Hello, Life: Out of the Shadows | Part 2

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.

Did you guys?

I'm sure you did, but if you didn't, tell me.

Did you play hide and seek growing up?

Yeah, yeah.

We got a class.

We already have applause for hide and seek.

Very good.

There you go.

You know, this hide and seek is funny.

It doesn't matter how old you are, you get into it.

Um finding the best hiding place, but this is something that you may not have, uh, depending, but hopefully most of you have.

Have you ever seen little kids play hide and seek?

It's hilarious, isn't it?

It's adorable, but it's hilarious because uh in finding the best place to hide, one will go behind the curtains and their feet, you know, is hanging out, and they're like, you can't see me.

You ever they actually say you can't see me when when you do that?

Or they're underneath the table and they're like, you can't, like, literally, you're looking at me.

I can see you, or hiding behind the there's just something uh to it.

Hide and seek, we do this.

Now here's the thing.

The truth is, the truth is we never grow up out of hiding.

We just grow more sophisticated in our hiding.

We don't grow out of hiding, we actually continue that well into adulthood.

We hide our messes, don't we?

We hide our fears, we hide our doubts and we hide our failures.

And we have these shadows in our lives.

The shadows are those places that you don't want the light to shine too brightly.

It's the shadow of shame or regret, fear or failure.

And we hide these things because we believe if they are shown, if you see them, right?

This is why we do that.

If you actually saw me, all of me, you wouldn't like me.

You would reject me.

And so we still hide to this day.

What if there's a place so safe that the worst of me could be known?

And I would discover that I was not loved less, but more in the telling of it.

How do we step out of the shadows of shame, regret, and failure into the fullness of life?

We're in a series called Hello Life.

We're studying the letter of 1 John.

John, one of Jesus' closest friends and disciples, today is going to give us this roadmap for stepping out of the shadows into the fullness of life we desperately long for, but honestly we feel is maybe out of reach, or for other people, maybe not us.

And the first thing that John is gonna tell us when he's talking about how do we step out of these shadows, these shadow lands that that casts such a well, it casts a shadow, that's what it does on our life.

He tells us this life is found by walking in the light.

If we want to know where life is actually found, it's found by walking in the life.

Life is not found in faking it till you make it, but it's about reorienting to an entirely new way of life.

If you got your Bibles, would you open up to 1 John 1, verse 5?

1 John 1:5

If you have an actual Bible, you just go all the way to the end and flip over a couple pages.

Um, if you have a uh phone, it's real easy, you just hit a button.

1 John 1, 5 says this.

This is the message we've heard from him and declare to you.

God is light.

I want to tell you something about the nature of God, that he's light.

In him there is no darkness at all.

Now, if we claim to have fellowship, relationship, intimacy, connection with him, and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out of the truth.

But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his son, purifies us from all sin.

What he's saying here, life, the life you long for, the life we hope for, the life we dream of and ache for, is actually found by walking in the light.

And here's the reason why shadows suck the life out of us, don't they?

They just suck the life out of us.

It's the parts of us we don't want others to see.

We hide, we cover up, we present a version of ourself that at its best is partial or incomplete.

Believing, if you ever saw me, like we said earlier, you would reject me.

And so we have this imposter syndrome, don't we?

And John is gonna help us understand why is life found here and how do we begin to live in it?

First, he says, God is light.

God is not a version or like light, it's not a metaphor.

He's describing the very nature of God.

God is light, he is life.

There is nothing shady in God, there's nothing hidden.

He has no darkness about him.

In fact, James would say it this way: that every good and perfect gift comes down from your heavenly Father, the Father of heavenly lights, whom there is no shifting shadow.

Talking about Jesus, the disciple John would write this and say, In Jesus is life, the life of all man, the light for all humanity.

Like God is light, meaning that he is life.

Where there is no light, there is no life.

And light reveals, doesn't it?

The minute God shows up in the scene, there is no darkness, light, darkness flees in the presence of light, and it reveals what's actually there, and so it reveals reality, it reveals truth, and it reveals his purity and his holiness.

By the way, everything that is holy is healthy.

That is the nature and the state our souls long for.

Isolation, loneliness, because we hide in the shadows.

We have become comfortable with darkness.

We live in a world that's comfortable with darkness.

Darkness is the absence of light, the absence of life of truth and purity and holiness.

John talks about sin and darkness as one in the same in this context.

