Are you mistaking escape for healing? /// Prayer: Part 7

We're so glad you've chosen to listen to our online experience! Here at Plum Creek, we’re all about changed lives, changing lives; and what that simply means is that what Christ has done in us is not just for us, but it’s for us to share with others in our community and around the world.

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If you're using this teaching for a Home Groups setting, we've included discussion prompts to help guide your conversation:

1. What triggered you this past week, and what might that reaction reveal about the thing beneath the thing?

2. Think about a time when you ran to a hideout instead of bringing pain to God in prayer. What were you trying to soothe?

3. Where do you see a pothole in your life that could become a sinkhole if you keep ignoring it?

4. Look up Romans 7:15 and discuss where you relate to Paul’s struggle of doing what you do not want to do.

5. Consider the idea that triggers can be invitations instead of permission to escape. How would that change the way you respond next time?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:17

So be sure to subscribe to be notified when you have to see your faith. Before we get into this, we want to remind you of one thing. We really believe that if Jesus is right, it only makes sense to rearrange our lives around what he says is true. Because if you choose to follow Jesus like that, it really does change everything, including the lives around you. Okay. Let's posture our hearts for what God has in store. This message.

Message Start

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Good morning, Plum Creek. It is such an honor to be with you all. I love, love, love this church. I love your pastor. Um, because he's a Bears fan. Uh, I love, love, love his integrity. I love Eric Parks and love just um your desire to follow Jesus. Uh, it is truly, truly inspired uh the church I serve at in Chicagoland. And so it's such an honor to be here to kind of wrap up the series on prayer. And I want to take that verse to pray continually or to pray without ceasing. And as we've walked through this entire prayer series, we've talked about how to have prayers of adoration, confession, lament, thanksgiving, and petition. But what I've come to realize is the activity of prayer is this ongoing, regular, consistent conversation with our Creator. And when we do this, we actually begin to tap into the love and the goodness of God. We make better decisions, we walk more in step and in alignment with the way of Jesus. And I don't know about you, when you think about that compared to wondering, do you ever just wonder why people say what they say? Or post what they post or do what they do? You kind of just see that, man, there's like a misalignment with the way of Jesus. And it kind of just hits you. But maybe the better question is do you ever wonder why you do what you do? You ever wake up the next morning and you're like, why did I say that? Why did I do that? And if you've ever been there, I'm gonna give you a verse that will help you see that you're in good company. Because Paul writes in Romans 7 15, I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I just don't do, uh, but what I hate, I do. And to be honest, um, I quote this verse pretty much every week with my wife when she's like, Hey, didn't I ask you to take out the trash? And I'm like, babe, the guy who wrote the majority of the New Testament, he said this, I do not understand what I do. The good I want to do, babe, I just don't do. The thing I hate, I do. You know what she says to me? Hey, we'll figure it out. And this is what I want to help you understand through the lens of prayer, how you can begin to understand why you do what you do and what the word of God tells us to do about it. Because I think that there is this profound intersection between formation and this and like mental and emotional well-being and health. And today we're gonna do that. If you have a Bible, turn with me to Esther chapter three. I'm not gonna do like what most preachers do, and they start in verse one and work their way down. I'm gonna do it more like Christopher Nolan. If you're a movie fan, uh he's the director of like Memento and Dark Knight, Inception. We're gonna start at the very end and we're gonna work our way backwards. Esther chapter three, verse 15 says this the king and Haman, who was his right hand man, sat down to drink, but the city of Susa was bewildered. Now, the Hebrew word for bewildered literally means in utter and sheer confusion. Have you ever come home? Utter, sheer confusion based on what a friend did, a family member did. And truth be told, there's probably times where other people are coming home with some utter and sheer confusion based on the choices that we've made. I remember many, many years ago, I was leaving my grandparents' house. We had a little small Honda Civic, my wife is in the front seat, my nine-month-old is in the back seat, and we're driving, and we're living in Grand Rapids at the time, and there's these snow flurries that are falling, and we're kind of processing what had happened at our time with her my grandparents and my dad. And as we're driving, um, all of a sudden, my windshield gets hit by a chunk of ice. And I drive maybe like two-tenths of a mile when I realize somebody's through that. And so, what do I do? I flip a U-turn, and my wife's like, What are you doing? And I'm like, Somebody's through that at us. I gotta find them. And so, in the middle of a snowstorm, I park the car and I see someone kind of running in this field, and