Healing the Wound of Abandonment

Even the healthiest families still have problems. No parent is perfect. What we learn in our family we practice later in life. Our family of origin goes a long way to inform who we become. 

When I am hurt how do I come back to myself? Some of us have those skills and some of us don't. Jesus actually taught his disciples how to recover themselves. You can only learn those things in the context of community. When we wrestle with wounds of abandonment we tend to go into enemy. When someone has hurt me, I turn them in to an enemy. But Jesus gave us a different way.

Tune in as Joshua Hoffert brings the way of Jesus to our responses to life's difficult moments.

Harlots of the Desert by Benedicta Ward: https://www.amazon.ca/Harlots-Desert-Repentance-Monastic-Sources/dp/0879076062/

For more about Josh and Wind Ministries visit: https://www.amazon.ca/Harlots-Desert-Repentance-Monastic-Sources/dp/0879076062/

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;01;00;17
Unknown
Baptism is more than a man. It is a public declaration of faith, but it's one from the baptism. This is what the church always called the sacramental. And the sacrament is making a grace that we don't see visibly, visibly seen. And so when we baptize people with the grace of new life and transformation is something we are making visibly seem so, something that's communicated individually.

00;01;00;20 - 00;01;27;10
Unknown
And so it's just a beautiful thing to see that I was just as we were talking about that, I was reminded of some statistics that are this isn't manipulating statistics that are. Our friend Benito from India sent me not that long ago. He's. He's part of you guys. Remember, Benito? Maybe some of you do. The last time we had him here was probably 2019 because of COVID.

00;01;27;12 - 00;01;51;19
Unknown
And the last time I was there was early 2020. But we've supported the work that's happening church planting, training, church planters, training leaders. And two things he sent me recently. One of them is a an updated an update on the story of a man named Wilson who when I was in India last. WILSON Some of you guys are going to remember this.

00;01;51;22 - 00;02;19;10
Unknown
Wilson is in the the state of Goa and he at this point, this was early 2020 had in the last 18 months planted 21 churches. And Wilson did not have a vehicle. So he was walking to each one of the places that he had planted a church. And so in order to get Bibles to you and the way you plant, you're not like, this isn't like, well, let's get people from the church down the street to come to our better program.

00;02;19;13 - 00;02;45;16
Unknown
That's not the way it works there. Okay. This is we're sharing the gospel and people are getting saved. And so for him to deliver Bibles to the people that are new believers is quite an onerous ordeal to him at that point. So the church here, CC had sent some money because it's easiest to get funds over to India by using direct cash and say here.

00;02;45;18 - 00;03;08;15
Unknown
And so we directed the funds to Benito to purchase a scooter for Wilson. And so Wilson had to spend about six months actually getting a driver's license. He didn't even have a driver's license. Um, yeah. So I had a picture. This is back in 2020. Benito sent me a picture of Wilson proudly standing next to the scooter they had bought.

00;03;08;15 - 00;03;32;21
Unknown
And now he's able to ride the scooter and deliver Bibles to each one of these churches. And Benito sent me an update just the other day about Wilson. Wilson is now traveling around India, training church planters. And Wilson is his history. He was a notorious stutterer. So he was super insecure about actually standing in front of people and speaking.

00;03;32;21 - 00;03;53;19
Unknown
You know, it's a funny thing that God does, right? I think it says somewhere in Scripture that he uses the foolish things to confound the wise. And so Benito sent me pictures of Wilson standing in front of groups of pastors, teaching them about planting churches and sharing the gospel and getting people saved. And so it was just a beautiful thing.

00;03;53;19 - 00;04;28;01
Unknown
And so Benito had sent me some statistics because he does a lot of the tracking and the networks for the statistics that they're working with in in and some of the networks they're working in from the statistics last year. And I want to share these with you because we've said this a bunch of times, like last week when we were taking communion, I said, we're participating in in the life of the church, the church corporately, not just SBC, but when we take communion, we're entering into the grand narrative and the story of Christ's life that's being shed abroad all throughout the world.

