Getting Unstuck - Darrell Franklin

This episode explores how to break free from the wounds of betrayal, disappointment, and church hurt by distinguishing between intentional betrayal and human failure. 

Through powerful biblical examples from Judas, Peter, and Psalm 40, we discover that Jesus is the Great Physician who heals broken hearts, restores trust, and leads us out of the past into the victory He has prepared. 

If you've ever felt stuck because of painful experiences, this conversation will encourage you to pursue healing, embrace God's restoration, and move forward with confidence in Christ.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Summit Church Podcast. Thank you for joining us as we share weekly sermons and teachings from Summit Church in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Our prayer is that today's message encourages your faith and helps you grow in your relationship with Jesus. Check out our website at summitchurchtn.com. Thanks for listening, and we pray this message encourages you today.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Today we're going to talk about getting unstuck. Getting unstuck to get you to your victory. And originally I thought, and I'm developing an entire series which I'm working on through restoration counseling, on helping people get unstuck from church wounding. Get unstuck from bad experiences in the past. Because just like Pastor said, your life isn't in the past, it's in the present and in the future in the Holy Spirit. And so I'm working on getting unstuck from abuse in the church. I'm working on getting unstuck from immorality in the church. I'm working on getting unstuck from betrayal in the church. And I'm working on getting unstuck from disagreements and disappointments in the church because all those things are different and have different solutions. But the author of all those solutions is Jesus Christ. And so it doesn't matter what you've gone through in your life, whether it's in church or out of church. I'm going to be talking more in church, but this applies equally well outside of church. It doesn't matter what you've gone through, Jesus is the great physician and Jesus is the healer, and he has your path and your plan to healing and wholeness and getting unstuck and moving forward in what God has for you. This is a holy moment because God is here today to help you to flow in what God has for you to flow into. I'm not saying that if you're stuck, that you're backslidden. I'm not saying that if you're stuck, you have you're stuck in unforgiveness or offense. And I'm just going to say this probably eight times today. Some of you have been told the reason why your pain still hurts is because you still have unforgiveness in your heart. Or you're stuck or you're captured in offense. And that's not true. If you have forgiven them in the name of Jesus, you have forgiven them in the name of Jesus. And what God has done, no man can undo. And so the thing is that, yes, do we need forgiveness? Do we need to not be bitter? Absolutely. But some of you have been told that if you forgive, all of your pain, all of your hurt, all of the impact is going to go away. And that's not true. So if I'm walking down the street and a car backs into me by accident and breaks my leg, is my healing related to the car? Do I go, oh car, I forgive you, and my leg all of a sudden starts knitting back together? Do I forgive the driver and all of a sudden my leg starts repairing itself? No. Now it's good that I forgive the driver so I don't drink the poison of bitterness and destroy my life. Don't get me wrong. But the thing is, I need something more than what I can do to get healing from those things that are outside of my control, and his name is Jesus. In Psalm 40, David writes out God's healing plan for when you've gone through church wounding. And you'll notice I don't use church hurt because church hurt we usually assign to those things of, oh, the pastor forgot to shake my hand. I'm not talking about those things. Okay. But church wounding in Psalm 40, the Holy Spirit, David, under the inspiration of Holy Spirit, gave us the ability, the way forward that God has laid out in his word for us. In Psalm 40, starting with verse 1, I waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined to me and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, and he set my feet upon a rock, making my footsteps firm. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and will trust in the Lord. How blessed is the man who has made the Lord his trust, and has not turned to the proud, nor to those who lapse into falsehood. Many, O Lord my God, are your wonderful works which you have done and your thoughts toward us. There is none to compare with you. If I would declare and speak of them, they would be too numerous to count. What we have here in Psalm 40 is a lament. A lament. L-A-M-E-N-T. A lament. Sometimes people say, oh, you shouldn't take your hurts, your pains, your complaints to God. And then I look in the Bible, and there's a Holy Ghost-inspired book called Lamentations. And sometimes say, people, I don't want to pray about it because I don't want to give it power. Let me tell you what, your problem was there before you spoke about it. And Jesus said that we are confess our needs and to bring our needs to Him. And that word cry in Psalm 40 is a lament. It is, if you read