, and what he discovered is why our marriages struggle. It's why all of our relationships struggle. And we need to realize this. So he starts off in verse 14 of chapter seven saying this, So the trouble is not with the law, the law of God, it says, For it's spiritual and good.

But the law was supposed to show us that we can't self help. It's not a plan on how to make yourself right before God. It's to show you that we can't do this without God. So he goes, The law is spiritual and good. But listen to what he says, The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin.

In verse 15, if you have your Bibles, underline it because this is where I think is the heart of all of our relational struggles. He says, I don't really understand myself. I don't really understand myself.

That's true for all of us. What we're going talk about today is learning to understand. If I don't understand myself and you marry someone who doesn't understand themselves, how are you supposed to understand them and them you if we don't even understand ourselves?

That's the problem. We don't even realize why do we end up in these fights? Why do we end up having these things? A lot of things you think you're fighting about is if they would just stop doing this, if they would just start doing that. I'm telling you that is probably not the real issue.

That's why when you go to counsel, say, I'll be better. And then you start doing the thing that the person wanted you to do or they stop doing the thing you didn't want them to do, you're still not happy for some reason. Because what he says next.

He goes, I don't really understand myself for I want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do what I hate. But if I know what I'm doing is wrong, this shows me that I agree that the law is good. What God says, here's how to live, is right. I just can't seem to do it, is what he's saying. So verse 17, so I am not the one doing wrong, it's the sin living in me that does it. Now right there, that makes it sound like he's given an excuse. It's not me, it's the one armed man. That's not what he's saying. He's

saying that if I know Jesus, I bring things into my life. We're gonna unpackage this in a minute. But I'm carrying these things. It's my sin, my brokenness. But if I know Jesus, that's really what we're gonna see in the end is the cure. But the idea is, but I still have this brokenness that I'm carrying around.

It's always right there with me. And I can fall into that. So that's why I struggle. I know what I should do, but I don't. I don't do I should eat better, but I do until I'm hungry.

You know, stuff like that. That's exactly the truth. I'm gonna be a better spouse. I'm gonna be And we wrestle with this. Like, okay, I'm gonna stop being addicted to porn. I'm gonna stop, you know, drinking too much. I'm gonna start coming up. I'm gonna start spending more time with the family. I'm gonna stop doing this. I'm gonna start doing that. We know what we want to do to make it right, but for some reason we can't do it. Sound familiar?

This is what he's saying. He goes, I have this problem. This is the guy that wrote two thirds of the New Testament, by the way. And so he goes in verse 18, And I know that nothing good lives in me. That is in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can't. I want

to do what is good, but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyways. But if I do what I don't want to do, I'm not really the one doing it, it's still this sin living in me. I have discovered this principle of life, that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong.

I love God's law with all my heart, but there's another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am. Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? You see, he's all caught up in this dilemma

that no matter what I have this stuff I'm carrying around and it keeps derailing me. So think about it, if you're married and the marriage is rough, you actually said I do to this person at one point. So you know in your heart you wanted to, but somewhere you say we both said I do, but now you struggle with I don't.

And it's back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And it's really the stuff that I'm carrying with me that we must unpackage.

We must deal something with this. That's where you get to the good stuff. So speaking of getting the good stuff, I want to bring up the best stuff in my life, my beautiful wife, Carrie. So come on up here and join me.

Alright. Hey, thanks for coming. Well, you're welcome. We've been talking about this and like I said, there's yours, mine, and ours when it comes to a good marriage that even if I'm doing these principles,

what I bring in is going to affect. But like we said, it affects good and bad. To carry on this hiking thing, hey, I've put the hiking boots on, I'm learning how you're wiring different, I'm learning how you're wording and why am I still exhausted, why are we still fighting, why do I still feel hopeless and want to give up on this thing,

What's the deal? And it's really these other two legs of the thing. So to carry this on, what Paul said is it's not really me, it's this thing I'm carrying,

this brokenness that's in me. And so I kind of compare it to a backpack. Because when you go on a long hike, and marriage is a long hike, supposed to be lifelong hike, you're going to bring a backpack. And you're coming into a relationship, into a marriage, carrying some things with you.

