SWYC 2017: Surrender - Moment by Moment

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GYC Southwest

Workshop: Surrender that Heals

Keala Thompson

Take Away the Show

Father, we pray that you may help us to understand your word and apply it, and that you may fill us with your spirit of love, and that you may apply the principles of your word into our hearts.

In Hawaii, when we fall asleep, we call it kanak attack.

Kanak is like kanaka means like a Hawaiian person.

Because after we eat, we kind of fall asleep.

So what I'm going to do is, can you stand up?

And you feel like you're falling asleep, then you can take deep breaths.

And then I might just walk next to you and kind of like screaming in your ear.

For the next 5 hours sermon, you guys ready for that?

We're looking at John chapter 11 verse 38 in your Bibles.

So we're living in a time, and we're focusing on Laodicea today as well, okay?

But we're living in a time in a world where the external is everything, And the internal is not really that important.

And you know, even in the churches, a lot of times we focus upon, you know, what you should do and what you shouldn't do and external obedience.

I was 1 who was always, you know, very strict and very rigid in my, in what I need to do.

And to do this and to that, and I was very, really extreme.

Because I forced myself, and my motivation was fear, I was very unhappy.

And because I was unhappy, I made people around me unhappy.

And religion was not a happy experience for my home, was not a happy experience for my friends and everyone around us.

And so this is something I feel like is very important.

And many times people, we pretend we're so good people, and we're so holy people, and you know, we go to church, you know, hey, happy Sabbath, praise the Lord, good brother, good to see you, how are you doing, you know, and then, as soon as we go home, you know, our true colors come out, right?

And people, our children see how we really are.

And it's really not what we say, but it's actually how we live our lives that's more important.

And so when our children see that, they actually get frustrated, and many times They may even leave the Lord just because how they were raised.

And everyone thinks that we're such nice people, except our own families at home.

And then we wonder why our families are falling apart.

And we're not talking about our families and homes in the world.

We're talking about families and homes in the churches.

And even if a family does not get a divorce, you know that the children are not happy.

And so I believe that God wants to do something.

You know, I talked about transparency and being real, and I was at a seminar there for youth conference, and an older man came up to me, and I talked about transparency, and he said, what do you mean about being transparent?

You know, no 1 today wants to be transparent.

I mean, that's just, no 1 wants to be really real with people.

But he said, what do you mean about being transparent?

He said, I fake being nice to my wife all the time.

I fake being nice to my wife and I think we all fake it and I said just because everyone fakes it doesn't make it all right.

So God wants something different I believe from his church and so we're gonna do to go look at the story of Lazarus when he was dead.

So Jesus was called to the family of Lazarus and he came there.

And Lazarus had already been dead how many days?

And John 11, verse 38, if you have your Bibles you can turn there with me.

John chapter 11 verse 38, notice what the Bible says here.

It says, then Jesus again groaning in himself came to a tomb, it was a cave and a what?

In other words, the stone was coming to covering this tomb of Lazarus' tomb.

In other words, Jesus is the light of the what?

And so the light came to the darkness of the tomb, but in order for the light to come into the tomb What need to happen?

That's what needed to happen And so and when the light hits darkness Darkness dispels and disappears because light is more powerful than darkness.

But the miracle of light dispelling darkness can only happen when the stone is first removed, right?

Hiding from Intimacy

Father, as your word is open, help us to see what you want us to see.

Let's look in the story of Genesis chapter 3, Adam and Eve.

What did Adam and Eve do when God was looking for them?

It says, "...and they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

And Adam and his wife..." What is that word?

"...hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees." In other words, Adam and Eve...

Okay, before this time, what would you think about it?

How was the relationship of Adam and Eve with God?

When God was coming to the Garden of Eden, what would happen?

They would run to greet him because they longed for that intimacy with God, right?

That closeness, that oneness they had with God.

Now you see a situation that God is coming in and He's calling, Adam, Eve, right?

And now, rather than running to God, they're running away from God.

In the same way today there are many people who are hiding themselves from having any intimacy with God as well.

You know I had a church member that said to me you know Pastor I'm such a private person that not only do I not tell my hard time opening up to my husband I have a hard time even opening up to God and again is that possible to happen to anyone here today?

Look at verse 10 now the question is why I like to ask the question why and everything I like to go look to the Root cause and discover.

I don't why it says we need to reason from cause to the effect look to the source discover what is the root cause don't just look at the symptoms and patch things up on that needs to be dealt with gotta go back to the root cause so why were they hiding from the presence of God the Bible says here in verse 10 why is it so he said I heard your voice in the garden, and I was what?

Afraid so in other words Adam and Eve experience fear You know fear is a powerful force The Bible says perfect love cast out what?

