WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.360 Music. 00:00:05.356 --> 00:00:11.099 Welcome to The Rooted Podcast where we believe that life change can happen for, 00:00:11.626 --> 00:00:18.826 your good and for God's glory. Today is the first episode. I've done some 00:00:18.826 --> 00:00:22.346 podcasting but I've never done a podcast by myself so I'm kind of trying to 00:00:22.346 --> 00:00:27.826 figure out just exactly what that looks like and how to best ensure that I'm 00:00:27.826 --> 00:00:32.826 having a dialogue with you whether you're listening or watching. And so 00:00:33.083 --> 00:00:39.510 So today, we're going to kind of pick up and start with sort of the first principle that 00:00:39.906 --> 00:00:46.786 I found to be really key to lasting life change, something that runs throughout the narrative 00:00:46.786 --> 00:00:52.780 of Scripture, and something that is talked about over and over again in recovery literature, 00:00:53.026 --> 00:00:55.226 and things like the Twelve Steps. 00:00:55.226 --> 00:01:00.945 And the way that I've formulated it is to say simply that we need to live in the light. 00:01:01.426 --> 00:01:07.506 So what do I mean by that? I certainly don't mean like just leave the lights on and run your electric bill up. 00:01:07.506 --> 00:01:10.186 What do I mean by that? 00:01:10.186 --> 00:01:15.446 And let's start with just a kind of analogy, an example here. 00:01:15.446 --> 00:01:19.546 Sometimes we get all kind of jumbled up when we're thinking about life issues and emotional 00:01:19.546 --> 00:01:21.470 issues and spiritual issues. 00:01:21.646 --> 00:01:25.666 But when we think about the physical, when we think about practical things, things become 00:01:25.666 --> 00:01:28.798 more clear. So let's start in the physical realm first. 00:01:29.006 --> 00:01:40.526 Let's imagine that maybe you've got a cold, right? It's not a cold that's so bad that you are like on your back, you're coughing and you 00:01:40.526 --> 00:01:42.427 can't go to work, right? 00:01:42.566 --> 00:01:48.446 But it's enough to be in a nuisance. It's enough that you are not going to get over it right away. 00:01:48.446 --> 00:01:56.326 And so you decide to not call off from work. You decide to go into work and try and work through, you know, take some DayQuil and get 00:01:56.326 --> 00:01:56.732 through it. 00:01:57.326 --> 00:02:03.196 Well, you do that and what ends up happening? Well, what ends up happening is you don't get better 00:02:03.286 --> 00:02:05.846 as fast as maybe you would if you took some time off. 00:02:05.846 --> 00:02:11.326 If you keep trying to live your life the same way, right? And you're trying to suppress the cough 00:02:11.326 --> 00:02:16.321 and you're trying not to deal with it. And then eventually the cough turns into something worse. 00:02:16.486 --> 00:02:22.526 Right? Maybe perhaps you get some inflammation in your lungs and it turns into pneumonia or something like that. 00:02:22.526 --> 00:02:31.486 And you continue to try and just play it off, Just use some medication, try and downplay to everyone around you that you're sick, and 00:02:31.486 --> 00:02:33.038 and try and just keep on going. 00:02:33.749 --> 00:02:39.799 And pretty soon you're on your back and you're very sick and you need to do something about it. 00:02:39.799 --> 00:02:46.999 You need to go to a doctor, you need to address the fact that you're sick and deal with it in an open manner 00:02:46.999 --> 00:02:50.999 and actually just, you know, get some medication, get some help. 00:02:50.999 --> 00:02:59.136 And that seems really straightforward, right? If you have something going on, you need to go get it taken care of, you need to talk about it. 00:02:59.379 --> 00:03:05.999 If you've got a, similarly, a gash on your leg and it gets infected, right, 00:03:06.157 --> 00:03:09.759 the best thing for you to do is to go to the doctor and say, 00:03:09.759 --> 00:03:11.469 Hey, I've got a gash on my leg. 00:03:11.955 --> 00:03:19.199 You wouldn't go to the doctor and say, Hey, I just don't feel good, but not tell them, you know, exactly where the wound is. 00:03:20.399 --> 00:03:26.647 And so that seems really