Let It Go | Ears to Hear #12

What is the thing that's holding you back? What poison do you still sip on in your life? Whatever it is, you're putting God's plans to lift you above it on the back burner. You are delaying peace and grace in your life. I talk about HOW to let go of the things that spiritually kill us. 

Title Song: Nothing but the Blood of Jesus by Free As a Bird

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to Ears to Hear. By the end of today's episode, you should be better equipped to let it go. Drop it. Stop it. Whatever advice you need to move forward with your life. Hopefully you find it in today's episode. That's the goal. So what is the thing? What is the person? What is the situation that is preventing you? Rather, preventing God from changing your life right now. Now God is capable to do that no matter what. But a principle of living the gospel, following God, following the example of his son Jesus Christ, is sacrifices need to be made. They really do. And we go through seasons in life where there's just things we hold on to. There's there's things in our past that we just don't let go of. I mean, how how old is the story of us forgiving others? Like we get to the grace where we're able to forgive others, but we just can't forgive ourselves. Guilty. I've done that. I've been there. That's so sad. That's so sad. Imagine being at Heaven's Gate. And Christ gives you the key. He hands you the key to get in. And you, you decide. No, I just I can't. I feel too bad. I don't think Christ is giving you the key. If you're not worthy to enter, you know what I mean? I just don't think so. I do think heaven is gonna be a self-selecting process. We will all stand if there is a fact about life that I will go on record saying I wholeheartedly know to be true, it's that we will all one day face the judgment bar of God. Christ will individually judge you and me. That will happen at a later date, at a later point. That is going to happen. And I imagine that experience is gonna be a lot less of Christ nitpicking every minuscule detail of our life, and a lot more of what is the what is the content of our heart? What is our heart made up of? What have we curated our heart, our soul to become that we are offering Christ at that point in time? Not who we were at our best, not who we were hoping to be by that point. What is it right here, right now, when Christ is in front of you, what is the heart you are offering? And I think what I mean by heaven will be self-selecting is you will have a perfect recollection, a perfect consciousness of all your sins, of all the guilt, of all the misdeeds you've done in this body, you will know to a T to perfection. You won't be able to justify anymore. There won't be any room for excuses to be made. Christ will hopefully, you know, spiritually tap us on the head, hit us in the brain, and be like, hey, now you see you as I see you in plainness, in truth. There's no more hiding. This is reality. This is the reality of the life that you lived. Where do you want to go? Where are you gonna feel comfortable being forever? And at that point, we will realize, you and I will realize, hopefully, you know what? I'm happy to see you, Jesus. And I feel comfortable in your presence. Therefore, I will feel comfortable indefinitely in your presence. I'm coming with you. I'm going where you're headed, where you've been. I'm going where you've been this whole time. That's that's the goal. Anything lesser is I don't want to spend a lot of time talking about, but many people will have that realization in that moment. Oh, Christ lives in this perfect way, in perfect morality and harmony with the laws of life. And I don't and don't want to. That's not where I feel happiest. And Christ loving you will let you go to a situation where you can do that, assuming it's not evil activities, because those won't go on forever. So, sidestep that. What I'm saying is we delay change and really growth in our lives most of the time because we refuse to sacrifice the thing that we need to sacrifice. The one thing, the one situation, the one person God wants us to let go of that He's saying, Hey, I know it's hard, I know it's gonna be difficult, but trust me. And really, if I'm being completely honest, if I'm being so super real and candid, this episode's for me. This really is. I I have these conversations with myself sometimes in the car. I don't know if that's weird. But anyway, and I try and like analyze myself, and honestly, honestly, I think I beat myself up too much. I think I have more so at some points in my life, less than others, and I've been better lately. Um but I I know I know there's things that I hold on to and situations that I just and really it's like thought processes. That's what it comes down to is I hold on to certain thought processes where the idea of making a hundred percent sacrifice, meaning fully letting go and turning back, turning away from, never looking back, that's what I need to do, and I struggle to do it. I struggle to do it because the period of waiting from letting go of that thing to when a better alternative would come is an unknown. That is something I don't know. I don't know when when I will get the things that I would like to get. I don't know that. I don't so it's easier to just like hold on, like barely to these thought processes. And I don't know if you feel that with anything. I mean, maybe it's like an old an old relationship you have, and it's just somebody that you you really loved and cared about, and and you just like can't move on from it. I'm telling you, let it go. And I think the best way to do that is to develop your faith. The the situations I was talking about isn't pertaining to that, but I have experience with letting go of a relationship. I do. And I really feel like I remember distinctly getting to a point of being able to let go of that situation, that relationship, that person who I had built a life with. And it was like a beautiful like bow tie on that chapter, that segment of my life. And from that point