0:00:00 - 0:00:31 This is gonna be a hard video to make. Uh Yes, the Lord. He, he streams sermons across my brain at certain times during the day. Usually in the mornings I wake up, morning by morning, he renews my my mind and I wake up and it's like Manna on the ground and there's never a place to put it. It, it all 0:00:31 - 0:01:01 has to go through a noisy filter which is my human limited body. And one of these messages that I've, I've been through several times now over the past few weeks, I, I'm gonna try to put it into words. It's always so hard because you learn a language that's higher than English. And it's, it's not conveyed 0:01:00 - 0:01:25 in words per se, but you get the words. It's faster than even a fast typist can type. And when you try to reproduce it, it instantly, it starts to evaporate. God can communicate to our minds and our hearts at a pace much faster than our, our, our conscientious brains can, can capture. It's like a net 0:01:24 - 0:01:49 trying to catch dew or it, it's like standing in the, in the surf trying to catch um shells or something. It's just coming in and out. It's such a flood that you look at all these shells in the water. I don't know if you've ever had the blessing of being on a, a beach with clear water. It's a beautiful 0:01:49 - 0:00:00 thing, but all the sand and shells roll up onto the shore and, and you see one, I, it's, there's so many there and it's just a split second. You have to sort of arbitrarily focus on something because you can't process it all and you go to grab the one thing and it's just, it's a pretty intense deal. 0:00:00 - 0:02:41 Um Anyway, one of these messages that, that keep flowing across my mind is to talk about the, the fars psychical temptation, which here's, here's a question for you. Why is it so hard for people to let go of sacred cows? This is one of many problems that we have that we tend to be much more capable of 0:02:41 - 0:03:08 seeing it in other people than ourselves. And it turns out that that human nature through human nature, we have these enormous barriers to these biases that prevent us from, from listening with an open mind and heart to ideas that differ from what we already believe or feelings that differ from what 0:03:08 - 0:03:39 we already feel. And we have this implicit trust in what we are and how we are already. And there's a lot about that that we could talk about, but I want to zoom into why this is so deeply entrenched within us. And one reason that I, I think a lot of people may not have thought about before is the following 0:03:39 - 0:04:13 . When you come to God, you have to reverse the process in Eden. And so what what happened was Adam and Eve dwelt in the presence of God and Adam had full familiarity with the Lord. He spoke with him, face to face, he was comfortable in his presence and he was naked, he was naked. And then after they 0:04:12 - 0:04:47 ate the fruit, he made clothing and he covered his nakedness and then the Lord called for him, but he was hiding. And so it was, it was a two fold self removal from familiarity with God and to come back into his presence, you have to get naked. Now, I remember as a little kid, a very little kid, uh I 0:04:46 - 0:05:07 was always naked and my mom would chase me around our apartment and I just, I would always be naked and I'd hate wearing clothes and I'd take my clothes off all the time and she'd catch me and I would just laugh and laugh and laugh. And then she struggled uh to punish me because his his uh kind of acuteness 0:05:06 - 0:05:41 overload. But eventually I had to put some clothes on. And so when I turned 13, just kidding. Um So it's a childlike thing to be naked and exposed to all these things that could hurt you. But to be yourself, how you really are, not how the clothing makes you look, but how you really are and applying 0:05:41 - 0:06:11 this, this sort of archetypal idea to our relationship with God. We need to come to Him with a broken heart and a contrite spirit. He can't connect to us in the same way until we do. And it's not even Him connecting to us. It's us receiving the connection. He always offers to everyone all the time. It's 0:06:10 - 0:06:46 only received through being completely exposed to who we really are. And a lot of the work that I've been doing lately in writing has been addressing this from a completely different angle. Buttons when someone ex uh I, I wanted to say exposes, but that's not the best way of saying it when someone, when 0:06:46 - 0:07:24 something collides with and draws our attention too, dogma that we believe a sacred cow, something that we have attached to our self worth. That's an interesting definition of dogma, a belief, an action, a feeling possession that we have attached to our self worth automatically subconsciously, we activate 0:07:23 - 0:07:57 a defense mechanism where we're much less likely to openly honestly rationally consider the facts at hand and instead do this evasion maneuver, which almost always is much worse than just becoming a temporary doofus suspending our ability to think rationally because we're in an emotional state. But going 0:07:57 - 0:08:38 further than that and doing really bad things to the person or people who have catalyzed this reaction in us. What is the core problem? The core problem is that a person who does this has not yet become nothing before God, either it's never happened before, which is most often the case or we haven't 0:08:38 - 0:09:08 maintained that state of nakedness. We found ourselves some fig leaves and those fig leaves are the dogma that we wear. And it's like false robes of the priesthood. We act like these things, give us honor and glory in God's presence when it's the opposite of what they do. They remove us from intimacy 0:09:07 - 0:09:43 with God. Why? Because that's the thing that we've placed off limits to Him. It's a shield. But instead of protecting us from harm, it cuts us off from light truth, goodness, beauty, everything that is in and through and maximized in God. So I've seen so many times where talking about better