As members of the human race, we all deal with life’s hurts, hang-ups, and habits. In this week’s lesson we’ll look at the cause of these hurts, hang-ups, and habits, their consequences, and their cure.
At the end of the message, we will be joined by one of the members of Gospel City Church, Marnin, who shares a little bit of his story with us.
Transcription (automatically-generated):
Okay, it's time for a pop quiz. Do you like Pop Quizzes, Diane? I know you do. If you answer yes to any of the following seven questions, you will know without a doubt that you are a citizen of the human race. Do you ever stay up late when you know you need sleep? Do you ever eat or drink more calories than your body actually needs? Do you ever feel you ought to exercise, but you don't? Do you ever know the right thing to do, but don't do it? Do you ever know something is wrong, but do it anyway? Have you ever known you should be unselfish, but we're selfish instead? And have you ever tried to control somebody or something and found them or it uncontrollable? All right, tally up your score. Did anyone else score seven out of seven, or is that just me? Okay, not alone. It's a good feeling. We're all fellow members of the human race, and that means that all of us deal with life's hurts, hang-ups, and habits. We all have things in our life that we wish weren't there, and we all have things in our life that we wish we could change.
But here's the funny thing about change. Nobody really likes change. If you think about it, that's because change is hard. Real change is hard. Now, we like the idea of change as long as that change could come about in my life by someone walking up to me with a magic wand saying, abracadabra, all your unhealthy stuff are gone, and it's replaced with a whole bunch of healthy stuff in a split second. Everyone loves that idea of change. The problem is that version of change doesn't exist. We like the idea of change, but very few people like the process that's involved that leads to real change. So, we try to avoid change for as long as we can. Part of our human nature is to refuse change until the pain in our life exceeds our fear of change. We simply deny the pain that's in our life until the point where it gets so bad that we are crushed, and we finally realize that we need help. Why don't we save ourselves a bit of misery and admit now what we're inevitably going to have to admit later? We are not God. We desperately need God because our lives are unmanageable without Him.
We'll be forced to learn that lesson someday. We might as well admit it now. In last week's message, we were introduced to our new Life's Healing Choices series, and we spent our time looking ahead at some of the things that you can expect to experience over the course of these nine weeks together. In tonight's message, we're going to take a look at choice number one, and we're going to do that by examining three main things. First, we're going to look at the cause of our hurts, hangups, and our habits. Second, we're going to look at their consequences. And then third, we're going to begin looking at the cure. And as we look at the causes and consequences of our pain, our spiritual poverty should become obvious. And as it does, we'll be better able to understand what Jesus is talking about in that very first beatitude where he says that our blessingness or our happiness is connected to our spiritual poverty. Admitting the truth that we are spiritually poor or powerless to control our tendency to do wrong leads us to blessing and to the cure for our hurts, hang ups, and our habits that we so desperately need.
So first things first. Let's start by looking at the cause of our problems. Now what I'm about to explain to you is one of the most important things you need to know if you are going to understand how life works. I'm not only going to explain to you the cause of our individual problems, I'm going to explain to you the root cause of everyone's problem. Like everyone in the world, everyone who is alive today has problems. And all of humanity's problems come from the exact same source. I'm about to explain to you why everything in our world today is broken. Why the whole world is infected with hurts, hangups and habits. Some of you may already know what I'm about to share, but some of you are going to be hearing this information for the very first time. What I'm going to share with you is not taught in our public school systems. It's not taught in our secular universities. It's not considered a reality by most of our elected officials. But it's the truth. It's what the word of God tells us is true. And it's also what lines up with observable reality. Now there's a popular meme online that illustrates this important truth so well, believe it or not.