And like I said, it's good and bad. Mean, of the stuff's good. Like I had some stuff like, if you go on a hike, you want water, right? Should bring some water with you. So, that's like maybe you've learned some really good things from your family of origin. Maybe you learned about work ethic or sticking it out or saying, hey, we're going to fight for for the right thing. You know, stuff like that. There's also some stuff you bring on a hike is like snacks. I I have no spiritual connection. I just like snacks. So, that goes in there but then

but then maybe like wishful thinking in this part of the country but maybe you need a layered clothing. You need like a sweater or something? I I we've never, you from Washington get it but But the idea is some clothing, and that could be stuff like for us,

one of the things that we were fortunate enough to carry in is what we've been talking about these last few weeks. We've had mentors and parents that have displayed this and mentors in our lives that coached us and taught us. We came in knowing these principles.

So that's helpful. We're carrying this stuff. So we bring some good stuff too from our lives. The problem is not with the good stuff. It's with the rocks that we bring. We also pack some rocks. And these are the bad things. They don't do anything but weigh us down, as Paul said.

You go, Man, why do I keep going to this? Why do I camp? Like these rocks. What I'm talking about is there's a lot of common rocks, like the big ones that you know about, like, for example, your pain from your past relationships.

Especially if you've been married before and it's broken, and when you've had hurt and pain in those past relationships, that's like a rock because even if you get past it, you're still going to carry around some hurt there. And these things, these rocks actually build up some hurts,

things that happen to you, some habits. Some of the unhealthy habits we develop are really just symptoms. They're unhealthy coping mechanisms to try to deal with this burden of these rocks.

So we put stuff in there like the trauma that's happened to you. Physical trauma, maybe people dying in your life, or sexual trauma, abuse, things like that. Traumas that have been sexual history is one of them, right? Yes. Yes.

There's this really big one wait, that's just my son Jadim, sorry.

What's another? You got one? I just think the dysfunctions that you can bring in from your family of origin. So like, yeah, the

bad things you saw. Like, hey, you what, you might be committed to go, I'm not going to have marriage like my parents did. I don't even know. They were split up when I was young. All I saw was terrible stuff. You might be committed to that, but guess what you're carrying? This is what you saw.

So it's all it's there with you. Was there any others? The the common ones? Yeah. Well, even your sexual history. Not just trauma, but maybe your sexual history. Like when God talks about what sex is about, we carry that in.

And and and what we've done in the past is is gonna, you know, influence our present. So you just start throwing these in here. And here's the thing. You get enough of these in here, it gets pretty heavy, doesn't it?

So even this is what Paul was saying. Even though I love God's law, I love the principles of how to have a good relationship, I love this other person, I want to be married, I want to go to the distance with them. You carry a heavy enough backpack, what's going to happen eventually?

You're going take the rocks out and start throwing them. Yeah. You're going to get tired and you're going to go, I'm sick of this, and guess you're going to start throwing the rocks. And if you're really on a hike, guess who gets hit with the rocks? The person standing next to you.

So it creates a dilemma. So what we wanted to share, what I wanted you to be able to share with us a little bit as our journey, is those are kind of the big known rocks that cause a lot of issues. We want to share from our life, we both had a rock that you wouldn't think of as as big a rock,

here's the deal. 10 big rocks can weigh 50 pounds. A 100 little rocks can weigh 50 pounds too. You get enough little rocks and it adds up, and I think that's the biggest problem a lot of us have. I think you see the big ones. But a lot of the big ones, you think like the dysfunction, you

think it's just the alcoholism or the sexual addiction or this. That might be just a symptom and a result of one of these more subtle rocks that we carried in that we didn't recognize. What we want to share is

share one of what you thought was a rock, and the rock we're sharing here today is the one that, when we realized it, causes almost every one of our fights.

