Those hidden things - we all have them and Christ wants to help us get them out and honestly deal with them and move on.

Oklahoma Family Retreat 2015: Nothing is Impossible

<p>Those hidden things - we all have them and Christ wants to help us get them out and honestly deal with them and move on.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Restoration International

Alane Waters

Tom Waters

Skeletons in the Closet

It's great to be here, and it's great to have all of you here.

The place is already filling up tonight, and we want to welcome those of you that are with us by live stream tonight.

And I'd like to second Alfonso's prayer that the weather would be good because I understand it's supposed to hail again tonight so pray that the Lord keeps that from happening and I'm going casual tonight because we got here safely, which we're very thankful for, but our luggage did not arrive.

So when Ricky picked us up, we're standing on the curb with my briefcase.

I said, yes, we're traveling light this year.

Because our suitcases were all left in Atlanta.

And we nicknamed it in the early years, we nicknamed it Always Stuck in Atlanta, because it seemed like we did get stuck there many times, but we're delighted to be here tonight, and we're looking forward to talking about skeletons in the closet.

Kind of scary a little bit maybe it drew your curiosity.

I can remember when my husband and I we were on a plane we spent a lot of time sitting on airplanes and we were talking about this year's family retreats and what we were going to do that would go along with our theme that nothing is very good.

So we've all got it we can all go home because we've got it, right?

Now we all need to keep this in the forefront of our thoughts.

So as we were talking about different things we wanted to discuss here, this is something that came right to the forefront of our minds because this is an area that all of us deal with, putting things away, you know, out of sight, out of mind maybe, just kind of hide them and and hope that we can go through life and not really have to deal with them.

Well, we're gonna open the closet doors tonight.

Now, it's only scary if we don't want to deal honestly.

And we're here because all of us want to be honest with the Lord and With ourselves and you can decide how honest you want to be with everybody else that's here But tonight we're going to talk about these skeletons that are in the closet because we all have things that are hidden or have had things that are hidden in the closet, things that we cannot talk about, Things that we hope no 1 else will find out about.

And in marriage, things that we try to avoid and keep tucked away because talking about them ends up creating problems or things don't turn out well.

Things that we don't really want to admit or that we don't want to, that we don't want to face, or that we fear what will happen if those things are exposed.

Or we have the fear of failure, and I think all of us can identify with that.

The fear of failure, therefore if I just don't have to have it right in front of me I don't have to have that fear of failure.

But we're going to give you just a list, it's not exhaustive by any means, but just some of the things that we know some of you and maybe more of you than we even realize are dealing with some of these areas, things that we have dealt with in our own lives and things we're going to be sharing with you that are very vulnerable and very honest and I say a little bit some how raw and intimidating maybe.

But these are some of the areas that we want you to think about because this is a very personal message.

So for you adults, this is very individual.

For you children, this is not excluding you at all, because you children face some things too that you don't want to deal with, that you don't want to have to admit to, weaknesses or problems or avoidances.

So we're gonna give you some ideas here, but we're praying that the Holy Spirit will bring to your mind the thing that he wants you to face here this evening and face and begin a new way of dealing with it through this retreat here.

So some of the things that many of you may be dealing with are negative feelings.

And of course, the person in the scripture that came to my mind was Saul, King Saul.

So When we bring the Bible character in, we want you to also think where those skeletons ended up for those people, okay?

And this is why we feel it's important that we face these skeletons.

Samson did not face his lust, his sensual thoughts, his indiscretions with women, and we know where that ended him up and we're thankful that eventually he was willing to deal with those things once his eyes were poked out and because he was made blind he eventually was made to see and he's there in Hebrews 11.

That's very encouraging because we can deal with these things.

Bitterness is another area that many people struggle with.

If there's anybody that comes to your mind that immediately brings a negative thought and negative feelings, even the physical feelings that come with bitterness that's held.

This is the time God wants us to deal with those kind of feelings.

Herodias had very bitter feelings, and we know what that led her to do and where what that caused the life of John, what that cost the life of John the Baptist.

Secret sin, vice, self-abuse, these are areas that can be deeply hid in the closet.

Fear of being exposed, fear of what will happen if someone finds out, and they lead, inevitably, all these secret sins will not always remain secret and they end up causing dysfunction in every relationship that we will have.

It's 1 of those things that we don't like to have to admit that we may have, but we have to open our hearts and ask God, Lord, am I holding a jealous attitude toward anyone?

