Deep Trauma and Deeper Grace

Dear Father God, as we lift our hearts to you. We need Jesus.

We've been we've been told that display has no part in the Divine Council.

You're not into showy stuff. You're into heart changes, real relationships with

you the scriptures. So help us to know Jesus on your terms, not

ours. And thank you for the privilege of being here today in Jesus name.

Amen. The title of the message this morning is deep Trauma and Deeper

Grace. There was a man in the land of Us. I didn't say

Oz like the Wizard of Oz, the land of us, and you might

say the land of us because it's relevant. He lived in the kind of

world we do. His story is not altogether extraordinary, it's all together ordinary

because we can be the job in the land of Us. There was a

man in the land of Us and he was a perfect, happy, holy

and secure man until Satan showed up to brag before God about his usurped control

of the world. Shows up and he says, look, I've been going

back and forth to and fro in the earth, which means I own the

place. And suddenly God had to speak up about that job. Had a

good life, a large family, a good business, stable relationship with God.

That was until God Almighty blew it all up by bringing Job's name into

Satan, bringing him into a contest, whereby suddenly he was the center of

the focus of the universe. Job one verse eight. The Lord said to

Satan, have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him

on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away

from evil. Then Satan answered, the Lord, does Job fear God for

naught? Hast thou not put a hedge about him and his house and all

that he has on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands,

his possessions, and have increased in the land. But put forth thy

hand now and touch all that he has, and he will curse thee to

thy face. Job's name in Hebrew means persecuted or enemy. It can be

interpreted to mean the Lord persecutes me or the Lord is my enemy. Some

theologians and exegetes have reasoned that that's the meaning of his name. That is

what a person feels, though, and that is what a person thinks when

he or she experiences deep trauma. Job's name captures the sense of what goes

through us when we feel really persecuted or attacked by things we can't control.

When you're hurting off off the charts, have you ever been in your time

of your life? Or you just were hurting off the charts, hurting inside,

hurting because of what people said to you, Hurting because you're dislocated,

Hurting because you were you were traumatized by something that came at you that you

can't explain. We've been there, some of us have, some of us

haven't, And so I praise God if you have not been there. I

grew up as an early child traumatized. They say that you can avoid it

or not. I had deep trauma as a child. There's not a day

that goes by that I don't remember it. It's part of who I am

forever. So when you're hurting off the charts, you ask the salient questions

born of pain. Why is God out to get me? Why has God

done this to me? Why has God forsaken me? Why doesn't God use

some of that power to fix the way I feel and what happened at me?

Why did this get thrown at me? If you've if you've never asked

these kinds of questions your life, and you have probably never experienced what psychologists

called deep trauma that is in your life. In the context of Job's predicament,

God is the one who seems to be a the heat heart of all

of Job's trouble. That's heated up as sure and all of Job's pain,

and Job sees it. Job has a good theology of God. He knows

that God has power, and so he's yearning to connect the dots. What

part does God have to play in all this? Now, context matters.

Satan wasn't messing with Job one lick until God dragged him into the mix.

You read the story, that's obvious at the front side. He dragged him

into the mix with his family, his children, his wife, into a

contest that left his children dead, that leveled his life, destroyed his health,

left him alone in a state of deep trauma, feeling the loss of

God, himself and life. Job had it all happened to him by when

in war the forces of hell were unleashed on Job by Satan because God allowed

it to happen and even set the stage for it to happen. That's what

Job tells us. So God doesn't get off the hook in the Book of

Job at all. God allowed out it, God incited it. In fact,

if you follow the storyline, Job lost everything he had as his life

was shredded to pieces, as his good plans for a secure future were torn

down, as his heart was broken by pain and loss. Satan hit Job

hard because God let him hit it hard. I mean, that's the baseline

of the story. Job lost his oxen to thieves and marauders to Sabeans as

they killed the servants. Job lost his sheep to a fire from heaven that

killed his servants. There Also, Job lost his camels and servants to a

murderous gang of Chaldeans bent on taking everything away from him, and they did.