The details might be different on every fight, but it almost always comes back to we picked up this rock and started throwing it at each other. Yeah, and I did bring in a lot of these little rocks into our marriage, and I was not even aware of this

when we got married because I came from a really great home. I came from a home, my parents loved the Lord and each other, committed to family, and so I didn't really recognize that these were kind of even issues in my life. But what I brought in was, one of the main ones, was this fear of failure.

And whatever it was, even though I had this, you know, great home, we live in a broken world, and we're broken people, and so how we react and respond to things really can set up these rocks. And I, like I said, I had this fear of failure, and kind of along with that were some perfectionistic

issues. And it wasn't like, Oh, I have to go out and be the best and work the hardest in this. This was more of, I carried the weight of unrealistic expectations. And I also, because of that, there was a lot of people pleasing involved, and what I like to explain it is carrying wrong size responsibility.

So based on this fear of failure, I was very, you know, if I make the wrong decision, and what's going to the ripple effect of that, and so I was just walking around with all these rocks, and what I realized later is that, really, my whole self worth, my value, my identity was wrapped up in these fears. So I saw everything

through the filter of all these little rocks that I was bringing into the marriage. So if whatever the issue was, if it started to get a little sideways, like you said, your approach to the fear of failure would be like wrong size. You own the wrong thing.

I would own the wrong thing. So much ownership of not the right thing that there's no room to own the right thing. You'd be so busy taking on responsibility for something that really you shouldn't own that you would reject the things you should own.

Now imagine that combined with my rock ended up when we kind of drilled down and spent time trying to figure this Ultimately, I have a rock that's fear of failure also. But it comes from a different place and it led me to a different result. Where she will own the wrong thing and reject the right thing,

my fear of failure makes me not own anything. I can't admit. If I see them failing I go, I've to distract, I've got to deny, and ultimately if I'm getting really, really feeling like I'm failing, I will ultimately destroy you. The best defense is a good offense. So imagine that combination of rocks.

You can bring up almost anything and if it clicks on and we start throwing those rocks, we end up in really big, long fights and they end up in fighting about this and this and this this. And you realize at the end of the day, everything we fought about, the details, had nothing to do with why we were fighting.

Now imagine, we actually used to resolve the fights. We're sorry, here's what I need to do, yet we never really got to the cause. And you might be like us. You've been having the same fight for how many years? The details are always different. The scenario is always different.

But you're probably pulling out the same rock and throwing it at each other over and over and over again. As a matter of fact, this is a good illustration because as God is nice to us,

we got in a fight this week. Last week I said we almost got in a fight. This week we did. It wasn't even talking about this stuff. It was we're both kind of sick. That's why Carrie has her tissues up here, if she starts hacking, it's not you. It's her. But

the reality is we're both sick, haven't felt well, and earlier in the week, we're trying to prepare, trying to keep working. We still got to move forward. We came home one night, it was evening, we're tired, we're exhausted,

and we're sitting there and for whatever, she decided to listen to one of the messages from the church office because she works at the church also and she's the receptionist, answers the phones, so she filters through the voicemails. And I don't know why, this is after hours, we're both exhausted,

she not only was listening to it, she put it on speaker. So I'm sitting there, so I hear this message. And the message was a pretty kind of it was just one where someone, they were nice, but they were just concerned about,

I'm the leader of the church, so I start to react and my attitude, the way I say it isn't like, oh that's interesting, are we going to take care it? I don't say it calmly because it hit up against this fear of like, oh that's going look bad on us and that's going look bad on me. What's going on? So I just pop off with this grumpy edit like, hey, wait,

that can't happen. But what I didn't hear was when Cara listened to it, she says, oh man, I might be responsible for it. I didn't hear that. I must have been in my nothing place or something. So when I said, That can't happen, guess what she thought she heard?

She heard me attacking her. And I did say it in a grumpy way, so then she's like, What? And she starts getting back in my face, and then I take that as, woah, woah, woah, why are you arguing with me? And so I pop off with, you know, you're going hear this and you're going go, why do we listen to this man at all?

