Jesus Transformed Our Mess into a Message | Jeremy and Ali

[SPEAKER_00]: Good morning, family.

[SPEAKER_00]: My name is Eddie and I'm going to be reading the word today.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to be in Romans chapter twelve.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Romans twelve verses one through five.

[SPEAKER_00]: Please stand for the reading of the word.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're all good.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, I urge you brothers and sisters in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is your true and proper worship.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is.

[SPEAKER_00]: His good, pleasing, and perfect will.

[SPEAKER_00]: By the grace given me I say to every one of you, do not think of yourselves more highly than you are, but rather think of yourselves with sober judgment.

[SPEAKER_00]: In accordance with the faith, God has distributed to each of you.

[SPEAKER_00]: for just as each of us has one body with many members.

[SPEAKER_00]: And these members do not all have the same function.

[SPEAKER_00]: So in Christ, we, though many, form one body and each member belongs to all the others.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the order of the Lord.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you, Eddie.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you guys have seen.

[SPEAKER_03]: See, our church knows what to do, Eddie.

[SPEAKER_03]: No worries, man.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love it.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, listen seriously seriously though.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love that we stand for the word of God.

[SPEAKER_03]: We do that intentionally because we we were a weird God's word.

[SPEAKER_03]: We want to just kind of show it the honor and respect that it is do and I'm so glad that we do that together.

[SPEAKER_03]: So thank you all.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for that reading Romans twelve one through five this morning.

[SPEAKER_03]: We have one more testimony for our summer testimonies that we're going to get to hear today and this is one of the scriptures that that they had put in this testimony.

[SPEAKER_03]: I was just thinking about Jeremy and Ali who are going to share what's thinking about them and their story and

[SPEAKER_03]: and just reading through, obviously, their story this week, and thinking about that scripture and just thinking, man, what a beautiful way to describe what the Lord has done in all of our lives.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think you guys' lives in particular too.

[SPEAKER_03]: And just how God doesn't just listen, God doesn't just save us.

[SPEAKER_03]: He does that by Jesus.

[SPEAKER_03]: He doesn't just do that.

[SPEAKER_03]: He changes us, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: He saves us any changes us, and he unites us together with our church.

[SPEAKER_03]: family to be part of the body of Christ.

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's such a gospel, y'all, it's so much bigger.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think then we give it credit for sometimes, because it does.

[SPEAKER_03]: It moves and works in our lives from beginning to end and saves us and changes, redeems, transforms us through a newing of our mods.

[SPEAKER_03]: So you guys are going to get to hear a little bit about that from Ali and Jeremy.

[SPEAKER_03]: See y'all going, come on up here.

[SPEAKER_03]: Ali and Jeremy, Halston, little co-testamoni today.

[SPEAKER_03]: So to kind of end up our summer test most.

[SPEAKER_03]: So let's pray together for them.

[SPEAKER_03]: If you guys would, pray with me as we just get ready to hear how God's work can y'all's lives.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let's pray.

[SPEAKER_03]: Lord, thank you so much, Lord, for your goodness, your faithfulness, your grace in all of our lives.

[SPEAKER_03]: God, all of us have stories because of you.

[SPEAKER_03]: And we're so grateful that you have saved and transformed each one of us who are in Christ.

[SPEAKER_03]: But we pray right now for Jeremy and for Ali, as they prepare to share their story together, individually and together, and how you've worked in and through them, Lord.

[SPEAKER_03]: So just use them right now for your glory.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let us hear that, Lord, and let us be let all of us be encouraged and challenged too, as we hear what you say to our hearts in Jesus name.

[SPEAKER_03]: Amen.

[SPEAKER_02]: Hey everybody, first I want to start off by telling you all thank you for allowing us the opportunity to get up here and share our story.

[SPEAKER_02]: Here we go.

[SPEAKER_02]: My mom and dad got married very early in life.

[SPEAKER_02]: They had quickly fallen in love and wanted to start a family.

[SPEAKER_02]: My dad was busy learning the plumbing trade while my mom put off her aspirations to go to college to raise a son that was not expected.

[SPEAKER_02]: My dad was a heavy drinker and my mom was not.

