INTRODUCTION

Good morning, brothers and sisters. I invite you to turn to the book of Genesis Chapter Fifty. We are in Week Three of an Eight Week Series called _Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. _

One Truth: I cannot be spirituality healthy if I am not emotionally healthy. (The Barrel)

If one component of your life is broken down or shoddy, that means you are limited to that level of maturity to the rest of your life.

Three Lies: I am what I do. I am what I have. I am what others think of me. (The Dutch Facade)

It doesn't matter how pretty'd up you are on the outside, it's what's inside of you that matters. [[1 Samuel 16]]:7, "The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

One Dare: I must go back in order to go forward. (The Tell)

In other words, in order for me to move forward in emotional--and therefore spiritual health--I must go back to my past, particularly my family origins, no matter how painful, in order to understand who I am today.

GENESIS 50

In order to illustrate what this looks like, we are going to take a look at the story of Joseph in [[Genesis 50]], particularly verses 14-21.

**Setting: **Joseph has been sold into slavery by his brothers. He's put into prison for rape accusations. Predicts a famine, gets promoted to the second-in-command of Egypt, controls the economy of the entire middle-east. Eventually, the brothers who sold him and passed him off as dead must unwittingly come to him for aid. He reveals himself to them, offering forgiveness. Years later, their father dies. To which the surviving family members say, "Uh-oh."

**14 **After burying Jacob, Joseph returned to Egypt with his brothers and all who had accompanied him to his father's burial. **15 **But now that their father was dead, Joseph's brothers became fearful.

"Now Joseph will show his anger and pay us back for all the wrong we did to him," they said.

** 16 **So they sent this message to Joseph: "Before your father died, he instructed us **17 **to say to you: 'Please forgive your brothers for the great wrong they did to you--for their sin in treating you so cruelly.' So we, the servants of the God of your father, beg you to forgive our sin."

When Joseph received the message, he broke down and wept. **18 **Then his brothers came and threw themselves down before Joseph.

"Look, we are your slaves!" they said.

** 19 **But Joseph replied, "Don't be afraid of me. Am I God, that I can punish you? **20 **You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people. **21 **No, don't be afraid. I will continue to take care of you and your children."

So he reassured them by speaking kindly to them.

Here we see the story of a family broken by sin, deceit, dysfunction, and fear. As soon as the dad dies, the brothers begin to fear for their lives! This family needs some serious Dr. Phil in their lives. They would be great poster children for Jerry Springer. But Joseph, the now de facto leader of this clan, who they are all rightfully afraid of, has done three things in order to bring health back to his family. He Recognized Reality, Combated Compartmentalization, and Accepted Adoption.

RECOGNIZE REALITY

In the story of Joseph, we can note that he did not avoid the facts of what had happened to him. Multiple times in his section of the book of Genesis, he is seen crying about broken relationships, making amends for what happened, and ultimately forgiving his family. This doesn't happen by avoiding the past. It happens by confronting it head on.

In order to live into the fullness of emotional and spiritual health and maturity that God desires for us, we must cease living in denial or illusion about our lives and ourselves, and instead embrace reality. This is not easy, this is not fun, for most of us it is not a gentle stroll down memory lane when we think of our past. Because we live and abide in a sin-infested, broken down world, our past is riddled with mistakes done to us or done by us; riddled with pain we've caused or pain we've felt; riddled with relationships that are broken or that broke us.

But the fact of the matter is, if we truly desire growth and health, we can't ignore wounds that fester. We must go back in order to go forward. Now, many of us resist this, and we think we have some pretty good excuses as to why. Let me assist you in wrestling those supposedly pretty good excuses to the ground.

Excuses & Realities

"I don't want to dwell in the past, it will just make me bitter and angry."

Recognizing your past is essential part of understanding who you are today. None of us just spontaneously arrived. We are the culmination of an infinite amount of moments leading up to today. To ignore those moments is to ignore the God who created them, crafted them, and redeemed them.

