Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Good morning, everybody. I'm Ben Fleming, one of the senior pastors here at Westside, and we're jumping into part two of our series that we're just calling Healthy Relationships. We believe that we all want to be in healthy relationships, and that translates directly to how Jesus believes that we should care for each other and then how the gospel should go forward in. Into the world around us. And so Evan introduced the series, talked about the importance of healthy relationships last week. And then today, we're gonna begin to build out how we accomplish healthy relationships. And specifically today, that starts with understanding ourselves.
[00:00:41] All right, so there's things that are happening within us, and this is where the work begins that a lot of times people can't see, right? People will hear our words and they'll see our actions, but our reactions and so much of what happens inside and underneath all those things, people would find another world if they could get to know you really, truly. Right? There's fears that maybe you haven't named, and there's disappointments that you haven't grieved. There's desires you haven't admitted, angers that you've learned how to disguise really, really, really well.
[00:01:12] There's wounds that have gotten very good at working around.
[00:01:17] And an author that I have a lot of respect for, his name is Pete Scazzero, who wrote a series of books called Emotionally Healthy. He likes to use the phrase what lies beneath. Now, not just the Harrison Ford psychological thriller from the early 2000s, Michelle Pfeiffer, I think, also. Is that right? Michelle Pfeiffer, Anyway.
[00:01:40] Ah, Pete Scazzero. That's right. He talks about. He uses phrase what lies beneath to talk about this hidden interior world that exists inside of anyone.
[00:01:50] And his basic argument is that if we want to actually become spiritually mature people, we have to pay attention to what's happening beneath the surface of our lives. If we want to become spiritually mature people, we have to pay attention to what's happening beneath the surface of our lives. Because eventually what happens is what lies beneath will make its way out in some way, shape, or form.
[00:02:12] And that's what the book of Proverbs is telling us. In Proverbs, chapter 4, verse 23, it says, above all else, God guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
[00:02:23] Everything that you do flows from the heart. So your relationships flow from the heart, your parenting flows from the heart, how you behave in conflict and inside of criticism. It flows from what exists in the heart, what you believe and how you behave and what you do when nobody's watching. It all comes from the heart. And I want you to understand that when Scripture is talking about heart, it's not this specific attachment to emotions and feelings, although that encompasses that as well. What Scripture is talking about is the center of a person, the very core of a person when it says the heart.
[00:02:54] And so Proverbs is saying, pay attention to that place. Pay attention to the center of who you are, the core of who you are. Because you can spend an incredible amount of energy managing what's happening on the outside while completely ignoring what's really happening on the inside.
[00:03:10] Through distraction and enough success, we can pay more attention to what's happening on the inside than actually what's happening.
[00:03:17] We can pay more attention to the outside than the inside. I'm on fire today.
[00:03:25] There's going to be more Harrison Ford references here in just a moment.
[00:03:30] One of the clearest places that Jesus shows us an alternative way of experiencing the world and experiencing ourselves is in a place called the Garden of Gethsemane. So Jesus is on his way to the cross. It's not long now before he's going to be crucified. And he knows the direction that his life is going. He sees and already can experience some of the pain that comes from the anxiety of knowing his coming death. And in that moment, he decides to go to this garden to pray. And he brings some disciples along. And in Mark 14, it chronicles this, says they went to a place called Gethsemane. And Jesus said to his disciples, sit here while I pray. And he took Peter, James, and John along with him. And he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, he says to them.
[00:04:17] And so I want you to notice something that Jesus is pretty comfortable with sharing what's happening inside of him. Enough for us to know through somebody writing it down in Scripture, and enough to how he's talking about and he's addressing his situation to God. He says, my soul is overwhelmed. He doesn't say, look, I'm fine. And he doesn't say, you know, hey, you know what? God is good.
[00:04:39] He's very quickly, openly with the condition of his soul. Now, we are kind of geared socially to not share information like this quite as quickly as Jesus is in the middle of his prayer line.
[00:04:51] Now, I do kind of want to experiment with the idea of you going and talking to a barista after this, this. And when they say how are you doing? And you say, my soul is overwhelmed. I'm just curious what happens from that point on.
