Renewing the Spirit of Your Mind

Right. It's happening, as Nate Bargates would say, my current favorite comedian. He's hilarious.

Anyway, welcome. I'm Bob. I think I know everybody here. I'm not sure.

But anyway, our pastors are on their little retreat for the celebration of Molly's 40th birthday.

So we're really thankful that they get to get away and get refreshed and celebrate

a little bit. So we pray for them and bless them.

And in the meantime, we'll have a good time while we're here.

Let's see, it's 9.46, so I'm going to try and be on time.

Happy Mother's Day for all of you, all of you mothers. We appreciate mothers.

My mother was the embodiment of a lot of things.

And I just wanted to share this little story about you because it'll be relevant

to the message here. But she was a child of the Depression.

They homesteaded a place in Montana with her family.

She had six brothers and sisters, a crippled, angry, alcoholic father who was abusive.

So they tried to avoid him as much as possible.

And then her mother died when she was—and her mother was a godly woman and prayed

with them nightly and all these kinds of things.

And kind of commanded her children, not commanded, but told her it was her great

wish and expectation that they would all go to school after they graduated from

high school and do something. And all of them did, which is wonderful.

But then she died when I think my mom was 13, 13 or 14.

And I found out a bunch of stuff about my mom in the last year of her life.

She was 92 years old, and it was like this part goes to my lesson today.

It really would have helped me to know some things that I learned about her

in her 92nd year if I had heard about it earlier in my life.

And what I found out was when she—this was the Depression, and her six brothers

and sisters didn't have money either, and they weren't prepared to be living

on their own when their mother died.

But they all left their dad because he was so abusive and lived on their own. And my mom...

During high school, junior high and high school, she moved 39 times because

she would live with one sister or brother for a little while.

Then they'd run out of money to feed her and they would go somewhere else.

And so she was just moving. If you figure that out, it's like every three or

four months she was moving throughout her entire junior high and high school career and stuff.

And she said, you know, I never really had mom to give me any directions as

to what to do with my life other than that she implored me to go to college and so forth.

But all of decisions about who to date, about go to prom or not go to prom or

do your homework or not do your homework, I was making those decisions on my

own from the time I was 13 and 14 years old.

And whether I succeeded or not was completely on me and I knew that really early

and whether I got the things that I needed to survive or the things that I wanted,

it was up to me and to nobody else because her brothers and sisters were just,

they were trying to survive themselves, you know, just trying to make it.

Well, my mom certainly became a survivor and sometimes she survived with,

let me see a nice word, being very aggressive and diligent.

She was a kind of mom that I didn't

really enjoy going out to eat with her because if anything went wrong.

You know, the waiter was going to hear about it and you never were quite sure.

How it was going to come out from my mom.

She could have a really nasty tongue.

She could be really, really sarcastic, really mean, really demanding.

On the other hand, she could be incredibly tender, incredibly warm,

incredibly encouraging, incredibly loving.

And she became supervisor of this hospital, and she didn't like having to deal

with politics, you know, the politics of corporate world.

And so she always worked, I don't know what they call it, I know it as graveyard,

but I know in the hospitals, you don't call the graveyard shift the graveyard, you call it.

Nights, okay. Not swing shift, but nights. And so she worked from 11 p.m.

To 7 o'clock in the morning, partly because she was in charge of the hospital

and there was nobody else there.

She ran the whole thing. But partly also to be home when we were home and so forth. you know.

So what that says is she was sleep deprived for about 40 years of our life.

And when she would get up, you never knew exactly what you're going to get.

Was this going to be nice mom or was this going to be nasty mom, you know.

But the most part, she was very loving. I know that I am different.

I was different from the friends that I had who were druggies.

I was a druggie too, but I ended up going to rehab.

Five of my friends ended up dying from overdose before they were 21 years old.

And I ended up going to rehab because I didn't want to live that life.

I wanted to get my life in order and have a healthy life and so forth.