"I'm a new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5); my past doesn't matter anymore."

Putting on the "new self" requires acknowledging and taking off the "old self" (Eph 4:22b-24). "You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; **23 **to be made new in the attitude of your minds; **24 **and to put on the new self." In order to do this, we must have a high amount of self-awareness of what that old self is and where it came from. This is a process; you _are _indeed a new creation in Christ, but that reality is in the _process _of transforming you in your entirety.

"It wasn't that bad."

Bad news is: you were raised by depraved, sin-stained human beings. It was that bad. No, it wasn't irredeemably bad. And yes, there are others who did have it worse than you, so don't try to outdo someone else's terrible growing up story. But the fact of the matter is whatever family you were raised in (or whatever family you raised) included mistakes, issues, problems, and sin, all of which you absorbed, soaked in, and marinated in, and therefore all of which you are going to continue to live out and repeat and recycle into your own family and relationships. That is unless you recognize those mistakes, issues, problems, and sins for what they are, and call upon God to put them to a permanent end. But that can't be done until you admit it was that bad.

Our fear of bringing secrets and sin into the light drives us to the illusion that if we don't think about our past, it will just go away. But it doesn't. Unhealed wounds open us up to habitual sin against God and against others.

What's Wrong With Me

A child doesn't ask "What's wrong with my environment?" but, "What's wrong with me?"

For instance, many of you are aware that I am adopted, and that before I was adopted, for the first seven years of my life I was raised by my biological mother Toni who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. This mental disorder caused her to have many delusions about reality. Perhaps one of the most dramatic I can remember is her belief that her mother, who had just died of liver disease due to alcoholism, was not in fact dead. This led to a bunch of irrational actions, including putting supplies in the casket, trying to give the deceased food and water, things like that. But what I most remember, and what shapes me as an adult to this day, is being at the graveside as they began to cover the casket with dirt. I sat there crying and crying. But I was told to Shut Up, to stop making a scene, that she wasn't really dead, that my emotions were invalid.

Well, you don't need four years of counseling to figure out what that did to my opinion about emotions. Well, I did, but never mind.

My point is that, when Toni said things like that, I wasn't capable of pausing the situation and pondering in my little six year old mind, "Hmm, I wonder how this ill-crafted environment will shape my ability to process emotions as an adult." No, instead, all I could do was ask, "What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me."

But today, what I want to do is give you the permission to ask about your past: your childhood, your family, your past marriages, relationships, your parents past marriages or relationships: "What was wrong with my environment?"

Does your family fall into any of these Ten Commandments?

  1. Money is the best source of security.
  2. Avoid conflict at all costs.
  3. Sex is not to be spoken about openly.
  4. Sadness is a sign of weakness, therefore get over losses quickly and move on.
  5. Anger is dangerous and bad (therefore let it out with sarcasm or in rare but violent bursts).
  6. You owe your parents for all they've done for you, therefore duty to your family comes before everything, and you must not speak of your family's dirty laundry in public.
  7. Don't show vulnerability, don't trust people, and don't let anyone hurt you ever again.
  8. Other cultures/races are not as good as yours, therefore only be friends with and marry people who are like you.
  9. Success is... (getting into the best schools; making lots of money; getting married and having children)
  10. You are not allowed to have certain feelings; and/or your feelings aren't important.

COMBAT COMPARTMENTALIZATION

The unfortunate thing is that so few of us are willing to go back, to "turn away" from the old self as well as put on the new self. Therefore we end up trying to put tuxes over muddy bib overalls. Or, as Jesus put it, we try to put new wine into old wineskins. Do you know why you don't put new wine into old wineskins? Because new wine needs to ferment, it needs the yeast to eat the sugar and therefore release all that carbon dioxide. But old wineskins are inflexible, unpliable. Therefore when you put new, bubbly wine into them, they burst.

