Ephesians 1:15-19, 3:14-19
I am more unorganized than usual today, so y’all have mercy.
Okay, what are we going to do?
So let me think here, give me a second. No, no, no, no. Yeah, so I’ll just give a very brief intro. We in this church have been studying the book of Ephesians for the last nine weeks. This is the 10th week. We’ve been taking sections of the book one at a time and teaching through this beautiful book that was a letter written to a real group of people by a person that was trying to encourage them. And so we’ve been looking each week at this book and what it says about us knowing Christ and how us knowing Jesus as our Lord and lover and Savior then begins to transform us as we become the people that he sees us, not as we see us and not as the world and the devil would try to make us become. And so we’ve been looking at this book. It’s been very practical, and we’ve had some wonderful studies and ministry times. And so today we are in week 10. We are going to do something a little different because we have some special guests with us. And I think I titled this something like From the Trenches, something like that. There it is. And so I knew that Rod and Diane would be here, and so I decided, I said, hey, why don’t you guys, would you read the book of Ephesians, and we just want to talk and hear your perspective on some of this book from your long experience in ministry. And so they were excited about that, so a couple weeks went by, we had a conversation, and we pinpointed some passages that we felt like would really be a blessing today to talk about. So that’s what we’re going to do today. And before I invite them up, just a very short bio. I’ve known Diane for a long time. Diane and I, she’s been, both of these guys have been in the vineyard for a very long time in different places. They’re both right now in Atlanta. And yeah, Diane and I met originally over music and we were involved in some vineyard stuff not too, too long ago, but it feels like it was like 20 years ago, 25 years ago. And Diane’s a rock star, I’m going to tell you what. But she’s just the sweetest, kindest person. I remember the first thing she ever said to me that I remember. She walked up to me and she said, you have a beautiful voice. And it’s the first thing I remember her saying to me that just like, wow, who is this? People just start with kind encouragement. And so we’ve known each other on and off over the years, and it’s a super, super honor to have Rod and Diane with us today.
So why don’t you guys come on up here? Let’s give them a…
And you can position these how you wish, or you can stand. I don’t know really how you want to do it. Whatever you guys feel like doing. I found this third stool. Might sit for a while, might stand for a while. We’ll see. Yeah, you guys just do whatever. Morning BCC. Yeah. Yeah. You got a mic? Oh, here’s your mic. I have your mic there. Golly gee. Like I said, it’s been a long weekend. We had a wonderful time here with training for our worship teams and such.
So, yeah, we’ll just start. I think I’ll start with prayer, and then I’m going to just read a few passages. I’m going to ask them some questions. They’re going to tell us some stories. I didn’t tell you when our cutoff time is. If I don’t finish the service at 1145, this is true, they will release the children into the sanctuary. As they should. And there’s between 40 and 60 of them. So we want to probably be ready for ministry time in 35 to 40 minutes max.
And I’ll just try. Tell us to stop talking. Yeah. So we’ve had so much fun this weekend. We just kind of haven’t really planned anything. That means we’ll have to cut some of that out, babe. You’re going to have to cut some of that out. We’ll see. Let’s pray. And then we’re going to look at a few passages.
Lord, we love you and thank you for longtime friends and thank you for your word. Thank you for your presence among us in the church. I pray that today would be life-giving for each of us, that you’d speak the things of life that we need. And we just, we want to open our ears and hear what you say.
come among us, Jesus, and touch each person, and we welcome you to move, heal, bring hope, bring light, in Jesus’ name. Amen. All right, Rod and Diane, tell us just a snippet. You’re going to tell a little more of your story in a moment, but why don’t we start and just tell us about your life. You live in Atlanta. You’re part of a vineyard church there. You got some kids, grandkids. Tell us some things. Do you want to see pictures? Later, yeah. Absolutely. Where do you want to start? Well, just kind of where we are right now. Okay, where we are now, we have, let’s see, I’m trying to count them all. Seven grandkids. We have seven grandkids. Yeah, we’ve got two daughters. She’s got a son and daughter. We’re a combined family and that’s a whole story in and of itself you probably don’t have time for that but maybe snippets of it yeah I moved to Atlanta in 95 job transfer into Atlanta from Southern California I was at the Vineyard Anaheim for a number of years in the 80s in early 90s and then moved to Atlanta? I moved from Chicago here to Marietta in 97. That’s where we met. But we have, like we said, seven grandbabies. One of ours is about to be adopted. We’ve had him as a foster old boy. He’s five. So when I sing that song, Behold Him, I just can’t even hardly get that line out, the orphan home, because we’re watching him. We just had a vacation with one of our daughters and her three kids, which included our little boy named Atreyu.