00;04;28;04 - 00;05;01;06
Unknown
And so these statistics, like, you know, our 15 baptisms a week statistics, we can roll into the statistics that Benito sharing as well because we're all one church. Benito shared this with me last year. He was able to track 16,377 gospel shares. That's pretty cool. So just on the streets, we're sharing the gospel. Some of you came when Benito was here and he did a presentation on one of the evenings about how to share the gospel, and we practiced with each other.

00;05;01;08 - 00;05;21;04
Unknown
Um, so of those 16,006 6542 accepted Jesus. So 6542 new believers, there was 688 baptisms within that network and 230 churches were planted.

00;05;21;06 - 00;05;43;06
Unknown
I love that stuff. I love that stuff. That's amazing. And, you know, it's been it's been prophesied of India. And this is something they tell me every time that I talk with them. It's been prophesied that India would be the greatest missions sending nation that the world has ever seen because they're the recipient. Right? At this point, they're the recipient.

00;05;43;09 - 00;06;07;09
Unknown
But they're starting to look at North America and they're going a lot of mission fields. What a mission field. Let's start sending people to North America to plant churches. Let's get North America saved. Don't even know what their own country. And they're starting to think of us. And so I just I love that. And this is again, this is we celebrate because this is the true meaning of the word Catholic, right.

00;06;07;09 - 00;06;23;14
Unknown
That the church united the church across all fronts, across all creeds, across all nations, across all ethnicities. And so, you know, I'll text him back and I'll say, hey, we got 15 baptisms a week going on, man. You need to catch up.

00;06;23;17 - 00;06;47;18
Unknown
Just some holy jealousy. There. There's a couple of things I want to talk about this morning. And I'm, you know, I think couching all that I want to talk about this morning under we've been doing this webinar this weekend on Healing the Wounded Heart. How many, you know, that we all have wounded hearts. Yeah, those are you didn't raise your hand.

00;06;47;18 - 00;07;16;06
Unknown
Well, you'll find out one day. We all do. And so what I wanted to talk about this morning kind of as a as an overall is how recovering from abandonment, healing from issues of abandonment, because all of us have to some degree struggled with abandonment or rejection. And we don't even actually know kind of the the way those roots play themselves out in our lives.

00;07;16;08 - 00;07;42;19
Unknown
Each one of us should probably this is going to make Phil way happier if I put this thing right in the middle. Is that the middle? Anyway? Whatever. That's where this that's where the X is, right? They've got an X here to make sure I don't go that far. Okay. What was I saying? That's squirrel. Each one of us as we're.

00;07;42;22 - 00;08;13;12
Unknown
How many of you know you guys have a family that you grew up in? Like it or not, you have a family that you grew up in and your family has particular characteristics and particular relational styles. And some families have really healthy, good boundaries. They have really good, healthy family togetherness, way of connecting, and some families don't. And there's a spectrum in between all those things from the most hyper dysfunctional family to the most functioning, loving, healthy family.

00;08;13;12 - 00;08;41;08
Unknown
We all have spectrums in between there. And, you know, and I've got news for you, too. The most loving family, the healthiest, healthiest thing you could ever picture, is still going to have problems because humanity has problems. And so each of us as we're raised, we are raised and taught particular skill sets. And you think about when a child's like when when one of my kids skins their knee.

00;08;41;10 - 00;09;02;20
Unknown
And my responsibility as a parent is not to yell at them and tell them that they are, you know, useless or whatever. My my responsibility is to help them recover back to themselves, help them become themselves and comfort them and console them. And sometimes for some of you, that didn't happen. So you have missing gaps in your formation.

00;09;02;22 - 00;09;21;06
Unknown
You have ways that you were the ways that you were taught where you kind of have missing information. So when I'm hurt, how do I come back to myself? How do I draw back from that place of hurt and come back to who I am and be myself? Some of us. Some of us totally missed that. Some of us got it.

