Naked and Unashamed

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

All right, good morning, Awakening Church.

So uh good to be with you this Sunday.

Thanks for greeting one another.

Hope you guys are having a good Sunday here today.

My name's Dave.

If we've never met before, one of the pastors here at Awakening.

And guys, we're actually concluding our Unalone Teaching series as we're going through the book of Oh, wait, what is you guys are good.

All right, good.

Hey, how's it going?

All right.

Aries, how you doing, buddy?

Good?

Awesome.

All right, good.

I want to make sure everybody's greeted.

Okay.

All right.

But we're we're finishing up our Alone Teaching series, and we're going to continue on through the book of Genesis, but with this series right now, but actually we're concluding it today.

And uh, I want to first start off by introducing to you my companion up here on stage.

This is uh Addy, okay?

Uh it was gonna be Adam, but it was a half a man, so we just named it Addy, so we just kind of kept it short.

Addy's been hugely helpful for me.

I mean, you need to know this.

I can drive with just good conscience in the carpool lane right now, and it's been incredibly helpful.

Um, I've actually uh wanted a full-size mannequin.

However, the team felt like a full-size mannequin standing here naked would be too distracting.

I don't know.

So I'm gonna take a survey.

How many people feel like that would have been a little too distracting?

I'm just curious.

Okay, okay, all right.

Uh, how many people feel like it's just too distracting right now?

Like, oh, some hands there too.

Okay, all right.

So we'll go ahead and cover this up.

All right, okay, there we go.

All right, good.

So don't want to distract you.

Okay.

Guys, why is it that we get so uneasy around nakedness?

I mean, I see sheep that are sheared and I start to blush, you know?

I mean, but aren't we supposed to get back to the goodness of the garden where we are naked and without shame?

Uh this is actually uh, there's actually a very small and eccentric community within the Christian community that believes this very thing on a literal level.

They're known as Christian nudists, or as they prefer to be called, Christian naturists.

Caution, do not Google.

Okay, all right, it leads you down a very troublesome path.

Now, there are there are these few and select churches.

They worship and experience Christian community in the nude, and they actually base their theological foundation around the central verse that we are going to be studying here today in Genesis 2.25, which reads this Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Now, an example of how one of these non den non-denominational Christian naturist or nudist churches defend their position to regularly gather and worship fully naked follows right here.

We seek to honor God through the Lord Jesus Christ and affirm the goodness of our bodies exactly as God created them.

The sin that Adam and Eve committed was not being naked, the sin they committed was to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Being naked cannot possibly have been a sin, have been a sin for Adam and Eve as they were created and lived naked in the presence of God.

We believe that it was and is God's design for us to be nude.

No one can seriously contend that God intended for the only two humans on the planet to hide their nudity from one another.

And so, guys, this is a really good opportunity that I do want to take.

Uh, just to announce something that Awakening is getting the launch.

Uh, but we have a new uh church plant.

We're calling it a nakeding, okay?

Um and there's a QR code on the bottom there if you want to be a part of the launch team.

Uh guys, this is the new coke of Awakening.

I want you to know.

I mean, it's gonna be everything just like we have at Awakening.

All the seats will be Christian, though.

I want you to know, heat is always gonna be on, okay?

All right, ha ha ha.

Okay.

Some dad jokes there.

I actually admire these Christian nudists and their heart for intimacy.

And actually seeking to actually like defend their position with scripture.

Uh, but I actually would like to seriously contend their theological position.

You see, this distortion that we have going on now is actually nothing new.

You need to understand that this was a part of the second century early church.

There were actually Christians that worshipped in the nude.

They called themselves Adamites.

And not surprising, they had the same biblical rationale, and they were labeled as heretics.

And so I'm in agreement with many scholars that conclude that Adam and Eve were never intended to remain naked in the physical sense, but only in the spiritual and the emotional sense.

Because the creation story in Genesis 2, it shows a garden.

Yes, that it was unspoiled, but hear me on this, it was unfinished.

With God inviting humanity to actually participate in the creative work.

And so humanity is meant to expand the creative work started by God.

We see this illustrated with Adam as he was able to name the animals.

This creative act was to continue in building infrastructure and technology and art and yes, even clothing.

It's what theologians have termed improvisation or the delegated responsibility or participation of creation.