Psalms, right, David's not shy about bringing his complaints to God. Right? In the Psalm that you read, he was talking about, right, the enemies that have come against him, and Lord, I want you to slap them. Praise God. And he's talked about the people who have betrayed him. He's talked about the people who have let him down. He's talked about the people who have hurt him, harmed him, tried to destroy him, disappointed him. And he brings those things to God. The difference between complaining and a godly lament is the godly lament is done out of faith, going, if God, if I bring you my hurts and my pains and my heartaches and my disappointments and my betrayal, if I keep coming back to you and keep coming back to you, you're going to keep pouring out in me everything that I need in this life. It is an act of faith to say, God, I know you're sovereign and I'm going through this and I don't understand why. Because you're declaring the sovereignty of God. It's an act of faith to say, God, I know you're a healer, and I don't understand why I'm still feeling the pain, because that's an act of faith that God is our healing God. It's an understanding of, God, I don't understand why I'm going through the valley when you order my steps because you are declaring the faithfulness of God to declare your life. So when you come to God and you say, God, I don't understand. God, this hurts. God, I don't like this. God, this is painful, that is trusting in God as your healer and your source and your life. So David said, I waited patiently. And God heard my cry. And one of the things that we have to understand that God's plan for us to have lament with him and to grieve with him is the element of time. We want instant everything. You notice I didn't say you, I said we. Right? If McDonald's takes longer than 45 seconds on a drive-thru time, we're saying, what is going on here? Right? Did somebody order 400 hot apple pies? But God, he said, I waited patiently for the Lord. And part of lament is spending time with your grief. And spending time with your complaint. And spending time with the Lord, talking to him and bringing to him and let him work in and through you with your hurts and your pains and your betrayals. And then bringing your cry to the Lord. And then you know what the promise is? God always hears our cry. Oh, I wonder if I make God mad when I when I bring my problems to him. No, God said that he wants you to come boldly into the throne room of grace in your time of need. And God is an ever-present help in a time of trouble. God wants you to come boldly to him and bring your troubles to him, bring your complaints to him, bring your heartaches to him, bring your disappointments to him, and bring the betrayals that you've had in your life to him. You know, I was going to preach about getting unstuck from disappointment, Holy Ghost. I was in a very odd and fun predicament yesterday, and Holy Ghost changed it right in the middle of that very fun and odd predicament. He goes, No, we're going to talk about betrayal today. I'm like, oh, that's fun. But the thing is, is that one of the things that gets people stuck in the body of Christ, stuck in their walk with God, is they're in church, they're around Christians, they're around family members, and somebody betrays them and it shocks them so much that they freeze in place. They don't backslide, they don't run away from God, they just stop doing the things that they used to do. Have you ever seen somebody that used to worship with both their hands raised and now they sit quietly? Have you ever seen somebody that used to run to altars when the altar call came and now they always hang back? Have you seen somebody that always used to be at prayer meetings but now they're no longer there? Or they used to have a prayer time at home, but the closet has grown dusty and the Bible has grown cold. And it is because we get trained by those betrayals to play it safe, to go in our shell, and stop taking risk in the name of Jesus. And this is a holy moment because God told me to tell you it's time to get unstuck and be bold for Jesus again. It is time to pursue him with abandon. It is right, you shall seek me and you find me if you do it with half your heart. All your heart. Praise God. All your heart. So we're going to go as quickly as we can about two cases of what we call betrayal. We're going to find out that one's not. That Jesus experienced. Because I want to tell you, it doesn't matter how you've been betrayed, Jesus has experienced what you've experienced. He just doesn't know about it because he's God, but he lived through it while he was here. And the scripture says that he was made like we are so that he could be touched by everything that we're touched with and understand in a way that having experience with those things gives him. So if you want to understand how to get through it, you just watch Jesus because he got through it. In Matthew 26, we're talking about Judas, the disciple that betrayed Jesus. As they were eating, he said, Jesus, truly I say to you that one of you will betray me. Being deeply grieved, they each one began to say him, Surely not I, Lord, and he answered, He who dipped his hand with me in the bowl is the one who will betray me. The Son of Man is to go, as it is written of him, but woe to the man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would have been good for