so I leave my nine-month-old and my wife. I cross four lanes of traffic, there is an embankment, I think I can jump it midway through. I realize I can't. I land waist deep in freezing cold water, and then I become a madman. I'm like soaking wet. I'm like, I'm gonna find you. And I chase after them in this field, and this field leads into this little suburban neighborhood, and I get into that suburban neighborhood, and because I watch TSI, I know what to do. I close my eyes, I just start to listen, and all of a sudden I hear three doors down a garage door close. I run to that house, bang on the door, soaking wet pants. Grandfather opens the door, and I'm like, hey man, did someone just run through your garage? He's like, Yeah, my grandson and his buddy. I'm like, cool, can I have a word with them? Now, he closes the door as he goes to get them. And at this moment, I need you to know I'm a middle school youth pastor. And as the doors closed, and I'm standing there out of breath with soaking wet jeans, I hear the Spirit of the Lord just whisper, What are you doing? The door opens, and there's two sixth graders, their legs are shaking like they're little puppies, and I look at them eye to eye and I go, nice shot. And I just walk away. My wife in absolute bewilderment and utter confusion is like, what just happened? Now, what happened was I was driving to my grandparents' house when the people who were gonna buy our home backed out. I was leaving my grandparents' house with my wife and son, and we were about to move back to California where I grew up. My dad had leukemia. I did not know how to process that. And then all of a sudden, a chunk of ice hit my windshield, and I was like, Oh, I can process that. I remember calling my mentor the next day, and he said, Welcome to the thing beneath the thing, the endless discovery of what's really going on. And that is what I want us to talk about today. What really is going on within you that causes you to do the stuff that you just don't want to do? Let's look at verse 13 and Esther, why the city was bewildered. Why? Verse 13, dispatches were sent by couriers to all the king's provinces with the order to destroy, kill, and annihilate all the Jews, young and old, women and children, on a single day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods. So why is this city bewildered? Because a genocide has been decreed. So so who would want to decree and make a genocide happen? Look what it says in verse 8. Then Haman said to King Xerxes, the right-hand man, says to the king, There is a certain people dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom who keep themselves separate. Their customs are different from those of all other people, and they do not obey the king's laws. It is not in the king's best interest to tolerate them. If it pleases the king, let a decree be issued to destroy them, and I will give ten thousand talents of silver to the king's administrators for the royal treasury. So why is it genocide been decreed? Because the right-hand man says there's a group of people whose customs are different. They act and behave in a different way. And King Xerxes, you don't have to deal with it. You actually could annihilate them. And here's what I'm gonna do: I'm actually gonna bankroll it for you. And then in verse 11, the king said to Haman, keep the money and do with the people as you please. Fascinating. Growing up in Southern California, when I moved to Chicago the first time, I was excited because of the Cubs and WGN. I was a Cubs fan. I was excited about Soldier Field and the Bears. But there was one thing nobody told me about Chicago. That was a just a rude awakening, and that is something called potholes. And they're literally everywhere, friends. And you will be driving and all of a sudden hit one and you just know it. You'll hear the thumping, womping sound. And one day in downtown Chicago, I was driving and I hit a pothole, and I knew it had jacked my tire, and so I pulled over. But here's what you need to know in the city of Chicago, they have a three-digit number, 311, and you can report a pothole. And if you report a pothole that has already been reported, and the city of Chicago has not fixed it in due time, they will literally pay for the damages to your vehicle. Which, no wonder the state of Illinois is going bankrupt, but that's another sermon. And so I pray, dial 311, I report the pothole, and then the lady says, I'm sorry, Steve, you're the first one to report it here. And I'm like, Whoa, wait, wait, wait. When I was a kid, I used to dial 411 to find out my friend's number. I would dial 911 for a first responder. I dial 311 to report a pothole. How many potholes do you all fill in? And she's like, Well, this the Chicago Tribune, which is our newspaper, just did a story. In the first hundred days of the year, do you know how many potholes we filled in? I said, I don't know. She said, take a guess. I said, 5,000? She says a little bit more. I said, 10,000, a little bit more. I say, 15,000? She says, try again. I say, ma'am, you sound like my dad. When he asks me questions and he already knows the answer, just say the answer. She goes, one more guess. I'm like, I don't know, 30,000. She goes, wrong. A hundred and eight thousand potholes in the first hundred days. You can actually Google this. The city of Chicago has its own pothole tracker where they literally show their work. So here's what you need to know about a pothole. Just in case you've never seen one or experienced this, asphalt is not like our Lululemon sweatpants. When water freezes, asphalt cannot have the elasticity. And so what