Alright, well hey guys, welcome to the University of Idaho Resonate. Glad you guys are here.
It's an exciting moment to be here in this place, in this time, exciting things that
we saw last year. Hope you get to make the video next year. I think that that would be
a great thing for you to aspire to, to figure out how much you can get your face in that
just because that seems like a lot of fun stuff to do. So this is Resonate Church. We
have an issue. We can't figure out what size of room to get for the size of crowd that
we expect and so bear with us. My name is Keith. I'm Lee Pastor here and I hope that
we get to be friends over the next couple years, few years. I hope that you get to just
have fun being here. I'm going to have fun being able to engage so you're going to see
a lot of this, a lot of this, a lot of this. These are the things that I do. You're going
to hear me shout and then whisper. So this is just preparing you for the next couple
of years for us to be friends. Hope we can be friends. Today, we're going to get into
a series that we have begun called Breaking History. And here's what I want to let you
in. The secret is that the Bible is incredibly relevant, that the Bible has something to
say about your life, that whatever it is that you're going through, whatever it is that
you are, are walking through in your life, the Bible has something to say about that
and that something to say is incredibly important. And so I'm excited to talk to you about this
because I think that over the next couple of weeks, we're going to get to process something
that's really profound. One of the things that I love about working with college students
and working here in this context, in the university campus, is that you are constantly making
decisions, that you are constantly figuring out what it means to live life in kind of
the context of your past and context of what you're doing right now, but really with an
eye on your future. This whole town is about what are you doing next? And so here, many
of you might have come into campus, maybe this is just, you've been here just a few
days, but you might already be thinking about what the future is going to be like. What
is it that makes kind of the future look like in your life? What are some pictures? What
are some desires that you have? And in that, you're going to be making decisions. As you're
making decisions, psychologists say that you are making these decisions not in terms of
just randomness, but there's a logical order to the way that you process life, the way
that you see life. There's a, there's a logical order to how you make decisions. And even
though this might not be seen from other people, there is, there's a significant way
that you, you kind of process life. And what this called is, they call it living on a script
or living by a script. And sometimes the script is really something that you can understand
like, okay, my dad was this and so I need to be this. And so there's kind of the script.
But oftentimes the script is something we don't even recognize and we don't even realize
that we're living this out that we have these values that there's this, this past that we
have. And there's all this stuff that happened and there are these decisions that we're making
and we're hoping that this leads to our future. And so in this, as you're, as you're processing
through this, as you're kind of trying to figure out what life looks like, my desire
is for your future. My desire is that you make good decisions and you're coming into
this place and there's so much that's thrown at you. There's so many scripts that say,
do this, this is what you have to do in college. This is the scene that you need to be involved
with. These are the ish, these are the friend group that you need to be connected to. And
you're going to make decisions over the next four years that the rest of your life, maybe
I sound like your mom right now, but the rest of your life is going to be kind of hinged
upon the things that you do. So it's crucial that you listen to me. I promise. Now sounds
like your mom again, but it's crucial that you have some sort of context for that. What
I want you to, what I want to do is I want you to see the script that you're living your
life by so that you can say, is this the script that I want to live? Are the decisions that
I'm making is the way that I'm processing life? Is that ultimately going to get me to
the future that I desire? That's my hope for you. My hope is to convince you that the Bible
has something to say about that. As you live your life, here's one of the realities each
and every one of you has experienced in your life. A moment of inadequacy, a moment where
you didn't measure up, a moment of pain, a moment where kind of some stuff didn't work
out so well in your life. And maybe for some of you, this is kind of these past issues
in your life. There's all these question marks that you have in your life. There's all this
stuff that maybe has happened. And so you process life not in just a vacuum. You didn't
just show up here on campus and say, this is how I see the world, but the way that you
see the world has been built over years in your life. So maybe your parents, maybe they
had a rocky marriage. Maybe they had some strife in there. Maybe they got divorced. And
so what happens is that is not just something that is lost on you. That is something you
process. And so in terms of relationships, as you approach finding a mate, as you approach
dating, the context of where you came from is going to be present. So seeing what it
looks like and maybe there's some angst in terms of, do I trust someone to spend the
rest of my life with? Do I? And so we participate in dating. And oftentimes the way that we
date doesn't mimic a good marriage, but it just mimics practicing for divorce. But this
is something in our past. It's something that we bring into our present and something that
has effects on the trajectory of our future. And when we bring all of these things together,
one of the best illustrations that I can think of in terms of how we make decisions right