Fear right so when love exists fear does not exist.

Fear cannot exist in the presence of love.

But I want you to know the opposite is true as well.

Love cannot exist in the presence of fear.

So, in a relationship, I give an example.

In a relationship of domestic violence, or even an environment where the husband is always fighting, or boyfriend is fighting with a girl.

How many have been in abusive relationships like that, where you're always fighting?

I remember I had a relationship with this girl, and we were dating, and I decided to break up with her.

And we went on a date to dinner, and after the restaurant, we were going, and then she said, I took a pill.

So I took her to the ER I'm panicking and I was like wait should I stay with her should I break it off are you following me and the only thing that was keeping me in that relationship was fear that she would kill herself are you following me but when fear is there even domestic violence a spouse may beat up another spouse, right?

And what's keeping that person from leaving is what?

But the danger of fear in every relationship, and even if you say you actually give a person a cold shoulder, right?

Or like you don't talk for your spouse for days or your boyfriend or girlfriend for days.

The only reason why they want to be nice again is because or not do something again is not because of love for them, but because they're afraid that you're gonna give them the cold shoulder.

So not only does When there is love fear can exist but where there is fear, love cannot exist.

They couldn't have intimacy with God because God is love.

We live in a world of, I think it's over 530 documented phobias or fears that's out there.

The reason why we don't do certain things is because we're afraid.

What actually gets us set in a certain way of thinking is because something happened to us in the past that created this fear, right?

In other words, before Adam and Eve had this relationship with God, there was no fear, it was just open intimacy and love with God.

They did something and they ate the fruit and it made them think differently about God and created a fear that Satan wanted them to believe in their minds.

And that fear broke the intimacy with God.

So in your handout you notice what it says.

It says if you're hurt, you hide and you isolate yourself, you build up walls around your heart.

And what's the point of building a wall around your heart?

Why do people build walls around their heart for intimacy?

Protection because they don't want to get hurt again.

OK, so now we know there's walls around our hearts to protect ourselves from being hurt again.

I remember not the first girl, but the first official girlfriend I had when I was in high school.

I mean, we had like, oh, be my girlfriend, but like real kind, like a long term.

And then I remember that I will never forget that time.

And I thought it was going great, until that time we all went out on a group of friends and I met some new people and I'm 14, I don't have my license yet, And here comes this guy who's 15 and he has his own van.

The Walking Wounded

Please Lord, we know that we can do nothing without you.

Okay, what we need to do is, we need to understand the times.

The sons of Issachar, the Bible says they understood the times so they knew what, what?

The Bible says, so they knew what Izo, what?

Okay, so the sons of Issachar was blessed by god in the old testament because the bible says they had an understanding of the times the culture so they knew what israel needed to do that make sense okay so that's what we're going to look at so we're going to look at first timothy chapter 5 and what do we call to do in the church?

So we can know what God's Israel church needs to do today.

The Bible says, "'Do not rebuke an older man, an elder, "'but exhort him as a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, with all purity." So we hear these terms of father, mother, talking about the church, sister, brother.

So really, the church was really supposed to be a family.

We are called in the Bible to respect the fathers, double respect, especially in the elder.

So in other words, it's a family, it's a village, it's a community.

And even though you think about it, even the Godhead lives with Father, Son, Holy Spirit as a community as well, right?

You know, in the days of the patriarchs, you also find that they lived in community as well, right?

You had several generations of Abraham, right?

And his children and the next generation, grandchildren.

They all live in community all together in 1 like a little tent city they had of their own and that is very important.

Grandparents with great grandparents, they open up their hearts and share their affections freely with 1 another as a community.

You know, that's something that I really long for.

I share about my brother on Friday night, and that's something I've been really striving for in my family.

There is 8 of us in our family, 4 boys and 4 girls.

And our family alone, without children and our grandchildren, some of them, we're the youngest of the 8, have even grandchildren.

It's just 70 of us and this immediate family.

And so when we do things, we always do things together.

And I was just thinking about, people say, well, I love to live in Hawaii.

How many actually like to live in Hawaii?

Okay, the problem with Hawaii is this, the cost of living.

Okay, if you've ever been to a vacation in Hawaii, it is super expensive, right?

And you know, they actually rip off the tourists.

I just want to let you know, they rip you guys off.

And unfortunately, they give us discounts.

If you have a Hawaii license, they give you up to 50% discounts on tourist things, up to, I found 70, 80% off.

You know, this is because, you know, they make the money on tourists.

I just want to let you know, so next time you go to Hawaii, save money, okay?

So I'm helping you save money while we're going through the seminar as well.