Seeing human humanity as actually sort of these Minecraft sub-creators, these co-rulers with and under the authority of God.

So, was humanity meant to physically be naked, and is that our call to return to as Christians?

I don't think so.

I've got bad news.

The church plant is off, okay?

I just want you to know that.

Alright.

Thankfully, there were no t-shirt orders that we had to cancel.

Alright, this is a not a lot of swag needed for that church.

Okay, alright, alright.

Guys, we still have to wrestle with this fact though.

That there is a nakedness that we are designed for.

Church, there's a nakedness that we yearn for.

Ryan said this in week one of our unalone series.

That longing for something more isn't a flaw.

It's a clue, a signpost pointing us back to the way that we were made.

And so awakening is we have left Eden.

Eden has not left us.

And so, what does it mean for us to be naked?

Or as they say, go commando.

So this morning we're gonna better understand the implic implications of commando living, examining what it means to be commando after creation, after the curse, and also after the cross.

Are you ready to journey with me?

It sounded apprehensive, and after that start, warranted, warranted.

Let's examine commando living after creation.

We find in Genesis 2.25 is actually a summary statement statement of the section that Ryan actually taught on last week, starting in verse 18.

I'm gonna put pick apart a few of the verses in that section.

It says this the Lord said, It is not good for man to be alone.

I will make a helper suitable for him.

Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib, he had taken out of man, and he brought her to the man.

The man said, This is now my bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.

This is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Now, as Ryan outlined the intent of this passage addressing the marriage relationship, it also has simultaneous implications on the core foundations of what it originally meant to be in a human relationship with one another.

In Genesis, we discover that God allows Adam to come face to face with his incompleteness.

That though he was supposed to be made in God's image, he wasn't fully reflecting or imaging his creator yet.

Because our God is one God, yet three distinct persons, complete, equal, interdependent relationship with one another.

And so for the first time we discover this that if we are truly going to image our God, it demands plurality.

If you're gonna image God, it demands community.

Therefore, through a bizarre cloning operation, God provides a rescuer taken from Adam just to ensure that there would be no question in woman's humanity, that there would be no question in woman's equality.

God makes two persons from one being to not only reflect his plurality, but then to set in motion their mandate to fill the earth and to expand his image-driven community.

And so Moses then puts the finishing touches on everything that he's writing here, and that's where he ends all of this in summary with Genesis 2.25.

Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.

They felt no shame.

Thousands of years ago, in modern day Iraq, is the first ever nudist colony where God, the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, man and woman were all living together, complete transparency, intimacy, oneness with one another.

Adam and Eve, they felt no shame because they had this unabashed innocence, this transparency, this confidence in themselves and also in each other.

Yes, Adam and Eve were going commando in the garden, but hear me, it was more so a nakedness on a relational level between themselves and between their creator.

A harmonious environment of safety and dignity and mutual submission, equality and harmony.

This is the commando living we are designed for and we now yearn for following the curse.

As we've been studying when it comes to this series, our utopia was actually fractured by our own doing, casting us out of Eden.

Due to humanity's rebellion toward God, one act of disobedience shattered community with God, with creation, and with each other.

We actually see some of the immediate results of Adam and Eve's sin as it's written in Genesis 3 here.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened.

They realized that they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Now I don't have a fig leaf.

This is my only shout out to Palm Sunday, guys.

I tried desperately to connect this to Palm Sunday.

I'm sorry for you, church, you know, calendar enthusiasts.

I tried to connect it, find some sort of connect.

There isn't any, and it got very heretical.

All right, so verse 8.

They hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

The man answered, I heard you got in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.

Then the man said, The woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.

What was once naked innocence and the presence of God turned to hiding behind bushes and guilt and shame.

What was once complete oneness and intimate intimacy immediately dissolved into coverings and fear and suspicion and accusations and isolation.

What was once mutual servanthood, and there was this dual partnership dissolved into power struggles and hierarchy.

Just a few verses later, Adam gives the woman a new name, Eve, meaning mother, reducing and manipulating her identity to just one function.

From this point on within the scriptures, nakedness is always, always equated with shame.

Going commando after the curse is much different than after creation.

It's ruined our relationships, it's perverted our self-image.

And so, guys, what does it mean for us today?

How do we get back to Eden where we are fully known, where we are fully seen, and where we are fully accepted?