Cain was jealous of his brother because his brother's sacrifice was accepted and his was not.

He didn't like the fact that his brother's was accepted.

Those jealous feelings led him to take the life of his brother in a moment of passion and anger.

And this is a story and we could tell you many of the Bible stories which you well know, but we often think that, oh no, I would never do anything like this.

But if we have these feelings and they're unchecked, if we have these sentiments, these thoughts, these emotions, and we just massage them, we justify them, whatever they are, they will not just be kept internally.

They will grow and they will manifest themselves.

The sin of pride, which is 1 that Every human being struggles with, and inspiration tells us that spiritual pride is the most incurable of all the pride issues.

And pride is just a fancy term for self-love.

And so, when it's candy-coated in religion, it makes it even harder.

Jesus had a very difficult time reaching spiritual pride on the earth when he walked here among us.

Greed is another area that people like to protect, hide, pretend like I'm generous, I'm helpful, I'm this, I'm that, but in the background, in the secret, they want to get more and more and more and more and more for themselves, even to the point of doing things that will cause other people's demise.

And the example of Balaam is another vivid example where Balaam was so driven by this kind of greed and avarice, covetousness, wanting for himself, he was willing to go to the point of talking to his donkey when his donkey talked to him.

How's that for being so involved in your feelings that you'll actually have a conversation with a donkey and think nothing of it?

Now, we think, well, that sounds kind of humorous and almost unbelievable, but it really happened.

And the angel told him, if it hadn't been for your donkey I would have killed you.

So the donkey saved his life, but that shows you how far these kind of thoughts and feelings can lead us if we are unwilling to address them where they matter most in our hearts.

Insecurity and addictions is another area.

There may be some struggling here tonight with 1 or both of those areas.

God wants to let us know that tonight it's possible to find victory in those things.

You know, we think of addictions, we think of, you know, abuse, drug abuse, alcohol, but there's other kind of addictions.

There's immoral addictions, there's food addictions, there's device addictions, there's entertainment addictions.

It's what captivates us, what drives us, what, where we spend our time, how we think, the decisions we make are driven by our addictions.

So we need to let the Lord through his Holy Spirit say, here's my closet door, Lord, open it.

I'm ready for you to show me whatever it is that needs to come out and clean that out and make me a whole person.

Mary is the example we have from scripture about addiction.

She had insecurities and addictions, and we know what the power of Jesus Christ did for her, don't we?

And that should Give every 1 of us hope, because there's nothing too hard for God.

No matter how low we've been, what we've done, who we've hurt, what we've said, God will change our hearts.

Another area that's very common and yet often unaddressed is insecurities.

Insecurities is something that often gets pushed aside or downplayed And it's interesting as I just said this, it's not in the notes here, but there was a time in my experience, and my wife knows this very well when we were back in our medical professions, that it was nearly, Well, it was very difficult for me to have face-to-face interactions with the doctors.

And my wife actually helped me identify this as an insecurity because I felt very comfortable talking, I'm just using the contrast here, I felt very comfortable talking with people who I considered of equal or lower estate than myself, but I felt very uncomfortable talking to people who I thought were better than me.

And my wife helped me identify this insecurity and where it came from.

It actually came out of my freshman year in academy.

I was a farm boy, okay, which I was very happy to be a farm boy.

But I came into a school outside of Detroit, Michigan that was not farm kids, an academy.

And I tell you what I went through my freshman year in academy was devastating to my you know my self-dignity I just it was a and I really never realized the damage it caused me until my wife helped me recognize this and it's something I had to deal with and it's something I still have to deal with at various times because insecurity can be a skeleton in the closet that we need the grace of God to deal with.

We just gave you a few little ones to kind of whet your appetite, stimulate your thinking, hopefully through the Lord opening some of those doors in your hearts, because there may be more than 1 closet filled, or there may be several skeletons in your closet.

But when we started looking at our lives, because we really want to be ready when Jesus comes.

We are anticipating that great day, and we recognize that we can't be comfortable just because we have an understanding of a certain belief system or because of things that we do, but we want God to open up our hearts and reveal who we really are and what we really need to do to change to be more representative of him in all times and in all places.

And So we looked at our lives and we recognized there's 2 basic reasons why we lock these types of issues up in our closet.

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Skeletons in the Closet

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