now in terms of circumstances in our past and an expectation of our future is from a
little movie called Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump. Maybe you've heard of it. It was like
on before you were born. Here's the thing. Like there's this guy named Forrest and there's
this guy named Lieutenant Dayan. And so Lieutenant Dayan is a guy and he and Forrest are fighting
together in the jungles of Vietnam and something happens and he's hurt. And so Forrest rushes
to save Lieutenant Dayan and he pulls him out and now ultimately he saves him. And what
we begin to see is in a scene what seems like a great circumstance doesn't seem like it has
great effects on Lieutenant Dayan. Check it out on the screen. That moment, that question
is a pertinent question. What am I going to do now? In light of my past, in the context
of my future, what is it that I'm going to do now? These are the questions that you're
asking. And so what I want to do is I want to get into this and help us to understand
this progress of what our life looks like and how is it that we can begin to operate in
a way that takes the context of our past and allows that not to be something that dramatically
screws up our future. You see here's the thing. When people come into college, there's these
paths that they go down and they're going to affect your future, right? And so what I
want to do is to call you to understand that these things that you're doing now, you do
them because of a reason, but they always affect your future. And so for us, what does
it look like to break history because our future depends on it? There's some stuff that
you're going to go through over these next few years, even these next few weeks and these
next few days that is going to affect your future. And I just want you to be aware of
it. I want you to understand the script that you are living out. And so what we don't do
is we're going to see a moment where Jesus has this interaction with this woman and as
Jesus interacts with this woman, it helps bring clarity to what it looks like for us
to process this entire trajectory of our life. So we're going to be in the gospel of John.
The gospel of John is one of the stories of John that tells the life, the story of the
life of Jesus. And we're going to be in chapter four. And really what I want to do is address
this question, what happens when you get stuck in a script? What happens when you get stuck
in this kind of way of living life? Can you get out? How do you begin to say, how do I
live for my future? What does this look like? And so let's get into this. What I'm going
to do is give you a little context and then we're going to dive right into the story.
And so I'm going to read the first four chapters and help us understand what is going on. It
says this, now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing
more disciples than John. Although in fact, it was not Jesus who is baptized, but his disciples.
So he left Judea and he went back once more to Galilee. Now he had to go through Samaria.
So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar near the plot of ground Jacob had given to
his son, Joseph. Jacob's well was there and Jesus tired as he was from his journey set
down by the well, and it was about noon. Okay, I want to give you some context here. Jesus
is a Jewish man and Jews and Samaritans are two different people groups and Samaria, the
area of Samaria was smack dab in the middle of this Jewish territory. And so Jewish people
had to go through Samaria or around Samaria to get to the different parts of their state,
Samaria. And so in this, they had these two options. One of the options was to go through
it. This was rarely the thing that people chose because they hated Jews chose because
they hated the Samaritan so much. Typically they went around it. But what we see is Jesus
goes right through the middle of Samaria. And not only that is he does this and he's
journey by himself and it's in the middle or not by himself, but is with his disciples.
But here we find Jesus by himself and it's the middle of the day. And so we're going
to pick up verse seven and get into the story when it enters a Samaritan woman. It says
this, when a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, will you give me
a drink? You see his disciples had gone into town to buy food. Verse nine, the Samaritan
woman said to him, you are a Jew and I'm a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a
drink? For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. Now, this context and what we begin to see
here is something that I want to unpack for you because as we just look at this through
21st century Western United States eyes, this doesn't seem all that dramatic. It doesn't
seem all that unusual. But if we were to take and peer through the lens of the people who
would have been a part of that culture, what we begin to see here is something that is
kind of messed up, something that's very unusual, something that makes no logical sense. You
see, first of all, what we see is this woman is getting water in this, in this well that
is out from the town. You see all the towns in that time and place when they were to create
a town, the central feature had to be the availability of water. And so they would have
had a place for her to get water that was closer to the middle of town because that
was what town was built around availability of water. And so what we begin to see here
is one odd thing, one unusual thing, one strange thing. She's going outside of town to get
this water. One, two, what time is it? It is new. See, in that time and place, when you
had an arduous task or a difficult chore to do, you didn't wait in this heat, this dry
heat that you would have there. You didn't do that in the middle of the day. The most
difficult thing that you would do would not be saved for the middle of the day, but it
would be done either in the morning or more likely in the very late evening. And so this
is when people would find themselves doing the chore of getting water from the well.
