2017 Men's Retreat - Session Two

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I'll say bless the Lord if you'll say, Oh my soul.

Bless the Lord.

Oh my soul.

Bless his holy name.

Wow, how strong.

Is the spirit thick in here or is it just me?

Is it because we actually spent some time alone with our dad before we came in here and our hearts are settled?

I got choked up on just singing my soul is satisfied in him alone.

I just want to see where the spirit's at with you guys.

So we're in my personal hot tub when we're talking about solitude with the Lord and seeing what he's speaking to you.

So I just want to gauge where the spirit's already at work in you guys this morning, and maybe we can join him there.

How many of you have spent significant time in silence with the Lord before?

How many of you, this was a new thing?

How many of you would say, it was cool, I get it, but man, my mind was racing?

Sometimes I call that the detox.

That we spend so much time pedaling the second we stop, that's just the wheel going, we fell asleep for the glory of God?

And your body just said, Rest, child, find rest, oh my soul, and God alone.

That's amazing what our bodies are telling us about the condition of our soul.

How many of you just had a sweet time with the Father?

Anything you'd like to share with this group about what was revealed to you?

And I like to use the language sometimes.

Here's what I think the Lord is saying to me.

I use that intentionally because I want to submit my interpretation to the community before I go straight to application so I don't wind up starting a cult.

But is there anything that was the spirit was stirring, bringing up in you?

A picture, a memory, a relationship, a scripture?

Is there anything that you would like to add to our community to make it more rich and textured because of how the Lord spoke to you?

And you realize that the people who are quote unquote pastors are not the only priests in the community.

Because that's how I hear a Father's voice.

But what I have to do is make sure I hear him speak into my identity first, so then my obedience can become a worshipful response, not a means to which I win his approval.

Is that too much of my own inner work?

Or okay.

So what do you think the Lord was speaking into your identity in that moment?

Yeah.

He brought that verse.

What does he want to say to you and about you before you even get to changing any of your behavior?

What does he want to affirm in you, do you think?

Yeah.

If I was listening with you, I would say, you are a man after God's own heart.

He wants to guard and cultivate that.

And so watch for all the ways that your heart is being stolen or distracted.

Bless the Lord.

Anybody else?

The verse has in my head like all weekend.

Well that will wear that while you're people talking about it.

I'm not gonna press you.

But one thing I love, when the Lord speaks to us, sometimes you don't know why it's so full of emotion and gravity, and that's okay.

Hey, this caught me.

Okay, great.

Sometimes you gotta sit in that for a little bit.

I think uh, especially as men, we can be so rational and want to explain something before we actually experience it.

That way we stay in control and don't have to trust as much.

Again, if that's my own inner work, I apologize, but I love it, thank you.

Yes.

Yeah.

I don't like that.

Anybody else?

What in there in John 17?

Is there any phrases or words that resonated with you in particular?

How about that line?

These two things I hold to, my unworthiness and worthiness.

Oh gosh.

If that's not the paradox of the Christian faith, we just got done doing uh Lord's Supper with our kids, and I got a bunch of shamefaced young adults who are so angry that I'm not warning enough people to stay away from the table.

And what I realize it is they're secretly scared of how their worthiness is in Christ.

Like, it you if you're in Christ, you can't be unworthy.

You can take it in an unworthy manner.

And we need to work against that.

But hey, if I admit I'm unworthy, that's what makes me worthy.

Anything else batting around that's resonating?

How are you guys doing uh energy-wise?

Good?

All right.

And we're gonna continue on in our psalm uh this morning, and this morning I just want to talk about um how to commit into the hands of a loving God some of our brokenness.

Okay.

We're in Psalm 31, and then uh as you're turning there, I'm gonna lead us in a guided prayer.

It'll be in Psalm 31.

We'll read those 10 verses or 15 verses again.

So just take a minute, take a deep breath in.

Exhale.

Try to let your soul be satisfied in God alone.