And I wanted to use that meme as a tool to help teach you this truth. But I couldn't find an image of it on the internet with a high enough resolution to put on the big screen behind me. So I recreated the meme using myself in it. Some of you are going to recognize this meme right away. And for the rest of you, you're in for a treat. So if you could just show the first slide. Okay? It's pretty self explanatory. I'm being abused physically. Someone is stepping on my face with their boot. It looks so painful. It was painful. How cruel is that? Who in the world would inflict that kind of pain on to me? Let's see it's me. I'm the one doing that to myself. I'm the source of the problem that I'm experiencing. And as ridiculous as this meme is, it captures the point that I want you to see. Humanity's main problem is not that bad stuff happens to us sometimes. Our main problem is not that those bad things originate somewhere out there outside of us. No, the source of our problems is in us. We are the problem.
The cause of our problems is our nature. Not trees and rocks and lakes kind of nature, but our human nature. And when we talk about human nature, we're talking about the innate, inborn, natural, essential qualities or character of each person. And our nature as human beings is skewed to the core. We are sinful, broken, jacked up people on the inside, all of us, without exception. We're physical beings, but we're spiritual beings as well. And our internal spiritual compass does not point us to true north. Our internal spiritual compass is freaking out all over the place like a compass would be if it gets come into contact with magnetic interference, pointing us in every other direction, spinning totally out of control, pointing us every way except the way that we ought to go. Instead, we are led away from where we ought to be going. Here's a different illustration that describes what our problem is like. I want you to imagine a mountain, and on the top of the mountain is God. And in Him and with Him is an infinite source. Eternal goodness, love, peace, power, blessing, righteousness. Everything that's good, everything that's lovely, everything that's pure is up on the top of the mountain because that's where God is.
Okay? So imagine that. Now imagine halfway down the mountain there's a big ball with someone holding it in place. Now imagine they take their hands off the ball. What happens to the ball? Rolls down the hill, not up. You got that picture? We're the ball, every single one of us. We naturally move away from God, not towards Him. It's our human, sinful, broken nature to do so. Don't believe me? The evidence for our brokenness is plain to see. When you simply observe the people on this planet, we start to see it manifest itself very early on in our kids. Are there any parents in the room who have toddlers? You're scared to raise your hands. They're so precious, aren't they? Some other times. And then there's the other times. You can walk into the kitchen and catch your toddler with their arm halfway in the cookie jar. You catch them and you say, no, don't you dare think about eating that cookie. And they look you right in the eyes as a gateway to your soul. And they look right into your soul and they don't need to use any words. You know exactly what they're thinking.
And they say, Watch this. Pull out the cookie and eat it right in front of you. What is that? Where did that come from? They weren't taught that. They were born with it. It's the sinful nature of human beings. And we were all toddlers once, and then we grew up into adulthood. And when we grew up, did our sinful nature evaporate? Did it go away? I wish, but it didn't go anywhere. We only got more proficient at yielding to it. Just think about the human race collectively. Despite all our advances in science and philosophy and government, we're not getting better. We're actually getting worse. It's my understanding that we have the resources to eradicate world hunger on this planet. Why don't we do that instead? We just let people starve to death every day. And I've heard it said that we have killed more human beings in the last 100 years than all of the centuries before combined. And this is not an anomaly. This is exactly what you should expect from a humanity that has a nature like we do. Well, how come we're broken internally? Where did that problem come from? Those are great questions.
I'm glad you asked them. I'm going to tell you. It started right at the very beginning. The very beginning of humanity. In the very beginning, mankind didn't have this broken sinful nature. In the beginning. Our first parents were good, but it didn't take long for that to unravel. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve rejected God. They sinned against him. Instead of moving towards Him, trusting Him and obeying Him, they moved away from Him. Not trusting him. Not obeying him. They were given one prohibition in the Garden of Eden, only one. They could eat from any of the trees. Millions upon millions of trees. They couldn't eat from just one. They were told not to eat of that one in the middle of the garden. And guess what they did? They went and they ate of it anyways. And at that very moment, sin was ushered into this world and it began to corrupt and break everything. Humanity's relationship with God that was once intact became broken after that. We see Adam and Eve try to hide themselves from God. They hadn't done that before. This humanity's relationship with the world around them became broken after sin.
