Cope Like Christ // Triggered (Part 8) // Pastor Brie Davis

Welcome to Transformation Church podcast, where we represent God to

the lost and found for transformation in Christ. We're so

glad you're here and wherever you're listening from, we believe

God will transform your life. Do today's message.

This is week eight of a sermon series that we're

calling Trigger.

Pastor Mike started this sermon.

Series a couple months ago, and I remember when we

were talking about this series before it started. We're talking

about what God wanted to do through this series and

specifically using the term triggered, because that is one of

our kind of buzz words for right now. There are

many different people who talk about how triggered they are

in today's time. And this is not a word that

was used ages ago or years ago in the manner

in which we use it now now. When we talk

about it, we're talking about some type of emotional disturbance that.

Takes place in our life.

That's what a trigger is. And when we started the

first week of this sermon series.

Passing my ass, he said, you know.

What are your triggers? And there were people in the

room that unashamedly yelled out the triggers that they have

in their life. Some people talked about dirty dishes being

a trigger. Anybody out there dirty dishes a trigger?

Okay.

I feel like it's a lot of mamas who said

yes to that. So all the kids need to button

it up, come on, get it together. Some people said

that bad drivers was a trigger. Anybody bad drivers? Okay?

So I thought to myself, I think today, what we're

gonna do is we're gonna start with I'm just gonna

love the play feeling and tell you some of my

own triggers today. Okay, I have a list, so here

we go. Some of my triggers are first, one is

lazy people. And I know somebody feels me on this one. Okay,

lazy people, it's like, can.

You get up and do something? Can you help please? Okay?

A lazy person. Another one of my triggers I have,

and this one will send me immediately an unexpected bill.

An unexpected bill, I don't care if the bill is

seven dollars and sixteen cents.

Don't send me.

Nothing unless you called me beforehand, told me that bill

was on the way. Okay. A good trigger for me

is an unexpected bill. Ask my husband. I'll flip out

every time. Okay, someone making me late to something. Now.

Listen, there's a caveat to this.

Okay, because I didn't say me being late that's not

the trigger, because I am often late on.

My own accord. But if someone else, hello.

Somebody, if somebody else makes.

Me late, that's the trigger right there.

Now.

If I'm gonna be late, let it be my fault

while I'm late.

I don't want to be late because you made me late.

Okay. I have more hurd on mean or rude people.

Y'all feel me on that one.

Take it up one more notch though, especially when those

people are church people. I can't stand it.

I can't stand it. I can't stand it.

I cannot stand how you gonna let the Lord but

not love people like that don't even make sense. That

is a trigger, y'all feel me on that way. Okay,

All right, okay, okay, schemers, I won't go no further.

Bad hair days, y'all see how much hair I got

on top of this here.

Sometimes I wake up and it looked like who done it?

And what fu? Every curl going which way but the

right way? I'm like God helped me today. Okay. Bad

hair days?

And then my last and.

Final one that I have And this is specific to me.

This may not be one for you, okay, but I

cannot stand stinky trash in my home. Specifically, if I

smell trash, it's like something got to be done. We

have to throw away the whole entire house. At this point,

I thought them trash cans were supposed to those trash

bags were supposed to smell good. Why is think like that?

What's in there? Some dad up in there?

You know, you be thinking something day.

It's some day.

It's not like something died up in here. We need

to get something going up here. So these are just

some of my triggers, y'all. Oh, I had another one

hold on spiritual bypassing.

Okay, I want to kind of talk about.

This one a little bit today. Spiritual bypassing is when

we use scripture or spiritual practices or even God to

bypass reality. When we use God's word to actually avoid

something that is real that needs to be dealt with.

Instead of doing that, we use scripture, slap a scripture

on it, and act like it's not a thing at all.

Spiritual bypassing is when God is actually trying to do

some work of transformation in our lives.

But because we don't want to do the hard work.

That often takes a lot of sacrifice to transform in

our lives. Instead, we'll act like, oh, his grace is sufficient.

He also wants you to change doing that.

Spiritual bypasses is one of those things.

If you know a little bit about me and Aaron,

my husband, the love of my life, the lover of

my life.

I love you, husband.

Y'all give it up with my husband. He hates that.

If you know anything about our story, you know that

over the last year we went through significant tragedy. We

lost our son last year, and in that whole situation,

we have learned so much about God and about grief

and about how we actually include God in our reality

versus acting like our reality is not a real thing.