things with 0:09:43 - 0:10:21 people, we've stumbled on one of these sacred cows and they lose their minds. What's really going on is that these people have not yet accepted the idea that they are nothing before God. I've been criticized by many people for many things. I appreciate all those criticisms that were actually corrections 0:10:21 - 0:10:52 , but many of them have not been. And one of those criticisms that were not corrections be because they were falls is that it is the the basket of criticisms around being arrogant. So someone will say something like, oh what you think you're better than I am or you think you're better than us or whatever 0:10:51 - 0:11:23 and there are more and less helpful ways of responding to this. The problem boils down to the fact that if you care for other people, you are going to do more to be better than they are willing to do because you're willing to suffer more to be able to help them, then they're willing to suffer for themselves 0:11:22 - 0:11:50 and certainly more than what they're willing to suffer for others. That is what love is. So it's difficult to love someone without becoming better than them. Because the way God has structured things, the more you're willing to bear, unmerited suffering, the greater you will become with Him, you'll grow 0:11:50 - 0:12:20 to be more like him. And we tend to hold a basket of truths that we don't realize are contradictory to each other. So, for example, um, any Christian should believe that there's a such thing as prophets, right? And if you read the Bible and you believe it, you kind of have to believe in people like Moses 0:12:19 - 0:12:48 that, that these folks existed and that if you read the stories, it's quite evident that they were closer to God than other people. And yet if someone comes along in that potential situation, just potentially they will immediately be dismissed out of hand. Because who are you? You know, which is interesting 0:12:47 - 0:13:13 because that's what the people said to Moses who made you a ruler over us. Well, the answer, it's a one word answer. God. God did because goodness doesn't come from ourselves. It comes from above. God was a uh appointed Moses, a leader over the people for what to enslave them. No, they were already slaves 0:13:13 - 0:13:40 to free them, to bring them up to the mountain as high as they were willing to go to serve them. How through living a lavish life and whatever. No, Moses lived less abundantly because of his service to the people than he would have without them. Not just in Egypt, because if he hadn't followed the Lord's 0:13:39 - 0:14:06 commandments to him, he would have remained a prince in Egypt. He would have remained the third most powerful person in the world. Arguably the first because the many blessings that flowed to the kingdom primarily came because of Him from God through him. And you say, yeah, ok. But he was exiled, he 0:14:06 - 0:14:29 was exiled for, for keeping the Lord's commandments. But even then on multiple occasions, the Lord said I am going to destroy these wicked people that you have saved, who have rejected me because they have rejected you. And I will raise up another people through you, which would have been a much better 0:14:29 - 0:14:57 situation for Moses and he refused. He said, give me more time and he said, you'll have to kill me if you want to do that because I won't let go of these people. So if you're a Christian, that should not be a hard thing to understand we, I mean, we said a lot about Moses, we could talk about a bunch 0:14:56 - 0:15:18 of other people. And yet, so you say, yeah, like, technically, I believe that God could, can send people and train them up and draw them closer to him and that, you know, technically people exist that they'll suffer more for, for other people. Sure. But I refuse to believe I will ever meet a person like 0:15:18 - 0:15:55 that. And these are contradictory beliefs. But another contradictory belief is to refuse to see that you are nothing. And when you refuse to see that, what happens is it clouds your vision and you can't see a whole host of other things. For example, when you see Moses instead of looking at him and saying 0:15:55 - 0:16:24 , what is this guy's sacrifice that I would never sacrifice? How much does this guy trust God in ways that I never would. You presume that Moses just thinks he's a ruler over the people and that, that's his motive because it would be your motive if you were in his place because you're wicked. But that's 0:16:23 - 0:17:09 not Moses's motive. Moses has come to help and he's given up a much better life to do it. That's an understatement in, in a high degree because actually Moses Paul part of the path of assent is you reach a point when the Lord gives you the option of coming home, the Lord left eternal life to come here 0:17:09 - 0:18:02 and be born here, their people in the world who decline the start or resumption of eternal life to stay here. And Moses did that and Paul did that and there are others, those people are special but they're not special in the way you would accuse them of considering themselves special. They're special 0:18:01 - 0:18:44 because they have accepted their nothingness beyond what you're willing to consider for yourself. Mm. When I was 18, I remember, um, it was an important year in my life for a lot of reasons. But chief among them is that, that's, that's when I came to know the Lord or at least began my conscientious participation 0:18:43 - 0:19:22 in that path. He has reached out to me my whole life. But I only started noticing when I was 18 and this was the year when I prayed and I asked if he was real and I found out he was and all of this came because of or through the intervention of God through his spirit and through his people. And so I'm 0:19:22 - 0:19:54 glad that he brought me to a place where I was able to see that and willing to receive it. But I remember reading through the scriptures for the first time and having this watershed moment where I was overcome with a desire to serve God and his Children. And