[SPEAKER_02]: She wanted more out of life than my dad or his alcohol alcoholism could offer her, so she decided she wanted out.

[SPEAKER_02]: Their marriage lasted maybe two years before my mom found herself a single mom trying to start over this time plus one.

[SPEAKER_02]: While she reunited with her high school soul mate and they are still married to this day.

[SPEAKER_02]: But as you could imagine, my mom meeting back up with my stepdad did not sit well with my father who spent most of my childhood training me not to like him.

[SPEAKER_02]: A man that made a choice to walk back into my mom's life and take on a kid that wasn't even his own.

[SPEAKER_02]: See, my dad had a hold on me ever since I could remember I had done anything and everything to try to make him happy.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if I said one good thing about my stepdad, he would come down on me drastically.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now my dad loved me, at least I thought he did, but I also could never live up to his expectations, his standards.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was never good enough.

[SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't a good enough athlete.

[SPEAKER_02]: He was always better.

[SPEAKER_02]: When I called him with my report card, my grades weren't quite good enough.

[SPEAKER_02]: And even when I became an adult and followed in his footsteps to become a plumber, he was always better than me, and I was never going to reach his level.

[SPEAKER_02]: So growing up, not measuring up, calls me to develop major insecurities that began to bleed over into the rest of my relationships.

[SPEAKER_02]: I develop social anxiety, a fear of failing, and an obsession with making sure people around me were happy and content, no matter how miserable it made me.

[SPEAKER_02]: I had become a people pleaser.

[SPEAKER_02]: A codependent is what we call it at Celebrate Recovery.

[SPEAKER_02]: And as soon as I learned that I could medicate all those feelings with the use of alcohol and drugs, that's what I did.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was introduced to sexually impure machit material to say that nicely via the magazines in my dad's bathroom by the age of ten.

[SPEAKER_02]: I stole my first beer from the fridge at the age of twelve and I smoked my first joint when I was fifteen.

[SPEAKER_02]: I soon found myself hanging out with the older crowd, you know, the ones that had better access to the mind numbing things that I desired to escape from the realities of life that I didn't want to deal with.

[SPEAKER_02]: When I graduated high school and became an adult, I partied my way out of UGA, found myself working for a gutter company, experimenting with harder drugs and going in and out of jail like it was a hotel.

[SPEAKER_02]: From the time I turned eighteen to the time I turned twenty one, I had been arrested thirteen times until the judge sent me to jail for a year, hoping to change the path I was headed down.

[SPEAKER_01]: My story is a little different.

[SPEAKER_01]: I grew up in church.

[SPEAKER_01]: Every Sunday morning, Wednesday night, we were there.

[SPEAKER_01]: Every special event, every VBS in the county, we were there.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's where you could find us in church.

[SPEAKER_01]: My dad became the youth pastor when I was a kid.

[SPEAKER_01]: He was also the worship leader and eventually the lead pastor of our church.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was saved as a child and my parent showed me how to have a relationship with the Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: They gave me a heart for scripture and worship through song.

[SPEAKER_01]: As a child, I was always singing and making up worship songs for Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: It has always been something that made me feel connected to Him.

[SPEAKER_01]: But there was always this feeling of inadequacy.

[SPEAKER_01]: within me.

[SPEAKER_01]: I never felt enough as the oldest and a preacher's kid always felt this responsibility to be something.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what it was that I thought I was supposed to be, but I felt like I could never measure up.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was a people pleaser constantly worried about letting people down.

[SPEAKER_01]: I had no voice and I believe that this led me down.

[SPEAKER_01]: the path of being taken advantage of sexually as a child and a teenager.

[SPEAKER_01]: I blame myself because I didn't know how to say no or to stop it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I carried the guilt and shame for years.

[SPEAKER_01]: I would go on to a discipleship training program after high school where we did Bible College classes, mission trips and ministry.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was amazing.

[SPEAKER_01]: But when the program ended, I didn't really know what to do with my life next.

[SPEAKER_01]: I convinced myself that there were expectations of me

[SPEAKER_01]: that I was never going to achieve.

[SPEAKER_01]: I felt lost in adequate and depressed.

[SPEAKER_02]: So after spending a year, a year in jail, I got out and went right back to the same playgrounds and playmates that got me there.

