Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] How is everybody tonight?
[00:00:04] I am excited. It is going to be an awesome week. If you walked in and you noticed the curtains, you saw our night to shine decorations have begun.
[00:00:14] Our team has been working and God, we are praying that he just shows up and blesses the socks off of every man and woman that walks through the door. Amen. Let me pray.
[00:00:29] Dear Heavenly Father, I love you so very much.
[00:00:35] Father, I love the line that you always knew there was a better me, but you loved me like I was.
[00:00:43] It permeates my soul.
[00:00:47] And tonight I pray that you will help us as we talk about families, as we talk about our role, Father, that you will open our hearts to hearing, that you will open our mind to healing, and that we will become something that you've always known we could be.
[00:01:12] In your son's mighty name, we pray. Amen.
[00:01:16] Okay, so we are starting a brand new sermon series and I'm calling it Family Matters. I'm going to date myself a little bit. When I was younger, there was tgif. Anyone, anyone. And there was a show called Family Matters. The Winslow family. You know what I'm saying? And the way the show would work was there was always a problem and then there was always a solution. They would always work it out in the end. And what I believe is that God designed family. It is his good idea.
[00:01:55] But there is a real truth that opposition happens. There's a real truth that there are family dysfunctions in every single one of us. I was literally trying to find a healthy family so I could use it from scripture.
[00:02:17] That's where you think you'd find it, right? There's gotta be a healthy family in scripture. There's literally dysfunction in every family in scripture.
[00:02:25] If you know of a healthy one, let me know. Because Mama was looking and couldn't find it. And what it showed me was, is there's hope, then for all of us, if this is God's good idea and we come up against conflict, then there is hope.
[00:02:42] And I want to start tonight with the lens of it's never too late.
[00:02:50] My daughter Lex, she told me about this podcast she was listening to. And the interviewer was talking to this person who said, no, you don't understand. The hurt is too deep, the pain is too real. It's been going on for so long that there's no healing.
[00:03:09] And so then the interviewer said, okay, well, let's just say that your mom or your dad, whoever caused the pain, I'm sorry, I can't remember the story. Mom, dad, I don't remember either. Okay. We don't remember details. And let's just say that they called you.
[00:03:26] And let's say in this phone call that they said, I've been thinking about your life.
[00:03:33] I've been thinking about how you grew up and how our family was. And man, I just wanted to say I am so incredibly sorry for who I was.
[00:03:47] The interviewer said, would that affect you? And through tears, the person was like, yeah, that would change my life.
[00:03:56] And so I want to say today, no matter how old you are, no matter what family dynamic you have, because there's different dynamics, you can be like my family, where husband and wife were not blended by the grace of God.
[00:04:14] We have three children who have met their people, their forever people. I've got a grandbaby. Some of you might be single parents. You might have been raised in a single parent home. Some of you might have left home altogether and created your own family unit. Some of you might be single. And when full disclosure today. I've been working on this series for a while and I had an idea of filming my kids and talking about the family dynamics because we're kind of on the other side.
[00:04:52] And so we prepared, we went out to dinner and the dinner was to just talk about, like, okay, what. What did God do really well in this family?
[00:05:05] Like, what was healthy that we can talk about?
[00:05:11] And we talked for a couple of hours and through lots of tears and realities of the things we didn't do right, we filmed the next day or that weekend. And then as we watched the film back, we realized that context matters.
[00:05:34] As I interviewed my three adult children, we were able to look back with retrospect. And as we watched the video, it sounded perfect.
[00:05:42] It sounded like perfect.
[00:05:48] And it's through the context of our life that our story has power.
[00:05:57] You know what I'm saying? It's through the fight, it's through the struggle, that the end result means something.
[00:06:09] And I think most of you know, Jacob and I, we had Lex when we were in high school. We were 16 years old.
[00:06:17] And that's a dynamic man.
[00:06:22] I was trying to find statistics, I can't even find statistics for what it looks like to get pregnant in high school, be with the same man, and now married 22 years later, can't even find the statistic.