ends up happening is a crater is created, and what the city of Chicago does is they come up and they look at it and they go, ah, just gotta add some asphalt. They add some asphalt, go to the pothole tracker, get it blocked, and they go 107,000, 999 more to go. But sometimes they come up to a pothole and they realize this wasn't caused by inclement weather. There's actually something that's happening underneath the surface. There's a thing beneath the thing. And it could be erosion, it could be some kind of pipe that is leaking. And if they don't deal with that first, a pothole will become a sinkhole. And this literally happened in the city of Chicago, where a 72-year-old man was driving and the road gave out, and he literally dropped two stories. Millions of dollars of damage happened. Why? Because a pothole became a sinkhole. And here's the entire teaching in a nutshell. By being human, by actually living with other broken and beautiful humans. Our stories are filled with these potholes. And every single day, there are people who come close to these potholes. And oftentimes we are too busy, we are just not aware, or we just find ourselves scared to ever deal with them and bring them before God in prayer. And so what often happens is that pothole becomes a sinkhole. That doesn't just affect you, but it affects everyone around you. You know, in 25 years of ministry, there hasn't been a day where someone's walked into my office, sat down, and said, Pastor, today's the day that I obliterate my character. Today's the day that I decimate every relationship. Today's the day I absolutely train wreck my integrity. But every single day it happens. It doesn't matter if it's in the school system, the marketplace, athletics, politics, the church, families. Every single day people make decisions and then they wake up the next morning and they go, I don't understand what I this did. And I think what happens is many of us have just never been aware of all of these potholes. So the question comes, why would Haman want to see a genocide decreed? Well, check this out Ephesians chapter 3, verse 2. It says, All the royal officials at the king's gate, they knelt down, they paid honor to Haman, for the king had commanded this concerning him. But Mordecai, new character, he's a Jewish man, but Mordecai would not kneel down or pay him honor. And then verse 5, when Haman saw that Mordecai would not kneel down or pay him honor, he was enraged. Yet, having learned who Mordecai's people were, he scorned the idea of killing only Mordecai. Instead, Haman looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai's people, the Jews, throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes. So get this. The reason why a genocide is decreed is because Haman walked into the city, and one dude, Mordecai, would not kneel down and show him honor. One dude, Mordecai, would not Tebo in his honor. Come on, Denver, that's a good joke. That's a good joke. I think about this. He gets so enraged that he goes, you know what? It's not just you who are gonna die, it's all of your people. All of your people. Now here's the deal. I don't actually think any single one of you would ever want to have the means or the power to see a genocide happen. But I will say, I do think there are many moments in every single one of us, every single day where we make decisions and choices that bewilder ourselves and those around us. So how do we do this? Well, it requires that we actually have the courage to get to the thing beneath the thing. And thing is an acronym. And the first letter of the thing is the word T, and it's literally the triggers. Every single day when someone gets close to one of our potholes, the triggers are the setup that sets us off. You're headed to work, you're listening to worship music, you have your coffee, and you're driving down an I-25 when all of a sudden somebody doesn't see you, and they just merge and cut you off. And you're singing, Holy is the Lord God. And then when they cut you off, a fist raises and words come out of your mouth that are not the same words that you were just singing. And all of a sudden, what happened? It's that you got triggered. And often, often, friends, when we get triggered, what ends up happening is we see it as permission to escape. We find ourselves having all of this energy moving through our bodies, and it has to go somewhere. And so, for most of us, when we get triggered, the place that we first go is to hideouts. And these are the metaphoric places we go to escape our pain. And truth be told, there are socially acceptable hideouts and there are socially unacceptable hideouts. You might run to Nordstroms when you're stressed. You might look to go buy something to try to make you feel okay. You might eat something to try to calm your nervous system, you might binge watch an entire show and season on Netflix just to kind of escape the pain. Or you might run to something that's more socially unacceptable to try to make yourself feel okay. Tim Keller would call this a counterfeit God, the Bible would call it an idol. Anything we run to to try to make us okay is actually a form of idolatry, and we all do it because every single one of us, we're all addicts in some capacity. And we have to be able to look honestly and prayerfully and going, why do I run here instead of to God? When I think about this, I think about something my mentor, John Orberg, said. He said, You can have a glass of bourbon and it will give you a fleeting sense of peace. It'll just never make you a person of peace. You can buy that on credit card with money you don't have, and in that moment, it