We don't talk much about sin anymore.

Honestly, because we don't like it.

It's not popular.

Don't call me a sinner, call me a mistaker, you know, that's fine.

I just made a mistake.

Sin literally means to miss the mark.

It is to fall short.

It's like an archer that is pulling back an arrow and aiming for a target and misses it completely.

That's sin.

Like, like there is a standard by upon which life is to be lived, and we've fallen short of that.

And sin ultimately separates.

It breaks things, it breaks our relationships with ourselves.

We live disintegrated lives, carrying stuff we were never intended to carry under the weight of guilt and shame.

It breaks relationships with others.

As we're never truly ourselves, and so never feel fully known and don't fully know another, and then the things that we do or don't do begin to disrupt and break down relationships and moves us more into hiding, doesn't it?

And then it breaks relationship with God.

What's interesting is one of our coping mechanisms for what we do with this is rather than adjust our lives to the light of what God says, what we've begun to do is just simply adjust God to our lives.

God, you come over here, you just agree with me, you because I don't want to deal with this.

And here's part of the reason why light reveals, doesn't it?

It exposes.

Light does not lie, it reveals, and so as a result, it is uncomfortable and wonderful all at the same time.

But we don't want to step out because we're afraid of what it will show.

I lived in Georgia for three years and I didn't know about bugs until Georgia.

And we would turn on the light in the middle of the night, and you all of a sudden you would see cockroaches scurry.

Yeah.

When I turned on the light, it didn't produce cockroaches, did it?

It just revealed what was already there.

What we don't want to do is we would rather ignore it, we'd rather keep the light off and never address it and just pretend like everything's okay.

Light reveals, but it also heals.

The light of God's grace, He doesn't bring light and shine light into your life to harm you, but to heal you, to bring freedom and restoration and life.

See, shame thrives in the darkness.

Shame thrives in the shadow.

Shame tells us that our worth is defined by our worst moments, that you're unlovable, that you're unredeemable.

We expect rejection.

Jesus brings restoration.

I don't know what you walked in today with.

What are the shadow lands that are casting over your life?

What do you feel like that you wouldn't share with a close friend or maybe your spouse?

That if God really knew, he just would reject you.

Jesus says, if we walk, I love that.

Life is found walking.

It's a pattern, it's a way of living of stop hiding, stop concealing.

Notice what it says, the blood of Jesus purifies, it brings healing.

He's like, What my heart for you is I don't want you to live in this.

I don't want you to experience the isolation.

I don't want you to experience the heartache and the pain and the weight.

I want to meet you there, but until you bring it into the light, you'll stay stuck.

And so, how do we do that?

How do we step out of the shadows and into the light?

This is an ancient, powerful practice that has been lost in our day.

It's the practice and discipline of confession.

Confession brings freedom, not condemnation.

Confession brings freedom.

Notice what John is going to say.

Confession is powerful.

It positions you to experience the grace of God in your life.

Confession moves you out of the shadows and into the light.

He says, if we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, though, if we what?

Help me out.

Try it again.

If we what?

That was decent.

If we what?

Come on, let's try it again.

If we what?

Confess.

Own up to.

This is me.

He is faithful.

Not based on your faithfulness, your ability, your standing.

He is faithful.

And he is just based on his righteousness.

He will forgive us our sins, purify us from all unrighteousness.

If we claim we've not sinned, we make him out to be a liar.

And his word is not in us.

One of the greatest invitations we have as followers of Jesus is to be honest.

To stop living a disintegrated, isolated, disconnected life filled with shame and guilt, and bring all of us before God.

And then when you do, you find you are fully accepted and fully forgiven.

How do you do that?

Let me just give you three phrases.

We gotta stop two things and start one thing.

You already kind of know the start of the one thing.

First thing we gotta do is we gotta stop pretending.

We gotta stop pretending.

He says if we claim to be without sin, we gotta stop faking it till we make it.

We live in an age where this is so much harder.

But we've always wrestled with this.

We gotta stop pretending.

We live in the social media age where what we present to the world is a curated version of our lives that presents the very best possible and yet it cuts out all of the rest.

We want people to think that we live this picture perfect life.

And so we filter every moment, we crop the picture, we only post the highlights because that's what everybody else is doing, and they're living their best lives, and so I have to somehow present something that is a version of me, but it doesn't tell the whole story.

Stop pretending.