And I know my mom had a great part of that.

And I remember this one time where I was in the fifth grade,

I stole money out of her purse to buy what was the rage at the time.

I think it's also kind of cool now even.

A Duncan yo-yo, right? Because it was the coolest thing to have a Duncan yo-yo.

And there was a guy at school that was selling it. So I bought one from him

with the money that I stole from my mom.

And she came home and I had this yo-yo. And she says, oh, where'd you get the yo-yo?

And it was a dollar.

That's what I stole out of her purse So it's not like I took 20 bucks or something

It was a dollar that I took out of her purse And I said, oh, I found it You know,

Woo, how creative. Anyway, she sits down on the couch next to me and puts her

arm around me, which wasn't all that common that she did that.

She did it sometimes, but it wasn't common.

You found it, huh? And she sat down there and she was just quiet for a minute.

And I'm terrified.

And she goes, she called me Bobby because I'm a junior.

So she says, Bobby, it's not like you to lie to me.

And boom, my heart just melted and I started crying.

And I told her the whole story and everything.

And that was the end of it. But that moment of truth delivered with such level

of grace and mercy just changed me to the point,

here I am, you know, I was, what, 11?

So 60 years later, I'm still remembering and telling you that story because

of the impact that it had on my life, you know.

And it enabled me to process my sin at the same time feeling great acceptance

and great mercy and great reward from my mother, you know.

And that was the capacity and that was the strength and that was the insight

that my mother operated in a good amount of time.

Let's just say that, a good amount of time.

So, Mom, I thank you. I honor you. I bless you. and appreciate what she has done for me.

Yeah. And so, excuse me, it's a two-bottle-of-water day here.

So I want to talk about renewing the spirit of the mind and living the life

that God desires for you.

My wife and I recently bought a cabin over in Cleelum, and when I'm talking

about the spirit of the mind, what does that mean?

And one day we were watching, and there was 11 deer down in our front yard.

And there was about four or five of them that were like.

Not fawns, they still didn't have their spots, but they were very, very young.

And they were just, they were just like, they were just leaping and jumping

and, you know, frolicking, if you will, and all of that kind of stuff, you know.

And you could just see the spirit of these deer, if you will.

It was just, they were just so full of life and so excited and just having fun

and exercising their body and stuff, you know.

And so I thought of the spirit of your mind, you know, So another example of

the spirit, we were walking, there's this little video of one of my grandchildren,

and she's just walking along and she's just,

you know, just so happy looking at things and walking in the snow and just laughing

and all to herself, all by herself.

She's just, we're following by, actually my wife was following behind her and

she's laughing and chuckling and all those kinds of things. You know,

the spirit of our mind, we are to become as little children, you know.

It is that freedom. It is that joy. It is that carefreeness that the Lord wants

us to be operating in and functioning in, you know.

And so I want to talk about renewing the spirit of your mind.

Let's go to the next slide.

I try to think, oops, that's not the next slide.

You're getting previews of what's really coming up. The next slide says,

the destiny of a Christian.

So there we go. Thank you. So it is. It's a magnificent destiny that we have.

It is an awesome thing that God has in store for us.

And I love the book of Ephesians.

Paul talks so much about what the glory of God is and what his intention is

for his children to be living in.

And this is just a part of it. Excuse me.

This is from chapter three. For this reason, excuse me, let me read it up here.

My print is too small. For this reason, I bow my knees to the father of our

Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,

that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory,

according to the riches of his glory,

okay, to be strengthened with might through his spirit in the inner man,

that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and

grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the

width and length and depth and height,

of his love. Okay.

Utterly and completely. And to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge

that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

All right. I underlined and boldened that, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

I know most of you pretty good.

And I know that it is your desire to continue to grow in your Christian walk

and continue to grow as the Lord is directing you and to see His will done in your life,

as I am as well, wanting to do that.

But to say that I'm living filled with all the fullness of God on a consistent

basis would not be my reality.