[00:05:04] Right. Because even the person that's asking the question, we're not really looking for total honesty. Right. How's your day going? What we want to hear is, oh, yeah, I know, it's pretty good. Oh, it's kind of hot out there. That's what we want. Jesus approaches it with this real honesty. My soul is overwhelmed.
[00:05:19] He doesn't quote a scripture verse to make the emotion disappear, and he doesn't tell the disciples, hey, hey, don't worry about me. I know this. Things are kind of feeling funny right now, but look, everything is gonna be fine. He names openly and directly what's happening. My soul is overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed with the sorrow of the moment.
[00:05:37] And I think sometimes we made the mistake as Christians, and this is a big deal that we've confused spiritual maturity with emotional avoidance.
[00:05:46] We've confused spiritual maturity with emotional avoidance. Meaning if we can just kind of good soldier this thing, and we could put our head down and we could keep walking and keep moving, that will then prove our faithfulness. And our faithfulness then will be a reflection of our spiritual maturity.
[00:06:01] Somewhere along the way, we learn that faithful people are just the most okay and the quietest people.
[00:06:09] And so when someone asks, how are we? We love these little canned expressions, right? Where it says, I'm blessed, I'm doing great, I can't complain. And maybe that's true for you right now. Maybe you do feel blessed, and that's a good thing. But it might not be the whole truth in every situation.
[00:06:24] And so, because underneath doing great, there might also be grief or loneliness or business insecurity, you're hurt, insecurity, personally, fear of rejection. All these things can be going on while we outwardly say, everything is fine, the weather's nice and warm, everything is good.
[00:06:42] And the danger that I think church people especially have is that you can become really skilled at living from those things without actually ever naming them. We can walk and talk around them, but we never name them. And Jesus names this interior reality in the middle of the garden very clearly. My soul is overwhelmed.
[00:07:03] Now this should be an opportunity for us to see his demonstration of emotional honesty is not the opposite of spiritual maturity. Right? It's actually part of the gig. It's part of being spiritually mature is being completely honest with God and with ourselves.
[00:07:17] And so this life that's full of healthy relationships, and we think of healthy relationships between us and someone else or us in A group, us in a church, us in a space. And really, it begins first, though, with us.
[00:07:30] I love how Jesus even talks about that we should treat others how we first would want to be treated, or we should love our neighbor as ourself, which insinuates the idea that we love and understand ourselves first, and then from that position, we can love other people. And so this life full of healthy relationship begins when we begin telling the truth about what's happening, first of all, inside of us, because so much is happening beneath the surface.
[00:07:57] My wife and I have been married for 16 years, and I've learned over the course of 16 years that we handle cleaning the house in different ways.
[00:08:07] Okay, My wife is.
[00:08:09] She can get out of the car and immediately jump into whatever was probably bugging her in the living room, even though she wasn't in the room for the last four hours, she can get out. And she began to take care of that thing. And she's on a mission. She kind of. Even her countenance kind of changes a little bit when she's on this mission. I believe a little bit more in what I would call, like, transition time.
[00:08:32] You know, we had a long morning, and before we accomplish the work, I would like to first rest.
[00:08:41] How long will that rest be?
[00:08:44] We rest till we're done.
[00:08:49] And my wife is like, we will be able to rest after we accomplish the goal of the mission. Okay, now, how long will we be accomplishing the goal of that mission?
[00:09:02] Nobody knows.
[00:09:04] Because every single accomplished chore leads to the next one.
[00:09:08] And my wife will still get excited in football season. My wife likes football, you know, and she'll be like, oh, the Seahawks play one. This will be great. And I'm telling you, halfway through the first quarter, we're vacuuming in front of the tv, you know, And I'm going, this is. I was lied to. This is amazing.
[00:09:24] And we've learned, we both, especially when in this dynamic, you know, when one of us is trying to rest before we can do this stuff, and then one of us trying to do this stuff before we can rest. There's these little, like, there's subtext of the conversation, you know, where she'll walk in and she'll go, whew, looks like we've got a lot to do.
[00:09:42] And then my response is, huh?