We just stop.

You know what?

This is me.

What does it look like to stop pretending?

Stop pretending that everything's okay.

Stop pretending that you we're doing better than we actually are.

That we have it all figured out.

Like, how are you doing?

Fantastic.

Crushing it.

Never better.

How are you?

Better than you, you know, whatever it is, right?

We put on this front, we put on this face.

Where we stop pretending and we actually own up.

This is where I'm at.

I'm struggling.

I'm just getting by.

You know, this area is going really well, but this area isn't.

And we have to stop pretending and then we have to stop defending.

This is what we've made as an art form.

He says, if we claim we have not sinned, we've become experts in defending our way of life.

Well, you did this.

Yeah, but it's not my fault.

You did this.

It's not that big of a deal.

It's not hurting anyone.

They made me do it.

This is just the way you have to get ahead.

This is just what you have to do.

This is the culture we live in.

And we pretend and we defend.

And John invites us to start confessing.

Confessing, that word literally just means to agree with.

Start confessing.

To agree with God.

That's all it means.

You can go to the next slide, we've got to start confessing.

He says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just.

To agree with God, to say the same thing, to admit, to turn on the light and go, yep, there's cockroaches.

And it's kind of gross.

I wish there weren't.

But there are.

To confess is to step into reality, to acknowledge the shadows in our lives that we've ignored or hidden.

It's not a one-time event, but it's a way of life where we continually bring our true selves to God.

Confession brings to the light what we'd rather hide or excuse away and agree with God that it's ugly.

That is hateful at times.

That is wrong.

Most of you probably have one of these.

This is a junk drawer.

Be more specific, this is my junk drawer.

This is by my bedside table, and I just gotta own up.

I have two drawers by my bedside table, and they're both junk drawers.

The truth is, you probably have one of these where you just have things that accumulate.

You don't even really know why you hold on to them.

What is this?

I don't even know what it's a Kaiser permanent.

Anyways, I what is going on?

I just put stuff in here.

For some reason, I can't get rid of it, and why I can't live without it, I just hold on to it and it accumulates and it builds.

And sometimes there's even, you know, some of us have a junk closet, and some of us have a uh a junk garage.

Some of us have a junk storage unit.

All of us, at some point, we have this junk drawer in our lives where we've just accumulated.

This isn't, nobody sees this when you come over to my house.

It is put in my room by my bedside table, nobody goes through it.

It's safely hidden in the dark.

And because of that, I never go through it.

And the problem is for us as people, what we do is we don't have a you know back room to put our junk drawer.

We are always carrying our junk drawer everywhere with us.

We're walking around and going like, and this is kind of what it looks like.

Hey, what's up?

Yeah, that's good.

No, don't worry about that.

No, you don't need to look at that.

That's fine.

Um, right here, I, you know, tried to shower and shade, and I'm trying to look good, but don't see behind me.

And we carry these things, and honestly, it just gets heavy and burdensome, and you're just constantly walking around with junk that Jesus doesn't want you to carry anymore, that he died for, and he wants to bring freedom and healing.

And so, confession is bringing out what we've hidden in our life, the junk drawer before God.

And here's why this is so important.

God cannot heal what we conceal.

God cannot heal what we hide and cover up, the things that we regret.

He says, Bring it out into the light.

Alcoholics anonymous have this great phrase.

They say, you're only as sick as your secrets.

See, God's light reveals our mess, but it also heals our hearts.

Let me give you one example.

One of the things that God's been revealing in my junk drawer, and I hate this by the way.

But he's been revealing, and everybody around me already knows this about me.

That's the terrible part about a lot of our junk drawers, is everybody already sees it.

He's been revealing.

In my impatience.

I'm a really impatient person.

Like if we're talking and you're not quite getting to the point, I'll help you get to the point.

In fact, I can finish your sentence before you can finish your sentence.

If you're not quite working hard enough or fast enough, I'll work harder and finish it for you.

Because I want things done.

I care seemingly more about productivity than people at times.

This impatience within me shows up when I drive.

You ever done that where you overplanned your day?

And I had meetings all day, and then that night had about an hour and a half from four o'clock till 5 30, maybe six.

And I was planning, I'm just gonna get a little downtime.

My mother-in-law was over visiting my daughter before she goes off to college.

They're on a walk.

She took a spill, she fell.

Oh my goodness, she hurt herself bad.