00;09;21;06 - 00;09;47;05
Unknown
Some of us totally missed that. Those aren't skills that you can learn in isolation. Those are things that you're taught and actually, I'm going to look at we'll look at the Gospels in just a second because Jesus, there's moments where Jesus is busy teaching his disciples those kind of skills, the things they actually lack. And he would say, no, these are the kind of people that we are, and you can only learn those things in the context of community.

00;09;47;07 - 00;10;13;28
Unknown
You can't learn them by yourself. It's impossible because you don't have if you don't have someone show you, how can you come back to yourself? You can't and it's it is. It's so it becomes so foreign to us that we don't even realize that we're doing it. And so when we wrestle with wounds of abandonment, one of the most direct responses is we go into enemy mode.

00;10;14;00 - 00;10;40;06
Unknown
Enemy mode is some person has done something or said something that I don't appreciate, and so what do I do? I turn them into the enemy and so I can reject them and hurt them and keep myself protected. And we don't. And so what happens is we externalize the threat and we say the threat is that person. But actually the threat is my own heart because my heart is the thing that's damaging myself.

00;10;40;08 - 00;11;01;13
Unknown
And again, we see we're going to look at Jesus and how he helps his disciples in a particular instance process. Through that, I want to tell a story and kind of characterize how how we wrestle with these things. And here's here's a significant example, of course, you know, because I'm speaking, you're going to get a story from the early church.

00;11;01;16 - 00;11;31;11
Unknown
So here's this. If you ever have a chance to pick up this book by Benedict award, it's called Harlots of the Desert. Yes. So it's not a romance novel and it sounds like it would be, doesn't it? Yes. In the early church, there was a number of stories that revolved around people that had been wrapped up into prostitution and that were brought back into relationship with Jesus.

00;11;31;11 - 00;12;00;08
Unknown
And so these stories became very popular. But there's this one story of a man named Abraham, who's he had a niece named Maria and Maria, her parents died. Her parents were very wealthy and her parents died when she was seven years old. And Abraham found out about and she'd been given the inheritance of all this wealth. Abraham finds out about Maria, and Maria is committed to his care.

00;12;00;08 - 00;12;22;12
Unknown
Now Abraham lives a life of solitude. He's he's living the monastic life in the desert. And so he takes Maria under his wing. He builds her her own little dwelling place right next to his, and he begins to teach her the monastic life and take care of her. And together they distribute all the funds, the inheritance they distribute them to the poor, to feeding everybody in the region.

00;12;22;13 - 00;12;47;27
Unknown
And so he's teaching her the gospel from a young age now for about 20 years. She lives next to him and she she's learning the spiritual life she's growing and people are starting to recognize that there's this very godly, saintly woman here. And people are coming to their and they're getting advice and direction. And this particular man starts coming over about a year and he begins to woo Maria.

00;12;47;29 - 00;13;15;24
Unknown
He has ill intent. And throughout the course of the year, at one point, Abraham leaves for a small retreat into the desert for a couple of days. And this man comes, seduces Maria and Maria falls. Maria Ah, Abraham comes back from his time in the desert and realizes Maria is no longer there. And he goes tracking with me on this story.

00;13;15;27 - 00;13;35;23
Unknown
He actually, Abraham had a dream in the desert. I won't go into the details of the dream because of time. But he had a dream in the desert when he woke up and realized Maria is in trouble, I need to go to her. But by the time he got back, she had already left. So Abraham doesn't know what's happened, but he knows something has happened.

00;13;35;25 - 00;13;56;09
Unknown
And he spends two years trying to track down what happened to Maria. And he puts word out and he's going to the people that he knows and says, you are. Is there any word of Maria? Can you find Maria? And eventually he he finds out that she's in a particular city again. Two years have passed. Actually, I won't go there.

