Hot Seat Model: Getting Across the Table (Eric)

In the final sermon of the Hot Seat Model series, Pastor Eric teaches on what it looks like to help someone move across the table—from the side of false beliefs and chosen relief to the side of Jesus’ story, true identity, and life in the Kingdom. He focuses on how our God-given longings often get turned into demands, and how that shift can lead us away from trust and toward control.

Pastor Eric encourages the community to rely on the Holy Spirit—both in listening to God and in learning how to walk with one another. He emphasizes that helping someone isn’t about fixing them but staying present, asking good questions, and pointing them back to Jesus.

The sermon also includes specific ways to help people reconnect with the gospel: questions that surface what they believe, who they think they are, and what it might look like to respond to God rather than react to pain. The goal isn’t just awareness—it’s renewal. And that happens best in community, with the Spirit’s help.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04: 0:12

Hello, my name is Eric Seaton, and I am one of the pastors at the Village Church. The following podcast is a ministry of the village church. We hope that it inspires you, that it draws you closer to Jesus, and it opens your eyes to the possibilities of living in the kingdom. Enjoy and God bless. Right, am I on? Thanks, Beth. I love it. Let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you for this uh community. Thank you for the opportunity to be with them and to talk about really good things. And I just ask that you would uh just help us rest in you, help us to listen, help us to walk away with the things that uh you desire us to know, the ways that you want to build um life into us and change the way we think. We thank you that you care so deeply for us, that you pursue us, that you died for us, Jesus. You rose from the dead, and we're excited about celebrating that next week. And so we ask all of these things in your holy name. Amen. All right, so welcome to the village. If you don't know, my name is Eric, like everybody announced, um, and I'm one of the pastors here, and we are doing this weird thing called the Hot Seat model, and it's the last week. So, yay! So if you're new with us, you're like, what the Hot Seat model? I apologize. You missed five sermons, um, and this is the sixth one. But hopefully, as you listen, you will at least get some sense of what we're talking about. Um so let me just quickly give you a little tiny summary. The point of the hot seat model is to help you as an individual and as a community move closer to the gospel and understand the gospel better and see how to apply it in your life and the different kinds of choices that you have to make. And so it's all about the gospel. In fact, I think John Calvin kind of illustrates what this model that we have been talking about for five weeks so far really is all about. And he says the gospel is not a doctrine of the tongue, but of life. It cannot be grasped by reason and memory only, but it is fully understood when it possesses the whole soul and penetrates to the inner recesses of the heart. That is the objective of this model, this discipleship thing that we practice in our community, is to see the gospel massaged into our lives, to go into the deep recesses, that we can help one another do that. So the gospel is important. One of the things, though, as we work on this and as we walk through the model that I want you to understand, and that is, is that you, as you heard read, are a friend of God. You're a friend of Jesus. And I don't know if we always think of it that way, but you are a friend of Jesus. I'll reread what was read to us earlier. John 15, 15 says, I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my father, I have made known to you. You're a friend of God. And so as you work together, have I died out? Good. Okay. As you work together through this model and as your community together, you are friends with God, and you are helping other people become friends with God and grow in that friendship, which makes you a practitioner, so to speak, of the faith. You are someone who practices this. And all of us are in different places in our friendship with God and our ability to practice the gospel. Some of us are really new at this idea of walking with Jesus and being a friend. Some of us have been doing it a while and we're very steadfast in it. And others of us are, we've been Christians for a long time and we are really well-rooted. We're like big oak trees, right? We are big oak trees. So, why do I lay this out for you? Well, for a very practical reason. I don't know how many of you do yearly Bible reading plans and how successful you are on them. This is not an official view of the village. This is just my view. You shouldn't do them. If you read through the Bible once or twice, that's great. Like the whole Bible. Um, oh, I just made some heresy there. Set some heresy, and everybody's like, what is he talking about? Here's my reasoning. Most of you probably start out in Genesis and you end in Deuteronomy and you give up. And the reality is, is you can't understand that gigantic Old Testament, which is 75% of the Bible, without being really gospel fluent. And so here's my suggestion. For a while, put aside the reading through the Bible. And if you are new in the faith, I would like to suggest to you that for a year you read through the Gospel of Matthew and the letter to James over and over and over and over again. So you can get to the point where you can tell me. In Matthew chapter 19, I think they talk about divorce and da-da-da-da-and-da. You can tell me everything about Matthew. And here's why, if you're new, why I think this is important. First, Matthew introduces the life and teachings of Jesus in clear and structured ways. There are good stories. You've got the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5, and the early church would memorize that. And so it's something that you can link yourself to the ancient space, but it also emphasizes love, obedience, and what it means to be in God's kingdom, which Jesus refers to as the kingdom of heaven. So I would read over Matthew, and