She's okay, but man, she fell hard, had to go to urgent care.

Well, now Jenny is taking care of her and she lives in Scotts Valley, her car's here.

Now that little hour and a half window, she can't drive herself back to Scotts Valley, so I drive her car back, and then um Jenny drives over and drives her mom over, and we're on our way back.

Have you ever driven when you're in a hurry?

Isn't it amazing how the stoplights get longer?

What is that?

And how slow people drive.

In fact, I this is just a personal opinion, but I believe if you drive 64 miles an hour in the fast lane, your license should be revoked.

We're driving back over the hill, and I'm in a hurry.

I'm impatient.

And as I'm driving back over the hill, um I there's slow people in front of me that they just need to move over.

And so I'm driving in such a way to help them know they need to move over.

Um not godly, not godly.

And as they finally get over, I notice that they're on their phone.

Yeah.

I was righteously angered, and I expressed it verbally to Jenny.

Can you believe that?

Not only are they driving slow in the fast lane, they're on their phone.

I'm not sure which one was worse to me, actually, in the moment.

And I drove past another person on their phone on the freeway.

And I can't help it.

I'm just Judgy McJudgerson on these people.

I get Jenny home and I leave for the office for my meeting.

And uh right before I leave, I check my email and I notice there's an email that needs addressing, and it's a long email sent, and it's one that I'm just kind of like, I need to.

So I do what any of us does at the stoplight.

I start reading the email.

And then uh I'm like, oh man, that wasn't as long as I'd hoped.

Uh and then I drive to the next stoplight, check it, and then now I'm kind of like doing this as I'm driving, you know, the streets, and it's traffic-y, we're barely moving, it's not a big deal.

It's not it's just, you know, I'm I'm not on the freeway.

And uh I didn't notice the car in front of me had stopped.

And I rear-ended this car.

Thankfully, we were moving so slow.

It was just a love tap.

That's what I like to call it.

Um, it didn't do any damage to the car, it didn't hurt.

Uh it would, but it would, I well, it did hurt, kinda.

It didn't hurt the girl.

It was a teenage girl.

And yeah, I felt awful.

We we pull into the um the parking lot there, and she gets out, she looks like, I'm fine, she's like, but I it scared me so bad, and she's kind of shaking, and it's like, oh, this sweet girl.

My impatience, my impatience ruined your day.

It spilled out all over you, and she was just so scared.

I'm like, I'm so sorry, it's gonna be okay.

And we exchanged insurance, and then as I got in the car, the Spirit of God is conviction.

Because not only was it impatience, I just was the older brother judgmentalist that I was driving, the hypocrite that I was.

God, I'm sorry.

God, I confess my impatience, you've been showing this, that it not only impacts me, but it just impacted that young girl.

I confess my my older brother, judgmental heart.

I'm sorry, God.

Could you please forgive me?

Thank you for showing that because I don't want that in me.

That's not life, by the way.

That's not life, that's not living.

And then I called my wife.

And I told her what happened.

James tells us, confess your sins one to another that you might be healed.

Confession vertically towards God, and then finding a safe, trusted person that you can really confess and talk to.

It's powerful.

And I'm like, Jenny, I and I just told her the whole story.

And then I had my board meeting that night with our leadership council, the elders of our church, and then I confessed to them, I told them the whole story of it.

Because confession, confession brings freedom, not condemnation.

We're so afraid that if we actually share it, if we actually show it, we will be rejected.

And it is the shame's voice that wants to keep you stuck.

Keep you silent, where you're just carrying this thing around, burdened down.

And here's the most amazing part.

As we close our time, John ends this way.

He ends with the gospel.

It's the thing that we need to constantly preach to ourselves.

What do I do about the mess inside of me?

What do I do about my brokenness?

What do I do about the darkness that I feel like I just can't escape?

John tells us Jesus is God's provision for your sin and shame.

There is no other provision.

There is no other path.

It's just Jesus.

Listen to what he says, my dear children.

As a father writing to them, he's like, I want you to get this.

I write to this so that you'll not sin, so that you won't live in this way, that you'll walk in light because it's alive.

But if anyone does sin, and we all will sin, you must know this.

We have an advocate with the Father.

Who?

Jesus Christ, the righteous one.

He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the world.

Jesus is your advocate.

What does an advocate mean?

He is your defense.

You don't need to defend yourself anymore.