See, it was a difficult thing. The third thing that we begin to see that's a little odd is
this guy, Jesus addresses this woman and what she says back to him is, why would you see
fit to ask me a question? Why would you even speak to me? All of those things lead us to
understand some things. When we begin to put all of this strange behavior together, what
it does is help us to get a framework around what is happening to this person. You see,
what we have to do is we have to kind of begin to piece all this together and realize that
this person, this woman at this well and Samaria has some issues and these issues are being
manifested by the actions that she is having taken place. What she's doing doesn't seem
to make any sense because what she's doing is removing herself from society. If we begin
to kind of peel back the layers, we realize that she probably sees herself as pretty condemned
or pretty useless in society. So she is going to the, a well that no one would typically
go to in a time that no one would go to it. And when she gets there, when she interacts
with someone, what she says is, I'm not worthy really to talk to you. All this leads us to
an idea of she doesn't feel like she is accepted by the culture that she is in. And what it
looks like is that she then has some bizarre behaviors that she's manifesting. And we can
kind of push this back, but I think that we do some of the same things. In fact, in our
lives, when we begin to think through what this looks like, oftentimes there's these
behaviors, there's these things that happen in our present and things that we are doing
that really, if someone was to look through and kind of see our lives, they would say,
that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Why did you decide to do that? And maybe in our
own hearts, we recognize that. Have you ever had a moment? Have you ever had a conversation
where you're talking with someone and all of a sudden you, you have this emotional response
to what they're saying, but you have enough sense of what's going on to recognize that,
that you shouldn't have that kind of response. So you get into this scenario with this individual
and all of a sudden you're like, why do I feel so self-conscious? Why is it that I feel
like I need to figure out if everything about me is okay or, or I feel like I'm inadequate
or I feel like I don't measure up or I feel all of a sudden like I want to leave this.
All of a sudden when we have these, these, these times, these moments where we have emotional
things that, that kind of don't make sense, there's a reason behind them. Maybe you've
had this moment where you've had something that's, that you worry about, but, but really
that thing that you worry about is really unlikely. Or you have a response in anger
to a situation that really is not that big of a deal. And you recognize, why am I getting
so angry about this? Or why am I having this emotional response? Or why am I worried about
something? Or why do I think about this thing? And no one else shares this thought. Why is
it that maybe you are defensive about something or, or maybe, you know, you get really sensitive
when people begin to talk with stuff. All of this stuff, it might seem like it's a logical,
it might seem like it's a rational, but for us, every single thing that we do, every decision
that we make is always rational and always logical to the belief system that we have.
This is just who we do or what we do. This is just who we are. We don't make decisions
about parts of our lives in just this, this vacuum. It always makes sense. But what happens
if what makes sense to us doesn't really make objective sense? See, here's the thing that
you need to understand. Here's the truth. Everything that we do is logically based upon
a set of truths that we believe about ourselves. And so let me introduce to you kind of this
idea of an equation that there isn't a, there's a truth about you. There's, there's, there's
something that you believe about yourself that is then taken. And because of that truth,
you have an action that you do in your life and it leads to a trajectory in your future.
So in all of this, when, when we begin to say, this is what it looks like, maybe you have
this, this, this idea in your head about who you are. Maybe you say, I'm not a very manly
man. And so therefore, because this is a truth that I shouldn't do very manly things, right?
