Breaking Free: How to Get Out of a Rut as a Christian
TRANSCRIPT
I wanted to start today by reading an article that I discovered online. I just wanna read it to you, and it's about this. There was a young boy once who was extremely unwell, close to death on three occasions. As a result of these events, the young boy unconsciously figured out how to capitalize on his uncomfortable and unfortunate situation, which was his mother's fear of losing him.
He worked the system brilliantly. His mother did everything for him. She cooked his meals, made his lunches, ironed his clothes, made the phone calls on his behalf. It was the perfect situation to keep him protected from life. He was living a cushy life and anytime he didn't want to do something and Dan wanted to force him to toughen up on work, mom would step into the rescue, making excuses for her poor, fragile child's inability.
This carried on through childhood into adulthood. He never grew up. He never matured in a number of areas of life. Then one day he fell in love and he married his beautiful bride. Not long after the honeymoon, tension began to rise with this couple when this new bride refused to do the things his wonderful mom had done for him his entire life.
No matter how he tried to use the scriptures to force her to do his bidding, unfortunately she had a stronger relationship with God that he did, and no amount of manipulation was going to work for this newfound bride as her heavenly father had revealed to her the real problem. She was married to a man who had never let go of his childhood, lead us to say this led to a very uncomfortable season of growing up fast.
Anybody relate to that situation? Anybody relate to it? Yes. I can see hands. Yeah. Yeah. Anybody here stuck realizing you just have, maybe I haven't transitioned outta something. Anybody stuck in it right now? Anybody sitting next to someone right now? Don't look, don't do anything. Just keep your eyes looking here and just say a little prayer.
The Apostle Paul was an amazing leader. He wrote large portions of what is your Bible? The Bible is not a book. It's actually a library of ancient documents, some French in Israel and some for us. The. New Testament Gentile church. And he wrote a lot of this kinda stuff and but he didn't start off that way.
He actually started off killing the new Jesus followers 'cause he thought that was a good idea and he was actually doing God's will. And so he has an encounter with Jesus on the road somewhere and he ends up blind for a while and appear. It appears that God had to. Make Paul blind in order for him to really begin to see.
But anyway, he finally saw, and then he finally got with the program, he became the greatest advocate for following Christ in a relationship with Jesus. So large portions of our Bibles are written by Paul, and in one place he wrote to a place called Corinth. And this is about 105 kilometers west.
Athens, but it was a really important place 'cause it was a crossroad between trade and the sea and that kind of stuff. So this is what he wrote. But for keeping in mind the article I just read, keeping in mind, this is what he wrote when I was a child. I talk like a child. I thought like a child. I reason like a child.
Now, he doesn't put the next line in, but I'll put it in, which means I behave like a child because that what it is. But when I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. Paul's articulating something that he's witnessing within the context of the church that we still struggle with 2000 years later today.
There are seasons, there's times there are places, there are people that we have to let go of at times if we are to grow up. If we are to grow up, and this starts actually very early in life. Now, some of you are wondering why have a teddy bear sitting over here? I have no idea. It's just that No, I'm making something.
No you're wondering why this bear, because this bear is actually very si significant because it's actually, it affects someone's position and the need to actually grow out of one season of life to another. So I'm gonna ask Dexter if he'll come up here. Dexter is I don't know what you call him, my grandson, uncle happy, whatever.
But this fine young gentleman here thank you for gonna look at me. He is a good looking boy. Me? Yeah. Yeah. Dexter this bear actually has a bearing on you because this is a better season, what you need to grow in. So how did this bear help you growth through that season? It has my gummies in it.
So your dummies are inside this bear? Yeah. Okay. All right. We got a photo of you there. Look, you are so cute. They look beautiful. Yeah, he was that age when we got rid of him. Go back to the other one. That's just an extreme. See that's a string bla but then this one, so you can see next, next month.
See? So he was really hanging onto this thing, but it was a season he had to let go of. And so I remember we were in the shop. And how long did it take you to actually put the dummies in there? Two or three hours? Yes. And we had to stand in the shop the whole time, but you had it. So for Dex, there was a tension of letting go.
