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Words For Change Podcast
Jump into the transformative world of "Words For Change Podcast," a thought-provoking podcast hosted by Rev. Lionel Bailey. Designed for those seeking inspiration and direction, this show delves into the power of change, transformation, and progress in our lives.
With every episode, Lionel Bailey, gives his unique blend of spiritual insight and contemporary relevance, sharing stories, and interviews that motivate listeners to embrace positive changes in their personal and communal lives. Rooted in Lionel's deep spiritual foundation, the show also touches upon various religious and moral perspectives, offering listeners a chance to reflect and connect on a deeper level.
Whether you're looking to evolve personally, spiritually, or within your community, Lionel provides practical advice and steps to help guide your journey.
Tune in to "Words For Change Podcast" and begin your learning and transformation journey with Rev. Lionel Bailey. Discover not just the power of words past and present, but the actions and impact they can inspire.
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Words For Change Podcast
Ep. 71 Overcome Big Church Hurt #churchhurt
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You're never going to dive deep into your spiritual journey until you are healed from past wounds. Ralph Waldo Emerson said it is not the length of life, but it is about the depth of life. Welcome to the Words to Change podcast. This is Lionel, your host, and we're gonna talk about depression and spiritual awakening. Man, I'm just going to tell you right up front today we have an interesting episode.
Speaker 1:I'm going to do this sort of different from what I typically do, but either have a guest on the podcast or share some things with you from my heart, but but I I'm sharing, uh, my personal journey with and struggle as I'm trying to figure out my purpose and place, using my gift, talents and abilities. Man, this was probably back in 2016, 2017, and I was having having an immense amount of spiritual struggle, being in church, leadership and working with a lot of people who I really, really enjoyed working with. But I saw another side of ministry that shocked me, that I was not aware of and I'd never been in a place like that before, and it had a tremendous impact on my life. Well, a couple of weeks ago, I reflected upon this experience and doing prayer. Actually, I was driving in my car and just had a deep sense of I wanted to be closer to God. I wasn't really satisfied with my spiritual discipline. My prayer life was OK, but it definitely could be better. My Bible reading was okay, but I felt like I, as a teacher and a person who uses the scriptures as a resource to empower you, my listener I wanted to share more, I wanted to do more, but then I couldn't figure out why I was feeling this deep sense of needing to do and be and feel more, and then the spirit began to speak to me about my past and man. The revelation that came through that process was absolutely profound. That is still having an impact on me today.
Speaker 1:This was recorded in my car about two weeks ago, and so this was recorded. I recorded this, and so I do apologize the audio is not the best. As you listen, you definitely can hear cars passing in the background and I trust that you'll look past that because you still be able to hear it but it won't be as sound quality to what you're used to on the podcast, and so I want you to listen till the end, because there is definitely nuggets and truths of gold that anyone who's had a struggle in church or perhaps you struggle in your spiritual life, or you had a deep moment of the soul, or maybe someone hurt you in church. You will benefit from this, as I share what God spoke to me about how I needed to get beyond that. Then, at the end of the so here we go.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible Jew, gentile, black, man, white we all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery.
Speaker 1:So I've been struggling deeply with my personal spiritual disciplines and it agitated me because I'm unable to maintain those disciplines which, for me, would be very important to how I function as a husband, as a father, as a person. How I go through the world, accomplishing my daily tasks, empathetic, driven, focused on the day in front of me, is affected deeply by my spiritual disciplines and I have been very undisciplined about it and it frustrated me and it stunted my spiritual growth. What I mean by stunted my spiritual growth? It didn't allow me to hear the voice of God the way that I'm accustomed to. And that also agitated me because I'm in a business and my calling is to help people, and I do. I help people through spiritual growth, bible studies, counseling, teaching, preaching. So not being able to have the divine inspiring moments is not only detrimental to my completing daily tasks and being in a mental disposition where I'm happy and in a mental disposition where I'm happy and satisfied with myself, but not having a passionate spiritual development program and process, it really interferes with my calling and my purpose that I feel while I was created to live and be and move on earth. And so, with these things in mind, the Spirit told me, you're never going to dive deep into your spiritual journey until you are healed from past wounds. And when that word came to me, it hit me to the core of my being because I never imagined that my lack of spiritual disciplines and my inconsistency was directly related to From past spiritual trauma, from being a church pastor, a church planner, a church leader and the various interactions I had a very tough time in my life that caused me to question if I was gifted enough, talented enough, was I kidding myself? Enough talented enough? Talented enough? Was I kidding myself?