[SPEAKER_02]: I even moved back into the same trailer park and had the same job and we sure did celebrate my coming home.

[SPEAKER_02]: The very next morning I was high in hungover when I fell thirty feet from a roof and crushed both of my ankles.

[SPEAKER_02]: I believe that this was when God had said he had had enough of my nonsense and he got my attention.

[SPEAKER_02]: I went home to Mama and spent the next six months learning to walk again.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now I was an athlete in my mind and I love the sport of basketball and I had to come to the reality that I would never be able to run again.

[SPEAKER_02]: This opened up a whole new level of insecurities in me.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now I worry about people staring at the way that I walked.

[SPEAKER_02]: Needless to say, God had a plan.

[SPEAKER_02]: I moved to Congress, met my first wife, and we had four beautiful girls together.

[SPEAKER_02]: Even though I did not drink while we were married, I would say that I was a horrible husband.

[SPEAKER_02]: selfish and cruel.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was not a wonder why after ten years we made our separate ways.

[SPEAKER_02]: I spent the next twenty years in a circle of insanity that included three DUIs, a public intoxication, jail, probation, many different jobs including several good ones that were lost to alcoholism.

[SPEAKER_02]: When you struggle with addiction, you're not just limited to one vice.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, you were addicted to what we call more, more of anything.

[SPEAKER_02]: If it was alcohol, one wasn't good enough.

[SPEAKER_02]: I need a twelfth.

[SPEAKER_02]: If it was pod, I smoked it till I passed out.

[SPEAKER_02]: If it was pills, I took as many as I could to feel high, not to eliminate pain.

[SPEAKER_02]: What was that for?

[SPEAKER_02]: No matter what it was, I needed more of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: One morning my dad called me and he asked me to take him to the hospital he had fallen in the shower.

[SPEAKER_02]: His drinking had finally gotten the best of him and after forty days in the ICU his liver finally gave out on him and he took his last breath at sixty three years old.

[SPEAKER_02]: The man that I spent my life trying to impress trying to measure up to was gone a victim of his own addictions.

[SPEAKER_02]: So seeing that, you would have thought that it was enough for me to make me put it all down.

[SPEAKER_02]: Turn away from my addiction, so start living a new life.

[SPEAKER_02]: But addiction was all I knew, and now I had grief and guilt and shame to go along with it, and that just fueled the fire.

[SPEAKER_02]: I spent the next year of my life nearly drinking myself to death, till I woke up on my front porch, literally on my front porch.

[SPEAKER_02]: Christmas morning, twenty- seventeen, all by myself.

[SPEAKER_02]: I realized my life had to change.

[SPEAKER_02]: I had ran off everyone that loved me, my mom, my kids, and I was finally sick and tired of being sick and tired.

[SPEAKER_01]: I never stopped going to church, but during the week, I lived a very different life cell, trying to numb the empty broken and dirty feeling inside me.

[SPEAKER_01]: I met my first husband in November of two thousand and six.

[SPEAKER_01]: We were married by June and had our first child that December.

[SPEAKER_01]: A year and a half later, at our second child, being a mom was the greatest joy I'd ever known.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just like I was raised in church, I wanted my kids to have the same upbringing.

[SPEAKER_01]: My husband and I served together on the worship team, but life in church wasn't the same as at home.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was a dysfunctional marriage of good times, but also distrust, lies, bitterness and resentment on my part due to my lack of boundaries and inadequacy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Gaslighting, emotional, and verbal abuse consumed my life.

[SPEAKER_01]: I justified and hit it all.

[SPEAKER_01]: I believed that I deserved it and that I was the problem.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was convinced that I was a terrible wife and an even worse mother.

[SPEAKER_01]: Trying to be a good wife, I would give into things I was uncomfortable with due to my past trauma that left me feeling worthless and eventually hopeless.

[SPEAKER_01]: My depression and suicidal ideation intensified and in my brokenness, I drifted further and further from God.

[SPEAKER_01]: In our tenth year of marriage, drugs entered the relationship.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was so broken and lost that my values no longer mattered.

[SPEAKER_01]: The dysfunction quickly intensified and I could see the impact it had on my children.

