Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So good.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: So good. Welcome to midweek.
Let's pray.
You alone are God and you are worthy of our lives. You are worthy of praise.
Father, I don't even know how to begin to speak about something so immense, immeasurable, something so powerful and something so life changing as your love.
So I pray it is less of me and more of you.
Pray your spirit will rest in this place like your word says, that you will pour it and fill your love in our hearts. Father, I pray for each person here and listening online that you will. You will fill them because it is you and you alone.
In your mighty son's name we pray. Amen.
Last week we kicked off a new sermon series called claim your strength. And we talked about how it's very easy to claim your insecurities.
Amen. It's easy to acknowledge some of the things that you don't got going on.
It's easy to acknowledge the anxiety, being overwhelmed. It's easy to acknowledge some of the things that stop us.
But what we were looking at is that there is a mighty God who gives us an inner strength.
And we're turning our focus from living on our insecurities to. To living in the strength that the holy Spirit empowers within us.
And it was extremely helpful for me in my life and this sermon. I got the idea for this probably three or four years ago, but I didn't know how to preach it. And I'm not even sure I know how to preach it tonight, if I'm honest.
There is a reality in life that when we experience the pain of rejection, we can feel like collateral damage.
There's a reality in life when we have been rejected that maybe it's not even the purpose that the person meant, but the shrapnel pieces of pain flew out and got you in the heart.
And I think when rejection happens, it's hard to process because it's like every insecurity then is screaming at you everything. You already feel kind of crappy about yourself. This rejection has set it off to make it true and verifiable now.
And I was thinking about this collateral damage in my life. I've had two deep rejections in my life that kind of were cliff moments. These. These moments where it could have gone either way for me.
These moments that it's like it's defined and marked my life.
And I think when I think about that rejection, it was this feeling of like neither of the people truly meant to hurt me. I believe that with all my heart, but it hurt me nonetheless.
And sometimes There is rejection where people did mean they meant it.
There's the rejection of pride and sin. And I think so often the unholy one, he doesn't have access to our head, but he has access to our actions. And what happens is when I'm doing things, I only really am thinking about myself.
Like my sin is self consuming.
But the reality of how sin works is it very rarely just affects you.
It very rarely is contained.
It often explodes into collateral damage.
And when you feel like you're collateral damage, it almost is like dehumanizing a little bit. I don't know if that's too strong, that feels too strong.
But it's almost like when this pain has happened and you're collateral damage, you weren't even important enough to be thought about.
Anyone know what I'm saying?
Anyone feeling the feels okay? And so then it's almost like.
I wasn't enough.
I am unlovable.
I am whatever it might be that this rejection has caused.
And my biggest belief is the unholy one uses these darkest moments of our life to whisper in our heart of how we will process this.
And if we can process life's pain and rejection in a God honoring way, in a healthier way, we have a stability in life that nothing can really be pulled out from us. Is it going to hurt? Absolutely. That's life.
Are we going to experience pain a million percent? Are we going to experience loss? Like, we all know these things are true. We all know it's a reality of life, but how we process it.
I was listening on a clip from a pastor in Florida, and he used this story, so I'm going to borrow it from him. He said, do you remember the stampede in the Lion King?
In the Lion King, there was a moment when Simba went somewhere he wasn't supposed to go.
And he went into this gorge and there was a stampede of wildebeests.
And his father comes and he looks over the cliff and he sees that his son is in true danger.
And so Mufasa jumps in, but it's at the cost of his own life.
He saves his son, but he dies.
And the wildebeest kind of clear out and there's dust. And Simba's searching wildly for his dad. And he sees him and he runs to him, but his body is lifeless. He's gone.
And Simba is like nudging him and he's saying, wake up, dad. Wake up, dad. And we're all crying, right? We're all scarred by this movie.
And I was even watching it he put his little head under the paw.
His dad's arm was around him.
But it was in this moment of darkness, this moment for Simba.
Where he doesn't know what to do. And he's afraid and it's messy, that the enemy swoops in.