And I know, right? And
we are, we got to be with him like night and day, you know, which is a whole different deal because we’re with all of our grandkids like that, but it gave us, just a couple weeks ago we got back and it was so glorious. Wow. So Rod’s retired. Yeah. I’m semi-retired. Sort of. Yep. I’m semi-retired. I just brought my vocal practice back home.
And you’re a vocal coach. I’m a vocal coach. Yeah. In a little name drop, she spent a ton of time with a lady named Jen Smith, which is love him or leave him, Justin Bieber’s vocal coach. Yep, and Usher and all the folks. Yeah, all these famous people. So, yeah, great vocal coach. And so that’s what you’re doing now from home. Just at home, which helped adjust, again, to be available to my kids and grands.
And so our lives, they’re kind of at the center. awesome and y’all are part of Vineyard Church in Marietta yes we attend a small relaunch of Atlanta Vineyard Church called New Hope yes called New Hope and we help out there that’s our home church we’re kind of no titles right now we just wear the roll your sleeves up which I think there’s a lot of you guys here which I love that so much what do you need do some worship and prayer open our home as often as we can. And I think probably a big mystery for us is just neighboring too. We love our neighbors, and so we try to be available to them.
Awesome. Well, first passage I’m going to read and ask you guys a couple questions is from chapter 1, verse 15 through 19. And it says that, For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus, which exists among you and your love for all the saints, don’t cease to give thanks for you. While making mention of you in that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of his glory in his inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of his power toward us who believe. So, question is, you talked to me about that passage and then also in chapter 3 where it talks about how we have these experiences with God that really open our eyes and they become sort of rocks and bedrocks of our faith and foundation of the love and presence of God among us.
And I thought that was just a really rich idea as we consider this passage. Talk to us about how, you know, we see people in the Scripture that have these encounters with God that really become life-changing and pivotal. And that was on your heart. Talk to us about that idea of our eyes, of our heart being opened and having those experiences and how it transforms us.
You said last night when we were chatting about the three ways that we see that a lot. It was so cool. What did you say? The three ways. Yeah, where we have those really big encounters. Yeah. I don’t exactly remember the three ways. I think I do. That’s why we need each other. But it was brilliant, babe.
It was so brilliant. It must have been brilliant, I guess. Anyway, that first portion of Ephesians is what I used to pray for my daughters all the time, that they would have a spirit of wisdom and revelation, that they would know you better. I think there’s pivotal moments in all of our lives that we can say that this is a rock or this is a remembrance of God moving in my life. You know, I think, you know, seeing not only God meeting you in certain circumstances, like my addiction, and God showing me a picture of me very, very young age,
taking my hand and walking out of a specific situation in my life and saying, there’s a better way. I’m going to show you a better way. But it was very vivid, and God was there. We were there in my past in a present-day situation, and God’s saying, I’m taking your hand, and we’re going to show you a better way. That is a rock. It’s a rock of remembrance, a rock of memorial to God. When I have frustrating days or something happens in my life, I look back and I say, yeah, but God met me there, and I know he was there.
I know it’s him. Another situation would be seeing somebody physically healed. I had the opportunity to go on a number of ministry trips. Those things mark you. You think the person getting healed is the one that benefits, but those that participate, it becomes a rock of remembrance. You know, it’s like you can’t unsee it. You can’t unsee it. You cannot deny it. Yeah, but I did see that.
But in all of our lives, there are these rocks of remembrance. You know, when Israel, in the Old Testament, they used to build these rocks, altars of rocks, thank you, altars of rocks as a remembrance, regardless of when, you know, if they leave that place, you could always go back to that place and remember when God moved. And so in all of our lives, I’ve found in my own personal life, there are things, situations, and circumstances where God marks us. He marks us with remembrance. I wrote down what you said last night. You’re welcome. It was cool because he said, you know, there’s like three ways a lot of times that we see him being used by him. You know, those moments where, oh my gosh, Lord, that word I gave or that it actually impacted someone. and then there’s moments of just personal transformation where something God speaks to you, kind of like what Rod just said, that it’s a moment in time when something happens, a transaction happens with the Lord.