then I would jump to uh to James. And the beauty about James is it's so practical. If you're like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do, James will tell you what to do. He has no problem doing it. So he's very much focused on practical living, and he challenges you to have your faith match your behavior. So I would encourage you to just read those two books over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And after you've gotten, you know, maybe five, six times through, pick up a simple commentary and then read through it with the commentary and then go back over and over and over again. Okay? If you are one of those steadfast people, then I would suggest that you go revisit the Gospel of John and Ephesians. And here's why. The Gospel of John is full of earthy stories of Jesus' interaction with people, like Nicodemus and the woman at the well. Like they're really earthy. If you want to know the emotion of Jesus and how he understands people, but he also clearly makes sure people know that he's God. So this is really helpful because if you're someone who's been walking with Jesus for a while, you need to know these things and have a command of them so you can begin to offer other people those and kind of internalize relationship with God. And I would recommend then that the letter you read is Ephesians. The beauty of Ephesians is that if the reformers like Calvin and Luther and Swingley actually focused their theology on this during the Reformation instead of Romans, they would have maybe not made all some of the mistakes they made. That's just another opinion of mine. Ephesians is so beautiful in the way that it lays out how we are to walk with Jesus. And it kind of gives us the big picture and it teaches us how to grow up in the faith, how to kind of deal with cognitive dissonance and develop unity. So if you're like, yeah, I'm kind of in the middle of my faith, do the same thing that I suggested for new people, but just read this over and over and over again. So it becomes something that you just can't help talking about because that's all you read. Right? That you actually make it part of you. And last, if you're an old rooted tree, I would recommend actually that you go to the Old Testament and that you read through the Psalms. And you read the Psalms over and over because the Psalms give voice to emotion, they give voice to anger and to joy, they give a broad understanding of God's sovereignty and the way he interacts with people. He shows you how to worship. And it is something that you need to internalize as an old rooted tree and help other people step into. And then I would recommend that the letter you read is 1 Peter. Because 1 Peter, he's the rock. If you people tell me this, I don't read Greek, but it is supposed to be the most beautiful piece of literature in the New Testament when it comes to the writing of it. But what I love about 1 Peter, and as I've been reading it this year over and over again, is that it helps make sense of suffering and trials. It helps you understand how to live in the bigger world. So my encouragement then, the reason I would do this, say this, is that if you're gonna understand the Old Testament, you need to understand the gospels because you're gonna have to read the Old Testament through the Gospels. But second, if you are going to help people in the hot seat model, help people grow towards the gospel, a community that knows the gospel is able to assist one another in rooting ourselves in the gospel. And so the hot seat model is only as effective as you and I are willing to be immersed in the gospel itself. Alright? So, if you're new with us and you're like, what the heck is he talking about? Let me just quick lay it out and remind all of you, and this will be the last time, probably for the next 10 years. So, yay, all right, here we go. Unless you go to a pilgrim group or sit with someone to be discipled. But here it is. The hot seat model is just this little diagram that helps us process things, and we do it by starting with a problematic event, some kind of event in our life that we can actually describe. From as simple as some, as I said last week, someone cutting us off in traffic to maybe more complex. We come home from work, and our husband or our wife, when we say, when they say, How are you doing? And you said, Oh, I'm having a hard time, and they say, Yeah, me too. Everything's bad anyway, right? Like you have this moment where they don't hear you. Whatever. It could be any kind of thing that produces some form of a negative emotion in you. From fear to anxiety to despair, it's just emotion flies up, surprise, and attached to those emotions, you have false beliefs. And those false beliefs are about yourself, others, and God. So you build a narrative out of your negative experience of things based on some kind of event. The reason that we would even work through all of this is because you yourself already made a poor decision. You did. You chose something that wasn't good. Now, the reason that you did that, we say here, is that all of us go around with two questions in life and we ask everybody this. We say, Am I loved? Do I have impact? Right? We say it to our husbands, we say it to our kids, we say it to our wives, we say it to our friends, we say it to everyone. And when the answer is not satisfactory, we end up having a deep conversation with the enemy. And that usually works like this. You begin to hear tapes or you begin to hear your Spotify playlist, whatever it is, but it is hyperbole. You hear words like always and never about yourself, God, and others. And you also hear conversation and memory about, oh, and do you remember it happened this way in your past and it happened that way in your past? See, see, it's always this way, and here's the relief. Just get mad at them, just go eat some ice cream, just flip them off when they cut you off. Like, just do get some power back. Relief is simply getting some power, and all of us come up with some kind of justification. Why the hot seat is so important, and why you know Mark laid this out a couple weeks ago is that this table of decision, this moment that you have to decide, Jesus is sitting there in that decision, and he is setting