Speaker 1:I went through a phase in my life, for instance in my ministry, where everything I tried at least a great majority of things that I tried a lot of them worked, but some of them didn't, and I spent many, many years. I spent many, many years training and in ministry and being educated in ministry, giving time, effort, energy and money, lots of investment, training in ministry, only to then move from that training into the real world of ministry and see my efforts not produce the results. I wanted, not only that, to become disillusioned about how success or what I deem a fruitful ministry was accomplished. I thought that my presuppositions were that fruitful ministry was accomplished by going to school, being educated, learning how to pastor, learning how to care for people, learning how to interpret scripture, teach scripture, guide people, guide people through this process, only to get behind the scenes of ministry, of big ministry, and realize that people that you admire don't study the Bible. It's not that they didn't see the Bible as important, but they didn't take it as serious as I did and I thought I was trained that your personal time with God and teaching and spending, spending the time and discipline studying scripture and learning and going from that place of intimacy with God, being a very, very in knowledge of the word of God and how to teach it, being the engine by which your ministry flourish To see that people didn't study scripture or barely read it, couldn't articulate, didn't have any type of creativity, but take other people's sermons and use that and see their ministries grow and flourish and money come in.
Speaker 1:And you saw different personalities in ministry that did not necessarily represent what you thought would be a man or woman of God and that confused me. It confused me because people that I admired were the ones who made these decisions or acted this way or gave people audience who didn't work as hard, wasn't as compassionate or empathetic, wasn't concerned about studying the scripture, but more concerned about at least in my estimation what other people, what other ministries are doing, and basically copy and pasting, without any ingenuity, because I came from a background where your time you spent with God, that was the main driving force for your creativity. But in this circumstance I started to see that it was not so much the creative spark of God but man's scientific way of doing ministry and then applying God or superimposing God on top of it, that it didn't originate it from God but it originated from someone else's ideas that had no context to that particular locale of ministry but was co-opted from some ministry somewhere in a total different state or a total different world, and just cut pace to use for that particular ministry. And that was very traumatic for me and then, on top of that, made me feel as if what I was doing did not matter, the gift, talents and abilities that I brought to the table were not good enough and that, my friends, that's what caused me to be hurt, angry, overweight, frustrated and not knowing why. Overweight, frustrated and not knowing why it caused me to not like ministry, to question whether or not I even wanted to be in ministry. Maybe I had become delusional about my calling. Maybe I thought I was good enough and realized that you're not good enough for the big leagues.
Speaker 1:People that I admired were ministry personalities, conference personalities, who had a tremendous impact, and these are the people that I looked up to and had anticipate, maybe not following their exact footsteps, but I was definitely on my way to having that kind of fruitful ministry. I realized that this was not going to happen, not because I said because the people that influenced me or had influence didn't never, never said to me I was good enough, but every practice in every in their minds I wasn't good enough. In their minds it was only there for my color of my skin, not because of the impact that I had. I even felt set up sometimes that I was given projects I was working very hard and given projects that would never go into succeed and decided that you know what it's time for me. If this is what ministry is about, I don't want to have anything to do with it.
Speaker 1:For me, if this is what ministry is about, I don't want to have anything to do with it and that my friends sent me on a journey of leaving the ministry not leaving church ministry, going into becoming a military chaplain, because I simply wanted to care for people, I wanted to teach people, I wanted to help people. I wanted to my ministry to be marked by people's lives being changed by what I had to offer. And for me I was standing and teaching the Word of God, teaching the Scripture. So my gifts, talents and abilities did not match up with what that church vision and ministry was all about. And I remember one of the senior leaders of the church said to me you understand that you work for these people. And I was shocked because and I remember one church leader saying, you understand you work for these people. And his words perturbed me, his words caused me to reflect deeply because I always felt that I worked for God and that any person who had any deep spiritual connection with God would believe the same thing. So I was introduced to a lot of different viewpoints about ministry. That was very unattractive to me and it's true I could have been just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Speaker 1:Helen Keller said that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming the overcoming of suffering, overcoming of suffering. And it wasn't to say that. All of my experiences with this organization, this church, was unhealthy, but it is to say that I went through a ministerial evolution that I was unfamiliar with, I didn't understand and to give talents and abilities that I prioritized Were not welcome or needed, or they were not seen as important, or they were minimized or not given opportunity to grow and flourish and be mentored. And these were presuppositions I had in my mind before. But behind the door of ministry and this is important for us all to understand that not all everything that glitter is gold, as the old saying goes, and so you never know what a thing is. The grass is not always greener on the other side. But no matter what, as Helen Keller said, as we go through suffering, we must also know how to, or learn to, overcome it. And so, for one reason, this is what the Lord allowed me to go through. But Romans 8, 28 says God will cause all things to work out for the good to those who love him, those who are called according to his purpose.