He doesn't know that his Uncle Scar has set this whole scene. He doesn't know that it was a setup. But the enemy swoops in and he gets down on his level and he says, ooh, this is bad.
This is bad. Bad.
What are your friends gonna think?
What's your mom gonna think?
And in the same way that the enemy swooped in for Simba. I feel like the enemy swoops in for us and gives us the same advice. And his uncle says. He says, run away.
Run away and never come back.
And I feel like in these moments of pain. It's easy for us to want to run away.
It's easy for us to want to run from God, to blame God.
It's easy for us to see these moments and hear that whisper and believe it.
And Simba does just that. He takes off.
But then you remember Rafiki?
Come on. That crazy little monkey.
There's a moment where Rafiki is, like, trying to slap some sense into him. And he sees Simba and he says, your father's alive.
And Simba's like, I don't know what you're talking about. He's not alive.
And so Rafiki takes Simba down to the pool of water. And he looks in and he sees his reflection. And he says, it's just me.
But then Rafiki says, you must look closer.
I don't even remember what he sounds like. But he looks down.
And bubbling up through that reflection.
Is the face of his dad and Church. This is what I'm telling you. We carry the reflection of our Father within us, Church. We carry the reflection of the one who loves us.
And everything inside of me wants to scream tonight to show you that the one who is inside of us is bigger than any message around us.
The Holy Spirit working within us to help us feel and sense and know God is bigger than anything that your past has brought. He's bigger than any pain that you may have felt.
And tonight, when we're seeking him, I want to look at Ephesians. Because it's. It's the best part of the verse, Church. It's so Good. It's Ephesians 3.
We read.
Let's just read it all tonight. Sorry I don't have it on the screen, but this is 14. This is what we read last week. If you missed it, go back.
For this reason, I bow my knee before the Father from whom every family in heaven and earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with the power through his Spirit in your inner being.
Now, this is where we're picking up tonight.
So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have the strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, what is the length and the height and the depth. And to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with the fullness of God. I said to my staff this week, I said, sometimes some verses you don't even really need to preach. It preaches itself. This is like this verse. It's just like, let's just read it 15 more times and call it a day.
Because there is. There is power when. When we are rooted and grounded in something stable.
There is power when we are rooted, that we have depth.
We are rooted. Things aren't going to blow us away. We have stability when we are grounded and we are on a firm foundation.
There is a stability and a peace of life.
But the problem is we constantly are grounding and rooting ourself in the wrong stuff.
I think I'm gonna generalize here, but I think, men, a lot of you can ground and root yourself in what you do and your job and your identity and what you can provide for your family. It becomes your rooting.
It becomes your foundation.
But what happens when you lose the job?
What happens when your boss is a jerk?
It can uproot you so easily because you're grounded in something that isn't stable.
Women, we can root and ground ourselves in our beauty, or we can root or try to ground ourselves in friendships and relationships. And listen, I am the biggest component of healthy, good relationships. I. I need a good girlfriend in my life.
I love my gorgeous husband, okay?
I want those things in my life, but I can't root myself in that kind of relationship.
I can't be. That cannot be the foundation for my life. Because they're human beings, and every human being is going to have moments.
And I was thinking about this. I haven't just had collateral damage done to me, but I've caused collateral damage.
We are humans.
And what Paul is saying to these Ephesians, he's praying this prayer for these Christians, and he's saying, I want something better.
I don't want you to be grounded in success or what your TikTok says, or whatever the number is. I want you to be rooted and grounded in love.
And there is a love, this idea of love. I heard this from Craig Groeschel. He said, you can kind of think of it as two ways we can love something because it's valuable.
And he pulled out some cards or something that were valuable, like baseball cards or Pokemon cards. Valuable. I don't know. I don't know. It's cool.
And jewelry. You can love something because it's valuable.
But he said, then there's a kind of love that gives you value.
And he pulled out this disgusting little teddy bear.
It was his mom's teddy bear, and then it was his teddy bear.
And he said, it's been around since, like, World War II. It looked like it, and it looked like it smelled like it. You know what I'm saying?
Like, had a look about it, and he held it, and he said that it is not of value because of it.
