The God of Restoration: Bryan Anderson’s Journey

The soul is like a battleground and every wound is like giving up territory to the enemy.

He'll use that in your life to take you out. He'll use that in your life to hurt other people.

God's not okay with it. He wants you to deal with it. The good news is he's got all the resources

of heaven at your disposal to heal it. This whole walk is a divine partnership.

You know, the Lord is going to give you everything you need but you have to cooperate. You have to

welcome to the city light church podcast. Thanks for joining us today as we look into God's word

and discover the hope and truth that he has for us. If you want to connect with city light

church feel free to visit us at citylightnyc.com that's citylightnyc.com.

Pastor Boyan Jansik and his team believe that the power of the Holy Spirit is already working

in our hearts and minds. As you listen to today's teaching remember that you are deeply loved by God

that you are surrounded by his grace and that he has a real hope and a future for you.

So once you put your hands together and welcome Brian Anderson.

Thank you Pastor Bo. That was an intro right there. Good morning church.

Woo, second service. You guys have had more coffee than the first hopefully.

And I was told before starting that the clock here is just a suggestion now, right?

For a second. So that's good. That's good. I don't know. I'm probably not going to use it all but

so my message today is about the restoration power of God. I'm speaking from personal

experience because we walked into this church in 2019. My now wife and I broke and not following

the Lord full of forgiveness issues, addiction issues, broken hearted, trust issues, just issues

for days. And we came just because we wanted a little spirituality in our lives. You know people

talk about I'm spiritual. I'm not a person of faith. Yeah that was us. We're going to be a little

spiritual now. So we came to dabble and dip a toe and we fell all the way in.

And so you know years later I spent six years. It's been a process but the Lord, we gave our

lives to the Lord in this church. We got baptized in this church. We got healed in this church. We got

just ministered to by a lot of you in this church. You've seen our story, you've seen our process.

We've had two more kids since coming to this church. My wife sitting over here. Wave.

This is actually Benjamin's first service. He's our youngest, maybe newest city lighter. He's in a

little car seat over there, weighing in at about nine pounds right now. Heavy weight. But he's two

months old so he started out as a lightweight. But Benjamin, Danny Anderson, we named him, his

middle name is after my father. It's about time we honored my father with the beginning his name

in there somewhere. So my father is a pastor and I grew up in a pastor family. I'm going to share

a little bit about what led me, what I believe were some lessons that caused me to backslide for

13 years of my life and walk away from the Lord despite my upbringing and some of the things that

brought me back and some of the lessons I've learned for restoration. I'm speaking specifically

today to the restoration of the soul. Without a heart restoration, you can't really see restoration

in other areas of your life and scripture bears that out. So I want to just highlight a few

scriptures and then we'll do testimony time and I'll give you some nitty gritty details and then

some lessons that I've learned. First scripture I want to cue up with this amazing technology we

have here is Romans 12-2. See, I've got it here. I've got like the high death version.

The Bible says that we are being transformed by the renewing of our mind. So now the Bible

distinguishes between our spirit and our soul. Our spirit is that part of us that comes alive when

we put our faith in Christ and so it's a part of us that's eternal. It's a part of us that

relate to the spiritual realm and the Bible says we're a new creation when we put our faith in

Jesus where all of our sins are wiped away and so our spirit is what we say is born again.

When you say you're born again, you're talking about your spirit, not your body. That'll get

changed out later too when you get a new body when you go to heaven. But your spirit is eternal

and your spirit is born again. Your soul is your mind willing emotions and that's the part of

you that the Lord is renewing into the image of his son. So when we say when the psalmist,

if you've ever read the psalms, he talks to a soul sometimes. Why you downcast, oh my soul, put

your faith in God because your soul can get discouraged. It's your mind, your will, your emotions.

It can get bruised and battered and it can have experience pain and it can be damaged.

And good news is it can also be restored by the Lord.