In the same way, when we recognize the turmoil of our inner-lives and, instead of allowing God to dig deep into us to bring healing, we will attempt to cover up the pain of our inner-lives by just adding more _stuff _and activities. Where we get so confused is that the stuff and activities that we add is good stuff. Bible studies, prayer routines, worship music CD's and concerts, accountability groups, missional communities, and, and and.... Obviously I'm not trying to say that these things are bad or hurtful in and of themselves. They're not. But when we compartmentalize our lives into **The Spiritual Things I Do **and Everything Else, then of course we are going to end up feeling like an old wineskin, ready to explode from the pressure at any second.

Unfortunately, this is precisely how salvation can be presented by the church or religious organizations. Instead of a process of re-creating you into the healthy and whole and vibrant human being that God intended you to be, religion just turns into a "life accessory," an at-times convenient add-on to life that can just as easily be ignored as it can be utilized.

No wonder so many of us get frustrated at this whole Christianity thing! We're like a car that needs a whole new engine, but all we got was more GPS units and 5-disc CD players and TV's in the back seats. Yeah, sure, these are all great, but they don't help the engine; in fact, they're just dragging it down!

The good news is this: God wants to give you a whole new engine! In fact, He already has, bought and paid for; it's yours and no one can take it away from you. When Paul wrote to the utterly sinful and mistake ridden church in Corinth, he wrote, "To the Saints." Do you see!? To the Saints! The Holy Ones! In God's eyes, even the most depraved sitting here today who call Jesus Lord are already saints.

But then Paul kept writing, "To the saints who are called to be saints." Wait, what? I thought we already were saints. Yes, but in order to put on the new self, you have to turn away from the old self. In order to accept the new wine, you need a new wineskin. In order to get the new engine, you have to get rid of the old. And the work of that is messy, dirty, filled with grease, grime, and grunge. But you wouldn't expect your mechanic to put your new engine on top of the old one; or to put a tux over bib overalls; or your surgeon to put your heart transplant next to your old heart.

Have I used enough metaphors today?

In short, what I'm trying so ineloquently to say is this: stop accessorizing your life with Jesus. He wants to be the core of who we are, the center of our lives, not just a gadget that we look at when we're bored, or that we have time for on Sunday mornings because nothing else was scheduled for today. And in order for Him to the proper and actual center of our lives, that means we declare Jesus the Lord of our past, not just our present; Lord of our previous pain, not just our current happiness; Lord of broken and messed up families and relationships and emotions. We must go back, and we must allow Jesus to come back with us, in order to go forward.

Archaeological Tells

In archaeology, most of where the work of discovery is done on things called a tell. No, not like a tell in poker. A tell is a type of mound where, over the centuries, civilizations keep building over and on top of each other. (Show pictures). The archaeologist's job is to start at the top and go in a spiral around the tell to discover the ancient past of the geographic location.

I believe that God wants to work with us in much the same way. He is wise enough to realize that you can't just start at the beginning of our lives and sort out all of our psychological problems in an instant. It takes time, delicate digging, and a bit of circling around to get the root. But for all of us it requires excavation, not just more building.

In other words, we are who we are because of our families, our upbringing, our background. This can't be helped by just adding more practices and habits on top of our old ones. The _old _habits, informed by our past, need to be seriously looked at, studied, and scrutinized. And then--painfully, yes; agonizingly, sure--and then we need those old habits removed and replaced by the rhythms of grace that God desires for us. We don't have a Spiritual Life and Everything Else. We just have our lives. Every moment of them. This is why Joseph was able to truthfully say to his brothers, "You intended evil, but God intended good!" He didn't try to shut out his personal life from his relationship with God. It was his relationship with God that gave him the faith to know that his absurdly horrible life had meaning and purpose. In order to move forward, we must go back.

ACCEPT ADOPTION

But we don't go back to stay back. Our desire is to move forward into health and maturity. We want our barrels to be whole; our Dutch Facades to reflect what's on the inside; our archeological tells to be fruitful, not just cave digging.