clear to us when it comes to the physical practicalities of life that, 00:03:26.890 --> 00:03:32.639 Yeah, like we should address problems head on. We shouldn't hide them. We shouldn't try minimizing 00:03:32.639 --> 00:03:40.132 them. Generally, rest and restoration is probably the best path forward, is whenever we can. But, 00:03:40.699 --> 00:03:46.399 when it comes to our emotional lives, comes to our spiritual lives, comes to the way we live and 00:03:46.399 --> 00:03:52.879 conduct ourselves, that's not always our first response. A lot of times our first response is 00:03:52.879 --> 00:03:59.759 rather to hide the thing up, to cover it up, to avoid talking about it or thinking about it. 00:04:00.720 --> 00:04:11.667 And that leads to a place of, well, ultimately a place where wounds and things fester, where things get worse. 00:04:12.050 --> 00:04:21.767 And so what we've got here is kind of this ongoing thing where we can often choose to, 00:04:22.245 --> 00:04:28.807 hide something away, and in doing so we think that perhaps we're avoiding something, but, 00:04:29.356 --> 00:04:33.250 In reality, it's really quite troublesome, right? 00:04:33.250 --> 00:04:37.690 We really need to address the thing. So let's put this in some context. 00:04:37.690 --> 00:04:46.890 Perhaps you or a loved one is dealing with an addiction, right, and addictions often are this thing that is shameful. 00:04:48.333 --> 00:04:54.370 We feel guilt around, and we don't wanna deal with it, right, we don't wanna talk openly about it. 00:04:54.370 --> 00:04:57.281 It's not like we wanna wear a badge and say, I'm an addict, right? 00:04:58.010 --> 00:05:03.470 But as time goes on, and if the addiction is particularly bad and has been going on 00:05:03.470 --> 00:05:12.050 for a particularly long time, it often actually is just as much as wearing a badge that says I'm an addict. 00:05:12.050 --> 00:05:18.290 It becomes what's called an open secret, where people around the person and the individual 00:05:18.290 --> 00:05:23.676 who has the addiction know that they have an addiction, but they're just not talking about it to them. 00:05:23.770 --> 00:05:29.050 And that person is just trying to continue to pretend like they don't have a problem. 00:05:29.050 --> 00:05:38.110 And that can be anything, again, from alcohol to pornography to shopping to gambling, anything where we begin 00:05:38.110 --> 00:05:46.550 to use a substance or a thing in order to cope cope or to avoid with something, where it becomes compulsive. 00:05:47.532 --> 00:05:59.055 But that also can be something around the path of like healing, whether you've had maybe some trauma or something really awful happened to you or something done to you, right? 00:05:59.406 --> 00:06:10.263 If we don't want to talk about it because it's really painful, it's really hurtful, it has a lot of really negative memories associated with it and some really strong and hurtful emotions with it, 00:06:10.695 --> 00:06:13.990 A lot of times we come into a place where we just don't want to talk about it, right? 00:06:14.262 --> 00:06:20.957 I'd rather not deal with those emotions. I'd rather not deal with that hurt. Can't I just pretend like it's not there? 00:06:22.065 --> 00:06:29.393 That's the That's what we like to default to because that in our minds seems easier than, 00:06:30.222 --> 00:06:33.902 dealing with the difficult pieces and parts of emotions. 00:06:35.235 --> 00:06:44.702 Or Maybe we're just stuck Maybe we need to make some changes in our life because the consequences of not maybe taking care of our health, 00:06:45.582 --> 00:06:51.542 Maybe the consequences of not building and maintaining healthy relationships is beginning to compound, 00:06:53.438 --> 00:06:57.542 Right, but change is hard right admitting that we're stuck and asking for help, 00:06:58.622 --> 00:07:04.742 Getting resources and community around us requires that we admit that we're not in a good place. 00:07:04.742 --> 00:07:06.742 It admits that we don't have it all together. 