[00:06:44] But man, that brought shame, that brought guilt growing up.
[00:06:54] And then Jacob and I got married. And we're two broken people because we're humans and we have issues. And now we've got two parents who are young trying to figure their own selves out. We got married when we were 20. We had two more kids back to back. So by 23, we had three kids. And issues.
[00:07:17] We had issues.
[00:07:20] And to say that we're even still married is by the grace of God only.
[00:07:30] To say that our children are healthy and love God is not because we're something special.
[00:07:40] It's because God's grace shined on my family.
[00:07:45] It's because we tried to be as intentional as possible.
[00:07:51] And as I was thinking about this family series and context is king, I didn't want to start with my kids.
[00:08:02] I wanted to start with me.
[00:08:07] And when you are looking at your family dynamic, here's what my husband and I believe with our whole hearts. We believe to change the world, it starts in your home.
[00:08:18] We believe that if you want a healthy future and you want the world to get better, then you better start right where you're at and where God's planted you.
[00:08:29] I'm going to talk tonight about you.
[00:08:33] I want to make it personal because here's what I believe. God wants to do something in our life.
[00:08:43] I believe that God wants to do something special and that God gave you your spouse for a reason.
[00:08:53] God gave you your exact children for a reason, or your exact dynamic, whatever it might be. He has given it to you for a reason.
[00:09:04] And I was looking and thinking about, about what really, when you get down to it, what really matters in life.
[00:09:18] I took our staff through this scripture because it's affected me so much. And it's the greatest commandment.
[00:09:25] Jesus strips away everything. And he says, listen, if you really want to know what matters in life, this is it. You'll find it in Matthew 22. And he said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest in the first commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
[00:09:50] As I was reading this scripture over and over and over again because I've always simplified it. Love God, love people.
[00:09:58] Boom, simplified. Greatest thing you can do in your life. But when I'm going to school and one of the things they say to look for in scripture is when things repeat, and in two verses, you see the word you or yours eight times.
[00:10:17] You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your your mind. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There's a repeat. And so when there's a repeat, you gotta pay attention.
[00:10:33] And I think what God is trying to show us is you play a Role.
[00:10:39] Okay, this is gonna be a sermon on ownership.
[00:10:44] I play a role in my life.
[00:10:48] I play a role in my family. I play a role. And oftentimes I think what happens is we like to blame other people.
[00:10:58] We like to push things under the rug and not even talk about it.
[00:11:02] We carry trauma and we carry things in our life, but we never stop and say, okay, what's my role in this?
[00:11:14] And so if we play a role, then the question is, if you're gonna love God and you're gonna love others, who taught you what love looks like?
[00:11:31] If we're lucky. We had an awesome role model.
[00:11:37] I'm a lucky one. My mom and dad taught me love in an incredible way.
[00:11:43] They taught me selflessness. They taught me a God first mentality. They taught me literally how to fight for each other.
[00:11:54] But what happens in most families, including mine, is we aren't just taught things. Get caught.
[00:12:07] You following me?
[00:12:10] I caught more than what my parents tried to teach me.
[00:12:15] It wasn't just lip service of what they said, but I watched them. I watched. And that's how I learned love in relationships with my siblings. I caught how to love. You learn it from somewhere, but often it's not what people say, it's what they do.
[00:12:39] And one of the crazy things is we're broken people.
[00:12:50] And when broken people get married and have families, a lot of the times what happens is we generationally pass things down.
[00:13:05] So my husband and I years ago, we did a class called Intimate Encounters.
[00:13:14] And in this class, it was like a 13 week, maybe 16 weeks, I can't quite remember class. We learned this idea that we all carry baggage.
[00:13:29] Can I get an amen?
[00:13:31] Can I get a real amen? You know what I'm saying? Okay, we're going to be transparent tonight. We're going to be real. Okay? We all bring baggage with us.
[00:13:44] We bring things that we have caught along the way.
[00:13:51] And I, being a broken girl, take things that I caught from my parents.
[00:13:59] Things like, just kidding, catch me privately. I'll tell you then.