will give you a fleeting sense of peace. It'll just never make you a person of peace. So when you're triggered, where do you go to hide out? The second place that most people go when they get triggered, they feel all of this energy going through their body is towards insecurities. And this is when we create false stories about ourselves. All of a sudden, we hear almost like these lies from the pit of hell saying, You're so dumb. You'll never figure it out. You're not good enough. Your sibling would have got this, not you. And all of a sudden, what ends up happening is like this shame storm reigns supreme. We find ourselves almost like powering down. And it's in this moment of insecurity where often we pick up a mask. And the placing of a mask over ourselves is where we get the word hypocrite. Back in the ancient Near East, what they would do is they would have these backpacks and they would be massive amplitors, and they these one or two actors would carry these different masks, and they place these masks over their face to showcase that they were a different character. And in our insecurity, that's often what we do. We put a mask of people pleasing. I just gotta make them be okay. Or a mask of perfection, it's gotta be perfect. I can't mess up. I put a mask of pretending like I have it all together when I don't, or to put a mask of performance and I can perform my way out of this. Or maybe for some of you, you grew up in the home of a of an alcoholic and you watched what seemed like strength and power, but in honesty, it was a form of insecurity. When the person who was an addict would slam their fist on the table and start screaming and yelling to try to get control of the family. And truth be told, it wasn't them powering up, it was an insecurity. See, oftentimes when we get triggered and that insecurity takes over, we're gonna go somewhere. I often will talk about how gossip is just Plato theology. When you begin to shape and form someone into a certain image, and you get other people to believe it and buy into it. But you know what insecurity is? It's when you gossip about yourself. When you shape and you form yourself into an image, not the image of God, but your own image, and you start to say, This person is stupid. This person's not enough. This person's ugly, this person has nothing to offer, and you actually believe that. And it's in that, just think about that. What kind of good decisions do you make from that place? The third place that most people go when they get triggered and they feel that energy moving through their bodies is to narratives. And this is what Haman does. Haman sees one action of Mordecai and he goes, Oh, not just you, but it's all those people, it's all the Jewish people. And if insecurity is when we create false stories about ourselves, narratives are when we create false stories about others. And we do this often. Again, this is literally what often social media has become. It's a place to spout narratives about other people without seeing the image of God and the dignity in another person. I watched this happen again and again, over and over hideouts, insecurities, narratives. And why it happens is because people get triggered and they've seen it almost as a permission to escape. Like they've been given permission, has been granted for them to run to a hideout, for them to think these thoughts about themselves or think these thoughts about others. Years ago, I was coming home from a meeting and I was frustrated. I walk into my house and I tell my wife that he did it again. She's like, What? I was pitching this idea and he did it again. He shut me down. And my wife looks at me and goes, Isn't God so kind? Like, what kind of response is that? I'm like, God so kind? What do you mean? Have my back? And she goes, Isn't God so kind? I'm like, why do you keep saying that? Why is God so kind? And she says these words. Because this person reminds you of someone who deeply wounded you 30 years ago. And you haven't had the courage to actually face that wound. The real question is, is today the day that you will face that pain and allow God to bring healing? You know what I said to her? Get behind me, Satan. No, I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I didn't say that. But that's the truth, though, friends. We get triggered and we see permission to go this way rather than what if you saw every time you got triggered as an invitation? As an invitation, because it showcased that there was a pothole. And if you didn't deal with that pothole well, it was going to become a sinkhole. But there was this invitation for grace. And that's the last one. And this is where the Spirit's power goes to work on those potholes to make you whole and holy and spiritually healthy. The question is, how do we do that? For some of us, it kind of scares us. Scared me for many, many years. Like, how do I address all of the potholes of my story? Well, I began to realize when I'm growing up in California, and I'd be skateboarding outside and I would skim my knee and I'd come in with my kind of tears running down my face. My mom would look at me and she'd just say, sit down. And then what she would do is she'd go into some cabinet and she'd pull out the ugliest brown large jar of something called hydrogen peroxide. And then she'd say, This, don't worry, this isn't gonna hurt, first fly. And she'd open it up and she's like, It's gonna be okay. And she'd pour it on my knee, and my knee would get all pusy, white, and gross. And I then was like, Oh my gosh, I'm gonna lose my leg. And I just have this freak out moment, and then she would clean it