Adam realized it was not good for him to be alone and he needed a rescuer.

It's usually not good for me to be alone up here.

I need a rescuer.

So I'm going to invite uh area pastor David Alvarez to join me up here.

Uh, and he's also the leader of Healing Path Ministry.

So can we welcome David?

Hi, David.

Mike's on.

There we go.

Rude of me, Addy.

Yeah.

Okay, all right.

So David, I can think of no better person to just help us take this journey when it comes to really being known and seen.

This is you, this is the work you do.

Right.

Um, some people here may not know the work you do, so tell us a little bit about just your uh just decades-long of healing ministry and just what you do here uh as far as uh healing path and being an area pastor here.

Right.

So I moved up uh to the Bay Area in 2001 to take a position with the church in San Jose.

Uh I was the healing pastor.

And uh six months in I realized all these 20-somethings who were millionaires on paper uh were pretty broken.

Uh during uh in between services, they'd all be out there, and you could feel the relational and sexual tension.

I mean, it was just palpable.

And so I thought, you know, I think I'm gonna write a curriculum to kind of help young men and young women really uh develop their skills uh to become more whole and mature people.

And so I wrote a 10-week curriculum called The Healing Path, and we began, you know, we began to really uh look inward uh to see what was driving us outward.

You know, I always say that we look at the past to see how it influences the present.

And so um by 2005 I had written uh a second iteration of 2.0 because the thirst and the hunger for healing was tremendous.

We had people coming from San Francisco, people from Gilroy and Hollister, and I know nothing about marketing, it was all word of mouth.

And so what it told me was there is a hunger for healing, there's a thirst uh for more.

And that's when I eventually uh left staff and started the nonprofit, the healing path ministries, and I go into other churches and do the program and train and equip their leaders to to sew it into the church.

That's awesome.

Yeah, and you've been doing this kind of ministry, whether it's healing path or just healing ministry for years, and some of it stems from your upbringing.

And so when we're talking about, we've all experienced the fall, the brokenness of sin, and we've all experienced it early on.

And when you and I have sat down, um, I love sitting down with David, we get coffee regularly, and just hearing your story is powerful.

Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like for you growing up and how it relates to that scene in the garden of shame and hiding and all of that?

Yeah, right.

So I grew up in a very shame-based Latino culture and with a very abusive stepfather.

And here I was, five, six years old, looking to him to uh delight in me, looking to him to call me forth uh away from my mother and stuff, and all he did was humiliate humiliate me, all he did was criticize me.

And so eventually uh I just began to shrink inwardly.

I just began to believe that I was stupid, that I was nothing, that I would never amount to anything.

These were all the words of death that he spoke over me.

And so this really was shame.

I felt defective, I felt weak, I felt, I lived what I call under a low ceiling, didn't see myself going to college or anything like that because he had he had really left me so fractured, I had little to no belief in myself because of the shame and the weight of the shame that I felt.

And eventually, when I became a Christian at 19, I to hide my shame, I became what I called the Christian good boy.

And so, uh, can you come early and put up the chairs?

Yes.

Can you stay late and put them away?

Yes.

So I had a very large yes muscle, and I had an atrophied no muscle, and that's the good boy and the good girl.

They're always willing to do things because we're looking for uh our unmet childhood needs to get satisfied through the pats on the head, through the adulation and applause of people, you know, as they call us forth to give us their certificate for being such a wonderful servant.

And so it is a it's a mask.

Yeah.

It's standing with a lot of shame and hiding and keeping everybody.

It's manipulation.

I was manipulating people through my good boy facade.

Yeah.

All rooted in my shame.

I don't believe I have worth, I believe that I'm defective, I believe that I'm weak.

I will never amount to anything.

You saw this in yourself, and it's a continued battle that we all have.

You're a spiritual physician that has worked in the healing ministry of this kind of of this kind of ministry for for years.

Right.

Is it the same thing?

As you kind of step back and just look at the world in general and the people you interact with, is tell us a little bit of the shame and hiding that you're seeing and and what we can relate to.

Right.

Well, I mean, it's it's across the board with the old, the middle-aged, and especially the young these days.

It's all, you know, we live in this hyper-curated culture now, and it's all rooted in perfectionism, perfectionism to to look good on Instagram, to look good on TikTok, and it's just it and it's all to me uh the hiding of weakness, uh, the hiding of being vulnerable.

