The Real Reason You're Your Own Worst Enemy | Motivation
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God doesn't walk away when the mess shows up. When suddenly they're exposed about what's really in them and what's really going on, in that moment, he doesn't walk away. When the blooper reel suddenly becomes on the stage and screen, he doesn't do that. And there's a theme that's running through this which we haven't touched on all the way through the series, and that's that every single one of these heroes of faith were hiding something They had things that were hidden within them that eventually came to the light, eventually came out.
Now, I wanna just share this with you. When I was trained as a pastor, I went through two Bible colleges, and they train us, they train us to look really good. You gotta make sure you keep it all together, make sure that you never have any problems, make sure that you're the legend hero. And so then they give you a microphone and put you on a pulpit in front of everybody, which means that, uh, you get very polished at presenting something which is not real.
In fact, one of my friends said to me, "Never trust a guy with a headset mic in front of a crowd." And I knew exactly what he was saying, because we're actually trained like this. Now, fortunately, I've learnt some things and grown a little bit out of that, but when you... You gotta be careful with this, this presentation, this thing from the front.
Now, I'm like you. Anybody that gets close to me realizes that I'm a mess just like you. I have issues. I have things that I'm still trying to process. Not the sort of things that... Not the sort of things like that had hit, hit the headlines, not those kind of things that you see around the world in religious circles, but, but the quiet stuff, the failure that happened, that I thought was gonna happen, didn't happen that way, and then you start carrying that failure, and you hide it, and you bury it.
Or that mistake that you made that hurt someone, or someone wounded you. These are all things, failures, mistakes, wounds. And if you're not careful, you can polish and pretend and get your showreel right out there, but underneath the surface, things are not good. And the thing that I've discovered about this, hiding things, is this: It is exhausting.
It is exhausting to keep it up, 'cause you gotta remember what persona you've shown to what people, and you gotta make sure you don't show the wrong persona to the wrong people, and you... before you know it, the big mess is out there. It's exhausting. And the reason it's exhausting is because your mistakes, the things you're hiding, the brokenness that's in there, if you don't deal with that, it has a way of leaking out Someone just says something that reminds you of someone else, and before you know it, you're arcing up and it's full on, and you're, it's, and you don't even know why you're doing it, because it's something that's sitting there.
And what I'm trying to get to with this today and wrapping this up is that just because you don't revisit your bloopers, you don't replay them, they're still there. They're still there and they're just awaiting the right opportunity to let you know they are still there. Like, Anne and I, when we were younger, married, we had a little bit of a challenge with this in our years of marriage.
Um, I was in a place where you just get the confrontation out here and let it all happen, and likes to just keep, let's just keep things quiet and that kind of thing. And so I would be trying to deal with some issues and say, "Honey, come on, we need, we need to talk about this." Actually, you did this to me recently, now I remember it.
Y- And, and, um, and anyway, I'm, I kind of say, "Well, honey, you know, we need to talk about this." And then this would happen Now, if you don't know what that means, it just means you're not married. It means, it means talk to the hand. Talk to the hand. Um, th- and she would say to me, "This is not the time or place for this discussion."
And I'd say, "I've been trying to have this discussion for 20 years. When is the time or place?" "It's not the time or place." And so you, you kind of then hide things. So we've been spending this time to help you realize those things that are happening there, they need to be dealt with. Now, as we've been going through this journey, two...
People are approaching this two ways. There are some of us that we go, we've heard the mess, we've seen the mess, and we're going, "Oh, thank God, it's not just me. I can identify with them. That's something. I'm just like that." But it's gotta go further than you can't stop there. And then there is the others, and I've had a few conversations with the others.
These are the ones that, that they've been watching at arm's length Which means they go, "Wow, that's really interesting that that happened to Moses. Bet he lost his temper like that. Phew. It's great. Yeah. Well, really enjoyed that. We need to talk about that over lunch. Maybe I need to study it. Perhaps I'll Greek it out.
