Restoration 2018:  Our Picture of God

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Restoration Ministry

Dee Casper

Surprised By Love

Oh Jesus, thank you for this privilege to come into your presence in prayer, and I'm asking now specifically that you would enable me to manage my time wisely and to ensure that the way that this is communicated doesn't glorify me at all, that no man would be uplifted, but that Christ and His faithfulness would be uplifted.

This is my simple plea today and I ask this in Jesus' name, Amen.

I title my story this based upon a similar telling of a story by C.S.

Lewis' story, Surprise by Joy, seeking to disprove Christianity and ended up finding Jesus.

Lewis' story kind of inspired mine in a sense of the title, that I was not looking for God, but I praise God for the fact that he came looking for me, amen?

It says in Isaiah chapter 65 in verse 1, that I was sought by those who did not ask for me.

I was found by those who did not seek me.

I said, here I am, here I am to a nation that was not called by my name.

And That's kind of the story that I'd like to share with you today.

So, what is a testimony without cute, chubby baby pictures?

He was, I'm 32, but he was 30 whenever I, he didn't have me, my mom did.

This is Loma Linda, you better be careful, That's not scientifically possible.

And this may or may not have been my best friend until like junior high.

It was referred to as a puffalump, but I called him Poo-Foo because I couldn't pronounce that and again he may or may not have been my best friend until junior high.

This is my dad Don This is my grandfather Bill William Lynn and then this is me.

He's Donald William I'm Donald William jr.

But I go by D just because it's Easier to do that whenever there's 4 people with the same name at family gatherings.

And I was just this little skinny kid that deserved to get beat up.

I was lying and stealing by the age of 5.

Objectified women, disrespectful, arrogant, I didn't do well with authority, academic apathy, I hated school, like absolutely hated it.

My priorities in life were basically my girlfriend and drumline, which is like marching percussion basically, I was a snare drummer.

In fact, when I was dating this girl in high school, she told me, like, I have to break up with you.

And the response was basically that you're not a Christian.

And I remember thinking to myself, like, I believe in God, why would she say that?

Because I just had no idea that there was more than just this ascribing to the existence of God.

Even the demons believe in tremble, we're told.

My parents were divorced when I was about 3 or 4 under the grounds of a few things.

1, my my dad was the caretaker for Gigi, my great grandfather, who had Alzheimer's.

Anyone ever take care of somebody with Alzheimer's?

And being newlyweds and with a small child, my mom just kind of bailed.

But the reason why she bailed was because whenever she was born, her parents get divorced and her mom just bails, abandons her basically.

And whenever my grandfather remarries, the woman that he marries, Mom has never really felt like she treated her as her daughter, right?

And so mom has basically felt that she's been rejected by 2 mothers.

And this sets us up for really, really strong hardship because I'm gonna cover this later this week, but our view of God is based largely upon our experience with our parents.

So my mom really wrestles to resonate with the paternal or the maternal love of God, the idea of the nurturing love of God.

That aspect of the image of God that was meant to come through her mother's, she never really got.

And so she was looking for relationships with men.

So she'd been married once before my dad and had a son.

It looked like somebody smuggled a watermelon under her wedding dress.

And so I don't remember much, but I was there.

My dad got custody, which she would say is in my best interest, and so would he.

And then she married again and the man that she married at this stage beat her up really bad.

I was not there when this happened but my dad's father, my grandfather, dropped me off at her place.

He lived like a mile or 2 from the projects where she was living And when he dropped me off at her house, when she opened the door, she's purple, she's swollen, she's blue, she's not the person I know.

But imagine as a five-year-old child who's already trying to make sense of life after the divorce, now at this stage, this happens and I just felt unsafe, incredibly unsafe.

And so what I ended up doing, what I was unaware of was that me stealing all the time and lying all the time was a way for me to create a form of safety and to feel in control.

The human psyche is so phenomenal that you can actually be numbing pain without even knowing that you're feeling pain.

But fear just overtook me and kind of ruled my life and my experience for years because of this.

And so I was just a wild mule of a kid in school.

I was sharpening my pencil every 10 seconds.

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Surprised By Love

Transcript

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Related

The Life Work

41m

Plenary Sessions

Full Circle: Gratitude in Surrender

1h 18m

Is God Enough

57m

Tablets of Our Hearts

51m

Absolute Surrender

45m

Jessica Trinh Weekend

I Will Bring the Blind

54m

Mystery of God Finished

45m

The Power of Perspective

Two Altars

53m

How to Talk to People Who Believe Lies

How to Talk to People Who Believe Lies Part 1

40m

Seminars

Christ in the Word and Prayer

53m

Christ in Crisis

1h 7m

Sound Doctrine