And even though for me grief has been such a

difficult process because I don't like that grief is unpredictable

and so you never know what days you're gonna feel low,

or what days you may feel sad, or what days

I'm gonna missed my son and all of that, it's

really been difficult, so much so that one of the

things I want to do is spiritually bypass it. One

of the things I want to do is move past

it like it's not actually as hurtful and painful acts

it actually is. And I remember one time I was

talking to a friend of mine and she was asking

me how I was doing, and I said, you know, sad,

you know, mad, all the things that I was feeling

at the time, I said. But also at the same time,

God has really just blessed us with such a wonderful life,

such a great community, all the beautiful things which is

well and true. And she said to me, she said,

I love that for you. I'm so happy that you

feel that way. And at the same time, I want

you to know when you go through tragedy like that,

when you go through something hard like that, I don't

think that it might be the best mood, the best

thing for you to say to your nervous system, but

look at all the blessings we have, because essentially what

you're doing is telling your own body, let's ignore the

pain and pretend like it's not there. And shouldn't you

be grateful for the life that you have? So shouldn't

you should only see the stars and the flowers and

the things that are taking place in your life that

are blessings and if you focus on that, maybe you'll

get over the pain that you've been through. Today, I

want to talk to you a little bit about this

because this is the thing that I think trips us

up as believers. It's a lack of self awareness, knowing

where we actually are, not where we are.

Pretending to be.

There's nothing wrong with being aware of your blessings, and

there's nothing wrong with gratitude. Has saved my life a

many of days over this past year, so there's absolutely

nothing wrong with that at all. At the same time,

can we be believers that deal with reality, that know

that our God is big enough to be in the

real day to day with us and still help us

move through it? And so today I want to talk

to you a little bit about that because one of

the things that I have learned, especially as we've been

walking through this series, is we've been talking about triggers,

and triggers are what Pastor Mike gave us a definition.

He said, triggers are the things that sets you off.

In other words, they create some type of emotional disturbance.

And not only is trigger a thing that causes emotional disturbance,

it's also a place where maybe the Lord is inviting

you and I into transformation, that this emotional disturbance is

there for a reason. Now, in order to say that

you have a trigger, you have to know it's attached

to your emotions, that there is some emotional disturbance that's

going on inside of you.

A lot of people, a trigger feels like anger.

Another person that can feel like sadness, another person that

can feel like embarrassment. There's so many different emotions that.

Go along with trigger.

But if we open our eyes to see the greater

reality that God has us in this Kingdom of Heaven

that we actually live in today, this trigger is not

only a place of emotional disturbance, it's also an invitation

from God for transformation in our lives. So today I

want to talk to you about some things, and I

want to be honest. Today may feel a little bit

like group therapy.

Okay, I am not a therapist.

And at the same time, I'm gonna be using some

language that sounds like maybe you sin in therapy.

So I don't know.

When's the last time you had your therapy appointment.

Look at your neighbor, say when selest ner.

I don't ask them that just kid it, just kid it.

I'm just kidding.

But today we're gonna talk through a little some things.

And I want to call today's sermon cope like Christ,

Cope like Christ. Let me tell you why. That's the

tiitle of today's sermon.

When we have a.

Crash y'all, which our definition right now, crash out is

where we get to when we have unaddressed triggers, things

that have caused an emotional disturbance.

And now I'm crashing out.

Because I haven't actually addressed the triggers in my life

that I need to, the things that have called cause

emotional disturbance. When we have a crash out, A crash

out is just a coping mechanism. That's it. A crashout

is just a coping mechanism. Now, a coping mechanism is

a strategy, strategy, or something we put in place in

order to find relief.

In our life.

Usually, if we have a trigger of some kind, it

has roued up some type of emotion on the inside

of us. It's caused us some type of emotional overwhelmed.

When we get to that emotional overwhelmed, then we turn

into a crash out.

Then we crash out but.

The only reason we crash out is because we're actually

trying to cope with this disturbance or this overwhelmed that

we have had emotionally, and we don't know how to

do it in a healthy way. Coping mechanisms are neutral.

They can be healthy or unhealthy. There are ways that

you can cope with stress in life that's unhealthy and

not helpful for you or anybody around you. And there

are ways that you can cope with stresses in life

that actually are very healthy and can lund you forward

into your future, into your God given destiny. And so

today I want to talk about how do we cope

like Christ? And today is going to take We're going

to do a little digging into our own selves and

becoming a little bit more self aware about us so

that we can see how do I cope now?

And is it like the way that Christ would cope?

So what I want you to do is turning your

Bible to Matthew eleven. Matthew eleven twenty eight through thirty.

This is the actual scripture passage that we started the

sermon series with. Also, Jesus is talking here in Matthew eleven,

and it says, come to me all of you who

are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give

you rest or relief.

Take my yoke upon you.

Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle

at heart, and you will find rest or relief for

your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and

the burden I give you is liked. What Jesus is

saying in this scripture is I have another way for

you to live. I have a new way for you

to live that is not based off of your culture,

based off your family, based off your ethnicity, based off

of your gender, based off of what the world is

telling you how to live. I have a brand new

way for you to live. And in this way that

you are living now, it's heavy, and it's burdened down,

and it may actually be too much for you to bear.

But the way that I want you to live is

in a life of lightness.

And ease and a place of relief.

Our coping mechanisms is only us trying to find some relief.

So today my question for you is going to be

do you want to live differently? Do you want to

live in an easy yoke and a light burden? Do

you want to live in a place of constant relief

in a healthy way that doesn't damage you, your soul

or the people around you. Because every single one of

us born into this world because of the families we

grew up in, the neighborhoods, we grew up in the culture.

That we live in.

Because of what society tells us, every single one of

us have adopted some type of unhealthy coping mechanism, some

type of way that we cope with emotional disturbance and

stressing our life that is actually not the way the

crisis asked us to cope. And So today, as we

are going going through some of the things I want

to talk about today, the question is do you wanna

live differently?

Don't you think the way.

That we decided to live without Christ in the middle

of that, that that is just too heavy for us.

The stress that we feel, the worry, the anxiety that

we feel, the depression that we feel, the anger that

we feel, is all really too much because it's not

the way that Christ wants us to cope. So I'm

gonna walk us through four different things today, and these

are what I'm calling crash out coping. These are the

ways that we crash out, and we try to cope

with the stresses of life and the emotional disturbances that

we have in this I want you to now, as

I'm going through these things, you gonna see somebody else,

maybe your husband, your wife, your kids, your mama, and

your daddy. You're gonna see somebody else as we're going

through these things. But listen, this is what I'm asking

you to do today.

Keep your eye on the sparial.

Okay, look at only you today. Today is about self awareness. Okay,

today is about self awareness.

So these are.

Four things, and I want to give you kind of

a little setup for them. So they're gonna put a

chart on the screen. You'll see a couple of different

things here. The first thing is passion. Mike told us this.

He said, sometimes when we crash out, we crash out internally,

and other times we crash out externally. Now, usually when

somebody says they're crashing out or ever, other people know

that someone's crashing out is because it's external. But there

are ways that we internally crash out too. So some

of these ways that we crash out, you're gonna see.

We feel them on the inside, even if you can't

see them on the outside, you.

Feel them on the inside.

Other ones you're gonna see that you can see these

on the outside. And then another thing that I want

you to remember as we're going through these is some

of these crash outs it's just you and you alone.

Other ones you have to have other people involved in.

Some people crash out own other people. Some people crash

out in themselves. Okay, so the question is can you

find yourself today? What I'm gonna do is I'm going

through these four things. And this is an acronym for

cope cope. Okay, just try to make it so that

you can remember it when you leave out this place.

So the first thing is how we crash out cope.

First person usually crashed out.

Cope by conflict. This is a.

Person that when they are triggered and they have too

many triggers that are piling up and they crash out.

They crash out on.

The people around them and they find someone to battle.

They battle other people.

Let me give you an example of this in the

scripture first Sevenel nineteen Saul here is the king of Israel,

and he is the first person that God has called

and asked to take on this type of role. So

it was a prestigious role obviously, first time having a

king of Israel. God chose and favored Saul. He wanted

Saul to take on this, and yet Saul was not

secure in the role that God gave him. So when David,

a young David came around, who would be the king eventually.

But when David came around, Saul felt threatened and his

so much so that when people were going around, they

were saying David killed his ten thousands, but Saul only

killed his thousands, and Saul was like, uh uh, I

can't take this. He was triggered and he crashed out.

And when Saul crashed out, he decided to pick a

fight with David.

David wasn't against Saul at all, he wasn't studying that

man like that.

But Saul was completely offended by the fact that David

was doing it well, and because of that, he picked

a fight with him. So these type of people, when

they crash out, they find and pick fights. They find

somebody that they're gonna battle, somebody that they're gonna go

and start something with because in their mind and the

only way I can get relief, which is a coping mechanism.

The only way I can get relief is through control,

not through connection.

Through control.

So these are the people who when you are talking

about a current issue, they may be the ones that

bring up old issues. It's like, that's not what we're

talking about right now, But last year when I did

the same thing, you got mad when I said, okay,

that's a whole different situation that we're not talking about.

These are the people that find anger safer than vulnerability.

So this emotion of anger is a place that feels

safe for them, So they go to this place whenever

they feel crashed, like they're about to crash out.

When they're triggered enough, they'll go to anger. But if

you know anything about.