up, she'd put a band-aid over it, and she's like, Now get out of the house and go skateboard. And I would leave the house. I come back the next day, and she would take the band-aid off, and she'd get that ugly brown jar of hydrogen peroxide, and she'd start to clean it out. Little by little, that wound got healed. And this is what I want you to think about. Is if you can start to look about your life and go, in the last 168 hours, the last week, there was a moment where you got triggered, and some are like, you trigger me, Steve, right now. But you might be thinking, I mean, something triggered me that instead of actually running to some hideout or to some false story about yourself or some false story about another, what if you actually saw it as an invitation to bring this pothole, to bring this wound before your creator? And just say, Lord, would you make this whole? Would you make this holy? Would you make this spirit make me spiritually healthy? What's so beautiful is like all heaven does is pour out this grace. This grace that actually begins to go to work on your soul. This grace that begins to go to work on you, as grace that actually, day by day, week after week, this wound that has caused so much heartache within you and in others actually begins to find healing. Think about it like this. If you don't actually deal with this wound, what might happen? And when you think about generational sins, it's usually one child that says, enough. Enough. This stops today. And not with shame towards a parent, not towards shame towards somebody. It just says it stops here. So that my kids and my grandkids can actually see an entirely different way. But that doesn't just happen. It just takes you actually bringing this before God. I said, what I want to do is I want to give you a moment right now. And I'm gonna say a prayer over you. But what I want you to do before I say this prayer over you, I want you just with your hands open to really reflect on this. And the last week, what triggered you? What triggered you? You felt that energy in your body, you felt frustrated, and then ask yourself honestly, where did you go to soothe that feeling? What did you use as a hideout? Or what lie did you tell about yourself? Or what narrative did you project about another person? And what if, what if, what if, what if you actually could take the scriptures seriously and almost replay the situation, and instead of running towards something else, you actually said, Here I am, Lord. What is this really about, Lord? And maybe there might be a memory, there might be a painful memory, there might be a storyline, a narrative. I often will say humans are very perceptive, they're just crappy interpreters of reality. We perceive something, and it's often the stories that we tell and how we interpret it when it's not done biblically that lead our lives out of alignment with the way of Jesus. But what if you could just imagine grace, a hydrogen peroxide of heaven just pouring over that wound right now? And it might get a little worse before it gets better, it might feel something. But what if in that moment, instead of like rushing to try to escape that moment, you could just simply say, I'm just gonna speak the name of Jesus over that. I'm gonna speak Jesus over that addiction. I'm gonna speak Jesus over that trauma. I'm gonna speak Jesus over that lie from the pit of hell. I'm gonna speak Jesus over the mental health issues of depression. I'm gonna speak Jesus and the name Yeshua Jesus means mighty to save, or salvation is here, and salvation is what makes us whole and holy and spiritually healthy. I want you just to take a moment, just to think about that, and here in this house to bring that before God as I prepare to read this prayer over you, church. My brothers and sisters of Plum Creek, we are all mysterious and wild, a collection of sounds and stories inscribed over the years. We are all made up of hopes, fears, and desires. We are all products of the messages of love and shame we've received. We are all full of energy, excitement, and oh so many feels. That's who I am, it's who you are, sacred and holy, the weight of feeling not enough and way too much, often in the very same breath. And every room you walk into, you bring this. Your whole self, all of you. Yet most of the time, you and I are unable to locate and identify what is churning within. Like these shadows that follow us. Our outward attitudes and actions reflect the steps, our internal world set. We've become functional yet disconnected, efficient yet unaware, and our bodies carry both truths and lies, every narrative we have ever been subjected to, fiction as well as nonfiction. And the body knows it holds, it controls all of us until we honor its whole truth, until we trust that we can bring these wounds and potholes before our God. And so, Plum Creek, may we honor the whole truth and not let our potholes become sinkholes, but mat rather may through these potholes God, our Heavenly Father, showcase his power to make every single one of us whole, holy, and spiritually healthy by his grace alone. Amen. Let's speak the name of Jesus over every wound and pothole. Grace and peace.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

Thanks again for listening. Our prayer is that this message encouraged and challenged you in your journey to follow Jesus. If you'd like to learn more about our church, please check us out online at plumcreek.church or if you find yourself within driving distance of Castle Rock, Colorado, we would be honored to see you in person on the weekend. So until next time, race and peace in the name of Jesus.