This represented comfort, this represented security. But eventually he let it go and put it inside, which is really good. 'cause I'm telling you, playing soccer with a dummy is not a real good thing. Not a real good thing. But anyway, I've got you something. I couldn't find a dummy, but I found some candy rings with lollipops on it.
So you can have all of those and thank you for coming and being apart. All right.
Leadership summit for that. They say never work with kids and animals, and I say. So that was a difficult, but that was a transition from out of childhood. He was growing up, I hate to say this, but some of us are still sucking on our dummies and throwing wobbly around the place because we're not, we're refusing to grow up and there's a tension to let go of this.
Now, I don't think this is a me issue. I think this is a we issue. I think it's an everyone issue because there it's very hard. The struggle with of letting go because it's, you're like, you're losing control. You're letting go of something. And we love to control. We love to control the pace and the outcome and everything.
I found the hardest thing in following Jesus isn't starting something new. It's letting something old go. It's as hard for me to let something old go now as it was for Dexter to put those dummies in that bear and zip it up. Actually we had to sew it up 'cause we knew if we zipped it up, getting back out.
But there, there's something like that in us. But the seasons have to change and it can be traumatic and it feels, the reason it's so hard for us is because it feels risky. Now I'm gonna give you three areas here that I've been through personally, and so you don't feel like I'm having a shot at you right now, but these are areas that I've struggled with and you'll probably struggle with.
Some of us should have left a work environment years ago. We knew things weren't right. We knew things weren't going. We knew things weren't happening. Things were starting to struggle, and we knew we should let go. We should get out of there. We are now the problem, but because of the risk, we hang on. And then we hang on.
And then the relationships diminish. Tension rises, strain comes in, and before you know it, your witness for Christ in that place is completely ineffective. Why? Because you should have let go. You should have let go ages ago, but I don't wanna let go. Why? 'cause it's risky. Part of letting go is dealing with risk.
It's letting go. Now, some of us may be single, are in relationships, and you've had a relationship that's been going on for a while and it's toxic. And I wanna say to you, if you're in a relationship that's toxing and you're not married and there's no kids, follow the example of Forest Gum. Run and run.
Forest run. Just get out of there. I cannot tell you the amount of single people that I talk to and they go, oh man, I try to let go, but you know what? And this is the line they use. They just listen to this coming outta people. Better. The devil you know, than the devil you don't know. I'm gonna go better.
No devil at all. Just get rid of him. Just get out of it. So some of us are in relationships that we should have parted from ages ago, and this one's a little bit pointy. Some of us have goals, we have dreams and we have passions on things that start off for God, but then they turn into a tyrannical idol.
Where all you can think of is that thing that you want to get done. That's all you wanna do. That's all you know. That's all you're totally consumed about. And after a while, everybody becomes an expendable asset in your world. If they fit the thing that you want to get done, that's fine. We'll connect. If they don't, sorry, don't have time for you.
We move on. You gotta let go of that because I'm telling you, if you don't let go of that thing, it will destroy every relationship, including your relationship with God. 'cause that's what idols do, and that's what an idol is. So it feels risky. It feels risky to let go because most of the time we discover that our life is not actually solidly fixed on Jesus in that space.
If your life is solidly fixed on Jesus Christ, you'll have no trouble with letting anything go. Anytime you struggle to let go, it means you have something in there that's more important to God, to you, and that is the thing that will come up, and that is the thing that will derail you. But I wanna say to you, just may be when you learn to let everything go, that's where real life begins.
That's where real life begins. When you learn to let go, when you stop trying to control it, stop thinking that you own it. You can relax. When we hold so totally to stuff, it affects our bodies. Like you. You just even doing that, I can feel how tense I am, but when you are holding something and carrying on and holding it and won't let it go, that starts to affect you.
Detrimentally. But when you let go and you discover real life, when you finally let go, you discover that somebody else has a hold on you and that's God himself, and you realize that you are being carried along. I do devotions a couple times a week anita was suggesting, and I do Friday mornings with some guys, and then I do one on Wednesdays and I've been doing one with a guy called Aaron.