You don't need to prove your worth.

You don't need to justify your mistakes.

What happens is the world tends to accuse us.

Satan, one of his names, is the accuser of the saints.

Like he wants to entice you, he wants to draw you out, and then he wants to say, How could you?

and shame you.

And there's times our hearts accuse us.

Even if your own hearts accuse you, you've messed up too many times, you're not good enough.

No one could truly love you after what you've done.

Jesus, the righteous one, don't miss this, stands between you and every single accusation thrown at you.

He stands in between you and he is your advocate, the righteous one covering you.

That no accusation may stand.

He says, No, no, no.

I've got it covered.

I've paid for that.

I've forgiven that.

They're free.

Why?

Because He is our atoning sacrifice.

He doesn't just argue for you.

Atonement is to make the full and final payment for something.

He sacrificed himself for you.

He didn't step into the courtroom of heaven and beg God for mercy.

He walked to the cross to take the full punishment of our guilt.

His blood was spilled so that we could be free.

Not just from the penalty of sin, but from its power.

Jesus is God's provision.

Your sin does not define you.

You are covered in the very righteousness of Christ.

Your sin, the darkness, the shadow that you keep hiding in your junk drawer, that you're like, it tends to take on a life of itself, doesn't it?

And he says it doesn't define you.

In fact, when God looks at you, do you know what he sees?

He sees Jesus.

Because you are in Christ.

You are covered by the blood of the Lamb.

He sees his righteous one, Jesus.

He says, I've covered all of that.

Your past, your present, future sin.

You are fully and finally forgiven.

So why do we keep hiding?

Why do we carry around things that suck the life out of us?

Let me ask you.

What are you hiding in the shadows?

Where have you been afraid to let God's light in?

He shines his light not to harm but to heal.

Thursday, I was going for a run, and a practice I just recently started doing is after my runs, when I have time, I just I turn my music off and I walk and I pray.

Just like 20 minutes of walking and praying.

It helps me if I'm moving to keep my mind engaged.

And as I was walking and praying, I said, Holy Spirit, would you show me anything in me that's not of you?

Would you shine a light?

Like, like, would you show me anything?

And he'll answer that prayer every time.

And I kind of expected the usual suspects, like, okay, my impatience, uh, some struggle with lust here and there, some of these sort of things.

And then he began to show me some stuff, shine some lights in some stuff that I'm like, oh, I didn't know that was there.

He shined a light in the area that I'm struggling, a person that hurt my wife and I a while ago.

And it's easy to pretend like, oh, it's no big deal, and it's easy to defend your reasoning.

They did these sort of things.

So he's like, but the reality is, is you have unforgiveness in your heart, and it's starting to develop a root of bitterness.

Like God shows me that for his kindness and for life, because a root of bitterness makes you a bitter person.

Oh my gosh, you're right.

You're right.

And he began to show me one thing and another thing.

And shine in the light.

It did.

It was like pulling out this stuff, and it's like embarrassing, and it's even embarrassing to say, oh my, you're pastor, and I'm struggling with these things that seem like but it's true.

And he wants to bring healing and he wants to bring wholeness, he wants to bring life.

But he cannot heal what we can seal.

And so as we close, the invitation is simply this.

Would you step out of the shadow into the light?

Would you invite his spirit to like show anything in you?

And may we engage in this practice of confession.

God, I agree with you.

You're right.

It's ugly.

It's not what I want.

But you died for it already.

Would you forgive me?

We're gonna partake in communion together.

And on your uh seat, you have this little paper, and you'll notice it's kind of see-through, and it's uh it's specially designed to dissolve in water.

Scripture tells us, as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us.

That though our sins are as scarlet, he has made us white as snow.

I want to invite you into the practice of confession.

Whereas you pray that you would take time, you would write down the areas before God that he's showing you.

It might be a heart attitude, it might be a response to a coworker or a friend or your kid, it might be a secret thing that nobody even knows about, but you've been carrying.

The beautiful part is you'll drop this in the water, it will dissolve.

And I want you to take the communion elements, his body broken for you, his blood poured out for you, that you might experience the fullness of life completely forgiven and free.

As we worship, you might need some extra time.

You may just want to come up here and kneel.

You might want to go back to our prayer team and have somebody pray over you.

But take this moment to experience his healing grace in your life.

I'm just gonna give you time.

Would you take time and just begin to write down those areas?

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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