Job lost his children to calamity and storm and a whirlwind that collapsed the

roof of the home of his oldest son upon the heads of all his children

as they died together having a party full of joy and celebration of life.

They died celebrating life as a tragedy, and all his children died in the

storm that God sent into his life. That's the baseline in the Book of

Job. Job lost his health to Boil's disease and pain, probably by some

virus from Satan's lab that caused the outbreak when his skin and constant pain.

So he wasn't just rendered without family and wealth. He was rendered in a

state of perpetual pain, physical pain. But as the one consolation in the

storm, Satan let Job keep his wife. To make it worse is all

she could do in the storyline. In her pain and missus Job was suffering

too, don't forget that, and all her pain and loss, she fell

to the bottom and she begged Job to curse God and die. That's the

story one chapter in Amazing and all of this, the Bible records that Job

did not curse God, and much to Job's distress, Job did not die.

He kept on living. Job was broken to pieces by all the pain

the loss that swept through his life like a whirlwind, bent on inflicting deep

trauma for the rest of his life, as long as God would make him

live. And so when he begins to praise, as naked came I into

this world, naked, shall I return? Blessed be the name of the

Lord. And then he curses the day he was born Job one twenty.

Then Job arose rent his robe, shaved, his head, fell upon the

ground and worshiped. No, I mean, I've heard calls to worship before,

but to worship God when all that happens to you, You're amazing person.

And he said, naked came from my mother's womb, and naked shall

I return? The Lord gave, the Lord is taken away. Blessed be

the name of the Lord. Now, when the Bible says the name of

Lord means the character of the Lord, the character of God. He doesn't

understand what's happening to him, but he's saying, blessed be the name,

character law of God, the Lord. And he goes to say, in

this and the Lord is taken away, the Lord gave, and the Lord

is taken away, Blessed be the name of the Lord. In all of

this, job did not sin or charge God with wrong. Job experienced what

psychologists called deep trauma. Empirical scientific studies demonstrate that if you experience deep trauma

as a child due to loss, abuse in the galact or natural disaster,

that deep trauma as a child will stunt your brains full development, inhibit your

full potential, and shorten your life by years. That's the research that's in.

That's why it's important when children come to the church. We have to

make the church a place that reverses deep trauma as effects on children. Right

now, children need boundaries. Children who have lived in crazy environments need boundaries,

but loving boundaries. Boundaries communicate self esteem. Boundaries give a sense of

order to a disordered life. With love, it's the optimal message which Shoulder

to receive. The experience of deep trauma is stored in the center of the

brain, the amygdala. That is the emotional mapping center for guiding you for

the rest of your life. It's the deep software of your emotions. If

you have deep trauma as a child, you can break on. You can

bank on carrying that pain and trauma deep inside your body with physical effects for

the rest of your life. Who and what you will become will to a

great degree be shaped by that deep trauma. Job's life was totally altered by

deep trauma as an adult. Job seventeen eleven. My days are passed,

my plans are broken off, the desires of my heart shattered. I'm broken.

Something has happened to me. I am not the same anymore. Job

had some good religious friends, you know, we come to church. We

think our friends are the people we associate with at church, and that's true.

He had some good religious friends until they showed up to blame him for

his deep trauma, I mean stunning and Job's trouble a life had so far,

and Bill Dad came to him with all the cookie cuttier answers that people

often provided funerals, or when people lose a loved one, Oh, it

was the will of the Lord that you do this, you know, and

they go, why would God do that to me? Or it was because

you did something wrong. If you had prayed a little harder, they might

have lived. None of his three friends simple kind of answers made any sense

to Job, the genius. In fact, they say, the Book of

Job is the most brilliant book in the Bible. We've been told in the

spirit of Prophecy, Moses wrote that book. It's the first book to ever

be written of the Bible has the most intense theology of a cosmic conflict.