I'm not gonna get him up here, so you haven't gonna, I gonna freak out Aaron, but he is sitting right down there in the back of there. And if you actually type Aaron into the chat, I'm sure someone will find him for you. But Aaron's fairly new in his faith and he's gonna be baptized and the next time I have a baptism coming up shortly, but with the last few weeks.
He's had this major breakthrough through reading the soap devotions and the scriptures because he struggled, like I struggled, and many of you do with anxiety crippling, and he suddenly, of the last two weeks has been reading these devotions and he's going, I'm actually beaten this thing. I'm actually free from this thing.
So now he's getting a little bit more ag anxious 'cause he's wonder where this is going. And so what I'm gonna suggest is that Aaron, if after here, for those in the room, if you go sit outside under the TV in the round table with your journal and if you struggle with the area that go out and sit without him, let him hear.
Maybe God will reveal the same thing to you. 'cause you've gotta learn to let go. And God, the anchor of God is, what does that see? Letting go isn't about losing control. It's about giving control. It's about giving it. You're not losing it. I'm giving it like when I gave my life to Christ at 21 years of age, it was a complete and utter mess.
My prayer was, Hey, if Jesus, I dunno. I dunno who you are. I dunno anything. I've completely stuffed my life up. Here you have it. See if you can do with what you want. But when you do that, you let go of control. You actually, it's not losing it. It's letting it going. It's giving it to the man who knows you better than know yourself, who knows you, knows what's important for you, knows where your direction's going, knows the beginning of your days from the end.
He knows where he wants to flow your life to go. And if you keep hanging on, you'll miss it. But if you let go, you'll step through right into it. And letting go is so important because we tend to clinging to things like comfort, identity control, relationships, hurts, even successes. If you don't let them go, they can trap you and I get, it's probably 'cause I'm getting older, I haven't hang around older people.
But we tend to have this thing about the good old days. Oh, the good old days when I was a boy and this happened, goes and the good old days and the kiss and the good old, and it's like I lived through the good old days. They weren't that good. They weren't that good at all. But if you get the people that are in the good old days and you give 'em a few wines and a few beers, whew.
The good old days become magnifi. Man, when I was an athlete, I used to run the a hundred meters. It was 7.8 seconds. Nobody's done in the 7.8 seconds. Was couldn't have been 10, and it was 7.80. That was before the stopwatches. And I've always got an answer. I was running so fast one day I ran in the back of myself and fell over.
It's amazing few wines, few beers, and those good old days. They become really good and entertaining, but not that good. But you can get trapped there. You can get trapped in that space. I know people now that I'll, if I sit with them, they'll recoil. When I was in grade 12, I did this. What have you done since you're 60?
Have you done anything? I'm just waiting on God. He's waiting on you. What else do you want him to do? He's done everything he's gonna do. It's up to you. Hey, that's a good idea for a sermon there. Anyway, I digress. In order for us to experience something new, you have to let go of something old. You gotta do it.
In order for me to experience a new kind of relationship with my wife, I had to say goodbye to childish ways in case you haven't figured it out. That was me in the front story. That was what it was like for me. So ours is about spillover and whatever you've got stuff spilling out of your life that's not good.
It means you're hanging onto things you should have let go of way before. But if you let it go. And let Christ have control what will come out of you will be so refreshing and life to people. But people do we want to control things. Control's a big one to let go. This is the way it's gotta be and it's gotta be done that way.
Yeah, but it doesn't work anymore. Oh, it doesn't matter. I like it that way. It doesn't work. We're not achieving anything. No, I like it this way. No, we gotta change it and then it gets into comfort. It's 'cause it's gotta become uncomfortable then. I don't want change because I like my dummies. You dummies are no good when you're running around playing soccer.
Put 'em in the bear. It's the same thing. Everything and hear me on this, I'm not having to go at anybody, but if you are gonna keep moving forward in life, things have to keep changing. Stop hanging on. My pastor used to say to me, oh, we've got this new system. We've landed, the plane's landed and we'll be right now for the next 20 years.
I said, buddy, you are in the wrong generation. The plane's no longer landing. We are mid every refueling. It doesn't land anymore unless it's, unless it gets shot down. But there's comfort, control, hurt, fear. They always think forgiveness. Unforgiveness, oh my goodness, that is so big. That is so big. Now please hear me on this one too.