[SPEAKER_01]: I would leave with my kids and return to broken promises of sobriety three times in a matter of months.

[SPEAKER_01]: Each time we returned, the chaos was worse.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not understanding what was wrong with me and why I kept continuing the cycle of dysfunction.

[SPEAKER_01]: I decided to go to an outpatient treatment program for my depression and started seeing a Christian trauma therapist that was recommended by our mayor's counselor.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was devastated by the ending of my marriage, but I knew that it was necessary.

[SPEAKER_01]: I started being honest for the first time in my life about the things I was feeling and what had happened to me.

[SPEAKER_01]: I experienced God's grace in a way that I had never had before.

[SPEAKER_01]: I decided that the glass of wine or beer at night was no longer for me.

[SPEAKER_01]: I found that numbing the bed from the day, numbing the good as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: So tomorrow will be eight years since I had my last treat.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Someone had told me about Celebrate Recovery at Eastridge and that they had a place for kids to share like the adults.

[SPEAKER_01]: I had found so much healing.

[SPEAKER_01]: I knew that they needed an outlet in a place to heal too.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we came to a Thursday night in September of, of, two thousand and seventeen.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was a testimony night for the adults and it was the first time I had seen somebody be so vulnerable and honest in a church before.

[SPEAKER_01]: I gave me hope that my family could also experience the same healing and restoration.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the ride home I asked my boys what they thought and they loved it and they wanted to keep coming back.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we decided to start attending Easteridge that following Sunday morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I heard Pastor Scott share his own struggles with depression as he introduced the testimony that I had just heard the Thursday before.

[SPEAKER_01]: This was happening on a Sunday morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think at that moment I felt safe and home.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so grateful for the ministry of celebrate recovery and celebration, place that's for the kids, for this space to heal, but also the community.

[SPEAKER_01]: Ms.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jamie was able to encourage and guide my kids through the hardest time of our lives.

[SPEAKER_01]: The healing and restoration of my family didn't look how I thought it would.

[SPEAKER_01]: But that's okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: The boys learn how to express their feelings and process the hurt they were going through in the midst of divorce.

[SPEAKER_01]: I found support, acceptance, and peace.

[SPEAKER_01]: where I used to be a victim and allow the trauma to pull me away from God.

[SPEAKER_01]: I learned to bring it all to him.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I began to know him and love him more deeply.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jeremiah, twenty nine thirteen says, you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

[SPEAKER_01]: I found a love that I'd heard about for years, but I experienced firsthand when I got real with God.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I let him into the deepest hurts of my life.

[SPEAKER_01]: I realized that he was there all along.

[SPEAKER_01]: I now look differently at pain and suffering now.

[SPEAKER_01]: I see it as an opportunity to know God more deeply and intimately.

[SPEAKER_01]: I love how at the end of Job in chapter forty two verse five, Job says, my ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you.

[SPEAKER_02]: That Christmas when I woke up on the porch, I knew I had exhausted all of my efforts to break free from the hurts of my past.

[SPEAKER_02]: The hangups that kept me stuck for years and the habits I used to medicate all that negativity my life had become.

[SPEAKER_02]: I tried everything in my power.

[SPEAKER_02]: I thought I had nowhere else to turn.

[SPEAKER_02]: But God.

[SPEAKER_02]: Psalm's twenty nine eleven tells us the Lord gives strength to His people, the Lord blesses His people with peace.

[SPEAKER_02]: Two weeks later, I showed up here one Sunday morning a broken man hopeless and lost.

[SPEAKER_02]: Struggling just to keep my head up much less here a message, but God has a way of reaching us in the middle of our mess.

[SPEAKER_02]: I slowly began to realize that Jesus did love me, regardless of how I felt about myself.

[SPEAKER_02]: The people here showed me kindness and I never once felt judged even though on the inside, I still felt fake.

[SPEAKER_02]: See, I still had the addictions I was fighting.

[SPEAKER_02]: I had no tools to recover at the time and I was way too prideful to admit that I did have a problem.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was in the middle of winning myself off of alcohol in the drugs, to only find myself in a new false reality, a new cycle of insanity.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was still trying to do things on my own power and not giving it up to Jesus.