[00:14:08] But I've caught things from my parents and I carry it.
[00:14:16] I've caught things from relationships in the past and I carry it.
[00:14:23] I've caught things from my current relationship, if you notice, it's the biggest one.
[00:14:30] We had real issues.
[00:14:34] And I try to do life carrying the luggage.
[00:14:41] I try to do life carrying the trauma.
[00:14:47] And I carry things like anger.
[00:14:51] Someone see, my parents didn't have to teach me how to be angry.
[00:14:58] We catch it. Yes.
[00:15:02] I've learned things and I think we all have our ways. I was listening to this sermon and it was very convicting. And the idea was you all have a fight style of how you fight.
[00:15:14] And mine, it's gonna be on the Internet.
[00:15:21] I go home sometimes when I'm done preaching and I'm like, did I just say that out loud? And then I have a stomach ache for the whole next day.
[00:15:28] I won't be watching this sermon back. Okay? My style is I don't think you really understand the pain you caused me. So I'm gonna shame you until you do anybody.
[00:15:44] Okay. Thanks for the honesty. Thanks. Two people.
[00:15:48] I'm gonna really let you know you hurt me. Why? It hurt me. And I don't label it as shame, but that's what I do.
[00:15:58] And I shame you until, well, shoot, you feel really bad now about it, and I really make sure you get it. You know, I think some of us have. We've caught ways of fighting and it's like the quiet treatment, the passive aggressive anger where everybody knows you're mad but you're not sleeping saying a word. Amen.
[00:16:24] Okay. Some of us along the way, our parents didn't love us the way we were. Some of us, our dads left and we feel deep sense of rejection. And we carry it. And we take the luggage with us. We take the trauma and the baggage. Some of us, we have body image issues. Some of us, some of us, it can be caught from other people about, I don't feel good enough. I don't feel beautiful enough. I'm never thin enough. Whatever the whole thing is, there's body issues deep within us. And then we tuck it in and we carry it and we make sure that wherever we go, it's there.
[00:17:12] Some stuff is so private, no one knows.
[00:17:19] Some stuff is so traumatic and so hurtful, it's tucked away for life.
[00:17:34] And when we think about relationships and the trauma we carry, we have to start figuring out how do I start unpacking this?
[00:17:48] How do I start being really honest with myself and saying, okay, I wish I didn't catch this, but I caught it.
[00:17:57] I wish this wasn't part of my life, but it is.
[00:18:01] I wish I wasn't insecure and broken in this way, but it's a reality.
[00:18:08] And some of you are thinking, I'm pretty good, right? I'm pretty good. It's not that bad.
[00:18:16] I just pray that you open your heart.
[00:18:20] You open your heart to what God might want to heal in you in this series, that you'll open your heart to true healing.
[00:18:32] My deepest desire for us Is that we reconcile.
[00:18:38] My truest desire for us is that we do not transfer the pain, but instead we transform it.
[00:18:49] Because that's the other thing I see in scripture time and time and time again, is it's generationally passed down. It's not transformed. It's not taken care of. It's not healed. And unknowingly, I'm giving it to my child.
[00:19:07] This is easy to talk about for me, so I'm going to use this a couple times. But the body image, I never felt whatever enough. And so I would get ready, and I'd be like, ugh, disgusting. But I have two little girls who watched. I have two little girls who heard it over and over and over again.
[00:19:29] But what happens to those little girls when they start to look like Mom?
[00:19:34] What happens to those little girls when the same thing I'm saying, disgusting. Is the same shape or form or eyes or whatever that they have.
[00:19:46] I am transferring something that needs transformed.
[00:19:54] There's this verse that, it says, train your child in the way they should go. And that's a good verse when you know that the training is healthy. But what happens when you were trained improperly?
[00:20:06] What happens when they did maybe the very best they knew how, but it was broken.
[00:20:17] See, there are things in my life that I have had to unpack with a friend. There's things I've had to unpack with my family.
[00:20:26] There's things I've had to unpack with a counselor. Because sometimes you just can't see clearly, and you need outside sources. You need someone else to speak into your life. You need truth that sometimes it's too muddy to see.