And then there’s just times in community and I felt that today. Like there’s something being surrounded by community. We’re singing together. All our bodies are saying these words together and they mean different things to us. They have very specific meanings and I’m hyper aware of that in a moment like this And when I’m saying behold, I know what I’m thinking, but I wonder what you’re thinking. And I can hear it.
I can hear you’re thinking something, you know, but it’s like that all presses together and makes something great. But I did think of a moment for me that was very transformational when I was like right before kind of a really dark, dark place in my life. It was moving in that direction. I knew that it was going to be a hard road. I didn’t know how hard and how long it was going to be. but I was sitting with the Lord and I heard from him.
It feels audible. It was such a strong moment where I felt like he said, Diane, I want to know from you. Am I Lord or am I not? And I was like, you’re Lord. I jumped right in. You’re Lord. And he’s like, no, no, no, no. Just stop a second.
Just really contemplate what that means to you. Am I Lord or am I not? Because if I am,
then I can’t not be right and if I’m not I’m not going to be so if I am then whatever comes somehow is filtered through my fingers of grace I’m there and you know and I just felt like so I sat with that and I said deep breath okay you are Lord and I had no idea how many times that moment would come up in my head when I’d be like, what? It’s like, okay, okay. I can’t see it with my eyes. Yeah. But you are Lord. Yeah. It’s that walking by faith in, you know, that for us practically now, some of us in the room, maybe the only thing that you need to remember this today is that there’s something in the past. It could have been last week. It could have been a year ago. It could have been 10 years ago. But the Lord tells us to remember over and over and over. And if we ourselves, you know, in the fog and, you know, in the ditch and feeling like I don’t have any traction. I don’t know if I even believe in God anymore. We have to go back and we have to say, but God appeared to me in this way at this time, and I know this happened, and I’m going to walk now by faith and not by what I see or can’t see, but I’m going to make a choice to hold on to those things, you know, because it’s not always easy. So, a great segue into the next idea.
chapter 3, verse 11, it says, this is in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him. Therefore, I ask you not to lose heart in my tribulations on your behalf, for they are for your glory. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father. So, Paul is telling the church, he’s going through many, many very difficult things that are crushing. And he tells the church, he says, don’t lose heart at my tribulations because they are going to bring glory. All right? So, let me speak prophetically to everyone in the room. Your tribulations will bring glory. They will. The purpose of God for you, for your tribulations, no matter how stuck or bound up you feel or crushed right now, the promise for us in Scripture is that there is glory available for your loneliness, for your heartache, for your crushing, for your abuse, for whatever tragedy you’ve gone through. We are promised as believers in eternal life that God is going to work glory for Him, and He’s going to bless you. There’s something on the other end of that. You guys have a story, and we’re going to get the short version, but they’re going to talk to you a little bit about, or a lot bit, I mean, we got time, so whatever, but they’ve gone through some things that have been crushing, but God has done such redemption and is still. And so, why don’t you talk to us your experience of that idea and tell us a little bit of your story or a lot, whatever comes out. It’s almost like when we open it, it’s like hard to figure out how to stop. So, I’m going to help us do that because you know what will happen.
Do you want to start? You want me to? Well, let me just kind of first tell you, obviously it’s our second marriages, right? And so our first marriages, we converged in, we told you how we converged in Georgia in the same church, but we were married to different people. And Rod was married to Charlotte, one of my favorite people on the planet. She became my very, very best friend. And while we were there, my husband was bedridden from an accident right after we’d moved to Georgia. And so he was bedridden for about seven years, and truly mostly in bed. And he was the Oxycontin moment in time that all the documentaries are being written about right now because they were prescribing it like candy for pain.
And so that’s how his pain was managed. And so just kind of fill in the blanks of how those years were. Very difficult. And also in that same season, they were going through a lot. and then Charlotte was diagnosed with breast cancer. That’s correct. Right? Yeah.
Let’s see. We had moved to Atlanta in 95. They had moved in 97. She came into, they came into the Marietta Vineyard at the time, and her and Charlotte, my previous wife, hit it off, and we became family friends. Yeah, we did life. To give you a little background. Yeah, that’s true. And we did life together as families.