And so, that's what the direction of this message is all about,

is helping us to work towards, to believe for,

being filled with all the fullness of God.

I've had a few moments in my life where I felt the fullness of God, where I experienced it.

It was one time when I was in the—before I was even saved, I was in the woods. My friends were out—.

High and picking fights with people. And I was in the woods trying to figure

out the meaning of life. That was kind of the difference.

And again, I attribute that to my mom. And the Lord's presence came to me in

this bright light in the middle of this dark forest and spoke to me,

not audibly, but spoke to me in a way where he said, look at yourself. This is not who you are.

You're going to be okay. Just keep going forward. And there was this unbelievable

presence. There was this unbelievable calm.

There was unbelievable peace that happened to me that I only became aware of

exactly what it was after I got saved. And I was in some other circumstances

where I felt the presence of the Lord.

And then I knew that's what happened to me back then.

But then there's been some other times, sometimes in worship,

sometimes on mission fields.

One time when I thought I was going to die, I told this story before about a

near shipwreck that I was in in Alaska.

And in the midst of that, the Lord's presence was there being filled with all the fullness of God.

And I think being filled with the fullness of God, it is what David was talking

about when he was saying that the Lord is my shepherd.

And one of the parts of that scripture in particular, Psalm 23,

says he restores my soul.

He brings us from the cares of this world, from the deficits that we experience,

from the brokenness that happens to us as a part of this world and so forth,

and he restores our soul so that we can experience what Paul is talking about,

which is to be filled with all the fullness of God.

I truly believe that it is not something that we're supposed to just,

oh, yeah, that's going to happen when we get to heaven.

I truly believe it's his will for us to experience that regularly and as much as we possibly can.

And there's work to be done to cause that to happen. All right,

let's go to the next slide, which should say transformation.

So the transformation, and I know you know this, but let's read it anyway.

You should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility

of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the

life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart,

who being past feeling have been given themselves over to lewdness,

to work all uncleanness with greediness.

So that was our life before we knew the Lord, and as we struggle in renewing

our mind and changing it so forth that we work through that.

But that's the transformation. We go from living that way to living for the

Lord. Let's go to the next slide.

But you did not learn Christ in this way. This is Ephesians chapter four.

If indeed you have heard him and have been taught in him, just as truth is in

Jesus, that in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self.

You lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lust of deceit.

I like the New King James. Sometimes it says deceitful lusts instead of lusts of deceit.

I'm not quite sure what the difference is, but it just makes more sense to me

when it says deceitful lusts.

Lusts are deceitful. They don't deliver.

We think that they do, but then they don't deliver even when we get them.

And that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new self,

which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness

of the truth. of the truth, excuse me.

All right, so renewed in the spirit of our mind.

And it is like not just changing from thinking about sin and lust and all those

things to be thinking about God and all those things,

but actually changing the spirit of our mind where we in essence are frolicking

like the deer or carefree like my little grandchild and so forth,

where it is God's desire that we live carefree, that we live unencumbered by

the burdens of this world and by our sin nature and so forth.

That is his will. That is his desire.

That's renewing the spirit of the mind.

Part of the process, let's go to the next slide, part of the process,

not something new to you, but part of it is to not be conformed to this world.

Don't go along with the standards and the ideals of this world or the values

of this world, But bee transform, you know, the metamorpho move,

which that word transform comes from, as I'm sure most of you know,

from the same word that we use for metamorphosis, you know, going from a cocoon

to, what do you call it before it's a butterfly? What do you call it?

They're from their cocoon, their poopa. What is it?

Caterpillar. There you go.

So, sadly, I took quite a bit of biology in college. But anyway,

but to be transformed, pretty radically transformed.

And this is not from a sinner to a saint because this is the book of Romans chapter 12.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

This is written to Christians. So, he's talking about going from being a baby

Christian, totally transformed into something new, from the caterpillar to the butterfly.

Okay? That level of transformation as an immature Christian to a more mature Christian.