And yet Job has no notion of this. So the genius Job doesn't buy

this kind of cheap answers. Because life was broken, it was shattered,

It's deep and complex. His knowledge of God was good and sound. What

has gone wrong? Friends came to comfort him, and all they did was

bringing more pain into his life to make it worse. Job sixteen two.

I have heard many such things, miserable comforters. Are you all job level

questions that God that were strong and severe and intellectually powerful, and that seemed

rude to his three friends, but honest questions. Now, sometimes people come

to me and they say, Pastor Mike, I need to talk to you

about this or that. And I've had on many occasion a person come to

me and say, Pastor Mike, I'm mad at God. We ever said

that, I'm mad at God? And I'm gonna tell you right now what

I say when they do that is I say, let's talk. Let me

hear it. Because when someone's angry at God, do you know what they're

really doing. They're trying to communicate with God. They're trying to figure God

out. They're not trying to run away from God. They're interacting with God.

And that's what we find in the Right to Suffer. A Job.

Here's a man of the relationship God, but he's mad at God. And

take note to the fact that Job kept on talking to God anyway in the

midst of his anger, because Job had nowhere else to go but God,

He's stuck in there with God in his pain. Job was talking to God,

and that meant that Job still had a relationship with God in the storm

of his deep trauma. And that's where healing starts. When you don't let

go of God even though you've been traumatized, if you don't let go of

God, even though you have messed up many times, maybe if you don't

let go of God as you are recovering and lapsing recovering, God's not gonna

let go of you. Did you hear me? I mean those who come

to Christ that the Father draws Jesus will not let the devil snatch you out

of his hand. Job was talking to God a huge point. Job two

verses seven. And here's what he says. I will say to God,

do not condemn me. Boy, that's a neat thing here. You are

praying. You say, God, don't condemn me. Let me know why

thou hast dost contend against me? Does it seem good to thee to oppress,

despise the work of thy hands, and favor the designs of the wicked,

hast thou eyes of flesh, dost thou see as man sees, are

the days of the days of a man, or thy years as a man's

years, that thou dost seek out my iniquity and search for my sin,

although thou knowest that I am not guilty, and there is none to deliver

out of thy hand. I can't face you. You're just bigger than I.

You're bullying me. I feel because I didn't do anything wrong to deserve

this. All Job's friends could do is an argue with Job to convince him

that he was guilty, not God. Sometimes in life, God is guilty

for your loss, for good reasons that you can never understand. At this

time, you know that. But in the Book of Job, God is

not guilty of leaving Job. The Book of Job ends when God shows up,

and that's when God's life. That's when Job's life starts over again.

In a renewed relationship with God. It's forever changed by the simple fact that

God shows up. His deep trauma is addressed by God's showing up. In

the Book of Job, God shows up in the midst of the pain of

the storm. But God doesn't show up with any answers like his three friends

provided none. Instead, God shows up with more questions that he asks Job,

and Job can't answer any of them. God shows up, friend,

God always shows up for his people in the storm. That is deep trauma

that no one really understands now. I won't hear me now, including God.

There are some things you cannot understand even if you are God. Do

you hear me? Job thirty eight three? Then the Lord answered Job,

out of the whirlwind, who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

Gird up your loins like a man. I will question you, and

you shall declare to me. What he's saying here is. I'm not here

to dehumanize you. I'm not here to belittle you. You're a man.

Stand You don't have to grovel before me. Stand up, Let's talk.

And then he asked the questions, where were you when I laid the foundation

of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding who determined its measurements?

Surely you know? Or who stretched the line upon it on what where

it's basis sunk? And who laid its cornerstone? When the morning stars saying

together, and all the sons of God shouted for Joy. Job, were

you there? Do you know these things? Job got no answers from God

and his struggle to cope with his pain. But Job did get God.

Do you hear me? You got no answers, but he did get God.