And so it all really goes against what really God is calling us to do is to live out of our true selves, to live out of the fullness of who He's called us to be, and yet we've allowed the world to shape us in the area of our hiddenness, our uh not allowing people to see our weakness and stuff.

And so um, and perfectionism, and perfectionists will always tell me, no, no, no, I don't hate myself.

But uh, I actually in 2005 wrote a teaching specifically because there was so much perfectionism in our classes, and it's rooted in self-hatred, and underlying that perfectionism is self-hatred.

And so when a perfectionist fails, they treat themselves with so much self-contempt, and it's just it's the culture we live in now.

I mean, it just politically look what's going on.

I mean, just across the board, I mean, it's it's everywhere, and like I told you earlier, the shame that I came under was obvious.

I think for a lot of people the shame they come under is very subtle.

Oh, you gotta be on your report card?

Well, you can do better, and in a way, that's saying to the young boy or the young girl, this isn't good enough.

And then you begin to internalize that as I'm not good enough, right?

Yeah, you see why he's here?

It's like, ouch, all right, yeah, and I totally we relate, we relate with this, right?

Because the thing about Adam and Eve is not that this event happened and it happened, it's that it keeps happening, right?

We all continue to live in brokenness, operating outside of our design, coming up short in our relationships, seeing ourselves with a with a perverted self-image, but thankfully, as we know, there's good news.

And if you don't know this, listen, because it's really good news.

You see, early in the fall, what we find is that God had a plan.

He had a plan to take our shame and he covers it with his grace.

We see this early on in Genesis 3.21.

It says this the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and Eve.

And he clothed them.

Thank you.

You get the point.

Due to our sin, we have the first actually sacrifice of an innocent animal to cover our shame.

But guys, this is a foreshadowing of the final and perfect sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf because God moves decisively, he moves permanently to solve our sin problem by placing his sinless son naked in.

On a cross to become our shame.

First Peter chapter 2, verse 22 states, He bore our guilt.

1 Peter 2:22

Prophet Isaiah actually forecasted this in 6110.

He says, I delight greatly in the Lord, my soul in the Lord, my soul rejoices in my God, for he has clothed me with garments of salvation, arrayed me in the robe of righteousness.

This is why Paul says that when we trust in Jesus' work on the cross and trust him as our leader and our rescuer, that we have a new identity.

He actually says we are clothed with Christ.

And so we are indwelled with the Holy Spirit, grafted into the family of God, and that during our time of judgment, God doesn't see our sin.

He doesn't see our guilt.

He sees the righteousness of Christ covering us.

Now, with that said, God still leverages guilt to continually draw us to Him.

Paul says this in 2 Corinthians 7.10 godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation.

So, yeah, we see guilt, we see godly sorrow as nothing more than the realization is I did something bad.

And it actually can be a positive force to help move us towards change.

Shame is the toxin, as you know, Renee Brown has said much on this, I am bad.

And it forces us to hide and alienate.

And despite our trust in Jesus, the problem of shame, the problem of hiding is still real and active because yes, conversion is immediate and perfection will one day come in heaven.

But right now we live in this now not yet kingdom of God where transformation is both really hard and beautiful, and it takes the entire earthly life that we have here.

And so, David, on this side of the cross, I would love for us to talk about the people, the places, and also uh the practices that are essential to help us experience this transformational commando living.

So let's first talk about the practices because the transformative work of commando living, we hope to return to first starts with ourselves and our personal practices.

Because you need to understand the Christian life is not just what you believe about Jesus, it's also what you believe about yourself through the filter of God's truth.

And so, David's shame has no place in the Christian life.

What are the personal practices, holy habits you have experienced and continue just so that you can grow a proper God sense of your God-given worth and value to then be seen and accepted by others?

Right.

You had mentioned Brene Brown, so I'm gonna just say something quick and then I'll get to the practices.

She says that shame either makes you become big or small.

And for me, obviously, I became very small.

My older brother, Stephen, became very big, very macho, very tough, very aggressive.

But he was just as broken as me.

He just hit it differently.

That's always the thing that's surprising with narcissists that the root of it is shame.

And you're like, really?

Like, it but the root of it is shame, and that's such an interesting thing.

All right, go on.

So practices.