Or maybe I'm not very smart. And so that's a truth that's in, in your life somehow. And
that makes you think, okay, well, that means that the present circumstances, I shouldn't
choose this major, or I'm not very an attractive as a person. So I shouldn't expect guys to
be interested in me. I'm not very funny. So I shouldn't expect girls to notice me.
So in all of these things, there's an equation about you and your life and what you believe
is true about yourself. And every single time, the decisions that you make, the actions that
you make based upon whatever that truth is in your life, make perfect logical sense, even
when they're not logical and they're not objectively true. You see, you can simply go back and
do this. You can kind of discover what this is through understanding that a truth in your
life that establishes your life equation can be identified by completing the statement,
I'll always be dot, dot, dot. I'll always be blank. What is it that you say, I'll always
be this? I'll always be like this. And maybe sometimes it's a physical thing, I'll always
be short, I'll always be tall, I'll always be fat, I'll always be skinny, I'll always
be pretty, I'll always be ugly, whatever it is, there's something like that, or maybe
I'll be smarter, I'll be an overachiever, I'll be the person that makes everybody laugh,
I'll be the center of attention, I'll be the guy who keeps to myself, I'd be the person
that loves to read books, whatever it is, what is it that you said, I'll always be this
is the clue to one of the truths in your life that create the equation that you live your
life by. When you begin to think about this, when you begin to understand what is how does
this make sense? So this woman is going to this well, and she's displaying this behavior
that somehow makes sense. But what we need to understand is why does that make sense?
What is what is happening in her life that would display actions like this? And so Jesus
gets into it in verse 10, he says this, Jesus answers her, if you knew the gift of God and
who it is that ask you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you
living water. Sir, the woman said, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep.
Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father, Jacob, who gave us
this well and drank from it himself? As did his sons and his livestock? Jesus answers.
Everyone, everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water
I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring
of water welling up to eternal life. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water so that
I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water. See, she understands her
dysfunction. She understand that this thing is jacked up in her life. She understands
that this is not the best way to live. This is just the only way that she knows. This is
a response to something else that's happening in her life. So she says, this is just how
I'm thinking that I should live. But all of a sudden what begins to be the case is that
she comes face to face with a savior who gives her hope. Jesus says it doesn't have to be
this way. This idea that you can't get out of this is not true. Here's the truth. Your
past doesn't have to be your future. Some of you need to know that and some of you need
to let that sink in because maybe it was in high school that you had this trajectory and
this script kind of set before you. Maybe it was in junior high. Maybe it was something
that was an elementary school that some truth got inserted into your life and you have believed
it lock, stock and barrel the whole time. And this affected you. It affected your relationship,
your performance in school, where you decided to go to school, all these things and you
don't even recognize and you don't even realize it. But the thing is, Jesus says to the woman,
you realize it doesn't have to be this way. And here's the most amazing thing. She says,
okay, I don't have to keep living this thing. I don't have to have this thing keep coming
back up in my life. I want this living water. I want this thing. I'm all in. If you can make
it where I don't have to experience this again, I want it. And this is a, this is an amazing
thing because this is hope. And some of you need hope. You've been walking through so
many things. You've been walking through this issue for so long. You just need to have some
hope tonight. You need to have this moment where you say it can be different. Whatever
it is and each and every one of us have those moments, have those things in our life that
we wish were different. And here's this place in the story where I expect Jesus. In my idea,
how this works is that, is that he says there's something different. You don't have to be who
you used to be. You can change from your past, your future, your trajectory can be different.
And she says, I want that. He says, woman, you are free from your past. Woman, here's
the trajectory. If you would just trust in me, everything will be different. And this
is what I'm thinking. Jesus is going, is about to just explode this, this beautiful vision
of who she could be on this woman and just change everything about her. But he doesn't
do that. In fact, Jesus does probably the most unexpected thing that you can imagine
in this situation. He sees this woman doing this strange behavior. He says, you know,
you don't have to keep doing this. She says, okay, I want something different. I want this
living water, so I don't have to keep doing this. We think that Jesus is going to do something
and he does the exact opposite. What Jesus does is he brings up the root of her shame,
says this, verse 16. He told her, go, call your husband and come back. In verse 17, you
can almost feel this dripping with shame. I have no husband. She replied short, doesn't
explain it, doesn't say, but here's the thing. Here's how I justify that. She simply just
says, I don't have a husband. Jesus says to her, you're right when you say you have no
husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands and the man you now have is not your husband.
