You can get a vision of what God is like at the top and you can order these
differently right? But I'm just saying the most holy divine you know, God like
you can think of as the Father, he seems kinda remote sometimes but he's the
Father right? And then we have Jesus the Son who came and walked here and got
dust on his feet and had to go to the bathroom and had people talking bad
about him and stuff like that. And we have the Spirit who he left with us who
connects us to God. So that's sort of how I see God. I want you to know that
we are each a community too. God made us in His image. What did that mean? Is this what God
looks like? Well actually yeah he does look like this. This is what God looks
like on earth, this is what God looks like on earth right? You are what God
looks like on earth but we're all a community. You can diagram it almost the
exact same way. Look, if you uh if you got the image there, we are spirit, soul and
body. Our spirit is the part that relates to God. Our body is the parts, our earth
suit, we walk around in it. You can't walk around in your spirit the same way you
walk around on on your legs right? We are on this earth but in the middle between
the two there's this soul. You know the bottom part here that the body, that's
material we can see it. It's extended in space right? The top part the Spirit, how
do you measure how much does your spirit weigh, how long is it, how tall is it. I
don't know, there isn't any of that, it's in the spirit. But in the middle there's
this soul part and because sometimes we neglect that part. But I want you to
understand that that part is important because that's, let's see next next slide
here, that's where we have a lot of problems,
a lot of problems that the Bible really talks about but we don't always address.
So I want you to know here in the middle in the soul that's where your mind, will
and emotions are. And if you want that's kind of where your personality is, where
your brain is in your body. It kind of overlaps that part.The soul is the part
of you that makes you you and I call this the decision partner, the decision
zone because okay here's how it goes right? Your body lives on this earth and
really likes pizza and sleep and drugs and sex and whatever else, it just wants to
do what if it's like yeah I want that right? That's what your body, your body
just wants to, let's face it if we were just animals we would be just bodies and
we would just do whatever we wanted to do right? Your spirit is like always
facing God, it's like in heaven looking at God's face all the time and it
doesn't have any, it's like why would I want to do all that messy stuff that's
gonna separate my relationship with God. I want to totally serve God with
everything. Look I don't care if you are strung out on drugs right now in a ditch
on the side of the road, you have a spirit. If you're saved, your spirit has
is sitting before the throne of God and it is serving and loving and praising
God with all it's worth right now. I don't care where you are, that's who you
are. Your spirit is your raw identity but the decider in the middle decides am I
gonna side with a body or am I gonna side with the spirit? And we got that
decision every single day and every single moment of every single day we
decide that. And I am sorry to say that I do not always decide with the spirit.
Sorry I eat that extra slice of pizza right? Or
I don't go to the gym or I don't actually talk to the person who looks
like they're really in need right now because I just really don't want to. Look.
Christians don't like mental illness. We don't even like to admit that it's
possible for us to have it. Oh no I'm going with the Lord, good brother
I'm good, I'm good. Oh yeah well you're taking, I don't even remember the names of
some of the medicines, you're taking, you know oxycodone or whatever, yeah
okay, maybe maybe there's some soul healing needs to happen there. I want you
to know inner healing is a name for the process, for a healthy process of dealing
with soul wounds. Everyone needs it, I need it and I'm gonna tell you how it
works. There's four major steps to inner healing. Follow Holy Spirit. Follow Holy
Spirit is number one. Don't go off on your own into your hurt, you'll get lost there. If you like spend a lot of time going, what happened to me, you'll get lost in
your own hurt. Follow Holy Spirit. Here's how you follow Holy Spirit, you
ask him to lead you. He's faithful, he'll do it.
