Wisdomfest 2024: Rising Above Anxiety – Consider the Birds 6/30/24

My heart really resonated with Peter as he was talking about Steve Bartel. When I got the news yesterday morning, there was something in my spirit that was like, “No!” We all know that cancer is part of the landscape of our world. We’re painfully aware of that. But for a man like Steve, who was so full of life, relatively young, to just be gone so quickly— it’s painful. I was so grateful that God has us in this series about anxiety and care. It’s such a kindness that God had us in this place. Today we’re going to look at one verse, as Peter said,

“Consider the ravens. They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet your Father feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!”

When Jesus was giving this sermon outside, not in a room like this, there’s every evidence—external and internal evidence—that this was at the period of the great bird migration. For those of you who don’t know, the Jordan Valley is the location of the greatest, largest bird migration in the world. It’s in the Jordan Valley.

If you’re imagining in your mind there’s a little olive tree and there’s a little bird, and Jesus says, “Oh, look at the bird—” No. Some estimate that as many as 500 million birds travel from East Africa to Europe and back again every year. The more likely picture that we should be putting in our minds is the sky virtually blackened out by birds flying overhead and Jesus saying … maybe he had to stop because the sound was so great. “Look at look at that. Look at that.”

In an environment where people were filled with anxiety because they were a dominated people, many of them didn’t know where their next meal was coming from, life was precarious and uncertain— Jesus calls them, in their imagination, to look at something that was abundant. In our broken, painful world that is so often characterized by scarcity, Jesus lifts their eyes. He’s lifting our eyes this morning to see the sky darkened with birds. Behind every single one of those birds is a question.

It’s a rough world for birds. I want to show you a picture of my friend. This is the cardinal, the male cardinal that comes to my window all through each day, along with two other regulars. I’ve never seen that Cardinal bring a little bag to put the seed in, or a little wheelbarrow, a little bird wheelbarrow, or a little bird pickup truck. When he gets hungry, he comes and eats the seed that I provide for him. I don’t think that bird’s worried about who wins the next election. I don’t think he watched the debate. And yet it’s a dangerous world out there for birds. That’s my cat, Bunny. She is savage. She probably takes town at least 100 birds every year. And she is such a sharer. She’s always got to bring us something to let us know she’s doing her job. Some estimate that up to a billion birds die every day.

And yet you don’t see birds forming blue ribbon commissions to figure out how to stop cat violence or end the bird food problem, or the global bird conflict crisis. They just live wild and free exactly the way God created them, because God created an ecosystem in which they can flourish.

The reason they don’t worry is incredibly simple: your Father feeds them.  Your Father feeds them. Then comes this question: “are you not much more valuable than they are?” In the rhetorical world, we call that a rhetorical question. A rhetorical question is a question that supposedly the answer is obvious. Jesus wasn’t like, do you think you’re more valuable? The answer to that question is obvious, but perhaps this morning it’s not that obvious to you. As Peter said, perhaps that question is the farthest thing from obvious. Maybe you’re sitting here this morning and saying, “You know what? I really don’t think so.” You count far more to him than birds. Aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? Are you not worth much more than they?

See this question of anxiety? I’m telling you this morning, right from the jump, that this is not a theoretical question for me. As I was sitting with God, he took my mind back to my childhood.

I had to bring this picture because I don’t think you people realize how incredibly cool I was. That is my Dodge Dart pushbutton automatic 1963 fire engine red. I bought that car for $300, drove it for three years, never had one problem and sold it for $300. So just imagine. Those days are gone forever. You can’t buy a new car and drive it for three years anymore without having a problem. I want to get nostalgic, but I’m not.

I was remembering when I was 12 years old and my dad sat me down and dropped the information that he and my mom were getting a divorce. It didn’t come as a big surprise to me, because growing up, it was evident to me that my mom and dad weren’t very happy, but I didn’t really know why. In later years, I found out that my dad’s relentless womanizing finally caught up with him and my mother said, “Enough. Enough.”