Really believe that what the cross says about you is true.

And if you have the courage, ask God to take you to the deep places where you most need his help and healing this morning.

Take a minute and pray for the brother on either side of you.

That they would become more who God intended them to be.

If you would just take a minute and pray for me.

Jesus, would you go before us in this text and make a way?

And together we say, Speak, Lord, your servants are listening.

Amen.

Psalm 31, in you, O Lord, I have taken refuge, my hiding place.

Let me never be put to shame.

Deliver me in your righteousness.

Turn your ear and come quickly to my rescue.

Be my rock of refuge, my strong fortress to save me.

Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me.

Free me from the trap that is set for me, for you are my refuge.

Into your hands, I commit my spirit.

Redeem me, O Lord, the God of truth.

I hate those who cling to worthless idols.

I trust in the Lord.

I will be glad and rejoice in your love, for you saw my affliction, and you knew the anguish of my soul.

You have not handed me over to the enemy, but you have set my feet in a spacious place.

Once again, be merciful to me, O Lord, for I am in distress.

My eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul, my body with grief, my life is consumed with anguish, and my ears by groaning, my strength fails me because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak, all of which every father of a newborn has said.

Amen.

Because of my enemies, I am the utter contempt of my neighbors, I am the dread to my friends.

Those who see me on the street flee from me, I am forgotten by them as though I were dead.

I have become like broken pottery.

For I hear the slander of many, there is terror on every side.

They conspire against me and they plot to take my life.

But I trust in you, O Lord.

I say, You are my God, and my times are in your hands.

Say the word of the Lord if you'll say thanks be to God.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

David here, I think in the context of this psalm, we can assume, depending upon where he's at in his kingship, he's being persecuted from some of his enemies.

And chances are, you can debate it or not, whether or not he's a righteous sufferer, or if whether he's inheriting the choices of some bad decisions, or if it's just part of the suffering infliction of expanding God's kingdom here on earth.

For the sake of our time this morning, though, when he talks about being broken pottery and being broken and those visceral words like anguish of my soul, my tears, my grief, my body is in sorrow and anguish.

I think from David's life and from this text, we can use it to mean both things.

There's brokenness that we've experienced in this life that is the direct result of the sin of someone else or the evil of someone else that we did not freely choose that we are enduring.

But then there's also the brokenness that we endure that we have freely chosen.

And there is sin that we have freely taken because our soul was not satisfied in God alone.

And there is brokenness that we have cultivated in our heart as a coping mechanism because we were too afraid to run to God and hide with him or climb with him where he was calling us to.

I've got four kids, and so I can't get to as much as I want to anymore.

Like a great day for me is to go to the movies by myself, load up on popcorn, have 9,000 calories before the previews are ever even over.

Um, you can probably trace that back to my childhood.

My dad uh was uh emotionally stunted, and uh we we had a fractured relationship, but there was one thing he would always invite me to do, and that was go to the movies with him because we could sit in silence and actually enjoy something uh together.

Um it's something I've tried to do with my kids.

One of my favorite directors is a guy called Christopher Nolan.

Now he's done Batman, Inception, Dunkirk.

Um chances are you may have seen one of his movies.

But as a director, he has a trademark style.

He started with an independent film called Memento.

And here's what he does: in the opening scene of the movie, bam, he drops you into a galactic scene that's coming at the end of the movie.

You have no context clues, you have no idea what's going on, you know it's dramatic, you know it's important, and your brain's just trying to absorb every detail because you know when he's done with this scene, he's gonna go back and spend two hours getting you to that moment.

And when you get there, you're like, that's it.

And it's this wonderful thing.

The detective part of my brain, the mystery part of my brain just loves it.

So it's not, hey, let's just warm up to some nice opening credits.

It's boom, here it is.

And then he spends the rest of the movie explaining how he got there.

So, with that um in mind, let me try my best, Christopher Nolan.

I'm gonna tell you an illustration.