But he has carried that little toy. He has slept with it as a child. He's loved it. It's been a comfort for him. And his love gave this little bear its worth.
This is the kind of love that we're putting our roots into.
This is the kind of love that we are building a foundation upon that it is. It's not that there is, like, intrinsic value because I'm so great or there's so much for me to offer, but there is value. Because the God of the universe who created everything, he looks at me and he chose me.
He looks at you and he loves you. There is a value that because we are worth something, because he is loving us.
And so when I'm thinking about this rejection and being collateral damage, there's a reality that when we are rooted and grounded in this love, that gives us worth, that gives us value, that there's something unshakable about a church.
There's something constant and consistent.
There's a love of God that no matter what someone does or does not say about me, no matter what love someone does or does not give me, there is a value in me because of who my Heavenly Father says that I am.
And when we are rooted and grounded in his truth, in his love, a love that gives value, a love that fills. A love that says, I know you, and I see you, and I am here.
We have a God who is near. He is not far. He is near.
Something happens in our processing mechanism when we believe in this kind of love.
You see, when I felt rejected, it made Me start questioning a lot of things.
It wasn't just like, are you good enough?
Clearly you're not.
But it made me start to like question everything.
I felt like it was like the enemy.
Does God really love you?
Is this really worth it?
There have been things in my life that I haven't processed well. And if I'm honest, the shrapnel still in my heart as a 43 year old woman.
But the things that I felt deeply, talked to a trusted friend, and then processed with the love of God, it's lost its sting.
I felt it deeply.
Life hurts.
People are going to hurt you.
I talked to a trusted friend.
Cause sometimes it's just the talking therapy, you know, you just need to get it out. Cause it's in there.
And then I processed with the love of God.
I remember I came to this church. I've told you guys this story before. I came to this church during one of these deep rejections of my life. And I sat in this front row and it was like six in the morning. I couldn't sleep all night. I was just sick. I couldn't think about anything else. You know, the feeling like it's that consuming kind of hurt.
And I came and I sat in this front row and I just said, I'm not leaving until you speak to me.
I'm not leaving. I need you more than I need anything else.
And I just started in Psalms because that's where a lot of broken heart happens. In the book of Psalms you see a lot of people in pain. So I just, I just started in psalms by Psalms 56.
I wish I was joking.
I heard, I just heard for this. I know that God is for me.
And in those moments I felt like nobody was for me.
But I started processing with that whisper, God is for me.
And I think what we need is when we are broken and when we're struggling, we need to look at Scripture and say, what does God tell us about us?
And if you really want to get some clarity on your identity, I want you to look at Ephesians 1 and 2.
And I just want you to go to Ephesians when you have time. And I want you just to like take out a marker, take out something. And I just want you to circle anytime that Paul says something about how God feels for you.
See, rejection says you aren't worth much.
But in Ephesians, God says, I chose you.
Rejection says you don't belong.
But God says, you are my sons and daughters.
Rejection says you're unlovable.
But God says You are loved with a great love.
I want to define this love. It's agape in Greek. And this idea isn't just an emotion, it's not just a feeling.
It's this self sacrificing love.
It's a love where the other person has more importance. This love that. It's like the care for this person is the deepest value.
A selfless love.
And when we think about this love, it's hard to really feel it because we know love by how people have loved us. And even I think I am the best mom in the whole world, minus my mama.
And I haven't loved my kids complete. I haven't loved them. Sometimes I wish I could take stuff back.
Do you know the feeling like, I wish I didn't say that. I wish I didn't get annoyed so fast. There, there is a love that, that is deeper, a love that is richer. It's this love that I want to try to find this definition that it's seeking the highest good in the one loved. The emphasis is on unconditional commitment.
When we are rooted and grounded in that kind of love and understand that is the love of a mighty God and that's how he feels towards you, it's unconditional commitment.
It's unconditional love.
We can feel like we don't deserve much, but God tells us you are saved by grace.
We can feel like this pain that you're dead to them.
But in his mercy, he made us alive in Jesus Christ.