The world became cursed. And it became painful to give birth to children and difficult to work the ground. Giving birth and working a job were never supposed to be hardships. They became painful and difficult after humanity rejected God. And they've been difficult up until this very day. Humanity's relationship with one another that was once intact became fractured and broken after sin came into the picture. Adam and Eve hiding themselves from one another and blaming one another. And we've been hiding ourselves from one another relationally ever since, deflecting blame away from ourselves to others every chance we get. And human beings relationship within themselves became broken after sin came into the picture. There was no depression in the garden before sin came in. There was no self esteem issues. There is no dysphoria, there is no guilt, there is no shame, there is no addiction, there is no sickness, no death. But all these things influence our life today. The inner person became broken when humanity rejected God. Our internal compass was broken. We became naturally bent towards the darkness instead of the light. We do not naturally love God. We naturally love ourselves and other things.
Instead. Adam and Eve made the choice to sin against God. But how is something that happened so long ago connected to us having a sinful nature today? It's another great question. When that first act of sin against God went down, there were only two human beings on the earth, just Adam and Eve in their new found corrupted sinful nature. And then they started to have kids. And guess what they passed on to their kids? You got it. Their kids inherited their sinful nature from their parents. Their grandkids got it too. And their great grandkids, all the way down throughout history, moms and dads have passed on this sinful nature to their kids. Your parents have a sinful nature. And guess who else has one? You do too. Romans, chapter five, verse twelve, says this therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, referring to Adam and death through sin, in this way, death spread to all people, because all sinned you think our modern pandemics are bad. The pandemic of sin has affected virtually every person who has ever walked this planet. Every single person except one, of course. The Bible tells us that this sin nature gets us into all kinds of problems.
We choose to do things that aren't good for us. Even when we know better, we respond in hurtful ways. When we're hurt, we try to fix problems. And often, in our attempt to fix them, we only make them worse. The Bible says it this way proverbs, chapter 14, verse twelve. There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death. This verse lets us know that we can't trust our human nature to lead us out of our problems. Left on its own, our sin nature will tend to do wrong. It will desire to be God, and it will try to play God. So let's look at each of these briefly, one at a time. So first, our sin nature will produce in us the tendency to do wrong. We will always have this sin nature, this tendency to do the wrong thing. In fact, we will wrestle with it for as long as we're on this earth. Even if Christ has already come into your life, even after you become a Christian, you still have desires that pull you in the wrong direction. We find in the Bible that the apostle Paul understood this because he struggled with his sin nature just as we do.
He says this in Romans, chapter seven, starting in verses 15 for I do not understand what I'm doing because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate. Now, if I do what I do not want to do, I agree with the law that it's good. So now I am no longer the one doing it, but it's sin living in me. Do Paul's words sound vaguely familiar to you? Sure they do. We end up doing what we don't want to do and not doing what we do want to do. I know about this dilemma all too well. I'm going to share a story with you about a part of my life that highlights the powerlessness I have experienced over my own sinful nature. I was about 13 years old when I discovered pornography. I was enticed by it, and gradually, over time, I became addicted to it. It started out enjoyable. There was the pleasure of it and the adrenaline of it doing something that you know deep down that you shouldn't be doing. But over time, it lost all of its luster. Something I started out enjoying became a prison for me.
Fast four when I was 13 years old till when I was in my early 20s. By this time, I had come back to church after almost a decade away. I had recommitted my life to Christ. I'd gotten baptized. I was reading my Bible all of the time I was serving in the church, I was giving financially to the church. I was worshiping my face off at church. I loved Jesus so much. And while all that was going on, I was still secretly enslaved to my addiction to pornography. And it was worse than it had ever been. Nobody in my life and life knew about it. Nobody in my circle of friends outside of the church, nobody in the church. Nobody thought to ask me about it. Nobody knew what was going on in this area of my life except me and God. But then God began doing something in my heart. He began growing in me. I hatred for the things that he hates. And I began really hating this sin. I hated it so much. But even though I hated it, I couldn't stop doing it. Trust me, I tried. I told myself after every time I did it that I would never do it again.