Here's the end scene.

My roommate in college is sitting on the toilet with a five-inch gash bleeding out.

He's going really white faced and about to pass out, and he looks at me and says, Brooks, whatever made you think this was a good idea in the first place?

That's that.

About a month earlier, we're sitting in our apartment, and it's a piece of crap.

Like it was off-campus housing that they exploited us to get money from buildings that should have been condemned.

We're laying on the couch, uh, me and my roommates, and we're pondering the existential crisis of man and the deep joy of God, either that or we're just bored.

And my buddy Rikley and I are throwing a baseball back and forth, and um I just look at him.

Uh Rhodes, one of our roommates, had just saved up his money for like two weeks to buy a full-length mirror because he was a narcissist.

Um, and it's one of those cheap Walmart ones that you kind of pin against the door and everybody can see, and uh, I can see it over there.

And uh Rikley has the ball, and I said, Rikley, go ahead and throw that baseball at Rhodes' new mirror.

And he kind of giggles, and then I give him the taunt that I know will work that questions your masculinity with an obscure act of bravery.

I said, You won't, you're scared.

And by now I know it's signed, sealed, and delivered.

Rhodes starts going, don't do it, it's not funny, right.

Don't do it, don't do it.

Everyone starts going in, but I can see it in his eyes.

It's game over.

The second I said, You won't, you're scared.

He's locked and loaded, and he's already, you know, stands up, turns around, whips the baseball at the mirror, it shatters in a thousand pieces, we all start laughing.

Rhodes is upset, we're pushing each other around, and then finally I stare and go, Who's cleaning this up?

Now, I I've struggled with impulse control problems my whole life.

Um, and so it's not enough to me that there's one joke.

I need like eight jokes to make it even funnier.

And so here's all this glass, and I go, I'll clean it up.

I open up the door and just start kicking it into the closet and going, hey, it'll be fine.

No one's gonna notice it in there.

Brooks, that's not funny, you need to clean it up.

So I get the wise idea.

Um, I don't want to scrape it up, put it in the trash.

Uh, I go grab some glue and I tell them in our little hallway, hey guys, let's glue all these pieces together and make this abstract mosaic.

It's gonna be awesome.

Now, I was the only artist, artsy fartsy guy.

They were all soccer players, they were dumb jocks with 3% body fat.

And so I got to be able to tell them what was the height of artistic expression.

So I'm like, yeah, it's gonna be really cool.

Just kind of just whatever comes into your soul, right?

And they're down there making a soccer ball.

We glued together some stuff, and we thought it was so cool that we wound up breaking more mirrors until this little hallway in our two-bedroom, one-bathroom with five guys in it is all painted black, and all four walls just have abstract mirror stuff.

And we thought, man, this is a great way to pick up chicks, man.

Like, hey, check it out.

Chip and Joanna Gaines have got nothing on us.

Like, look at this, we're so artsy, right?

But there was a fatal flaw in that design.

We'd be walking in that hallway or go into the shower, and you'd brush up against it, and it would rip your shirt.

Or to just nick your arm, and then all of a sudden you're just like bleeding like this.

You're like, that's just a little nick, but apparently that's what happens when you glue exposed mirror jagged edges on the wall and call it art.

But I just said, hey guys, now it's performance art.

It's okay, alright?

It's really cool.

Well, then one night we're screwing around like we always are, and Alan had come in, I think he had a backpack on it and his hands full, and we just always thought it was so much fun, and because we secretly desired intimacy, but only knew violence as a means of expression.

And so he's walking by, and I think it's gonna be real funny to take him by his back back and shove him into the wall.

I take him, shove him like this, and he clips that thing and it slices up his arm like this.

He's bleeding out, he's sitting on there with a towel that's gushing full of blood, and he looks at me and says, Brooks, whatever made you think that was a good idea in the first place.

I tell you that story simply because this.

I think that's a lot of what happens with our brokenness sometimes in our life.