a table and inviting you actually to choose what is good and what is right, to not choose relief, to not listen to the enemy, to actually step into the story of God and know that you're loved regardless of the circumstances, to understand who you are and your identity, and to live out a life of repentance in the kingdom of God, which is worship. And if we can't get there, then we aren't ruled by our negative emotions, and we are able to stand firm against the enemy in our mind and life. Now, what's the goal of the model? I just want to revisit this real fast from last week. The goal of the model is not to fix you, the goal of the model is not to make you feel better. The goal of the model is simply to do here what I have highlighted in yellow, to help you as a human being in this process be a person who sits at the Lord's feet. So that when the next event comes, if we can get you so rooted in the gospel, in the love for you, the identity, and what you're called to do, if we can get you so rooted in that, that when the opportunity to choose relief in a moment where there is a negative emotion, where there is an ache and emptiness, to choose to get up from that would be so brutal because you find a deep peace at the feet of Jesus. That doesn't mean it feels your emptiness. Because guess what? Your emptiness is never going away until you die. Because we live in a fallen world, and the best that you can get is a sacred discontent. That you know and experience the love of Jesus, but in a fallen world there is pain and suffering. And so we're trying to get you rooted in the gospel where you don't end up living a destructive life for you and others. So, what's my vision for the model's use? Sundays, the view the my vision for this is simply that you have this model in the back of your head, and you can easily ask good questions to get somebody to talk about something hard in their life for them to maybe offer you how it made them feel and what they're believing, and you can pray for them. You don't have to do the whole diagram. It's just in the back of your head, you kind of have this there, and you're able to encourage and pray for people. Inside of groups that we call pilgrim groups, that's where this is practiced and where healing and accountability can happen, where you learn to speak the gospel to one another, where you learn to take on the gospel, and where you are held accountable for living out as a priest in the kingdom of God. And I would argue to you in one-on-one discipleship, if you have ever met with me, I guarantee you all the time this is playing in the back of my head. This model. What's going on with this person? What kinds of experiences are they having in their life? What kind of conflict are they facing with the enemy? What where's the relief moving? Like what kind of relief do they take in their life? I may not be diagramming it for them, but I'm thinking about this and I'm asking questions, and I'm hoping I can have a community that's doing the same thing. So this is what today is about. So you have, and we're we're working as if you were in a group or you're sitting one-on-one with somebody, you've gotten to the point where you found somebody's problematic event. They've told you what their fear and anxiety is. You've laid out, okay, this is what you believe about yourself. You know, you are, they are, God is. You've got that false belief system. You've figured out sort of the hyperbolic language and how God has accelerated the emotion and what kind of relief they chose and how they justify it. You've got that down, right? You've got it. They've told you all that. We've the last five weeks, we've gone through questions and everything. How do you get across the table? How do you help that person now anchor themselves in the gospel? That's what we're going to talk about today. So, first thing that we have to remember, as I told you, is that when we're here, the overarching experience of all human beings is that question, am I loved? Do I have impact? Right? We can say that in a lot of different ways, but that's basically what it boils down to. And so the first thing we do is we work on helping people discover what they long for. Most people do not think about what they long for. And longing is a deep desire for love, purpose, and connection placed in us by God. Longing is good. And longings require usually waiting. It won't be fully met by people or relief, only by God's presence and timing. So that's what a longing is. Everybody has them, they happen in every event of life. Most of what happens, and the reason we end up in relief, is that we've taken a longing and we've made it a demand. Okay? And demand is a distorted longing. It's what happens when you stop trusting and you start controlling. So you have, I really hope that this happens too. If I do not have this happen, my life will not work. You must make it happen. Demand seeks relief not in a relationship. It uses it uses people or things to ease pain on our terms. And demand leads to sin, it justifies self-protection, and it blocks us from receiving what God actually wants to give. So for us to help someone get across the table, we have to figure out what their longing is. And we can do that by asking questions. So I have some questions here. I suggest you either get Jill's notes later or you take a picture of this because these are really helpful. But what were you really hoping someone would give you in that moment? So, what were you hoping your wife would give you in that moment when you came home and you said I had a hard day? And she said, Me too. What were you hoping? Because now you're just like, oh well, she doesn't care, right? But what were you hoping happened? Well, I I was hoping she would ask me how I was doing. And she didn't. What kind of love or care were you quietly reaching for? Same idea here. You can you can start hearing these. There is something we Want when we have some element of vulnerability or someone kind of puts a stopper on us, crushes us, gets in the way of something. What were you longing to hear, feel, or receive for them? What did your heart most need from the people around you? If you were fully honest, what good thing were you asking for, even if you