Obviously, uh the reading of scripture has really helped me.

You know, one of the things we give out at Healing Paths is a three-page uh printout of who am I in Christ?

And it's just walks you through of who you are and the scriptures that are related to it.

And so I'm a big believer in reading scripture, but not reading it just to read it, but to really uh think about it.

What does it mean that I'm more than a conqueror in Christ, you know?

And so I dwell on these things.

I I kind of chew on them and stuff and and and ask the Lord, help me to live in the way uh that you're calling me to live through these scriptures and stuff.

And so scripture reading is really, really key for me.

Finding robust community.

And that takes a while.

Believe me when I tell you that.

Not everybody, uh to say healing path isn't for everybody.

You know, everybody, I mean, it's hard to find men who want to uh stand naked and unashamed.

And over the years I've gathered a group of probably six, seven, eight guys who um I would get together with and stuff.

But the pandemic, a lot of them moved to go buy homes in Texas and Idaho and Oregon and stuff, but we still have that bond.

Uh my birthday was in February, and one of them came into town, two of the other guys, we all went out to Half Moon Bay, got fish and chips.

Uh they rented a cyber truck, pulls up in front of my house.

I'm like, what?

And so uh, but just the conversation, and we did the auto drive thing, nobody was touching the style.

It was like a ride at Disneyland.

And so uh, but it's like we pick up where we left off.

We we sure we love the 49ers and the Warriors and the Giants and stuff, but we also love to talk about marriages and ministry and life, and it's it's this robust community where at the end of the night you don't want it to end.

You don't want it to end because there's such a there's there's a bonding, there's an attaching there that really, really, it just breaks the power of our shame.

And the third thing is journaling.

And I I brought my journal, and um, I'm gonna read to you.

I wrote something in 1997, and this isn't journaling's important because it helps you, especially men, to process what you're actually feeling.

To feel shame is to feel seen in a painfully diminished sense.

Whether all eyes are upon me or only my own, I feel deficient in some vital way as a human being.

And in the grip of shame, an urgent need to escape or hide may come upon me.

Shame is an impotence-making experience because it feels as though there is no way to relieve the matter, no way to restore the balance of things.

Feeling exposed opens myself to painful inner scrutiny.

It is as though my eyes inexplicably turn inward.

I'm suddenly watching myself scrutinizing critically the minutest detail of my being.

And at this point, I'm thinking everyone else in the room is doing the same thing.

They are finding me lacking.

So when I try to voice my inner pain and need, I feel immobilized, trapped, and alone in the ambivalence of my shame.

This has hindered me in my ability to acknowledge my need for Jesus in the weak, sinful, broken areas of my life.

That is shame.

That is the processing of shame.

That is what really helped me with journaling was I was beginning to be able to name some of those inner emotions.

Anger's easy, because anger's powerful.

That's why we love anger, because it makes us look powerful.

But these other emotions that were dormant within me that I had suppressed for so many years began to come out as I journaled.

And that was significant.

I've got so many of these journals in my uh my home is frightening.

And uh, but that really, really helped me to excise some of the damaging uh words that were spoken over me.

So good.

Yeah.

There's no silver bullet in any of this, but I think the thing that's really essential that David hit right in the beginning is that we've got to go vertically before we ever go horizontally internally.

We we we look we have to grasp to that filter of truth through scripture, but then as we move internally through uh journaling and then also then move horizontally towards others.

And this is why we continuously encourage you when it comes to that looking vertically first, why we encourage you to be a part of our Bible reading programs.

Uh, because it's essential, it's the number one catalyst for our spiritual growth and gives us the foundation of how we need to be seeing ourselves, how God sees us.

And so just a reminder: application number one, super simple.

We have a holy week reading plan starting today.

There's a QR code on the connection card, just go there, it'll take you to that.

And just journey with us as we journey really through the steps of Jesus as he goes, you know, in and through the cross, and we remind ourselves that we are resurrected people of a resurrected God who is deeply and madly in love with us.

That is a truth that we need to continue to hold uh forever.

All right, so David, we've talked about a little of the practices.

You mentioned this a little, but I'd love to go a little bit deeper into the people, because practices uh can be incredibly anchoring for our souls, especially in the midst of spiritual war, but they also give us then the confidence to find people where we can be known, fully known, and fully seen.