I don't know." But what's happening is that you've watched and listened to them, but you haven't emotionally engaged with them. You haven't addressed the fact that this is going down. So it's not even so much the bloopers now that are a problem. The issue now is that some of us are actively hiding things Wounds, mistakes, failures, we actively are hiding them.
We hide them from other people, we hide them from ourselves, and we hide them from God, which I gotta tell you, is a pretty stupid thing to try and do. When God calls himself omnipresent, which means He's everywhere at once, He sees everything, it's a fairly dumb thing to do. And He's omniscient, which means He's all-knowing, He knows everything.
You wanna talk about know-it-alls, He is it. The great know-it-all, it's Him. He knows everything. But somehow we figure that we're gonna hide this stuff. And I said, "Well, how do I explain this?" He said, "It's just like this. When you have a little toddler and you say, 'You wanna play hide and seek?' And they go, 'Yeah.'
'Okay, you go off and hide.' 'All right.' 'Buddy, I can still see you. Go and hide. Go, go and hide.' 'Yeah. I can't see you, you can't see me.'" And we do the same thing with God. It's like, if I just pretend He's not there, maybe He can't see me, and maybe this thing down here will maybe just go away. But it's a problem when you're trying to manage it and curate it and look after them.
It's exhausting. But not only is it exhausting for you and it's doing damage in you, there's a whole bunch of missed opportunity that goes with it. Because in another conversation with Paul and a few others, He said this statement on God's behalf. He said, "In your weakness, my strength is made perfect." In your weakness, not in your show reel.
Everybody's got one of those. But in your weakness, when you will bring your weakness, your wound, your mistake, whatever it is going on, when you bring that, I have opportunity to display my power and make it perfect in that. And it suddenly hit me, because we all have a tendency to hide things. You cannot heal what you will not reveal You can't heal it.
It just sits there. It just sits there. Now fortunately, God has a lot to say about this, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna share from a place which is some of you are just gonna fall off your chair, because I'm actually gonna take it out of the Old Covenant
Seriously, what is this guy up to? He's backsliding. No, I'm gonna take something out of here because I want you to see... Some of you are nervous, like, uh, when we say we had unhitched from temple and empire. I'm not saying discard. I'm saying you s- need, when you unhitch, you learn what you need to apply and what you don't apply.
And this is actually a great opportunity for you to see how it starts and where it moves on the other side of the cross. So, it's about a guy called Isaiah. Uh, he was around 8th century BC. Uh, and he, his job was to speak on God's behalf to Judah and to the kings of Judah, which was, um, Ahaz and Hezekiah, I think, at that time.
And he was to speak on God's behalf, and he was trying to call them to be faithful to God and to trust God, because they're busy trying to build political alliances to further this rather than deal with and trust God. There's a whole bunch of people in the world, political people, who need to hear that.
Political align- uh, alliances is not the way. You need to learn how to trust God. So, in the middle of this, he has this encounter with God. It just happens and so let's, uh, let me just read you through it. It says, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on the throne." Now, you would think, wow, wow, that, uh, you'd think that'd be awesome, wouldn't it?
I would love to see God like that, high and seated on the throne. Well, let's see what, how it comes out. "Woe to me," he cried, "for I am ruined." So getting too close actually has some consequences to it. But Isaiah cries out, "Woe to me, I'm ruined. I'm a man of unclean lips, and I live among un- people of unclean lips.
And my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." So this is not a normal day. He's having a little bit of a different day. He's having some kind of vision. It's drawn him in, but then as soon as he really catches what's going on here, he realizes his unworthiness. He realizes there's issues in him that are not dealt with, that are hindering him, and so his whole place is, "Man, I'm, I'm done, really."
He's, he's like, "I'm saying I'm done." Let's read on. It says, "Then one of the seraphim..." Now, I'll show you a picture about them a bit later on, because fortunately someone was taking a snap at the time. But, um, I'll just talk about them at, for the moment. So this is an angelic being and, anyway, this angelic being is told, uh, to take a coal, which he has in his hand, which he's taken from tongs from the altar- Isaiah did not go to the altar.