We figure out different ways to hide it, to laugh at it, or to rearrange it.

And we don't ever take it seriously until it seriously wounds someone we care about.

So if you look in this text, I think the psalmist goes through an incredible process here of talking to the Lord honestly and authentically about it.

Be merciful to me, God.

I am distressed.

And I love that image of I've become like broken pottery.

One of the questions when you guys get into small group is I just want to talk about maybe a season in your life when you were like broken pottery.

Here's the lie and the delusion that Satan wants to keep a lot of you men trapped under.

Hey, you're the only one going through this, and no one else would ever understand what it's like.

Total lie.

Keep you isolated, keep you hiding, and sin and shame and bad coping mechanisms.

Uh, what's unbelievable is the amount of freedom when you go, screw it, I'm not keeping this secret anymore.

You start talking and you see someone go else, me too, I just hadn't have the courage to say so.

That's when chains start falling off in the spiritual realm, and I want to do the happy dance.

So, this is what I find really interesting.

He says, But I trust in you, O Lord, in verse 14.

And I think that's where immediately all of us want to get to.

But you have to go through verse 9 when he says, I cried out because you are merciful to me, Lord, and I am distressed.

And he gets to verse 9 by going through verse 7 and says, I will be glad and rejoice in your love because you have seen my affliction.

There's a history here.

He can step into this brokenness and this suffering because he's done it before.

God's proved himself faithful.

He sees him in his affliction, he sustains him in the midst of his suffering, and he says, He will satisfy him with his steadfast love.

Neil and I are talking on the way here.

Sometimes in our walk with Christ, I think the greatest expression of bravery and faithfulness we can have is even in the midst of our boredom is not sinning.

Can we say all addictions that I see come with the fact that we doubt God will satisfy us with his steadfast love?

We believe the lie, he doesn't see, he doesn't care, and he's powerless to do anything about it, so I'll take it into my own hands.

And the very things that we think will heal ultimately destroy the very lives of our souls.

He sees us in our anguish, he sustains us in our suffering, and he can and he will satisfy us with his steadfast love.

That takes time and that takes practice, but that's what the heartbeat of the Men in the church need to say, God will satisfy us in his steadfast love.

And maybe for some of you, you're like me, all of your transactional relationships in life have been about self-gratifying love, not self-sacrificing love.

And so that's a new muscle for you to flex that I'm actually giving without the expectation of receiving back.

I'm actually giving without manipulating because secretly I need you to meet my needs.

But maybe, just maybe, if God can satisfy us with his steadfast, self-sacrificing love first, then maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to offer it to the people closest to us.

What would happen if into the hands of the living and loving God this morning we decided to commit our brokenness?

But you won't.

Because you're scared.

Here's what I've observed in my life and some of the people that I get the chance to walk with and counsel.

Just like in that story, here's what we learn to do with our brokenness instead of bringing it and putting it in the hands of Jesus.

First of all, we learn, first of all, just to try to hide it.

Right?

Oops, here's this.

Hope no one sees it.

It's default, right?

It's an Eden response.

Uh-oh, screwed up, hide, cover up, run, blame.

It's just intuitive in us, I think, as fallen creatures who assume shame and guilt and punishment and retribution.

Uh-oh, I messed up, therefore I must no longer be your son, in whom you're well pleased.

Put that under there.

Because if it's under there, I don't have to deal with it.

Until it starts to fester and stink and sabotage every other area of your life.

I want to know if we can become the kind of men who we don't wait till it gets to level 10 to deal with it, but we actually start lifting it up and going, Holy Spirit, what's in my life right now that you want to go, hey, this needs to be dealt with on a consistent basis.

Into your hands I commit my spirit.

Not just the pretty parts and the perfect parts, but the ugly parts.

I don't want to wait until my marriage is in the ditch.

Um, my kids hate me.

Um, I can't control this pornography problem.

I want to actually start talking about it now.