00;13;56;15 - 00;14;24;04
Unknown
Two years have passed. And he finds out that she is in a city and she is living in a brothel. And so she has dedicated her life to a life of prostitution. And Abraham dons a suit of soldier's armor, knowing that he'd never get into the place dressed as a monk. You know, he's smart that way, I guess, and disguises himself.

00;14;24;07 - 00;14;57;26
Unknown
And so he makes the trek. He's an old man at this point. He makes the trek to the brothel and hires Maria. And so you think about this. A man from the desert, a well-respected Christian monk who people had been going to for insight, for wisdom, for prayer for decades, can now be found in a brothel. You think about the reputation hit that this guy would take from doing that.

00;14;57;28 - 00;15;24;16
Unknown
So he's in the room with Maria and she doesn't recognize him because he's dressed as a soldier. And I want to just read this passage to you. So the bit you know, it's maybe a whole paragraph, so bear with me. When she had locked the door, she came towards him and the old man said to her mistress, Mistress Maria, come close to me.

00;15;24;19 - 00;15;41;27
Unknown
And when she had come close, she held her firmly with one hand, as if about to kiss her, but snatching the hat from his head in a voice breaking with tears, he said to her, Don't you know me, Maria, my child? Dear heart, am I not the one who took care of you? What happened, my dear? Who hurt you?

00;15;41;27 - 00;16;00;23
Unknown
My daughter. What has become of the dress of angels that you used to wear? What has become of your virginity, your tears, your vigils, all your prayers From what a height you have fallen my child into such a pit. Is this why, when you sinned, did you not tell me? Why? Could you not come and speak of it with me?

00;16;01;00 - 00;16;21;08
Unknown
For of course I would have done penance for you. Why did you not do that? Why instead, did you hurt me and give me this unbearable weight of grief for who is without sin? Save God alone while saying this and much besides me, Maria sat like a stone between his hands, overcame, overcome by both shame and fear in tears.

00;16;21;08 - 00;16;39;17
Unknown
The old man said to her, Why do you not speak to me, my heart? Have I not come to take you home, my child on me? Be your sin, my daughter. And on the day of judgment, I will render an account of it for you. To the Lord. It is I who will be responsible for this. To God.

00;16;39;19 - 00;17;04;10
Unknown
After a while, she plucked up the courage and weeping. She said to him, I could not come to you. I was so very much ashamed. How can I pray again to God when I'm defiled with sin? Such as with with sin, which is as filthy as this? And the holy man said to her upon me, Be your sin, Maria, and let God lay it on my account.

00;17;04;12 - 00;17;34;04
Unknown
Only listen to me and come. Let us go back to where we belong. My dear, do not draw back from the mercy of God. I love this to you. Your sins seem like mountains. But God has spread His mercy over all that He has made. God has spread His mercy over all that He has made. See, Maria, she obviously she falls.

00;17;34;07 - 00;17;53;11
Unknown
And I mean, think about this. She's seven years old and she loses her parents. She loses everything that has meaning in her life. You know, psychology, losing her a little bit. But we're reading into this, and I don't think it's too much to read into this. She loses her parents at seven, which is traumatizing for a child. She's abandoned.

00;17;53;13 - 00;18;20;08
Unknown
She's left alone. She has to go live with an uncle who she doesn't know all that well. Now her uncle cares for her. But this is a serious trauma that happens in her life. She's neglected. She's alone, she's abandoned when she makes a mistake, rather than going to the very one who, as he said, let that sin beyond me.

00;18;20;11 - 00;19;02;29
Unknown
Don't you bear the weight of that rather than going to the one that can help? I suspect, and I don't think it's too far of a leap out of fear of that same pain, hurt, loneliness and rejection. She rejected him first to preserve her own woundedness. I couldn't come to you because I was ashamed. So when we when we have roots of abandonment in our life, the very person that would help us is the one that we reject.