And the research continues to show this, and scripture continues to show this, is that we can only grow to the extent we are known.

We can only be loved to the extent we are known.

We can only be healed to the extent we are known.

The psychology of vulnerability actually has done a lot of research on this.

And they actually have this chart here, which is similar to the Johari window.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, but it's a little bit like it.

Um, and you can see it on the screen there as well, too.

But essentially, not known, not accepted, isolation, not or uh not accepted, known, rejected, not known, accepted, impression management, and this is the commando living.

This takes us back to Eden, intimacy, accepted, and fully known.

And so uh the research continues to show that when we're in this space, it actually makes us better people.

You need to understand that.

It makes you a better student, it makes you a better leader, makes you a better family member.

This is why God continues to direct us back to Eden of being fully known, fully seen, fully accepted.

Uh essentially, this is therefore, here's what I'm gonna challenge you with.

We need to find our shems and we need to find our Japheths while remaining cautious with our Hams.

Not the best word I know with a teaching around nakedness.

Let me explain.

Okay.

You see, later on in our Genesis series, we're gonna be reading about Noah, the flood, and his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

And following the flood, what we're gonna find is the most righteous man in the land, Noah, gets slammed, drunk, passes out in his tent, naked.

Again, nakedness is always associated with shame.

And so what we find is that when Ham finds his dad in his tent, fully exposed, naked, shame, he immediately runs out embarrassed, and he tells his brothers Shem and Japheth.

And this is an example of just guys how gossip can be cloaked as like, I'm just passing on information, but really the intent is to fuel accusation and blame.

But when Shem and Japheth hear the news, they don't freak out and tattletale.

When they see, and they actually don't even see, when they see Noah completely naked like this, shame-filled, the scriptures say this.

Shem and Japheth, they took a garment, they laid it across their shoulders, they walked backwards and covered their father's naked body.

Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.

A beautiful act of grace.

A beautiful act of redemption, of acceptance.

And as a result of this incident, Ham is cursed, which is like, oh, guys, I can't take a break.

His name's Ham.

But and then Shem and Japeth, they're blessed.

And so, Dave, David, as we return to Eden, it means having relationships where we can be naked, exposing our real selves, the good, the bad, the ugly, and yet still be blanketed with grace.

And so, how do we find the Shems, the Japheths in our world that can where we can just be fully known and fully seen and also fully accepted and covered with the grace of God?

Tell us, how do we find these people?

Well, I always lead with my story, not the complete story, just part of my story.

And when I first came up here in 2001, I wanted to meet the people in the church, so I started inviting people to lunch all the time.

And I would talk to them, share a little about myself, and they'd look at me wide-eyed and they'd say, Where have you been?

I've been wanting this kind of you know, uh conversation with somebody to really talk about some of the painful things in my life.

So leading with our story is important.

It's also connecting to those friends of yours you're closest with and beginning to challenge them and say, Hey, do you want to enter into this?

I see some of my guys here from uh our Monday night group, and these guys were hanging out after group and stuff, meeting for coffee and stuff, and grabbing meals and stuff.

And to me, it's just like there there's a hunger and a thirst for more.

And so they're gonna look and connect to those people who want to go there.

And for a lot of us, the shame and the fear is so deep, we just we can't go there.

And I get it, I understand it.

Uh, for those of us who've been traumatized, there are two things we need.

Uh, are you safe?

Are you safe?

And can I trust you?

Can I trust you with the secrets of my heart that you won't go?

And that's a strict rule and healing path, confidentiality, which you hear in that small group, you cannot share with anyone.

Yeah, if you do, yeah, you're gonna get the right foot of fellowship.

Yeah, yeah.

And it and it it takes like some intentionality, it's nothing that happens overnight.

It's it's I think just trying to think through who has got in my life has in my life.

Is there someone that I need to be praying for?

And it's small steps.

You know, for me, I'm I'm thankful for the Shem in my life, uh, where I can just have my authentic self be there without judgment, without embarrassment.

I mean, nothing ever changes uh Mark's love for me and acceptance.

Uh he no every time he reminds me stop beating yourself up over my short temper, my propensity to manipulate, my perfection to seek approval, but to simply rest in the person who God already is assisting, insisting who I am, a loving child of God.

And so when I'm with Mark, man, hiding in the dark is just I'm healed.