didn't say it out loud? Look, this may feel touch touchy-feely, but let me just tell you something. The reason that the world suffers and the way and that we're all in the mess that we're in is that none of us have anyone who cares what we long for. It is a very healing thing to get someone to speak out what they long for and to help them cross that table and figure out what they're longing for. Alright. Second thing. And now I'm giving you instructions for context that maybe some of you aren't in, but I think this is important. Listening to the voice of Jesus through the Spirit. John 10, 27 says, My sheep listen to my voice, I know them, and they follow me. And John 14, 25 says, All this I have spoken while still with you, but the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Now, I don't know about you, but when I have a good friend or someone I feel who likes me, if I learn something new, I want to tell them. If Jesus is your friend and he is your perfect friend, guess what? Jesus really, really wants to tell you stuff. But you have to stop for a second. So here's one of the things that I would recommend that people do when walking more formally through this process. So you get somebody all the way down through the enemy side of the table. Maybe it's some heavy stuff they've been talking about. You stop. And you say, you know what? We're all friends of Jesus. So let's hold on to whatever scripture we've been reading. Because it's good to have scripture built into this. We're just going to sit for five minutes and we're going to ask the Spirit to tell us what Jesus wants us to know. And so you just sit there for five minutes and wait. Now, here's the beauty of something, of all things. You have a brain. And God created your brain. And guess how God communicates with you? By your brain. And most likely God communicates to you by your brain with random thoughts, with images, with visions. He does communicate that way because he wants to get things through, because he wants you to be able to be his voice to a person who's struggling. So for five minutes, if you'll just sit there and listen with that person, and then when you're done, if you're in a group or if you're just one-on-one, you can first say to that person, Did God say anything to you? And if not, you can ask everybody else, did you hear something? And you let that kind of begin helping you get across that table. It's allowing the spirit to come speak because a lot of times what human beings like to do is fix other people's problems. This model is not about fixing people's problems, it's about teaching people to be in relationship with Jesus. Alright. So getting across the table. As we said at the village, we say the gospel is story, identity, kingdom. We receive the story, we're given an identity, and we practice the kingdom. So the story is in direct opposition to the enemy's side. So the enemy is affirming your false beliefs, hyperbolically speaking about you, God, and others, and you are the center of the story. But for Jesus, Jesus' story has two places. It's got a reorientation place birth, death, resurrection, ascension, what all of that does for you. But it's a reorientation in that it tells you you have been living as the center of the story. The gospel invites you to have Jesus as the center and invites you to be part because it begins and ends with Jesus. But the second part of the story, and it's the part that you and I are not necessarily that familiar with, and this is why I really want you to read the gospels over and over again, is that it's the relational part. Jesus has multiple human interactions where he is engaging people's hurts, their brokenness, their rebellion, their stubbornness. And so we, if we know those stories, can begin to invite people to find themselves in the relational part of the story. To really say, oh no, Jesus is the center of the story, and where do I find myself in that? So here are some questions that you can ask people. If you were one of the people Jesus touched, noticed, or spoke to, who would you be in this moment? So in that hard moment, can you connect yourself to a story in the gospel? Which moment of Jesus' life, death, or resurrection feels most connected to what you've been experiencing right now? What might Jesus be forming in you right now that couldn't be formed in any other way? And here's the key. And the thing I didn't write up here is that the reorientation is that the Satan's side of the table, the enemy's side of the table, is so much built into you avoiding and running away from suffering. And Jesus' side of the table, oddly enough, is an invitation into and through suffering. Because suffering is what forms us into the people of God. First Peter says that very clearly. So second, we receive that story and find ourselves in it, but then we're given an identity when we believe it. And identity has two places, two kinds of things. It has family. All of us are sons, daughters, and children of God. And there are a lot of other identities, but it's important to understand that you get the identity of family. Because family means priority. Remember last week I told you if you get a flat tire on I-10 and you call me, I'm going to come help you. But if my son calls after that and says he has a flat tire and he's only next door, I'm going to call you back and say, I'm going to change the tire of my son first because he's my son, not because he's next door. And then I'll come help you. Being a child of God means you have priority, you have place. You actually sit in the seat of the firstborn. But second, you have a vocation, meaning you are a holy priest. We have read this over and over again out of 1 Peter 2 over the last five weeks. We've talked about priesthood. The way that you operate in this world is a priest, and that identity of child and priest is something that we have to get worked into us and understand what it means to live it out. So part of the process of helping someone move in that direction is to ask them some questions, but to understand that on the other side of the table, remember we had affirmation of false beliefs. The second thing is relief. Identity is what counters relief. Identity, when we go after relief, whatever that