So Romans 12-2, we just read, be transformed by the renewing of your mind,

your mind is part of the soul. Next verse Psalm 23. We've all read this, we've skimmed

right past next verse, skid right past the part where he says he restores my soul. There's

everyone's favorite song I think, right? He leads me beside still waters. He lays, makes me line

at down in green pastures. It's not a one-time event. This is like the way our walk with the Lord

goes. He restores my soul. So soul restoration is part of your walk with the Lord. So all

every one of us can experience hurt. We can pick up a fence. We can experience pain in our soul

and we have to deal with it. And the Lord is the one who does it. He restores my soul. So we've

been renewed by the renewing of our mind. Our souls can be restored. Next verse, let's look at Isaiah

61-1. This is one of my favorites. Jesus preached this in his early ministry and he almost died

for preaching it. They tried to kill him after he said, this is me. Basically the Spirit of the

Lord is upon me because the Lord is anointed me to preach good news to the poor. Okay, that's

the preaching of the gospel and there's the things that come with it. We see that the broken

hearted are healed. He sent me to heal the broken hearted to proclaim liberty to the captives

and the opening of the prison doors to those who are bound. Now he's not just speaking about

actual prison. He's speaking about setting people free from bondage, addiction, trauma from

relationships, broken trust, you know, infidelity in relationships. This is the stuff that was binding

me up when the Lord set me free. And this stuff can get on Christians. You can be walking with

the Lord. I think one of the hardest things sometimes is to be open that you're going through a

season where your soul needs to be restored when you're especially when you're a mature Christian.

It's hard to be vulnerable sometimes. You're supposed to have it all together. You've been walking

with the Lord a while. It couldn't be you. You couldn't have hidden sin issues. You couldn't

be the one. People will lose respect for you if you mention it to them. That's a lie.

By the way, we all need restoration from time to time. We all need healing. Part of our walk that

Psalm 23 walk with the Lord is a continual restoring a renewal. We always have to go to Him with our

pain. If we don't go to Him with our pain, other problems happen. And that was what led me away,

actually away from the Lord, was not dealing properly with crises in my life and having it completely

shipwrecked my faith. Before we go to a little story about that, let's look a little bit more

at 3 John 1-2. They're John 1-2. This is a great prayer. I pray that you may prosper in all things

just as your soul prospers. So what it's saying is prosper in all things and be in health. I've

forgot to be in health part. I just can't forget that one. Just as your soul prospers. So what the

writer is saying is the health of your soul is connected to prosperity in every area of your life.

If your soul is prospering, you'll see it in every area of your life. You'll see it in your

relationships. You'll see it in your business. You'll see it in everything you do that the

prosperity and health of your soul is the baseline for that. Another scripture that says basically

the same thing is Proverbs 423. It says keep your heart with all diligence for out of it spring

the issues of life. Another translation says guard your heart for everything you do flows out

of it. So the health of your heart impacts everything you do. Your relationships, your work,

everything. So it's kind of an important thing to get healed up and let the Lord do that.

Okay. I'll share with you a little bit about my story and hopefully it'll help some of you

avoid these pitfalls but also see some similarities and maybe some things that have happened in your

life. As a college kid, I actually was completely on fire for the Lord. I'd grown up in a pastor's

home, missionary family, spent some time in Peru as a kid and I'd been in church my entire life.

Had some rocky years during high school where I wasn't sure about my faith and had friends who

weren't Christians but in college I knew it was a crossroads for me and I decided you know this

is a time I'm either going to become a party kid or I'm going to be a Christian. I decided

to be a Christian. I got involved deeply with like a really healthy church in my college town

in Oregon State University which is a long way from here and I was deeply involved in growing.

I got filled with the Holy Spirit and it was a really powerful time in my life. At the end of

college I felt the Lord calling me to go to law school and so I was heading in that direction

when the church that I was a part of began to crumble and there were some scandals and issues

and you know we've all read stories of churches that have failed, ministers that have failed

and some of us it wouldn't have impacted them the way it impacted me. It impacted me deeply

made me lose some of my faith in the church in part because I had seen my parents

be hurt by churches before. I'd seen them go to a church, it didn't work out, they had differences

in ministry approaches or whatever and people are you know despite being in a church,

they're still human, they're still full of flaws, we're being redeemed and renewed but hurt people,

hurt people and so the same damage that's in people gets projected onto someone else and

I had seen my parents just kind of go through it, go through the ringer. So I think I was already

carrying somewhat of a grudge against the church kind of expecting the church to fail me and so

I said you know what, attack with this, I don't want to have anything to do with the church,

I'm going to have my faith but I'm going to have it solo, lone ranger, you know, I don't need people,

I'll do this on my own, people are risky, they're going to hurt you, they're going to let you down,

so I'm just going to do this on my own and that was a mistake.