Number 1, when you go there, everything's expensive.

You're going to find the food is ridiculously expensive.

Gas, I mean, not so bad, but sometimes it gets very expensive.

I mean, cost of living, buying a home, I mean, certain islands you forget about it.

The average median cost in like Hawaii is the highest of all the 4 major islands.

You're talking about 750, 800, 000 just for a basic single family home, you know, and that's what you're looking for.

Number 2 is you get a pay cut for the same position in the mainland for the same job in Hawaii.

So you get twice by a higher cost of living plus second a pay cut.

So that's why they say it's a cost to live in paradise.

And the only way you're going to be able to live in paradise is, and I know people who move from the mainland to Hawaii because they want to live the Hawaii dream I guess, and they love it and they enjoy it, but the problem is that after only a short time they cannot afford it and they move back.

And people wonder how in the world do we make it?

You know, we left, we felt God's calling after I got sick that I pastored 15 years in the Hawaii conference and it was a great experience for me, but we felt that God was calling us to this ministry full-time because we saw the need, especially in Hawaii, there's a great hunger, and so we felt we wanted to do this.

And so by faith, by faith we went out, and we just went out full-time into our ministry.

We're not asking anyone for money and donations were coming in.

But I'm telling you right now, our salary compared to what we used to make is very little.

In fact, it's like 1 third of what we used to make.

Less than 1 third of what we used to make.

And you know how we make it inside Hawaii?

And I was just thinking about, you know, a few things this morning as I was going through this.

When there's a luau or a party, you know, my sister, my sister, she does like the floor decoration, beautiful.

And it costs like hundreds of dollars inside the floor mark.

And it's like this beautiful mark, she does it, you know, it's free, just donate her time.

There's other people, very professional in making like, decorating the whole luau, really nice.

My specialty, I have different specialty.

I do the kulolo and bring it to the luau.

And in our family, we have different services.

Like my brother, he's really good at fixing cars.

And in building a house, you know, the fixed things, we all work it out.

You know, I know how to fix the basic of cars.

Facing the Pain

Father as your word is open, we know that only you can interpret it.

Lord, if there's any pain here that maybe we've forgotten or purposely stuffed down, we pray that you may help us to remember that we may face the pain and heal.

Now most of us have heard the phrase growing pains and what that means is, is that whatever we do in life, no matter what we do, there's always gonna be some type of pain, right?

So like a baby when it's growing up, I mean we're having is teething goes to pain, right?

You actually have to work out and sometimes you get pain from that and so in a spiritual realm to whatever we do in order to grow there needs to be some level of pain.

And in the same way, emotionally, we need to experience the sorrow and facing the pain that we may heal.

Last summer we had our school in Hawaii and There was an older lady that came to our school from another island And she Looked like she had all together.

I knew her for a while and Always happy smiling bubbly everything and then I Never forget it was like the end of the week, everyone's sharing their testimonies and she was all, I love this everything, I love this school, I love the messages, and oh this was good for me, but never opened up.

I think it was the last night that we, we had a testimony sharing a prayer chair, like we come to the front and you sit in a chair and you share and we pray for you.

And then I knew her for over 20 years and never knew this story.

She sat in a chair and then she began to cry.

She said, I've never shared this in public.

Then she went on to tell the story of when she was younger.

She was upstairs and she told her mom, mother-in-law, to watch her son.

So she went to sleep, getting ready for work.

Finally when she came downstairs, she saw her mother-in-law in the kitchen cooking and she didn't see her son anywhere.

She looked around and The first thing she saw was a screen door open to the backyard.

And she said in her heart she knew that her son had already died.

So she went outside in the backyard And there she saw her son in the pool face down.

She was weeping while she was sharing her story.

And she just gave a lot of a wail in front of everyone.

Just was weeping a wail like a cry like I've never heard before.

And some ladies, girls went up there, they're holding her.

And then she says, Sheryl, that I don't have a family anymore.

My other son and my other daughter, They don't want nothing to do with me.

I have no children." I just said, what happened was because I was so much in pain, that I wasn't able to see everyone else's pain all around me.

Because her own son was in pain, because he lost a brother.

Her own daughter was in pain because she lost a brother.

But because of that, and she never forgave, still was bitter against her mother-in-law for neglecting to watch her son.

To that day, 25 years later, do you think people can walk around carrying this burden?

Pain in their heart, even after 30 years?

That's when some of the students said, we will be your children.

But her goal is to reconcile with her children, to make things right, to ask for forgiveness.

And God has brought healing to her, and God's been continuing to bring healing into her life.

But it didn't happen till she faced the pain.

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Series

Workshop: Surrender that Heals

Hiding from Intimacy

Transcript

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