is, take control, demand that things work out our way, we are not acting like a child and we are not acting like a priest. So we have to begin to rehearse what that might be. So here are some questions that would help. If you had to remember that you were deeply loved, if you had remembered that you were deeply loved, what might have you done differently? Right? When your child mouthed off to you and you screamed and called them a terrible name? What would it have looked like to respond as a priest in the moment instead of protecting yourself? When your spouse didn't pay any attention to you, what would it have looked like to be a priest to them when you longed for that? What small choice could have reflected your identity even if the pain was still there? These are questions that help us begin to wrestle with what it means to be a priest, what it means to be a child, what it means to be loved. Again, when we understand the gospel and the principles of the gospel, we're able to speak these to one another and help one another root in. And last, but most important, I think, it is living out life in the kingdom. And that has two parts. It is confession and ministry. Confession has to do with speaking out your sin. So as you go through this process, the relief that you chose is a sin. The way you chose to entertain false beliefs about God and other people is a sin. And part of the process of repentance is actually confession. It's speaking out and saying this was sinful and practicing some kind of renewal in that process. And then ministry is blessing and repair. So I have a little excerpt here from Colossians 3 that says, Close yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another. If any of you have a grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put love which binds them all together in perfect unity. I would argue to you that one of the main ways of doing ministry is being a person of forgiveness. Blessing someone is forgiving them. Blessing someone is saying, I will not exact justice on you because justice was given to Jesus for you. So I forgive you. Like I relinquish that right. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop hurting because you hurt me. I link relinquish the right to punish you for what you did to me. And repair is to ask for forgiveness. Repair is to ask for forgiveness. And so that is a big part of ministry. And so here is a set of questions. And I decided to put a whole bunch up here because I think this is an important part. So let me just read them to you. What do you need to confess, not just to God, but maybe to the person you impacted? Who do you need to repair with, and what would it look like to show up as your true self in that conversation? What would forgiveness look like here if you trusted God with your pain? What do you need to grieve about how your choice affected someone else? What truth about who you are in Christ do you need to hold on to as you walk back into relationship or this moment? What would it look like to worship God in this space, not just through right behavior, but through surrender? So, in a relationship, in that problematic event, in that moment, what does surrender look like versus just doing the right thing? Where might you need to keep renewing your mind because the old belief keeps showing up? And how is Jesus inviting you to be part of his kingdom here, right in the middle of the mess? These are good questions to help you and to help others step in and be rooted in the gospel. So that's the whole point of doing this. We get somebody there and then we help them begin to ponder these things about the story and the identity and the kingdom of God, what it looks like. And what we're hoping is that we can get that person not to fix everything, but to have a sense of two things. One, what is it that I need to repent of? What do I need to confess? Being able to articulate what they need to confess, and maybe also articulating an action that usually will involve either forgiveness or repair. Because here's the world. Think about your relationships with your kids, think about your marriages, think about your friendships. If you're 19 or older, you've had enough opportunity to screw it up with people. Our life is built around the need for repair because everything is ruptured. And the only way that happens is if you're willing to forgive, which means to remove your demand to punish and to embrace that person, and also just to be vulnerable and ask for forgiveness. So in a group or in one-on-one, like prayer is key. You invite the person who quote unquote sits on the hot seat to actually, do you want to confess your sin now? And what is it that God might be inviting you to? And then you invite them to pray, and you pray over them afterwards by laying hands on them. James 5.16 says, Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Do not get caught up on righteous. How many of you feel righteous? Wow. Alright, there you go. We got one. You are righteous. How are you made righteous? And Jesus. Remember, Mark, for those of you who are here, he's preached a whole couple sermons on being right justified. What happens when you right justify in your word document? Everything gets like ch-ching. You have been put under Christ. You are righteous. So your prayer as a righteous person in Christ will be powerful and effective. Okay, because you are not praying for someone on your own power. You did not die for anyone, you did not raise from the dead, and you did not send your Holy Spirit to anyone. Okay. But you have the power of the Spirit of God, and you are a friend of God. When God does not, He's just so happy to tell you stuff. Okay, Bible quiz. Who's the one person in the Bible who's called the friend of God other than us? No, not David. Abraham. Very good. Good. Just a little Bible quiz. All right. I've lost my clicking ability. I got it back. All right. So we're done with the hot seat model. And I have time to answer all your questions. No, I don't. But you might have noticed, and I saw poor John come up here because he was ready to read scripture after the second song, and we threw a third song on the front so that we'd have a little bit of time, a little extra time to answer questions.