Huge. God showed up as the storm in the whirlwind that calmed his

storm inside, a storm up a deep trauma that no one can unders dand

or heal. But God could show up. And that's the focus of the

book of Job. God showed up, and somehow that fact meant more to

Job than any answer ever could provide He could provide or any more answers to

questions that might come up in his mind. Dear heart, does it mean

anything to you in your life to know that God shows up even if you

don't get your answers? Is that meaningful to you? Consider the truth of

the divine paradox that God became the storm that showed up to answer Job with

more questions than answers. In fact, God didn't give Job any answers to

confront and comfort his deep trauma. No. Instead, God gave Job the

answer er with the capital A. Because God himself showed up as the answer

the answer er in the storm. Many people today leave God when they don't

get the answers they want or need they feel, but they leave God,

which is the ultimate answer they need. Don't leave God if you don't get

those answers. I mean, there are things in the Bible I don't get.

I've been as through the Bible many years, and that list is shrunken

over the years. And there are things in the spirit of Prophecy I understand

too. But you know what, I'm not leaving God because I don't know

two or three things. I'm hanging in there because God knows me, and

I know God, and I want to know more. So when these people

break faith with God, they figure that maybe that'll answer the question and be

helpful for them, it really devoids their life of the cure. Job never

got as much sought after answers to his burning questions fueled by anger, loss,

and pain. But Job did get God as the answer in his life.

God came back into his life with a deeper understanding that God shows up

with a deeper grace that is more profound than deep trauma, and that somehow

you can start over if God is with you. Job forty two five and

six. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the year. But

now my eye seizes thee. Therefore I despised myself and repent in dust and

ashes. The Bob records that God turned the affliction of Job when Job found

in himself to pray for his friends. His friends had a deeper problem than

Job. They didn't have a relationship with God. Job got more wealth,

he got new children, and yes, God probably used his wonderful wife and

turned her attitude around, and they started over, and more children, more

wealth, so on. But Job never got his children back. He never

recovered what he lost, and he would know that for the rest of his

life. And Job never knew that Satan was in the mix in a fierce

struggle, a cosmic controversy in heaven. He didn't know that, in a

war larger than his own conflict, that he was somehow in the middle of

the story saying something good about God. Centuries later, God showed up when

Jesus came into this world to save the world from every bit of every person's

deep rom and sin. At his birth, the angel caught his name.

You know what is what do you call him? Emmanuel? And what does

it mean? You know? People have been arguing with angels ever since.

I mean, the angel said, when this baby's born, it's God with

us. And I hear, I hear. People said, well, no,

he wasn't God. Well, the angel is a lying in a testament.

Jesus is God with us. What does it mean? It means when

Jesus was born, God showed up. The John to Baptists called him the

lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. God becomes

the lamb. God becomes the sacrifice. John tells us that God in Jesus

came to his own home, his own people received him, not you know,

John one one. And in the beginning was the word. The word

was with what God? The word was God. And it says he came

to his own home as own people received him. Not. If Jesus is

not God, then God does not show up in Jesus. And the cross

means nothing as a sacrifice for sin. When Jesus came to this world,

God and Jesus showed up to save us and to heal us. That is

the highest soteriology we can derive from the Bible that God got it done.

God hung on that cross as the righteous sufferer. God became the job of

the cross, so to speak, because God shows up for every person's pain

and sin. And then the tables were turned on God that dark day.