[SPEAKER_02]: But he was still at work in my life.

[SPEAKER_02]: I had met someone on Facebook that I'd really liked a lot.

[SPEAKER_02]: That might be.

[SPEAKER_02]: I also knew that I was not going to be able to be the man I had always been if I wanted to pursue her for more than just a friendship.

[SPEAKER_02]: After a few days of talking, she asked me if I'd ever been to celebrate recovery.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I told her I thought about it, but I'd never pulled the trigger on it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Remember, I still believed I was going to be able to do this myself.

[SPEAKER_02]: But God always has a plan.

[SPEAKER_02]: May, seventeenth, twenty-eighteen, I walked into CR and I had never looked back since.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's been two thousand six hundred and twenty-three days since I've had my last drink.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's a little more than seven years of sobriety.

[SPEAKER_02]: I hated the life I had been living so much.

[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't care what recovery looked like as long as it wasn't looking like the chaos that my life was.

[SPEAKER_02]: I hit the ground running.

[SPEAKER_02]: I got into the first step study I could.

[SPEAKER_02]: I heard that miracles happen there and step studies and I learned how to walk through the twelve steps of recovery and surprise was possible.

[SPEAKER_02]: Miracles were possible, but only with Jesus.

[SPEAKER_02]: Principal three at Celebrate Recovery tells us in order to be truly in recovery.

[SPEAKER_02]: We have to consciously choose to commit all of my life and all of my will to cry, scare, and control.

[SPEAKER_02]: When I allow Jesus to be in control, I experience what Paul was talking about in Romans twelve two.

[SPEAKER_02]: Do not conform to the patterns of this world.

[SPEAKER_02]: But be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

[SPEAKER_02]: Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is.

[SPEAKER_02]: His good and pleasing and perfect will.

[SPEAKER_02]: My mind was being renewed by him, and I no longer wanted to be conformed by this world.

[SPEAKER_02]: I have since led two more step studies where I've worked through some of the character defects that had haunted me throughout my life, and I found freedom from such things as codependency, insecurities, and self-righteousness.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I still struggle with these at times, but now I have the tools.

[SPEAKER_02]: Through the steps in the principles of celebrate recovery, have taught me to regain the joy that the enemy stole from my past.

[SPEAKER_02]: When I struggle with insecurity, I remind myself, I remind myself, I'm not defined by what I've done, but by the work that Jesus did on the cross.

[SPEAKER_02]: When I struggle with codependency, I have accountability partners that remind me to set healthy boundaries.

[SPEAKER_02]: And a sponsor that will let me know if my head's getting too big.

[SPEAKER_02]: But by far, the biggest tool I've added to my life is my daily prayer and quiet time with my Savior.

[SPEAKER_02]: I have learned that when I start my day with Jesus and I spend time during my day and prayer with Him, my days are more peaceful.

[SPEAKER_02]: I have learned that it is not possible to chase the world if you are chasing Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we got married.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are married.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's hard to even imagine the person that he talks about because I don't recognize him.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what God does.

[SPEAKER_01]: When I got here, I thought that I would never sing on a worship team again.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was too broken, but God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now I get to lead worship on Thursday nights.

[SPEAKER_01]: In what an incredible, indescribable and redemptive experience that is.

[SPEAKER_01]: We get to serve and lead together in many ways that celebrate recovery.

[SPEAKER_01]: And in the end, we felt the Lord leading and saw a door open for us to serve as ministry leaders in the landing at celebrate recovery.

[SPEAKER_01]: The landing is for teens, middle to high school.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a place to come and share to work through life's hurts, hangups, or habits.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was so lost and felt so alone as a teen, to be able to offer young people a place, to be real, to feel heard and seen, to be able to point them to the saving grace of Jesus has been such a blessing.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's the redemptive work of the Lord, where I felt broken in my hidden shame.

[SPEAKER_01]: God has turned my life around and put purpose to my pain by allowing me to share with others that they are not alone and healing is possible.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want others to know and experience the life-changing love of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is truly humbling to be able to serve in that way.

[SPEAKER_02]: My life looks a whole lot different now that I've turned back to Jesus.

[SPEAKER_02]: The man that once was only interested in the next best thing I could find from this world has now found the best thing I could ever ask for.

