Music.
Welcome to the Rooted Life Change Podcast. We believe that lasting life change can happen for your good and for God's glory.
This week we are picking up and we're going to kind of be, again, still talking about
this idea, this concept of coming out of denial, of admitting that we have a problem.
We've kind of looked at it from a couple different angles at this point.
We talked about what denial is and how we can't get help if we're denying that we need
help or that we have a problem.
We've talked about the metaphor that the Bible kind of uses to talk about the health of our
souls, this idea of fruit, and thinking about the fruit that our lives are bearing.
Are we bearing good fruit, are we bearing sour fruit, unhealthy fruit?
And what does that indicate about the condition of our hearts, the condition of our souls.
And how we are doing?
And when I kind of just revisit and remember, remind us about a concept that I talked about
a couple weeks ago called choosing your heart, right?
This was this addressing this whole idea, this whole concept that if we choose that
if we choose to not make a change, right?
Sometimes we default to this place of like, continuing down the path that I'm already on
is easier than stopping and making a change.
And in some ways, it is a little bit easier because it doesn't involve us breaking a habit,
But that doesn't mean that it is easy, right?
Sometimes, when we're thinking about making change, making a difference in our life and
changing the directory we're on, we think that the change option is the hard one.
And we think, just staying where I'm at, that's the easy one.
That doesn't take and cost me anything.
And that's not true. Staying where we're at is costing us something.
It's uncomfortable. It's leading us to a place where we ultimately don't want to go.
If I continue to behave, or to exist, or to have the same things going on in my life right
now, and those are still happening in 5, 10 years, where am I likely to end up?
And is that a place I want to be? That's costing me something.
It costs us a lot of discomfort. And so this whole idea of change is not an idea between, I want us to get rid of the
the idea that there's a easy option, which is just doing what we've always done, and.
A hard option, making change.
The fact is, is that there are two options and they're both difficult, but only one of
them has an outcome that we're even remotely interested in seeing.
And that is an important concept to remind and recall ourselves to because I'm going
to talk about sort of some of the consequences of not making change today.
If we continue to stay in denial, where are we going to end up?
What are the consequences of it? What are the hard things that are going to come at us if we continue to say, you know
what?
Like, I know that this addiction, I know that this cycle, this pattern, this hurt, it's
if I don't do something about it, like, I know I should do something about it, but I don't want to.
Let's talk about, well, if you don't, what is going to be the consequence of not addressing
that? What's going to happen? So there's a couple of things that kind of come to my mind of what's
staying in denial, what's staying on our current path or trajectory of not opening up and admitting
that there's a problem, there's a couple things that that does.
The first thing that that does is it suppresses our feelings.
It squashes our emotions. It shrinks our hearts.
Because if we're in denial, we can't be honest about how difficult the circumstances we are.
If we are constantly wearing a mask and pretending that, oh, everything's all right, I don't have a problem.
And every time somebody asks you, oh, how are you doing? Or how's that thing going?
You say, oh, it's just fine. Everything's dandy. I've got no problem.
You are suppressing your feelings and that can cause a whole myriad of problems.
Feelings are a really interesting thing and we'll talk about them more here on the podcast, I imagine.
But some of the things that you might not realize about your feelings in one thing
it took me a while to learn is that our feelings don't go anywhere until they've found resolution, until they have been expressed. Maybe you've
seen the Disney movie Inside Out. It's this animated story that is fantastic
and I recommend adults watch it as well as children. And the idea of this story
is that our main character, we get to see the emotions inside her head played out
by these little characters. And what we find is that she's living a life where she's constantly
suppressing an emotion of sadness. She can't allow herself to feel sad.
And that begins to make a cascade amount of problems until things escalate and she begins
to feel anxiety, she begins to feel anger, she begins to feel depressed, and she ends
up running down a road that she doesn't want to go down, and she ends up in a lot of trouble.
And all because she was suppressing the feeling of sadness. She didn't feel like she could feel sad.
And when we're in denial, when we're not talking about our problems, our hurts, our cycles,
and we're not getting the help we need, we're in a place of hiding, we're suppressing our
feelings and that is going to bind us up inside and it's not going to be good because that
emotion is going to want to find a way to express itself.
And that's when we start to pull on multiples of addictions or unhelpful outlets or we begin
to just, oh, I need this to vent, even if this is a really unhelpful thing.
Because we're venting pent-up and suppressed emotions rather than addressing them head-on.
The other thing that staying in denial will do is that it costs us energy.
It takes energy to constantly be putting on a mask, to constantly be saying, you know
This is fine. Don't worry about it. This isn't a problem. Oh, you know, I kind of,
Somebody maybe saw a little bit too much of me at one point. I'm gonna kind of have to hide that up
I'm gonna have to pretend a lot make a lie.
Right, it is exhausting to.
Remember the different lies that we've got going on to feel like we're going to be discovered
covered, all of that takes energy.
And rather than us just showing up as who we are, we're taking the energy to put on a face.
We're taking the energy to keep up appearances, to convince others that we look a certain
way or we are a certain way.
That's exhausting. It takes energy from us that we could be using in other ways.