forward, life has been so much better. I've seen, I've seen what that's done. I remember in those like first few months post um that person and I splitting, like, I didn't want to like let how could I let go? How could I like restart my life? How like logistics didn't even make sense in my brain at the time. But now, like, you know, and it's not like oh, I wish I would have let go sooner. Frankly, I feel like I I did relatively soon, and that's by the grace. But what that situation did and what it enabled me to do was to immediately be in a place to receive new opportunities to grow, not just like relationship-wise, but in all aspects of my life. The the weight that holding on to that carried for those few months like didn't enable me to move forward, it really didn't. And I needed to go through some of that, but you know what the kicker was? It wasn't forgiving that person or people involved, it was forgiving myself. It was giving myself grace and with the mistakes I made. You know, for so long, it's it's okay, you you go through like a bitter period and you want to push blame, and then you have like a self-acknowledgement period somewhere in there where you realize you're partially to blame, but then you also realize, well, I need to forgive, I need to forgive so I can let go. Well, that's half of it. What about forgiving yourself? What whatever percent of responsibility you had or didn't have, it doesn't matter. The point is you carry a lot of emotion as a human. We're we're um super complex and there's a lot of wiring going on in here. And that moment when you let go of all of it, and Andrew Huberman, I don't know if you know who that is, but he's a famous scientist, biologist, neuroscientist, whatever, has a great podcast, and he he's recently opened up about his faith in God, and he talks about how beautiful it is, the relationship with God. God is the only thing outside of science, above reality, where you can take like your heart, your emotions, your challenges, and you give them over. Like you get them out of you and over to something real via prayer, via worship, and then you're you are clean of it. Like God solves it, God inhales those problems and deals with them as we yoke ourselves to God, and you don't like you can be rid from the burden of that emotion. And outside of God, there just isn't a good way to do that. Therapy ain't it. I'm pro therapy. I've been and I go here and there, and I like it, and I think way more people should. I think the older generation typically is like, uh just you know, pick yourself up by the boots and figure it out. And I think a lot of them could learn a lot in therapy. I don't think therapy should be a routine thing. I think you know, if if you go to therapy always, the tools you're getting in therapy aren't working enough because you should be able to apply things yourself, and that's generally speaking. I know there's like cases, and this episode is not about that. I'm not talking about therapy. But what I'm saying is therapy and any other kind of like remedies for physical sicknesses, emotional illnesses, there isn't like this beautiful process of taking something in your past, taking something about you that you monkey's fist in the trap, right? You're holding on to the to whatever the monkey wants in the hand trap, and it can't get his hand out. Whatever that thing is for you, God let it go, give it to God, and take your hand out, and you got this whole world, you got everything else to explore. You got all the other candy or nuts or whatever the monkey wants outside of what's in the cage. You can just go get them down the street. Anyway, I'm kind of rambling. Sorry, it's my my mind's all over the place right now. But the idea of new beginnings and that not being able to happen until you let go of something is so prevalent throughout the Bible, throughout all scriptures, throughout history with people. And I just want you to think of a time in your life where you like let go of a past or a past way or a past habit, and then you saw the fruits of like, oh man, I wish I'd never would have done that. Small small thing, and I talk about this a lot, social media. I had Instagram for so long, for um probably since I was 14 till 2020 20, yeah, yeah, yeah. So six, seven years I had Instagram, loved Instagram, you know, was all about it and whatever and posting stupid things. And I remember like it being a hard thing to delete it, but I I chose I wanted to delete it and made that choice and glad I did. And like within a week of deleting it, it was just like, oh, that was that was actually all dumb. And in the moment I couldn't really see that clearly, but as soon as it was like no longer part of my life, and I've gone through this process with many other social media apps, Snapchat. I I had Snapchat for so long, I'm a grown man, I had Snapchat for so long. It's because like my high school, we used it, and my friends, whatever, I don't need to make excuses. But same thing, I just like held on to it and oh well, it has my memories on there, and I don't want it. I finally got rid of it, and like within a day of have not having it, it was like, Oh, I like that was dumb. Like, that was kind of a waste of time, and like I knew it, but I couldn't really see it until I was on the other side. And the grass getting always greener, it isn't, but it is greener where you water it, and the grass on the other side might be fake. So just keep this in mind with this idea. I love the whole theme in the scriptures of the law of Moses. Pre-Christ coming, the law of Moses was how followers of God worshipped. They had these laws, they were very cut and dry, black and white, applicable to the cultural and spiritual laws and ways of living they had at the time. And Christ comes and we take old things and we make them new, and he shatters them, like quite literally says, everything we've been doing, scratch that. We're gonna we got a whole new system for y'all. And people couldn't let go of it. Like, people really couldn't. The entire Jewish religion, the