You can't go to the altar in heaven and live. God sends from the altar to you. And keep that in mind, 'cause we're gonna sing a song about that in a little while. So he
takes this coal with the tongs of the altar, and look what happens. "With it he touched my mouth and said, 'See, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away. Your sins are atoned for.'" Here's something interesting about this. Isaiah has an encounter with the presence of God His response is not hiding.
His response is, "I'm exposed." And he doesn't deny it, and he doesn't try and manage it, and he doesn't wanna sit down and say, "Well, let me give you my credentials as a prophet." He just owns it. He just owns it. And he collapses and says, "Woe to me. I am undone. I'm ruined." Everything that he had hidden was suddenly exposed.
But it's interesting, the coal came from the altar, but it wasn't really judgment. It's interesting. Now, his, hi- we do have this photo here of the seraphim, just so you know. It was, someone ha- took a happy snap. These were angelic beings. This is a, obviously it's a Hollywood depiction. There wasn't someone really there with a camera.
But it had, you know, these wings that covered their face and covered their feet, and then they could fly. So this being is taken the coal from the altar, brought it to Isaiah, and once it touches Isaiah, he is completely changed in a moment. Did you get that, Megs? He's completely changed in a moment And as you go on from here, this is what he, this is what Isaiah says.
'Cause the minute he has this conversation, Isaiah's going, "Woe is me, I'm ruined. I'm a man of unclean lips. I'm good for nothing," blah, blah, blah. The coal touches him, then God's saying, "I need someone to go do something for me." And Isaiah's, "Ooh, pick me. I'll go. I'll do it for you." He, he was like, it, it must have been like Donkey on Shrek, "Ooh, pick me, pick me, pick me."
But Isaiah has gone in a moment from, "Woe, I've been exposed, which, that which is hidden, I'm ruined." To suddenly I'm guilt-free, I'm healed, I'm restored. The guilt is taken away
For Isaiah, the encounter with the coal wasn't the end of Isaiah, it was the beginning. It was the beginning 'cause now he could say, "Here I am, send me." Do you know how many people never put their hands up to serve God because they don't feel worthy? Yeah. And they feel like they have to get themselves to a certain place.
You can't get yourself to a certain place. You just need a hot coal. Yeah. The coal didn't disqualify him. It actually freed him to speak Do I need to change this? Is that okay? Romans 12. Let's get into Romans 12 now. Again, the new covenant. He's t- Paul's talking to the church in Rome, and they're, uh, they're discussing.
Now, you gotta remember, in these days, he was talking predominantly to Jewish people that have converted to follow Christ. And some of them weren't very happy about this c- converting to follow, some de- decided not to. But they were having a discussion about their enemies. Now, for those of you who don't know anything about a Jewish culture, uh, an enemy of a Jew is anybody who's not a Jew.
It's fairly simple. Uh, that's all it was. If you're not a Jew, you're an enemy. That's how it is. And, and even though in the old covenant, the tone of the old covenant, you'll never see, well, Israel hated their enemies. If you read what they did, eh, I don't think they really liked them very much. So they were having this discussion about their enemies.
And Paul starts quoting Jesus to them, and let's just see how this goes. He says, "On the contrary, with your enemy, if your enemy is hungry, feed him." What are you, sick, Paul? You don't feed your enemies. That makes them stronger, then they become stronger enemies. You just don't do that. No, no, Paul's going, "No, you gotta feed them.
Oh, and gi- oh, if they're thirsty, give them something to drink." Paul, there's, there's, we don't have wa- we live in a desert. There's not a lot of water around here. We're not giving it to our enemies. This is silly. This is silly. We don't sell slabs of water at 7-Eleven or anything like that. There's just no water.