We're not the righteous sufferers anymore. He's the righteous sufferer. In the story,

Jesus hangs on the cross as a job who has persecuted more profoundly than

Job ever experienced. God is the job for all time, suffering naked on

the cross, suffering in the shadows as the Father, suffering silent as the

spirit. And when God showed up in Jesus, Satan leveled his attacks on

Jesus harder than Job ever felt in his life. And on the cross,

Jesus is the God forsaken gods, it human flesh, experiencing every person's deep

trauma, from Adam to the ends, sucked into him. Zaiah says,

God has caused literally in the Hebrew, all of our sins to meet in

him. He becomes the nexus of our tortured conscience and consciousness, the joining

of all humanity in one human mind and emotional state, the lamb of God

who takes the way the sin of the world. Jesus is the one who

cries out to God as the God forsaken God, and the storm and the

darkness of the cross. He quoted Psalms twenty two one. In his pain,

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And the

darkness of the storm, the whirlwinds of the cross. Jesus became the god

forsaken God. Every life that was ever lived rushed through him, with all

the deep trauma, all the deep sin, all the deep brokenness. And

in those hours of suffering, Jesus stretched at his arms on the cross and

embraced the storm and the world and the land of us, not us,

the land of us, and with all our lives and him, he drew

us into his heart. He secured a safe future for us in his deep

trauma. Is by no accident that Jesus cried out, my God, my

God twice, why have you forsaken me? My God, the Father,

my God, the Holy Spirit. Seldom spoken of in clearest terms, but

clearly in the scriptures, why have you forsaken me? But God had fractured

in the darkness of the cross. No theologian can figure that out, no

scientist can define it. God can explain it. So he had darkness over

the cross until the ninth hour, so no one would see what no one

can understand, and they're on the cross. The Godhead was torn apart into

savagery and the pain of a storm that only God can experience, but that

even God can never really understand. We will never fathom what the Father went

through at Calvary, and God can't explain it. We will never understand with

the Holy Spirit, who can be gried, You can't grieve and impersonal force

you grieve a person. The Holy Spirit who can be grieved went through in

the silence of the cross. But God the Father experienced with the Holy Spirit

suffered. When Jesus finally died and cried out, it is finished, he

could have said, God has finished. And what's happened to us is horrific,

cannot be quantified or understood by our simple human minds that impose an order

on something that is so evil that it is the mystery of iniquity. And

when Jesus suffered and died in the darkness of the cross, he sank into

the well of all our hell, that is our deep trauma, our guilt,

our isolation from God. And when you were rose on Sunday morning,

he held in his hand a deeper grace than this, sister White, and

the desire of ages describes God's christ sufferings far better than I ever could.

I wrote a song about this when I was fifteen. Maybe one of these

days I'll sing it for you, she writes. The spotless Son of God

hung upon the cross, his flesh lacerated with stripes, those hands so often

reached out and blessing nailed to the wooden bars, those feet so tireless on

ministries of love spiked to the tree, that royal head pierced by the crown

of thorns, those quivering lips shaped to the cry of woe, and all

that he endured, the blood drops that flowed from his head, his hands,

his feet, the agony that racked his frame, and the unutterable anguish

that filled his soul at the hiding of his father's face speaks to each child

of humanity, declaring it is for THEE that the Son of God consents to

bear this burden of guilt. For THEE he spoils the domains of death and

opens the gates of paradise. He who stilled the angry waves and walk the

foamcap billows, who made devil's tremble disease. Flee, who opened blind eyes

and called forth the death to life, offers himself upon the cross as a

sacrifice. And this from love to thee. He the sin bearer, endures

the wrath of divine justice, and for thy sake becomes sin itself. Was

God in Christ on that cross? Paul says, God was in Christ reconciling

the world into himself. God showed up. Let's not second guess the God

who showed up. Let's just thank God he did. I like our children

come forward and help us. Before we start our communion with your guides.