Our girls were best friends, and we would vacation and laugh, and through all the hard stuff, they were praying. He’d come over and lay hands on Kevin and my first husband and Price, so we were very intertwined in each other’s lives. Yeah, intertwined families. Yeah, so after all those seven years, we had a new caseworker that came in and said we’ve got to do something. We found a new doctor that said we’ve got a surgery that we want to do. It’s a newer surgery on his back. And we went through with that. And miraculously, it was life-changing. I mean, it was slow, but it was, you know, he came off of the Oxycontin, which was a thing in its own, and then started to enter back into life and was studying to be a luthier, to build instruments and prepare them.
We’d been musicians our whole life. He and I were in the CCM world on a, you know, we did that whole gig. And then we were worship leader for many, many years. And so we were pretty much poor musicians most of our lives. So we had to figure out what to do. So he was going to start that business and started attending a luthier school in Georgia. And it was only two and a half weeks into that time. He was on his way home and was hit head-on by a car. He was sitting at a light, tragically leaving a voicemail for my son when he was hit and was killed instantly.
And so it was literally a little taste of having him back. Some good healing happened during that time emotionally, thank God. But we, I’d written in my journal, again, one of those things where I feel like the Lord, you know, I’d had that, you are Lord or you’re not. And I’d written in my journal, it’s like, oh my God, Lord, this is amazing. Like, he’s getting up and going off to school. Like, I just, I’m a normal, you know, this is so normal. You’re like, back to normal. Yes. And I was like, I’m making the bed.
You know, he’s not in it all the time. And like, it’s just so wonderful. but right in there I said but I know that everything in my life can change in a moment and so I am choosing this moment just to say that you are Lord you know I actually wrote that down just days before and in fact that day I was in my car and the song we sang it at his funeral
oh gosh I can’t remember But the song came on to the point where I had to pull over because I was feeling so moved by this song. It was about praise you in the storm or something like that. Like, I am going to, you know, something like that. But the day that he was killed, that happened to me in the car that I pulled over. So that’s another one of those ultra experiences, you know. He was preparing my heart, and it was dark. And these guys were next to me. Yeah, we went over there to figure out what was going on.
We had heard Kevin had been in an auto accident and was instantly, yeah, pretty instantly killed. And so that was hard. Charlotte had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and we were going through that process, I think, for about a year. Yeah, that’s right. And we got the call that Kevin was in an auto accident. So we figured it was the normal auto accident. You get a fender bender, but he was killed instantly, waiting at a red light to go. This guy was out of control and hit him, coming the opposite way. Watching Kevin being bedridden for seven years, then getting his life back in recuperating with this…
They installed this metal box in his back and isolated the pain situation back there to where he was getting a normal life. He was becoming a luthier. He was losing weight. He was like all these things, and suddenly that’s taken from him. It’s like, God, I’ve got to ask you about this. What the heck is this? And again, it was another, I’ve got to trust God through this, otherwise I’m going to be pretty angry.
And so it was a matter of surrender, another memorial of surrender to the Lord about that and just say, okay, I’m going to trust you in this. We didn’t get there real easy, though. Yeah. I just want you to know.
But I, you know, I do want, I’m just going to fast forward. Yeah, this is probably taking too much time. So then, you know, we walked as a community. Our whole community lost Kevin, you know, and they were with me through all of it. So it was devastating. And then Charlotte started to worsen, and so I threw myself into caring for her because I’d been doing that with Kevin for so long. And then two years later, she passed.
And then Rod was left caring for his teenage girls. I had two daughters in high school. One was a senior and one was a sophomore. Yeah, that was intense, yeah. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Yeah. Is manage my daughters through high school without their mom. And learning, and there’s a whole back story to it, learning a new skill as well. Yeah.
But he did, he was amazing. He’s an amazing dad. And so, you know, obviously you can fill in the blanks that it’s, you know, you say it in a few minutes, and there’s so much that we could tell you about, about how God met us. in really beautiful ways. But we do want to get to the fun part that I know that you all want to hear, is that, because you’re wondering, okay, how do we get to this?
So just, you know, just so much of leaning in, of lamenting, of learning to grieve. We began to kind of grieve together. I was 46 when it happened. And then, you know, we just became, already we were great, great friends, and we just continued our friendships, and we would get together for coffee, and we would grieve together. Yeah, she, you know, when I started the grieving process, Diane was a couple years farther down the road.