00:07:06.869 --> 00:07:13.513 And that's not where we like to live. to live. We like to live in a place where things are, 00:07:14.674 --> 00:07:22.044 at least on the outside, look all put together. We like to put on these masks. We like to think 00:07:22.044 --> 00:07:25.964 and make everyone else around us think that we've got it all together. 00:07:28.447 --> 00:07:34.364 But this, if we, again, go back to that analogy that I was just talking about with the physical 00:07:34.364 --> 00:07:42.124 illness, a cut on the leg, or a sickness, or a bug, or a virus that we have, ignoring it and 00:07:42.124 --> 00:07:47.144 and trying to hide it can often lead it to grow more and more acute, maybe lead into 00:07:47.144 --> 00:07:52.424 chronic conditions, can create significant problems if we don't bring it out into the 00:07:52.424 --> 00:07:55.256 light and get the healing and the help that we need. 00:07:56.102 --> 00:08:00.649 And that seems obvious there, but again, when we're talking about things like addiction, 00:08:01.304 --> 00:08:06.383 hurts in our past, making significant life change, needing help where we're stuck, it 00:08:06.704 --> 00:08:13.584 doesn't always seem quite as easy or as natural to bring it forward into the light. 00:08:13.584 --> 00:08:18.239 And this is part of the human condition. We've been doing this since the beginning of time. 00:08:18.584 --> 00:08:26.251 If you know the story of Adam and Eve, right, Adam and Eve are placed into the perfect garden. 00:08:26.744 --> 00:08:35.424 They have communion with the Lord, and God gives them kind of two choices. Not two choices, 00:08:35.424 --> 00:08:42.744 And he gives them a command, a singular command, he says, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 00:08:42.744 --> 00:08:49.144 You can eat from the tree of life, but don't eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 00:08:49.144 --> 00:08:54.264 And we're going to talk more about those two trees, because I think they're really, really 00:08:54.264 --> 00:09:00.104 significant in how we understand the biblical understanding of where we find ourselves when 00:09:00.104 --> 00:09:07.264 we find ourselves stuck in addiction, hurt, or in need of significant change. 00:09:07.264 --> 00:09:08.985 But let's stick with this story for now. 00:09:10.047 --> 00:09:14.217 Adam and Eve were told not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, 00:09:14.217 --> 00:09:20.217 and the story goes that they did. They were deceived by the serpent, and they ate from 00:09:20.217 --> 00:09:27.417 that tree. And let's read that story together here. I'm going to jump into Genesis 3 here, 00:09:27.417 --> 00:09:32.937 and this is the story, and I want you to pay attention to what exactly it is that Adam 00:09:33.057 --> 00:09:41.177 and Eve did, how they responded after they had done this, after they had eaten from the fruit. 00:09:41.817 --> 00:09:49.337 And so, this is out of the NIV translation if you find, if that's curious to you. So, Genesis 3, 00:09:49.522 --> 00:09:52.857 I'm going to start in verse 1 and just read through the story here. 00:09:53.690 --> 00:09:59.017 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals that the Lord had made. He said to 00:09:59.017 --> 00:10:05.737 the woman, did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden? And notice that that's 00:10:05.737 --> 00:10:11.577 a distortion of what God said. It's a lie. And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat from the 00:10:11.577 --> 00:10:17.577 trees of the garden, but God did say you must not eat from the fruit, from the tree that is in the 00:10:17.577 --> 00:10:23.417 middle of the garden, and you must not touch it or you will die. Notice God didn't say that you 00:10:23.417 --> 00:10:29.699 mustn't touch it. He said that you shouldn't eat it. Another slight distortion. And you will 00:10:29.879 --> 00:10:35.497 not certainly die, the serpent said to the woman, for God knows that when you eat from it, 00:10:35.497 --> 00:10:42.176 your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. The serpent slips 00:10:42.419 --> 00:10:48.190 in this lie that the woman believes. And when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good 00:10:48.377 --> 00:10:54.671 for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some 00:10:54.770 --> 00:11:00.865 and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was there with her, and he ate it. And. 00:11:01.537 --> 00:11:05.267 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked, and they 00:11:05.637 --> 00:11:13.357 sewed fig trees together and made coverings for themselves." Notice what they did right 00:11:13.357 --> 00:11:16.157 after they realized they were naked. 