There are things that we have to replace some of this brokenness with.
And if I'm really gonna understand this unconditional love, this highest value on this unconditional commitment by a God, then I have to start speaking it.
Ephesians 1 and 2, use it.
There was a disciple in the disciples.
Go figure.
If you want more good theology like that, you just come to midweek every week. Okay?
There are two brothers and they had this nickname. They were the Sons of Thunder. And the idea in this nickname, the best we can understand from the text is that, you know, thunder has a presence about it. Right. I think our family might be called the Family of Thunder because we're so loud when we get together. You're not missing the conversation, okay? Because we are scream talking over everybody.
And these men, they had this presence about them and they were the sons of thunder. And there's this time where Jesus goes into somewhere and this group kind of denied him.
And the sons of Thunder, John was one of them. He said, do you want us to call Fire down from heaven and destroy them.
This is the Sons of Thunder church.
They don't just start the fight, they finish it. Okay? They have a reputation about them, and so the Bible gives them this nickname. But slowly, something starts to happen in the life of John.
Day after day, he's spending time with Jesus.
Day after day, little by little, something's happening on the inside.
And he writes three times in the Book of John, I am the one that Jesus loved.
That was his nickname for himself.
I am the one that Jesus loved.
And I'm telling you tonight, church, that collateral damage can be painful.
But there is a God who works things out.
And I processed these pains. And three or four years ago, I was thinking about this, and I was like, I felt like collateral damage. But if I'm honest, right now, I feel like it's collateral beauty.
I feel like what I thought was going to take me out, it turned into something that the beauty and dignity and strength of God was working within me.
I've talked to so many people in counseling that just come, and they're saying, I would never want to go through this again. But here's what I found on the other side.
I want to put a definition, this is just a working definition in my head of collateral beauty. Can we pop it up?
The beauty, strength, and depth of love that God reveals to us in hard situations to work all things together for good.
Something happens in the deepest pains of our life when we process with God that we get a better understanding of his strength.
We get a better understanding of the depth of love that he has for us.
And I think what happens is he reveals to us in these hardest moments, like the moments that should take you out turn into the exact moments where you find the depth of God's love.
And in verse, Ephesians 33, 19, 18, it says this.
May we have the strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses the knowledge there. There is an immeasurable love that God offers us.
And if we can process with him and we just say, father, this is hard.
I'm not leaving until you speak to me.
We ask him, can you reveal something? If. If this hurt, if you can use it in some way for good? Because that is a promise in Scripture.
Can you reveal it to me?
Can you help me understand the depth of your love for me? When I feel wiped out by the people that meant the most to me?
When I'm longing for something different?
Can you speak to me and reveal something to me.
How many of you have been in life and it's not the moments that are going good that really, truly shape you. It's the moments where you've overcome something big.
Those are the most defining moments.
And I think for so many of us, there's a reality that, like, we haven't processed well.
We haven't processed well.
And I think sometimes we have to go back.
Sometimes we have to say that shrapnel does not belong there anymore.
God is not making us collateral damage.
He reclaims it.
He reclaims what's lost. He reclaims what hurts. He reclaims what's broken.
And he does something and he turns it into collateral beauty.
And I know beauty's not a super manly word, but there is a truth in it.
There's a depth in it that what once was going to take us out, he revealed something better.
I was listening today to the song the band is about to play, and it's called oh, How He Loves Us.
And I was just wondering, like, who wrote it and why?
Like, how did he get here to this song?
And in the song, there's just a repetitive nature. Oh, how he loves us.
Oh, how he loves us.
I'd sing it, but I did not give my daughter my voice.
And it's interesting because this song was not written with ease.
The writer of this song, he had a group of friends who had gotten in a terrible car accident.
And he got a call late that night that his best friend didn't make it.
And he said, I couldn't sleep all night. And I just. I got up early and I took out the pen and he said, if I'm honest, I wrote this, Matt.
I wrote it because of the pain.
And he said, this song isn't like the hot pink God. You see, this isn't like this happy.
This is. This is a song about love that breaks you.
A song that, in your most brokenness, trying to understand the immeasurable love of God.