We're not doing it, Paul. And then he goes, "No, Paul, you, you need to feed them, and you need to give them something to drink." Why? Well, in doing this, you will heap burning coals on their heads See how the dynamic is shifting? The seraphim brought a coal to Uzziah
Healing, feel free. When the Holy Spirit was sent for us, he came with flames He's so, he's a spirit of fire, and he cleanses. And now he takes the coals that you and I need to be cleaned up and touches whatever needs to be touched. And then it goes a step further, because here it's not the seraphim anymore.
The commission is coming to you and I. Says, "When your enemy does this to you, you love them. You be generous. And in so doing, you pass the coals on that you have to them, and they have the opportunity to respond to God or not respond." That's why our whole value system is based on love and generosity. He was purified, Isaiah was purified for purpose, not for punishment.
People fear getting too close, 'cause they feel like, "Oh, I'm gonna be punished." That's not the purpose of the fire. It's not the purpose of the coal. Now, when you go back to the ones that we looked at across that, this season, you'll notice in every story there's an enemy. But if you really look closely, you'll discover the enemy is not without, the enemy is within.
Moses was really angry and lost it with the Israelites 'cause they were continually behaving badly. But that wasn't really the issue. The issue was that M- Moses was hanging on to 40 years of resentment and unforgiveness that he never allowed God to deal with, and eventually it took him out. David's enemy wasn't Uriah, and it wasn't Bathsheba, and it wasn't Nathan, about the fact that he got caught.
David's enemy was, he wasn't where he was supposed to be, and God, saw something he wasn't supposed to see, started hiding that sin. There were consequences of that sin, which then led to murder. He, the issue was going on within David. It wasn't without. Peter's real enemy wasn't the servant girl that saw him and said, "You were with Jesus," to cause him to deny three times.
That wasn't his enemy The real enemy for Peter was the fact that he had reached the place that after denying Jesus three times, he did not feel he could ever be trusted again. He was a coward. No one would ever trust him. He was never going to ever be able to get back. That's what he had sitting inside of him.
Jonah's real enemy wasn't Nineveh. As barbaric as those people were, they were barbaric people, and they deserved to be wiped out, but God had different plans. The real issue in Jonah wasn't that. The real issue was what was going on in Jonah. He had a forgiveness issue. He had a prejudice issue. He had decided, "These people are written off, and you should not help them, Lord.
And I'm not gonna help you to help them, 'cause I know what you'll do. You'll forgive them, and I'm not gonna do that. So I'm gonna run away," which is as good as hiding. It doesn't really work. Wherever you go, the Lord's there Abraham, it wasn't the fact that the, the enemy wasn't the wait, he was asked to wait.
The enemy was that he failed to trust when God seemed a little bit passive, when it was a little bit slow. And I know pastors that struggle with this now, but they forget the fact that God says, "Why, why is he tarrying? Why is he waiting? What, why doesn't he just sort this mess out?" Because He doesn't want any to perish, but all to come to repentance, which is to meet the fire, to be healed, to, to come into a relationship.
That's why. He's not slow because He can, He couldn't wind it up like that. He's slow, but He doesn't want any human being to go to a crisis eternity, so He's taking time. And some of us pastors don't like it when God takes time. We like Him to do things now, and He doesn't tend to do that. So in every one of those cases, it's not, it's not performance that's gonna fix it.
It's not try harder that's gonna fix it. It's actually being willing to accept exposure. Accept exposure. Be like Isaiah, "Oh, woe is me. I am undone." God confronted all those guys in different ways, but it was all done in love. And it was all done to help them get to the place that they could realize where they'd gone wrong and get back to the place they needed to be.
It's another th- I was thinking about another message here, Adele. This, and I haven't fully formed it yet, but it's like God doesn't seem to ever go for a frontal assault on something. And I was thinking about military terms, and that is one of the worst things you can do, is have a frontal assault, because you lose troops hand over fist.
And He seems to, like, do the same thing. He knows. He knows what Tom's like. He says, "If I do that to Tom, he's gonna arc up and we're gonna have a fight, and then I'll have to smash him." You know? Uh, He doesn't do that. He seems to find a way in the back door. Like with, with David. David had committed this awful thing, and Nathan comes along and tells a story.