I learned later you know that the Lord, he has a plan, well his plan A on earth is the church,

there's no plan B, there's no plan C, if you don't believe that you've got to rip out the book

of Ephesians, it's all about the church, the glorious church, the church he's coming back for,

I restored bride, so if we have issues with church, we have issues with God ultimately,

there are problems in churches, there are churches that have failed but this is a team sport,

we can't do faith alone, it doesn't work, lone ranger flaky Christians is a thing of

something else, it's not you know real faith, you have to have you know you're just going to

conferences isn't enough, tuning in online to your favorite YouTube preacher isn't being part of

a church, being part of church means you meet with people and you share your faith, you share

your pains, you share your hurts and some of the soul restoration that has to happen in our lives

comes from the church and God uses imperfect people in our life to bring healing because it keeps

us humble, if we were just to go to God we just be these arrogant people, I got it me and God,

we're going to go pray real quick and fix it, instead he uses imperfect people in our lives and

it's actually a beautiful thing because we're all in need of a savior, we're all imperfect,

we're all being renewed, we're not there yet and the Lord will use mature Christians but

fallible people who don't always say the right thing the right way who didn't return your phone

call on time and now I'm offended, you know the petty stuff you deal with in church sometimes is

just human stuff but it's God's planning on the earth and and it's and we got to stay plugged in.

The enemy wants us to have a critical spirit, I think it's one of the biggest

the one of the biggest things that that takes out Christians and believers and even keeps people

from walking in the door in the first place is just having a critical spirit about churches and

church leaders, it's grieving to the Holy Spirit every time a leader falls because it

erects another reason for people to avoid the church which is the very source of life for people

to stay plugged in to stay protected and to grow. Okay, second thing that happened and these were

kind of reflections I did with the Lord where I said, Lord, how did I get so far off of course?

You know, I was I was people look at my family and they say you have an amazing family,

some people use the word perfect, not perfect but they're really loving people and they serve the

Lord with all their hearts and you know no family is perfect but my family was just about as

close as perfect as you can get and yet you've got this kid who just goes off off the deep end.

So what happened you know so the second thing crisis that hit my life was a divorce. I'd

been married at a young age in church and it was kind of my my marriage was kind of really connected

to my faith and then you know we kind of grew up together in the church and the marriage started

falling apart after you know well we had issues that we never really opened up about but it really

started falling apart after we were no longer in fellowship. So we were we were kind of like

sitting ducks. We had issues that we needed to deal with, we weren't dealing with them,

we weren't opening up to anybody and we were out of the church because we rejected

fellowship as as something we didn't need anymore and so when this crisis hit we were completely

vulnerable and didn't have a community and it shook my faith in God. It made me question

the nature of God and sometimes pain has a way of lying to you about who God is, his nature.

It's one of the most dangerous things about going through a traumatic season or a painful season

is a devil will lie to you about who God is who'll make you question. Did God really say that?

Is he really good? Does he really have your best interest in mind? Or is he fickle? Is he flaky?

Is he unreliable? Is he distant? Is he far off? And you start to kind of adopt this resentment

towards the Lord and you can you can harbor in your heart something that actually starts to push

the loving father away from you. Now we know in scripture in Pastor Boeluted to it before we

started here that the father's heart is actually close to us. In fact it's as close as our breath

his healing power to save and heal us. He's never far off. We just believe he's far off.

The father runs towards the prodigal son. The prodigal son by the way if you know the story

he's coming back from having squandered his inheritance. He wasted all his father's money

on women, booze, drugs, whatever and he's walking up the trail just to be like a servant in the

household and the father runs to him, puts a ring on his finger, puts a robe on him, puts sandals

on his feet and throws a party. That's the heart of the father towards you and towards your woundedness

and to your pain. The father runs towards it. He's not afraid of it. He's not ashamed of it. He's

not intimidated by it. There's nothing you can do that makes where your pain would be

too shocking to him. He's seen it all. He died. He sent his son to die to wipe it all away

and he is interested in it and wants to take it from you and heal you. He does understand you.

It's a lie when the enemy tells you no one understands me. The father understands.

The father understands. He put all that pain on his son and let his son die so that he could touch

that pain in you and heal it. So let's self-pity set in. Nobody understands me. Nobody's been through

what I've been through. I'm uniquely wounded and identify with my pain. You know we're kind of

in a culture today where people are obsessed with therapy but would never get better.