I promised myself, and I promised God that I would never do it again, ever. You ever make promises like that before? But of course, I did do it again and again and again. I was powerless over the grip that it had on my life. When the temptation came to indulge that sin, here's what happened. Any time the thought filled my mind to do that thing, it was like a fish hook was placed in my soul, and it just pulled me towards what I did not want to do and where I did not want to go. As I walked towards doing that sinful act, I hated myself every step of the way before I even did that thing. I hated myself because I knew I was going to do it as I did the deed. I hated myself throughout the whole time. And after I was done, I hated myself even more due to the shame and the guilt that I felt. And that was the cycle over and over again, doing the thing I hated doing, the thing that I was powerless to stop. This went on until I became so broken over it that I just gave up.
And I started doing what I should have been doing all along. I started crying out to God, asked him to save me. One time after I had sinned, I just fell to the ground. Grown man saw being before the Lord just so broken, and this is what I cried out to him. I remember like it yesterday. God, I am powerless over this sin. It has a grip on me, and I can't stop. I want to stop so badly, but I can't. It's power over me is so strong that unless you intervene and break its hold over me, I know I will be enslaved to this power for the rest of my life. And I truly believe that nothing happened the first time I prayed that prayer. And I can't remember how many times exactly I prayed it, but I started praying it every time I sinned in this way. And although my deliverance didn't come the very first time I asked God to heal me, it did come eventually. And when it did, I experienced the supernatural power of God in my life. Something that had me in spiritual chains for years, something that I hated doing with all of my being, something that I did every day after every day after every day, every day.
And then one day stopped. There was a moment in time that God broke those chains over my soul. He freed me. And that sin stopped having that dominating power over my life. That was about 20 years ago. Now, God doesn't deliver everybody from their hurts, habits and hang ups in the exact same way. So I don't share this story with you so that you think this is how it works every single time. I have other areas in my life I need freedom in, and it looks different in those situations. I share this story with you to highlight the reality that unless I came face to face with my powerlessness over my sin, over my sinful nature, I don't think I would have ever been set free from it, and I'd still be enslaved to it today. I believe that. Praise God. I'm not. So left on its own, our sin nature will produce enough a tendency to do wrong, to even do the very things that we hate. But that's not all that it does. Second number two. Our sin nature produces in us a desire to be God. Why do we continue making poor choices?
Why do we repeat the same mistakes again and again and again? At the root of our human tendency to do wrong is a desire to be in control. We want to decide for ourselves what is right and what's wrong, what's good and what's bad. We want to make our own choices. We want to call our own shots, make our own rules. We don't want anybody telling us what to do. In essence, we want to be God. But this is nothing new. Trying to be God is mankind's oldest problem. In Genesis three, Adam and Eve tried to be in control. God put them in paradise and they tried to control paradise. God told them you can do anything you want in paradise except one thing don't eat from this one tree. And we already saw what they did. They made a beeline straight for the forbidden tree. The only thing in paradise God said was off limits. Satan said to them, if you eat this fruit, you will be like God. And they wanted to be God. And that's been our problem from the very beginning. Today, we still want to be God. Number three. Our sin nature produces in us attempts to play God.
We play God by denying our humanity and by trying to control everything for our own selfish reasons. We attempt to be the center of our own universe. We play God by trying to control four different things. This is the first. Fill in on your outline. Write this down. We try to control our image. We try to control our image. We care so much about what other people think of us. We don't want them to know what we're really like. We play games. We wear masks. We pretend we fake it. We want people to see certain sides of us while we hide others. We deny our weaknesses and we deny our feelings. We say things like, what are you talking about? I'm not angry. I'm not upset. I'm not worried. Me, afraid. I'm not afraid. We don't want people to see the real us. Why are we afraid to tell people who we are? It's because we believe that if I tell you who I who I really am and you don't like me then I'm in big trouble. Because then I'm all I've got. Write this down. We try to control other people. We try to control other people.