All right? And then, let me read the rest of it. By the renewing of your mind,

so that you may prove what the will of God is.

Part of the will of God is, is to be filled with the fullness of God.

That's part of the will of God, to be filled with the fullness of God.

Doesn't that just, the thought of that, doesn't that just blow your mind? All right.

That which is good and acceptable and perfect. And then the mechanics,

that's kind of the strategy in this next part here from Romans 8 is more the tactical process.

Excuse me, which says, For those who live according to the flesh set their minds

on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit the things

of the Spirit so they put their mind on the things of the Spirit so that's just a excuse me that's just a.

A holiness thing, that's just an intentionality that we're taking the time to

make sure that we're focusing on things of the Spirit.

It's guarding ourselves. It's guarding our hearts.

It's watching what we listen to, being careful of what we listen to and careful

of what we're watching and things like that.

And my wife and I had a really holiness era where we went over the top and were

just like so uber legalistic about what we would watch and so forth.

And our intentions were good, but we really were judgmental towards everybody.

And it's a double-edged sword, of course, when you're involved in judgmentalism

because you judge yourself as well.

And we were always coming up short. And so we realized that legalism was not

only hurting our relationships, but it was hurting ourselves as well.

And so, we begin to realize that's not the total solution for renewing your

mind is to be so legalistic about what you will let into your senses and so forth.

It's more than that. Okay? So, let's go to the next slide.

This is sin nature. So, this is Romans 7 where Paul talks about his frustration

with not being able to be more spiritual.

And he says in Romans 7, And I know that nothing good lives in me.

That is in my sinful nature.

I want to do what is right, but I can't. I want to do what is good,

but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.

But if I do what I don't want to do, I'm not really the one doing wrong.

It is sin living in me that does it.

Now, here's a little bit different focus that I have today and that we're going

to get to in just a moment here about the sin nature.

I'm talking about the sin nature, not in the sense of, oh, I can't get myself

from acting on the lustful things that I have in my life.

I can't keep myself from porn. I can't keep myself from, I don't know, gambling.

I can't keep myself from being selfish. I can't keep myself from being so lazy.

I can't keep myself from getting off of the video games and actually go,

I can't, I just can't do, I can't, you know, I'm not talking about that aspect

of committing sin. I'm talking about what I'm talking about today.

And of course, that is important and significant and part of what Paul is talking about.

But also because of the world that we live in and the sin nature that exists

in the world and in our family of origin and in the family that we're in now

in our whole life, the sin nature that exists.

Okay that's that's what i'm talking about and the deficits that come with it

all right everybody has been.

How many had perfect moms? Nobody, of course.

Nobody has perfect moms. Nobody has perfect dads. Nobody has perfect sisters or brothers.

We've all been exposed to things that have hurt us.

We ourselves have done things to hurt other people as well.

There's deficits in every human being that is on the planet, okay?

And that's why Jesus came, was to be able to help us from that.

But to be delivered from that and to be forgiven for that.

But the sin nature impacts us in a way that keeps us from being able to live

in the fullness of God, having that freedom that is there.

We can be super diligent and very, very dedicated to not commit sin and still

not be living in the fullness of what God has for us.

And it's because of the sin nature that we have been exposed to that connects

with our sin nature and keeps us from being free like we see the little children

living in. And I'm talking about little children.

And that is things like, well, let's talk about this a little bit.

Let's go to the next slide here. Now I'm switching gears from talking about biblical information,

and now I'm kind of switching into what my work is as a psychologist and how it impacts us.

So, if you don't like science or if it bugs you, just pray during this time

because I'm going to talk about that a little bit.

So, neuroscience has scientific explanation for why we don't consistently exercise

greater authority over our sin nature, okay?

It has identified what we do with some of the stuff that happens to us,

and this isn't going to be new information.

Some of the stuff's not going to be new information. Some of it will be new information,

but it is identifying how things from our past have impacted us and keep us

from living carefree more the way that the Lord has designed our life to be.

