this will go a a reach deeper but just in all honesty for
me one of the biggest lies i believed was that
really it was that what jesus had done in my life the elements that he had brought
freedom healing hope they were taboo to the church a lot of the time i was delivered from
an addiction to pornography i came out of sexual promiscuity i i'm sitting here wrestling with the
angst of being like oppressed in my dreams things happening in my sleep that are just disorienting
and when i looked around at the church by and large i didn't really see anybody talking about
stuff that heavy and that intense and that's like the tip of the iceberg of stuff that i was
internally like wow this is this is my story and i know he did it for me but i don't see anybody
talking about these things and so do i want to even be a voice that brings that to the table
and so the lie that hey wow what they're going to think about you when you start sharing these
things that could be that's where eventually the holy spirit ministered to me hey you you chose
to be crucified with christ so you can't hurt a dead man if your life's already been laid down
if you have already crucified the flesh then there's no criticism or judgment or pushback
that is going to wound you press forward because there are many wrestling with oppressed by
dying under these things and perhaps i'm calling you to evangelize not necessarily it's all good
and cheery let me tell you about my lord and savior jesus christ like that's beautiful and has
such a great place but there's also real life and a lot of really heavy things that sometimes when
it solely comes from like almost uh a super simplistic angle it can leave the people that are
dealing with adultery behind closed doors or you know addicted to drugs or addicted to pornography
or whatever it may be feeling like that's not even a jesus who gets reality because i'm it's a lot
but i want to speak to anyone tuning into this right now
man the chains that have bound you that he has set you free from will be the very same chains he
wraps around the the demonic the principalities the enemy and binds them up with and cast them out
because it's it's the experiential victory that we can bring to the table and it can be weighty and
heavy and hard and it's often the things that you want to hope nobody sees or knows about that are
going to be the most powerful agents of evangelism because so many are pushing those things down
into the depths and don't know the real jesus who wants to minister to those exact places
i love that i think that a lot of people watching today might be struggling with that same lie
that you just mentioned that there's too much shame in my story so my story is not the story
to be shared and i hear what you're saying is that there is so much power in commonality
there is so much power and i went through this and you went through this and let me tell you how god
has interacted with my real mess and transformed my real mess and how he can do the same
for you because one of the best things about jesus is that he did not stay
far and above us he is not out of reach for us but he came to be emmanuel god with us to be
tempted like we're tempted to mourn like we've mourned and commonality was so important to god
that when he sent jesus he said it's not going to be enough for me to show them how a god
can do it they have to see how a human can be tempted like a human is tempted how a human can
suffer loss like a like a human has suffered loss and how a human can live for god obey god and
and be resurrected and there's so much power in commonality but when we just tell people a curated
story we are not letting them into the true full story of how good jesus is and how we can interact
and transform our real lives so we don't want to tell people a curated story god has a better
story god is a better author and god wants to use our real lives to reveal his real power the real
power of what god can do is shown when we share our real stories i thought that was so powerful
mode thanks for sharing that i think if everybody understands that your story matters that's what i
had to get to that point to realize that my story matters it may not be like everybody else's story
but it matters but coming into you know the church especially that teaches faith sometimes
it's a little difficult to not not for me but for several for many people to really tell you know
their truths or their you know to be authentic with you know what they have gone through or
whatever we paint this picture like everything is so prim and proper and perfect and it's not
right it's like everybody didn't come from this perfect lifestyle to come into the body of christ
and we try to impress those that are around us and the people that are around us are already in
the body of christ most of the time and we have to get out here into the streets into this world
a dying world actually to tell them our story they don't want to know your end they want to know your
beginning they want to know where you started and so we have to begin to own our story and to know
that again like most say god gets the glory out of all of it so it's not here to try to you know to
promote myself and to say that i'm this and i'm that now it's like they don't want to hear that
they want to know you know how did you overcome this were you hurting and did this happen to you
and how did you cast down this lie they want to know your truth they want to know you know what
you've gone through to say so they can say okay well if god did it for her he'd do it for me right
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