Parents try to control kids. Kids try to control parents. Wives try to control husbands and intern. Husbands try to control wives. Coworkers vie for office control people try to control other people. And along the way, we develop a lot of tools to manipulate each other. Everyone has his or her preferred method of choice. Some use guilt and shame. Some use praise and affirmation. Others use anger, fear or an old favorite the silent treatment. All in efforts to gain control. Write this down. We try to control our problems. We try to control our problems. I can handle it. We say, It's not really a problem. I'm okay. Really. I'm fine. Those are the words of someone trying to play God. When we try to control our problems we're saying I don't need any help. And I certainly don't need counseling or recovery. I can quit any time I want. I'll work it out on my own power. Back in the day, a TV repairman was asked about the worst kind of damage he'd ever seen to a television set. And he said this the kind that results from people trying to fix their TVs on their own.
The more we try to fix our problems by ourselves, the worse our problems tend to get. Write this down. We try to control our pain. We try to control our pain. Have you ever thought about how much time and effort you spend running from pain, trying to avoid it, deny it, escape it, reduce it, or postpone it? Some of us try to avoid pain by eating or not eating. Others try to postpone it by getting drunk, smoking, taking drugs, or abusing prescription meds. Some try to escape through sports or traveling or jumping in and out of relationships. Others withdraw into a hole and build a protective wall of depression and isolation around themselves. Still others become angry, abusive, critical, and judgmental. We'll try almost anything to control our pain. But the real pain comes when we realize in our quieter moments that no matter how hard we try, we're not in control. That realization can be very scary. So agreeing with God that he's God and we're not leads us into our first healing choice. Choice number one. It's all about admitting need. And it's this I realize I'm not God. I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life is unmanageable.
The first step is always the hardest, and this first choice is no exception. Until you are willing to admit your need and recognize that you are not God, you will continue to suffer the consequences of your poor choices. As the beatitude says, blessed are the poor in spirit. Admitting your need is what being spiritually poor is all about. Now, if the cause of most of our problems is rooted in our sinful nature that influences our efforts to control everything around us, then what are the consequences of playing God? Well, there are four. The first is fear. When we try to control everything, we become afraid. Back in the Garden of Eden, Adam said in Genesis 310, I was afraid because I was naked, and so I hid. We are afraid somebody will find out who we really are that we're fakes and phonies, that we really don't have it altogether, that we're not perfect. We don't let anybody get close to us because they'll find out that we're scared inside. And so we fake it. We live in fear, afraid someone will reject us or not love us or not like us. When they know what we are really like, we believe they will only like the image we work to present.
So we're afraid. Number two is frustration. Trying to be the general manager of the universe is frustrating. Anyone here ever been to Chuck E. Cheese? You'll understand this? Anyway, they have this game called the Whack a Mole. You know that game in the fair? It's from the pit of hell, this game. You use a big mallet to beat down these little moles that keep popping up. And when you whack one, three more pop up. You get those three, five more pop up. It's infuriating. That machine is a parable of life. We whack down one relational conflict and another pops up. It's frustrating because we can't get them all knocked down at the same time. We walk around pretending we're God. I'm powerful. I can handle it. But if we're really in control, why don't we just unplug the machine? They'll never pop up again. The apostle Paul felt the same frustration. In Romans seven, he says this, verse 21 so I discovered this law. When I want to do what is good, evil is present with me. For in my inner self I delight in God's law. But I see a different law in the parts of my body waging war against the law of my mind and taking a prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body.
King David felt it too. Psalm 32 three. He says, When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long. Frustration is a symptom of a much deeper issue a failure to acknowledge that we are not God. God's power is infinite. Our power is finite to the core. Number three fatigue. Playing God makes us tired. Pretending we've got it all together is hard work. David experienced the fatigue of pretending. He said to God, same. Psalm 32, verses four and five. For day and night, your hand was heavy on me. My strength was drained as in the summer's heat. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not conceal my iniquity. Denial requires enormous amounts of emotional energy. Energy that could be used in problem solving is actually diverted into problem denying, problem hiding and problem avoiding. Most of us try to run from the pain by keeping busy. We think, I don't like the way I feel when I slow down. I don't like the sounds that go through my mind when I lay my head back on the pillow. If I just keep busy, maybe I can block out those feelings and drown out the sounds.