[SPEAKER_02]: Instead of waking up every morning searching for Adville and Gatorade to medicate the hangover, I'm in my Bible searching for a scripture that will define my day.

[SPEAKER_02]: Instead of blaming everyone from my problems, I'm writing a gratitude list of all the people, places and things that I'm grateful for.

[SPEAKER_02]: Seven years ago, if you would have told me that I'd be up on Thursday nights teaching recovery, going into the jails on Sunday, having an opportunity to share what the Lord has done in my life, I would literally have laughed in your face and popped another top.

[SPEAKER_02]: But God, he can take any mess and turn it into his message and he can do the same thing for anyone that is struggling right now.

[SPEAKER_02]: He didn't come for the healthy y'all.

[SPEAKER_02]: When we let go and let God the possibility possibilities are endless, but surrender has to happen first.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was once a superficial Christian that came to God on Sundays and when needed.

[SPEAKER_01]: I knew that he was a powerful and loving God, but he always felt distant.

[SPEAKER_01]: The last few years of drawing closer to him has changed my life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Through quiet time, Bible study, journaling, working to allow God to remove anything in me that he doesn't like.

[SPEAKER_01]: Learning obedience even if I don't understand or my flesh gets uncomfortable.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've lived a lot of my life for me, but now I try to die to myself and live and solely follow him.

[SPEAKER_01]: I want to share with others who he is because I could not even imagine going through life without him.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is my rock, my savior, my song, and so much more.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you've been keeping him at a distance, I promise he is so much better than you can imagine.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you think you're too messed up, it's time to start running to him.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let him be Lord of your life.

[SPEAKER_01]: I promise you won't regret it.

[SPEAKER_01]: We came from two very different backgrounds, but had similar struggles that had the same answer.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus, we were two messed up people who found healing in recovery.

[SPEAKER_01]: And now we have a healthy Christ-centered relationship that neither of us thought was possible to God be the glory.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for letting us share.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, man.

[SPEAKER_03]: So good.

[SPEAKER_03]: So, so, so good.

[SPEAKER_03]: Um, got to read it like four times a week and it was still like, yeah.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, man.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just down there.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm taking some notes.

[SPEAKER_03]: So I just thought I'd read a couple of my notes just to give give some highlights.

[SPEAKER_03]: If you guys miss some things that they that they shared, um, just so good.

[SPEAKER_03]: You both talked about people pleasing, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: And I think Caitlin talked about that a little bit last week as well.

[SPEAKER_03]: People pleasing her codependency and, um,

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand, but we probably would all raise our hands in some way of just that struggle, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Just wanting to, I mean, we had that in us.

[SPEAKER_03]: We want to be liked.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think everybody wants to be liked, but sometimes that becomes unhealthy in the various ways that that manifests in our lives, just wanting so badly to get somebody else's approval.

[SPEAKER_03]: And sometimes missing the reality that man, we're created in the image of God who loves us.

[SPEAKER_03]: What approval of men do we need?

[SPEAKER_03]: And he gave us sun for us to make us right within that he is pleased with us in Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_03]: And man, that struggle is real.

[SPEAKER_03]: That is so real.

[SPEAKER_03]: Just talk about that.

[SPEAKER_03]: And then how that will flesh itself out and play itself out.

[SPEAKER_03]: Justifying bad behavior, justifying our excuses, drifting away from the Lord.

[SPEAKER_03]: How are you talked about that, where in a mask?

[SPEAKER_03]: And Jeremy talked about that a little as well, but I think especially grown up in church and then feeling like, man, I got to be this good Christian person because everybody kind of sees me that way, but then I got this duplicitous side of myself, this other part of my life.

[SPEAKER_03]: I know nobody else in here can relate to that, but we all can, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: That's just that is true.

[SPEAKER_03]: I have felt that you have felt that at there's times when my life doesn't okay my my my Sunday world looks a certain way right where my my nice pretty Sunday shirt and then I rest in my life doesn't look that pretty

[SPEAKER_03]: And maybe it's because of things going on that I have no control over or maybe it's things that I do have control over a lot of times.

