Speaker 1: 0:13

You know it's such a simple, but it's a brave thing for somebody to take the time and give themselves as a gift to us In the church. They let us in under the surface of their life. They go so far beyond I'm fine, and they actually let us into their inner world. What Darnell gave us was a gift, because then we feel seen not just by another human. We're in a church and just through the simple story of another human we also feel seen by God. We're in this series on anxiety and mental health and practical hope. I'm a guest. It's a pleasure to be with you. My name's Steve. My last name is Cus. I'll just get it out of the way now. There's nothing we can do about that. That's just what it is.

Speaker 1: 1:01

I grew up in Western Australia. Unchurched kid Was not raised with any kind of religious background. My whole extended family, not just my parents, but my uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, great-grandparents, my great. I had to track down a great-great-aunt to find another believer. When I was a teenager I became a follower of Jesus, along with my oldest sister. Just to simplify my story, I would simply say this my first encounter with love was in the local church. I walked into a church at 13. I became a Christian at 14. I couldn't say this at the time, I didn't know, but as I look back on it it felt like the first time I could relax Somehow. I was home, I was welcomed and for those of you who aren't followers of Christ, maybe somebody has invited you, maybe you're just wondering, maybe you're very skeptical. You've got your hand. That's most of my extended family to this day. Can I just say to you that I have experienced that the center of the universe is love. The very heartbeat of the universe is in fact love, and his name is Jesus Christ. And the idea that God has a particular love for us has scandalized my life and it's also hard for me to believe that it's true. So I kind of say, lord, I believe, help my unbelief, true. So I kind of say, lord I believe, help my unbelief.

Speaker 1: 2:22

I think all of us, whether you're a follower of Christ or not, I think we experience a gap between what we believe about God and what we experience from God. And I think most of us have three gaps. The first one I've kind of gotten into I believe God loves me, but I don't feel it. The second one I believe God is with me, but I don't see it. And the third gap is I thought I'd be further along by now. I just thought I'd be better at this than I am. Three gaps, and I think a lot of the modern Christian experience is managing the gaps.

Speaker 1: 2:55

I don't know if you're this way, but I have beliefs in my head that my body doesn't seem to agree with. I believe in the peace of Christ. My body's, like I, am not at peace. I believe in freedom. My body says I'm so bound. And out of all of these different gaps, I think for me the lifelong struggle, for me, up until about eight or 10 years ago I had quite a breakthrough. I'll share some of that. But for me it's God's love. When I really get right down to the very deepest core of myself and this took quite a while I don't believe I'm worth loving, and so it's hard for me to relax into God's particular love. It's very easy for me to say that God loves you. It is harder for me to say that God loves me. It is easy for me to believe in a generic love, like God has to love me because I'm one of eight billion people on the planet and God loves us. That's what he does, it's his job, versus what Jesus says, which is that God has a particular love for us, that God knows the number of hairs on our head which, let's face it, for some of us is easier for God than others.

Speaker 1: 3:56

When I graduated from college, I moved to America to go to college, and I'm a pastor. I got a Bible college degree. I went from college into hospital chaplaincy. I was a trauma and hospice chaplain. At 24 years of age. I'd never seen a dead body in my life. I'd had no experience of grief.

Speaker 1: 4:11

It was an absolute, disorienting, intense year and, just like you see in your hospital dramas, when medical residents do these marathon overnight shifts, they don't show it on TV. I'm a little bitter about it, actually, but chaplains do the same thing. So we did these 28-hour overnight shifts. In the year I was a chaplain I attended to around 200 deaths, unbelievable amounts of cancer. I was in pretty much every room when somebody got the news any kind of tragedy. Basically, my job was to connect to people at the worst moments of their life and help strangers in the most intimate and worst moments of their life, help them navigate it so that they could figure out what was next. It was quite intense and in many ways that one year of chaplain residency profoundly shifted the direction of the trajectory of my life.