00;19;03;02 - 00;19;21;04
Unknown
But because I can't let myself be vulnerable again, I can't let myself. Because if I'm vulnerable again, I'll be hurt again. And so I go into enemy mode. I start blaming them for the problem. You can imagine, as Maria is on her way to the brothel, how she's Well, if only he was. If only he would have done this.

00;19;21;04 - 00;19;48;03
Unknown
If only he would have done this. If only he would have done this. And we justify and we erect walls to keep the people out. That would be the very people that would read our heart and draw godliness out of it. Abandonment leaves this gaping hole, and we have no idea we're responding to it until someone begins to pull us out of it and pointed out to us and to demonstrate to us.

00;19;48;03 - 00;20;18;15
Unknown
Here's a different way of responding, which is what Abraham does for his niece. Actually, I would take that scene upon myself for you. The consequences of that are mine to bear, not yours. I love that you see your sins as a mountain, but God has spread his mercy over the whole earth.

00;20;18;18 - 00;20;55;01
Unknown
I read this the other day from actually Greek Orthodox monk who said this. Know this. This is the distinct. This is the distinct message of the Gospel of Christianity that God is love. Never assume that this world functions with love. It does not. Love is foreign to this world. You must realize that for most people, love and God are two different things.

00;20;55;03 - 00;21;04;14
Unknown
It is our mission to bear witness to the truth that God is love.

00;21;04;16 - 00;21;34;21
Unknown
I love that it's so important. As we push forward into the fall and we're starting, you know, Tracy talked about starting life groups up. We practice the love of God in the midst of community. And, you know, it's great to gather on Sunday morning. Okay. But I can disappear on Sunday morning. I can. If you guys noticed, I took off right after church last week.

00;21;34;24 - 00;21;56;24
Unknown
Some people pointed it out. I had to go. But my point is, Sunday morning, we don't learn to dig through the trenches with each other. We learned that through the every day of life. So how do I come to grips with God is love? How do I come to grips when I have areas of abandonment in my life?

00;21;56;24 - 00;22;18;14
Unknown
And I don't know. I'm rejecting the very people that would hold me. And when I reject the very people that would help me, guess what? I've separated God and love. And so I call myself a Christian, but I can't practice what it means to be a Christian, which is to lay down my life. But I erect walls to keep people out because I've been abandoned and I want to protect myself from being hurt again.

00;22;18;16 - 00;22;49;09
Unknown
If we push into this, it's so important to be involved with each other, to have meals together, to gather together, to be with each other. I'm so I'm excited for what it means for the community here in the fall. What's my little sales pitch for the life groups? Sid Here's the thing. The spiritual life, the Christian life, the life of rhythm and Jesus has essentially one.

00;22;49;12 - 00;23;24;26
Unknown
One thing in mind is the destruction of your ego. The spiritual life is designed to destroy your ego, essentially, because the ego does this. The ego places itself at the center of its own universe, and so nobody else is important as me. And so I need to preserve myself. And in order to do that, I will turn other people into an enemy so that I can justify rejecting them before they hurt me.

00;23;24;28 - 00;24;36;17
Unknown
The disciples did this. There's a great passage where Jesus really corrects this. Just look at this really quick, Luke. Turn with me to Luke, nine, starting around verse 50. Once you get there, there's a lot of verses and a lot of chapters in here starting a verse 49 and John answered and said, Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to hinder him because he does not follow along with us.

00;24;36;19 - 00;24;47;06
Unknown
Okay, This is enemy mode, all right?

00;24;47;08 - 00;25;08;03
Unknown
There's two to distinct this this short, short, 49 to 55. There's two distinct versions of enemy mode. Master, we saw someone casting our demons. Your name. We tried to hinder him because he does not follow along with us. Do not hinder him, for he is not against. He who is not against you is for you. So Jesus is starting to correct a false paradigm.