SPEAKER_06: 36:00

So your question was, do you feel righteous? And I don't feel righteous, but I am righteous as well. Yeah, okay, that's good.

SPEAKER_04: 36:14

So it's a bad question. It's a good question. Are you righteous?

SPEAKER_02: 36:31

I think what stands out to me often when we go into repentance, as we we take the story that I am loved and that I have impact on the world, that I have identity in God, and then my repentance. And I think one of the things that I feel like often happens when we go through the table of decision is that the repentance that is offered sometimes is like, well, if I just did the opposite. So instead of like I get cut off in traffic and instead of flipping off the person, I smile at them and I wave and I say hi and I'm nice to them. And I think actually the repentance is to be willing to say, Jesus, I was afraid in that moment. And I was like, there's a uh when Paul is arrested and put in prison, and then the the earthquake comes and they get free, and the jailer believes in in the book of Acts, and then they're all sitting around and the word comes to the jailer, let those people go. And my thought is like, well, okay, I'm gonna leave, right? Paul's like, all right, well, I'm gonna leave this city because I was arrested here and I was misunderstood, but I I'm just gonna leave. And his response is actually not to just run away from that, but to say, No, I'm gonna step into the scary place and I'm gonna walk into relationship with these people who arrested me, and they have to come here and say, because I'm a Roman citizen. Like there is he pushes into relationship rather than running away. So there's like this the repentance is not always just that opposite thing, it's actually living into like I can be sad. Like I can live in that place of like I long to be safe, and I don't know that I'm gonna be safe, but I can sit with Jesus in that fear or in that sadness.

SPEAKER_04: 38:32

I would I would argue that you repent of the demand to be safe, yeah, right? And also I would say that you repent that your relief betrays your unwillingness to submit to Jesus and to suffer and offer love, to be to do the cross thing, forgive them because they don't know what they're doing. They don't know when they cut me off what they were doing. They they don't know.

unknown: 38:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09: 38:56

Okay. Um what if you try to do that? Like when you try to express yourself to the point where what you're saying that we should, but like people take it in the wrong way, and then it's you're in the wrong for doing that, if that makes sense. Or you're too emotional because you're trying to explain to them what you're feeling. Does that make sense? Am I explaining it correctly?