I'm healed when I come out in the light.

And shame, guys, always withers.

It always withers in the midst of empathy, in the midst of love, and he just blankets me with that.

And he also has healthy correction, too.

And so here's application number two, guys.

Is there a person of deep acceptance and courage in your life whom you might develop such a relationship with?

Ask God to guide you to that person or to surface that person.

Take it slow.

See how the person just handles and reciprocates just a small appropriate disclosure.

Are they a sham or are they a ham?

You know, if the foundations of transformational friendship are there, just begin to cultivate it.

And hear me on this too.

This doesn't exclude the need for a counselor or therapist to complement disclosure or to address more complex issues like trauma or addiction.

Now, David, we talked about practices, people.

Let's talk about the other essential for commando living, and that is to how do we cultivate spaces and places that we also need for commando living?

Because part of introducing the healing path was not only to allow people to enter into healing, treading in those deep waters of authenticity, but the hope was that we would gradually raise the level of authenticity, commando living within our entire church.

Now we know that with religious institutions, many of them swim in this impression management zone, right?

With religious institutions.

And even certain cultures have a higher propensity towards that, where we just perform, like you said, the good boy, good girl sort of performance thing.

But if we're to grow while also better reflecting God's kingdom of this Eden commando-like living, our desire to be known and accepted must become greater than our desire to hide and self-protect.

And so, David, as we find these individuals where we can be fully known, fully seen, how do we create just appropriate spaces where there's heightened uh witnessing of levels of vulnerability and that they're grown and that they're celebrated?

Right.

Um well, do you know the way that I started it uh back in 2001 was I began to do small book groups.

I would find, like there's a book out right now, Healing What's Within by Chuck DeGroat, and we're gonna go through that at my church this summer.

But I found books that dealt with issues internally, and I'd gather five or six guys and we'd we'd meet at the church, and we would re share what we found in the book, and then we'd begin to answer hard questions.

What is challenging for you right now in your marriage?

What is challenging for you right now in your career and stuff?

What is challenging for you in your spirituality right now?

And so um those were one of the spaces uh uh the women in the church went through a book called The Artist Way, and they started with like three women and eventually grew to like 30, 40, but it was really helping women to recover that creative part of them that had been damaged through abuse.

There's a way in which abuse, especially sexual abuse, shuts down a woman's creativity.

And we had a group, and it started with three women, and then like a fire, it just burned.

And so uh, but I do a lot of my stuff in coffee shops like you.

I meet one-on-one with people and stuff, and then they want to bring a friend, and I'm sure bring a friend and stuff, so like that.

So you tend to start small, and if it's really going well, all of a sudden you'll begin to see other people who are invited in, uh, and then all of a sudden they sit in and they think, Yes, this is this is what I want.

I mean, during the uh break time, I had a wonderful chat with a young woman in here, and it was like we just bonded because we spoke the same language.

That's cool.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely.

And it's it's a reminder, like you've heard this before, we don't need a cure, we just need an empathetic witness, right?

This is what James was saying about like confess, go public.

Then the healing begins.

When we look at most of the spiritual movements throughout Christendom, they usually start with this public confession and they're rooted in that.

And so here's a question just how do we ease into the waters of disclosure, being more known, seen in our current spaces with our groups here at Awakening, maybe with a family member, maybe with a friend, that we start just working these new muscles.

I just want to give you uh application number three, and this comes from Pete and Jerry Schizero.

They're uh sort of renowned experts in the land of like emotional spiritual uh healing and connection within community.

And they have this uh chart called Community Temperature Reading, and you can actually find this at, and I want to make sure you can at uh emotional healing, excuse me, emotionallyhealthy.org.

But this is just a way in which it allows you to have these prompts where you can engage in a small group or you can engage with a friend, and each prompt takes you to higher levels of vulnerability, some appreciations or excitements, like I'm excited that, I appreciate that, some worries or concerns.

You know, I'm worried about this, or I'm puzzled why you did this.

Instead of creating a narrative, which we like to do, I'm just gonna get it out there and say, this is what I'm puzzled about with our situation right now.

Uh some claims complaints, some possible solutions.

You know what?

I notice when you do this, it really does this to me.

This is what I prefer.

Oh, that's pretty vulnerable.

Like we're getting there, right?

And then it's like new information, like there's something new that you don't know that I'm gonna share.