[00:09:47] We're saying full paragraphs to each other in this moment. She's saying, how great will it be that you can come alongside me and together we can accomplish this cleaning goal. Because I've been thinking about it for the Last couple days. And as a test of our marriage, we will now do the dishes together.
[00:10:03] And I, in my. Huh. Am saying not right now.
[00:10:09] She even.
[00:10:10] She dropped.
[00:10:12] She's taken to, like, shooting the cardboard boxes up in the air so that they make a loud sound.
[00:10:20] When I don't want to do the work. She'll be like, okay, we just went to Costco, and she'll throw it up in the air and boom. And I know that sound is supposed to encourage me into action, to break that thing down and get it into the bin.
[00:10:33] There's so much going on beneath the surface of communication. Everything is happening right.
[00:10:39] And Pete Scazzero, again, he likes this idea of an iceberg, this subtext that's happening within us. And you probably know by now when you see an iceberg, there's way more going on beneath the surface than there was than there is over the top. You only see a small percentage of what an iceberg above the water. But underneath, there's this massive structure. There's a. There's a whole amount of dialogue that Rebecca and I have about cleaning the house without even saying it. There's so much going on with you that does not.
[00:11:08] It's not understood by what's on the surface all the time. Your life is like that. Above the waterline is this part that everybody sees and they become accustomed to. It's your church attendance. It's your work and your ministry. It's your place in the community. It's your amount of success, it's your job title. But underneath the waterline are things like fear. Fear and grief and jealousy and unmet expectations and frustrations. Those things, I need you to understand, don't stay underneath forever.
[00:11:35] Eventually they affect everything above the surface. Now, we like the idea of curating the surface as best we can because it's so easy to change and shift and mold into whatever we need to be above the surface. We like a certain amount of distance from the world around us.
[00:11:52] I think we actually like to be admired more than we like to be known.
[00:11:57] I like this idea. I gotta be honest with you. My natural place would be. How awesome would it be that I could work at a church? I could preach on a platform up here. People would think I'm funny and incredibly good looking.
[00:12:14] And that would be like the relationship, right? Oh, there's some inspiration that happens from here. And I like that idea of this distance, right? People say, look, I can't believe you're introverted. You stand up on that stage in front of. I feel like I'm all by myself up here right now. None of you get to talk and only me.
[00:12:29] It's awesome.
[00:12:34] This is not a relationship. Talking into a microphone from a stage is not a relationship. It's not the real nitty gritty. It's an opportunity for a lot of wonderful things to happen. But if our relationships really come down to one sided listening and admiration, then I gotta believe that we're going to fail in the long term. Because ultimately being known and being vulnerable is the way that we can sustain relationships, understand ourselves, understand others, and really truly care for one another.
[00:13:02] That's the only way that it can happen.
[00:13:05] And so instead of curating the top of this iceberg and never dealing with and understanding what is beneath that, that will simply lead to this idealized admiration that we want the world to have for us and it will allow us to avoid ever being known.
[00:13:19] But again, the scripture says, guard your heart, for everything flows from it. The goal in this, in understanding ourselves and understanding what lies beneath the surface, isn't to become obsessed with ourselves, but instead the goal is to become honest about ourselves in the presence of God.
[00:13:35] That's the beginning of all of this.
[00:13:38] There's a big difference, right? Christian self awareness isn't staring inward with this navel gazy kind of idea of faith. It's actually inviting God inward so that we might say things like search me and show me and teach me and help me understand and complete me, God.
[00:13:57] That's really the goal.
[00:13:59] I always get a little worried for couples when one of them would look at the other and go, look, you really complete me. I want to look at them and go, wow, they're really going to let you down big time if that's the goal.
[00:14:10] I've never known one person that can really truly complete another. We're all imperfect. We all have places that we fall dramatically short. And we're called and asked as Christians to allow God into that space in real vulnerability so that real work can be done.
[00:14:28] Then we can actually begin to move the ball forward in the direction of spiritual maturity that we want to head in.
[00:14:34] But the trick is honesty in the first place, because I need you to understand that it's difficult for God to transform a person that we are pretending to be.
[00:14:45] He wants to meet the person that's actually here, that actually has these feelings and these experiences. And Jesus continues to show us this right. It says, going a little farther he fell to the ground. He prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. Abba Father, he says everything is possible for you. So take this cup from me. He begins with the emotion. I'm overwhelmed, right? And then he goes deeper and he says, take this cup from me.
[00:15:10] That's the desire that exists beneath the emotion.
[00:15:14] Jesus isn't only acknowledging sadness and wallowing in the sadness, Right? The emotion exists there. But then he identifies what he wants. Father, I don't want this outcome.
[00:15:25] I want something different.
[00:15:29] It's important because Jesus is honest with God about what he wants right now. Sometimes we maybe we're even a little bit more honest with ourselves or maybe even sometimes with other people, probably not as often than we are with God.
[00:15:41] We don't need to be Christians that just pray what we're supposed to pray. You understand?
[00:15:47] We tell God what we think spiritual people would probably want, and we say the prayers in the way that we believe that they would pray them. But Gethsemane gives you permission to pray. Father, this is what I actually want in all of my true honesty. I don't want this diagnosis, and I don't want this marriage to end, and I don't want to lose this job. I don't want to lose my child to struggle. I don't want to forgive this person. I don't want to let this dream go, and I don't want to fail, and I don't want to be alone.
[00:16:16] Are all things that many times, if we're being honest with ourselves in prayer, those are the things that would come out of our mouths. Take this cup from me.
[00:16:28] That's intimacy.
[00:16:32] Jesus knows that God is safe enough for the truth, that the Father is safe enough for the truth.
[00:16:39] And so maybe that's one of the most important things that we can learn about prayer, is that it's not this place where you finally get to hide your humanity from God. It's this place where we finally bring all of our humanity to God.
[00:16:53] One practice I want to encourage you in is just the simple slowing down and stopping all of the inputs that we have in order to create distraction so that we might understand and learn beyond this emotion. That isn't the deepest thing.
[00:17:09] Right? And so, like, a simple version of it would be. This thing makes me angry. Okay, that's a great start. What's underneath that anger?
[00:17:16] I felt dismissed. All right, what's beneath that? I felt unimportant. Well, what's beneath that? And for me, sometimes this is my true self. I would say I am afraid that I don't matter.
[00:17:27] And that feeling is ultimately what led to the anger that exists on the outside.
[00:17:32] And until we deal with that, with what's belief, with what is truly beneath, we'll go ahead and attack whatever is above.
[00:17:42] This comes out in different ways. You yell at kids and you'll criticize your spouse and you'll withdraw from your friend. You'll blame a co worker. You leave the church. You'll buy something, eat something, drink something, scroll something, anything. Finally, to be distracted from what's actually going on beneath.
[00:17:57] Now it might be a worthy opportunity for all of us to examine what are our coping mechanisms and how often are we dipping into those things.
[00:18:06] You guys, whenever things go wrong in my life, I feel this opportunity, this reason, this great reality that I get to go ahead and buy and eat whatever I like because my feelings taste amazing.
[00:18:24] Anybody else like, life is hard. I'm gonna buy a breakfast burrito now. Hello, you guys. Some of my greatest moments of faith are when I look at the back of a bag of potato chips and I go, this calories per serving.
[00:18:38] This 210 calories. This is this whole bag.
[00:18:42] There's not four servings in here.
[00:18:48] You know, I think calories should be determined by eatability.
[00:18:56] If it goes down easy, we should be in great shape. You know, what are you coping with? How often do you wanna be so distracted?
[00:19:06] Do you find yourselves when there's lots of things to do or there's somebody to connect with? Relationships are going poorly that you just wanna scroll all the time. Maybe you avoid and you leave all the time.
[00:19:17] Maybe you're one of those people that I've seen here before that you've shared even with me or with somebody else. Like, oh, man, I finally found the church that will finally accept me. The last six of them that I've been to, I've all felt rejected by. There might be a little bit of a pattern. I'm not saying that everybody's treated you fairly, but there might be a pattern that exists in you.
[00:19:37] This is how you cope. You stay busy.
[00:19:40] You avoid having to sit long enough to feel what's actually happening beneath the surface.
[00:19:47] Jesus stays in the garden, right? He doesn't run away and he doesn't numb himself and he doesn't distract himself. He stays. He stays with the Father.
[00:19:55] And then I think Mark gives us this interesting contrast, right? Jesus is confronting everything that's happening inside of him. This massive moment. And meanwhile, the disciples are doing what it says in verse 37. It says, he returned to the disciples and he found them sleeping.
[00:20:11] Three times Jesus goes to pray, and three times they fall asleep. And I don't know that Mark just wants to laugh at sleepy disciples, and maybe he does, but I think there's something human here, right? Jesus is facing this pain and the disciples are running away from it. They're escaping it. They're sleeping through it. Jesus is awake and they're asleep.
[00:20:32] This might be two different ways that we have the opportunity to live here today. There's this awake life and asleep life.
[00:20:39] This asleep life is what is how we avoid what's actually happening on the inside. And the awake life stays around and pays attention.
[00:20:48] Jesus even tells them, watch and pray so you don't fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Watch, pay attention, stay awake and notice what is actually happening inside of you and around you.
[00:21:05] Pay attention to this inner life, because what's happening inside of you will eventually shape you and come out from you.
[00:21:16] Because here's the truth of it. And many of you know this. Even if you haven't heard it or said it out loud, you know it.
[00:21:22] Your soul, that the grief you don't grieve eventually just becomes anger.
[00:21:28] The insecurity you don't confront becomes comparison.
[00:21:32] The fear you don't name becomes control.
[00:21:35] The resentment you don't address becomes cynicism.
[00:21:39] And the shame you don't bring into the light becomes hiding.
[00:21:46] Some of you have been hiding for far too long.
[00:21:53] Today's an incredible opportunity for honesty, for praying differently.
[00:22:03] So what is it that you've been allowing to grow? Is there bitterness and fear and envy? And what is it?
[00:22:10] Is it peace and trust and gratitude and love, in that case? Amazing. You've been doing this work.
[00:22:14] You're finding your way.
[00:22:17] But I wonder if today is just different, an opportunity for us to pray a little bit differently.
[00:22:25] There's a couple different ways of praying that I've discovered over the last several years of my life. And if you don't know, I won't share the whole story, but I'm a pastor's kid, grew up in the church, started pastoring at 19 years old, and I got really, really good at what I would call Evangelical Pentecostal prayer.
[00:22:46] You can kind of orate and you can. You can. You can be charismatic inside of prayer. And I'm not saying this is how it happens for everybody, but this is how it's happening for me. Is it becomes kind of this performance for other people when I pray around other people, you know, Dear Jesus, heavenly Father, we believe in a fresh touch of your anointing in this place and here. And I believe all of that, but I know it was going on in my heart. And there was this performance that was connected to prayer. And then I got a little bit older, started dealing with some different things, had to wrestle with my faith and the reality of is God real or is he not? And I gotta be honest with you, there's some moments, some hours, some days, where I have a hard time believing that God is real. And if he's real, that he loves me as much as he says that he is, other times that's easier.
[00:23:29] But I've noticed a couple different prayers that have been helpful for me. Number one, I've been stealing prayer from ancient people that have been praying for a lot longer. Well, they're not praying anymore. They're dead. But they wrote this a long time ago.
[00:23:42] If they're still praying, then I got a whole different kind of theology that I need to take on.
[00:23:47] I pray old prayers because I need something that I don't have. Right out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
[00:23:56] I need something that I don't have. And so I'm going to try to grab a hold of it from these ancient prayers. I used to think that that was not a great practice, but now it's one of my favorite things, and I do it every single day.
[00:24:06] And the second kind of prayer is this. I practice this brutally honest prayer that often takes place in my truck all by myself.
[00:24:14] And that's where God and I just have it out.
[00:24:21] No sheen, no veneer, no polish, no. Dear Heavenly Father, we just believe that you're going to come and enter into this. It's a lot of. Hey, God. What the heck?
[00:24:35] What's wrong?
[00:24:37] How did this go? Poorly.
[00:24:39] How could you not defend this? Why is this person in charge? Why is the world heading in this direction? Why is my life heading in this direction? What's the deal?
[00:24:49] Because here's where I really am and this is where I really need to be. And doggone it, God, you've got let me down and I want some answers.
[00:25:02] Brutally honest prayer. And what's happened in the middle of all that is, something has shaken in the very soil of my soul that when I get to this place where I get to be intimate, where I get to be vulnerable, where I get to be completely honest with God. I have learned over the course of the process that God is safe enough and. And kind enough and strong enough to be able to hold all of my real, true honesty.
[00:25:25] Now, there's a world in which this translates into our personal relationships. Right? It's the same thing for us. We need to Know the other people that we love and are close to are safe enough to be able to hear our brutal honesty in those relationships. And that's how those relationships get stronger. But this simply starts with what we do and who we are in the presence of God, right here in this moment. Some of you have lost some things, and you've been praying prayers that are too kind. You have lost children, you lost jobs, you've lost hopes, and you've lost dreams. And you put your head down and been a good little Christian ever since. And you've prayed prayers like you hear me pray here on Sundays in front of a large group of people. It's time to be done with it. It's time to have it out. It's time to be honest and grieve and understand this deep fear that's inside of you and let it out. Because God can hold this. And we believe that because he loves you and he knows you, that he will not be surprised and shocked and in awe of what's going on in your soul and said he is someone that can hold it and care for it and begin to walk forward with you in the midst of it.
[00:26:23] That's the God that we serve.
[00:26:26] It's time for us to be honest in the presence of God and in prayer.
[00:26:37] And so what Jesus ends up saying, he says, abba, Father, everything is possible for. For you take this cup from me yet. Not that I will, but what you will.
[00:26:47] Here's four questions that I'm going to finish up with when we're out of time, so we'll do our best. Here we go. I want you to ask these four questions. If you want to be honest in the presence of God, and this has been a difficult thing and a difficult process for you, I want you to ask yourself these four questions.
[00:27:06] Okay? What am I feeling really? Simply not. What should I feel?
[00:27:11] Not what would the holiest people in my life feel? Not what would Evan Earwicker feel?
[00:27:18] He has no feelings. Just kidding.
[00:27:22] That's not true.
[00:27:24] But that's the joke we say a lot around here.
[00:27:28] What am I actually feeling? Angry? Afraid? Sad? Lonely? Embarrassed? Threatened? Jealous? Disappointed? Be honest. What am I actually feeling? Feeling. What's beneath that feeling is the second question. What happened? What did this touch in me? And what story now am I telling myself as a result?
[00:27:45] And number three, what do I want?
[00:27:47] Jesus prayed, take this cup from me. What do you actually want? And say it out loud.
[00:27:52] Say it kindly and sweetly and quietly or loud or angrily and alone in your truck. Whatever you want to do be honest about what you want.
[00:28:02] And then the fourth thing question Can I surrender that desire to God?
[00:28:07] Jesus lays his desires and his hopes and his dreams out openly before the Lord and then completes it with surrender not what I will, but what you will.
[00:28:19] That's not because your desire doesn't matter, and it's not because. But it is because you trust the Father more than you trust your ability to control your own life.
[00:28:28] Spiritual maturity brings us to this place where we believe that God is God and we are not.
[00:28:33] And so we're going to be honest and shaped and transformed in his presence. And we're going to believe that God will be God and that he loves and he cares for us.
[00:28:43] In a moment, we're going to take communion. The ushers are going to go ahead and begin to go around.
[00:28:49] If you'd like the elements brought to you, you can raise your hand right now, and somebody will bring those around to you.
[00:29:03] Healthy relationships, they believe they begin when we are honest in the presence of God, where we can admit that the soul is overwhelmed.
[00:29:17] And it's also where we talk to God and say, this is what I want.
[00:29:23] And then we understand that in the safety of the Father's love, we can say, not what I will, but what you will.
[00:29:30] So this week, I want to encourage you when something rises up and you resist the temptation to immediately push it back down. Instead, let us stay awake. Let us watch and pray and ask, what lies beneath this situation? What lies beneath what's happening in me? And then let's invite Jesus there.
[00:29:49] Amen.
[00:29:50] Amen.