"Oh, David, you know, what about this man? I knew this guy, and he only had one loving little sheep. And this other rich guy, he had thousands and thousands of sheep. And, and, and then this, this one guy that's got one sheep, the guy that's got all the good sheep, he just steals it off this guy and leaves him with no sheep whatsoever."
David is in a rage and says, "I'd take that person outside and I'd kill him because that is so ungodly." And then Nathan goes, "And by the way, you're that man, David." And David was able to repent of the hiding because it came from a place of love than a place of revelation. God's just waiting for us. Now, here's where it gets a little bit personal for you.
The burning coals principle that, of Isaiah that now forms through into the Holy Spirit and now using us, not Seraphim, uh, is not just, does not just work with enemies that are external. It works on enemies that are internal When you refuse to forgive yourself and extend the same grace to yourself by holding onto your failures, holding onto your wounds, by trying to manage them, by trying to make sure that they're hidden, you become your own worst enemy
When you try and hide rather than allow God to expose and heal and move you forward, you're actually becoming your own worst enemy. And whereas you can then grant it to someone else, the forgiveness, sometimes you don't let go of it within yourself. And then what happens is you just try and manage the mess, and it's exhausting, and it keeps breaking out and hurting people.
You're trying to hold onto something you're not supposed to hold onto. When human beings were not designed to hang onto these emotional things within us. It's why most of the ills in the world today are caused by this, what's going on internally. We're designed to walk with God. And if you walk closely with God, you...
He doesn't have to say anything. Just by moving closer towards Him, His holiness emanating from Him, you go, "Woe is me. I'm undone. I'm ruined. I'm not who everybody else thinks that I am." But at that point in time, he doesn't go hiding, he doesn't go running. He says, "Okay. Here, have this."
I get it. I get it. Hiding feels like protection But self-concealment isn't really, is not humility. It's actually self-obstruction. You actually are obstructing your own life from being conformed to the image of Christ, and you're actually getting stuck in there without a way to go forward. And then you just manage everything.
And it leads, if you don't deal with it, it just ends up in self-destruction Isaiah, when he got close to God like that, he didn't try and hide anything. He did not try and hide. He did not try and hide. He did not try and manage. He just fell to his knees and said, "Woe to me, I am undone." And God did not move away from him.
And then he sent a coal from the altar to him to rid him of his guilt so that he could once again be free. And in that moment, he said, "Lord, here I am, send me. Here I am, send me." That's where I want this to really sit. If you struggle to follow God in the things that he's asking you to do, and we know that he wants us all to go make disciples, you need to look inside.
What's stopping you? What's going on in there? Is there a failure there? Did Moses and David and all the guys that we looked at, did they actually push something to the surface? But you're kind of like, "Oh, no, I don't really wanna deal with that." I mean, is there a wound there that you've convinced yourself that you've got under control and it's everything's fine?
Is this some unforgiveness that, you know, "Well, they p- they did this and this and this, and I'm never gonna forgive them, so then I'm, then I'm just gonna set up personal boundaries." Can I just say this to you? Watch out for the term boundaries. Boundaries and balance, they can be real traps when it comes to your relationship with God, because God says, "Love me with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength."
You try and boundary that up, it's gonna go bad. I get it. When you're dealing with other people, you gotta have boundaries. But not with God. You gotta keep that open, you gotta keep that fresh, you gotta keep that full. So I want you to hold onto the fact that the call is coming not for punishment, but for freedom, for purification.
For freedom. It's not punishment, it's purific- purification. And then once you're in that purification place, you have the ability to say yes. When God says to you, "Hey, I want you to risk all this stuff here." "Hold on, I n- I need to hang onto that." "No, no, you're, you're not trusting me." "Yes. Yes, Lord, you can have whatever.