um as I was reading the scriptures and it 0:19:54 - 0:20:28 sort of triggered all of this. I remember praying and saying Lord. So I was, I was broke financially. I was in a bad place and I had come through a childhood of poverty and I had, I had nothing temporarily. And so I said, Lord, we could take a snapshot of where I am right now. I know exactly where I 0:20:28 - 0:21:36 am. I have nothing. And I have talked about that before but I also said I am nothing. Mm. I knew that my own desire was for evil. I knew that I had done a lot of bad things in my life. Mm. And I knew I'd do them again if I had the chance. And I said I'll, I'll, I, I'm emptying all this out and I am nothing 0:21:36 - 0:22:23 . What I had before was worse than nothing. And now I have nothing. And I said everything after this. It's all you, anything good in my life after this. Uh, it's just on loan and I know where it comes from and I promised him, I said anything you give me, it's yours and I will use it to the best of my 0:22:23 - 0:22:55 knowledge for your purposes and no holds barred forever because I, I'm, I already have nothing. I'm already at the bottom. So it's all yours you can do with me what you will. So any time he comes along and he says, you know, you could do this better or you really need to stop that or you really need 0:22:55 - 0:23:33 to start doing this. Here's some new information. I just say thank you. Because the Lord gives and it takes away. But it's all improvement all the time. That's all he does is better, better, better, better all the time. There's no loss with God. There's only improvement. There's only replacement with 0:23:33 - 0:24:13 something better. You cannot break that because he cannot be broken. When we struggle with these sacred cows, we're refusing to let go of our own presumed righteousness and that's what it is. Now, people will fight like dogs and cats to try to pretend that this thing is actually God's righteousness and 0:24:13 - 0:24:46 they're fighting for God. You're actually fighting against him. He has sole authority to tell us what's good. He's the only one that knows. He blesses us to have intermediate understanding of things and incremental understanding of things, but he alone holds the strings. He has full authority to come 0:24:46 - 0:25:25 down and say this thing you thought was rock solid is actually just a step to get you to the rock. He is the rock. He'll do whatever he can in righteousness to guide us to better things. And when we cling, when we cling to one of the monkey bars, we absolutely cannot go forward. True trust in him requires 0:25:24 - 0:25:52 us to be naked. We have to strip ourselves down from the pride of thinking we know better than him. And this includes in our presumed understanding of him when he says no, that's not actually how it is. Let me tweak this a little. We can't reply and say, oh, but you would never say that that's not God 0:25:51 - 0:26:24 . That's uh and this is one of the vital reasons that he has given us understanding and why it's so important to understand that he works through reason. There isn't anything that you can cling to and say now that I've got this figured out, I can judge all things by this. This is an earth shattering 0:26:23 - 0:26:46 , extraordinarily uncomfortable thing for religious people to hear they were sold religion as the answer. It's all been figured out. Here you go, here's a box and whenever you have a question or a problem, it's in the box. True religion is a process. It's a process of getting to know God and becoming 0:26:46 - 0:27:24 more like Him. You're never done. So where does confidence come from? If everything's just so open ended? Well, it's not open ended at all. We're, we're given a process that we can evaluate ideas and incorporate them into what we have and we, whether the new thing is better than the old thing, it's not 0:27:23 - 0:27:56 hard to do. It's a simple thing. The, the difficulty is not in complexity. It's in honesty because it's a razor's edge. The more sophisticated, you become the more tools you have to become, I'm sorry to be dishonest in ways that other people will not see, but you will see it, you will see it. And if 0:27:56 - 0:28:24 God sends you a servant with greater wisdom than you or awareness than you, he or she will see it. And so they'll call you out and bless you in doing so because they're cutting through your self deceit. And this, this is not something you wanna react to by pretending you're on some kind of holy war in 0:28:24 - 0:29:08 defending God when God is the one who's reaching out to you. So most Pharisees are Pharisees because they're unwilling to be nothing and holding on to their arbitrary sacred cows prevents them from letting go and being nothing before God. And actually for the first time coming down in humility before 0:29:08 - 0:29:45 Him to say I am nothing, Jesus Christ is the one sure foundation. And while there's something left in us, we can't build on Him, we can't build our house on his foundation because there's something between us and it, it doesn't matter if that something is what you recognize as a sin or if that something 0:29:44 - 0:30:18 is something you claim is holiness. It's still a barrier between us between you and the Lord. You have to remove all obstacles between you and the Lord. And that requires you to come down in abject humility and recognize that everything about you is garbage, that good only comes from God and that He 0:30:17 - 0:30:46 is the arbiter of truth. He can criticize anything about you and it will always be correction. It will always be to point to something better to make room for something better. He knows what he's doing. So I hope that these thoughts are helpful and I hope that this helps inoculate you against opportunities 0:30:45 - 0:31:11 where you might otherwise act more like the pharisee. Then the, the publican who said God forgive me. I am a sinner. That's the starting point of Him building you into something better and unless you become better, they're not gonna do much good for anyone else.