I'm going to open this up. We have five points from the Word of

God which will help us with deep trauma, and I'm going to have them

read and come as quickly as you can. Okay, come on up here,

yep, okay, okay. Now I'd like you to do when you

read it. Whoever reads the first one, come on, just line up

in a good line. I am so glad you're here. We don't believe

anybody out any child who wants to read. Even if you didn't practice,

that's fine. We're gonna have fun here. Okay, y'all up here,

come as close as you can to the mine. Now, the first point

is the Lord understands when we're going through deep trauma. Okay, just take

this sheet and you can start right there. Okay. Then the Law said,

I I seen that the acqussion of my people who are in Egypt,

and have heard the cry because of the text. Next, I know those

sufferings, and I have come to to to level them out of the hand

of the the Atipsins, and to bring them up out of that land to

a good and broad land, a fland flowing with mark and honey, to

the place for the Curtis aquan eye. The haties that the ams surpriseiz her

yes, and service sized Rachel, very well done. Maybe okay, which

gonna need this one if we hear that? And the people believed. And

then there they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel and that

he had seen their reflections. They bowed their heads and worshiped. That's just

like Joe. Joe worshiped when that happened to him. Okay, so I

will rejoice and be glad for the steadfast love, because thou hast seen my

affliction, thou hast taken heed of my adversit advera sits. So the Lord

understands. We learned from that verse. The second grouping is the Lord is

strong to deliver, and it shall be to you as a sign on your

head and as a memorial between your eyes, that the law of the Lord

may be in your mouth. For with a strong hand, the Lord has

brought you out of Egypt. Be strong and of good courage. Do not

fear or being in shred of them. For it is the Lord, your

god or who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you.

The Lord is with his people's thought every change. I will make them

strong in the Lord, and they shall gloor hurry in his name, says

the Lord who has Proverbs fourteen twenty six. Did you read this okay um

um in the feel of the Lord, one with drawn and his two treid

will have a refuge. So strong confidence and the children have a refuge.

Three. The Lord is. The Lord is with his people through every challenge.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and

through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire,

you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. So

the Lord is with his people. Are number four The Lord comfortences people.

Even though I walk through the valleys of the shadows of death, I fear

no evil, for thou art to me the router and thy staff, they

shall comfort me. Well. This is my comfort and my afflication that Thy

promise gives me life, comfort, comfort my people, says You're God,

speak tenderly to Jealusalem, and cry to your that her where faris ended,

that her in crettiest partner, and that she has received from the Lord's hand

double for her sins. Okay. Point number five. The Lord saves the

broken heart who comes to him because God shows up. Are you which one

are we going to do? You do the one you want to do.

We had read them, and that's from my previous list, but we'd like

to hear your reading. I make them strong in the Lord. They shall

growin in his name, says the Lord. The Lord is near to the

broken and hearted and saves the crushed and spirit Many are the affections of the

righteousness, but the Lord delivers him out of them. All case that the

Lord hups them, deliver them. He delves them from the wig gift and

saved them because they take refuge in him, and then consequently he is able

for all time to save those who drawn near to God through him, since

he always lives to make it inter intercession for them. Thank you well done,

Thank you so much. So let's just review those five points. Number

one, the Lord what understands. Thank you, young people, you help

me here. Number two the Lord is strong to deliver, and number three

the Lord is with his people through every challenge, and number four the Lord

comforts his people. Number five the Lord saves the broken in heart who come

to him because God shows up. Thank you all. Do you have any

fathers really special to me? Right now? To see Sam, you'll let

your singing and hear everyone else join with Jody and Sam in a song that

says, Lord, thank you that you're there when we're going through things we

can't explain, and there's a morning coming where it all makes sense, at

least in the sense that it'll be over. Father, bless everyone here this

sermon. You know I have preached it today because of someone who's online right

now watching it, who asks me to preach on depression and suffering. Father,

this is the best I knew how to do with your help. More

than that you're carrying that dear person. You know she knows who she is

and I know. May she know that her life was made for happiness,

joy, a future, and a hope, that she is not someone who

has to just suffer and suffer. That she can turn it around and she

can have a new beginning, a new future, days that are good.

And Lord, there other people that may have tagged along for that prayer.

May they know it too. And Father, help us to get out of

the business of trying to figure out how to make our lives work, be

it our ministry or anything else. You work in us to your good glory,

and thank you that you always get it done. In Jesus name, Amen,