Most people would say my mom and dad didn’t have a chance. My mom’s mom had a variety of mental health diagnoses and issues. My mom’s mom (“Grammie” we called her) lived homeless pretty much her entire life, mostly by her own choice. And my dad’s dad was famous as the town drunk of Carney, Nebraska. And so it was not surprising bringing that kind of trauma and brokenness into the marriage, that it was a struggle from the get-go. My family ecosystem was often chaotic. It was dysfunctional. It was broken.

This is the meaning that, as a child, I made this story that I wrote based on my experience in my childhood: at the end of the day, I’m really alone, and I can’t trust or rely on anybody. The story that I wrote in my head. The meaning I made is that the world is a dangerous and unpredictable place, and I really don’t belong here. I believed I wasn’t good enough or strong enough to hold my family together.

Most kids who experience divorce feel intense guilt and shame. Somehow we always think it’s our fault, no matter how irrational that is. Many of you know what I’m talking about. And ultimately, I decided that I just don’t really matter in the grand scheme of life.

I grew up in the church, but I saw myself as one face in a vast crowd. Yes, God knew somehow I was there because he knows everything. But I’m just a face in the crowd, lost in a sea of humanity. When you believe that you have no value, how are you not anxious? When you believe the world is a dangerous and unpredictable place, you’re really irrational not to be anxious. That was my life.

As I’ve thought about this, it occurred to me, what if anxiety is really more about what we believe about our value than it is about our circumstances that we obsess over, or our problems, or all the people who have failed us? What if really those are not the primary causes of our anxiety? What if it really is an issue that we actually don’t believe were more valuable than the birds?

This story is beautifully reflected in the book of Genesis. It’s reflected in the whole Bible, but the story of Jacob has resonated with me in a very powerful way. Jacob, one of the main characters in the book of Genesis, was a boy that grew up always wanting a blessing. In that way, he reflects every child who was ever born. We want to be blessed. We want to feel the affirmation. It’s not so much about the stuff, it’s that somebody is looking out for us. Somebody is saying, you’re good, you matter. You’re valuable. But unfortunately, Genesis tells us…

“When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter [that’s Jacob’s brother], a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents.”

He was a nerd. Do you still say that word? Yeah, thanks.

“Isaac [that’s Jacob’s dad] loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebecca loved Jacob” (Genesis 25:27-28).

This is what we call in the business the “classic father wound.” This is a dysfunctional family. Look up “dysfunctional family” in your dictionary and you will see this family because this is seriously messed up.

In time, Isaac is dying. He’s coming to the end of his life. Jacob still doesn’t have the blessing that he longs for, so his mother cooks up this scheme to deceive her dying husband (you can’t make this up). And Jacob dresses up like his brother and comes in to steal his brother’s blessing.

“Jacob said to his father, ‘I am Esau your firstborn. I have done as you told me—” [Lie, lie. This is so crazy.] “…now sit up and eat my game, that your soul may bless me” (Genesis 27:19).

That’s so powerful and pathetic, isn’t it? That is the human story. So Isaac says, “Yeah, you smell like my son. You’re all sweaty, but your voice is— His voice is kind of deep and you have this nerdy voice. Come closer, I gotta check this out.” So he came near. Get this, it says “he came near and kissed him.” This gets worse and worse.

“And Isaac smelled the smell of his garments and blessed him and said, ‘See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed.’”

Then he gives this extravagant, crazy blessing.

“Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you, and blessed be everyone who blesses you!”

It’s like, wow, this is the blessing of blessings. It don’t get no better than this. All because he thought it was Esau. If he’d known it was Jacob, he’d never given it. This is like a movie. It’s so awesome.

“As soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, when Jacob had scarcely got out from the presence of Isaac his father, Esau his brother came in from his hunting” (Genesis 27:27-30).