We're going to be utterly and completely carefree when we get to heaven and

don't have sin nature from us.

But here on earth, we have that opportunity if we will identify it and we will

do the work to pursue the Lord and allow him to work through us and also change

some things about us. Okay, let's go to the next slide.

So I'm going to talk about the brain a little bit here. There's two parts of

our brain I want to talk about. First of all, our brain's.

Two sides to it, the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere.

The left hemisphere does these things, a linear logical language.

It's very literal and it focused on the past and the future.

So a lot of the rational things, a lot of the stuff we learn in history,

learning math, all of the learning multiplication tables, that's all done on

the left hemisphere of our brain.

The right hemisphere of our brain, which is the one that we use first as babies

and as one years old and so forth, we're really emphasizing our right hemisphere.

And part of that is because in order to be able to absorb the linear,

the logical, the literal, all of that kind of stuff, you have to have language.

And you don't have language for quite some time there because that part of our

brain is not fully developed to be able to encode the language and all of that.

So we're really focusing on the right hemisphere when we're first developing,

and it's understanding our body compared to mom's body and all of those kinds

of things that's happening in that.

But the right hemisphere, it is a sense of our body in time and space.

It focuses on nonverbal communication, which makes sense, especially when you're

a baby, because there's not any verbal communication that's going on.

And the majority of communication is not with our words, but it is in facial

expression, it is in tone of voice, it is in body language and all of that kind of stuff.

So that's part of it. The holistic sense of experience, you know,

it's like taking in everything that's going on right here and right now, okay?

Social and emotional context, and then focusing on the here and now.

It's your right hemisphere that enables you to be totally present when you're

with other people anytime.

It helps you to be totally present and take in what's happening right here and right now.

What you're experiencing, you know, if you're not thinking about what's happening

for Mother's Day celebration after church, but actually being right here,

right now, your right hemisphere is enabling you to be able to do that.

Okay, well, God's design, let's go to the next slide. God's design is for us

to have complete integration between the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere.

That's when we're really healthy

and really whole is when those two hemispheres are integrated, okay?

And so we have both of those things that we can tap into. But what happens is this.

Kids will focus as children and then carrying it on as adults,

We focus on one side or the other.

And the reason for that is what they are exposed to.

Has a great impact on that. And so there may be a mom that's totally artsy and

that's all they focus on and that becomes something that they love and there's

great experience that happens with mom and all that.

So that becomes their focus.

The other thing is that they have great success on the one side.

We see that in a lot of kids with STEM in particular.

They get math and they get excited about it.

It's almost like a game, but then they get reinforced because they get gold

stars and they get oohs and ahs and they get A's and hundreds and all those kinds of things.

And they have great success because they're succeeding on that left side of their brain.

And that school really, really brings out the left side of their brain so much,

you know, so kids thrive in that.

And especially when there's been the other side, having failure with the other

side, Like kids that struggle with art or kids that struggle with music or kids

that struggle with expressing themselves emotionally and so forth.

When they struggle with that, then they're going to lean into the left side.

And that's going to become more and more and more their focus.

And, of course, the opposite is true, too. So kids that really have that experience

with the emotional side and the artistic side and the expressive side,

and they get lots of kudos and reinforcement for that,

they're not going to be that interested in all of the details of math and history and all.

They're boring, and what do you get out of that? And so they don't get that

much reinforcement, and they don't continue on with it.

And then throughout school, those things are typically reinforced and they go on and on with it.

And as you can see, some examples of that, what it creates, what it can lead

to is like I say there, an exceptionally intellectual, logical person with very

little emotional maturity or creative outflow.

We have at least four major corporations that are thriving because of those,

and that's Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta.

They have some exceptionally intellectual and logical people that have really

struggling with their emotional maturity.

And I can testify because I've treated quite a number of those people as clients.

And they know it. They know it. And they don't know why they are that way.