Okay? I'm just telling you. The way she starts to give attitude to me, I react with, Wait, wait, wait, wait, we're not having a husband and wife talk right now. This is boss of the church talking to someone that works there. You see? Everyone but me gets it. You would think the way you just reacted in normal circumstances,

if you were telling me that I would have went well. But when you're in the middle of it and it's your rock and you've pulled it out, I didn't see that. I didn't admit it. I doubled down. Because she reacted really angry. I go, see? Now you're showing really disrespect.

And so then I tripled down and said, you know what? Anyone on my staff talks to me like that, they'd be fired.

I didn't get it. You I just I threatened to fire my wife. I'm like, you're fired. And at that point, it wasn't just rocks that flew. There was a cell phone that flew right by my head. It didn't even hit him. It hit the ground and cracked. I totally lost in that. But yeah. It and you're all welcome.

Now you know why I play that song when she walks up here. I'm also ready for the marriage series to be done because I'm tired of fighting. But no, but here's what was so,

so interesting. Actually, I, it did, it was such a perfect illustration for what we're talking about, but even on a deeper level, yesterday when I was just kind of praying in the morning over the weekend, God kind of gently reminded me about something about,

specifically about this fight, and he reminded me that what I thought I heard Bill say, the one that just got my blood boiling and my, just lit me up, was not actually what Bill said. And what I heard him say when he first heard that message, I heard him say, Carrie, you had one job, and you couldn't even get that right.

And he never said that, but I said about every other stupid thing you could possibly say. But she heard the one thing I didn't say. Yeah. But what I realized was I was hearing through the filter of my rocks, really. I was hearing this fear of failure,

the ripple effects of what were gonna come from that. I was holding on to wrong size responsibility, and I it literally just I couldn't I had no other option but to throw the phone.

It used to be cordless phones. Those are cheaper to replace. See, here's the point. The beautiful thing about this is years past, years ago, this would have turned into days. We might have finally said I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and reconciled the moment, but never recognized the cause.

I want to give you three principles as we talk this through that will really help you understand. If I'm ever going to learn to start unpacking, getting the rocks out of here, the first thing is you have to recognize the cause.

You've got to have conversations. You've to start understanding. Peel the onion back. Where is it going? I've struggled with things in my life, I always thought struggling with lust or wanting to overeat when I'm stressed or just avoiding responsibilities,

I've discovered that those things are actually the unhealthy coping mechanism. They're just the symptoms. They are the result of a deeper cause. They're not actually the problem. They create more problems. I need to get to the underbelly of this, like Carrie said. We have to learn what is the real cause of this.

And you've got to recognize it. And as you recognize it, what helped us to recognize it is that we've been doing this long enough. So the beautiful part of this is this sounds like a terrible fight. A phone gets thrown, it could be horrible.

You realize she stormed out of the room and went upstairs, and then I was eating a burrito while we were having this fight, by the way. I looked down at my burrito and I had about three bites left. And I knew in my heart, when this burrito's done, this fight's going to end.

Because I realized we're both going to recognize what just happened. And so I walked upstairs and I said, Hey, we need to talk. And the face she made was so adorable,

even though it looked like it was like that adorable that you want to rip my face off. I don't know why I find this attractive right now, but I'm strangely attracted to you in this moment. But as we had that moment, I started laughing.

And then she started, Why are you laughing? And I go, You know what, we're just I think we pulled our rocks out. Can we just agree that we both started throwing rocks and you threw a cell phone also? And

we were fine. And it's because we've learned to recognize the cause. It doesn't mean you don't eventually you you could unpack the rocks, but sometimes we pick them back up.

And so it happened, but the fight ended up short because you recognize the cause. And the other reason why we're able to deal with this, not only recognize it, we've realized the consequences. You need to realize the consequences of not going deeper

and figuring out what's going on in you. Because like you shared, you should write this down. This is wonderful. She has a little, like what she's discovered the consequence of this is. Right. Well, really, when you don't

realize what's going on, you end up in this cycle, this vicious cycle of fear, frustration, fatigue, and failure, and it just continues on. After you've gone through Fear? Fear, frustration, fatigue, and failure. There you go. And really just continuing through that cycle leads to hopelessness.