SPEAKER_04: 39:25

Yeah, well, and I think what I would I would say there is that what you're talking about is a moment in your life where you've have like you're trying to be heard and you have a longing to be heard and to be seen and known, and you're not, right? And that's really hard for you. And there's probably a set of beliefs that you believe about that person and you and God. And so I think the invitation there, and I mean, I I'm not gonna hot seat you on it right now, but there's an invitation to begin to. See, okay, well, what does God have to say to this? Like, what is he like when I say these things to him, what what is his response? How does he see me? How does he understand who I am? Because what you're doing when you express emotions, which is good, is that you're hoping that that person will tell you that you're loved and that you have impact. But they're a broken, sinful person, so a lot of times they're like, well, here's a warped mirror. Let me show you a warped reality of what I think about you. They don't hear you, they don't see you. It's part of the invitation of this is to learn in those moments how to sit in the gospel and to hear the voice of Jesus. Yeah. It's a good question, Teresa. Very good question.

SPEAKER_08: 40:51

Thank you, Eric. Thank you, uh villagers. Um I have a friend of um 40 years, and uh we recently reconnected, and um we've been texting, and um a couple of days ago, someone that was beloved to her um suicided. And I have sent her you know some scriptures and there and um you know stuff that uh heals me, but apparently didn't heal her. So I went to um some um stuff I got from a workshop on uh grief, and I I have added to it from the time that I went to that um uh deep grief um situation that um was uh gold actually. And so I was looking through my materials to see she lives in Florida, so I was looking to see if I could find that workshop for her over, you know, around her parts. And when I looked at my um booklet uh from the Grief workshop, it said um uh forgiveness is a way of life of living, and it that connects what uh what you've uh taught us today. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_05: 42:16

There's too many. Oh we got a hot seat model there, he rejected you. Um would you would you read Psalms 23 and connect the context around the table in Psalms 23 to the hot seat model?

SPEAKER_04: 42:35

Yes, and in fact, if you remember Mark's sermon, that's what he did. It may be I don't know if you were actually there for that one. Oh, right. We were all out of town. So Mark did that for us very already, yes. So good, very good.

SPEAKER_07: 42:58

Oh, I'm grateful for how you've taught this for so many years and to be able you asked a question about how do we what do we do when we keep redoing the same relief over and over, even though we see what's going on with ourselves. And I love that you put worship in there, and I've really been grateful for Sue's example to me to write out this is a lie, this is what's true. Right for those three false beliefs yourself. It's really good.

SPEAKER_04: 43:26

Yeah, that's cool.

SPEAKER_01: 43:31

This question may be related to that question, but does or how does the hot seat model um cover addiction?

SPEAKER_04: 43:44

How does it cover addiction? Well, that's a good question. So relief addiction is a form of relief, right? So um, and one of the things, so all right, I'm gonna just be a little psychological here for a second. So everybody in this model we always say over and over again, we all have choice and we're all volitional human beings, right? But because of our lives and because of the hard things that have happened to us and the traumas and everything else, some of our choices we are we I will use a word called priming. We are primed to make certain choices based on our life. And so what me it means we still have a choice, but it is so difficult. So I would argue that this is not a therapeutic model. And so when dealing with addiction, I would argue that it can be helpful in beginning for you to realize that the addiction you do have can be spoken to by the gospel, and that they you probably are gonna need to take some steps further outside of this model and into some more you know skilled help, so to speak, over a long period of time. I think this is a very good. I would continue to do this in working through your addictions and having people pray for you because I do believe that the prayer of a righteous man or woman can fail it much. Can have it's very effective. But if that's all we're gonna say, okay, we prayed for you and you have some actions to do, and we're okay, we're done with you, then yeah, it's not gonna help with addiction. But at least can identify it and say, Yes, this is your relief is an addiction. I don't know if that's my best answer for that.

SPEAKER_06: 45:33

Good. Thanks. Um can you talk a little bit more about sacred discontent and just like I've not heard that out of the year in a long time.