What you said is quite true. Now, the weight of the statement might not fall on us the
way that it would have fallen in that culture. You see, she was an outcast to be a woman
like this would have been the talk of the town, would have been isolated, would not
have been accepted, would have been excluded. This was just the kind of culture that she
lived in in that context. What does Jesus do? The thing in her life she was most ashamed
of the thing that she most wanted to escape the thing that she hated about herself and
her situation. Jesus goes right at it. He airs out her dirty laundry. He takes her to
the place she least wants to visit. She's face to face with her history, face to face
with her shame. And this is just this interesting moment. And here's what you need to know about
the gospel. Here's not what you need to hold the savior. See, I think that this might have
thrown her off. All of a sudden she's having a conversation and he says, there's living
water, there's hope. And then he counters with how about that thing that you least want
to talk about that thing that you're most ashamed of. And I wonder if she's like, that
was kind of out of nowhere. That was something I didn't expect. Hold it, Jesus. I thought
we were having a conversation about water, not my sexual history. Jesus says, you don't
have an issue with water. You have an issue with shame. That's your issue. And here's
the reality. Jesus, Jesus knows something about this. He knows the truth is to heal shame.
You must reveal shame to heal shame. You must reveal shame. You cannot let this manifest
itself down deep. You can't just kind of pack it away. Those things that happen, those issues
that might have gone on in your life in your past. You can't just say that just didn't
happen. What you have to do to be healed of it, Jesus says, I've got to go right at this.
See, Jesus went around the countryside physically healing people. But when it comes to these
moments of shame, when it comes to these moments where people have these issue in your life,
he said, I can't just go, boop, you're healed. We've got to go back. Healing comes when you
reveal the issue, when you bring it back up and when you insert a new truth in here, you
see every action is rooting, rooted in something and Jesus is going after the root. You see
shame didn't just happen. Those actions didn't just happen. They have their root in something.
See there is something in your life that is manifested itself because of shame, because
of some inadequacy, because of things that we all have in our life. But let me tell you
you can go after that over and over trying to figure out how you eliminate that, but
you will never eliminate that until you go down to the root, until you deal and reveal
what it is that causes that. And so here I want, this is what I want to do. I want to
introduce kind of a picture to you to help us to understand how we tie all this together.
It's a picture of a tree. And so on a tree, obviously, you know, there's fruits and there's
all there's roots as well. And so when we begin to think about this and I'll move out
of the way as you can see this, this whole thing, what we begin to see is, is there's
all of these things that have these manifestations of these issues in our life. And so what happens
is we never, when there's this shame enters our life, it's never just isolated. It always
has these roots that reveal its fruits. And so what we begin to see is, is that this,
this moment in our life, it didn't just go away when the moment passed, it comes back
up in our life. And so let's say you have a, you have this moment where we're some kind
of some trust issues began to happen because of a divorce that happened. And so he's like,
well, that divorce, I'm over it. But if you don't go back and process that, you don't
really go get back to it or that time and, you know, in seventh grade, you know, we all
have that junk in seventh grade, right? It's just seventh grade. It just happens. Everybody
gets self-conscious. And so maybe you go back there and you remember the haunting echoes
of seventh grade and you say, I just, I don't want to deal with that. But what happens is
then you begin to have these, these issues in your life. So, so all of a sudden, because
you didn't have any kind of safety, you were, you were mocked or something happened in your
life. You didn't measure up in some sort of a capacity or this relationship got broken.