So it's like being a Cardinals fan. It's this cycle of fear That's true. Frustration, fatigue, and failure. Yeah. Sadly Now we're just hopeless. Yeah. Then it becomes hopeless. Sorry. But, yeah, it's it's it's this this this cycle, and and you really it costs you.

Mhmm. Because you're gonna fail over and over again. And the reason the real ultimate consequences is a lot of us, this is what happens. You leave a marriage, it's broke, you're like, I'm

sick of those rocks, I'm out of here because we don't think of our own rocks, we just feel the rocks that we got hit with. And then we take our bag of rocks and we go on and we get into another relationship. And usually you end up finding someone that's not like the other person. So you're like, great, I am so happy. Finally I got past that problem, and then you get hit with a rock you don't recognize. You're like, what was that? That doesn't feel familiar.

Because now you realize, oh, they have a different bag of rocks that they're carrying, And you start the whole process all over again. So you've got to recognize the cause. You have to realize the consequences of not doing anything about it.

And then finally, what we're talking about is we need to receive the cure. We said it's received because there are things we have to do. We have to step out and act. But this is not self help, is it, Carrie? No. No. Yeah, I wanted to share. I came to this point in my

life, in our marriage, where I realized I had to receive the cure. Because of all these rocks and all the fears and all of this, I ended up in a cycle. My cycle ended up anger and resentment, and it was just a continuous thing, and it was affecting our marriage,

and it was affecting our kids, and it was affecting my relationships outside of my family. However, Bill did bear the brunt of the rocks and cell phones. But, so I began this journey, what really, I began a journey of healing and recovery, but what initially had led to this was some passages.

And I wanted to share with you because I, they're saying exactly, well, what we're talking about. And the first one is Isaiah, and it's 57. I'm sorry, I need my glasses. And it's Isaiah 57 verses eighteen and nineteen, and it says, I have seen what they do, and he's talking about the Israelites, but I will heal them anyway.

I will lead them. I will comfort those who mourn, bringing words of praise to their lips. May they have abundant peace both near and far, says the Lord who heals them. And then the next one is Ezekiel 3six 26, and he says, And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you.

I will take out your stony, stubborn heart, and I will give you a tender, responsive heart. And this is to also the Israelites who were scattered in captivity because of their disobedience and their hard hearts, but I loved this because it reminded me

that this was not a journey of something that I could fix on my own. This was, I had to surrender this stony, stubborn heart to the Lord, and He is the one that turned it into a tender, responsive heart. And so what surrendering looked like for me was going on a very real journey of recovery,

and so I met with somebody for two years

every week, and we had to really dig through my life. We went layer upon layer. This was not a journey of blame of anything in my past, but it was looking at the things in my past and what had happened, things that had been done to me, said to me, things that I did, how I reacted, how I responded, how I approached.

It was all of these things, it was very humbling. It was very difficult. I realized But it was very eye opening as I began to understand why and how these rocks are really affecting my life, and there were amends that I had to make. There was forgiveness that I had to be willing to offer, and that

alone is a journey. If you ever want to see the power of God work, ask Him to go along with you on a journey of forgiveness. Sometimes that's harder than asking for forgiveness. So, but this was, I literally watched God take this heart of mine and heal it. It's not something that happened overnight,

but it was a long it was a difficult journey, but it was a journey that was worth it. And like I said, I've gone on the same journey. And even though we can still pick up our rocks like we did this last week, we recognize it. We realize the consequences of not doing anything about it,

and we receive the cure. And to receive the cure, it's God that heals our hearts. He's the one that does it, but he uses a process, and the main process is us, the church, the people. We're called the body of Christ for a reason, so we can't do this alone.

And that's why to help us receive the cure, we have a tent set up outside that if any of this is ringing true, you want to dig in and find out what's really going on, we have all of our ministries out there that represent what I call the rock unpacking ministries.

They're the ones like our Celebrate Recovery, our Mending the Soul, our Grief Share, our Divorce Care, we have a marriage class, we have counselors. They're all designed for us to walk together to try to get these rocks unpackaged.