And so like everyone wants to talk about their pain but nobody's getting better. I've got

friends who've been going to therapy forever. It's like this great scam for the therapist.

Like they get pharmaceutical drugs. They get high so they don't feel anxiety and stuff like that

but they just keep paying the therapist and never getting over their issue.

Got a friend who's got a forgiveness issue with his mother. I said, when are you going to

forgive her? I don't know. He's been going to therapy for like five years over the forgiveness

issue. He doesn't know the Lord. Maybe he's stuck he can't forgive. I think without God

you can get stuck like that. I was stuck like that. In fact when Heidi and I came to the church

we were trying to piece back together a relationship. We had both been unfaithful in our

relationship to each other. That was the one wound I didn't think I could get over. I was like

anything else that's happened to me in my life. I could get healed up from but somebody cheating

on me. It's a direct front to my ego. I'm not supposed to get over as a man. I'm supposed to

kick that person to the curb. That's what we do. We kick the person to the curb and we act like

we're fine but we're not ever fine. We're wounded and we're damaged for the next relationship.

And so I didn't know why we were trying to work it out but we were trying to work it out. It was

this the Lord and his redemptive plan in our lives. We were trying to work it out but I had zero

faith. It would work out. I thought it's doomed. There's too many trust issues. There's too much

too many things I'm never getting over this. And by the way I've done the same thing but it's

different when it happens to you. It's different when it happens to you. I mean honestly it shook

me. It shook me. Why is that so funny? That's so true though. It shook me to the core and I didn't

think I would ever I just thought I would cope with it. I never thought I could get through it.

I never thought I would forgive. I just thought I would the pain would go lessen over time and I

would just deal with it. And I think sometimes we don't understand that the Lord can heal us so we

just sort of like get used to walking with the crutch. And we just say you know what it's fine. I'll

be fine. You're not fine in fact that the soul is like a battleground and every wound is like

giving up territory to the enemy. He'll use that in your life to take you out. He'll use that in

your life to hurt other people. It doesn't just ever affect you. It affects your calling, your

destiny, your children and it gets passed on. Woundedness is like one of those things that's like

a virus. It just it gets passed on generationally. A lot of people are carrying some of the woundedness

that their parents had. Maybe think about it. Some of your offensive, some things that offend

you are because your parents were offended by them. That's like adopted. That's like passed on

woundedness that you have to deal with. It's not okay. God's not okay with it. He wants you to

deal with it. The good news is he's got all the resources of heaven at your disposal to heal it

but you have to cooperate with it. This whole walk is a divine partnership. The Lord is

going to give you everything you need but you have to cooperate. You have to cooperate.

He's not just going to blow it down and blow it out of your system. He's going to require that

you in faith walk some things out. Forgiveness is one of those tough things where you may have to

talk to somebody. You may have to forgive somebody. You may have to open your mouth and say something.

Hidden sins, one of those things where you may have to tell somebody. The Bible says to pray for

each other. Confess and pray for each other. Bringing the light into an area can break the

bondage that's holding you back. The Lord may have you do some things. There's tons of

examples of that in scripture. Go wash here and your leprosy will be healed or go do this,

rub mud on your eyes or whatever. There are steps that the Lord may have you do that is your

gesture of faith that the Lord I believe and I'm going to step forward and I'm going to do something.

So there are some things that we have to do to see healing come into our lives.

I believe just one of the biggest things that holds people back from experiencing

healing is not understanding the heart of the Father and not understanding that he comes for

you again and again and again. He's the most persistent person you will ever meet. He doesn't

stop coming. He doesn't stop chasing you until you're dying day. He will be chasing you.

And you can push him away or you can begin to cooperate with him and see restoration in your life.

Okay, a couple of lessons I've learned along the way. Well, I've mentioned a few but we'll

mention a few more. We have to decide to believe in God's goodness and we have to choose to resist

the lies about the Father. Let me tell you a quick story about restoration in our family.

Before Heidi and I came to the Lord, Jude actually came to the Lord two years prior. We were

actually visiting my parents and he'd gone to a church service where my father was preaching and

given his life to the Lord. And so the Lord was already working redemptively in our family,

chasing us, pursuing us. We were unaware of it. It was a sneak attack. He picked off my kid first

and then came from me. It worked. But in the midst of that, Jude and I have a fantastic

relationship and he prayed for me actually before the service. He had his hands on me praying for

me, just speaking Holy Spirit, fill my dad, fill him up, you're with him, you call them,

you're on his life. And so we've had this redemptive power of the Lord running through our life.