And then it stunts our growth.
If we were to stay in our place of denial of continuing down the path that we're on,
it stunts our growth.
We're not going to grow if we're in a place of denying any places that we need to grow.
This is a really big deal.
This is something that happens in all of us where we are kind of stuck, is one of the
the things that keeps us stuck is an unwillingness to.
Admit the places where we need to grow to think and say okay like I maybe don't know everything
I've got a problem. I Need help. I need to grow right if you've got an athlete and,
they're on a team and,
And they think they are the star player,
But they actually kind of stink right if you've ever seen someone who's on a team and they think they are the best player on that team.
Right? They're gonna be the one to keep the ball, they're gonna one-to-one to.
Want to make these big plays, but if they're not actually all that good their
success rate is gonna be kind of lousy. They're not gonna complete as much as
they should and what eventually will happen is the coach will eventually stop,
putting them in the game because they're not getting any better and they would
rather have a player who knows how good and bad they are that's not going to
make stupid decisions thinking they are the best player on the team. We need to
have the humility to recognize the places where maybe we don't know as much
as we think we do. That someone else might be able to see into our souls and
into our life and bring understanding that we don't have.
This is a big thing.
A lot of times we think we know ourselves best, but sometimes people can see blind spots
that we don't necessarily see. We become so accustomed to our own blind spots,
we forget they're there.
But other people often are very keen at identifying the places where we're not paying attention
and where perhaps we need to grow.
So staying in denial is going to stunt our growth. We're not going to get better, we're not going to grow,
We're not going to progress forward.
So, so far we've said it's going to suppress our feelings if we were to stay in denial
about our need for change and help.
It's going to cost us energy, it takes it out of us to stay in denial.
It stunts our growth, it keeps us from growing, and then fourthly, it isolates us.
If we are trying to keep others from finding out that we have problems, that I need to
grow, that I need help, we're going to be isolated. We're going to need to keep
people away from us at an arm's distance. There is this massive weight that can,
sit upon a person's shoulders and it's this question. The question is, if someone
were to know me honestly, to honestly know, to see me, to know my weaknesses and
faults to know my past, what would they think of me?
Would they like me? More important, would they love me? Would they still accept me?
And that's a question that many of us sit with in the back of our heads, wanting to ask that question
or to have the experience of someone saying, yes, even with your faults, I still want to be
in relationship with you.
We desire to hear that answer, but we never ever want to take the risk of asking that question.
And that becomes increasingly more so the more secrets, the more things that we're keeping in denial,
the things that we don't want to talk about.
The more of those we have, the more we don't want to ask that question,
and the farther we need to keep people away from us.
So it staying in denial suppresses our feelings, costs us our energy, stunts our growth, isolates us.
And then here's a really, really important one is the last one is that it lengthens our pain.
It makes it so that the circumstances that we are experiencing are going to continue
to be painful, to continue to last as long as possible.
Let's think about this for a minute. Let's take the example that every kid,
every human has to figure out at some point, the bandaid, right?
You've got a boo-boo, you get a scratch, you've got a something,
and you've got a cover up of a bandaid, and then it's been a day or two,
all right, time to take that bandaid off.
What is the best way to take that bandaid off? Is it just a little peel it up and just slowly pull it,
or to just rip it off, right?
And we know that ripping it off, Getting all that pain out of the way is way less
than doing it ever so slowly and peeling it off of the skin.
I hope I'm not making anyone nauseous or disgusted here. But the whole idea here is that we know,
that it's better to just get it over with than it is to draw it out.
Let's think about this in a maybe more adult context. Let's think about the idea of maybe you've got a thing on your to-do list. It is the thing
you don't want to do. It's maybe a bill you don't want to pay or maybe it's a task. Maybe
you need to go fill out a form or maybe you need to talk to somebody. There's a task, a to-do thing
that you just don't want to do. It's your least favorite thing. It's a pain you wish you could could avoid it.
Now, you've got a couple different options and ways of kind of addressing that.
You could put it on your to-do list and you could do everything else except for that one, right?
And you could just kind of, it could become that perennial task
that you just keep moving to your next to-do list
because you don't wanna do it.
You keep finishing to-do lists but leaving that one thing undone.
And every time you sit down to make that to-do list, you're like, ah, I still haven't done that thing.
And it's the thing that's gonna come into your mind in the middle of the night when you're laying in bed
and you can't sleep and you're just like, oh, I still need to do, I really ought to do that thing.
I just have, I don't want to do that thing.
We get into this place of continually pushing that off. And what we do is we just feel this weight of this thing that maybe has a due date,
or maybe is beginning to build up in consequence because we're not getting it done.
And that and then we eventually get it done. We either because the due date is here or because it's the last possible moment
at which we could get this possibly done. We get it done, right?
Oh, and you feel this immense relief. I'm like, oh, that's finally over with.
That's finally not going to be on my to-do list again.
That's fantastic. And we feel this immense amount of relief.
And what I also find is that usually once I've done it, I'm like,
man, that was not as bad as I like.
Like it wasn't great, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it was.