'cause Phil tackled this one. If someone hurts you and you refuse to forgive, there is a season where God will give you some grace while you are working through the emotion of that. If you get to a point where you don't forgive and you don't put things right, you're in a worse position than they are.
Because they did that to you and they've already repented of it, probably you are now refusing to do that, which means you know what you're doing. I'm gonna play God. I'll choose God and I'll choose whether I'm gonna forgive him or not. And I put you in a way worse position. So you need to forgive. Jesus said, forgive forgive, and move on.
And this should be something that happens in this all the time. So if we've got all this stuff going on in us, that's just gonna clutter us up, it's gonna make it hard for us to go anywhere. If you do your self devotions, eventually God will deal with everything in you. But if you'd like to fast track something, if you'd like to fast track something, you should probably go and go into EHS, go into emotionally healthy spirituality.
That's where you can go in there. And we can take through and help you discover that you can't be spiritually mature if you're emotionally immature. You can't go forward unless you deal with your family of origin and the things that have affected you growing up in life. If they stay in the well, they will continue to dismantle everything that you're trying to do.
So you gotta decide. You gotta decide what you're gonna do with it. What are you gonna let go? Because it's letting go. That actually puts you in the flow of where God wants to take your life. John wrote something down that Jesus had spoken to a group of people. John was one of his close, Jesus close disciples.
He wrote this down. He said, whoever believes in me, rivers of living water will flow from within them. That's strange, isn't it? I dunno if I wanna believe in Jesus and suddenly have water gushing out, that's bad. Look, it's no. This is an image. It's a symbol. Water always symbols.
In the new, under the new covenant, in Jesus wa Washing, cleansing, renewal represents the Holy Spirit's. Activity was different under the old covenant and water represent judgment. You've all heard of a big flood with Noah, but under the new covenant. It's representation. Representation of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit moves in us.
He moves through us. He wants to give us abundant blessing. He wants us to be so connected with Jesus that he can flow through us, but he knows that we, I can only flow through if you let some things go so I can actually flow through. So it's so important that we do that. Go's not taking anything from us in this letting go process.
He's making space in us for something new. 'cause while you got all the other stuff going on, you've got no space. But if you do it, you get space letting go in the end is the beginning of flowing of activity of the Holy Spirit in your life. And if you read the Bible through, you'll see all through scripture this happens.
There's a need to let go of something in order to move forward. Three of the big ones that come to mind straight away is, you talk about Abraham, father of faith. Abraham, he gets told, listen, you need to leave your family and your land and all your familiarity. You can go to a place, oh, that's a bit harsh.
Yeah, but you need to do that. Abraham goes, so he, lets go of all the familiar in order to flow with what God wants to do. Peter's got a very successful business with his family, fishing and nets and everything's going on, and then Jesus walks up and says, Hey Peter, come follow me and I'll teach you how to be a fisherman.
And Peter just walks away from everything. He just walks away. He lets go immediately so he's not hanging on and to self-reliance or his business or things like that. He wants to be where Jesus is going, where it's flowing. And of course Paul had a late start. He came to the game late but he had to let go of his reputation.
Paul had a magnificent reputation and pedigree. He said, when it comes to being a Pharisee, I am the all star. I'm the all star of the Pharisees. You talk about Hebrew. I'm a Hebrew of Hebrews from the tribe of Benjamin, and you wanna talk about the law. He goes on and says, how arrogant is this? I'm perfect in it.
613 laws, and I'm perfect. That's a big pedigree. But then he goes on and says, but I consider all that rubbish to know Christ. Rubbish to know Christ. And I was excited. 'cause I wasn't at an event recently, but I did hear that the president or the principal of that event made the comment, even around education and things like that, if we make people spectacular and do that and they don't have faith in Christ, you haven't helped them at all.
If they go to a Christless eternity. I'm so excited because he's telling to help you understand, yes, we provide great education. It's gonna be this, that, and the other, but you better get 'em connected with Christ because the Holy Spirit's gonna flow where their life's gonna be. And if you miss that, you miss everything.