00;25;08;05 - 00;25;31;19
Unknown
He's doing. He's giving John resources to recover himself in the midst of wanting to reject other people. Okay. It came about when the days were approaching for his ascension that he resolutely set his face to go to Jerusalem. This is verse 51, and he sent messengers on ahead of him and they went and entered a village of the Samaritans to make arrangements for him.

00;25;31;22 - 00;25;52;12
Unknown
And they did not receive him because he was journeying with his face towards Jerusalem. And when his disciples, James and John saw this, they said, Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?

00;25;52;15 - 00;26;23;08
Unknown
Let's again, like I said, let's reject them before they can hurt us. They they aren't with us. And so and think about the mindset of a first century Jew, intensely protective of their environment in the midst of a pagan world. They were they set themselves apart. So it's inbred into their culture. If the person doesn't agree with my message, let's, you know, we'll kill them here, right?

00;26;23;11 - 00;26;49;23
Unknown
But at the very least, we reject them first. So they've learned a pattern and a character trait in their culture that says before they can hurt us, we're going to hurt them. This is a root of abandonment and rejection. So we all deal with, you know, here it's a bit more grandiose because they're going to want to call down fire.

00;26;49;24 - 00;26;58;02
Unknown
I love how they actually think they could, too. Who knows?

00;26;58;04 - 00;27;21;10
Unknown
So what does Jesus say? Yes, do it. Anybody that's not with us, kill them. Well, Jesus has another way. He says, you do not know what kind of spirit you are of. It's a scary thing for Jesus to say. He says to Peter, Get behind me, Satan. Verse 56 For the son of man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them.

00;27;21;10 - 00;27;47;29
Unknown
And they went on to another village. So it doesn't keep in mind the people never listened. They went on to another village, but Jesus said, No, This is when people disagree with us. When people don't accept us, this is how we go about responding. He's teaching them how what it means like this is so practical as to like it's almost like you want to make it more mystical.

00;27;48;01 - 00;28;08;09
Unknown
It's so practical saying, look, when someone's going to hurt you, that doesn't mean you just hurt them first. We're not about our business is not about destroying lives. Our business is about saving lives. And he goes, and you can hear the rest of it because they go into another villages they might not be ready to hear right now.

00;28;08;11 - 00;28;28;28
Unknown
And so we're going to go, but we're not going to destroy. So he teaches them what it means. He's the example in the midst of them, what it means to deal with rejection or deal with abandonment right in the midst of it. He says This isn't the kind of people that we are, and it took them a lifetime to learn that.

00;28;29;01 - 00;28;54;25
Unknown
Right. We still see Peter is not it's James and John who say this. But, you know, ostensibly Peter's right there with them. But Peter's the one who would only eat with the Jewish Jewish widows or the Jews. And Paul has to correct him for that. So they're still there ironing this out throughout their whole lives. It's not like they were perfect in it, but Jesus is intensely concerned with showing them what the true way is.

00;28;54;25 - 00;29;14;24
Unknown
So here's the thing. Okay? You know, we've got this thing in the scriptures called the Golden Rule. Right. Do unto others as you would have done unto you or or another way. It's you know, it said all everything that hinges upon all the law on the prophets. Love your neighbor, love Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself.

00;29;14;26 - 00;29;39;15
Unknown
Right. And we kind of present these as the par exemplar as it pertains to the moral life. Right. Do you realize that the golden rule, as beautiful as it is, can be found in other philosophies and religions? Right. This is not the golden rule is not exclusive to Christianity. Okay. In Christianity, the golden rule is the baseline for morality.

00;29;39;18 - 00;30;01;19
Unknown
Like the lowest step. Right. This is what society's built off of is the golden rule. Okay, You think about the system of laws and all this kind of stuff is designed like, okay, if you hurt someone, you're going to go to jail. So do unto others as you would have done if you steal something from someone else. Okay, We're going to punish you.

