THE POWER OF INNER CONCLUSIONS WHICH DRIVE WHAT WE THINK AND HOW WE BEHAVE.
We all came to varsity, T coll or polytech with a little bit of luggage and a whole lot of baggage.
This is the power of the internal iceberg or the mother ship which drives our lives without us even realizing it.
Varsity is a good time to sort it out.
Mental and emotional and spiritual health is getting what is unconscious and driving us, to the surface and dealing with it.
All of us are unselfaware to a greater or larger extent.
Some of us are totally unconscious of the things that we do and the things that drive us.
Scary people. We could walk around and hit our heads against a brick wall and not even notice. And we don't notice what we're doing to other people, or that they're not on the same ship as us.
Some of us are conscious that we are incompetent and unself aware, driven by deeper things but we like it that way. We can't actually be bothered with getting any better. Not today any way.
Others have had a big wake up call about stuff that's been going on deep down, driving. And we've made a huge effort to get our shit sorted out. Maybe we're still working on it. But we're starting to be consciously competent with our lives and relationships. We are generally a safe person, not hurting others anyway.
Unconscious competence is when you are so good at life you don't know you're doing it. But you are doing it well. You're proactively making a difference.
The trouble is we have photographic memories and every memory is recorded. What we didn't now how to deal with is still sitting there.
We show and only know 10% of the iceberg
Like a cesspool added to by countless words and actions said and done to us and then inner resolutions that we make, we are the product then of the effervescing of that cesspool of shit.
Stuff doesn't go away.
Our families are critical places where rules are defined,
spoken and unspoken
and where systems are set up that suck us all into their magnetic field and we are powerless to interrupt them.
The story of King David in 2 Samuel, is both tragic and triumphant.
He never sorted out some of his stuff, despite repentance and being so forgiven and despite being a man after God's own heart.
What I want you to get is that David had seeds of lust within him that blew up into adultery, seeds of dishonesty and deception that blew up into murder.
And those seeds were present in his kids.
Not because they inherited them, but because they made judgments and vows about their father.
And they went and did exactly the same things.
The foundation for Amnon's behaviour was laid when he was a teenager and he saw his father model behaviour that was manipulative and treacherous. He saw his father take another man's wife and get away with it.
What he learned as did the other siblings, was how to cover up, how not to face issues and how to ignore the hurt that grew out of one's actions.
David never sorted it out,
He was furious but did nothing about the rape.
He did not defend his daughter. She was desolate
He could not rule his own house.
David was a godly man, his spirituality shines out
But he did not know how to face the pain in his family and deal with it.
He dealt with it by avoidance and passivity.
He was only processing the pain he had inherited.
Read about it in 2 Samuel.
The tragedy is that we can hold these two extremes together.
The second tragedy is that it usually takes massive pain or acting out or destructive behaviour before we will do something about it.
Some of what I say tonight you may not understand. But maybe one day when you experience this, you'll remember that crazy woman and go didn't she talk about something like this.
THE POWER OF AN INNER VOW and a BITTER ROOT OF JUDGEMENT
I want to put it out there tonight that:
- 1. we all come up with gunge from our past. A little bit of luggage and a whole lot of baggage.
- 2. we don't live in freedom because we are unself aware.
- 3. we come to inner conclusions as kids that drive us as adults and we hold onto subterranean judgments, some of these are obvious, close, others are deeply buried which bitterly affect us.
- 4. we don't realize the power of reaping what we sow. Especially as it relates to dishonouring our parents.
A child has no option at times but to come to certain conclusions.
A child does not have the benefit of adult reason or wisdom.
An example from the Sandford's book: Transformation of the Inner Man:
A woman who could not conceive a boy child came to counseling. As her story unfolded it became apparent that in her childhood she had been subject to merciless teasing and bullying from her brother. Not the normal sort of sibling conflict but vicious and uncalled for behaviour. Her father failed to protect her. At some point she vowed to herself that would never carry a boy child. And as she did this, so she sent a directive through her mind and heart and body, resulting in this current crisis.
What she needed to do was bring that wounding to the cross and let it go in forgiveness.
Then to break the vow and command the body to forget it, and to pray for healing new life.
An inner vow is one set in to us at a early age.
I'll never sing
I'll never speak in public.
I'll never be like them
I'll never fail or I'll never try again.
Even seemingly good ones:
Never raise your voice to a woman.
Don't get angry
Don't ever argue.