that man if he had not been born. And Judas, who was betraying him, said, Surely it is not I, Rabbi. And Jesus said to him, You have said it yourself. Going on, now we're moving on to the garden of where Jesus was betrayed, and Judas was approaching him. And so while Jesus was still speaking in the garden later, behold, Judas, one of the twelve, came up accompanied by a large crowd with swords and clubs, who came from the chief priest and the elders of the people. Now he who was betraying him gave them a sign, saying, Whomever I kiss, boy, isn't that just twisting the knife right there. Whoever I kiss, he is the one, seize him. Immediately Judas went to Jesus and said, Hell, Rabbi, and kissed him. And Jesus said to him, Friend, do what you have come for. Then they came and laid hands on him and and seized him. And finally, the final disposition of Judas in Matthew 27. Then when Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that he had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priest and the elders, saying, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood. But they have said, What is that to us? See to that yourself. And he threw the pieces of silver into the temple sanctuary and departed, and he went away and he hanged himself. That'll get you shouting wanna. Judas walked with Jesus, he ministered with Jesus. When the disciples were sent out, it said they all were able to see God heal and cast out demons in the name of Jesus, including Judas. You know, it's always striking in this life when people who can do so much good in one way can do so much bad in another way. Has anybody ever had somebody do just tremendous good in your life and tremendous bad at the same time? Is that only me? And so the the thing is that Judas was one of the twelve that walked with Jesus. In the Psalm it says, I could have taken it if I had been betrayed by an enemy, but my wound is grievous because I was betrayed by a friend. And so one of the things that we see in this is that the Holy Ghost has told you, the Holy Ghost hasn't told you, excuse me. The enemy has told you, and the Holy Ghost is telling you now. The enemy tells you you did something to deserve that betrayal. You did something wrong, you made some mistake, you made some error. And of course we make mistakes and we make errors. We're human. Unless you've got nail scars in your hand and crown of thorn prints on your crown, you are going to make mistakes. We are all going to make mistakes. As leaders, we make mistakes. There are times that I look back and I thought I was right in decisions that I made based on the best information that I had doing the best I could, and then ten years later and look back and go, boy, I messed that one up, didn't I? Everybody makes mistakes. But the enemy wants to take your mistake and say that that's an element for betrayal. He wants, because again, what Jesus did is he disappointed Judas, and Judas used his disappointment as a cause for betrayal. But let me tell you, it didn't matter what Jesus did. It was not worthy of what Judas did. And I'm going to declare over your life that that person who betrayed you, what you did was not worthy of what they did. You did not earn that. You did not cause that. It was not your fault. The betrayal is always in the heart of the betrayer. Because if they're a brother or sister in Christ and you wound them, they're going to come to you to reconcile, not pull the knife out and bring a crowd to try to tear you down. I'm going to preach that again. If somebody is hurt, they're going to come to you and try to get healing. But if they got betrayal in their heart because they have betrayal in their heart, and the Bible says that the devil had entered into Judas after he consented to betray Jesus. If they've got the demons in their heart, it is not your fault when the demon possessed act like the demon possessed. Oh, if I'd have just been a little better, that abusive person would stop abusing. No. There's a whole sermon there, but I'm not going there, praise God. Pastor said I could only preach to two. But she didn't say A.M. or P.M. Pastor, you know, I found that there is nothing that improves people's prayer life like joking that you're going to preach a long time. And so Jesus experienced true betrayal of Judas. Somebody he had been good to, somebody he had laid hands on, somebody that he'd imparted anointing to, somebody that if Judas had stayed faithful, he was destined to sit on one of the twelve thrones and judge the children of Israel in heaven for all eternity. Jesus had elevated him and put him at the highest level, and Judas still betrayed him. And I'm here to tell you, you've got to stop taking the condemnation of the enemy and taking the sin that somebody else did and taking responsibility for the sin of others in your own life because Jesus came to set you free. In Luke 22. At that same dinner where Jesus confronted Judas. And you, when you once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers. But he said to him, Lord, with you I am ready to go both to prison and to death. And he said to you, and he said, I say to you, Peter, the rooster will not crow today until you have denied three times that you knowed me. Matthew 26, 69. Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard where Jesus was being condemned and beaten. And a servant girl came to him and said, You too were with Jesus the Galilean, but he denied it before them all, saying, I don't know what you're talking about. When he had gone out to the gateway, another servant girl saw him and said another girl said to those who were there, This man was with Jesus of Nazareth. And again he denied it with an oath. I do not know the man. A little later a bystander came up and said to Peter, Surely you too are one of them, for even the way you talk gives you away. Then he began to curse and swear, I do not know the man. And immediately a rooster crowed, and Peter remembered the word which Jesus had said before our rooster crows, you will deny me three times. And he went out and wept bitterly. Peter walked with Jesus too. He was anointed with Jesus too. He was the first one to say, Jesus, you're the Messiah. And Jesus said, Upon this faith, upon this rock, I'm going to build my church. Peter was always the leader, the aggressor, the one moving out fast. He was always the one that's going to say, right, if you storm the gates of hell, I'll be there with you with a water pistol, right? And have you ever noticed that when somebody says, I'm going to be, you know, storm the gates of hell with you, right? And all that stuff, when crunch time comes, it really doesn't make one difference one way or the other. Right? Have you ever had somebody say, I'm going to be there for you? I'm going to be there for you. And then you look around when the crunch time comes. You're looking behind the drums. No, no, they're hot, not hiding under the riser either. Where'd they go? And it feels like betrayal. It feels like betrayal when somebody said they were going to be there for you and they're not. It feels like somebody who said, I'm going to stand up and fight for you, and then when the fight comes, they're nowhere to be seen. It feels like betrayal. That's what the enemy's going to tell you. When you're in places in churches and people are praying, and then they make the wrong decision, it feels like betrayal. But it's not. Betrayal takes intent. Betrayal takes intent. You see, Peter failed in the moment, and that's human failure. And a lot of what we term as betrayal in the church isn't betrayal, it's incompetence, including mine. It's human faults and flaws. It's judging things, being caught into my own stuff, and judging the present by the past. It is having to balance 48 different stories, and you're not the Holy Ghost, so you don't know what's going on behind the scenes. You know, sometimes people expect the pastor to be a judge, but the pastor doesn't have the legal means of discovery, right? To compel testimony, to put people under oath, to hire investigators. They don't have detectives and police officers and access to the security cams. And we're supposed to have a pastor that's be able to make this. Well, they hear from God. Yes, they hear from God as long as God's talking to them about the situation. People can't hear from God if God's not speaking to them about the situation. Somebody needs to hear that a third time. People can't hear from God if God's not speaking into that situation. Pastors and ministers and elders don't have magic phones where they get up and call God and say, God, I need the inside scoop on the situation. And God's like, Oh, I'm happy to gossip with you.

unknown 23:31

Come on.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

God wants somebody to know that you've been trying to forgive somebody for betrayal, and it's not worked because it wasn't betrayal, it was just failure. It was just weakness. It was just like Peter, who had a good heart but a weak constitution, and when the moment of pressure came, he crumbled under the pressure, and he was all too human. Now I want you to understand that there is a different response to the Judas in your life and to the Peter in your life. There are those out there, and I've got their books on my bookshelf at home. So if you see my bookshelf, don't assume I agree with every book on my bookshelf. She said, Amen. That will tell you that you're supposed to go and make it good with everybody who has wronged you in your life. But the Bible says, follow peace with all men as much as it lies within you. There are those that will say that if you're not able to reconcile with the person who intended to harm you, that somehow you're a failure and that's a lie. Because remember when they dipped the bread and the dinner, and Jesus said, Woe to the man who betrays me, it would be better if he had not been born. That's called a boundary. In 1 Timothy chapter 6, this is the response to the Judas. If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited and understands nothing. But he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who dis who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. That was a hey, go give that guy a hug. In 2 Timothy chapter 3, but realize this that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, and holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power. What's the next sentence? Avoid. Avoid, avoid, avoid such men as these. Right? In Titus 3, it says, reject a factious man after he has been reproved. I want to tell you something. Some of you have had burdens laid on you that you're responsible for things that you're not. If somebody comes to you like Peter and truly repentant and they get on their knees and say, Please forgive me, then yes, you have the