Jewish people at the time, could not fathom letting go of these laws. And the entire is an overgeneralization. Obviously, some people did, some of his apostles, you know, all them being Jews were able to leave this life behind. But it was so hard, it was so hard to like. Wait, what about this rule? You know, what do you mean you're healing a man on the Sabbath? That has been like punishable by death for centuries, and now you, the son of God, are just doing that? Like, get what I'm saying? So there are things that at one point could have been good for you that God now wants you to let go. Maybe it wasn't always bad, maybe it was like a good thing that served a purpose, a good job, a good person, a good habit, a good routine, but now it doesn't serve you anymore. And do you have the spiritual bandwidth to recognize at what point things are supposed to come in and out of your life? And do you have the decision-making ability to let those things go and let other things come in? I'm working on it. I'm getting there. But I think that's a good spiritual skill to develop is can you be tuned in enough to your relationship with God to realize when he's taking something out of your life or wanting to, and that resistance you feel, that's not like that's you holding it. That's God pulling on the rubber band, and you're he's just saying, Hey, just you're good, just let me take this real quick, and you're like, uh, well, actually, uh, maybe I want it, and just let it go. And if I really sit here and think about the way to do that, it's think about a time in your life where God let you down. God let you down. I know there's like nuanced situations, some people might say they have that experience. I guarantee one day you'll see the bigger picture and realize God, God never let you down. Either you let yourself down or something else, but there has to be an alternative because God doesn't do that. He loves you. And we lie to ourselves and think, oh, if I'm just a little bit better, if I'm more obedient, God will love me more. How how wicked of a lie is that from Satan, where we feel like if we do more, God loves us more. His love, unconditional. However, his blessings and what he can do in our lives is conditioned on on how well we follow him. So not his love. His love is unchanging and unwavering for you and me, despite what we do, despite what mockery we make of the cross. He will love us the same. However, what can come into our lives is conditioned on what we sacrifice and what we choose to do with our time to follow and worship him as he'd have us do. It's a faith, it's a trade-off, it's sacrifice, it's consequence. You pick up one end of a stick, you're picking up the other end of a stick. So if you're not letting go of something, you're postponing and maybe never receiving the blessing which God is trying to get through to you. No space left in the voice. I do sales and I call people that I really need to get a hold of. And they don't know I need to get a hold of them, but I do. And a lot of people, I like leaving voice messages, and a lot of them have their inbox full. And I'm like, listen, I I got a message I gotta shotta get through to you. And I want you to hear me explain it. A text just isn't gonna work, and email sucks because it's gonna go to your spam. And I just I just want to leave a message for you, but you don't clear out all your old crap. That's a not a great example, but sometimes we have our voice message full, our inbox is full, and we don't see the new messages coming in from God because we won't let go of all the old crap. We don't need those subscription things from a year, we don't need this voice message from somebody we don't talk to from three years ago. So clear out your inbox, clear out the clutter, clear out the things that you won't let go of so that God can let progress happen in your life so that you can actually grow and become the person he needs you to have. So I think that process is when you pray, ask for help. Ask for the strength to do it. We want to offer the prayer of God, take this from me, but then when he's trying to, we're not ready. So maybe the prayer isn't God, take this from me, give me the strength and help my desire change so that I want to give this to you. I think that's a beautiful prayer. Try it out. And then sit and watch, and as you go through your life the next day, week, months, years, whatever that thing is that you want, and you know what? I think that's the point. I think sometimes you don't know what you need to sacrifice until you clearly define the thing that you want. I think that's fair to say. I think once you clearly define what you want in life and what you want to ask God to help you achieve and gain through his grace, then you'll start realizing the things he's trying to uproot, the the deep-rooted trees in your life that God wants to get out of there so he can plant this new forest of desires you have. You you probably won't realize what it is that you need to let go to God until you start working towards the things you want. And as you're working for what you want, God will, as you're going down that path, God will show you as you walk down that path with Him, hey, this this tree needs to go for us to get by. And you're like, Well, no, but I uh not that tree. Yes, this tree. If you want to get there, this tree needs to go. But that tree's provided fruit for so long, it needs to go. Because you don't see what I see, but this tree is gonna cause major issues down the road and be a distraction and blah blah blah. So I think there's a process there. So after you pray and ask for God for the help to to do this, then watch and be willing, have a willing heart, and then I love God is God is like good at you know like test this process like you can test it and if this doesn't work if I'm spewing garbage it won't take long for you to realize that I really don't think so. Thank you for listening to today's episode. Hopefully, I don't know, I ramble and so I just yeah, hopefully something in there was good. See you next week.