I think most of you know the story. Esau’s like, “What? Look what my brother did to me! Take it back.” Isaac’s like, “I can’t take it back. I said it, I can’t unsay it.” What’s so pathetic is that Jacob gets everything he ever longed for. He got it. But the only way he got it was in a false identity. He had to become somebody he wasn’t to get what he thought he wanted. Isn’t that amazing?

Does that look at all like our world? People living in their false selves, their shadow selves of false identity because that’s the only way we know how to get even legitimate things. It’s very legitimate to want to be blessed.

Jacob’s mother calls him in for a little conference. It says,

“The words of Esau her older son were told to Rebecca. So she sent and called Jacob … and said to him, ‘Behold, your brother Esau comforts himself about you by planning to kill you’” (Genesis 27:42).

So dad’s dying, but good news: Esau is doing pretty good with it, and the reason he’s doing pretty good with it is—as soon as dad dies—he’s going to kill you. That’s his comfort. So let’s check the scoreboard, shall we?

We have a dying man who was kind of a failure as a father. He kind of did the classic blunder by favoring one son over another. As the man is dying, his two sons are fighting over his stuff. He has a son who is a swindler that will deceive his dad on his deathbed, and a wife who’s partnering with him to do it. Then he’s got a son who can’t wait for the grieving process so he can kill his brother. If that’s not a dysfunctional family, I don’t know what is.

Jacob was like, “Feet, don’t fail me now. I’m getting out of here before Esau gets his comfort.” It says,

“Jacob left Beersheba… At sundown he arrived at a good place to camp … Jacob found a stone to rest his head against—”

Which is pretty pathetic. This is not like my pillow. When you’re using a rock for a pillow— I don’t even get that. Especially for a nerd. What nerd would use a rock for a pillow? That part of the story, I don’t know.

“As he slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from the earth up to heaven.”

Insert Led Zeppelin allusion.

“At the top of the stairway stood the Lord, and he said, ‘I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham [check], and the God of your father, Isaac”

Check, even though he was kind of a failure. But is he my God? He’s everyone else’s God. Is he my God?

“I am with you, and … One day I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have finished giving you everything I have promised you. Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place,  and I wasn’t even aware of it!’ But he was also afraid and said, ‘What an awesome place this is! It is none other than the house of God, the very gateway of heaven!’” (Genesis 28:10-19)

This little moment kind of encapsulates again the story of our world and the hope of our world, the story of redemption, the story of Allan Sherer growing up as a little boy in a dysfunctional house. In every moment of that story, though, the Lord was there and I didn’t know it. I didn’t know it. The fact that I didn’t know it more than all the circumstances of my life was what left me feeling alone and afraid. I became Jacob. I had to con and connive and charm and weasel my way to get everything that I so desperately needed and wanted. But the God who came looking for Jacob at the lowest point — I mean, when you’re leaving home because your brother’s about to kill you, it don’t get no worse than that.

I even relate to the whole father thing. My brother Jeff (he’s four years older) he has worked for IBM for like 50 years. My brother, when he went to work at IBM, they actually changed company policy to promote him at an age earlier than company policy so he could be promoted because he’s so brilliant. He was the technology supervisor for the 1984 Olympics.

It’s kind of different because my mom maybe kind of liked him, and my dad couldn’t stand him. It was a little different, but the story is the same. I could never live up to him. I’m like, “Hey, someone help me turn my computer on. I don’t know what this is. I can’t get the printer to work,” so I get all that. But the God who came looking for Jacob, he came looking for me in the craziest place. I was never unseen or unknown.

I just want to say — it’s very interesting and we can’t get into this because it’s a very deep thing — but the Bible says that even before Jacob was born, God said, “The elder will serve the younger.” I don’t understand all that. I’m not going to get in debates with you Calvinists out there. I’m just saying that one way or another, in some mysterious way, what Jacob always longed for, God had already said, “You’re going to have it.” The longing that was in Jacob’s heart was a longing that God had put there, but he didn’t know how to get it apart from being his false self and making it happen in his own strength, in his own cunning.