These come out of our striving, our determination.
These are like blowing up a balloon and never letting the air out.
Our inner being persistently retains the programming no matter what life changes are made. We do not grow out of them.
They rest forgotten and dormant until triggered.
I am not that keen on vows unless they are like a covenant in marriage.
Even good vows need to be released, so we are not acting in the flesh but in the new nature of the spirit.
Marriage is a potential rail yard of hidden tracks which collide and destroy.
Arguing for example is healthy.
Siblings learn how to negotiate and cooperate when they fight.
If you grew up in the absence of anything unpleasant chances are you haven't developed any resilience around this area.
Or if there was destructive arguing then you learnt how to compensate and made judgments around that.
Boys discover that mothers have elephantine memories! What ever you say can and will be used against you. Mum may control you by emotional blackmail. So boys learn to hide from their mothers. The less she knows the better. Whatever she knows may be hauled up for criticism or scolding weeks, months later. This may result in an inner vow or conclusion:
Never share what you really feel with a woman; it's not safe.
It may not trigger until marriage. He won't share anything with me anymore. He won't be vulnerable.
Repentance must come for the resentment towards his mother.
Can you see how this sets up for affairs and divorce?
Too many fathers ignore their daughters. Or don't notice or remove themselves physically and emotionally from bringing up the kids.
Girls need to be received and appreciated by their dad. This builds confidence to be a woman and be with a man.
A young girl needs touch and affirmation from her dad.
But when this fails: the little girl's heart will say: men are so insensitive, dumb.
I'll never trust a man. I want him to notice me but he won't. She basically reaps her own expectancy.
It doesn't have to be abuse, its anxiety borne of distrust. He will not see and do what makes me feel secure. Therefore the conclusion is: don't really let him have or know all of you.
Abuse of course will cause a woman to shutdown on many levels.
But wait there's more bad news:
They work along with bitter root judgments.
Was your mother obese?
Did she use the toilet with the door open?
Was the house a mess?
Did you despise her for this?
Have you learnt to despise your father because he was weak and never stood up to your mother?
David's sons judged him for his behavior and they reaped that judgment on themselves.
Big time.
Are we any better?
We all make judgments about what is good and what is bad as kids and as adults.
Then we learn to conform and pretend and we learn to survive.
But we make judgments about what we will not tolerate
and about how we will do life.
Sometimes we will do this with forgiveness and righteousness, but many times we do this with a root of bitterness, a hardness which says: I will never be like that. I despise you for it. I will never forgive you.
Make every effort to live in peace with all and to be holy. Without holiness no one will see the Lord.
See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root springs up to cause trouble and defile many. Hebrews 12: 14-15
To the extent you judge your mother or father for the lives they have lived out before you,
so you are in line to reap the same judgment in your relationships.
You may say surely not. I'm a Christian.
Don't be fooled. We still live in a legal world where we have to root out specific sin.
It does not go away.
Yes it has been dealt with at the cross, but this has to be appropriated.
Work out your own salvation.
Judge not that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged. And the measure you give will be the measure you get. Matt 7:1-2
The seed we sow may be a tiny judgment, anger and resentment held against some family member as a child and forgotten. But it has the power to reach full blown maturity given the right triggers.
RO 7:21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
Only the cross can break the cycle we are due to reap.
It is not automatic just because we are Christians.
Sin must be confessed specifically.
The judgment must be traced and faced and replaced with the truth and with forgiveness.
There are three simple laws that affect all life:
- 1. Life will go well for us in every area in which we could in fact honour our parents and life will not go well in every area in which we could not honour them.
- 2. We will receive harm in the areas of our life in which we have meted out judgment against others.
- 3. We will reap what we have sown.
- 4. Most people enter marriage with little or no awareness of what they are bringing with them in the heart, or what power these unconscious forces have to influence, drive and control perceptions, attitudes or behaviour.
- 5. The reality is that sometime down the track we are going to grind against each other and how we fare in this is obviously pretty important. In our throw away culture, this will be the obvious time to split. But what you don't realize is that there is a force deeper in you at work and you'll simply repeat the cycle in the next relationship.
- 6. There is only one answer and that is to bring self to the cross and ask what is it in me that I need to sort out and bring to death on the cross. Work through the problems and be transformed.
- 7. There is a right time for this. What you need above all else is insight. Proverbs 4. Above all else get wisdom, insight, understanding.