And I want to commit my brokenness into your hands.

The other thing is if we can't hide it, our default reaction is to laugh at it.

Check out what I struggle with, right?

As a kid, all funny people, I'm a funny person.

I know you don't know that by me now because I'm trying to hold it back as a means for getting approval, but I learned to be funny because I moved around a lot and I was a kid who was picked on.

Most funny people are the ones who are the most insecure and most hurting people.

It's just a coping mechanism.

We just learn it.

And when you start laughing, that means I get your approval and I don't have to earn it in other ways.

So isn't it interesting that a lot of times when we deal with our brokenness or get confronted with it, we try to make fun of it.

Oh, that's just the way I am.

You know what that laughter is?

It's a nonverbal agreement.

Hey, I'm not taking it seriously, and don't you ever take it seriously either.

I don't want to be accountable for it, so let's just keep laughing about it.

Or the last thing, the most dangerous thing, and probably I would say in this room, which most of you have done with it, you rearrange it.

You learn that if you pick it up and you put it in a different pattern that's actually pleasing to the world or helpful for your career, all of a sudden your pride, your ambition, and your selfishness now is hailed as one of the reasons why people want you around.

And it's turned you upside down and inside out.

We can talk about brokenness and we can talk about sin, and some of it is obvious, but there's a lot of it, a lot of you workaholics in here who you're so driven, not because of the love of God, but because of the love that you've never received.

And you've rearranged it into this picture of the self-made man who's gonna work harder, outlast anybody else.

And at the end of the day, you have no idea how to rest in the hands of a loving God, and you have no idea how to offer love freely.

Only when it's earned do you give it back.

And you fight the suppression and choke on it every time when someone's around you.

How do I not point out every single imperfection and inadequacy in you because I spend my whole life doing it to myself?

And normally when that happens and we don't want to deal with our soul, we produce we pursue leisure activities because we have no idea how to rest and be satisfied.

And the Lord, I was reading some of this in my time together.

Our greatest foe is often what we most often seek: unencumbered lives broken in unbroken leisure, lives free from any care or concern.

Elton Trueble had believed this would destroy us.

Listen to this.

The ultimate enemy is not pain or disease or physical hardship, evil as they may be, but it is triviality.

I remember the Lord uh about six years ago, I inherited a college ministry uh in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Um, and I knew how to be a communicator, I didn't know how to be a pastor.

Um and my life was getting turned upside down, my health was failing, I couldn't meet everyone's expectations.

And I usually would go home on Wednesdays the day that I preached that night, and I'm just locked and loaded in the zone, and I get home, I try to see my family real quick before I left.

I was moody, I was rude, I was entitled.

I'm preaching tonight.

Everyone bow and worship, you know, pray for daddy, right?

Everything needs to be just perfect.

And I just felt this aggravation and easily just uh not a person I wanted to be around, and it was me.

One of the days I felt the Lord just tap me on the shoulder and whisper to me, hey Chris, I'm gonna teach you more about being a pastor with your own family than I ever will with the church.

Because if you can't pastor and serve your family, how dare you go to offer them something you're not offering your own family?

And just changed my mindset, just going in and expecting, hey, where's the chaos?

Today's the day that I preach.

All right, let's have at it.

Come on, where's the problems?

Audrey, what can I do to serve you?

Um and what I had done, I think in that moment, I've rearranged all my brokenness and my issues, and I learned how to dance for grandma and get everyone's approval and appraisals.

But then when I walk home, I was just as bankrupt as I ever was before.

I had my same issues, I just put Christian in front of them.

And so, what is it in your life that you've just kind of rearranged?

I believe that God gives us all sacred wounds and sacred gifts, and chances are that's the area that He's designed you uniquely to expand your kingdom in, and Satan has bent it on itself.

If he wants to distract you, he doesn't come to your weakness, he comes to your strength.

And he turns you upside down and inside out in the midst of it.

And you'll say things like, Who am I without this?