00:11:16.241 --> 00:11:21.717 And then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord as he was walking through the garden in the cool of the day 00:11:21.717 --> 00:11:28.826 and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden but the Lord called to them, where are you? 00:11:29.474 --> 00:11:35.767 He answered, I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid. 00:11:36.460 --> 00:11:40.357 And he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree 00:11:40.357 --> 00:11:44.148 that I commanded you not to eat? And the woman, and the man said, 00:11:44.257 --> 00:11:48.937 the woman you put here with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate it. 00:11:49.603 --> 00:11:53.397 And then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done? 00:11:53.397 --> 00:11:57.408 And the woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. 00:11:58.317 --> 00:12:04.160 So notice that story of the fall, what's commonly called the fall. 00:12:05.213 --> 00:12:13.081 Adam and Eve both do the thing that they weren't supposed to do. They eat from the tree of, 00:12:13.911 --> 00:12:22.511 the knowledge of good and evil, and in doing so, what becomes the warning that God gave 00:12:22.511 --> 00:12:29.231 them that they would surely die—and he didn't mean necessarily an immediate physical death, 00:12:29.231 --> 00:12:34.551 although physical death does follow the consequences here—he means a spiritual death. 00:12:34.551 --> 00:12:44.151 Immediately that spiritual death results in this lost innocence, this lost reliance upon God, 00:12:44.913 --> 00:12:49.271 and they become judges of their own nakedness, and they become ashamed. And what do they do? 00:12:50.098 --> 00:12:57.351 They hide. They immediately go into hiding. And then what else do they do? Well, they point. 00:12:58.245 --> 00:13:03.431 Each almost in kind of comic book stripped fashion to the next person down 00:13:03.431 --> 00:13:08.751 the line. Well, she made me do it. Well, the snake made me do it. And shifting the 00:13:08.751 --> 00:13:22.588 blame. And that is where we find ourselves. Like we often today will live our lives trying to cover ourselves up with sewed together fig leaves. There 00:13:22.871 --> 00:13:24.631 There might be fancier fig leaves. 00:13:24.631 --> 00:13:35.031 They might be the fig leaves of materials. They might be the fig leaves of fancy clothes, a certain lifestyle, the fig leaves of social 00:13:35.031 --> 00:13:42.510 media filters, the fig leaves of success, the fig leaves of a good well-placed lie or, 00:13:43.391 --> 00:13:45.264 good well-placed minimization. 00:13:46.660 --> 00:13:53.111 But ultimately, the truth remains that there's something broken about us, that there's something 00:13:53.111 --> 00:14:00.955 that we are ashamed of, something that we hope God never sees and other people never recognize. 00:14:01.551 --> 00:14:08.271 But the truth is, is that like Adam and Eve, we're pretty bad at hiding. 00:14:08.589 --> 00:14:12.471 And God ultimately is calling us out of hiding. 00:14:12.471 --> 00:14:20.431 That's the truth. That's the story of the Bible, is God's pursuit after mankind in saying, where are you? 00:14:20.431 --> 00:14:23.911 Come and have fellowship with me. 00:14:23.911 --> 00:14:28.151 And this is my encouragement, and this is where I want to start, is that the conversation 00:14:28.151 --> 00:14:35.351 of growing, of stepping out of addiction, of finding healing, of making significant 00:14:35.351 --> 00:14:40.061 change, involves us stepping into the light. 