But Jude is from a prior relationship. I have a custody agreement with Jude and I only see him

40% of the time. And so his mother gets 60% of his entire childhood while he's spent with her

and not with me. And so as a father, that's painful, especially when it came out of my drug-induced

haze of 13 years and after walking into the city light, one of the things that keeps you stuck

sometimes is you know how painful it will be when you sober up. That one of those pains and those

regrets that was just deep to the core was I'm going to miss 60% of my first son's childhood.

Lord, what do I do with that? How do I cope with that? Because it doesn't matter how much

restoration I get in the church, I don't think those facts are changing. Those are not good facts.

They're not good circumstances. Lord, can you change those circumstances? Can you make it like,

I don't know, redo the agreement or something? Make it 50, 50 at least.

And the Lord spoke to my heart and he said, Brian, I'm going to make it as if you never missed a day

of your son's life. And he said, my grace is sufficient. I'll make it as if you never missed a day.

And I said, Lord, how is that possible? 40%. So Brian, already look at your relationship with Jude.

You have an incredible relationship with Jude. You have a better relationship with him than a lot

of relationships you see with a father and a son who don't see each other every day or on the same

house every day. And I looked and I saw it and I said, yeah, you're right, Lord. Oh my goodness.

He's already doing it. He's already moving, moving redemptively in my life by his power to bring

first my son to the Lord and to restore relationship. We have a close relationship today like you

wouldn't believe. Like it's one of the highlights of my life. And the Lord has done that despite

me not starting to walk with the Lord until he was seven years old being an absent father for the

first seven years of his life. There's no bitterness there. There's no resentment there. We went on

a father's son trip to Costa Rica when he was 10. It's sort of a tradition of my family. When your

kid turns 10, you go out of the country and do some sort of trip. I think you just did one with

your son. Yeah, yeah, my brothers. It's a god thing, I guess. It's a god thing.

So we were traveling. We were in Costa Rica and I just felt that the Lord wanted me to

apologize to Jude for being an absent father. And so we're at a proving restaurant. I have a

thing for Peruvian food for having grown up in Peru. And I'm going to go find some water as I keep talking.

Here's one. This is like, oh, thank you. Wow. All right. Have not because you asked not.

So we're in the middle of this Peruvian restaurant in Costa Rica and you know sometimes in the

Lord asked you to do something. It's uncomfortable. Actually, a lot of the times. Like, hey, get up and

preach. It's not always the most comfortable. But you know, you got to do it because on the other

side, there's life. And so then you start to like, even though you have to do it scared, you have to

do it with your heart racing. You start doing it because you realize, man, every time I obey the

Lord and some of these things, he asks me to do, there's breakthrough, there's power, there's grace.

Like the time I said, hey, Heidi, you know how are Christians now? Well, the Lord said we should

stop sleeping together. So we got to stop doing that. And that was a really difficult conversation

because we'd had a year's long relationship, many years. And she said, you're breaking up with me.

I said, no, I'm not, I'm not breaking up with you. I'm just saying we got to do it God's way

because all whole lives have to line up. We can just do a half way. We're doing this thing all the

way. And so for a year before we got married, the, yeah, we did that. So we were like dating,

being the way we felt the Lord wanted us to be, not being intimate and God restored and healed

us as we obeyed, healed and restored. That part of our life, which had been so damaged and destroyed

by our sin. So back to the Jude story. We're in Costa Rica and I say, and again, this is one of those

moments where I'm like, okay, I feel like the Lord wants me to do it. But my heart's kind of like,

it's so uncomfortable. Like, do I really not apologize? I mean, I've been pretty good father lately.

You know when you negotiate with the Lord a little bit, Lord, did you really mean like,

like apologize, apologize? Just be like, how's it going, man? You doing okay?

So yeah, he meant apologize, apologize. And so I said, Lord, okay, I'm going to do it. So I

I open my mouth and I said, son, I've got to say, you know, I just wanted to ask you for forgiveness

for being a bad father. I was absent for, you know, big chunk of your childhood and

ignoring it. It's not going to make it go away. I want you to forgive me. And he stood up and

came over to me at the table and said, Dad, can I just be here forgiven? Can I just pray for you?

Start praying for me. We both started weeping the presence of God game.

And we're in Costa Rica and the people are looking at us and I don't care. And I'm just crying.