And so we talk about this very thing. On the other hand, you have highly creative,

art-oriented, artistic, emotionally expressive people that don't have a lot

of common sense or don't follow logical processes and so forth.

So the key is to work to balance relationships.

The right and left hemisphere. And if you know, and I would guess that you kind

of identified in yourself what, what you're strong at,

the left side or the right side, you know, and what will be healthy for you

is to take up some of the activities of the side that you're not as strong in.

Okay. For me, that means I need to mountain bike because I'm very much lean

to the left side of my brain.

I'm very much a logical, logical guy.

But when I get on a mountain bike and I'm out, I know this is ridiculous what

I'm saying, so I apologize.

But there's something happens to me when I'm in the woods.

And I'm, especially when I'm coming downhill, because there's just a flow,

and you're just going with the contour of the earth.

And so I'm like in touch with the earth, and I'm in this beautiful forest,

And I'm having this excitement of the impact of gravity.

And it's just exciting. And I'm literally, I catch myself.

I'm going like this, flowing and all this stuff.

And I'm smiling. I have this big smile on my face as I'm doing it.

And I don't even know it. I just all of a sudden realize, oh, I'm having so much fun.

And it's just coming out of me. So that's part of why I mountain bike is because

of that, but also just because it's really, really fun.

But I experienced the same thing skiing, but I need to do more than that because I'm horrible at art.

I do like music, but I don't exercise that much, but I got to work on that.

So identify that, and that's a whole other sermon, and I'm not going to spend

a bunch of time talking about that. But here's another part that I wanted to

get to, and this is really the most important part, is the next part.

Next slide, sorry. Our memory. This is our long-term memory.

We have the explicit memory and we have the implicit memory.

The explicit memory is the things like that really connects with the left side

of your brain, which is illogical and linear and so forth.

Sorry, I'm having a little problem with my cable.

I'm wired.

And as you can see here, the explicit side, the explicit memory,

primarily the left brain, as it says there, it's gradual and repeated process

of learning facts, stimulus and response over and over and over.

Okay, dates, historical, etc.

The implicit memory, the right brain and all of the rest of the stuff that's

up there, it has to do with unconscious learning, its perceptions,

behaviors, and emotions.

And so learning happens in the implicit memory through the body, you know. You could...

Get on a whiteboard and teach how to ride a bike, but you're really not going

to accomplish anything until that body gets on top of the bike and dad's running

along behind and holding it up.

And you're, you're like, well, you know, and all that. And then it's like,

you let go for a little while, you know, y'all remember that experience?

Yes. Okay. So that gets planted in your implicit memory.

And it's not like, okay, if I said, all right, we have 40 bikes out here.

We're all going to go get on our bikes after we leave. If we went out and did

that, we wouldn't need to go, okay, let's review. How do you ride a bike?

I wouldn't have to get up here and do a whiteboard and go through all that.

You would know because it's in your implicit memory. It's stored in your body, if you will.

You get on that bike and all of a sudden it kicks in. You go,

oh yeah, I know how to do this, and boom, off you go, okay? That's implicit memory.

That's how it works. The other aspect of it, and this is really the part that

is the essence of the message, is trauma.

Trauma is stored in our body as well as is stored in the implicit memory.

It impacts us in that way.

It's like you can't tap into, let me remember, how do you ride a bike?

You can't really think about it, But once you get on it, boom,

it comes there. It's that same way with trauma.

It's stored there, but it doesn't come out until something connects you with

the trauma that happened before.

And when the trauma happens before, all of a sudden, boom, you're triggered.

And you're like, you're not acting your normal self. And you're acting weird.

And it's like, what's happening to me? You may panic. You may all different

kinds of things. And that's extreme trauma.

OK, but it happens even on a smaller trauma, because anything that is emotional

and difficult, it gets stored in that implicit memory.

And unless, well, let's let's.

Well, I have a slide that will explain it here in just a minute here.