So I would call her and say, we have to have coffee. And I would explain situations that I was walking through, and I said, is this normal? Because this whole grieving process is a weird process. Yeah, it’s not linear. And it is, you know, trying to take care of my daughters and trying to keep my head straight and work and everything else. And then we’d get together and we’d just talk. And we’d just normalize the pain. Like, we normalize the process of it all, right?
And it was so, so helpful in that season. And we were clueless. I just thought, Char would beat me up if I, like… I mean, I was aware of our singleness, but I’m not, like, thinking… I just never really thought about it that way, right? Until… Until. There was a really funny story. Okay, we’ve got to make this fast. Look what time it is.
Do we have time? Well, if you tell it, I’m going to have to interrupt you, so I’ll move you along. You might have to give us a sign. Let’s go. You have to stop talking. So keep talking. Okay. All right. Okay.
You asked her out. Thank you. Well, you asked her. No. As I remember the story, you said, what would happen if I asked you out? No, God was involved in this thing. He set us up is what happened. I got to tell that part because I was clueless. We were, you know, we were going to the same church and everything.
And then there was one Wednesday night in July that I felt like the Lord said, ask Diane to go get ice cream with you after we were having a Wednesday night service. Go ask Diane if she’ll go out to the Marietta Square to have ice cream. I said, that’s weird. Maybe she needs to talk about something or, you know, you never know what God, you know. So we go there.
It’s like hot and ice cream’s melting and we go there and you know. Anyway, and then the Lord says, ask her if she’ll go out with you. We’re just having this great time. This is a weird question, Lord, because I’ve been, we’ve been friends all this time. We’ve been through this all. I’m talking she’s my, I don’t want to mess our friendship up.
Because, you know, this is really important. Because the grieving part, right? We’re learning to do life as single parents. Anyway. So tell him how you asked me. Well.
Come on. If you don’t remember, I do.
Great man of faith and power. So he said, if. If I were to ask you out.
I was really on it. Give me a break. It had been a long time.
If I were to ask you out, would you go out with me? Right. And like, you know, we have all this history with us. Anyway, go ahead. Okay. Your turn. So I just was like, oh, well, yeah, I guess I would. But we were both like, but we don’t want it to get weird. We’re like, no, no, no, we don’t want it weird because we love our friendship, right? And I was like, Rod, you know, we’ve been through a ton.
If this isn’t going to work, we can talk about it. This is years past you both lost your spouse. Three years past Charlotte. Yeah, we’ve been friends for three years, right? Apparently everybody else knew this was happening. We had no clue. When we walked into church holding hands, we were ready for everybody to go, and everybody was like, hey. Of course. It was like so, yeah.
We all knew. That’s what he said. So I won’t tell you the whole thing, but it took a long time. He didn’t ask me after that for many, many months.
you all know don’t try that at home there’s a story behind that though but we’re not going to tell it all right now tell that one part I’m driving home from the square we say okay she says yeah I’ll go out with you and I’m driving home and we drove there separately
and invariably you know the question is are you ready for a relationship and the Lord just showed me without a doubt They said, you’ve been taking care of your daughters for two years. You’re not ready.
So what happened was it was just another God showing me I needed to get into counseling and work through my own grief. Because that was all, it was there, but it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t, it was still there. So meanwhile, in Diane’s mind, he was the hottest man I’d ever seen from then on. And all of a sudden I was like, like God just, you know, he takes the veil back and you’re just like, oh, I haven’t thought about it that way before. And then for months it was exhausting to think that way without getting the call for the date, the hypothetical date, the if date. So I’m thinking, well, maybe it really truly was hypothetical and he’s not going to, he decided if, nah, you know. But I finally called him out and asked him that’s when he told me that, okay, that was like in October. And I was just like, honestly, it just, I loved him more. I thought he’s getting ready for me. And I just, you know, that’s amazing.
It’s the start of our relationship that we both really did deep inner work in our lives. I just want to say we’re big fans of inner work, right? Because then we brought together, there was just, like we had so many friends who had had second marriages and things like that. I’m not saying there’s one way. I’ll never say stuff like that. But I’ll say for us, when we finally did Mary, and we had our first kiss on New Year’s Eve, 1-1, 1-1. Isn’t that cool? God, right?