And I would challenge you, you'd say, Well, I'm not really messed up. All those things I mentioned in the beginning, I didn't have sexual trauma, didn't have this, didn't, neither did we. But what was destroying us was this little rock.

And what's funny is, I've heard so many testimonies from people in recovery that had incredibly horrible upbringings, and they ended up with the same rock that I did from a completely different point of view. So it's like don't think that, well I'm not really messed up, I've had a good It's like no.

It's those little rocks that are going to get you. And so we would encourage you to go out there and take that step.

So I want to wrap this up and talk about what's the first step before we take that step so it's not just self help. But I wanted to Carrie spent enough years of sitting around watching me talk to a crowd, so I just wanted to thank her for being up here and for this whole series and to say I would not want anyone else to throw a cell phone at me but you.

So you, Carrie.

So what is the if I go out there and just start doing programs where I just take steps and try to apply principles, all we've done is done a spiritualized self help program. But it is, it says, Hey, God says I will heal them anyways. God says, I will take the stony stubborn heart and make it responsive.

He uses a process to help us that involves people and others, but what's that first step? How does God even start to empower that?

And that goes back to Romans chapter seven, the very last verse of chapter seven I didn't read. Paul says, you know, he starts off with, Oh, what a miserable person I am. Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? And then in verse 25 he says, Thank God, the answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. You see,

I'm not kidding. In church, the answer really is always Jesus. It's in Jesus Christ our Lord. It starts with that. And it's not just, Oh, I pray to Jesus and He's going to take my problems away. He'll empower us and he'll enable us and he'll go with us on this journey

to help us. But we still need to go on a journey and follow him. But the reason we want to go to him first is if you turn over to Matthew chapter 11. Jesus is now talking about the same legalism, the self help concept to life. I'll just make it work. And he talks about that's not going to work.

And he says these words in verse 28. Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens. Some of you feel like that? Sadly enough, the relationship that was supposed to be the joy of your life, for many of you, it's the biggest burden in your life. And he says, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light. You see what saying? He's saying come to me. We have to go to Jesus first. The process he wants us to walk out is great,

but it doesn't work if you don't have Jesus. He's the one that lightens the load. He's the one that gives us this new burden, this new yoke. It's like his is light, which is weird.

Because if you think about it, he's the one that said, you know, the law says don't commit adultery. I say if you look on someone else with lust, you've committed adultery. Doesn't it sound like his yoke is harder? Why is it easier? Because He's the one that blazed the way for us. He's the one that made it possible.

When we can't live the law, when we can't unpackage rocks, when we know the rocks are gonna kill us, He's the one that died for them. He went to the cross for us. He died on the cross. He then was resurrected three days later,

beating death, and it says in the Bible that no one comes to the Father but by Him because He is the way, the truth, the life. And I don't care how many times you've been in church, it doesn't make you a Christian any more than sitting in your garage makes you a car. And

so the idea is this, you have got to put your faith absolutely 100% solely in Jesus.

That is the first step. That is the only step. And if there's any church you've gone to, any religious part you've been a part of that kind of subtly tell you, yeah, Jesus is important, but you know what, the reality is you've got to earn it. That's false teaching.

That's not true. It's Jesus' empowerment. If you go into chapter eight, go read Romans chapter eight, and he says, you know why it's thank God to Jesus? Because he then gives us his Holy Spirit. He says we now have the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives when we know Jesus, and it says we have the same dunamis,

which is the Greek word where we get dynamite, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is the power that Jesus wants to bring into our lives.

Jesus didn't die just to get us to heaven someday. He died to bring life to your relationships right now as well, But you have to trust Him. You have to put your faith in Him, and then with the help of His people, you have to let Him unpack these rocks in your life. That's what we need to do.

You know, I learned this, and you know what? It's still hard. You can still pick up those rocks. It's always a challenge.

Because I finished the Courage series about building this new building, and I told you the last week of Courage is any time you step out courageously trusting God, there's going to be attack. You're going to get attacked. And that happened to me. And think about it, if I just told you my big rock is fear of failure, imagine trying to build a $17,000,000

expansion where I need to I go, Hey guys, I need us to pay for it, and I need you to not stop giving to the regular fund too because that needs to stay strong to pay our staff and be able to do what we need to do. Right? That's a scary thing. So don't let the regular giving drop. Okay?

