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Good morning, Northgate. Good morning. My name is Robert Feeney, and I am in recovery. My date was August 17th, 1991. For that I am grateful and thank you, Lord. Today I will be reading verses from Psalms 139, 1 through 6, and 23 and 24. Oh Lord, you have searched me and known

Psalm Reading And Welcome

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me. You know when I sit down. And when I rise up. You understand my thoughts from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue. Behold, O Lord, you know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is too high. I cannot attain to it. 23. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there be any hurtful way in me. Lead me in the everlasting way. This is the word of our Lord. Thank you.

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Thank you, Robert.

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Hi. I am Justin. I'm sometimes here. If I'm not here, I'm usually sitting over in this area, right around there, that area. Lady, you're in my seat. That's my mom. Um my mom is in my seat. Uh some of you know what that feels like because you have a seat that you sit in every time you're here. And then my mom sits in it and it gets weird. Um

Why Recovery Culture Works

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I'm really happy to be here doing this. Uh I'm a I'm the 12 steps uh recovery culture. Like there are very few cultural offerings that I have more admiration for. Um, the life change I've seen in in friends and family members who have entered into recovery, it's it's unprecedented. Uh, it works. Someone say amen. It works. If you work it, it works. Uh, I love that there, you know, folks who know about recovery culture, you know it not because you saw an ad. You know it because someone's life was changed and you heard about it. Like that's magical. There's so much advertising in the world now about like what works and how to lose weight and how to do this and how to make your life better. But like AA and NA, like they don't go advertising. It's just, they just do the work and then people's lives are changed. And almost everyone in this room knows about AA, knows about NA, knows about recovery culture because you either know someone or you are someone whose life has been changed. Life change is the advertisement. We don't really need an ad. We just know it works because someone is healthier, more whole. Someone's family was saved because they did this work. The 12 steps, uh, it's it's it's not just a, it's not, it's not a trick. It is a it is a work, it is a life work that actually does change us. So I'm happy to do this. I was a young life leader from 1998. I was on Young Life staff from '98 uh till no '93 to '98. And one of my, this is a story about a kid when we'll we'll call him Mick because that was his name. Uh I believe it still is. Uh you never know these days. So uh Mick was a kid I knew through high school. He graduated, didn't hear from him for a little while. And then um I like two o'clock in the morning, uh, after like three or so years, he showed up in my apartment where my roommate and I were living and at like 2 a.m. and and like handed over all his alcohol. And he said, I've like, I've had this, like I've had I've got a drinking problem and I'm I'm lost. And he came to me as a minister because I was a young life leader. And I had to do a bit a bit of confession because I didn't know how to help. Someone say amen. Like alcoholism's a real big deal. And I didn't want to pretend like, oh yeah, I got you. Let's just pray a simple prayer. But here's what I did know. I did know that there was a guy named Sam, also his real name, who had been in recovery and was had had been sober for like six or seven years at the time. And I said, I don't know that I can help you. I can pray for you, but I I I'm gonna I'm gonna pass you on to a friend of mine. And what this this kid Mick did is what we're talking about this morning, is is he he made a decision to hand his will over. He said, I I got I can't I can't be around the booze. I don't know what I'm doing. Will you help me? And then I had to kind of share with him in submitting my will and saying, like, I don't know, but he can probably help you. And he like turned himself over to some stranger he didn't know because he was at the end of himself. What he knew was that his will had led him to a place that was unhealthy and it was unsustainable. And he needed to hand his will over to other persons and over to God. So this line right here, kind of a wild thing to say, is to turn our will and our lives over, to turn our will and our lives over to God, to turn our will and our lives over at all. Just that's a wild thing to ask. It's a wild thing to say. We've been talking about submission. We've been talking, talking about surrender. And my friend Mike was here last week and talked about how countercultural that is. That we are, we are specifically here in the States, we're like kind of addicted to winning. We want to win all the time. We're gonna find a way to win. And if we pay attention to what the call of Christ is in our lives and our culture, that's not what he's asking of us. Someone's saying. In fact, the call is quite the opposite. I need you to start losing so you give yourself over to me. To submit our lives on a will. And it's not as easy as to just do it. Like, oh yeah, I'm just turn your will over. Just turn your life over to Jesus, just do it. No, it turns out, you know, that as kind and wonderful as she is, you know, Carrie was only partially right. Jesus, take the wheel. If you've been in that situation, you're driving down the road and of your life and you're driving your car down the road and you're like, Jesus, take over. He doesn't just kind of do it. Someone say amen. You know what I mean? Because we're like, listen, I would like you to take the wheel now. You take your hands off the wheel, and the Lord's like, I need you to put them back on there for a second. Because I'm gonna ask you to pull over first. And then after you pull over, I'm gonna ask you to like take a couple deep breaths, and I want you to turn the car off. And then you're gonna undo your seatbelt and get out of the driver's seat because you're asking me to take the wheel of your life, but you want me to do it from the passenger seat. Sound familiar? Lord Jesus, I want you to be the Lord of my life. And also, I reserve the right to make several decisions on my own. You know what I'm saying? Jesus, take the wheel. It's not as simple as like, let's just do it. There's a whole process. There are all these steps that go between how I'm living my life now and him being the Lord of my life to turn my will. See, surrender really isn't the issue. The idea, because surrender is kind of an idea. The problem with surrender has to do with our will. I want this. I want Christ to be king. Anyone with me? I want Christ to be king of my life. I also want things that are antithetical to Christ being king of my life. Someone say amen. Y'all with me? Can we just agree to being conflicted persons? I can in fact be conflicted with myself. In fact, I most of the time am. I know things that I shouldn't be doing. I know things that I should be doing. I just don't want to do the things I know. Someone say amen. We are constantly at conflict with ourselves. Some of that has to do with what we think, but even once we get into the guts of who we are and why we do what we do, my will, my wants are complex. I don't want just the one thing. I want a lot of different things. And some of the things I want are kind of at odds with one another. I would like the donut and the

A 2 A.M. Hand-Off Of Will

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second donut and probably your donut as well. I would also like to like run a sub two half marathon. Those things are antithetical. I want both. I would like to run a race in which there are donuts on the way. This is the thing I want. Will someone build a race? Our wills are constantly complex and at odds with ourselves. And so when Jesus calls his disciples, he actually makes this thing clear. He says, Whoever wants, this is the thing you want, you want to follow me. Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Which immediately puts me in a position to like do something I don't want to do. I want to follow Jesus, but I watch me say it, I want to follow Jesus, I just don't want it to cost me. I want to follow Jesus, but I don't want it to cost me. I want you to take the wheel from over there. I don't want to get it out of the driver's seat. I want you, but I don't want you completely. We sing these beautiful songs and they're wonderful prayers, but they also put us at odds with ourselves because our wants are conflicted. Can we just confess that for a minute? It's not as simple. I like the way Paul writes it about the conflict in his own soul. I do not understand what I do. Someone say amen. Same. I don't understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do. I should read this in the original Greek because it might make more rhythmic sense. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but a sin living in me, for I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is in my sinful nature. For I have watches, I have the desire, will to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. Ugh. Man, I'm so thankful for the scriptures being written the way they're written by actual human beings who are actually in conflict because this, I find a home here. Anyone else live here? I'm in conflict with myself. It's not as simple submitting our will and our lives to Jesus, surrendering our will and lives to Jesus. It's not as simple as like, okay, quick, let's just let's just go ahead and do this. Some of it is also because we are somewhat complex as persons. So Dallas Willard, who's one of the grandfathers of the spiritual formation movement, developed this kind of graph. It's not fantastic. He's not an artist, so it's a little ugly. Um, but he he basically is kind of breaking down there different facets to what it means to be a whole person. There is the your, you know, the soul, we can talk about the soul another point, different discernment. But like there's your social life, your friends, the people you hang out with, maybe your family, your kids. There's your body, the way you feel about your body, the way you function your body. There's your, there's your mind, like there's like all these, you know. But in the middle of all of it is your will, your spirit, what I want. One of the mistakes I tend to make is I tend to like believe somehow that if I can change my mind, I will change my life. How many of y'all know at this point in your lives that that doesn't work? Because I am constantly knowing, this is what Paul just said. I know better, but I want differently. I know better, but I want differently. What Willard is getting to is that the work of Christ is not just trying to change your mind. That's part of it. But he wants to get into our will. I want to get to the core of your person because I want you to want the things that I want for you. Does it make some sense? I don't want you to just agree with me and then be in conflict because we've all been there, right? I'm gonna do this, but I'm just gonna do it just because you asked, but I'm like, I don't really want it. No, no, no. I want to work on your will. I want you to want things at a better few because that's actually how you live. You live out of your desires. We don't live out of our agreements, we don't live out of our cognitive selves. We live out of our desires. We do ultimately what we want to do. Isn't that terrifying? So he wants to change that.

Surrender Is A Process

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Jesus does this thing, uh, he'll show up in places where people are in like some form of conflict and he'll ask them about their desires. He'll ask them about their wants. In Mark 10, he's having a conversation with a gentleman named Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus is blind. Very clearly, there's the math. He's blind and he wants to see. But Jesus asks him, What do you want me to do? Isn't it just obvious? But Jesus wants to have a conversation with him about do you actually want to see? And then he does the healing. The more profound one, the scary one for me, is the one in John 5. The legend has it that there was like this pool, and that people who were physically unwell would lay by the pool. And then, like, when the pool was stirred theoretically by an angel or something along those lines, if you had an ailment and you got into the water, you got healed. And like hundreds, maybe thousands of people would lay by the pool and wait for the water to get stirred. And there was this guy who had been laying there for like deck, literal decades. And Jesus walks up to him and he doesn't just pick him up and throw him in the water, which is what I would do. That's my ministry. It's like, here, get help. Jesus walks up to him and he says, Do you want to get well? I'm sorry, what? But let's again confess this. A lot of us don't really want to. A lot of us don't really want to get well. A lot of us have become really comfortable with the ways that we hurt ourselves and other people. I don't like that I hurt myself and other people. I don't like that I'm living in destructive patterns, but man, if I actually start changing that, it's gonna cost me some stuff. So it can be more comfortable, can it not, to stay in our filth than to actually get clean because it costs us stuff that's more comfortable. Is it making some sense? I want you to want it. Jesus doesn't force himself on anybody. Somebody say amen. I want you to want it. I'm gonna show up and I will woo you and I'll talk with you and I'll be with you. But I'm gonna continue to ask you, do you want this? And as you want this, I will move deeper into your life. But it's not about what you think. It's not about who you're hanging out with, it's not about what you're how you're spending your time and your money, it's about what you want. And that's what we're gonna talk about. What do you want? I want you to give your will over to me. So how does it actually happen? How does it how does our will actually change? What is what does it look like? Well, there are these two wonderful examples in the scriptures. In the book by John Ortberg that you're you're modeling this series after, he he gives the he talks about the example of Mary. So we'll start with her, but I'm gonna hang out a lot on the example of Paul because both of these people submitted their wills and their lives to Christ and both were transformed. There are these kind of two angles to it. In the example of Mary, we know the story. If you've been to a Christmas uh gathering here or somewhere else, like Angel shows up at her place, which is just wild. Angel shows up and he's like, I'm boom, I'm the angel Gabriel, and then she's freaking out, and then he's like, Settle down, which is like, don't say that to women. Um the angels always say that, by the way. They're always like, Be not afraid. It's like you're an angel. You just showed up in my life, be not afraid. Be not afraid. I'm

The War Inside Our Wants

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just here to tell you you're pregnant. I'm sorry. Like, you say, Hey, you know, you're pregnant and you're pregnant with God. That's a wild message to be delivering. Also, relax. Okay, Gabe, thanks. And this, you know, the the Holy Spirit will come on you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the the Holy One will be born uh to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age, rude. And she, who is said to be unable to conceive in her sixth month, for no word of God will ever fail. This is the angel proclaiming this. And then what Mary says is, I am the Lord's servant. May your word to me be fulfilled. Notice what she doesn't say. What she doesn't say is, This makes sense, let's roll. Right? Because it doesn't make sense. In fact, what she says before this is, how is that exactly gonna work since I'm a virgin? She exposes her will and her conflict with God before she gives her submission. Someone say amen. I've kind of got to do that. I have to wrestle with God a little bit because then we're really getting to the nitty-gritty. I'm gonna tell the Lord. I that doesn't make any sense to me. And once I've said it out loud, then he says, Hey, I'm I'm the Lord and I've got a plan here. And then the choice I have is to say this or not. I'm the Lord's servant, may it be, may your word uh to me be fulfilled. Let it be with me as you say. She doesn't agree to the plan, she submits herself to the will of God. Do you see the difference? And the difference is this submission of a will is not an agreement. You don't come to an agreement with God. You don't come to the end of an argument and be like, okay, God convinced me. We just stop having the argument and saying, it doesn't make sense to me. I'm not even sure I like it, but I'm gonna trust that you have something good for me that I can't see from here. That's a massive difference. The other part of this is that is also somewhat wild, is that submission of her will means that Mary enters into a process of transformation. It's not a moment, it's a process. She says yes to becoming pregnant, which means for nine months, the decision she's made to submit her will actually grows in her body. When we submit our will to God, it's not a momentary thing, it's a process into which we enter. And it is a long process. And if you've given birth, and I'm talking to some of the people in the room now, if you've given birth, you know that at the end of nine months, you're not done. There should be more laughter here. Um I'm 52 years old, my mom's right there. She's not done. It's a long process we enter into. Speaking of that long process, this is Paul, who before he was Paul, he was Saul. And when Saul submitted his will and his life to God, when he actually surrendered, he entered into a very long process because his life was very different. Meanwhile, Saul was breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest and asked for letters of the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there that belonged to the way, whether men or women, he might make them as make take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground, and he heard a voice say to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Who are you, Lord? Saul asked. I'm Jesus, the one you're persecuting. We'll come back to the line. Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do. The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless. They heard the sound but did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes, he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. For three days he was blind and did not eat or drink anything. So many good things in here. One of which is this. Who are you, Lord? Side note, once in a while, do you ever kind of get the like a feeling that I do that Jesus has a bit of a smirk

Jesus Asks What You Want

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on his face? Like I'm not saying he's not being like a smart aleck per se, but he's like, Lord, Lord, who are you? Goes funny you should ask. Happens to be that I'm Jesus, the one you're persecuting. Like, of course I'm Jesus. So who, but this disorientation, he doesn't know. This is a person who has been training his entire life to know God so well that he can judge other people for knowing God poorly. Someone see, you see what I'm saying? For years, for his entire life, from a child all the way up to adulthood, he's been training so that he would know the scriptures, he would know God so well, so precisely, that he got to judge other people, the Christians specifically, for not knowing God clearly. And all of a sudden, in this moment, when he has to turn his will over to God, part of what he has to turn over is that he does not know God perfectly and well. Someone say amen. Part of what we end up handing over when we submit our will, when we actually surrender our will to God, is we surrender the ways we used to know God. I'm not right about you. I thought I knew the way you worked. I don't. And I want you to build your image in me on your terms now. That's a tricky submission. The other part of it is this the men traveling with Saul stood there speechless. They heard the sound but did not see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes, he could see nothing. So not only is Paul blind and disoriented, the people around him were also confused. When you turn your will. Over to God. When you actually turn your will in your life over to Jesus Christ, you can oftentimes become unrecognizable to the people around you because they've come to know you a certain way. Someone say amen? This is part of why it's so hard, because we built our lives around our wills and what we want. We've submitted ourselves to systems, and we'll come back to that in a second, that like are dependent upon us choosing those systems instead of choosing the kingdom of God. When we change our minds, when we change our wills, when we hand ourselves over to Jesus, the people around us can find it really disorienting and really confusing. And can we be honest, that doesn't always go real well. It's not always easy when the people around us have come to know us a certain way and we start living differently. That's hard. This is my mom who's sitting over there. She didn't know that she was gonna have her picture up there. There's my mom. By the way, that like she legitimately has less gray hair than I do. And bless your heart. I don't know what you're doing or what you're eating. Um when we give ourselves over to the kingdom, when we submit ourselves and surrender our lives to Jesus, the systems and the cultures that we have actually been submitted to previously sometimes don't like it, and sometimes we get punished for it by those systems and sometimes by those relationships. So uh my mom and I used to go to Raider Games when they used to play in Oakland. I'm told that they moved. Um they're dead to me. Uh the Raiders were a sort of like a family tradition. We didn't like go to Bali and all that kind of stuff as a family. We would we would go to Oakland Raider Games. That was like our thing as a family. My mom, my dad, and I. And then when we lost my father in my mid-20s and my father passed away, like I kind of stepped into that role as like my mama. This is like our thing. And that's who I want to be. I want to be someone who values family. Someone say amen? I want to value my family. Okay. So right around the same time, uh, around the time we lost my dad, I began a career in the arts and I began playing music and touring, which meant being on the road. And when I'm kind of on my own making those decisions, like I can kind of bend the, I wouldn't travel during uh during the football season as much because I'm going to radio games. But then this booking agency, because I was doing decently well as an artist, they brought me on and this booking agency would book shows for me. Now these things are all tangled up all of a sudden. And they want me to be on the road more because when I do my thing, they make money. Do you see how Will and everything gets all tangled up? What I want and what they want, and everything's all tangled up. Here's a systemic, systemic kind of entanglement. So they bring me on, like, hey, we want to book you and make money on you making money. Sounds great, fantastic. And says, so we have a meeting. I say, here are these eight Sundays in the fall that I'm not available. And they were like, I'm sorry, what? I'm like, yeah, these eight Sundays, I'd rather not travel on these weekends because I go to Raider games. They're like, that doesn't make it better that you're going to Raider Games. So we tried it for like a year, year and a half, two years, and it was tough. And they weren't, they weren't happy per se about it, but it was going okay. And then the unimaginable, the inexplicable, the miraculous happened, and the Raiders made the playoffs. It'll never happen again. I hope. Um and now it wasn't eight Sundays, it was ten. But you don't know about those two playoff

Mary’s Submission Without Agreement

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Sundays until deeper into the season. So now I'm not just saying I'm unavailable months ahead of time. I'm gonna cancel some gigs. And they really didn't like that. So I got fired over text. That's so rude. Breakups, firings over text, that's awful. So I don't tell my mom this is the time, she knows now. But like I was supposed to be in New England, but instead I'm at the Raiders playoff game against the New York Jets. And I'm feeling it that day. So I'm like, I'm spending money instead of making money, which is not a great move. So I'm feeling it in my guts. I'm like, man, I don't know what happens from here, but I'm still making this choice. I've I'm I'm here, this is my will. I'm willing to be here. And I can't do that. And I'm the system has punched me in the throat for choosing my mom. Well, Raider games were always kind of a magical time. The parking lot was incredible. People were great. They build these big fires and roast pigs, and it's an actual story. The wonderful Tongan family would literally come in with these two giant pigs and build a fire pit the size of the stage. It's a great time. And then people would bring bands. They would come with like their cover bands and they would kind of local bands kind of play. And so we're in the parking lot and we're, you know, we're eating pig, and and and I hear this cover band across the way playing a song that I recognize called Ride the Lightning, which is an old Metallica song. I love Metallica. I was like, that's a great cover. This is these guys sound really, really good. That guitar tone is fantastic. It's very, very good. But they're very loud. Well, one of the other gentlemen is in our group, a guy named Mike, uh, Mike Bowles, who'd been a football player, uh, he's like six, five, six, six, much taller. He's looking over and he looks across the parking lot in the direction of the sound. He goes, No way. And he grabs me by the back of my neck like a kitten and picks me up, sets me on his shoulders, he takes my mom by her wrist, and he starts running across the parking lot. Because when he looked across the parking lot in the direction of the noise, it wasn't a cover band. It was Metallica. Actual Metallica, had driven into the parking lot, unannounced, dropped the top of this big truck, and played a 45-minute impromptu set. Oh. And it was like the Lord was saying to me, son, I heard you got fired. Have some heavy metal. Which is a cute way of saying this. There are gifts and riches and blessings available on the other side of us surrendering our will that are simply not available on this side. And on the other side of what it costs

Saul’s Conversion And Losing Control

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us to submit and surrender our will to Jesus are blessings and riches we could not possibly imagine. I would not have believed you if you told me that I was going to catch a free Metallica show at any point in my life. It's like $900 now. Everything's $900 now. But on the other side of saying yes to what I should say yes to, on the other side of the systems around me punishing me for having chosen differently, there are gifts available to me. So I can't tell you what it's going to look like for you. In a few moments, that's just going to come out here and maybe present some potential next steps for you. What I want to encourage you in this morning is this is when you begin to submit and surrender your will to Jesus, it's a long process and it doesn't happen in a moment. Someone say amen. It comes sometimes at the end of your rope where your will is kind of worn out. And it's not an agreement you make with Jesus. It's you just saying, I don't want to fight with you anymore. I want what you want, whatever that is. And he's better than you can possibly imagine. It's worth the cost. It's worth how hard it is. So she's going to come out here and pray a blessing over you guys and present with uh a few potential next steps. And it's why we talk, it's it's why this book does what it does, and it's why the steps are the way they are. It's because it is a process you you get to enter into. And you don't have to be ready for the whole thing this morning. But can you be ready for a step? And what might that look like?