So many of us have those kinds of long as well. I was living in Southern California. I was playing the game, I was part of a church. As I said, in my day, we saw God. There’s this thing called a chick tract (you have to be old school to know anything about that). I had this chick tract and was like, “This Is Your Life.” The whole basic idea was that when you die, there’s going to be a movie, and everyone’s going to see all the bad things that you did and even thought. I was so terrified of that. But then this thing happened called “the Jesus Movement.” I want to just give you a flavor of it. This is a group called Love Song (also impossibly cool).

You can Google it on YouTube. Watch it. It’s amazing. But I, little Allan, the Schmoozer, the con man — I was the kid in church that all the parents said, “Why can’t you be like Allan?” They didn’t know what a toxic waste dump I was in my heart. And I walked into a concert — Actually, when I went to the concert, they were singing that song when I walked in the room. I’ve told some of you this before, but when I walked in the room, it was like there was a wind blowing out. I had to actually lean forward to get into the room because the presence of God was so powerful.

When they were singing “Feel the Love,” it wasn’t like an idea or an emotional thing. It was like you could feel the presence of God. It was like, do you want it or not? People were all around me. These songs were so simple, they were kind of silly, and people around me were sobbing in their seats uncontrollably.

On that day, and the days that succeeded, I had an encounter with the God who had always been there, and I never knew it. And it changed everything in my life. I thank God that when that happens, he redeems our pain. He doesn’t just make us survivors.

One small picture: my wife and I have started a school now for children who have experienced the kinds of things that I experienced. In our school, I can truly say that every child is seen and known and loved, and God is taking all that shattered, pulverized brokenness and shaping it into a beautiful story. Jesus said,

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet one of them will not fall to the ground outside your Father’s care … So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows” (Mt.10:29-31).

The God who created ecosystems for birds has created a much more beautiful and powerful ecosystem for you, because you are much more valuable than they are. God’s ecosystem is a deep, intimate connection in which we form joyful attachment. Jesus said,

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love” (Jn 15:9).

Literally, that word “remain” is the idea of making yourself at home. John said, “God is love.” This is the Message translation, paraphrase.

“When we take up permanent residence in a life of love we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house becomes at home and mature in us. So that we are free from worry … There is no room in love for fear since fear is crippling” (I John 4:16-18).

So right here, right now, on this day, Jesus is inviting us into a different way of being, into a different kind of ecosystem. He’s calling us. Let me give three ideas about this.

Awareness. Are you aware that ecosystems are fighting for you? Behavior is captured by where our attention is focused. What our attention is focused on will dictate the life that we live, the way that we navigate.

I was thinking of B.F. Skinner, one of the most important behavioral scientists, probably the most of the last 100 years. He worked in a laboratory, first with rats and then with squirrels, but finally with birds – pigeons. He loved pigeons. And he developed techniques to control their behavior. He used a system of reinforcements, mostly food, to condition them to live and act in a certain way.

Life magazine did this article, and they gave the example that Pliny the Rat makes a living on a slot machine. Literally, there was a slot machine, and the rat would pull the handle. He became obsessive-compulsive because when he pulled the handle, he got a little pellet. So that’s all he did all day, every day: the slot machine. Pigeons could play piano and ping pong and ostensibly even guide a missile toward a target. So, y’all you’re worried about AI — it’s the pigeons. They are coming for you.

In graduate school, Skinner designed an “operant conditioning chamber.” This was a mechanism for the animals to operate a plate that a pigeon would pick, get a piece of food. Pick, get a piece of food. Then he would wean them off the food where they only got food like every 12 times or every 20 times, but they would keep pecking it. They actually became more obsessed when they didn’t get it every time. That’s why slot machines work. And the pigeons would just start doing this thing like this all day, every day, all day. That’s what they do. Why? Because their attention was if they do that, they get a reward.