Speaker 1: 5:01

I couldn't name it at the time, I was young, but I've always been a chronic people pleaser. Some of you are like me. We're like golden retrievers. We're just always needing a pat on the head. You know, if somebody's disappointed in me, it feels like the world is ending.

Speaker 1: 5:16

If I've let somebody down, I just had this massive overreaction and as a chaplain, what happens is is when people are desperate, they believe that there's more chance that God will answer the chaplain's prayer than their own prayer. Even though I don't think theologically, that's true, that's what people believe when they're desperate. And so much of my life, sometimes dozens of times a day, I would be paged to go into a room to beg God for a miracle. So these people begged me to beg God for a miracle. Now, what's true in the year I was a chaplain is I did experience some miracles, some things that even the doctors would say we can't explain it. The tumor's gone, like that did happen. But if I can be honest with you, the numbers, the percentages, were not great, were not great.

Speaker 1: 6:01

Overwhelmingly, god did not answer their prayer the way they desperately wanted God to, and I, as a people pleaser, took that very personally. I couldn't tell the difference between God's job and my job and as I felt like I was letting people down, I began to build like a Teflon layer around my heart. Again, I couldn't tell you any of this at the time. I was just living my one wild and beautiful life. Right, we just live our life until we finally run into ourselves, like Darnell was sharing with us, and that's what I was doing. I was just trying to cope in a subconscious way. But I started to realize subconsciously, if I never expect anything out of God, god can never let me down and it won't hurt so much. There's actually an old song in the 80s by Steve Taylor. The song is called Since I Gave Up Hope, I Feel Much Better and in many ways that was my faith. You really can't experience the love of God when you have Teflon guarding what gets into your heart.

Speaker 1: 7:01

Now, when I was a chaplain, I was introduced to a very specific theory that teaches you as a chaplain how to notice the anxiety in any environment, like we were trained, and how do we walk into a room and notice who's the most anxious person, who's generating the anxiety, who's carrying the anxiety? Some of you. You could use this theory like with your boss, right, like you're like man. I wouldn't mind this theory tomorrow morning because the boss is the most anxious person in the room. The problem is he doesn't realize he's anxious. He thinks he's a strong leader. He's generating it. We're all carrying it. I've been trained in how to help in that theory and now what I do is travel the world and do workshops and teach people how to manage anxiety in the workplace and the home place. That's mostly what I spend my time doing now.

Speaker 1: 7:44

But the most surprising thing when I first learned this theory is how anxious I was as the chaplain. How much I was bringing into the room, how much I was infecting the room with my own false needs without even knowing it. The anxious need to make you feel better. The anxious need to say just the right thing. The anxious need to relieve the unbelievable amount of tension. What I learned especially in the emergency room Emergencies don't generate family dynamics. They just reveal family dynamics. Whatever was happening in that family one minute before they got the phone call. That's the dynamic that was exposed in the crisis and all of this family tension would boil up in me, and so I had to learn how to study chronic anxiety. Now, there's all kinds of anxieties and I'm trained in one particular kind of anxiety called chronic anxiety. We're going to spend kinds of anxieties and I'm trained in one particular kind of anxiety called chronic anxiety. We're going to spend a bit of time.

Speaker 1: 8:41

I just want to teach you some of the tips of chronic anxiety, because it's one of the most common anxieties that every human faces, and it's the number one cause of relational disconnection. Out of all the anxieties you can carry, chronic anxiety gets us disconnected in our relationships quickest. It disconnects us from ourself. So often we can be chronically anxious and not even know it. That's what Donnell was hinting at. It disconnects us from our people. It makes us avoid difficult people and it disconnects us from awareness of God. You might remember in the Bible when Jacob said Surely, the Lord was in this place and I was not aware of it. That's chronic anxiety. Chronic anxiety displaces your awareness of God. But before we get to that, just a couple of things that might be helpful in this series.