mandate, the commandment to forgive them and try to reconcile with them. But if somebody hits you with a baseball bat and they keep hanging on to the baseball bat, you do not have any obligation to get back into swinging distance. It is not your failure. It is not your failure when people walk in a Judas anointing. You've had people in your ministry and you question your leadership and you question your ability to hear from God and you question your ability to be in the leading of the Holy Ghost, and you question your vision, you question your mission, you question your methods, because somebody betrayed you. But let me tell you, it did not start in your methods, in your mission, in your hearing, in your vision, in your relationship with God. It started in the heart of the betrayer who gave himself over to the enemy. And God is saying it is time to get free from the condemnation of somebody else's sin and to walk in the confidence and the ability and the anointing that God gave you with a holy boldness that is unafraid to walk in the power and the demonstration of God. That's true when congregations fail you. That's true when leadership and pastors fail you. That's true. Again, because if somebody's in the pulpit and they've got a five-year-long affair going on, they're betraying their congregation. That's not the congregation's fault. And if a pastor is up here preaching the word and people rebel against it because they want to hear a softer word or a different word or a bad word and they have a vote, it is not the pastor's fault. Let's look at the Peter response. In John chapter 21. This is after Jesus' resurrection. Jesus called Simon over Peter to a fire that was made out of the same kind of coals that the fire that Jesus denied, or that Peter denied Jesus around. So in the scripture, it's literally the same kind of fire, the same kind of setting. Where the servant girl had come to Peter. Do you know him? Because you're a Galilean and Jesus, and Peter swore and said, I don't know this guy. The same fire, the same coals, the same heat, the same warp, the same light. Jesus took him back. So when they finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon, Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? And he said to him, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. And he said to him, Tend my lambs. And he said to him a second time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? And he said to him, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. And he said to him, Shepherd my sheep. He said to him a third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, Do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know all things, you know that I love you. Jesus said to him, Tend my sheep. Truly, truly, I say to you, When you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk around when you wished. But when you grew old, you will stretch out your hands, and somebody else will gird you and bring you where you do not wish to go. Now this he said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. When he had spoken to him, he said again to him, Follow me. One of the hardest betrayals that we have to face is where we think we've betrayed God. Where we think we fail God. And so again, one of the things that the enemy likes to do is when we've failed, we've collapsed, we've denied, we've gone wrong, we've made a wrong decision, we've said something we shouldn't have said, handled something away that we shouldn't have. Right? He wants us to take the Judas option and just run away and die. But Jesus says, Come back. Come back around the same place and the same fire and let me reconcile you and set you back in the calling and the ministry and the anointing that I have for you. You understand that he ended that section with the same first two words that he used to call Peter back into being a disciple the first time was follow me. When Peter had failed, Jesus came up to him and he said, Well, now, Peter, we're gonna have to sign a contract and you're gonna have a diminished ministry, and and you know, we're gonna know he just said, What did he do? He said the exact same thing to him, follow me. Because I guarantee you, whatever you did, you weren't in as bad a shape as you were when Jesus rescued you from a life of sin and destruction, and you were drowning in the pit. God, whatever failure you had was not the same as you were doing when you were sinning against man and God, and he's here to tell you, I am ready to restore you into everything that I have had for you, am having for you, and will have for you, if you'll just come around the fire and repeat, Jesus, I love you, I love you, I love you, and I'm willing to follow you even to the utter ends of the earth. See, what the enemy does is when you're going good. Have you ever noticed that betrayals and failures happen when everything's going great? When you're moving and flowing in the Holy Spirit, and you feel like you're having the best time in your life, and you and you reach the mountaintop like you've never reached before, that's when that happens. That's not by chance. Remember when Satan attacked Jesus through Judas the week before, he had just entered in to Jerusalem with people waving palm branches and say, Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna, glory to God in the highest. Jesus had just been through the Mount of