[00:20:44] And sometimes I've literally had to draw a line in the sand. I had to do this with my husband's. The baggage we carry. I literally had to say, from this day forward, I will no longer carry it.
[00:21:00] I drew a line in the sand, and I walked away from it.
[00:21:04] See, my problem was, I would say, it's forgiven. I would say, we were good. But secretly, when something else happened, I brought it all back up.
[00:21:20] Anybody else?
[00:21:22] Okay. I have a stomach ache preaching this. I'm gonna be vulnerable. I need some amends tonight. Deal.
[00:21:29] I'm telling you all the things, but I consciously had to say. I'm sick of living this way.
[00:21:40] I'm sick of shaming him. I'm sick of hurting him. I want to be his best friend. And this pain I can no longer carry with me.
[00:21:49] God, by your grace, by your goodness, will you help me to forgive and move on?
[00:21:57] I didn't draw that. That line in the sand by myself. There is a verse that I learned young. I got it tattooed on my wrist young because I needed reminded over and over and over and over again. And the verse is, you are more than a conqueror to through Christ who loves you.
[00:22:15] And so my heartbeat is okay. If a fight is what the unholy one wants, the fight is what he's gonna get. Can I get an amen?
[00:22:26] If there's a fight that you are going to pick, here's what you're gonna know. As a mom, I will fight harder for my babies than anybody in the world.
[00:22:37] As a wife, I will fight harder for that gorgeous man.
[00:22:42] Delicious. Yes.
[00:22:48] Thanks, Brad. Good point. Good point.
[00:22:52] I will fight for him with all I have. You hear me? My God has given me the greatest command, and it is to love him, to seek him, to trust in him, to follow him. And because I love him, I. I will love my family. Well, parents, hear me.
[00:23:15] I want to be so real.
[00:23:17] I'm going to talk as a parent, and then I'm going to talk as a daughter.
[00:23:21] Parents, your child should never have to initiate health, ever. It should be you.
[00:23:31] Please hear me.
[00:23:34] I don't care what perspective my kids have. If I hurt them and they're hurt by it, I am their mom, and I will initiate health.
[00:23:48] I will go to them. I will apologize. I will fight for them, because that is what parents do. You hear me, parents? I sat in that restaurant with my kids. We cried. And do you know what was bubbling up inside of me? Defensiveness.
[00:24:07] I wanted to tell them all the reasons why.
[00:24:11] But do you know what didn't matter?
[00:24:13] The reasons why? Do you know what mattered? That they felt loved and heard.
[00:24:21] And that they knew more than anything I was, was for them, that I loved them, that I would have their backs no matter what.
[00:24:31] And if an apology is needed, stop waiting for your kids. You are the parents.
[00:24:41] Amen.
[00:24:43] If you are a child, it's time we start showing a little grace.
[00:24:54] I was in my 40s when I realized this is how my parents felt when they were in their 40s.
[00:25:02] And I realized I don't know anything.
[00:25:06] And I am required to know a lot, and I am doing my very best.
[00:25:12] And I thought back on my parents when I had, you know, they were the best. They were amazing. But we were a real family. I had beef, you know, and as an adult, I'm looking back and I'm like, gosh, they were doing the very best they knew how.
[00:25:32] I know for some of you, that isn't True.
[00:25:37] I know for some of you, that wasn't your reality.
[00:25:47] But when I take ownership of my life, I have to draw the line.
[00:25:54] I have to say, from this moment forward, I'm moving forward.
[00:26:02] From this moment forward, I'm not staying stuck with the baggage of blaming my parents or blaming whoever because I have to take ownership of my life.
[00:26:13] Something Taylor reminded me in the video was my dad and I did a podcast, and my dad talked about, to live your most authentic life, you are the author of your life.
[00:26:27] If there has been trauma, it's time to get healing.
[00:26:32] If there has been hurt and pain, it's time to start forgiving. Because I am the author of my life. I might have had no control what happened to me when I was younger. I might have had no control of the hurt or the pain that people caused. But this day forward, I have control of my life.