So he then goes on and he then just tries to give them some imagery around scriptures. They, the Philippians, he says, here's what you gotta do. Forget what's behind. Forget what is behind and strain forward to what's ahead. You gotta keep looking forward. You have moved from childhood to adulthood to maybe you're getting married, then marry with kids, then empty nesters.
Then the decline, the new frontier, the final frontier of death. They're all seasons that you have to manage, you have to go through and you have to learn to throw off. As Paul says, throw off everything that hinders in the sin that's so easily entangles, everything. Throw off everything that hinders.
Anything that is blocking the flow of the Holy Spirit moving through you to take you where he wants you to go. You need to get rid of it. Get yourself a bear. If you need to go to build a bear, wrap it up and stuff it in the bear. That could be fun to see a bunch of adults in there doing that.
People going, what is going on there? Maybe you can do a deal with them. Listen, in order to grow, you must let it go. You must. Can you imagine Dexter still running around with his dummy playing soccer and he is gonna get his head punched in a second game or something like that. He is that's just ridiculous, man.
What are you doing that for? But yeah, there are people that still behave like they're on their dummy and throwing wobbly. I talked to one of our, guys of young fellas that works in retail and he said he was trying to negotiate a difficult customer and they, he couldn't fulfill their request because there's legal reasons why he couldn't do it.
And so anyway, they go off their nuts, start swearing at him start cursing him, threaten to throw the long black over him, then they storm out, go to the other side and give him the royal finger. What's that about? You've got someone right there still sucking on their dummy, spitting their dummy and throwing wobbly someone that's never negotiated, getting out of childhood into adulthood.
So they behave exactly as you would as a toddler when you don't get your way. And it's not a good look. It's not a good look at all. So gotta let it go. We gotta let it go. So what do you need to throw off? Yeah, maybe it's pride, maybe it's sin, maybe it's anger. Maybe it's unforgiveness. I don't know. Maybe it's just the childishness to transition to being an adult.
You notice, I didn't think anything about youth and young adults specifically, because scripturally can't make a case. They went from children to being contributing adults. And a lot of the horrible problems that we have today is when children get stuck in adolescence and you end up stuck there for a decade or two and you end up with 45-year-old young adults.
So I can't make a case for that. I'm not bagging it and I'm not saying we don't love you guys. We love young adults and that kind of thing, but. The model is you grow up as a child, you move on from childish things, you become an adult, you become a contributor, and you become healthy so that you can go through all the stages of life.
And if you're stuck with a, on the thing of the idol, like something that's a goal or a dream, that's that. Someone said to me like, how can you tell if something's an idol? It's easy. Just look at where you spend all your time. Look at where you spend all your money and how many friends do you have that aren't about you fulfilling your idol and your dream or your passion.
And if the answer is zero on those, and you got yourself an idol there. And so you need to deal with that. And you need to figure out. 'cause if you don't, if you don't, the idol will eventually deal with you. What are you, what do you need to let go of childish things. Grow up into a marriage, from child to an adult.
When you get to the space of being married, you lose your personal space. That becomes into a servanthood. When you get kids, man, then you learn about self-sacrifice there. And when you get to empty nesters, this is what it should be. You should say, God, I'm available. I've got plenty of time now I'm gonna see Kev, see what he wants me to do.
So the question is, what's the Holy Spirit? What's the Holy Spirit just whispering to you to let go hurts, control some sort of dream that maybe started as a dream but now has maybe got a little bit unhealthy and it's becoming all about your identity of who you are. You maybe you should start praying, Lord, what do you want to flow through me?
That can only come when I let go. You can move on from those guys now I want.
Oh no. They're stuck. They're stuck there. So what do you start asking? The Holy Spirit. What do you wanna flow through? Me? That can only come when you let go. When I let go. If you have people that have hurt you and I have to deal with this because we, believe it or not, when you're a pastor people this is gonna be unbelievable.
You you'll be shocked about this sometimes. People use you for what they can get out of you, and then when they can't get out of you what they used to get, they just discard you and they just disappear. It's like you don't even exist anymore. That would never happen to you. Only ever happens to pastors.
But sometimes those ones that hurt the discard, you like that. It's like, how do you process that? So I have a little thing that I do that might help you. Sometimes I'll write notes and I'll burn it just to release it. But if it's a stubborn person that I can't let go, I write their name on rocks.