We run from pain by constantly being on the go. We work ourselves to death or we get involved in some hobby or sport until it becomes a compulsion. We're on the golf course or tennis court or somewhere all of the time. Even over involvement in religious activities can be an attempt to hide our pain. We say, look at me. Look at all the ways I'm serving God now. God does want you to serve him out of love and purpose, but he does not want you to use serving. Him or the Church to escape your pain. If you're in a constant state of fatigue, always worn out, ask yourself, what pain am I running from? What problem am I afraid to face? What am I trying to hide? What motivates and drives me to work and work so that I'm in a constant state of fatigue? The number four is the inevitable failure. Plain God is one job where failure is guaranteed. You're not big enough. The wisdom of Proverbs tells us in Proverbs 20 813 the one who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy. We need to be honest and open about our weaknesses, faults and failures.
This brings us now, finally, to part three, to the cure for our problems. Or to the beginning of the cure anyways. Now there has been no lack of trying on the part of humanity to fix ourselves over the years. But all of our attempts to fix ourselves have been made in vain. The futility of humanity's collective attempt to fix the brokenness in our lives is seen when we try to fix everything except the one thing that needs fixing the most. We think to ourselves that maybe if we can fix our physical health or our mental health or our emotional health or our financial problems maybe with more advancements in science and technology maybe when a new political party comes into power. If we could fix all those things for everyone, then everyone in the world will be happy and whole and living the blessed life. But none of these fixes get to the root of the problem though, do they? None of these things fix our broken nature. We need a new nature inside of us, one that isn't sinful and broken. One that loves God instead of hating Him, one that trusts God instead of always doubting Him.
One that worships God instead of worshiping ourselves. And as we've seen, the source of our problem stems from the sin of rejecting God out of our lives. This means that the solution is connected to getting God back into our life, walking with Him, getting on good terms with Him. Now, everything in me as an evangelist wants to share right now what God has done to make this possible for you. But I'm going to hold back so that we can slowly build up to that in the next couple of weeks. And when we get to choice number three, I'm going to tell you what God has done to offer you a new nature, one that loves Him so that you can walk in friendship and relationship with God. I'll give you a hint, though. Jesus of Nazareth is the only human being ever to not have a sinful nature. That's a clue. We need a nature like his. So we're going to get ourselves ready for that. And we're going to get ready by focusing on what has to take place in your life before you are ready to receive what God wants to give you.
There are two things that need to happen in a person's life that softens them up and prepares them for the change that God wants to do in them. The only way that we can receive the cure for our problems comes through admitting weakness and through a humble heart. The Bible says that in admitting my weakness, I actually find strength. The apostle Paul, in two Corinthians, chapter twelve, verse ten, says this so I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and in difficulties for the sake of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong. And this is not a popular idea in our self sufficient North American culture that says raise yourself up by your own bootstraps. Don't you dare depend on anyone else. Do the Lone Ranger thing. Be the strong, silent type. The Bible also says that knowing we are spiritually poor will bless us and make us happy. This is the first step towards healing wholeness and freedom. You must admit that you're powerless to do it on your own, that you are spiritually poor, that you need other people, and most importantly, that you need God. Making the first choice to healing means acknowledging that you are not God.
Doing so means recognizing and admitting three important facts of life. Write this down. Number one I admit that I am powerless to change my past. I'm powerless to change my past. It hurts. You still remember the pain, but all the resentment and shame in the world isn't going to change what happens. You're powerless to change your past while the ink is still wet on your pen. Write this down I admit that I am powerless to control other people. I'm powerless to control them. You try to control others. You actually like manipulating them. At times you use all kinds of little gimmicks, but it doesn't work. You are responsible for your actions, not theirs. You can't control other people. Number three. Write this down I admit that I am powerless to cope with my harmful habits, behaviors and actions. Good intentions don't cut it, Will. Power is not enough. You need something more. You need a source of power beyond yourself, a power higher than yourself. You need God because he made you to need Him. Admitting you are weak is just admitting what is true. The truth is you're not strong enough. Don't fight that truth.