00:14:40.637 --> 00:14:48.531 It involves the brave and courageous decision of deciding to voice what is going on behind 00:14:48.531 --> 00:14:54.276 the mask, behind the fig leaves, behind what everyone might think about us. 00:14:54.771 --> 00:15:03.377 And that's a really scary step, but it's the most important step we can take because it's the first step. 00:15:03.531 --> 00:15:09.451 We'll leave you with this one last sort of story from my life that was really impactful 00:15:09.451 --> 00:15:13.131 for me to an insightful to the human condition. 00:15:14.054 --> 00:15:24.703 I was part of a community, I had just joined a new community of believers, and I was having 00:15:24.703 --> 00:15:29.663 some different conversations, getting to learn and know what was going on, and I talked to 00:15:29.663 --> 00:15:34.743 several different people, and I think I remember having the same conversation with about three 00:15:34.743 --> 00:15:43.403 different individuals, and they were all in kind of a generally close-knit community, 00:15:43.536 --> 00:15:47.003 But each and every single one of those three people I talked to, the first person came 00:15:47.003 --> 00:15:49.763 up to me and they're like, you know, Luke, I just feel really alone. 00:15:50.270 --> 00:15:54.699 I feel really disconnected. I feel like, you know, I don't have any community. 00:15:55.303 --> 00:16:00.183 And then somebody else I came up, came up to me maybe that same day or the next day, 00:16:00.183 --> 00:16:03.620 and they said almost exactly the same thing. 00:16:03.923 --> 00:16:08.283 And then I had the conversation again with yet another person. 00:16:08.283 --> 00:16:17.223 And the thing that shocked me was like, well, like, here's three people all in close contact with each other. 00:16:17.223 --> 00:16:19.410 They all know each other, and they're all lonely. 00:16:19.983 --> 00:16:25.783 They're all longing for a deeper sense of Christian community, of accountability, of 00:16:25.856 --> 00:16:34.039 being in relationship with other people in a meaningful way and not just a superficial way. 00:16:34.957 --> 00:16:41.623 But they're all kind of hiding. They're all a little bit alone and not exactly sure what to do. 00:16:42.537 --> 00:16:48.722 And created for me a picture that has stuck with me. And that's the picture of picture. one of those. 00:16:49.667 --> 00:16:58.651 Sort of Stereotypical offices with all the cubicles. It's full of people who are sitting alone in their cubicles and, 00:17:00.037 --> 00:17:01.811 each and every person in their cubicle is. 00:17:03.476 --> 00:17:13.037 Not perfect. There's a little broken has Doesn't have it all together and they never want to stick their head up above their cubicle because they're afraid if they do 00:17:13.037 --> 00:17:18.077 do, that other people would see them and they would see just how much they don't 00:17:18.077 --> 00:17:21.637 have it together. As long as they keep their head down, they don't interact with 00:17:21.637 --> 00:17:26.317 anybody, they'll be okay. But the thing is, is that's not just one person in a 00:17:26.317 --> 00:17:30.757 cubicle. If someone were to actually lift their head up above the cubicle and look 00:17:30.757 --> 00:17:35.277 over the wall that divides them, they would see that the person next to them 00:17:35.277 --> 00:17:39.717 actually looks a lot like them, actually has a lot of the same problems and. 00:17:39.791 --> 00:17:45.637 Experiences. And if you could get the whole office to just start peaking their head up 00:17:45.637 --> 00:17:50.277 above those cubicle walls and start having some honest conversations about what's going 00:17:50.277 --> 00:17:56.237 on in their lives, they would all find that, wow, we're all in the same boat. None of us 00:17:56.237 --> 00:18:04.437 have it together. And in an open community, we can begin to untangle ourselves and make 00:18:04.437 --> 00:18:11.037 a way forward. Well, that's enough for this first episode of the Rude Podcast. Thank you 00:18:11.037 --> 00:18:22.837 for joining me. Please follow and leave any reviews or comments linked and check the show 00:18:22.837 --> 00:18:28.777 notes for anything I ever mentioned here. But thank you for joining. I hope that you're 00:18:28.777 --> 00:18:36.713 able to join me next time as we begin to dig more into some deeper implications of what what it means to s- 00:18:36.720 --> 00:18:50.046 Music.