SPEAKER_04: 45:45

Yeah, okay. So the idea of sacred discontent is is that because we live in a fallen world, and until Jesus makes all things new, the emptiness that you and I feel in life is not gonna go away. Right? It's gonna rear its ugly head. But the beauty of being a follower of Jesus is that in that emptiness, we are not left alone because we have the Holy Spirit. So the picture I always kind of try to imagine is when you are not a follower of Jesus, you have to cross a crosswalk by yourself as a four-year-old with cars flying by. That's just life in general and wrestling with all that comes at you. You're by yourself and you're trying to navigate and figure it out. As a follower of Jesus in the world, we all still have to, we're still the four-year-old and we still have to cross the street. Only we have Jesus, who sometimes picks us up, sometimes holds our hand, sometimes stands next to us while he invites us to be courageous and walk across the, but we're not by ourselves. So there is a discontent that even though we're we are with Jesus, we're still have to walk across the street, and that's actually not right. It's not right for a four-year-old to have to cross a busy street. That's not something they should have to do. Um that's the world. And so there's this discontent of like, yeah, this is I'm not supposed to be here, it's not supposed to be this way, but I'm with Jesus. And having someone with you is powerful because it's not an individual thing, it's all of us together. That's why church and why we gather and why we sit around and eat food together, is that the discontent is able to be comforted with God's people and through his spirit. So I don't know if that I mean I could preach a whole other sermon, but yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 47:49

With respect to suffering, um I have a high pain tolerance or whatever that my doctor says. So, but part of that is just ignoring the pain. It's not actually dealing with it or the like it's just ignoring it. Yeah. The other thing is you can go get pills and so forth, and you can avoid it that way temporarily. Um, so talk a little bit about I don't I don't know what word to use. Embracing suffering sounds like you're too eager to get there. Um but but there is something powerful about learning the presence of God in suffering that is the richest thing in my life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 48:33

So if you spent a long enough time wandering around in the enemy's world and the world's way of being and your own brokenness, you realize that the only hope in life is Jesus and being like Jesus. And my mom said most of my life, she would tell the story of different moments of her suffering, and she would pray this prayer, which was very disconcerting to me, but it was if this suffering will shape me into your likeness, do not take this suffering away. Because I would rather be like you and have the suffering than not be like you without suffering. And I don't like that at all, but I find that to be very true in scripture, and I find that to be very true in my own life. And that doesn't mean a seeking out of suffering. It means it's pretty hard to avoid suffering in this world. So I mean that's be my best answer to that. And I I probably have time for one more question, if there is one, then I should Eric right here.

SPEAKER_00: 49:38

Yeah, no. Um dude, this has just been amazing. I just want to say thanks for the series and the encouragement, and just what a practical tool to try to incorporate into rhythms. And Rod actually kind of kind of took took the question, but I was just kind of meditating on the same thing, something you said about how just the enemy's side and relief seems to really highlight like running from suffering and and you know, Jesus' side of the story often invites us to to step into that. And and I was just thinking that you know, something that I think the Holy Spirit just kind of like you know highlighted as you said that is so pivotal is like the suffering that we step into a Jesus is a suffering with hope, you know, and it has that hope. And when when we suffer or we enter into suffering with no hope, it's despair. And and often that's why we choose you know that side, because we're we're just it's despair. And if there's no hope, I you know, I just want to do everything I can to just pretend like it's not there. Um so yeah, we're I I think we're and and then the other, I think, just you know, piece of this, you know, throughout the series that's really stood out to to me is just the um the need that you've emphasized just for community. Like I find myself many times trying to use this model like by myself in my own mind without like talking through it with you know, even somebody like my wife or just some somebody that I'm in you know regular community with that uh you know follows Jesus. And often when I'm you know trying to live in the story identity and kingdom of Jesus, but I'm not doing that in community, it's it's just really hard. I mean, it's so hard to not believe the false beliefs, which often feel true, you know, and getting to the side of the table often you know requires me to step into just something that in the moment doesn't feel true. But often when I try to step into that with other people, it's so much easier because they're affirming there and they're you know, so yeah, that's just kind of the other thing that I think uh has really stood out and just want to say thank you that you've highlighted.

SPEAKER_04: 51:38

So thanks, dude. All right. Well, I think I pushed the time, so let's let's pray. Father, thank you uh for this time with this community, and I just ask that you would take this and um you would use it in our hearts to shape us into your likeness. And I ask that in your name, Jesus. Amen.