You have this desire to control it because you want safety in your life. And so everything
around you is controlled and you need to have control over every single situation in your
life. It's really not just because you need control. It's because of something that is
a root of a lie that's in your life that there's something about this that happens that you
don't really understand. There's the express expressions of shame. These are things like
anger or depression. They're tied to a root of a lie somewhere, something that you have
believed in your life. Things like denial. When you begin to say, oh, that just didn't
exist or that didn't happen. I don't want to talk about it. I just want to push this
under the rug. I want you to know that you will never eradicate moments of inadequacy
and shame. They will always linger unless you deal with them. You see, we've got to
go back and we've got to understand what this looks like. We have to understand as Jesus
presses her into understanding the roots of her life as Jesus says, this is what you need
to understand. This is how somehow you need to figure out what the equation looks like
because your equation in life, it will always jack up your life. It'll always mess up your
life. It always starts with the lie. If the root of it always starts with something that
is untrue. And so what do you have to do is you have to find a new equation. You have
to figure out a different equation in your life because it'll all make sense to you.
And then your life sucks, right? And you don't understand. Why is it that I'm having such
difficulty in my life? I'm doing everything that seems normal. I'm doing what seems logical.
You don't realize that it was based upon a lie. There was something there in the equation
that you founded everything on that was messing everything up. And Jesus is saying, you can't
just say, I want living water and not go after the roots. You can't just say, I just want
this, but not say, I'm not going to dig up the painful understanding of some sort of
a lie that I believed over and over. We collect these little lies in our life. And they pushed
themselves into the trajectory of our future. You need a new equation, living water that
he'll shame has to be delivered to the roots. He goes on and it goes like this in the story
in verse 19, sir, the woman said, I can see that you're a prophet. All of a sudden her
her laundry just got aired out, right? She says, I can see that you're a prophet. And
what did she do next? Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that
the place where we must worship is Jerusalem. All of a sudden she makes this about a, where
do I worship issue? And Jesus says this woman, believe me, a time is coming when you will
worship the father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. So you're asking the wrong
question here. You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we know for
salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has come now when the true worshipers
will worship the father and in spirit and truth for they are the kind of worshipers the father
seeks. God is spirit and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. The woman says,
I know that Messiah called Christ is coming and when he comes, he will explain everything
to us. What we begin to see is she begins to have this understanding of, okay, I get
it now. There's something in my life that has to come out of this. And here's the hope.
Okay, I begin to understand that it's about my worship and who I worship and it's about
something that happens internally, not just externally. And so my hope is that I'll understand
this and it'll all be explained when I understand who the Messiah is. It will explain everything.
Everything will make sense. And then what happens next is very profound in verse 26.
When Jesus declared, I, the one speaking to you, I am he, the one that you've been waiting
for, the one that is explaining all of this to you is right in front of you. And I don't
want you to miss out the answer to this. He reveals her lie. And in this lie, he's inserting
a new truth. Remember, this is the woman who had gone to great lengths so that people would
not interact with her. She's gone outside of town in the middle of the day. And this
was probably the routine of her life in order to avoid being spoken to when she speaks to
someone. The words, the first sentence out of her mouth was, I'm not worthy for you to
speak to me. This has been, this is the manifestation of all of these issues. Jesus points out this
and what he says to her is this, I, I'm the one addressing you. I'm the one speaking to
you. I'm the one who, who is communicating to you something about your value that I am
talking to you, that I'm expressing something to you. I, the one speaking to you, you've
tried to avoid people who speak speaking to you. You tried to make it clear to me that
you didn't deserve to be spoken to. But there's a new truth. And that truth is me. This is
just fascinating. Jesus breaks all of the social norms to communicate to her. This woman
who's a tried to avoid contact, Jesus is saying, I'm speaking to you. And this truth, this
new truth is being inserted into her life. So not, so no more is there a lie that my
worth is based upon whether my sexual history is acceptable to my culture. Jesus says, here's
the truth. I am the way, the truth in the life, right? It is me and I accept you. That
has to be the new truth in your life that creates a new decision making process and
creates a new future for you. And this is, this is, this is just amazing. You now have
intrinsic worth because of not the relationships with the men that you've had in your life,
but because of your relationship with your heavenly father, because I have said that
you have intrinsic worth. See, it's not about changing the behavior. It's about changing
your savior. Jesus says it's really about me. And so resonate, here's what I have to
say about you. Here's to you. Here's about all of this about your future, your past.