But let's go to the next slide for now.

All right. So the challenge with implicit memory.

We have the capital T trauma, which is like if you're in a serious car wreck

and almost get killed, sexual assault, physical assault, you know,

like being beaten up or something like that.

Those are, you know, being in war. All those kinds of things are the capital

T trauma. But then small-t trauma is like being bullied but not being beaten

up or being talked to harshly.

You know, a lot of things, there's just a ton of things that are included in the small-t.

So, as it says here, the emotional and physical experience of trauma is stored in our implicit memory.

And if left unprocessed, it empowers us in nature.

It empowers us in nature. It keeps us from experiencing the fullness of God,

which is stored in our implicit memory without being processed.

That's the big deal. And the emotions from trauma can include hurt, shame, fear, anger.

All of those things can be stored in that implicit memory, and you get back

into that, a similar scenario that put it there in the first place,

and boom, it impacts how you behave as a result of it.

Physical aspect of trauma can lead to struggle with physical affection.

Violence, and or sexual dysfunction.

All of these experiences influence our thinking, our self-esteem,

and empowers the sin nature.

I hope that makes sense to you. This next slide will give a really good example.

If a child feels ashamed when his father uses an overly harsh and demeaning

tone of voice with him, the child's left hemisphere would try to make sense of why he feels so bad.

If his father does not repair that emotional injury by apologizing and owning

responsibility for his own actions, the boy will likely conclude that he did

something to provoke his father.

In other words, he's the problem. He's what's wrong.

There's something wrong with him. He will not likely figure out that his father

is responsible for creating the shame he feels.

The child will probably feel responsible and will try not to upset his father

so that he won't experience the same feelings of shame again.

And that comes from Kurt Thompson, a great book called Anatomy of the Soul.

A really great book. He's a Christian psychiatrist.

He goes through scripture.

He goes through science. And he marries the two.

And he really helps you to have some understanding of how these things are impacting

you on a much deeper level than what I'm talking about here.

And so you can see when I'm talking about unprocessed things that are stored

in our implicit memory, it's like what happened to that boy that he's giving the example of.

Our brain, our left brain, our left hemisphere requires an explanation for why things happen to us.

Our implicit memory, it's unconscious learning that's happening,

you know, all the things that we're confused about, all the emotions that we

experience, you know, our left brain's trying to make sense of it.

It makes sense. It's trying to make sense of it even when we go to sleep at night.

That's why when you wake up in the middle of the night and you have all these

weird thoughts about, you know, what about this and what about that?

Your brain's all the time trying to process, unprocessed stuff of our life,

you know. And if there's stuff that's not taken care of during the day,

your brain's not done working on it.

It's still thinking about it at nighttime, and it wants you to address it when

it wakes up in the middle of the night.

You have to tell it, I'll talk about that in the morning or I'll think about that in the morning.

But all of these things that have happened to us, our left brain is trying to make sense of it.

And when it can't make sense of it, it usually turns inward.

It usually turns inward. And that turning inward is what keeps us from living

in that freedom, that carefree life where we can experience the fullness of God.

All right, so let's go to the next slide. We're almost done here.

Utilize the left brain explicit memory to walk in.

This is the process of processing that unprocessed stuff that I was talking about.

Okay? So, utilize the left brain, your explicit memory, to walk into the implicit

memory to process the emotions and somatic, your body, experiences that are found there.

So that means you are telling your story.

You are thinking about your story. You are sharing your story.

And you can call things up in your explicit memory, but you can't call things

up in your implicit memory except through your left brain, your explicit memory.

So you go back, and it's just this...

The process is not complicated, but to do it is, you know, difficult.

So it is, as it says here, tell your story to an empathic listener or empathetic

listener. It means the same thing.

And take the time to recall and experience the emotion and physical impact of

that episode of your life.

And then I said, setting a fire in the garage.

Okay, so when I was eight years old, I went over to my neighbor's house.