The emotion anger, what you know is the emotion anger

is just a surface level of emotion. Underneath any person

that's dealing with anger, they're probably dealing with some hurt.

They're probably dealing with some type of shame, some type

of guilt type something that is underneath that anger. Anger

is just a surface level emotion, meaning that there's something

underneath that that's actually impacting you. But for these people,

because conflict seems like a safe place and anger feels

like a safe place. They can't actually heal or deal

with what's actually going on inside of them because they

go to the surface level emotion instead of dealing with

what's underneath it, instead of just saying I'm.

Hurt by that.

That really offended me the way that I felt belittle

when you said that. Instead, these people are gonna puff up,

go into anger and cause some.

Type of conflict. So these are the people that do that.

They may even exaggerate details.

In order to just start a fight.

So anytime in a fight or argument, and take this

home with you, be take it gently, okay. And you

go around saying you always, you never everybody always. Those

are called absoluteses, and those are never ever. That's true,

And I'm gonna use absolute for that. Those are never true.

Because you may say to your husband, you never take

out the trash, well, there had to be one time

in fifteen years that he took out the trash. I mean,

come on, now, when we exaggerate the details, exaggerate the

details in order to have a fight, that may mean

that you run to conflict as a coping mechanism. Maybe

you are the type of person who transfers guilt when

somebody says, hey, I didn't like when you did that,

and then you look back at them and say, oh,

you perfect, You ain't never made a mistake before, instead

of taking ownership for what has actually taken place. These

are the people who run to conflict as a coping mechanism.

The worst part about this type of person is they

usually pick on their safest people around them. So instead

of dealing with the fact that you're triggered at work

because you work a job that you know that God

has called you to do more, but you haven't taken

the time to actually step out in faith and do

what God has asked you to do. You come home

with those triggers from work, and your wife and your

kids are the ones.

You pick a fight with.

These are the people that, if you look at Saul's story,

David was a safe place for Saul. David only wanted

the best for Saul. He only wanted him to be

able to be everything that God has called him to be.

He was only helping. But because Saul was triggered by

what people were saying and he needn't actually deal with

the fact that he was jealous of somebody else, he

took it out on someone that was safer and even

seemingly weaker. So this is the type of thing when

we say coping mechanisms, these ways of finding relief. If

you think about but Jesus says in Matthew eleven that

I would give you a yoke that is easy and

a burden that is light. This is the opposite of that.

Although for some of us it feels like our norm,

our norm is to run to conflict, to start some

type of drama as a way to deal with the

triggers that we have in our life. So see it's

for a conflict. Oh is very different than conflict. This

one stands for oppression. These are the people that in

some type of way, they start their crash out internally,

but eventually you see it outside. Instead of avoiding their emotions,

they sink into their emotions and their emotions become the

drivers in their life.

And the heavy burden.

That they feel is because they focus all their attention

on how they feel. There is a balance that is

necessary when we are following God. Feel all the feelings,

but don't let the feelings be the your life. Don't

let the feelings be the decision makers in your life.

Let them inform the decisions that you make, but not

be the ones who are making the decisions in your life.

These people are the people that withdraw, that isolate, that

eventually you see over time less and less answering calls,

less and less coming outside to hang. These people are

the people that are going to go within their brains,

in their emotions and in their thoughts because that is

the way that they cope with the triggers in their life.

This is much different than the conflict. The conflict person's

gonna come out guns blazing. They're gonna come out with

their dukes up. Everybody need to have their box and

gloves on right now, okay, because conflict is coming to

start something. Those that go into oppression sink back and

eventually you ain't heard from them in weeks, and when

you ask them how they're doing, they're saying, okay, I'm good,

but they're not actually dealing with what's going on on

the inside of them, trying to detach because if they

detach enough, it feels safe to them.

This is what happened with Elijah.

That Pastor Will talked about last week. When Elijah was triggered,

he sunk into his hole where he buried himself in

his emotions. His emotions didn't just inform him. They were

his God, And sometimes our emotions can be our God.

Elijah was triggered by what Jezebel said to her said

to him, and when he was triggered, he went to

God and said, I'd rather die now.

God had done all these wonderful.

Exploits in Elijah's life, all these miracle signs and wonders,

but all of that was scratched when he was triggered.

So even though you may not think you see this

on the outside, this is one you see on the outside,

because this person becomes more and more invisible, quieter, with drawn, isolated.

And here's the thing.

For each one of these coping mechanisms. Someone taught us

that this is how we survive. Someone taught us that

this is.

How you find relief in your life.

Maybe growing up, the easiest thing to do when there

was chaos.

At home was a shrink.

The easiest thing to do was to go to your room,

close the door and pretend like none of that is happening.

The easiest thing to do is to detach from all

of the healthy community that God has put around you.

Because This is how you have found relief. So see

is for conflict, always for oppression. P is for those

of us that power through. These are the people that

you're not gonna sink. You may not even take it

out on other people. But you now are overfunctioning because

you are going to busy yourself instead of actually dealing

with the emotions that you need to deal with the

triggers that in the emotional disturbance that you have going

on in your life. Instead of doing that, you're gonna

power through pretending like none of it exists.

And you're gonna overfunction.

You're gonna busy yourself, and you're gonna do way more

than God asked you to do, which is also called disobedience.

Because we see this and with the story of Moses. Now,

Moses had to lead a lot of people out of

slavery into the promised lamp.

And when he did this, this was a hard job

for Moses as a leader.

I mean I would have been he had to cut

somebody out at some point because.

That was hard. That was a hard job. Okay, The

people was complaining all the time.

One of the times that they were complaining to Moses,

they said, we don't have any water out here. We're thirsty.

You should take us back to slavery. I would have said,

gone back, gone back, because I'm sick of it out.

Here, trying to help you. Okay, pray for me.

They said to Moses. They said, Moses, there's no water

out here.

What are we supposed to do? Moses goes to God.

God says, I want you to take the stick in

your hand. I want you to strike the rock one time,

and water's gonna come from it.

Okay.

Moses goes and does that. It happens, The people are relieved,

they're happy, and all all their complaints are gone.

It happens again. Exact same thing happens again, and then

come to Moses, take us back to slavery.

We ain't got none to drink out here. I'll be

like drink a spit dog on it. Sick of it again,

Pray for me. Okay. Moses goes to God and he says, God,

what am I supposed to do?

These people are thirsty again, and God.

Says, this time, don't do anything that's going to cause

you to have to use your own strength. No striking

the rock this time. This time, I want you to

go to the rock and speak to it and tell

it to do what it needs to do. Moses says bet.

Moses goes back to the people. He's so triggered by

the people that instead of doing what God told him

to do, he does more than what God told him

to do, because that's his way of crashing out. So

what happens is Moses goes back to the rock the

first time he struck the rock once God told him

this time to speak to the rock. Well, he doesn't

go back and strike the rock one time. He goes

and strikes the rock twice, this time using way more

energy than he needed to use because all he had

to do was speak to the rock.

Water did come out of the rock still when he

struck it twice.

But God told him you will not inherit the Promised

Land because you disobey me. So for every person that

fills up their schedule with unnecessary things, and every person

that God did not tell you to help, every single

person in your family, maybe that one person he called

you to, but you decide that you're gonna play savior

for everybody in your life, for every person that acts

like you don't need a sabbath, and you don't need

a day of rest for every person that busies themselves

as a coping mechanism, because maybe if I need it somewhere,

I won't feel all the feelings that I'm feeling on

the inside. Maybe I won't be so emotionally disturbed if

I feel in the gap for every person in my life.

Could it be that that, although looks like a good thing,

is disobedience. These are the people that power through. You

would almost never even know that they're triggered because they're

everywhere all the time.

It's like they're our nission.

It's like, what are you.

God himself? You at every event.

Making sure everybody's celebrated, your kids in every sport. Why

every sport.

I'm gonna tell you right now.

They're not gonna make it to the NFL, the NBA

and the soccer league whatever it's called.

I'm sorry, I'm black. I don't I don't generally know whether.

Okay, anyway, pray for me I fee Yu's prayers.

Okay.

These are the people that busy themselves, so they overfunction,

they overhelp others. They never seem to really have a

bad day because.

They don't go low called emotional.

These are just emotions that God has given us, but

they don't allow themselves to sink there. These are people

that will fight through everything to not cry, which I

want to say, tears actually release toxicity in our life,

and so I always say, if you don't cry, you

must be toxic because because that's just biologically the way

that God set us up.

Anyways, these are people.

That are often disconnected from their own needs, physical needs

that they have. So oftentimes they don't take a break

until their body makes them take a break. They don't

take a break until they have to take a break.

And I know what that's like.

I know what it's like to go through the day

and think to myself, when did I eat?

I didn't even eat today.

These are the people that power through as a way

of crashing out, and you may not even notice it

because more than you see it on the outside, this

person has to be aware enough to know what they're

feeling on the inside. They have to know that this

is my way of coping. That someone taught me somewhere,

either by showing me or telling me that you being

needed is what makes you significant.

That your value only comes.

When you're able to answer every call and every text

message and be there for every person in your life

and show up at every event. And the truth is

what you actually need. The healing for your soul. The

rest that Jesus talks about in Matthew eleven is some

stillness to be with your emotions and your God, to

ask him what's going on on the inside of me?

What am I running from? Cause I'm running in my life.

I'm running from something. The people that power through last

one is e and this is the people that externalize.

By this, I mean they blame others for their triggers. Now, okay,

somebody felt that, okay, and we praise God.

Your trigger is just that your trigger. And how you

know this is true is that we all have.

Different triggers based on the way that we see life

and the way that we deem something that's right or wrong,

and everybody has a different way of the measuring that

that we have our own triggers. So when we take

a trigger and we blame somebody else, what we're doing

is we're externalizing, and instead of dealing with the things

that we need to deal with, we're asking somebody else

to take on our work.

Here's the thing about that.

If somebody else is at fault for your trigger, then

that means that they have to be the one to

own your freedom. And I don't know about anybody else,

but I don't want nobody else having to be the

person that gives me my freedom. I want my freedom

on my own. The only way that I'm gonna get

my freedom from myself is to know that the things,

the woundings, the bondages, the.

Triggers that I have are also mine too.

So these are the people that may go around trying

to figure out who it is that I need to

blame as to why I.

Am acting this way.

But everything that we do, every temptation we fall into,

the Bible says, comes from our own desires.

There is no such thing as someone making you mad.

You have to choose that.

It's a quick decision, but you have to choose that.

And if you externalize that, then that means that you

don't get your freedom unless that person doesn't make you

mad anymore.

How thought, that person still does.

What they're doing, but then you don't find yourself as

mad as you did before because God has transformed you.

This is what happened in Genesis.

After adam Ate the fruit of the tree that God

said do not eat from.

He said, what are you doing? First thing Adam does

points a finger, She made me do it.

Me and I'm just kidding.

I love y'all. And then when he points a finger

to Eve, he said, God says something. Even he says,

the serpent made me do it.

Nobody took ownership for their own actions and their own behavior.

As people of God, we should be the most confessional

community on earth. And you know why, because we serve

a God that no matter what we do, no matter

what mistakes we make, no matter how many people we heard,

no matter how many issues we have, he still loves

us unconditionally. So it shouldn't make us more confessional. It

should make us tell on ourselves more. It should make

us be more honest and take ownership of our stuff.

Saw when he was called into being king, it says

that he hid in his baggage. How many of us

do that every day, hiding in our own baggage when

freedom is promised to us. So when it comes to this,

we can't say things like I forgive them when they apologize.

That's beneath the standard. That's not what Jesus talks about.

A yoke that's easy and a burden that's light. In

Matthew eleven, he's saying, do you want another way to live?

How about someone offends you and hurts you, and you

live so light and easy you forgive them before they

even realize that's what they did.

What does that look like.

It's a different way to live. So these are ways

that we cope, different ways that we go into situations

that trigger us and we find conflict, or we sink

into oppression, or maybe we power through or even externalize.

But there is a different way to live. And this

is what we love about God. He gives us a

new way to live that doesn't require us to lean

into our old ways.

Here's what I want to say.

When we become believers, we do become new creations in Christ,

new creatures in Christ. Because now the righteousness of Christ

is what God sees when he sees.

Us, what Jesus did on the cross.

And yet your soul has to walk through process of

transformation because when we come into Christ, no matter how

old you are, when you come into your relationship with Christ,

you got some old ways, some old habits, some old

ways of thinking, some old belief systems. And your belief

system is what actually creates your thoughts, that create your behavior,

that creates your habits, that creates your destiny. And so

we have to, even in a relationship with God, submit

our baggage, our issues, our triggers back to God and

say where you help me? Because I want to live

a different way. And as long as we are on

this earth, we'll be asking God, will you help me

because I want to live a different way. I know

that I used to have those triggers, but God going

to now I.

Got these triggers. Where you help me?

Because I want to live a way that is light

and easy, as Jesus talks about.

So I want to go through real quick things that.

Jesus did to cope, and specifically in one situation, which

was a situation that pastor will have talked about last

week too, which is a garden of gassimone business before

Jesus is going to the cross to die for a

bunch of people, some who love him and some who

hate him, and he is going to the cross for us.

And the thing about when you say you got triggers,

my God, can you imagine what kind of triggers Jesus

had that this could cause an absolute crash out.

The things that he.

Was about to do, which was to die for the

sins of other people, none of which he committed. He

was going to go die for those sins. Four things

Jesus did in this story, and I'm gonna kind of

flip through the different gospels of how they share them,

and Mark fourteen thirty three through thirty four. It says

that Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him and

they became deeply troubled and distressed. He told them, my

soul is crushed with grief to the point of death.

Stay here and keep watch with me. First thing in

christ like coping is community. One of the best ways

that we can cope is to have a healthy community

around us that we can call on to say, Hey,

here's what I'm going through, here's what i'm feeling.

Girl, I'm about to crash out. I need your health.

And I'm not talking about the community that'd be like,

come on, let's go slash tires together. Okay, that feels good,

Like we'll.

Say I had a friend said that to me once

other maybe, uh, it feels good, but.

It's not christ Like coping. I'm talking about a healthy

community that's gonna help you see that Christ is the

way to go.

What happens in this story.

Is so beautiful because Jesus shows us that he invited

his community into this situation and they didn't even hold

him up the way he needed to be held up.

But he's still invited community in. And not only did

he invite them in, he didn't just leave him outside.

And I tell him what was going on, he said,

my soul is crushed to the point of death.

He was vulnerable with his community.

If you're going to cope in a healthy christ Like way,

you have to have community. Jesus showed us going further

into that scripture what our old stands for, and that

is a In Mark fourteen thirty six, Jesus says ab Father,

he cried out, everything is possible for you. Please take

this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want

your will to be done, not mine. I think we

under estimate the power of obeying God in the midsts

of being triggered, that oftentimes we use our triggers as

an excuse as to why we disobey God.

Because God knows I'm triggered.

Yes, he does, and he created a way of escape

for every temptation. Everything that you want to get out

of you can get out of. Every emotion that you

want to deal with in a healthy way, you can

deal with in a healthy way. Is called obedience. This

is when we sacrifice. This is when God says to

forgive those who despitefully use you.

When we decide to.

Forgive, even when we're triggered by somebody's actions, that's called obedience.

And obedience has fruit in our lives. We see that

as we obey that fruit is coming in our lives.

Peace comes. Joy comes because all of that fruit has

to be in the opposite environment.

Meaning I don't know if I.

Have peace unless I'm in the mist chaos. I don't

know if I have joy unless I'm in the mist

of sorrow. It's not because the things externally are going

the way that I want them to go.

It's because I have a greater.

A greater covenant, not just with myself, but a covenant

to God that when I said yes to Him, I

said yes to his ways, not just yes to him,

yes to his ways. Jesus went to cross to die

for people who didn't care about him. Jesus got on

the cross and said, Father, forgive them, for they know

not what they do. That's the way of Jesus and

Matthew eleven.

He's asking, do.

You want another way? When you say you committed to

me and you're in covenant with me, are you saying

that you're in covenant a covenant with my ways? Because

that looks like obedience. The P stands for prayer Matthew

twenty six. And this is the way that Matthew wrote

this whole entire story was different than everybody else because

Matthew shows us in the story that Jesus went to

pray three different times in.

The same setting. He says in verse forty.

Four, So when he went to pray a third time,

saying the same.

Things again, have you ever met.

Somebody that lives beneath their privilege? I had a friend

one time who needed some money, and instead of just

asking for money, he went and donated some plasma or

something like that, And I remember all of our friends

were like, why didn't you just ask for some money?

Like you're living beneath your privilege. You're going and doing

things that you don't need to do on your own,

where you could have just.

Asked for some help.

When we live a prayerless life, we're living beneath our privilege.

Do you understand that the creator of the entire universe

is tuned into you, that he has never ever missed

a second of your life, that he knows the number

of hairs on your head, that he knows your thoughts

before you even think them. That's how a tuned he

is and attached he is to you. And yet oftentimes

we decide not to pray to that God. We live

beneath our privilege as believers when we don't live a

life of prayer. Prayer is our access to Heaven. And

let me let me demystify some things.

Prayer is communion with God.

You ain't got the robot showed now you can if

you want to, but you don't got to. A tear

can be prayer, a whisper can be prayer. Sometimes the boldest,

biggest prayer that you can say is God help me.

Sometimes you don't have what it.

Takes to say all the soliloquies and know all the

scriptures when you pray. But if you know that you

got a God who's leaned down to hear you, you

gonna say something because there is a power that is

released to us through the act of prayer. And that's

what Jesus did in this situation. He didn't go at

it alone. He didn't power it through it. He decided

to pray. Last one is empowerment. And Luke Luca is

the only gospel who says this about this story Luke

twenty two and forty three. It talks about how Jesus

is praying, and then it says, then an angel from

heaven appeared and strengthened him. Fourth and final thing, and

I want to end like this. There is a power

that is available to you and myself when we say

yes to God and we receive that gift of salvation.

Jesus left this earth and he said, I'm gonna leave.

But the only reason I'm leaving is because I'm sending

you something greater.

There is a power.

The spirit of God lives on the inside of you.