So we hide it, we laugh at it, or we just simply rearrange it.

Next time I come, I want to talk to you guys about Sabbathing.

I don't think we're there yet.

But one of the greatest things that I see is men who are incredibly hardworking and driven who don't know how to sit still and be present.

Who don't know how anymore to have the simple pleasures in life be overwhelming with how grand and glorious they are.

That wheel's just spinning.

Uh Archibald Hart, uh professor at Fuller, calls it anahedonia.

The brain is so overstimulated and its dopamine sensors have been so taxed that there's no longer pleasure in the simple beauties in life.

Anybody feel that sometimes?

One of my new uh prayer exercises on the way home is called a prayer of relinquishment.

So I've been doing pretty good at the first half of my day, carving out my sacred rhythms, uh spending time with the Lord, my wife praying with her before she leaves.

I'm great before the day started.

Once the day hits, man, oh my gosh.

That's just bam, bam, bam, bam, you come home to chaos.

So I've been pulling off the side of the road and I'll literally just go, hey Lord, thank you for everything that I got done today.

This, this, this, this, and this.

Because what I usually do is I ride home and I just go, didn't get this done, didn't get this done, didn't get this done.

Hey guys.

Yeah, let me answer this real quick.

All right, great, what are you doing?

All right, leave me alone.

Um so just have said, thank first of all, I need to concentrate what we got done today, Lord.

I really appreciate that.

Thanks for breath in my lungs, and I'll offer that up to him.

Then I'll turn around and go like this.

Hey, here's what I'm releasing that I didn't get done today.

And I'm walking home in a secret sack of shame because I didn't do it.

I had, once again, I think I can accomplish 10 times more of the things that I can accomplish.

So I'm releasing this to you, releasing this to you, and releasing this to you.

And I'm trusting that while I'm resting, you're gonna work far more than I ever could.

And I'll wake up tomorrow and I'll pray that there's manna on the ground for me to continue to work in your strength and your mercy and your grace.

Not my approval-laden workaholic tendencies that are driven nonstop 24 hours a day all because I don't know how to sit still with you.

But that's too much, I'll stop there.

What else, Lord?

There's this uh beautiful art in Japanese culture called konsigi.

Um apparently in Japanese culture there's they hand down uh pottery uh from generation to generation.

But if and when it breaks, they used to just put ugly metal staples in it, and there was somebody who said, no, that's fine a different way.

And so he established the art of Kinsigi, which they take gold powder, mix it in the lacquer and resin, and then they paint it onto the cracked places in the pottery and the china.

It became so popular now in Japanese culture.

If you have a broken vessel that has a gold scar through it, it's actually valued and worth more.

Because it shows the history and it highlights the broken places, not as something that needs to be ignored, but something that needs to be celebrated.

It's the spiritual picture I have for men in the church, that the glittering gold of the gospel fills in the broken cracks and in our soul, and we don't hide it, but we celebrate it.

And we realize that perhaps those are the places where the Lord is going to release most of the spiritual authority and power in and through my life.

So I'm done hiding it.

I'm done trying to manage it.

I'm asking, like Romans chapter 8 says, I need the Spirit to help me in my weakness.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

I need him to intercede on my behalf.

And it's not enough for me to admit that I need to help, I need to ask for help and to realize that the Spirit has given us the church and these men right next to us, so that that glittering gold of the gospel can be continued to apply to all those broken yet beautiful places.

And I think there's biblical uh precedent for Kinsigi being a reality, and that is when Jesus was resurrected from the grave, his resurrected body bore the scars of the cross.

Touch these, see and feel the power of the resurrection.

What if we were men who locked eyes with other men and just said, touch this?

The Lord saw me in my anguish, and he satisfies me with his steadfast love.

Amen.

So, Jesus, as we prepare to just uh flush out some things that you've poured into us, I ask that our conversations would be inspired, courageous, and that you would illuminate things by the power of your Holy Spirit.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.