Lean into it. So we need to admit our weakness, but we also need to have a humble heart, and the two go hand in hand. God cannot work as change in our hearts if our hearts are filled with pride. The Bible tells us in James, chapter four, verse six, god resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. God's grace has the power to heal us, enabling us to change. Even after all we've talked about in this message, though it's still difficult for us to admit our need, our pride continues to insist that we can go it alone. Some of you may still be thinking, I can do this on my own. I can solve my own problems, thank you very much. No, you can't. Because if you could, you would have done so already. But since you can't, you won't. So what needs changing in your life? What hurt or hang up or habit have you been trying to ignore? Choosing to admit that you can't do it alone and that you need God is the first and the hardest choice. It's hard to admit that I have a problem and I need help.
Admitting we have a problem and giving it a name is humbling. When we do this, we're saying, I'm not God and I don't have it. As together as I'd like everybody to think. If you admit that truth to someone else, they will not be surprised. I promise you. You know that, right? Nobody is going to be surprised that you have brokenness in your life. Others know it, god knows it, and you know it. You just need to admit it. So stop right now and just in the quiet of your mind, name the hurt, hang up or habit that you've been trying to ignore, then admit to God that you are powerless to manage your life on your own. If you've just done that, congratulations. You've just made the first choice to the road to healing. Admitting that you have a hurt, hang up or habit is just the beginning. To implement this first choice as well as the seven choices to come, you need to take three actions. Pray about it, write about it and share about it. These three interactive steps are highlighted in gray to make it really easy to find. Highlighted in gray for you and are found at the end of your message outline.
And they are your pathway to healing. Working through these action steps is where the real work gets done. This is where the change happens. Some of you may be tempted to skip this part and just wait to hear the message next week. Don't do it. Don't do it. Act on what the Lord is inviting you to do. Now, this brings us to an exciting part of the service for me. We're going to pivot here into a time where you're going to have the privilege of hearing from one of the members of Gospel City Church. They're going to come and share with you a little bit of their story. So I'd love to invite my good friend Martin to come up. Marnin's going to come up and you're going to hear about God's grace in his life as I ask him a few questions. It's his favorite thing to speak publicly in front of people.
Marnin:
Forgive me if I only look at BJ.
BJ:
Okay, well, thank you so much for doing this, Marin. This is amazing. Would you be willing to briefly share with us a point in your life where you came to the realization that you were powerless in your own strength to control your image, your circumstances, other people, your problems, or your pain?
Marnin:
Yeah. So my wife and I have been married for nine years, and I know there's probably a lot of people that are double digits, like, come on, get on my level. But when we first got married, the thing that everyone was telling me about her is that she's always wanted to be a mom. And when you ask little kids what they want to be, and they want to be a fireman or they want to be a policeman, they want to be a doctor, my wife, her answer to that question was, I want to be a mum. And that was she was, like, four, so that's always been there. When we first got married, I was still in university early stages to become an engineer, and we both wanted a family. I come from a large family, so both of both of us have the desire. But we we prayed to God, just, you know, on on your time, give us a family. And it wasn't happening right away. And you think logically, that's good, because I'm in university, just logically makes sense. But then university ends, and so now this fear starts to grow, like, okay, what's going on?
Now it logically makes sense, and it's just not happening. And the fear grows, and it grows. And I didn't want to see doctors because when one is not happening but you don't know, at least, well, it could happen. But when we went to go see the doctors realized my worst fear, that we couldn't have kids. And I was the reason. And my fear was that this has been a lifelong dream for her, and I can't give my wife what she wants. And then there was also the frustration of it's always been our desire to have a family, and we can't. And then there are others and I'm just being honest here there are others who don't want a family and have one, so why can't I have a family?
BJ:
Thanks. Marnin, how did fear, frustration, fatigue, or failure associated with trying to be in control affect your relationship with God and others?