[00:26:53] I have control of how I love other people.
[00:26:57] I have control of who I am in Jesus Christ.
[00:27:04] And there needs to be a line where you say, from this day forward, it's not the blame game anymore.
[00:27:12] From this day forward, I take ownership of my life.
[00:27:17] Do you remember in the beginning that we said context matters?
[00:27:27] The context of love matters more than anything.
[00:27:35] Why would we love God with all of our life? I mean, he's asking for all of it. Heart, mind, body, soul, strength. He's asking for it first. John tells us that we are only able to love because God first loved us.
[00:28:03] Context is king.
[00:28:07] I am only able to love because I have a God in heaven who, when I was 15 and 16 years old, he found me.
[00:28:18] He caught me.
[00:28:22] And when I felt so alone, so unloved, so unworthy, he wrapped his arms around me and he said, I love you.
[00:28:31] I catch you. You are mine.
[00:28:37] When my marriage was struggling and I was in so much pain and we just didn't know how to figure it out, God caught us.
[00:28:46] And he said, I am for you.
[00:28:50] And he took my family in his arms and he caught us.
[00:28:56] The love of God, when you truly, authentically know him, it transforms you.
[00:29:05] You hear me, church? When you know the authentic love of Jesus Christ, you do not live in an obedient way because it's duty. You live because it's gratitude from the overflow of my heart where I just say I didn't deserve any of it. But you have been so, so good. You are worthy of it all.
[00:29:38] When I look for his faithfulness in my life, I find it.
[00:29:44] If I look for pain, guess what I find?
[00:29:48] Pain.
[00:29:50] We love because he first loved us.
[00:29:56] Start looking for his love in your life.
[00:30:02] Start looking for his healing touch.
[00:30:07] Start asking for him to catch you.
[00:30:11] I understand doubts. I understand questions. I understand even, like, the pain in life can be so real that it's like, I don't good for you that you caught. He caught you. I don't feel it.
[00:30:27] Then tonight is a really good night to just start asking to see God in your life.
[00:30:34] Tonight is a really good night to say, I don't want to do it alone anymore.
[00:30:40] I want to take ownership of this one.
[00:30:44] I want to heal.
[00:30:47] I want to know a God who would love me.
[00:30:51] I want to know a God who would transform my family.
[00:30:56] I want to know a God that all things are possible.
[00:31:03] And I just ask that we close our eyes and we just take a minute to connect to God.
[00:31:14] In a minute, we're going to come and we are going to do the Lord's Supper together.
[00:31:21] And the Lord's Supper is a time where we remember who God is.
[00:31:31] We remember that he is God, that he has a plan and we reconnect to his plan for our life.
[00:31:46] I want to take a minute and just ask God to meet us. Exactly. Wherever you're at, this is going to be. I'm stretching this series out, so this is probably going to run through April.
[00:32:01] And my prayer is that you will take the first step of ownership, of seeing what needs to be healed in you, what needs to be transformed, so that God can do what only God can do.
[00:32:26] Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that as we come before you, we will find you.
[00:32:40] I pray for those who have carried trauma long enough that you will help them open up the baggage and start sorting through it. Father, I pray for those who need to just draw a line in the sand and say no more.
[00:33:05] Pray for those who have never felt you, that in this moment you will meet them, that you will call them by name, that you will be their God and their leading person in their life. Father, where hurt and trauma have left wounds, I pray that you are a God who heals and you heal the brokenhearted. You bind us up, Father, because you are a father to the fatherless.
[00:33:43] You protect the widows. You bring us into your family. And my hope and my trust, Father, is in you and you alone.
[00:33:53] I pray during this song that you start to raise the ashes.
[00:34:01] Because from the ashes, Father, you make beautiful things. And I've known it, I've seen it, I believe it. And I desire it so, so badly for this church. I desire it so badly for those who are listening online meet us.
[00:34:19] Show us your way and help us to love like we have never loved before.
[00:34:26] In your son's name we pray. Amen.