And then, man, here's some of my hopes and dreams.

Uh, this can be, I've used this before.

Tried it with my family once, it was a train wreck.

Um, but anyway, yeah, so uh they just weren't ready, all right?

Which uh actually gets me to like just three words of caution when it comes to disclosure, okay?

Uh first, it caution's sharing too much too fast when the rapport isn't there.

Uh we don't need more exhibitionists, all right?

So just go slow.

Uh second, never force someone to be vulnerable who isn't ready.

Right.

Coercion is for cults, okay?

So just model it, just model it, encourage vulnerability while celebrating uh those brave disclosures.

And finally, uh, we have to say this in our world today, but some things like abuse and Evil upon the vulnerable, they do need to be exposed, okay?

Whether or not the offender wants it to or not.

Their title track Take Me Back to Eden.

Uh, there's a rising metal band right now, sleep token.

And uh any fans?

Okay, all right.

Uh I'm going to see him in Oakland.

All right.

Uh they say this.

I guess it goes to show, does it not, that we've no idea what we've got until we lose it.

Guys, our journey back to Eden, it's reminded us of what we have lost.

And that that we actually don't need to change our church's name to a nakeding.

We don't have to get naked, right?

To just have commando living.

That though we ruined perfect intimacy of being fully known and fully accepted, our God has blanketed us with his grace.

Help me again, David.

He's blanketed us with his grace through the sacrifice of his son.

As followers of Jesus, guys, we now have a confidence of one day fully returning to Eden.

But now, in this present day, we remain committed to our own personal transformation and to the restoration of our communities.

We want to be a foretaste of his coming kingdom where we are fully known, fully seen, fully accepted with his love and with his grace, because then we are imaging our creator as we have deep connection with one another.

And so awakening, may we grow in our practices of just anchoring ourselves in the truth of what is already true about who we are in Jesus.

May we find people where we can fully disclose our brokenness and weakness, reciprocate it with empathy and acceptance and accountability, and may we cultivate places that gently encourage and welcome our real, authentic commando selves filled with doubts and weaknesses and goodness and failures.

Part of David's shepherding uh of Healing Path are these pastoral letters.

And I wasn't a part of Healing Path, I was a part of something different six years ago, and it was five days a week, eight hours of therapy, it was terrible.

Uh but good.

Um but uh I was the one to send these letters out.

And he has always the salutation, he sends it after each session, and he sends out these letters with the salutation, dear ones, and he gives them love, he gives the participants encouragement.

And I had the privilege of just reading through these and just how powerful they were.

And so for our benediction today, I just asked David, I just said, Hey, would you give us, dear ones, a letter as uh of love and challenge to just be a part of our benediction?

And so, um, first, can we thank David for serving us today?

Yeah.

And how about this for our uh benediction?

Can we all stand together as he reads this over us?

Dear ones, the psalmist writes in Psalm 34, verses four and five, I sought the Lord and he answered me.

He delivered me from all my fears.

Those who look to him are radiant, their faces are never covered with shame.

This is a difficult and painful part of the journey.

Acknowledging our need for Jesus and inviting others into it is hard.

But you will learn how to wrestle with God just like Jacob did in the book of Genesis.

To stand naked and unashamed, we must struggle with God about our painful past.

In your intentional seeking of God, I encourage you to begin to pour out all the negative words and beliefs in your heart and allow God to bear your shame.

This can be with a trusted friend, by yourself, or through journaling.

As you listen, I pray that he would begin to speak his healing words to your thirsty soul.

Once you become one of his sheep that recognizes his voice, the process of healing gains tremendous momentum.

You will no longer listen to the old messages from your past that imprisoned you to shame.

And hopefully you will begin to identify trusted others who you can begin to pour out your heart to.

This process of deliverance will allow you to feel love and accept it.

The speaking of your truth will begin to deliver you from all your fears and shame.

That weight of fear and shame will begin to lose its power to keep you hidden.

This is my hope for awakening church, that it become a house of healing for the wounded, the weary, and wandering.

May your faces become radiant as you look to Him.

May you be free of the ways in which you were shamed and humiliated by one you look to for blessing.

And may you enter a season of listening prayer that breaks the power of these beliefs about yourself that have left you crippled.

I believe you can do this and more.

The Lord bless you.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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