And the Lord healed, healed part of my heart that had regret and pain over neglecting my son.

He's the healer. So the Lord is speaking to you today. If you've got a broken heart or pain

in your life that's unhealed, he's saying he wants to make it as if you never walked away from him,

as if you never went astray. There's abundant grace for restoration. In fact, the Bible,

when it speaks of restoration, always speaks of increase or multiplication or betterment of the

thing once it's restored, talks about restoring the years, the locust of stolen. You know, the Lord

can do that by increasing the current years. He has abundant grace. I call it catch up grace.

Not like catch up and mustard, but like catch up. He wants to make your life as if he walked with

him every day of your life intimately. He can do that. He can do that because he's the restore. He's

not bound by our timelines. He's not bound by a custody agreement. He's not bound by our past. He's

not bound by our sin. He's the restore. And the only way he can be the restore. Amen. Yeah, you can

clap for that. That's, that's a Lord. And the only way he can be the restore is if he's outside of

all our issues and can come in and touch them. And you got to let him touch those by believing he's

a good father and he's here to heal you and restore you. Okay. So it's just a suggestion,

Pastor Boe. It's not, it's not, we're not, all right. So declare the truth of the Lord. So the

first one was decide, decide to believe that the Lord is a good father and he desires you to be

whole. Number two, declare the word of the Lord. The Lord wants to put some fight in us. You know,

when I look at how Israel took the promise land, you know, some of it was, there was like a,

there was like miraculous battles you see in like in the Old Testament where the Lord just did it

all. He like, he made the enemy hear something and they like ran off. But most of the time it was

like hand-to-hand combat. And the Lord had them increase gradually in the promise land because

otherwise, you know, they wouldn't be strong enough to keep the land. So the strength that it

takes you to fight out of your issues is the same strength it takes to stand and not give back up

that territory. So if your soul is a battleground and there's forces fighting for it, you've got to

learn to fight to protect it. The Bible says to protect your heart as we read at the beginning

of Proverbs 423 said guard your heart. You got to stand guard over your heart. You got to take

ground and keep ground. And one of the ways that the Lord strengthens you to take ground and

keep ground is to teach you how to fight. And so we're in a battle. The Bible teaches we're in a

battle. We have armor. We have to fight. So you need to learn how to fight if you're going to

get whole and stay whole. If the Lord could just say, okay, you're whole, he does that sometimes.

Like some of the things that broke off my life when I came to the city light and that first service

while I was just weeping, the Lord changed some things like my view of the Father changed.

You know, I was given, you know, sort of just in that moment, just a revelation of his love for me.

That was such a gift. But other things he had me fight for, like the forgiveness issue. That

was a huge one just sat right on my chest and it took a couple years to get that one dealt with.

At first I was just like, oh, Lord, help. And I would wait and nothing would change. And then I

would say, okay, that's not working. Let me try something else like, Lord, could you please give

me the desire to forgive? I don't want to forgive. But if you could please give me the desire to forgive,

then maybe I'll forgive. So that was kind of where I was. And then I had a revelation about,

and I don't know when it came, but it was like the Lord started teaching me about what I speak,

affects what I think. And I would think a lot about my woundedness. And the Lord started saying,

if you're going to win the battle on this issue, you're going to have to learn to have godly thoughts

and victorious thoughts. And I said, okay, Lord, how do I do that? And then there's a scripture about

how the tongue directs your life. It's like the rudder of a ship and how what you speak influences

what you think. And so the Lord started teaching me speak what you want to think. And it doesn't

matter if you feel it, you start speaking it. It starts to shape your soul. So I started speaking

forgiveness. I didn't feel it at all. But I started speaking it and saying, I forgive.

I don't really love for doing it. I forgive. I forgive. I forget what name the people that hurt

me. I forgive this person. I forgive this person. I woke up one day and realized I had no more

forgiveness issues. Like they went away. And I woke up one day and realized I wasn't dwelling on

it anymore. I wasn't dwelling anymore. And I was learning to think, you know, I was learning to

catch myself thinking about despair and grief and ways that have been wounded and put my eyes on

the Lord. And the Lord, the Lord doesn't scare of your pain, but he doesn't want you just looking at

your pain all the time. If you just spend time just wallowing your pain, you'll be the most depressed

person on earth. I mean, your pain, it won't go away by looking at it. It goes away by taking it

to the Lord and saying, Lord, I'm going to contend with this issue until I see breakthrough.