Transfiguration, he'd just been through this triumphal entry, and that's when the betrayal entered into his life. You see, you have to understand betrayal isn't a mark that you failed, betrayal is a mark that you were doing what God wanted you to do and you were flowing in what God wanted you to do, and Satan attacked you through the betrayal in your life. The thing that we do that's wrong is that when churches fail, when leadership fails, we put the name of God on human failure. Imagine if Jesus had been on the cross and instead of saying, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do, if he said, Father, condemn them because they're just like Judas. Father, you can't use me because I'm just like Judas. But Jesus said, Father, forgive them because they didn't know what they were doing. And again, intent matters. The scripture says God knows the thoughts and the intents of our heart because it makes a difference. But Jesus did not look at them and say, condemn them all. He said, They're failing, but they're not betraying. So, Father, forgive them. And right now, you've been feel like you've been betrayed, but you've actually been failed. I'm speaking to somebody right now, and you need to rebuke the enemy and say, no, that's human failure, that's human incompetence. That again, I'm just gonna again, this is a cliche, but never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by incompetence. Oh, they were all against me. No, they just didn't know what they were doing. Oh, it seemed like everybody was conspiring against me. No, it was just people playing Keystone cops, running into each other, overreacting to the situation because the hair was on fire and they didn't know what to do. You've been there. Don't look at me like you haven't, because I have. You've been in situations where you came out of that, and well, I was handled that about as poorly as a human being could. And if that's been you, that's been them. Oh, they're pastors, they're elders, they're church members, they're supposed to somehow magically, Harry Potter style, be made into something different. I tell you what, I'm not gonna get perfected till I hear that trumpet and my body gets turned into a new eternal body. By the way, I'm looking forward to that moment when my resurrected form becomes fully real and fully true, and I, as Ryan says, I'm gonna stop stepping and stupid so often, and I'm gonna be glorifying God. But until that time, I'm human, you're human, we're all human. And the moment that we say, Oh, somehow, right, they've got to get it perfect every time, or that's God speaking. It's not God speaking to you. When it's God speaking to you, is when we walk in the anointing and the power of the Holy Spirit and walk in the fruit of Spirit, and we display those things when we didn't used to display those things, and we walk in patience and kindness and grace when we didn't used to walk in patience and kindness and grace. That's the work of God. My mistakes are my own. And we have got to stop attributing to churches and pastors and people the mistakes that people make and say, Oh, that was God. Somebody betrayed me. God must be mad at me. God didn't tell them to betray you. Oh, oh, the uh again, not gonna tell much of my story, but I had an entire denomination and an entire state believe a lie about me. And I let that get in my head that that was somehow God, and it caused bitterness to come in my life, and it almost destroyed me. That close. But God has been through a long process of bringing me back and understanding that was just people listening to the best information they had because I was too sick to defend myself, and they believed the testimony that they heard without proper process, but it wasn't God speaking, it wasn't the verdict of God, it wasn't the will of God, it was just people being incompetent. Oh, but again, have you ever noticed that the people who get it wrong the most tell you about how they had the greatest amount of discernment? The more somebody says, Oh, I can discern people in situations and I've got it all figured out, nothing ever gets past me. I'm going, they are following for for Nigerian uh uh scams on the internet right now. Maybe that's not true, but I feel that way. But the thing is, is that especially when you're young in faith and somebody says, I can hear from God and I can discern and I can tell you this and I can tell you that, you want to believe them. And what the enemy does when you take that right because to the pure, all things are pure. When you are young in faith and you want to believe and you want to trust, the enemy will send somebody to betray that trust, to destroy that trust, so you won't have that trust in the things of God. And it's time to say, Enemy, I'm not gonna let those betrayers take my trust, but I'm gonna step out and grab hold of the trust that God gave me. I'm gonna grab hold of that new babe in Christ trust with a soft heart and believe all things and hope all things and understand that God is doing all things in my behalf. Well, how you do that? I'm glad you ask. And he inclined to me and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, and he set my feet upon a rock, making my foundation firm. Who is the chief cornerstone, the rock? Jesus. When you get lifted out of the miry clay, you put your feet on Jesus. And you'll notice later on in that verse it says, You did not turn to the