Do you not know that in this moment, the most precious commodity on the planet is your attention? Do you not know that? Do you not know that you see thousands of billboard messages? Do you not know that you just have to talk about a new pair of Nike tennis shoes, and it’s going to come up on your feed 4,000 times. Your attention.

“Corporations are ingenious,” Gabor Maté says, “at exploiting people’s needs without actually meeting them. Brand-aware companies … are marketing much more than products: they sell meaning, identification, and an almost religious sense of belonging through association with their brand.”

Shout out to all you Apple people! He’s talking about you. No, he’s talking about all of us, right?

The Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, has recommended that there be a warning label on social media. Remember, like cigarettes, “This product may be hazardous to your health.” I don’t know how much change it’s going to make in behavior, but I do agree with his framework. Just as cigarette smoking over a lifetime will almost inevitably produce, destroy your health, what social media does is destroying our emotional health as individuals and as a culture.

Make no mistake. Please hear me. Social media is so dangerous and so powerful because it is an ecosystem, an ecosystem that tells us we are seen and known and important and connected. But it’s all a facade. Sherry Turkle, probably the most renowned expert on this, wrote,

“Technology is seductive when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities.”

What does she mean? Those longings, Jacob’s longings, Allan’s longings. Your longings to be known, to be seen, to be valuable.

“And as it turns out, we are very vulnerable indeed. We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Digital connections and the sociable robot may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.”

That’s why it’s so powerful.

“Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other. We’d rather text than talk.”

Wow. Whatever is causing our anxiety, your anxiety, whether it is a physical thing like what Tiffany was talking about or an emotional thing or a trauma, childhood trauma, whether it’s a spiritual thing (and usually it’s a combination of these things) — whatever is the cause of our trauma or our anxiety, the outcome or the power of it is going to be directly related to where we are paying attention.

I want to show you a little diagram that may be helpful to you. It’s been helpful to me. Here’s one way that we can see the world. This is the way I saw the world as a 12-year-old, 14-year-old, 18-year-old, 45-year-old preacher. This is the way I saw the world. There is a circle, and it’s me. Then there’s another circle. That’s God. Then there’s another circle. That’s everyone else.

The way I saw the world is I live in the “me” circle. But because I’m a Christian, I’m always trying to get God to come into my circle and do stuff, heal my kids, make my wife be nicer to me, help me pay my bills, make people understand how incredibly cool I am. He never would answer that.

It’s kind of like in the Old Testament when Baal was the rain god, and you had a drought. So it’s like, what do I got to do to get Baal to come into my circle and stop the drought? If I sacrifice one of my kids, will you do it? Then it’s always about how I get the attention of the God who is out there in his other circle to drop into my world and hopefully help me.

It’s the same thing with other people. Other people just don’t get it. They won’t come in my circle and help me. They just come in my circle and make a mess, make it worse. We’re essentially on our own. No matter what we sing in church, that’s the way we think, we believe. We’re always trying to get others to come in. We’re responsible for everything and everyone, and nobody seems to get it or want to help. But here’s another way to live.

This is the connected worldview. The whole circle is God. I’m living in this circle of God, and in that circle is life and death and me and even slow drivers (I don’t know how they got in there). My kids’ struggles, my jerky boss (I don’t mean Hubbard), my food that I eat (bad and good, cold and hot), the joys. Everything is God.

I’m never alone in the circle. Ever. Nothing that happens is ever outside of his knowledge and control. I have nothing to prove. While the world is always invested in making you feel the pressure that you have to be good enough to be blessed (like Jacob), in this circle, the whole economy is grace and mercy. I get an A on the test before I even take it.

I said to my wife a couple of weeks ago, I’m just going to get in a circle called “enough,” and I’m just going to live there. I’m just going to believe that what we have is enough, and what’s happening in our life and who we are. That’s that kind of life.

I want to kind of illustrate to you the difference between living in the connected worldview and the disconnected worldview. Get ready to write, we’re moving fast.