It all must revolve around Jesus. All I have for you is Jesus Christ. But the good thing
is that he is definitely enough, completely enough. See, Jesus in the midst of this is
is on this earth. He's accomplishing something to win her soul, to do something for her so
that she might be redeemed so that she might have worth based upon not what her actions
are or her behavior for her, but because she has intrinsic worth because of who her savior
is because she is created in the image of God. And so it's about changing our equation
about inserting truth where there was a lie and ultimately to place Jesus in that place.
And so week after week, you're going to come to resonate church, I hope. And I hope that
we get to get a bigger room and we can all fit in here and it's nice and it's not hot.
This is this is the hope. But the thing is, you've got to be able to apply all of this
stuff, not just to the fruits of your life, but to be able to get it down to the roots.
If not, you're just playing some religious hobby. Because when it begins to get to the
roots of your life, when you begin to replace those lies of shame with the lies of the truth
of who Jesus is, it affects everything. See, I want you to address differently because
of the gospel. I want you to date differently because of the gospel. I want you to choose
a different career path because of the John, the gospel. I want you to choose a major
because of the gospel. I want you to change the way you have a marriage. Because of the
gospel, I want you to change the way you spend money because of the gospel, not just because
of what the Bible says about this, but because somehow you have centered your life around
who Jesus is in your life, and it changes all of that stuff.
Let's just think about these equations.
See, there's an equation that we can put in there that my worth is determined.
In my life, because of the attention that guys give me.
So I am worthwhile if guys pay attention to me.
And that lie has been founded in so many of you ladies.
That's what gives you worth.
And so here's the here's how this gets processed.
That that that thing, that identity, that that lies is in there.
So what's the manifestation of that?
So now if that is this truth, then the way that I dress is affected by that.
So what I wear needs to attract the eyes of guys.
And what happens is this equation leads us into places that you never want to be.
Ladies, I promise you the attention that you receive as you wear clothes
that attract the eyes of guys around you.
That's not the thing that your soul really wants.
That's not the attention that you need.
If in your heart, the lie, the equation is if guys think I'm pretty, then I'm worthwhile.
Maybe you never even say that to anyone.
But if that's really the way you choose your wardrobe.
That's the way that you see.
That's the way that you act towards people.
Then here's the thing, your future is in jeopardy.
Because here's the thing.
That's not the attention that you want.
And ultimately, guys are not meant to be what gives you your value.
Let's go back to what Jesus says about, it is me.
It's guys that spend hours in the gym trying to get that atlas body, you know.
Trying to figure out how is that a look a certain way.
And then all of a sudden they decide to take up running
because it allows them to go shirtless through the maximum amount of people.
They hate running, you know, but they've just spent so much time in the gym.
They need to show it off, you know, so there's this thing.
I am worthy if I have a body like that.
And so what am I going to do?
I'm going to take my time to stay in the gym because that's my worth.
Maybe it's something else.
Maybe it's my worth is when I'm the center of attention.
So I'll at all costs try to make everyone my friend
and try to in any such circumstance go above and beyond and be the center of attention.
Be the person that everyone is looking at.
Maybe I'll take and because my history is that if I produce good grades and I'm smart,
that's what makes me worthwhile.
And so I'll spend so much of my life trying to figure out how I get good grades,
how I excel in school because that's ultimately what gives me worth.
Or maybe it's maybe it's significance in front of other people.
And so you always try to figure out how to manipulate your circumstances
where you are always significant or maybe it's the person of the opposite sex.
And so you're always, you can't go without a girlfriend or you can't go without a boyfriend
because somehow you believe that that is what it gives you worth.
That is what gives you significance.
And over and over what you're doing is you're creating a trajectory and a script in your life
that seems completely normal in your mind, but is jacking your life up
because you have not founded your life upon Jesus Christ,
but you have founded it upon some other thing and it will always let you down.
And you'll always have this moment of shame.
They'll always have this thing that you're going back to.
You're trying to to overcome that.
Trying to pack it away, but you're still having these manifestations of it.
And Jesus says the simple thing is you've got to let me at it.
You've got to open up your eye.