[SPEAKER_03]: It is that and it's things that I'm just messing up and doing wrong or whatever, but and then we get to this place where we just go, okay, I have to put on that mask.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like when I'm around these people.

[SPEAKER_03]: I gotta wear that mask and I'm so glad that you guys shared that truth like our saying, just that we can hear real stories on Thursdays, on Sundays, wherever.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I hope by the way, I hope that man as a church family, we do understand this that I don't care if it's Thursday or Sunday.

[SPEAKER_03]: We're gonna be real here.

[SPEAKER_03]: And we're gonna be honest about life because life is hard at times.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it does us no good to walk in here and act like everything's polished and nice and neat.

[SPEAKER_03]: And like where we can put on those masks and just pretend.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now I want us to be a church family.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I think this is the heart of so many of us here that we want to be a church family that can just be honest and go, you know what, if life's hard, we say it's hard.

[SPEAKER_03]: And if I'm struggling, I can say I'm struggling.

[SPEAKER_03]: And that's that's okay to struggle, but it's also okay to surrender those things and encourage here to surrender those things and we're going to teach that here to surrender those things and we're going to let God speak to us in his word to surrender those things over to him again and again and again and again and again if necessary and then twenty more times after that.

[SPEAKER_03]: because daily on daily.

[SPEAKER_03]: And that's so Romans twelve, one into, I urge you and view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is your spiritual act of worship.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's about worship today, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Through song, through giving, through connect cards, through everything, but through offering ourselves to God.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is our act of worship.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is how we worship Him.

[SPEAKER_03]: This is what He's pleased with in us, not our perfection, not the masks that we paint and the polish we put on ourselves.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's pleased with serving and offering ourselves to Him as holy sacrifices every day.

[SPEAKER_03]: Just going, God, I'm here.

[SPEAKER_03]: Just me, I don't have anything but me.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's what I have to bring.

[SPEAKER_03]: But I'm here.

[SPEAKER_03]: And my encouragement to everybody in this room right now is just to, can we just, right now, can we just lay down whatever pretence we maybe walk in this place with whether today or all the time or in your life in general, maybe this pretence that you're kind of holding onto and wanting to put out there for everybody else to see, can we just lay that down and admit and confess, I'm not perfect.

[SPEAKER_03]: and maybe I'm even struggling, but I want to offer myself to God as a living sacrifice.

[SPEAKER_03]: And he says, don't be conformed any longer by the pattern to the pattern of the world, but be transformed by what?

[SPEAKER_03]: What is he saying?

[SPEAKER_03]: Newing of our minds.

[SPEAKER_03]: I love that because as y'all were sharing, I was thinking this, be transformed by the renewing of your minds.

[SPEAKER_03]: He doesn't say, be transformed by the renewing of your minds unless you've already got it figured out and you're good.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now what he said, there's no caveat in that verse, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: That is a blanket statement to every person in Christ Jesus.

[SPEAKER_03]: Be transformed by the way, what does that imply?

[SPEAKER_03]: You need your mind to be made new.

[SPEAKER_03]: You need that and so do I. That implies, let lean into me real quick.

[SPEAKER_03]: That implies you don't have it all figured out.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's okay.

[SPEAKER_03]: All right.

[SPEAKER_03]: The scripture's let us off that hook.

[SPEAKER_03]: You don't know at all.

[SPEAKER_03]: You're not there yet.

[SPEAKER_03]: Neither am I. So let's be renewed.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let's be renewed in our minds daily in Christ Jesus.

[SPEAKER_03]: And that's why I set up front.

[SPEAKER_03]: God doesn't just save us in Christ.

[SPEAKER_03]: He also sanctifies us and he transforms us praise God.

[SPEAKER_03]: And what a great testimony of that.

[SPEAKER_03]: Well, that's true.

[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you all for sharing that today.

[SPEAKER_03]: Here's how I would love to just end up today.

[SPEAKER_03]: They both talked about Jeremy and Ali both talked about also just doing the little things day by day reading the scriptures and being in prayer and being connected to the church.

[SPEAKER_03]: Listen, if you are struggling with some very specific thing in your life right now, whether it's anger or co-dependency or depression or drugs, whatever it may be, we have a ministry for that on Thursday nights.

[SPEAKER_03]: Show up.