Speaker 1: 9:29

Number one I don't know if you've noticed, but our society is talking so much more about anxiety than it used to. Have you noticed that, like in the last 10 years, maybe 20 years, the language and fluency of anxiety has gone through the roof? I personally think that's a very good thing. I'm a Gen X, we're the forgotten generation, we're the neglected generation, everyone in the room. If you're a Gen X, we need all the pity we can get, because everyone talks about boomers and millennials and we're just here like hey, we have the best music. Because everyone talks about boomers and millennials and we're just here like hey, we have the best music. Right, like InXS, eurythmics, right, right, I'm a Gen Xer. Some of you might be boomers and I do find myself when I'm doing anxiety workshops. Sometimes I'm defending millennials and Gen Z, because millennials and Gen Z are so fluent in the language of anxiety, they're so good at talking about anxiety.

Speaker 1: 10:18

And once in a while, another Gen Xer like me, or sometimes a boomer, will come up to me and they'll say something like look, our parents or grandparents fought Hitler and they didn't need to talk about anxiety, right? Have you ever heard something like that? Why are our kids always talking about it? And I just gently say to them yes, they did fight Hitler. That is why they're the greatest generation. They're unbelievable and, yes, they drank their feelings away. They came home and drank those feelings right under the table and their spouses and kids said that they were a stranger and there was massive levels of generational abuse. So let's decide what's the better solution talking about it or pretending it doesn't exist.

Speaker 1: 10:57

The second thing I want to point out is we're talking about anxiety a lot today, but one shift that would really help our culture. In fact, I don't think we're going to grow as a culture until we make this shift. We have to learn to stop talking about anxiety as a singular and learn how to talk about anxiety as a plural. It's not anxiety to talk about anxiety as a plural. It's not anxiety, it's anxieties. There are so many different kinds of anxiety and each anxiety has a different playbook. Like, trauma is a form of anxiety, but it operates so differently from grief, and it operates so differently from mental health, like anxiety, depression disorder, that needs mental health medication, which operates so differently than acute anxiety and chronic anxiety. Now, I'm not here today to give us an overview of all the main anxieties. I've got a couple of books out there. Be happy to dig into them there. Here's the point I want to make Just two quick points.

Speaker 1: 11:51

Number one if you or a loved one struggle with mental health and you need to take mental health medication I am not a medical professional, I'm a pastor. I have no medical training at all. I just want to say, as a pastor, if you need mental health medication, you should thank God and take mental health medication. It's a gift from God. It is not a comment on your faith. Mental health medication is more typically a comment on your chemicals in your faith. Now, I don't think in Northgate there's a stigma about this, but maybe you have a loved one that goes to a church that highly discourages mental health medication. I would simply say, as a passionate follower of Jesus who is deeply studied in the Bible, I would just say thank Jesus that we're in the 21st century where we can avail ourselves of such great technology. You should take it.

Speaker 1: 12:42

Now I'm not going to go through all the different anxieties. Let me just talk about two. Let's talk about acute anxiety, because that's a fun one. Acute anxiety is any time that you or a loved one might be in danger, like maybe you're thinking about the last time you had to slam on the brakes and swerve to avoid an accident. Or maybe you're a parent and you're thinking about the last time you lost a child in a public space, like at a playground. You missed your kid. I have three kids and I'm proud to say I've lost all three of my children, and that's acute anxiety.

Speaker 1: 13:13

I was raised in Western Australia. Australia has the great gift of having nine of the ten deadliest snakes in the world in my zip code. Australia is such a great place to die. We can kill you on the land, we can kill you in the ocean. But some of those snakes were in my backyard I mean my literal backyard. I remember one time looking outside and my cat was playing with a Jew guy one of the nine deadliest snakes in the world and I was like, well, nice to know you, buddy, like that was kind of rough. But when I was a teenager my older sister would make me walk to school ahead of her to flush out the snakes. Yeah, yeah, we're very close. And one time I saw a tail rustle in the leaves, the dry leaves, and I heard the sound and saw the tail. And I did not. Just in case you're curious about this, I'm not a hepatologist. I did not stop to identify the snake because it's either a dugite, which is very deadly but it's shy, or it's a tiger snake. They are deadly and aggressive. Tiger snakes were born with a chip on their shoulder. They were born angry and they come after you. And so I did what any self-respecting six foot two Australian teenage boy would do I ran and squealed like a little baby.

Speaker 1: 14:24

That's acute anxiety. That's acute anxiety. When you're in acute anxiety, you get a big dose of adrenaline. Your brain gets very focused. You've heard those stories about people with superhuman strength. They can lift a heavy object of someone that's trapped. You get all this adrenaline acute anxiety but it's based on something real. It's based on something real. Now, in reality, maybe that snake's just a garden snake, but your body is smart. It's designed to get you to safety. Acute anxiety Now listen, we're not talking trauma, that's different. We're not talking grief, that's different. Depression, anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder different. Just one kind here. Now, the kind that I was trained in is called chronic anxiety. And what's fascinating about chronic anxiety? It is not generated by a real threat. It's generated by a false threat.

Speaker 1: 15:13

What do you think you need that you don't really need? What do you think you need to be okay and for the world to be okay that you don't actually need. I'm a people pleaser. I need everyone to get along. All the time, Tension makes me so anxious Me being in tension with somebody, but even me witnessing tension when I have run a staff before and I'm well with my team, but some of my team are not well with each other I get anxious Isn't that crazy? And I anxiously go in and I make them get along. A false peace. Why? For their sake? No, for my sake, so I can relax. What do you think you need? So what happens is your body cannot tell the difference between acute anxiety and chronic anxiety, unless you train it. This is why people burn out, because they have all of these unaddressed false needs. The average human being has between 30 and 50 unaddressed false needs, and they show up in the craziest places.

Speaker 1: 16:13

Two years ago, I was flying home to Denver, where I live, from Chicago. I was doing an anxiety workshop in Chicago and I'm at the O'Hare Airport and I don't know if you're aware of this, but O'Hare Airport is where Satan lives. It's just the worst place, and I'd been there all the day before for seven hours as my flight delayed and they finally canceled at 11 pm and now 3,000 of us are trying to rush to get hotels and I get a hotel at 1 am and I'm back at 4 am at the airport for the first flight out and they've kind of squeezed me on a flight and I'm at the back of the plane. We land in Denver and look, I'm sleep-deprived, I'm a little grumpy, there's no excuse for what I did. And so the seatbelt sign goes off. You know we're at the gate and you hear that ding and the family behind me. You're not going to believe this.

Speaker 1: 17:00

The family up behind me tried to skip the line, not on Daddy's watch, no, because in the Cuss family you must be courteous to everybody and everybody must be courteous to each other, or else we take over. I'm not proud of what I'm about to say. The teenage daughter she barrels up the aisle. I was kind of half asleep, so you know no excuse, my peripheral vision wasn't great. But as soon as she got through the aisle I stuck my arm out in the aisle to block the rest of the family. Like I'm Gandalf, like none shall pass, like who made me judge, jury and executioner.

Speaker 1: 17:39

But that's what happens when you're in chronic anxiety? You get reactive, you get reactive and before you can realize you forget the Lord. God is judge, but when you're anxious, you become judge. Or sometimes it goes the other way. It's not so much you make yourself bigger, like I did, sometimes you make yourself smaller. God is refuge. But when you're anxious I must protect myself, I must go into self-protection. So sometimes we get bigger when we're reactive. Sometimes we get smaller when we're reactive.

Speaker 1: 18:07

In this particular time I got very big, stuck my arm in the aisle and addressed the family, had a little meeting and I said hey look, we're all trying to get off this plane. Let's wait our turn. Very condescending At the time, this is how crazy anxiety is. This made perfect sense to me in the moment, like anxiety says this is exactly what the world needs for you to be okay. Anxiety has a gospel and it says you must do it. Just keep trying, do more, worry your way to peace. So there I am, taking over and I told them let's all wait our turn. And they invited me to have, let's just say, a relationship with my mother. That's illegal in all 50 states. It was really bad and they bust through my arm and I'm so angry. I'm so angry.

Speaker 1: 18:54

This is not a past, tense story, back when I was a sinner. This is two years ago. This is me flying home from teaching an anxiety workshop, a managing anxiety workshop. I get off the plane, the flight attendant had seen everything and she pulls me aside. And the flight attendant says sir, I thought you'd like to know that young lady was having a panic attack. Yeah, and she said, and you blocked her family from helping her. This was not the time for me to say you know what? I'm a pastor. I'd like you to. Why don't you come to our church? I should have told her I was a Lutheran, like, hey, I'm a Lutheran pastor. What happened? What happened in that moment? What was going on? Listen, I used to be a trauma chaplain. I've been trained in noticing the physiological signs of stress and I missed it. Why? Because my false need wasn't getting met. Now, most of us have 30 to 50 triggers and most of us are triggered, bigger or smaller, every day.

Speaker 1: 20:00

Did you know that out of all the different anxieties, chronic anxiety is the only one that's contagious? We catch it, we spread it. Who here has ever tried to take a toddler shopping? Yeah, who here has ever tried to get a child out the door for school on time in the morning? Yeah, who here has ever been that poor kid? And suddenly your parents have become different people. I thought you were a reasonable human being and now the parent is like I've got to make you lunch. The parent's the one having the tantrum and you're like look, I'm the 15-year-old. How is it? I'm the most reasonable person in this room right now. That doesn't even make sense, because we catch and spread. Why is that? Because chronic anxiety, different than the other anxieties, is its playbook. It is generated by assumptions, false expectations and false beliefs. This is why it's interesting to me as a pastor. It's because chronic anxiety or reactivity is generated by false beliefs.

Speaker 1: 21:05

Every human being has up to five false needs that when we don't get them, we get reactive. Here they are Control, perfection, always knowing the answer, always being there for people and approval. I think we have a slide for it Control, perfection, always knowing the answer, always being there for people and approval. Where are you on the big five? Where are you on the big five?

Speaker 1: 21:36

Those of you who are perfectionists? I have a lot of empathy. I'm not a perfectionist. I'm very comfortable making a mistake. It doesn't bother me. But some of you who are perfectionists, you believe the lie, talk about a false need, talk about an assumption. You believe the lie that you are supposed to get it perfectly right the first time you ever do something. You've never done it before and you expect to be an expert. You do not allow yourself to be a rookie Perfectionist. You decide I'd like to learn to play the cello, and in three lessons. Why aren't I? Yo-yo Ma? That's a perfectionist, right Perfectionist. When have you ever done it perfect? Some of you right now are like what's your problem, dude? That's not the point. The point is to exhaust myself on a treadmill to nowhere and just keep chasing the carrot that's dangling out of reach. Who's the smart guy now?

Speaker 1: 22:26

I grew up in Australia where greyhound racing is a thing, and there's three occasions I don't know if you know greyhound racing Instead of horse racing. It's dog racing, pretty simple. It's a rounder circuit, like horses do, but to entice the greyhounds they have a fake mechanical rabbit on an arm and the rabbit just stays about 30 feet out of reach of the greyhounds and they just chase the rabbit. Of course the rabbit is just made out of metal. Well, you can go on YouTube and you can Google failed greyhound races. It's really a great way to spend your time, I think. And there's three occasions where something went wrong. The first occasion, true story, you can see it on YouTube a real live fur and all rabbit ran onto the track at the wrong time. That's so great to watch. He's like I'm just out for a run and suddenly half the greyhounds start chasing the wrong rabbit. It's great. But two other times they had a power failure and the mechanical fake rabbit stopped and the greyhounds ran right into it. Those greyhounds are done. They're retired. Why? Because they discovered the thing they've been chasing their whole life was fake.

Speaker 1: 23:27

That's chronic anxiety, perfection, control, always knowing the answer. How about always being there for people? That's one of mine. I cannot reliably tell the difference between your need and my need to be needed. I have to incessantly come in and save the day. Sometimes I overcommit. I don't know my boundaries. How many people can you love? Always room for more, always room. No end to my ability to pour myself out and sacrifice myself. Sometimes I'm more helpful than you've asked me to be. Steve, I'm not asking your advice. I'm just trying to tell you about my day Really, because my brain told me that you want me to help you live your life. Isn't that crazy? That's crazy. That's a false need, that's an assumption.

Speaker 1: 24:11

Sometimes those of us who are always there for others we get very lonely and we say, well, I'm there for everybody. Who's there for me? Why isn't anyone? We go into self-pity. We don't realize our anxiety has set the whole operation up. Our friends gave up years ago trying to help us because every time they would ask us if they could help us, we'd say I'm fine, because our core belief is I help others, I never need help. The big five I won't go through all five. Maybe you can find yourself on all five.

Speaker 1: 24:42

But this is where we start to discover why we struggle to relax into the love of God. Because we're operating out of these false needs, these false beliefs, if you will, what we would call in the church a false gospel, and all of us live for various gospels, not just one, those of us in the room who are followers of Jesus. We talk about the gospel of Jesus, but we don't realize that we live for a number of false gospels. You know, I did not grow up in the church, as I said, and so I just always assume that my belief in Jesus is my deepest belief because Jesus is so precious to me, jesus has transformed my life. But it was about 10 years ago that I realized, oh wow, jesus is in fact not my deepest belief. Jesus is my most precious belief.

Speaker 1: 25:29

But I have beliefs rummaging around in my subconscious that get in the way, that infect my capacity to relax into God's love, to relax into God's presence, and all of those beliefs are making me pay. I'll share with you one of my deepest, most core beliefs. I'm not worth loving Now. It took me a while to find it, but it is down there. I had a rough upbringing. I was bullied a lot as a kid and I just didn't even know I was doing it. But I just had to perform, perform and fake and fake my way to survive into adulthood and I just thought, when I became a Christian, I'd baptized that belief and it had died. But it's still in there. It's still in there and it activates when I'm anxious and it suddenly tells me you have to have that person like you for you to be okay and for them to be okay and for things between you to be okay. You have to do it perfectly for everything to be okay.

Speaker 1: 26:30

Those of you who are perfectionists, here's how you can test your perfectionism Pick an email this week, email somebody that really matters maybe a team or something and put five mistakes in it on purpose Right. And some of you right now are like this guy is not to be trusted, like he's a heretic. Because your anxiety is telling you a gospel right now, and it's the gospel of doom and Armageddon. Your anxiety is saying just stay on that treadmill or try harder, do more of the same, just keep striving for that carrot of perfection that you've never got and you'll never get and you'll exhaust yourself. Meanwhile, jesus stands at the door and knocks and invites you to be human-sized.

Speaker 1: 27:10

If we look at those big five again, if we could put those on the screen again, you suddenly realize these aren't just the five sources of anxiety for humans, these are the five core attributes of God. Wait, god is in control, so I don't have to be. God is perfect. I get to be human and learn and make mistakes. That's human sized. God knows everything. Rather than feeling stupid when I don't know, I get the gift of being curious, which is a wonderful human gift. God is there for everybody. I do not have to exhaust myself with what's known as a Messiah complex, and God freely gives us our approval. I don't have to earn it from anybody, I just get it as a gift of grace because of Jesus' work on the cross. And so the challenge of our faith is letting the gospel of Jesus, what's called the good news, seep deep into ourselves so that it can infect the story we tell ourselves, the way we treat ourselves.

Speaker 1: 28:16

I'm just going to give you a couple of tangible tools that you can take home, and some of these are deep and some are real simple. We'll do the simple one first. Just even right now. If you have a device or taking notes, you can just do this right now. Just make a quick list of three things that you do or say for people you love. If you've got a device or a notebook, you can write a note of this. This is a simple game Just three things that you do for people you love, or three things you say to people you love, all right now. You can write them out now, or you can just make that homework, because I'll keep talking and it's hard to do homework while you're listening. So that's some homework.

Speaker 1: 28:54

I'll give you an example of my life. I check on my friends. I believe them. When they tell me how they're doing, I don't say, well, suck it up, dave, you can do better than that. I would never say that to Dave. I say that to myself. I would never treat Dave that way. So I check on them, I believe them and I use words of encouragement and kindness with my friends. Okay, your next piece of homework what's one thing that you do to yourself that you would never in a million years do to another human being yourself, that you would never in a million years do to another human being, even your worst enemy? You wouldn't do it to them? What is something you do to yourself? And in this simple exercise, we see a 180-degree difference between how we treat our loved ones and how we treat ourself.

Speaker 1: 29:40

When I first did this exercise, it was 2016. I was tired of proclaiming a love of God. I was struggling to experience and I went on my own deep journey, and 2016, for me, was a real turning point. So I've been living in kind of this new reality for eight years now. I discovered that I called myself a moron all the time.

Speaker 1: 29:58

I have felt stupid my whole life. I felt stupid as a kid. I didn't get great grades. As a high schooler, I was kind of a late bloomer. I was very insecure and I've carried this stupidity feeling with me. And now that's partly why I'm such a wicked intellect mostly to overcome the feeling of stupidity. And of course, god redeems all our pain and so God uses it. But that stupidity thing is still in there.

Speaker 1: 30:29

And so in 2016, I spent a week and I took inventory of every time I called myself an idiot or stupid 50 to 100 times a week. I didn't even know I was doing it. It was just what I did. I would never call Dave, call Dave a moron, no, I would never do that to my friend Dave, so freely did it to myself. I believe Dave. I don't believe myself. I say come on, get over it. You can do better than that. Let's go Very harsh.

Speaker 1: 30:47

Jesus said love your neighbor yes, and he has this pesky amendment. Love your neighbor, yes, and he has this pesky amendment as you love yourself. Could it be that one of the reasons we struggle to relax into the love of God is we're letting the story we tell ourselves have a higher priority in our life than the gospel of Jesus. It's very hard to put your faith in an invisible God. It's easier to put your faith in yourself that most of us have been doing most of our life. If we go one level deeper, we suddenly run into our inner critic. I'm going to just speak about our inner critic quickly. This could be a whole thing, but again, this could be some homework for you. What message does your inner critic send to you? Have you ever said it out loud to someone?

Speaker 1: 31:36

2016, I was fishing Same year. I had this kind of epiphany. This was a moment for me. I was fishing in the Blue River in Silverthorne. I live in Colorado. I was fly fishing. I've never loved a hobby. I'm bad at like fly fishing. I'm not very good at it and I love it. And there I am in the water and there's like 10 other fishermen around me and everybody's catching trout except me. I couldn't do it. I tried changing flies, did all the things you do. I could not attract a trout on my rod and my inner critic had a word for me. You know what it's like.

Speaker 1: 32:07

Every time you let yourself down, your inner critic speaks. So I'm letting myself down, I'm moving into shame and my inner critic said see how stupid you are. You're so stupid you can't even outsmart a fish. With a brain the size of a fish, you can't even outsmart a stupid fish. That's one of the messages of my inner critic. Pleased to meet you, by the way, just thought I'd get him out in the open for you. And then, if I really let my inner critic have his way, he tells me I'm not worth loving.

Speaker 1: 32:43

And I never realized until 2016 that my inner critic is giving me a gospel, making me pay, but the gospel of Jesus. Jesus pays. And I started to learn the difference between the voice of my inner critic and the voice of God by who's paying, who's making me pay and who's doing the paying for me. So in 2016, I said, great, I'm going to fire my inner critic. And then he showed up to work the next day and I'll talk to you in our last step on how we contain him.

Speaker 1: 33:12

But here is the gospel of Jesus 1 John, 3, 19 and 20. This is how we know we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence. If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything, greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Our inner critic is trying to protect us from outside condemnation so it kind of gets it over with by condemning us first before someone else can. It's almost like beating yourself up hurts less than being beaten up, so I'm going to beat myself up out of protection. It's a weird form of self-protection. And here is John getting right to the heart of the matter, where John says man, when you enter God's presence, that's anxious. God knows everything, he sees everything. That's very exposing. Most of us are never relaxed around other human people. We always have some kind of pretense up or some kind of self-protection up around most people in our life. But when you're in God's presence, your pretense, he sees right through it, your self-protection, and you're just exposed. And it's scary. It's scary, isn't it to be loved by God Before? It's wonderful, it's a little terrifying because there's nothing you can do. You just have to stand there and take it. God's love, no conditions. And so John says your heart condemns you. Your inner critic tries to kind of get ahead of the condemnation that thinks that God's giving you. And then John wonderfully says but God is greater than our hearts and God knows everything. God's view of you. It trumps your view of you. You, it trumps your view of you.

Speaker 1: 35:00

I'm an Australian citizen, which means that the king of England is my sovereign. I know that sounds really funny to you, those of you who are American citizens. Look, I understand. I'm also an American citizen, so I have a dual citizenship. I love both countries so dearly. I love this country. America is a great country. But we do have a small difference with you guys. We, as Commonwealth people, like we like to drink tea and you apparently like to throw perfectly good tea into a harbor in some kind of weird protest. Right, I get it, we're different. I get it.

Speaker 1: 35:28

But King Charles, if he were to ever beckon me to Buckingham Palace, it would be an honor to go meet the king. It would be a great honor for me. But there's rules. If you've ever seen the Netflix series the Crown, you know there's protocol. Imagine when Queen Elizabeth was alive, if I just walked in and started running my mouth. Can you imagine mansplaining to the queen? No, no, the sovereign gets the first word. You walk in and you wait, and they speak. You wait, they speak, then you get to talk, but you would never correct your king, you would never correct the king. If the king says it's going to be hot today, you wouldn't say actually, king, it's going to rain. No, you wouldn't. You don't correct the king. And then the king gets the final word.

Speaker 1: 36:12

And I realized in my life I was giving my inner critic the first and final word. Jesus said you are fearfully and wonderfully made. And I said no, jesus, I know better than you. In the name of humility I thought it was being humble, that's pretty arrogant to stand in front of the king of the universe and say my opinion of me is more important than your opinion of me. So I fired my inner critic and he showed up to work the next day. And so I realized well, I just need to relocate him. So I took him out of the corner office of my brain, where he had free reign and was not paying rent, and I moved him into the basement of my life. He's still there, he still has a word, but now I contain him with God's first and last word.

Speaker 1: 36:58

I try to live every day inside God's first word and last word. The first thing every morning, I wait and try to discern God's first word and God's first word is always the same thing. It's always life and love, and my inner critic chats once in a while, but it's lost its sting. It's difficult, isn't it, to be loved by God, just to stand there in God's presence and let God speak over you when God says there is now. Therefore, now, no condemnation.

Speaker 1: 37:31

When you were knit together in your mother's womb, god knew your name, and so just our final exercise and this is going to be a simple prayer that you can do now and then you can take it home if it's helpful is just to fill in the blank prayer that can help you displace your message with God's. And that is what if I were at least as blank to myself as God is? What if I were at least as blank to myself as God is? What if I were at least as blank to myself as God is? And you can fill in the blank for you. What if I were at least as kind to myself? What if I was as patient with myself? What if I perfectionists, were as forgiving of myself as God is? How would that change my life? How would that change my life? What's the blank for you? What's the blank for you? Let's pray.

Speaker 1: 38:30

Oh Father, thank you so much that you invite us not to get reactive but to relax into your presence, that we can get off the treadmill of anxiety anytime we want and we can remember the Lord. We can relax into God's presence. We don't have to be in control, because you are. We don't have to do it perfectly because you're perfect. We don't have to know everything there is to know. We don't have to be there for everybody that has overwhelming problems. We don't have to know everything there is to know. We don't have to be there for everybody that has overwhelming problems. We don't have to curry favor with people. We can simply be exactly human sized, beloved of yours. We can receive your gospel of love. We thank you, lord, that we can do that. Lord, we believe. Help our unbelief in Jesus name, amen.