And do you know what that means? That in a

very natural world we get to live supernaturally. That means

we have something that the world cannot give us. And

as the saints old saints say, the world cannot take away.

I remember one time, if you know anything about me

and my husband's story. We didne have been through hell

and back, and in our first couple of years of marriage,

we used to argue, like nobody's business.

I want to practically.

Apply this, okay, cause when we talk about the Holy

Spirit sometimes to an ethereal thing, let me bring it

down to your house, okay. So we used to argue

all the time, I mean, anything was set off an

argument because we were just so broken, so triggered all

the time, always crashing out on one another. And I'll

never forget One day we were in an argument and

I went to another room and I said to the

Holy Spirit, I don't even know if I fully believed

it when I said it, but I said, I need patience.

I need patience. And that's really all I got out.

Didn't know if I fully believed it, didn't know if

it was gonna happen, but I knew what I did

not have the offer at the time, and that was patience.

And I kid you not, this is something that happens

on the inside of you as a believer, that there

are times where you will ask for something and you

will feel the answer to that prayer in the moment.

And I was standing in this room, and I asked

the Holy Spirit for that. By the time I walked

over the threshold of the door to walk out of

that room, I had what I know only came from heaven,

patience that was long suffering in that moment. Do you

know what kind of power lives on the inside of you?

Do you understand that the God of all creation lives

on the inside of you? And not just so you

can go do big exploits, and not just so you

can go become a millionaire, and not so you can

just go get married, not just those things I need.

In the conversations that you're having, I'm talking about in

the moments where you feel alone and you want to

sink into your feelings and you.

Say, God, I need some joy.

I don't know where I'm gonna get that joy from,

but I need some joy. And the moments where you

feel like you're about to crash out and everybody about

to get it because you got your dukes up right now,

you say, God, I need some peace, and you know

I'm a fighter and I need some peace. There are

so many moments where we negate this power that lives

on the inside, this power that we have because of

the God that we serve. And what I want to

say to you today is the same thing Jesus said

in Matthew eleven. Do you want to live a different way?

Do you want a different way to live where the

triggers don't have to be as triggering, Where the crash

out doesn't have to be the way that you cope,

Where you can be vulnerable and true and honest about

the emotions that you're feeling. Where you can find a

community that actually doesn't see you as a burden. They

are a burden that they want to carry. That you

can be in a place where the things that used

to take you out set you off and emotionally disturb

you to the point of not being able to see

straight that God can heal you from that. There's a

power on the inside of you. And when we crash

out cope. Essentially, what we're saying is that power ain't

strong enough today. I think God wants to open up

all of our eyes to this empowerment that He wants

to give us. That yes, I am a devout believer

in therapy and making sure you have tools and breathing techniques,

all the things, because I do believe God uses very

practical things to help us not crash out. And at

the same time, a very practical thing that he also

offers us is his spirit that's a teacher and a comforter,

and it's gentle and it delights in the details of

your life, and it wants to know what's upsetting you

and how can I help you. Jesus went up.

To blind Bartimaeus. It was obvious what his issues were.

He was blind, and yet Jesus said to him, what

do you want me to do.

Today?

We don't have to live the way that we've been living.

In whatever little way. God is speaking to you individually

and your situation. Imagine Jesus standing in front of you saying,

what do you want me to do? Because that power

lives on the inside of you. Let's pray God, we

are so grateful for who you are in our lives.

Thank you for being a God that gives us a

way of escape for everything that we want to crash out,

every time we want to crash out, every trigger that

comes our way. You've created a way that looks like

your son, one that includes community, one that includes obedience,

one that includes prayer and goodness. Your empowerment. Today, God,

will you empower us to live a different way than

the way we've lived before. Then, even just yesterday, and

the triggers that don't seem that big, don't seem like

that big of a deal, even those are invitations for transformation. Today,

we surrender ourselves to you over and over again. Have

your way in us in the name of Jesus. While

every head is bound in every eye closed. Somebody in

this room today are watching online today you want to

receive this free gift of salvation. With this freak gift,

there's so many things that come with it, one of

them being the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. And today,

if you want to receive that gift, all you have

to do is pray a prayer, confess with your mouth,

and believe in your heart, and just like that, you're saved. So,

if you want to say that prayer with me, if

you want to receive that gift of salvation, I'm going

to ask you to say this prayer with me. And

because we're a family here at Transformation Church, I'm gonna

ask everybody to repeat this prayer after me. Say, Dear God,

I admit I made mistakes. I admit I need a savior.

I ask that you change my heart, that you change

my motives, that you changed my life. I believe you lived,

you die, and you rose again. So change me, renew me,

and transform me. I'm yours in the name of Jesus.

We pray and everybody says Amen, Amen, Amen,