[SPEAKER_03]: Show up, come on up here, and see that there's going to be other people going, hey, me too.

[SPEAKER_03]: So maybe that's a step you need to take right now.

[SPEAKER_03]: Be encouraged with that.

[SPEAKER_03]: And they come talk to y'all after church if we're down there.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so come talk to Jeremy and Ali after church if you want some more info on that.

[SPEAKER_03]: And maybe it's not that right now.

[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe it's just, you know, there's some other next step that God's calling you to.

[SPEAKER_03]: My heart right now is that wherever you are with the Lord.

[SPEAKER_03]: Whether that's, I don't know him at all, or I've known him for fifty years, and I'm still looking to, well, I'm still going to take a step.

[SPEAKER_03]: Wherever that is, seek the Lord in that.

[SPEAKER_03]: seek his will in that.

[SPEAKER_03]: And ask him, God, what step are you calling me to take?

[SPEAKER_03]: And just commit that to prayer, commit to the Lord's will.

[SPEAKER_03]: And just open again, offer yourself as a living sacrifice, holy, and pleasing to him.

[SPEAKER_03]: And so here's what I like to do as we end our time up together today.

[SPEAKER_03]: Two things.

[SPEAKER_03]: One is we're just gonna have time right now for the next five minutes.

[SPEAKER_03]: We'll pull a music on in a minute and we're just gonna let you guys just do exactly that.

[SPEAKER_03]: Just start that conversation with the Lord if you haven't yet.

[SPEAKER_03]: God, what's my step right now in my faith?

[SPEAKER_03]: Again, you might be going, God, I don't even know who you are.

[SPEAKER_03]: I don't even know who I'm talking to.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's okay.

[SPEAKER_03]: Take that step today and just start that conversation and I'd love to talk with you more about that after church.

[SPEAKER_03]: But maybe it's whatever other situation it may be.

[SPEAKER_03]: God, what's my step today?

[SPEAKER_03]: How are you leading me?

[SPEAKER_03]: How are you transforming me and the renewing of my mind to be thinking differently?

[SPEAKER_03]: You're doing some things differently.

[SPEAKER_03]: And the other thing, I want to give you an opportunity to do.

[SPEAKER_03]: We did this last week if you were here.

[SPEAKER_03]: We had the index cards on the chairs.

[SPEAKER_03]: They're actually on these tables now, kind of around y'all.

[SPEAKER_03]: around the room.

[SPEAKER_03]: Those index cards are specifically to, and I believe this is part of the renewing of our mind and Jeremy, you talked about this just being thankful, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Just gratitude to the Lord.

[SPEAKER_03]: So listen, before you leave today, over these next few minutes, right here is an opportunity to do it.

[SPEAKER_03]: If you want to get up, go to one of these tables, grab an index card, and just write down, man, how has God been good to you?

[SPEAKER_03]: How has he been good to you?

[SPEAKER_03]: How has he shown himself faithful?

[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes it's just good for us to be reminded of those things.

[SPEAKER_03]: Because I don't know about y'all, but I complain sometimes.

[SPEAKER_03]: I do.

[SPEAKER_03]: And it's good to be reminded, man.

[SPEAKER_03]: God is good.

[SPEAKER_03]: And he is faithful.

[SPEAKER_03]: And so if you want to do that in these next few minutes, go to one of those tables right down some of that you can bullet point them.

[SPEAKER_03]: You can write a whole paragraph.

[SPEAKER_03]: You can write front and back.

[SPEAKER_03]: If you want to, you can take that home, bring it back next week.

[SPEAKER_03]: We'll have them out again.

[SPEAKER_03]: Just drop them in the baskets if you want to do that.

[SPEAKER_03]: On the table if you if you finish that up.

[SPEAKER_03]: So let's just take a moment now.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let's go ahead and put some music on Mr. Dwayne.

[SPEAKER_03]: We're gonna play some music for y'all just to kind of have have time to kind of be quiet and still our hearts You guys right now commit this time just to pray Seek in the Lord and then if you want to go to one of these tables and write down some ways that he's been good Let's do that as well.

[SPEAKER_03]: Let me pray real quick Lord, we love you We commit this time to you in faith in Jesus name amen