January 1st, 11. And so the first second of the new year, we had a little kiss, right? And it just opened everything. And so just seeing, I know it was a train of thought, and now it’s my turn. You don’t remember what I was going to say? But seeing our way through that, just, okay, what I was going to say is the preparation, then six months later we were married.
Because as Rod would say, well, it’s not our first rodeo. So we were like, what are we waiting for? 7-1-1-1. We needed to, so on 7-1-1-1, we were married. But I think what I wanted to say is that while I had some friends who had second marriages, and they would kind of call like, how’s it going? Because, you know, we’re, whew, it’s a lot, you know. And it is. You’ve got to blend families. But I’m telling you, after all that we had walked, I was living my best life.
I mean, this man, I mean, just like, it was so easy to love him because he had worked so hard, right?
And so, you know, that space in our life was an amazing season. There’s so much more to the story, of course, but just the idea that we can come from a place of complete devastation. And it doesn’t mean it’s going to be like, and then this will happen. But it was just this progression in our lives that I remember somebody saying to me, like, you know, oh, you’re going to find somebody. I’m like, I don’t want anybody. I’m good. I’m good. I really was. I like wear my rings for a long time. I’m like, I’m good. And so I wasn’t looking. I wasn’t expecting, you know. Your story is, it’s beautiful. And I remember in real time hearing about it as your friend and, you know, you being in a different city, but just thinking.
The whole vineyard really came together for me. I got emails from all over the world when the news got out. And I would just, I would say, you know, this passage talking about glory coming from tribulation. Can you imagine being 46 years old? In your case, I think you were 50. I was 50 when I married. But you were 46 when Kevin passed. When Kevin passed, 46. When your wife passed, you were early 50s. Yeah.
I was 70. Yeah, because they’re just a few years apart. So I would just, I think the testimony, what I gather, because I’m about that age, you can be, and it’s a rhetorical question, But so does that mean that my life can completely fall apart unexpectedly in my late 40s or early 50s, and God can somehow put the pieces back together? And I want to say, praise God, the answer to that is yes. We said our 15th anniversary. Yay.
Yeah.
Let’s hit one more passage and one more question. I’m going to delete the last one for the sake of time. Good. One more passage and one more question. This is Ephesians 4, verse 20 to 24. And it says, you did not learn Christ in the wrong way. If you’ve heard of him, you’ve been taught the truth in Jesus in reference to your former manner of life that you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness in the truth. And you guys talked about inner healing and just how things get put on us that were never made to be on us. And a funny thing happened to me Friday, and it’s interesting because last week I was riffing and I said something like, people think a pastor just sits in the church and waits for people to come and pray for them, And they just, and it never happens that way. Well, guess what happened? Friday night, I was here getting ready for this event by myself. I locked the door. I was getting in the car to head over to the other church because that’s where the meeting was. And this, I saw the plants were dying. So I thought, well, let me take a second and water these plants. So I started watering these plants and this SUV pulls in, and this lady got out, and she said, she’s like, are you open now?
And I said, and I thought, my initial thought was she was going to the other church for the worship night. So I said, well, actually, it’s at the other church. And she’s like, when do you open? And I’m trying to figure out what’s going on here. I’ve got water in my hand. It’s all over my feet. And I said, well, we’re not open. And she said, well, I need to know when you’re open, because I need you to cast a demon out of my daughter.
And I said, oh, well, we’re open for that.
And I said, well, is she here? And she said, yeah, she’s in the car. My whole family’s in the car. So that then just was this beautiful 10 minutes or so, and this doesn’t happen this way. So it’s God kind of got me because last week I told you guys, we don’t just sit around and wait for the kingdom to fall and then literally it’s like driving, you know. But I, so I went and it was real weird because these kind of things don’t happen and there’s always two sides to every story.
So they opened the door, there’s a teenage daughter and she was having some strange things happen to her and there was a couple other kids in the car and it was very awkward and the woman was just broken. Broken, the mom was broken. And so we chatted a little bit. I interviewed the young lady and the way that John taught us to and the way Jesus taught us to. And so I began to pray for her and prayed a number of things. And I sensed as I was praying that as I was praying for her, it’s almost like I could see all these voices being spoken into her.