And it certainly wasn't worth all of the dread,
all of the anxiety of all the weight of having that constantly floating around in my mind and nagging at me every day as I said, I really ought to
do that thing.
We know that that task, as soon as it comes up, if we were to take quick action on it
and take care of it right away, it's going to cause us much less suffering than if we
just drag it out and try and push it off.
We know that, but we still for some reason push it off. And so when we stay in denial, when we're not, you know what, I don't want to talk or
I don't want to deal with that problem.
Let's not talk about my addiction.
Let's not talk about my cycles. I don't want to deal with the fact that my life seems to be stuck here because of these
things.
I want to keep pushing those off because I'm afraid of the pain that's going to come with addressing them.
The fact is, is that you are experiencing pain. We are experiencing pain when we're in denial.
It's constantly in the back of our minds. It's lengthening our pain.
It's stunting our growth. It's costing us energy.
It's suppressing our emotions, and it's isolating us from people who love us and want to support us.
So those are some of the things that staying in denial can compound and bring about in our life.
Soon, those things begin to become like magnets for other problems.
If we're isolated, if we feel our emotions are being suppressed because we don't want
to talk about our addiction, depression is most certainly on its way.
Anxiety is certainly going to be popping its head up when we begin to find ourselves forced
to interact with people, we're finding ourselves in a place where we need to kind of hide up
or cover up parts of ourselves and parts of things that aren't going well in our lives.
So those things are consequences. And so let's take this week, right?
Think about kind of the consequences of the path that you're going down.
If you have an addiction, if you have a pattern that you are seeing repeated in your relationships,
if you have a cycle, if you have a hurt, if you need to make life change,
Take a moment and spend some time this week,
maybe journal out or have a conversation out loud with yourself or reflect or maybe talk with a close friend
and just wonder aloud, what is my life going to look like,
if I continue to live exactly how I am living right now.
How will my life look in five, 10, 15, 20 years?
How will my life look at the end of my life if I continue to do the things that I am doing?
If my addiction never changes, if I never enter in and become sober,
if I never break these chains, what will be the effect on my life?
Will I lose relationships? Will I continue to be more and more isolated?
Will the emotions that I'm suppressing continue to well up inside of me and needing an outlet?
If I never address this hurt that's in my life, will that build up into me a character of
bitterness, of anger, of frustration that is going to impact how I love and serve others?
Is it going to limit me from taking risks and exploring new things in the future?
Take some time, evaluate the path that you are on. Last week we were talking about those fruits, those sour fruits.
Look at that list and say, if those sour fruits, if those spoiled fruits that are unhealthy
stay present in my life now, and let's just say they stay at least as bad as they are,
probably get worse over the course of my life, where is that going to lead me?
Identify that place that that's going to lead you. And that's not meant to be a condemnation.
That's not meant to be a, how bad are you?
It's simply just trying to wake ourselves up.
It's trying to take stock of where is it that I'm going? And if I know where I'm going,
and I realize that that's not where I wanna go, we can begin to take the moment and say,
all right, let's change.
Let's take the next off ramp.
Let's find a different way of living. And let's do all of that again through grace.
I was talking about that whole idea of, if someone knew all of the nasty, ugly things about me,
if they could see all of my sour fruit, all the problems that are in my heart and life,
what would they think of me?
Would they still wanna be in relationship with me? Would they still love me?
That's a question that we all long to hear answered at some point in our life.
And the answer to that question, for you, for anyone who's listening, who wants to follow
after and know God, is that, yes, God does indeed love you.
That's the fantastic thing about the gospel.
See, the gospel says that while we were still sinners, while we were still stuck, while
we were still broken, while we were still in all of our mess and problems, God loved us.
God loved us first, and God said, I'm going to love you where you're at because I want
to bring you somewhere new.
Jesus died not for perfect people, but for broken people. He died for you and me.
He died for people who need to grow, who have problems. And he loves us in the midst of those.
Sometimes, we get this idea of God as this kind of taskmaster who expects us to immediately
change and become this perfect Christian person.
And that's not true.
I believe that God has enough grace and compassion and understanding and faithfulness and long
suffering that He knows exactly what you're capable of.
If today, where you're at, you can't be where you're going to be in a couple of years
today, you can only be where you're at. If you're capable of one step forward, closer
to Jesus, closer to where He's calling you, then that's all He's expecting. He's not expecting
you to transform overnight. He's expecting you to just fix your eyes upon Him and take
one step. And we can do that because if we were to look at the face of Christ, if you
You could behold Jesus and see what He looks like as He sees you and all of your problems
and your life and exactly where you are right now.
You would see not a God who's shaming you or shaking His head or is so disappointed.
You would see a God who is beckoning you closer, who is saying, come on, let's take care of this together.
A God of compassion, who is not here to bring about judgment on those who are seeking to repent,
who want to experience love and transformation. That is the grace that God offers in Jesus Christ,
and that is the gospel. And that is so key to the change that we want to see. Like we said,
And I believe that lasting life change can happen for your good, and for God's glory.
Thank you for joining us today, appreciate you listening. Please subscribe, comment, and leave us a review.
Let me know what questions and things and topics...
Music.