00;30;01;22 - 00;30;26;03
Unknown
The golden rule is a baseline for all of societies across the entirety of the face of the earth. The golden rule. This. This. It's not germane to just Christianity. It's a baseline moral standard. Okay. And guess what? The golden rule. And here's the whole thing. The golden rule puts the entire practice, everything. It puts you at the center.

00;30;26;05 - 00;31;14;09
Unknown
The Golden Rule says, think about yourself first and treat other people that way. All right. Okay. It puts you at the center. You think about yourself before you think about everything else. This is how the disciples thought. What does Jesus say? Well, let's read it. John 1334. Turn with me quickly. A new commandment I give to you. Right.

00;31;14;11 - 00;31;33;01
Unknown
This is the commandment, the golden rule. Love your neighbor as yourself. Do unto others as you would have done it to love your neighbor as yourself means the way that I want myself to be loved. I love the people next to me. Right. That's the same principle. So this is what all of the commandments hinge themselves upon, is thinking about yourself and then treating other people accordingly.

00;31;33;04 - 00;31;51;19
Unknown
Okay, that's not bad. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying that if that's your practice, it means your ego is driving everything. It means you're the center of your own universe. Okay. Jesus says a new commandment I give you. All right. This one sums up all the other commandments I'm giving you a new commandment. And he says this.

00;31;51;22 - 00;32;16;05
Unknown
Love one another as I have loved you. Guess what? You're not in the center of that. Love one another as I have loved you. So he takes the whole thing that says you're the center of morality. Think of yourself first and deal with everybody else from there. And he says, No. Now put me at the center and what you've seen me do.

00;32;16;09 - 00;32;35;06
Unknown
Right. Like, we should reject those people, because that's how we want them to. That's how they're treating us. So we're going to treat them the same way. Right. But no, now I'm at the center and you're going to love like I love. And when those people rejected us, I said, it's okay. We're going to be okay. We didn't come to kill people.

00;32;35;12 - 00;33;00;11
Unknown
We came to save people. And so when I'm at the center, when Christ is at the center, when he's the universe and not your ego, you look at him and model his behavior. I become like him rather than becoming like, whatever that is over there. The spiritual life is designed to destroy the fact that you put your ego at the center and we built all of society around it.

00;33;00;18 - 00;33;29;27
Unknown
That's fine, but that's not what it means to be Christian. I don't like. I'm. It's not like I'm going, Okay, man, I did the plant and Tracy's office is doing better than it is in mine. All right. If she's not, I know one day she has off. If she's not here, I can grab that plant. But I'm not going to do that because I don't want her to come into my office and take my stuff.

00;33;29;29 - 00;33;39;27
Unknown
And so I'm not going to go take her stuff so that she doesn't take my stuff. Right. If that's our standard for morality, then we're not doing this right.

00;33;40;00 - 00;33;48;26
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It's a good thing I don't like plants that much.

00;33;48;28 - 00;34;11;11
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We put Christ at the center and we erect structures that keep us self-centered. I couldn't go like Maria. I couldn't go to you, Abraham, because I was ashamed. I'm the center of my universe. We need people around us like Abraham, who will say, I will. I'll take responsibility for that. Like Abraham, It's not even his responsibility at all.

00;34;11;14 - 00;34;40;23
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I'll take responsibility for that. All bear the weight of that so that you can get out of your that you're stuck in your own universe. And I want you out of that because Christ is to be the center of universe. He's the moral standard. He's who we look to. We need each other, as I've always said, because you help me see what it means to die to myself more and more and more.

00;34;40;25 - 00;35;28;01
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And we need Christ at the center. I need the Scriptures. I need times of prayer. I need intimacy with him that I can look at him and I can become like him. There's just one more verse I want to look at. Maybe the worship team could come up from 119, verse 161. Mostly just want to do that so I can say verse 161.

00;35;28;03 - 00;35;48;17
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Here is a baseline principle for dealing with issues of abandonment, dealing with issues of rejection. How do we respond? What kind of people are we? What do we see in the life of Jesus? And how do we how do we come back to ourselves when I don't know how to respond, when people abandon me, when I feel rejection?