But you get fearful, then you go, I hope it works. I hope it works. There's all that pressure, and then right when we launch it, weird things happen. The weirdest things happen to pastors. It's weird. You don't even understand what happens to this job. My wife answers the phone. Got a call this last week from somebody that's in a psych ward that apparently knows me,

and I gotta meet him. The eagle has landed, meet him at the annex somewhere, it's gonna save his family. And she's like, Bill doesn't know you. Oh, I think Bill knows me. I've known him better than you do. He's talking to my wife.

I mean, are the weird things that come out. All these things start just the weirdness starts showing up, and the pressure starts to build. And this is why so many guys just blow up. But fortunately, I recognize the cause.

And I was getting tired, and you know what happens? When I start to get really weighed on, I start to get fearful. That whole fear, frustration, fatigue, and then you'll fail. And so we were in a staff meeting,

and we were talking about some of the courage and what's going on. I said, You know, I probably should tell the staff.

It'll be a good teaching moment too, but I also realized I need to reveal. I'm going to be honest with my team. I'm not going to hide. I'm not going to try to act all I can convey. I'm just going to tell them I'm struggling, guys. I'm struggling.

So I got up to tell them. And as I told them, I didn't even realize how heavy the bag had got. As I told them, I lost it. I just started bawling. I lost it in front of our old staff, just crying. And they laughed at me and they left.

And I said, my staff's not going to treat me like that, so we have 42 staff positions that are open right now if you want to apply. No, that is not what happened. Way to ruin a touching moment, Bill. They gathered around me and they just started praying. The dunamis power of the Holy Spirit. I was so

feeling defeated and afraid, and I don't even know what I'm afraid of. I just don't I just feel fearful in that going in. But recognizing that cause, realizing I don't want the consequences,

and being open and letting the church body, the staff, which we have an amazing leadership team here. Not just the pay staff, the volunteers. They just rallied around me. And by the time the last one who prayed said, Amen, I don't even remember what was bothering me anymore. That's the power. But it starts and ends

with putting your faith in Jesus.

So here's what I'm do. I'm gonna pray.

Some of you, you already know Jesus. You were like me. You're you're like Carrie and I. You're like, you know, I think I've picked up a few of the rocks again, but I know the Lord. You can start praying right now. Start just putting go, God, need to give this back to you. I I I need to not carry this. I need to deal with this.

But some of you, before you go out there and talk at these tents for any of us, I'm gonna give you a chance to put your faith in Jesus right now. And maybe you've never done it.

You simply need to surrender your life and say, I choose that you are the way, Jesus, not me. I'm putting my faith absolutely in you. And I'm gonna give you a chance to do that. So if you would just pray with me, just close your eyes. And here, I'm gonna pray something. You pray with me, but make it your own prayer.

Make it between you and God. Just pray something like this. Dear Lord Jesus, I am burdened. And I realize I'm carrying around so many rocks. Just as your servant Paul said, it's it's just like I end up doing the thing I hate, and I and I can't seem to do the thing I want to. And I'm sick and tired of it.

So right now, I confess that I have brokenness, and it's caused me to hurt others as well. And I've been hurt by others, which has caused more brokenness. But I confess the times that I've chosen to not put my faith in you and tried to help myself.

But Lord, thank you that you came, you lived that perfect life, you showed me the way, you died on the cross, and then you resurrected to give me life, to heal me. So right now, in the best way I know how, I put my faith in you and what you did for me, not what I try to do, but in what you have done. So, Lord, forgive me,

heal me, and help me to lace up those hiking shoes not only with the people in my life, but with you. Help me to go on this this lifelong hike with you to learn more and more what does it mean to take on your yoke. What does it mean to have that light load of the life you want for me?

Help me to live in that each and every day going forward and bring healing to myself and to the relationships around me. I thank you for that, and I pray this all in the mighty and holy name of Jesus. Amen.