Ask him to lead you and then go where he goes. Don't like explore there. Go
where he takes you. Don't go to the thing you think is your worst hurt because it
probably isn't. It's probably something deeper and earlier and more poisonous
that you never actually fixed and he knows, so follow him ask him to lead you
to the place in your mind where you're stuck and where you're hurt and follow
him there. And then here's something to do when you get there. Remember
you're safe, you keep holding onto his hand and you ask him to tell you what's
wrong. Don't tell him what's wrong. I was
in this situation. Let's see myself in a situation let's say there was a woman
that I was helping through this and she could see herself as a little child
being abused right? And it was ugly. I asked her, ask Holy Spirit what are you
feeling right then and she's like terrified. I'm so angry,
I'm so ashamed. Those are feeling words. Here's what's
not a feeling word, I was attacked. That's about you attacking me. I was betrayed. No
that's about someone doing bad things to you. What were you actually feeling? Ask
Holy Spirit to help you name it. This is really hard for us men because we just
like we're either happy or we're mad. There's not much in between and there's no
degrees of mad, we're just mad and it's just not right, we're mad. Women can tell
you 36 different words for why they're upset with things like that, it's awesome.
So if you're married ask your wife to help you with your vocabulary. But
meantime Holy Spirit can really help you to figure it out and some people like to
just like to visualize this nasty thing in them like this ball of goo. Or like a
tumor or something. That's identifying the problem. When you're there I want you
to feel that hurt, to really feel it right? And then the second step is give
it to Jesus because the truth is he already took it and he doesn't want you
to have it. He paid for it all, look if he paid for it why are you holding on to it?
Why are you paying for it too? He's he's not gonna say oh I don't want that one
that was ugly. No, he he already went through the ugly, he just wants you to
give it up. So you gotta say Jesus, would you take this? I don't want this anymore.
Sometimes people want their hurt you know that because it empowers them.
They're like if I have this hurt then I'll have the power to take revenge.
Look, you're not an Avenger okay? Hurt will not help you give it to Jesus. And
step number two, if it was caused by your own sin and this is something to ask Holy
Spirit too, did I do this, is this me? That's the time to repent right? Not
everything was caused by you but some things that's where you say, hey I
actually did that, that was wrong, sorry. That's a great place to do it.
Third step, let the Father restore you. This is the father of the prodigal son.
He's not sitting there with his arms crossed, he's sitting there with his arms out waiting
every day for you to come back. This is our Father.
Ask him to restore you and what I like to do is I like to say God, I have this, I
felt so wounded and so I felt so ashamed okay.
God would you give me something in replacement for that? If it's shame I'll
ask for honor. If it's fear I'll ask for peace. If I don't know what to ask I'll
ask Holy Spirit, what did I ask for cuz I need something different than this. And
he'll tell you because he's good, he's real good.
He gives good gifts take them. Let the Father restore you and then last,
repeat this if you have to. So this is what I do with people and we're gonna do
this in a minute if we have time hopefully
yeah well. Ask the Holy Spirit to take you back to that place one more time,
hold his hand and walk there and ask yourself what do I feel now. It's
probably gonna be something different. If you felt a shame before you might feel
anger now. Okay let's go deal with the anger.
Let's follow Holy Spirit, give it to Jesus, receive from the Father, follow Holy
Spirit, give it to Jesus, receive from the Father until you can go back to that
place and you're free.
And then tomorrow when Satan comes and attacks your soul and says and you're
like oh okay it doesn't mean you're not healed, it just means you're healing. This
is the process. After you're healing you got to pursue God like your new drug
and when the pain comes back you go at it with what God has given you. You were
healed by His stripes, you were healed body, soul and spirit. You were healed.
This is what the Bible says folks, it doesn't matter how you feel. It's just
true and you, how's your self-talk right? Are you saying, I might, I don't know, I'm
not sure I'm healed. Yeah you are healed because that's what God said you
are. I'm not asking you whether you feel healed or not today. I'm asking you to
receive from him and this is a process. Follow Holy Spirit, ask Jesus to take it,
receive from the Father, repeated as often as you need every single day of
your life. June 28th through 29th we have a thing called Freedom Weekend where
it's gonna be a time where we're gonna go deeper into inner healing, forgiveness,
the love of God, deliverance and all those things where we'll be able to get
healed from any issues that we have. Deliverance from any that it's
more of like where will you go further with God. And during that weekend you can
sign up with us on our website Hungry Gen.com and get more information about
that. It's a weekend you don't want to miss. It's a time where you're gonna get
to know God more and more, that when you serve God you serve Him with a pure
heart, with a free spirit and your life is it'll never be the same. So we
want to see you there and now let us let us put our attention to your Life Group Leader