Life in a disconnected world, our ultimate goal is always control. And it’s transactional that God is there to help me get control over my kids, my wife, my job. But in the connected world, the goal is connection. I’m not trying to get control, because if you haven’t figured it out yet, you will pretty soon that that is an illusion. I’m trying to get connected to God.

In the first circle, we covet certainty. I want to know. That was the original temptation: you will be as God, knowing everything. But in the second circle, I’m fully alive in mystery. I can live in mystery because God is a mystery.

In the first circle, there is constant pressure to be perfect because you can’t be loved, you can’t be in control, you can’t be worthy of blessing unless you’re perfect. It’s perfection. In the second circle, I’m free to fail and failure is learning.

In the first circle, I have got to find somebody to blame. That’s what we do, right? When something goes bad, there’s a wreck, there’s a this, there’s a that. Who do we blame? Oh, you? I going to blame you? In the second circle, we have a way to forgive. Do you know that that is the most superpower gift that you could ever have is the power to forgive. I can’t forgive in that first circle because it just makes me more unsafe. You’ll just come and hurt me again. I’m self-protecting. In the first circle, I’m always second-guessing constantly. Well, what if I turn right? Well, what if I turn left? Well, what if I bought the Honda instead of this? What if I’d married somebody else? What if, what if, what if, what if? In the second circle, every day is a new beginning.

In the first circle. I always, always, always am carrying a low-grade fear and dread and just waiting for the shoe to drop. But in the second circle, I can live fearless in my true identity because I’m safe.

In the first circle, it’s endless thought loops, future tripping, internal dialog. Experts say we might have as many as 80,000 words every day of internal dialog, and statistically more than 75% is negative. That’s not the Father’s voice. That’s the lie we believe when we didn’t know that God was there, and we didn’t know it. In the second circle, I’m free to think and live creatively.

In the first circle, I am in bondage to what other people think. In the second circle, I’m free and alive.

In the first circle, I die every day. A thousand times. A little death, a little death. Dread, fear. The phone rings. I get a text, I get an email, I die. But in the second circle, Jesus said you can never die.

In the first circle, it’s nothing but shame and self-loathing. Why did I say that? There I said it again. I said it again. I said it again. That’s not Father’s voice. That’s not the Holy Spirit. But in the second circle, I’m free to live in my true identity. I don’t have to try and be Esau to get the blessing because I don’t fundamentally believe that any good creature would bless me.

In this first circle, I’m constantly asking “why?” Why God? Why this? Why that? Why the other thing? In the second circle I’m asking, what do you want me to know? What do you want me to do?

Finally, in that first circle, I’m just like a drowning person and I’m pulling everyone around me under with me because I’m desperate. But in the second circle, I can live as a non-anxious presence that becomes a source of life to those around me.

This is one way to understand what Jesus meant when he talks about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is where we live in a world where everything and everyone is connected.

More and more and more we live in a disconnected world. We have to hate the Democrats, hate the Republicans, hate the rich, hate the poor, hate Black people, hate Latino people, hate immigrants, hate Americans, hate white people. We live in a world where it’s just pulling itself to pieces. We don’t need those people.

But when they took the wolves out of Yellowstone Park, the fish in the streams died because the world is connected. You can’t disconnect it. Safety is not found in living in the world that I create and trying to live in it. Safety is only found in the world of our Father. It’s an ecosystem.

When we live in his world, the truth of our being creates the way of our being. Do you understand what I’m saying? You see the truth of our being is, we’re never alone. If we are one of God’s people, if we’re in God’s family, you’re good enough. The pressure’s off, like a vine or a branch that abides, lives in the vine.