You have to be courageous and say, I need to let God in.
So this is how I want this to change you.
This is how this is how this has to happen is that you've got to bring Jesus back into those moments.
This is tricky.
Let me get right up in your grill here.
Jesus needs to come back to those places.
See, you cannot heal from shame if you aren't willing to let it be revealed.
You've got to go back to those places and Jesus says, I am heat.
So maybe it was just six.
And maybe you remember and you had this seared in your memory,
this class of people that is mocking you for something.
And you look back and say, it's just I was just six and it was such a silly thing.
But your heart carries that memory.
Whenever you get around some groups of people,
there's some sort of an angst that happens.
Maybe it's 13 and you were trying so hard to make this team and you got cut.
And forever, the label that you live your life under is this thing that I'm not good enough for this thing.
Maybe it's a relationship that you just got dumped in.
And you have trust issues and you have relationship issues because this was your past.
This is that thing.
So what has to happen is you've got to bring Jesus back to those moments and you've got to redeem those moments
and you've got to root down and find those freaking lies and you've got to go after them.
And you have to bring Jesus with you.
I know this feels like an inception moment here, but I have to go back and say,
OK, that time when I was 14 years old, I need to bring Jesus in that because there was a moment in my life
where I started believing a lie about myself and that that had these manifestations all throughout my life.
If Jesus were there walking alongside me, what would you have said?
Hey, that that actually isn't why you're worth anything.
Or how about that time when I was 17?
I need to bring Jesus back into that moment.
Or how about that huge group that I made at 19?
I need to bring Jesus back in that moment to say you're forgiven.
Because if not, the rest of my life is going to be jacked up in your life too.
Maybe you've come off a summer where you just have done some stuff you never thought you'd do
or you became someone who never thought and now you come here and you're kind of carrying this baggage in
and you have a choice to make.
So we start this off.
My desire is that you would break the history that will ruin your future.
Your future depends upon you have encouraged this.
I just want to call you to be people that bring Jesus into this and allow him to redeem what needs to be redeemed
to speak truth what needs to be spoken truth over in your life so that you might not continue to live
in these lies that are rooted in your life.
But ultimately you would be into war and freedom.
Jesus says to the woman.
I've pinpointed the root of the issue and I am the only thing that will free you in my view of your life
from living out this kind of perpetuating cycle of shame.
So Resonate Church tonight as we close this first time meeting down.
I want to allow you to have an opportunity to respond.
I know it's tight in here.
But whether it's on a connection card and say, will you pray for me?
I have this issue.
It's overwhelming.
Maybe some of you have been products of abuse in your life.
There's some stuff that is so ugly that you carry with you.
And maybe this is bring this up and you said, thanks Keith.
I didn't need that.
Maybe you need someone to pray with you.
There's going to be people that are available to pray with you.
Maybe tonight you say, I don't know Jesus.
I'm not a follower of Jesus.
But I do understand that I need someone.
I understand that I can't just keep in this cycle.
If you want to tonight say, I want to follow after Jesus.
There'll be people in the back and go right out the doors.
And there'll be people there and they'll pray with you and help you to understand what it means to follow after Christ.
But I want us to sing a couple of more songs and be able to process this.
And for you to be able to push into this idea.
What does it mean to break the cycle of shame in my life?
To break history.
Your future depends on it.
Let me pray for us.
God, I ask that you would just really push into us in this moment.
God, that you would help us to see exactly what you have in store for us.
Lord, that you would help us to see a picture of our future.
Lord, that today that we would begin to see what is hindering us in our past.
That you would help us to see how we can break free of this.
Lord, that you would give us courage.
Right now I just pray for people in this moment just to have courage.
Just to be able to say, I know it sucks and I know it's hard to go back and to experience that again.
But I'm tired of living like I've been living.
I'm tired of living in shame.
So I pray that you would just help us to have a beautiful picture of who you want to be.
Lord, I pray that you would help us to understand what it means to place you at the center of every part of our life.
So that we might have everything revolve around you and we might be released.
We might be able to have a future that is not based upon the culmination of our past, but your desire for our future.
We ask all of this in your holy name. Amen.