00;35;48;19 - 00;35;59;25
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Because realistically, what I'm responding to is to something that happened to me when I was five or ten or 15.

00;35;59;28 - 00;36;22;17
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So my 19th verse 161, says this Princes persecute me without cause. That means I'm rejected. Nobody's listening to me, but my heart stands in awe of your word.

00;36;22;20 - 00;36;57;26
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So here's here's and here's the clue in that verse. When you're wrestling with interpersonal conflict and you know what happens when you start getting angry. Anxiety over whether can I have this conversation with this person whom you've ever spent a day anxious over a difficult phone call? Right. Anxiety is not something you create. It's something that happens to you like, you know, you've ever tried to be like, okay, stop being anxious.

00;36;57;29 - 00;37;18;16
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And then you start doing the dishes and all of a sudden that anxiety kind of creeps right back in. You're like, Wait a second. I pushed that anxiety off to the side. The anxiety is the response to the wound of rejection that's been festering for decades because I don't want to be hurt again. And so anxiety starts to come up and it keeps coming.

00;37;18;16 - 00;37;36;03
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And it keeps coming. And it keeps coming because my response is, I'm going to push that aside because I don't want to feel it. But guess what? It doesn't really go anywhere. When you push, push it aside, it stays there. So how many you ever had anger? Kind of just it just takes over. Right. I don't like trying get angry.

00;37;36;04 - 00;37;54;11
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It just takes over. And what you've been driving and someone cuts you off how many you've ever gone. Well done. Inappropriate things, right? It it happens to you. It's not something you prepare for.

00;37;54;14 - 00;38;14;00
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These are forces beyond our control because we're responding to things much deeper than we realize. And we don't know what kind of people we are because we've not had someone show us, You just drive with me. I don't cut people off and I'll show you how to do that.

00;38;14;02 - 00;38;42;15
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But here's the here's the beginning clue, though. People have rejected me. Princes persecute me without cause. It's not my fault. My heart stands in all out. Your words. I heart in the moment of anxiety. In the moment of anger. In the moment when I don't know how to respond. In the moment when these overwhelming emotions happen. You know, these people rejected our message.

00;38;42;15 - 00;39;03;12
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Jesus, let's call them fire on them. In those moments, the disciples were fortunate enough to have Jesus to look to right there in front of them. Our first response has to be, Let me offer this moment to you, Father, that I can see who you are in the midst of it. My response is not to reject anxiety. It's to sit in anxiety and offer it to him.

00;39;03;17 - 00;39;39;28
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My response is not to reject anger. It's to sit in anger and offer it to him. I'm no longer going to let this be the thing that controls my response. I know there's something deeper here, so I will look in or actually, one of the ways you could translate that word are means I will look in silent trembling and you and those people around me have heard me and I can feel all this stuff starting to rise up in me because I want to reject them before I'm hurt.

00;39;40;01 - 00;39;50;09
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I'm going to look at Jesus. Who are you and how do I see you today?

00;39;50;11 - 00;40;16;12
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And in that I start recovering myself because I made in his image. So how do I get back to myself? I look at him when I'm overwhelmed by the challenges of life. I look at him. I sit silently and tremble before him, anticipating that he's going to lead me and guide me, and he's not going to leave me alone.

00;40;16;14 - 00;40;36;04
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His word says he never forsakes me when I when when I see people that disagree with me or they reject me or anything like that. I'm not going to be the primary reject or I'm going to make myself the center of the universe anymore. I'm going to let the spiritual life have its work in me and destroy my ego.

00;40;36;04 - 00;40;55;11
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So he's the center of my universe. So I look at him as the baseline, not me as a baseline, because that might have worked, you know, when I was 20 and I could ignore things. But it doesn't work today. So let's get to work on putting Jesus at the center.