None of the branches are like, “Well, why is that branch bigger than I am? Why does that branch have three peaches? I only have two. Who’s going to win the election?” They don’t think that. They just think, “I’m living in the vine.” Think like a sheep who can’t even imagine what it’s like to live in a world without a shepherd that’s always taking them to green pastures and still water. They can’t imagine, what do you think it’s like for sheep in Ethiopia? I don’t know. They don’t care. Or like a child who’s sitting on the lap of a perfect father. He can’t even imagine a world that’s scary because he’s with a perfect dad. Or like the bride who’s on her wedding day, and she’s marrying the greatest man in the history of the world (and he actually is). Or like a body and a soul. These are all biblical metaphors of what it means to live in that connected world.

Yes, in that circle, we really grieve. We are grieving right now. Yes, in that connected world, like Tiffany said, sometimes we just have to ride the wave. We just have to stand as still as we can until the wave recedes. That’s all true. But we’re never alone. There’s a floor below which we cannot fall. There are arms to catch us and hands to catch our tears. It’s a different world.

All of this is rooted in the Father-heart of God, your Father. Jesus says it over and over. “Your Father.” “Your Father.” Do you know, in the whole Old Testament, do you know how many times God is referred to as “Father?” 15 times. In the New Testament, it’s 350 times. That doesn’t mean God has changed. It does mean that one of the main reasons Jesus came is to reveal to us, in a new and supremely powerful way, what it is to live in this circle connected to a loving Father.

Did you know, just from John 14 to John 17, which is the last thing he’s telling his disciples, he’s talked about God as Father 50 times. It’s like, “I’m leaving and you’re going to have trauma and the world’s going to hate you. What do you need to know? You have a Father who will never leave you.”

In the developmental world, we talk about “secure attachment.” Secure attachment means that you are spoken for, that someone in this world has signed up to look out for you and always be there for you. That’s exactly what Jesus is talking about. And guess what? He’s a perfect Father.

This past week we celebrated Juneteenth. It is remembering what happened on June 19, 1865, when a group of enslaved people in Galveston, Texas found out that they were no longer slaves. This was two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. So for two and a half years, the law of the land said, “No more slaves.” And for two and a half years, these people’s lives didn’t change at all.

Many of us have heard all our lives that we’re no longer a slave to fear but have our lives changed? John said,

“We have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love…”

No guilt, no fear, no shame, no pressure, no trying that this day maybe I’ll almost make it. Whoever lives in love lives in God. We have known and believe. That’s an 18-inch journey, or 14-inch for some of us, from our head to our heart. We have known and believed.

What if somebody came to those enslaved people in Galveston and said, “Hey, guess what? You’re not slaves anymore.” “I don’t believe you.” “Why would they believe it?” That’s the only life they’d ever known. For many of us, it’s the only life we’ve ever known. The hardest thing in the world, surprisingly, is to freely receive the love of God. We would much rather keep trying to be good enough than to freely receive the love of God.

Hear me: you are not defined by the trauma, pain, sin, or failure of your past. That is not what defines you, because you’re not writing your story. God is. Are you willing to let go of the pen of the story you’ve been trying to write? That people just won’t cooperate. You have them set for a certain role, and they do some other role, and it just messes up the story. We keep trying to erase it and rewrite it and fix it. And God says, why don’t you just give me the pen? And the pressure can be off. Jesus said, “I will be a Father to you.” Or God says in the Old Testament,

“I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters,” says the Lord God Almighty.

The worship team is going to come up right now, and in a little while the prayer team will be up here, too, but not yet. The worship team is going to come up, and Nicole and the team are going to sing over us a song.

I think there are actually a ton of people here today who are like, “Yeah, I kind of see what you’re saying, and I want that, but it also seems a little bit elusive.” You don’t know how to move into it. I understand that. As Tiffany said, it’s a process.

As this song is sung, I don’t want you just to sit and listen. I want you to actively engage with the Father who’s just waiting for you to come so he can love you. Jesus said, “I didn’t come to be served. I came to serve.” And he’s ready to serve you now by breaking this power of those past pains and traumas now, today. So as they sing, open up your heart and just talk to God. Like Tiffany said, just talk to God. And then at a certain point, they’ll invite us to join them in singing.