It's until I see freedom. I'm not going to stop because you don't stop coming from me. You persist.

You persist. So he's putting his DNA in you. He's a fighter. He's a father who fights for his

family. And he's putting that same DNA in you so that you fight. So you fight for your issues.

You don't give up. You have a persistent spirit. All right. So that's the declaration part.

And the last one is deal with your pain without delay. The Lord is, the Lord will give you some

things to do. If you'd noticed the two stories I told, one was about a pain or a trauma that

disconnected me from the church as people. Another one was something that disconnected me from the Lord

and how I saw the Father. Do the opposite of those two things. Connect to the Lord. Connect to people.

Godly people. Stay plugged into the church. It's safety. It's protection. It's healing.

The Lord often will bring your healing while you're ministering to someone else for their healing.

Start praying for people about your issue. Lord, I pray that you help people in this church

is forgive. I pray that they would drop all offenses. Start praying for other people.

Start ministering out of the thing you start sowing the seed you need and ministering out of

that place of what you need. So the Lord wants to connect you with people today. He wants to

reconnect you with him. He wants you to say, Lord, Lord, I'm sorry for seeing you as a distant

Father. You're the one who runs toward me. He wants you to open up. One of the biggest things you

can do is if you're dealing with pain in your life, talk to someone about it. Bringing that light

into the issue is huge and it breaks the power of that thing in your life. I had this, I had this,

I'll just, I'm getting a little too transparent maybe, but I just toe fungus.

And it wasn't getting better by just putting the drops on it. So I had to go, this was actually

yesterday. I had to go to this podiatrist. And they had to laser it. And he's like, man,

the thing's gone all the way to the root. How long have you waited? It's been a couple years.

It's like, yeah, that thing, man, things really, you let the thing go. And I said, yeah, well,

so that's, that's a little illustration of what happens with our woundedness.

You let that funk sit in the dark. It'll just keep growing. It'll get into the roots of your heart.

It'll affect other areas of your life. Bring it into the light. I get that laser on it. The Holy

Spirit laser, let it heal, kill that stuff. It kills it so fast. It took like two minutes. It didn't

even hurt. It was just like, that's it. That's it. That was easy. I'll give you the doctor's

recommendation if you guys need podiatrist. It's only cash. It's like one of these Ridgewood

Queens doctors. But hey, you know, it works. It works. I knew a guy who went there and got it done,

so like I went on the testimony of someone else, you know, to get to get my healing.

So deal with your pain. God's going to give you some things to do. If you're afraid to do it,

do it afraid. If you're afraid to do it in your heart is racing. Do it with a heart racing.

There's some steps that the Lord, I believe, is going to get some of you to do and take

to root something out of your life. That's that you know is destroying your life. That's holding

you back. That you need healing and deliverance from. Go to someone. It's a start. It takes a

process. Keep fighting until you're free. Keep your eyes on the Father. He will heal you. He's

healed the rest of our lives and my family completely bringing us from a place of total

brokenness to a place of wholeness. I don't feel the crippling anxiety and pain that I used to

feel. I mean, it would just be hard for me to be quiet and alone just because of all the

damage. It's so nice to be free, you know. It's so nice to know you're loved. I never want to

go back. So if I see something coming into my life, some issue, I'm pretty ruthless with it now.

I want to have a Holy Spirit immune system that says, no, I'm not picking up that offense,

that criticism, that that back biting. I'm not responding in that spirit. I want to keep

clean before the Lord. Amen. So yeah, if you're here today and any of this spoke to you,

there's prayer ministry obviously is a great place to go. There are a lot of mature Christians

in this church, an amazing number. It's a healthy church. You can like throw a dart and probably

hit a mature Christian. Don't try it, but you could probably do that. So you talk to somebody

you know as doing walnut faith or just have you have a trusting relationship with it and pray

for you. Don't leave today without doing some of the steps that, you know, you've got to put

hollated on your heart during this message. Pastor Bo.

This is the City Light Church podcast. If you've missed any part of today's message,

or if you would like to find out more about Pastor Boyan Jansik in City Light Church,

visit us at citylightnyc.com. That's citylightnyc.com. Feel free to visit us online or in person

anytime. We would love to connect with you. We pray that you have been encouraged today,

that you have been reminded how much God loves you, and that you are surrounded by grace.

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