In other words, your family of origin doesn't have to define your future; God defines your future when you surrender the whole of your past to Him.

This is essentially what Joseph did when he told his families, "Don't be afraid. I will continue to take care of you and your children." In short, he adopted them to provide them with care, and certainly not for any kindness they did for him. He had worked through his past with his family, accepted the fact that God had used it for a greater purpose, and chose to love and care for his family through it all.

About once a month, I visit with a spiritual director. A relationship with a spiritual director is much different than a relationship with a mentor, counselor, coach, or accountability group. Essentially, a spiritual director's main purpose is to ask two questions, "What's going on in your life?" and "What do you think God is saying to you through that."

In a recent meeting with my spiritual director, after about half an hour of prayerfully asking those two questions, he gently asked me, "So are you saying you feel like you must achieve to be loved?" To which, I had to be honest, and say, "Yes." I am an achievement-based person. To be fair, I think some of it is ingrained into my personality, but I think some of it has been exacerbated by family experiences. But for the most part, if I am not accomplishing something, I feel less than worthwhile as a person.

Now my spiritual director gently pushed against this, asking the question, "What do you think God is saying to you about that?" Now, let's be honest, I'm a paid staff member at a church. I lead worship, I preach, I have a bachelor's in philosophy and biblical studies; I'm currently in grad school getting a Master's in Theology and Biblical Studies. If anyone was to know the right answers about what God thinks about me finding my identity and worth in achievements, it would be me, right? And the fact of the matter is, I DO know the right answers. But when it came right down to it, all I could tell my spiritual director was, "I don't know any other way to live."

"I don't know any other way to live."

That's how it is with many of us, right? We've so successfully compartmentalized what we know to be true about God and Jesus and salvation and the cross and yet, when it comes right down to it, we feel utterly powerless and impotent to live any other way then the way we've always lived. We still addicted to achievement or success or approval or pleasure or relationships or hoarding our time, our money, our things.

But I want to close with you listening to these words from Paul in his letter to the Ephesians. I'm going to read this from The Message, because I think it gets the tone so, so right.

3-6 How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He's the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.
7-10 Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we're a free people--free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.
11-12 It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.
13-14 It's in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free--signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. This signet from God is the first installment on what's coming, a reminder that we'll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life.

Do you hear words of achievement or striving?

There are none.

Do you hear messages of needing to be better? To do more?

They're just not there.

What is there is the beautiful truth that by no virtue of your own, you are adopted into the family of God. He chose you and loved you and saved you long before there even was a "you" to begin with.

So your past is not something to be afraid of or ignore or to avoid. Your past was the very thing that God saw and planned to redeem when He said, "I love you."

In these verses we hear The Gospel, The Good News, The Message that there was nothing you did to deserve God's love, and there's nothing you can do to diminish it. This is Grace, supreme and absolute, gentle and caring enough to not let you just ignore the past you have, but excellent enough to take that past and redeem it and restore it.

We believe that God is the God not only of our present and our tomorrows,

but also of our yesterdays.

And we desire to know all of God and each of His wonderful deeds.

Which means when we ignore our past, we ignore the God who was working in our past.

But in order to go forward, we must go back and see that what the world or our families or our relationships intended for evil God intended for good.

APPLICATION QUESTIONS

Are there any realities about your past (your family? your relationships? your actions?) that have you ignored or refused to acknowledge? What are they? How can you begin the journey into acknowledging their presence in your life?

Are there any ways that you have made Jesus merely an accessory to your life? That you have compartmentalized the power of the Gospel into only one or two areas of who you are? Which areas are you still grasping on to?

Have you discovered that there is another way to live than the ways of achievement, approval, or addiction? That your adoption into the family of God had nothing to do with you, and everything to do with God's grace? What habits can you abandon as you let it sink it that you have nothing to prove anymore?