I might get 10 or 15 rocks and I write my, write their name on them, and then I wait till they see them and I throw it at no.
No. I take them and I throw them out into the ocean as the signify that I can't, oh Lord. I just release them. I just release them. I let them go. And I don't wanna hold onto anything that's gonna interrupt the flow of what you want to do. So maybe you need to do the same thing. I don't know.
But I just love the fact that we are becoming a church. That is not stuck on, we're not stuck on what was, but we're always stepping into what is another slide. People not stuck on what was, we don't hang on to what was things that happened, but we are more interested about what's next, what's coming next.
And if you keep letting go and you keep that clear, the Holy Spirit can flow through you. And then you don't get spiritually stagnant. You continually stay, spirit led and he can move in. It moves quickly and when we let go, that's it. God can really flow. He can reflow in every area. And it's really no different to what Jesus did Think about what Jesus had to let go of.
He said, I didn't come to be served. I came to serve. How? By giving. Giving what? Giving my life away What? Letting go of your very life. Yeah. Why That? I might win some. I might ransom some. And it's the same thing for us. Jesus had to let go to remain in God's love. And to remain in God's flow. And when we finally let go, same thing, then we remain in God's flow and that's when we then exponentially begin to grow.
That's when things really start to happen.
So I just wonder, what do you need to let go of? What do you need to let go of what's hindering the Holy Spirit, having full free flow through you? Because there are people around you that are desperate to see a representation of Christ. I was I was,
I spoke to someone before the surface and, they don't, haven't had a longstanding faith with churches and they just said to me, we've, I've been coming for so long and God's changing me and my heart feels full and I understand the Holy Spirit is working in me. And I thought, that's what it's about, Lord.
But zero history in churches. And that's not uncommon anymore. For people to come in and have had no idea about churches, and then they step in and then they learn some things. And then I get so encouraged when I meet people that have come in, like I think of Barry and John and things like that, that have spent long portions of their life under religiosity.
Know a lot about rules and regulations and dos and don'ts, but now I've discovered, hey, I can have a relationship with God for myself. And it's not hard. It's not hard, but unfortunately religion's made it hard. But it all starts with letting go. So let's pray together. Father, I just pray for those of us that need to release some things today, then that maybe have got a grip over our life and lot of we wanna choose not to control, let you to control it.
So that you can flow through us, so our lives could be a blessing to others. And Father, I just wanna help us understand that all, understand that every, this all begins with the journey of saying yes to Jesus. And I don't know where everybody's at in this room and I dunno where everybody's at online, but it all starts with letting go by saying yes to Jesus When you finally discover that you are broken and you can't fix yourself, but there's a God there that loves you so much that he send Jesus to pay the price for your sin and my sin so that I could get out of this brokenness and back into relationship and experience life and love and security.
Yeah, that's exactly what it's all about. So I'm gonna do what I do when I do this and that's I'm just gonna pray the prayer that I pray when I discover something still comes up in me that has to be surrendered 'cause I'm still broken. And I'm gonna pray it slowly so that if you are here, maybe new and you are online and you've never surrendered your life to Christ, this is the starting point.
It's letting go and letting God have control. So I'm gonna pray and a little space so you can pray after me if you want to. And then we'll bring this thing to a close by having communion together. So heavenly Father, Lord, I still know that I'm broken and I can't fix myself. But every so often I see you and your original design, but I know I can't get there.
But I'm so grateful that you sent Jesus to die for me to take my sins, and then to go to hell and take my punishment, and then raise from the dead. Yes, to grant me eternal life back with you, my heavenly Father. So Lord, right now, I just stop trying to fix myself and I choose to let go, and I surrender my life to you, Jesus.
To be my Lord, to be my savior, to be my king. Would you help me to not keep picking things back up again? Help me to surrender all of my control to you right now that I might remain in your flow, and then you might lead me into the reason why I exist on this planet that I might fulfill your plan and purpose.
So right now, holy Spirit, come into my life, begin the rebirthing process of everything. That I may be a follower of you and that my life might represent you well, and I thank you In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.