proud or to the deceitful. You've got to stop, and I've got to stop listening to the testimony of the proud and the deceitful and the betrayers and the destroyers, as anything except a lie from the enemy. Oh, everything has some element of truth in it. No, it doesn't. I could sit here and make a joke about dunking a basketball, and I could tell you there is no truth in that at all. Amen. I'm almost 59. I'm not even sure I could dunk it on a nerf hoop now. Maybe if it was this high. But Jesus is the rock. And your solution to your betrayal problem and your failure of people problem isn't going back endlessly, rehashing, recycling, recalculating, reconfiguring, because that is the Freudian lie in our society that if you just remember it and rehash it and rehearse it, and rehash it and rehearse it, and rehash it and rehearse it, that somehow you're going to get free. But the research, by the way, for those of you who are interested, you're just deepening those neural networks and strengthening those synaptic connections. That's the only psychology you're going to get in this sermon. But the thing is, is that when we talk about this, we have to say, Jesus, because again, a lament is I had a problem, but God, you're my solution. I had a betrayal, but in God, I trust. God, they were unfaithful, but I know that you are faithful. God, they lied, but I know that you're truthful. God, they were not worthy of my trust, but I know you're worthy of my trust. And the people that you send into my life and the churches that you send into my life, and the pastors that you send in my life that are obedient to you, they're worthy of my trust too. I am not going to blame everybody for one person or one church's or one denomination's sin. I am going to let every person, it says in Exodus, every person shall bear their own iniquity, and every person shall be the result of their own righteousness. When you start doing this thing we're doing in the world, where you start blaming all men and all women and this race and that ethnicity and this group and that group, you have fallen live to the spirit of alienation that is trying to destroy your soul because the scripture says that we all live and die before God, one-on-one, in relationship with Him. And it's not about group, it's not about identity, it's not about, oh, that's what churches do, or that's what pastors do, or that's what this denomination does. It's about what that one person did under the influence of the enemy, and it's time to stop generalizing and making it about everything when it was one person or one group of people. So, right now, in the name of Jesus, to the spirit of alienation, the Lord rebuke you. The Lord rebuke you. The Lord rebuke you. If you have a problem with that bit of spiritual warfare, it's in the book of Jude. Verbatim. The Lord rebuke you, Satan. But what God is calling you today is to say, first of all, Lord, that person that I thought betrayed me, they probably just failed me. Now, if you know they betrayed you, they betrayed you. But they probably just failed. That's where the Bible says, judge not, because we don't have all the information. You're like, well, I don't know if they betrayed me or if they just failed me, because I don't know what was going on inside their mind. Exactly. You will hear me say often, mind reading ain't a thing. God knows the thoughts and the intents because of the Spirit of God, but we don't. Now, if somebody looks you in the eye and says, I'm gonna stick a knife between your ribs and I'm gonna do my most to destroy you. I've had that happen to me. Right? That's a betrayal. But if somebody's just clueless, incompetent, making the best decision, or maybe they just get a little human, a little have you ever had somebody make a bad decision in your life just because they got selfish? And people say, oh, that was that wasn't a betrayal, that was a failure. Because betrayal takes the desire to destroy you. And most of the time, it's just that people are trying to enrich themselves or do their own stuff. Now that's bad. That takes forgiveness, that takes healing, that's a big thing. Your leg's still broken, whether they did it intentionally or not. But if somebody looks you in the eye and runs over your leg, then you know, right? But your leg's still broken. And one of the things that Holy Ghost told me to do coming in here is to validate your pain. To validate your wounding, to validate your hurt, to validate your betrayal, to validate the times that people have failed you. God sees you, he loves you, he cares about you, he loves you, he loves you, he loves you right where you are, and he is touched by the feeling of your pain. But this is a house of healing. This is a house of his presence. He did not intend for you to live in that pain. He did not intend that every time you walk into a church, you remember that past betrayal or that past hurt. He did not intend for you every time that the Holy Ghost tells you to go to the altar. You're sitting there struggling because of something that happened in the past. God wants you free to pursue him with all of your heart, without any change from the past. He wants you to get unstuck from the past so you can walk in victory in the present and the future. I'm here to tell you God did it for me. He can do it for you, he can get you free from all of those things because God wants you to walk in victory.