Marnin:
This all break into my relationship with God and then my relationship with my wife. So the frustration of why do others get to have a family and I don't? It's kind of in the time, I didn't know this. It's looking back, seeing it. But I felt guilty because I know God's good. I know he's faithful. And I felt guilty that I had this question about why I felt like I was being a bad Christian, honestly, just questioning why he wouldn't give me a family. And so it affected my relationship with God because I wouldn't pray about it. The one thing I need to do is go pray about it, but I wouldn't. I would only pray about other things, or I just wouldn't pray at all because there's that lingering thing. And then relationship with my wife. When we found out, her response was just, are you okay? And my response, my typical response is suppress emotions, problem solve. And so just, yeah, I'm fine. I went to go do dishes because I need to do something. And then I hear her crying, and I just broke down because I can't give her the thing that she wants.
So rather than grieving with her, I went into problem solving mode. So now it's do all these things to try to make her happy, bring humor into the situation. Don't do that. Did not go over well. I wasn't the support that she needed, and I wasn't setting the example of going to God with our hurt.
BJ:
What would you say brought you to a place of admitting your need to God? And did this also include admitting your need to others? Were there roadblocks in getting to a place of admitting need or weakness? And how did you overcome any roadblocks, if there were any?
Marnin:
So the roadblocks my own need for control. I hate not being in control. That's probably the engineering me. I like to have all the information. I like to be able to control things and then pride. And to be honest, I don't know if there was, like, a moment where I couldn't tell you the moment where things changed. It's by the grace of God that he worked in me and got me to that point. But we asked the first two questions. I forget, what would you...
BJ:
You're doing good. And then, how do you overcome any roadblocks, if there are any?
Marnin:
Yeah. I couldn't tell you an exact moment. It was just I came to the end of myself. I was gutted. I had tried controlling it on my own, and things were just not getting better. So it was out of almost necessity, right? I tried everything else in my own, so maybe I should do what I should have done in the first place.
BJ:
I know someone who can relate. It's me. Last question, Marnin. How is humility to admit your need and weakness to God and others a powerful weapon? What kind of freedom or blessing have you experienced from taking a posture of humility?
Marnin:
When I try to control things on my own, I'm working out of a place of emptiness. So I push and I push and I push without any energy, and nothing gets better. And I just feel the weight getting heavier and heavier and heavier. And when I give it to God, that weight is gone, because now I'm not in control. He's in control. And when you give it to God, you're working out of a place of infinite strength. You're working out of a deep wall. You're not drawing on an empty wall anymore. And things don't necessarily get better instantly. But you know that you're putting your faith in your trust in someone who's going to be there for you and can control the situation. And you know, the thing to notice like this is not a one time thing. I find myself having to go there time and time and time again every day because my natural tendency is to want to control things as if it's going to work better a second time and it just never does.
BJ:
That's awesome. Thank you, Marnin, for coming up here and doing this and just amazing to hear God's grace in your life, your love for him and just letting us come into this journey with you guys is humbling to be part of your story and to hear it. So thank you so much for sharing that with me and with all of us. In light of all that we've heard tonight in this message and in what Mornin has shared with us, I want to invite you just to pray with me. Let's pray together and while we do this, I'm going to invite the worship team to come back up as we get ready to pray. I just want to ask God to give you the courage to admit your inability to control yourself or your world. Pray that you will begin to depend on his power to help make positive changes. Ask God to take control of your life and to help you stop trying to control your image, other people, your problems and your pain. Let him know that you are weary of carrying the fear, you're tired of carrying it, and the frustration, the fatigue and the failures of trying to be the general manager of the universe.
So I'm going to invite you just to pray with me. Make these words your words. If they fit, if the shoe fits, you're allowed to wear it. Dear God. Dear God, I want to take the first choice to healing and spiritual health today. I realize I'm not you, God. I've often tried to control my problems by staying busy and keeping myself distracted. But I want to stop running. I admit that I am helpless to control this tendency to do the things I know are unhealthy for me. Today I am asking for your help. I humbly ask you to take all the pieces of my unmanageable life and begin the process of healing. Please heal me. Please give me the strength to cheer choose health. Help me stick with this process for the next seven choices. In your name I pray amen. Amen.