And so I prayed and rebuked those things and rebuked any spirits in the name of Jesus. And then I, you know, this whole thing was about five or ten minutes. And so at the end, you know, she seemed like she was in a good place and shut the door. And I asked the mom to come over and I said, I sense that something has been said or done to her that’s just got her off right now. And the mom, and we would call that a word of knowledge. And so the mom said, well, she just had something happen last week. And the guidance counselor told us that there was a situation where a boy had been with her in a room and something happened and she was unwilling to go to school since. And she said, what do I do? So I gave her some advice about she needs to talk, you need to hear her, you need to keep praying, dot, dot, dot. But the connection between the Lord, you know, impressing that and then the mom telling me that was really beautiful.
And it opens the door to what you just said of we are all in situations like that. Everyone in this room, even if you’re totally checked out right now and disengaged and you’re wanting to go get lunch, we are all in places where there are things that have been spoken to you. It could have been your mom or dad or coach or last pastor. It could have been your abuser. It could have been something you read on Twitter or Facebook last night that has stuck into you. And we are all in this battle to not stay the old self in the way that we would be defined by our own self and by the people around us that don’t have the best for us. And to hear the voice of God that says you can be free of all that stuff that just you walk around sunken down by those things.
And Paul talks about that. He says, you can take off the old, and in Christ you can put on the new. So I want to use that as just the last story to lead into the last point. You mentioned this about, well, how did you say it? Healing and reframing, bringing change in our lives, identifying falsehoods and lies that we’ve lived in, and being renewed. Talk to us in the last, why don’t we take like three or four minutes about that, and then we’ll have some ministry time. Okay. Yeah, because I think there’s something I’m going to read over the ministry time.
Yeah, it can define us and in our own minds create havoc. But God has called us to be free, right? He’s called us, just set us free. That’s part of why he came. Not only salvation, but also healing and restoration as well. We’ve been privileged to be in a healing group in Vineyard and seen this over and over and over and over again. We ministered for 10 years to pastors and our spouses in worship and in inner healing prayer. And these are pastors, right? And time after time, as we would meet in the inner healing prayer, there was some place of malformation where a truth, like, you know, the idea that we’re all supposed to be loved, right?
We feel love and secure in the father. And our fathers, that’s their job on earth, and it just doesn’t always happen, moms and dads, right? And we just get fractured here and there in all different ways. And what happens in that fracture is that we begin to believe a lie. And many times, especially for young people, that lie becomes about yourself. It defines them. Yes, because the parent has to be the good guy in this scenario because they’re our security. or how we can stay safe, right?
And so we decide in that moment, I’m not worthy of love. How many times Rod and I have prayed with somebody that that has been a core lie that they’ve then seen their whole worlds through without even really realizing it. It’s not like spoken. But as we sat in prayer and Jesus came over different memories and moments and just said, and we just kind of, we would watch. we, you know, talk about looking like rock stars when we weren’t doing anything. We were just kind of leading them to Jesus. And then Jesus would, you know, what is he saying to you? Because I’m not going to say it because when Jesus says it, it carries, you know, all different weight. And we would watch people. We could see it on their countenance. We could see them as we do these 10-day retreats. So we’d see them like walking in a room different and everybody like, what has happen. It would be like that. So it was like that, that a lot of times it’s, it’s letting go of a lie and letting, but also receiving the truth. And many times it’s about us, not always.
Sometimes it’s about how we’re viewing other people or how we’re viewing God. God is angry at me or God is this. And it’s like, then we frame our whole lives right through that. We just, we start to look around and that’s bubbling down there, completely ignored, right? But it’s going to frame how you think and how you’re able to receive. Yeah. Another big one is you don’t measure up. I think that was huge. And, you know, authority figures in our lives can mess us up sometimes. Yeah.
And God can unwind that. We’ve seen it over and over and over again. He can do it. He can do it. Sometimes you need help doing that. Some people, like, you know, like I said, we’ve seen it over and over and over. God’s done it to us and now we get to do it for other people as well I remember we would go for training for a while and we would go back to the hotel room and then just pray for each other like Lord show us places I mean it’s clear that picture I had before was after a training session in the hotel room God’s on me doing this thing and I’m going oh my god you’re doing it to me right now it’s just a way I want to live like okay where am I I’m feeling all this anxiety right now, but what’s under that?
What’s happening there? Just being curious rather than just, that’s how I’m feeling. It’s true how you’re feeling. Yeah, that is true. But the why underneath it might be something God wants to address. Yeah, let’s do it right now. Amen. Can I just read real quick from our years of inner healing, Just one thing that I think has always unlocked things for people is we started under a gentleman named Terry Wardle and just went through his, and all of them are very similar, but I love this part.