Speaker 1:So if you're going through that experience, you may have been hurt by church. That experience can be used to teach you something about life, to give you the resources that are necessary To put you in a position to help people that are in your sphere of influence, that God has strategically placed in your path For you to help them get through their trauma. So when the Spirit said to me you left ministry wounded and you've never gotten over it said to me you left ministry wounded and you've never gotten over it, that you're never going to experience the new blessings God has for you until you begin healing. And then I asked the spirit how do I heal? Because I want to. I'm not, if you know me, I'm not a. I'm a pretty independent person, self-thinker, free thinker and Ier and I don't like to rely on people. Having your own being your own man, being your own person, walking with God, you minister to people from the overflow of your cup. So I said Spirit will win. And it's like the Spirit said to me, you can't put a timetable on grief.
Speaker 1:So when I thought about the Spirit saying, well, you can't make room for new blessings until you heal from old wounds, and I thought about that and I thought well, I thought about Jesus says the word blessing is basically safety. It's really a comprehensive shelter experience. It means safety in your entire life. Blessings is not just material, it's financial, spiritual, mental, physical, it's all encompassing, it's sort of a wholeness. So Jesus said In my Father's house, in the Gospels in Matthew I think, there are many mansions, there are many rooms, that God has a place of safety, there's a room of safety for you, there's a place where you're going to get to, that new place of blessing, that room of blessing, that house of blessing. But you can't get there until you've been healed by the healer. So I said well, I want to be like the blind man at the pool of Saloon. Can somebody just dip me in the pool to be healed?
Speaker 1:And the Spirit said back to me your healing is a lifelong journey, it's a process. What's more important about that is I had to. I'm judging my own, even now as I talk about it. I'm judging my own presuppositions about blessing. Why do you want to be blessed and why do you want to have people? No one wants to go through life without, at least in my mind, without helping someone and being a blessing, benefiting others. So it's a lifelong journey. Healing is a lifelong journey.
Speaker 1:So my encouragement to my listeners is we're never going to get to the place we need to be and experience the new home, the new room of blessings until we experience healing and healing is a lifelong process, it may be we can consider what are the things that we crave for when we want to experience healing. What are the things that we crave for? I'm still trying to work all of that out. I'm not sure how cravings and healing go hand in hand, but when I want to feel blessed or experience happiness, what? What triggers come to mind and make me feel like I don't deserve that? When I want to experience happiness, what triggers come to mind and make me feel like I won't deserve that? I don't know who this is for, but I can tell you that this is the warts and all this. These are the warts of my life experience, things that I've learned, been through.
Speaker 1:I've been through many more, but these are the things that I'm still being healed, and perhaps you are a person who's needing healing yourself that God has a place and a space for you and me to be healed, and that we need to rely on the Lord and see it as a journey, not rush the healing process, but allow time and chance to have its place, and maybe in the future, the time will come when we begin to experience that deep richness of blessing. There's nothing better than having deep intimacy with God, having a deep journey with God. Because it's from that place, because it's a deep journey, deep intimacy with God it's from that place comes blessings. Not only blessings. For me and maybe this is what blessings mean it's the ability to feed other people, to help other people come alive again, to give other people hope, to introduce Christ to people and see their lives be changed. This, for me, is what blessings are, and I will never be able to help people get through, get into their home of journey, their room of journey, their room of blessing, until I heal for my woman that my efforts are in vain until I do the hard work of being healed.
Speaker 1:Wow, such a deep moment of reflection and I want to share that with you because, as my listener, as our community, I want you to understand that, no matter what you're going through, no matter what you're experiencing in your life, healing is a lifelong process and some of you who are listening, you may be experiencing depression or you may be going through a very, very tough time. I just want to let you know you're not alone, that there are people who get it and there are people who are willing to walk with you through the process. If this message or if this content helped you at all or it gave you encouragement, send me a note, let me know, send me an email. It's down in the show notes. You can see it right there, okay, so, hey, thanks once more for being a part of this Word for Change podcast. You guys, keep the faith, keep hanging in there and remember change begins with you. Until next time, talk to you soon. Salute and I'm out. Thank you.