You... Whatever you want me to do, that's fine, I'll do it." Yes. You want me to go? I'll do. In fact, you get to the point where you're actually a little bit hungry and you're almost, like, just listening, waiting. I'm, I'm ready to say yes, just say something and I'm off. You know, I'm just waiting there. I called the title of this thing called Burn Baby Burn.
'Cause sometimes we're frightened of it, 'cause we feel like it's all about judgment. It's not. It's about healing, it's about restoration. I mean, imagine a place. That's the part which I could never have imagined the journey that we've been on, h- where God has changed us to a people that don't judge, but a people who love.
Doesn't mean we drop the standard. We still hold the standard exactly the same, but it's not our job to judge. It's our job to love and build relationships and hang on and be there. Because each time we do that, and we do things out of love, God gets opportunity to pour a few more coals that direction, that maybe He can bring some healing.
Maybe He can set some people free. I love this. This is a place now where y- no one's running around, like, pretending you've got it all together. I hear different ones come and they sit at a table and they go like, "Man, I just... Man, I just blew it in that area this week. I just..." And the other one doesn't go, "Ugh, man, I can't believe you did that.
Serious. Like, man, I would never do that. Oh, last Tuesday. Oh, no." But no, what do they say? They go, "You know what? I have had the same struggle. I messed up at times, too. Hey, let's bring that thing. Let's not hide this thing. Let's bring this thing out and let's let the Holy Spirit come, pour some coals on us.
Not of judgment, but coals of purification." Freedom is found in the light, in the burn, not in the hiding. And that's the w- we, that's the kind of church we're becoming, and I, and I love that. Because I, I was at the Gold Coast Marathon watching Phil yesterday, and I'm looking at all these people and I'm thinking, "They don't need someone to judge them.
They need someone to love them." In their mess, in their brokenness, someone that's gonna love them, that's gonna pour themselves onto them, but someone that now doesn't have to rely on saying, "Seraphim, could you take a coal over there?" No, you carry the Holy Spirit within you. He is a fire flame. He then pours the coals out through you, first in you, and then you get to hand those coals out to others.
It's amazing. And there you can see the difference between the old and the new in there. It's still applicable because it still comes through. And that's why Jesus said, "Freely you've received, so freely give." Just freely give
I thought a little bit about how we would kind of wind this section up, and I think we're gonna go this direction. We're gonna sing a song, uh, in a little while called C- Oh, Come to the Altar. Uh, as I said, if you don't understand your good theology on this, you could actually interpret that song in a wrong way.
But if you do understand, you're okay. So when you sing, it's not come to the altar. You can't go to the altar in heaven and live. That's not happening. The altar now was in the temple. That's gone. Jesus said that's never coming back. The altar now is ri- resides within us. We have an altar within us. And so as we sing this, you need to ask the question, who is on the altar here?
What's here? Is the Holy Spirit here? Is purity, is love, is forgiveness, is that all here? Or is there all that other stuff that these guys struggle with and then they're blind out of the water. Is that what's there? So we're gonna sing that in just a moment, but first I want you just to watch, uh, a few people.
We had a water baptism in a little while back, and, uh, just have a look at these guys, 'cause these are people that understand the God of second chances, and they understand what it means to be touched by the coal and to be set free. So I'm just gonna sit down here. We're gonna let... Watch this, watch the, uh, this baptism video, and then the team's just gonna start to sing quietly, and then I'm gonna step back up and just walk us through.
So you guys online, this might be a bit awkward for you to follow, but just hang in there and I'm sure God's gonna do something really neat. So, Lord, I just ask that, uh, even as we watch these baptisms, help us catch something of the change, catch something of the fire, the coal that has completely just changed these people.
And then, Lord, encourage us to do a little itinerary over the next few minutes, just to make sure we're not hanging on to stuff that we shouldn't hang on to, stuff that's damaging us, some- that's damaging our relationships, something, stuff that's just causing us to, even though we'd love to run with you and to step out, but we, we're too frightened because, well, what if that gets exposed?
Help us right now to prepare to bring that to the light so that you can purify it, take it away.