He just kind of condensed. He said there are six core longings that everybody’s born with. You’re born with a need to be loved unconditionally. There’s nothing wrong with you wanting to be loved unconditionally. That was, you know, that was in God’s design how we were supposed to be loved, right? To have significance for somebody to let you know, actually, your presence on this world is significant. To feel safe and secure. Listen, my little new grandson was telling me, yeah, I was outside in my diaper, and the policeman found me. He was two years old. You know, so like to find out, so I’ve been praying this stuff over him, right?
Because he didn’t feel safe and secure. He had to take care of himself. Understanding. Isn’t that a core need to feel understood? So we fight for it when we’re not. Like we can’t move through our lives knowing actually we are really understood. Even if in this moment this person isn’t understanding me, you understand me, Lord. And it frees you a lot in that space. To have purpose, for someone to call out purpose in your life. And then a really important one is belonging.
Like, I’m part of somebody, you know. So, as those words, like, that’s a real beautiful place for you to just kind of be curious. It’s like, wow, that word just kind of poked something in me, right? And that maybe there’s something that God wants to do. Yeah. Amen. Thank you. It’s an honor to have you guys with us. You guys are wonderful. Let’s all stand.
And I want to spend some time in prayer. We are kind of at our… The children may rush in, but we’ll deal with it. Hopefully there will be a little grace.
Let’s pray and see what we feel the Holy Spirit is doing.
Holy Spirit, we welcome You. We welcome You.
We welcome You.
Lord, as you promised your presence that was like a gift, it was like a good gift, not a burden, but a good gift that we could have as much as we asked for, that you would not limit it. We ask you this morning to come among us again. Pour out, increase your presence and your spirit on us.
And we welcome you into the inner deep places of our lives. Yes, Lord.
even if we’re not able to open that up the Lord can come right now and just say yes to it it’s feeling locked up right now yeah that’s the same word I was getting was locked I think there’s
so if we were in like a vineyard conference this would last an hour but since we have children that need to get out we’re going to make it quicker but that’s okay I think there’s some of us this morning that I’m just going to keep it very vanilla to make it just very easy and accessible. But some of the things that were said this morning, you really feel like we’re beginning to unlock something in you. And I believe Jesus, even if you don’t even know who Jesus is, Jesus Christ is inviting you now. He’s holding his hand out saying, come to me.
And I want you. I want to be part of your life. And when you do, there will be a new level of grace and freedom and meaning in you. if you’ll come to him. So if some of the things that were shared today speak you and you feel that invitation and you like prayer, I want to invite you to come forward and we want to pray for you. So if that’s you, come on up here.
I believe the Lord has something great for you. And you can just come right up here in this area and we’ll have some people pray for you in just a moment. Come on up if that’s you.
I had an image of a sailboat in the middle of the ocean. It had its sails rolled up. It was at anchor with no land around it. And it had been at anchor for so long that the chain was rusted and it finally broke. And the captain on the ship was like, well, what do I do? What do I do? and it was just time to roll down the sails and trust the wind to take the boat on to the next place.
Great word, great word. Thank you.
We could have six or seven more folks that can pray for people come up here and help us pray for the folks that have come up.
I think there’s a few more. We’re going to release you guys in just a moment, but I think there’s a few more that would like prayer. And don’t be bashful.
Sometimes you have to push your way through the crowd and grab Jesus in order to experience Him.
We need some people over here. If we could have a couple folks. We could have a few more guys in the front help pray. Come on up, you guys. Some of you guys that want to pray, or if you don’t want to pray, come up. Sometimes it works better that way.
I need a couple more ladies over here also.
If you’re new with us this morning, this is just how we like to end our services. We just like to give a chance for those that would receive prayer and want to respond to the message and to get prayer.
I’m going to let you guys take your time. If you want to hang out and just come say hi to Rod and Diane at the end, you’re welcome to do that. They’re going to be hanging around and we’d love to meet you. And so I’m going to pray and dismiss this. You guys take your time. And Lord, we bless you for today. We bless you and we invite you to continue working in us for your glory. We trust you. We submit to you and say you are the Lord. We go in your peace in the name of Jesus. Amen. Guys, bless you. If you’re getting prayer, take as long as you need and have a wonderful Sunday.