He said, I in tears. He was crying. He said, I just. I was so angry. And I'm writing this song because something inside of me understood at a deeper level how much he loved me.
He had a verse that he wrote just for his friend. And he said if Stephen was here, he would stop. He would tell me to stop being mad at God because he is so good.
And something happened in the writing of this song that even death can make you feel like collateral damage sometime.
Can make you feel like you've lost the people you love the most. How are you supposed to live? Like you are left with the pain.
But he said in writing, it is one of the most healing processes he ever did because he was honest with God.
God knew.
And whatever your darkest day is, whatever your moments of pain are, there is a God who knows.
There is a God who wants to work things together for good.
There is a generation now. What's funny is the night his friend died, he was speaking. Speaking at a conference for youth. And he said, if my death would make a difference for this generation, I would die tonight.
And now this song.
If you knew our mission trip, hundreds of kids have gone. It's like the anthem for a generation to sing out to Jesus Christ.
It's an anthem for a generation to seek God, to understand that even in the pain and even in the midst of it all, that he loves you. Church.
That he's big enough to hold it. He's big enough to understand.
He's big enough.
His love is unsearchable. It's as far as from the east as to the west.
There's a picture of. I wish we could understand the breadth of and the width and the length and the depth. But it's immeasurable, Church.
It's everywhere.
It's all around us.
And there is a God that knows you and sees you, and he values you because his love gives you value.
And so as we sing this, it doesn't have to be pretty.
It can be honest.
As we sing this, I want it to be our authentic heart that trusts God.
It says, I want to know the fullness of God within me.
I want to process different.
I want to trust different.
I want to seek him differently.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: Sam.
[00:33:08] Speaker C: He is jealous for me.
Love's like a hurricane. I am a tree bending beneath weight of his wind and mercy.
All of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory.
Realize just how beautiful you are and how great your affections are for me.
[00:33:47] Speaker A: Oh,
[00:33:49] Speaker C: how he loves us so oh, how he loves us how he loves he loves us so.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: He is jealous for me Loves like a hurricane I am a tree bending beneath weight of his wind and mercy oh, all of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions he crips my blood Glory I realize just how beautiful you are and how great your affections are for me.
Oh, how he loves us so oh, how he loves us how he loves us so, Lord oh, how he loves us oh, how he loves us oh, how he love and we are his portion and he is our prize Drawn to redemption by the Grace in his eyes.
Grace is in a ocean we're all sinking so heaven meets up like enough to see. Cause my heart beats by the inside of my chest. I don't have the time to maintain these regrets. When I think about the way he loves us.
Oh how he loves us.
Oh how he loves us.
Oh how he loves. Oh how he loves us.
Oh how he loves us.
Oh how he love.
Yes, he loves. Yes he love us.
Oh how he love us.
Oh how he love love how he loves.
[00:37:39] Speaker C: Oh how he loves.
Oh how he loves.
Oh how he loves.
[00:37:57] Speaker B: John repeated to himself, I am the one that Jesus loves.
I am the one that Jesus loves.
Tonight I want you to close your eyes right here, right now, and I want you to say, I am the one that Jesus loves. Let's say it together.
I am the one that Jesus loves.
I don't know what regret you might have.
But you are the one that Jesus loves. So it's time to let it go.
I don't know what pain has stopped you. But you are the one who Jesus loves. So it's time to start walking in that love.
You are the one that Jesus loves.
It is a life changing thought.
Father in heaven, I pray with all my heart that you will help us.
That you will help us to process pain. Different that you will help us to process, Father, that we can feel it fully, that we can talk to a trusted friend. But more than anything, Father, I pray that we process it in your love that has no end.
It's immeasurable, Father. And I just. I pray that there is something inside of us that will believe with everything we are. That we are the ones that you love because of it.
I pray we will create a more stable future.
I pray that there will be deeper inner peace within our soul.
I pray that better decisions will be made because we are trusting you.
Will you be our God and we will be your people.
In your mighty and awesome son's name, we pray. Amen. God bless you, church.