And they had a little boy who's about three years younger than me, excuse me.

And I was playing with matches in his family's garage, lighting a fire in the corner of the garage.

Okay. Not, not a big one, just, and it wasn't like malicious trying to burn

down the garage or anything.

I was just being a stupid eight-year-old with matches and stuff, you know?

And so we got this little fire going, And his mom caught us and his mom got

in my face and pointed her finger like this at me and said, don't you ever come

around here again. They live two houses away from me, right?

Don't you ever come around here again? And I don't even remember all the words

that she said, but what was imprinted in me is that I am a bad kid.

I am a bad influence.

There's something bad about me. Okay. And off I went.

This sense of shame overwhelmed me.

And the bad part of it, the worst part of it is she didn't tell my mom.

And so all that shame and bad feeling that I had, of course,

I didn't want to go and say, mom, I did this. I didn't want to go and confess.

I didn't want to get in trouble. I was eight years old, you know?

And so I lived with that shame and it got imprinted on my implicit memory,

and I carried that with me.

Not a huge deal. It wasn't like I was beaten or anything, but that little seed

was planted in me, and that shame kept me from being as free as the Lord intends for us to be free.

Now, what I need to do, or what I needed to do,

is to not only call that up in my memory that time, but actually go back and

remember what that feeling was, and share that feeling that I had and talk about

the shame that went on during that time.

So, one more minute. I didn't finish that. Go back to the last slide, please.

So you visualize it, you embrace all of your senses in the process,

talk about what you see, what you feel, what you hear, what you smell in that moment.

Try to, as much as you can, experience that as it was back then.

So try to recall the thoughts that you develop as a result of that experience.

What did you come away with? What did I walk away with that,

how I thought about myself from that time going forward?

And then lastly, if you're dealing with a capital T trauma, don't try to do

that without some professional help.

Okay, so I'm not talking about, you know, I was thinking this morning,

you know, that we overcome the devil partially by, of course,

by the name of Jesus, but also the word of our testimony.

Remember that scripture? The word of our testimony.

And the word of our testimony is sharing the bad things that happened to us

so that we can be free from it,

so that we can embrace the fullness of God, because that keeps us from receiving it.

It is the sin nature that gets in the way of experiencing that fullness of God that He has for us.

Now you can go to the last slide. And the worship team can come up while we do this.

And maybe this sounds really heavy to you and a lot of work to you,

but it's a process that can take decades to do.

But we are in this growing process here on this earth where we're going to grow

into experiencing the fullness of God more and more over time as much as we can do.

And this, what I've just been teaching about, is part of that process.

But I want you to remember this.

Especially verse 13 there. I love what Ryan taught one time,

that it's a team effort between us and the Holy Spirit working together to help us.

But this is one of my favorite scriptures, one of my life scriptures that says,

verse 13, it says, it is God who is all the while effectually at work in you,

energizing and creating in you the power and desire, both to will and to work

for his good pleasure and satisfaction and delight.

Whenever you get discouraged or whenever you feel like you've backslidden or whenever you feel like,

gosh, it's just so hard, you can just be confident that God is all the while

effectually at work in you and me.

And we're so grateful for that. Let's pray.

Lord, we're thankful for your word that teaches us how to live and how to grow.

We thank you that you are all the while effectually at work in us,

helping us to grow. We thank you, Lord, that you are in the process of restoring our souls.

Lord, I pray for each person here that they would be able to identify some parts

of the sin nature that they have experienced, that they have encountered,

that may be hindering them from really walking in the freedom that you have provided for us.

You died that we could be free, and we're so grateful for that, Lord.

Whom the Son sets free is free indeed.

Help us to walk in that freedom, Lord, by breaking out of the impact of sin

that has hit us and impacted us and crippled us in some ways and walk in the

freedom that you have for us.

Lord, I pray that you bless our days today.

Bless the moms today. Let them be just blessed in all the work that they do

and the commitment that they have.

And we thank you for them, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen.