Latest / BECOMING | Biblical Truths, Purpose, Identity in Christ, Grow Towards God / 3. Taking God off auto pilot
Transcript
- Elly Nelly: Hi friends, we are so back. Welcome to episode three of the podcast. I am so glad that you're here, that you're listening. really excited to have you back. how are you? I hope you're doing so well. Yeah. Fun fact that I was just thinking about the other day, which actually inspired this podcast, is somebody asked me how I was doing, and I was kind of upset. And I said, I'm doing great. How are you? And they said, doing good and walked away and I was like, why did I say that? Like I am so not doing great right now. Right now. If I had to characterize how I was doing, it was s rather poor, stinky, not amazing, a little down in the dumps, if you may have it. And sometimes I'm sure you guys have days like that too where it just feels like every time you're excited to have a new opportunity or try to let other stuff go. Something just keeps happening and keeps happening and you're like, my goodness, how can I get a grip on this day that seems to just be coming at me more than I'm coming at it? And when we talk to other people, sometimes we just go on autopilot and we don't let our relational self be seen for the sake of ease because it's easier just to say like, I'm great, how are you? Good. Okay, have such a wonderful day. It's easiest to do that and most of the time I mean I don't even realize that I'm doing that, but I am. and I was thinking about that concept and I was at a conference actually with our church staff. I work at a church and my staff was at a conference at Hume Lake and one of the speakers was talking about how to grow your relationship with the Lord and just like spend time with him. I was like, you know what? I really need more of that. I really need more than I need to learn about anything else is just to be reminded of how important it is to go and spend time with the Lord. And this speaker is one of the high school camp directors. Her name is Annalisa. She is amazing and she brought radical truth and it was so so good. I had an amazing quiet time and it was awe-inspiring. And I think some of those things that I started to think about while I was up there on the retreat. percolated into that instance, percolated into a few other random happenstance moments in my life, and from there this episode was born. So today we are talking about how to take our relationship with God off autopilot because so often like we greet other people as we're walking in the store in the hallways. we put on this like relational front and we don't actually let people in. And it's not a bad thing. It's just a thing we do unconsciously. So how to consciously take an actionable hold of our relationship with God through a story in John chapter 5. So let's get into it. Today we're gonna be in John 5, verses 1 through 9. it says Sometime later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. For one of the Jewish festivals. Now, there is in Jerusalem, near the sheepgate, a pool in Aramaic called Bethesda, and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades or pillars. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie, the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him. Do you want to get well? Sir, the invalid replied, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. When I am trying to get in, someone else goes ahead of me. Then Jesus said to him, Get up, pick up your mat and walk. At once the man was healed. He picked up his mat and walked. Now, there is a lot more good stuff happening in this passage, and honestly, I'm gonna encourage you to read John 5 as a whole, because John is a great place To learn about who we are and who Jesus is and how he interacts with us. one of the things that I was told and reminded of when I was listening to Anna Lisa's seminar was she says, so often we read the gospels to learn how to be more like Jesus, but when in reality we are actually much more like the people that Jesus is interacting with in the story of the gospel. So we're much more like This man at Bethesda, we're much more like the woman at the well who's seeking to be seen and she's isolated and she's shamed and Jesus sees her. I'm more like her. I'm more like this man at the well who is in disbelief. He's hopeless, he's alone and he's sad and Jesus sees him. I am much more like the woman who touches the very little tiny corner fabric of Jesus' hoat because she has hope that he can heal her. and he sees her and he does like we are much more like the people that the Lord interacts with in the gospels than we are like Jesus himself, where Jesus is the goal, but we're just, you know, we're being developed, we're being formed, we're becoming someone and we're not there yet. We will never be there, but we're not at that goal. We're more in the place of the person he's interacting with. So to read the Bible and the specifically the gospels through the lens of Not just how do I be more like Jesus, which is a great thing to think about and meditate on, but also who how am I like this person in the story? And how is Jesus meeting me right now? Like he's meeting this person in the story. And what does that show me about his character? And what does that show me about my own heart and my own reaction towards him as he's trying to meet me in this moment? So all of those thoughts in mind, let's talk about it. the first thing that happens is it says that when Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, Do you want to get well? When Jesus saw him, now Jesus knew everyone in this story. He knew everyone that was around this pool, and yet he specifically saw this man who had been suffering alone, hopeless, for thirty eight years. That is a very, very long time. That's my age plus half my age now. That's a lot of life to live, sitting at a poolside hoping and hoping and hoping and missing opportunities and missing opportunities and feeling defeated and feeling like, am I ever gonna get well? But the Lord chooses to see him. and I I think it's cool. I've personally been into learning the names of God and just writing them down and the ways that God relates to me, relates to everyone else in the Bible. And this is this would be an instance of God being Adonai El Roy. Adonai meaning God. El Roy meaning the one who sees. Adonai El Roy, the God who sees. the God who's seeing this man at the pool right now. and so it's super cool to s like kind of know what's gonna happen based off of how God interacted with Hagar of how Jesus is gonna act with interact with this man at the pool. So one, Jesus sees him. Jesus is seeing you, the Lord is seeing you right now. Good to acknowledge these things that are happening. Second thing is this offer becomes extended to this man. The Jesus asks, Would you like to be made well? And in this culture there's a lot of Eastern context that we don't necessarily understand with our Western lenses. So if we were to think about this, this man was at the pool and people who were disabled, like blind, lame, deaf, they were not able to work and people they would sit on the side of the road and people would give them money and The money was pretty much a way to buy goodness from their believed God and say, Hey, I'm giving this person money. Please don't let this, what's happening to this person, ever happen to me. It's kind of a way to like hedge their bets a little bit against encountering disease and just in infirmity in many different ways. And so this man has probably not worked for 38 years of his life. He has been cast aside from society. He has been looked down on. He has not been seen. He hasn't been treated well and if he's been there for a really long time, that probably means that he's become hopeless, he's become jaded. If I was just laying somewhere for 38 years, I would honestly probably be just waiting to die because what hope has le been left for me? Why am I still here? You know? And this offer, Jesus comes out of nowhere and says, Would you like to be made well? Now if this man is made well, he has no friends, his family. may not understand what has happened, his family may not be in that ev area anymore. so he he doesn't really have a community and what would he do? Like all of his years of life where he would learn to do something or have a trade or be the carpenter, the blacksmith, or the farmer, all these things, all those years are have been left in the wind. They have go come and gone and he has not been able to do anything with them. So what would he do? No one would give him money anymore. Like he would actually have to go and learn and struggle and strive for more than he ever thought he could have and that's hard and that's daunting for him I can only imagine. And so this offer is such a generous offer. It's such a almost unbelievable offer, but it's so unbelievable that it's like, how could that ever be? Like there's so many obstacles in the way. Healing for being one, restoration mentally, physically, spiritually, Not to mention the fact that he would now have no trade, he would have no way to feed himself, he would have no home, he would have no community, like he would be starting life completely over. And so this offer, while extremely generous, is also an extremely heavy offer. Like, would you actually like to be made well? Because that changes the entire landscape of your whole life to be made well, to be truly restored. And his response is so interesting because He doesn't know that Jesus is Jesus. You know, he he just thinks it's a man who's wandered into this area. And so his answer isn't, yeah, like I'd love to be healed. Or no, honestly, I can't, I can't afford to change my lifestyle now. He doesn't do that. He does exactly what I know I've done a thousand times, which is make excuses. He says, I can't. He literally says, Do you want to get well? Sir. I can't, sir, the sick man said, for I have no one to put me in the pool when the water bubbles. Someone else always gets there ahead of me. I can't. He says, I can't. The excuses start piling up. It's not, yes, I'm hoping for this, because sometimes hoping for stuff is admitting that we're not content with where we are now. And he doesn't say no, because saying no would seem stupid. It would be like, my entire life would have to change and there's all these things and there's worry and there's doubt and like I wonder if he's thought about like what if I do make it to the water? What if I do get well? Like, then what? Like there might be almost some like hesitation in trying to get to that point because there's so much unknown. There's so much that he couldn't predict or account for. And so there's there's a lot of unknown and a lot of uncertainty regarding both outcomes, getting better or not getting better. And so his excuse of I can't is kind of this like weird middle road. autopilot thing that he's doing where if someone were to walk by and be like, Do you even want to be well? He's like, I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't. You know, I mm I can't, I can't do it. I can't do it. I know I've a lot of times had hard conversations ahead of me or people I need to be honest with or even good, beautiful things where it's like, I don't want to do that. I remember the first time I spoke at youth group, I was so excited and I was offered it and I was like my first thought was like, well somebody else would be better than me or I I may be bad or what if I get stage fright? What if I get sick and I can't speak? What if I'm I say all the time and no one wants to listen to me? What if I look bad, what if I smell bad? What if I, what if I, what if I, what if I there's all these reasons in my mind going, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't and that's what he is doing right now. And as I'm saying that, I think it's actually very funny that in my mind I say, what if I what if I I pull I pull all these abstract like what ifs and I personally, just the way I was raised, my dad when I was very, very little, told me, he was like, you can never use the word can't because you can always try. And so whether I was playing softball or I was performing or I was doing a singing concert or a ballet recital. Like when I was little, little, like three or four years old, he would I would be like, I can't do that. Like, I'm not, I'm not tall enough, I can't do that. He's like, you can figure something out. You haven't tried yet, have you? And so my dad actually very much limited the way I think I can't in my own personal vocabulary. I come up with all these abstract worries and fears and doubts, but there's not very many things that I genuinely believe I cannot do, which I would say is thanks to my dad. But I know we all have these voices inside of us that make excuses in one way or another. If it's I can't, if it's I'm worried, if it's what ifs, if it's should I, it's all these ex extrapolated thoughts that cloud our vision, that put us on autopilot, and we just shut down in the sea of our own excuses. And so in that same way, we are exactly like the man at the spring when we interact with Jesus. If he's offering us something more, if he's offering a new way to do things, if even for me, he's offering me this podcast saying, you're the call that's been placed on my life right now is helping other people become who I made them to be. And then I'm looking at myself going, how am I supposed to be? become the person that God made me to be. okay God, you're gonna have to carry me. You're gonna have to carry the words that I'm gonna say to these people. You're gonna have to literally support me in every way because I am so afraid of the gap between where I am and what you have for me. It feels insurmountable for me to to even dare to dream to do that on my own. But I know that the Lord is good and the Lord, just like in this story with the man at the pool, doesn't say, hey, you have to cross this gap and meet me here. He says, You have you have to stay exactly where you are because that is also where the Lord is. Jesus comes into the pool at Bethesda. Out of all of the people on five tiers there, he sees this man. He knows him. He asks him if he wants to be made well. He doesn't let the excuses get in the way of being in his presence. That man could have made excuses and any other person could have just walked away. And this man probably expected to Jesus to just Turn around and walk away and be like, You're right, it's hopeless. But he didn't. In the midst of that great divide between what we are and what we can be in Christ, there is immense fear. I think immense joy, immense bravery, immense courageousness, immense discipline. Like there are in all things. a gamut of emotions and we can be holding all of these things at once. But what I really want to highlight is this experience with Jesus is a miracle. And there are so many instances where the Lord is right next to us, ready to perform a miracle in our lives, ready to do what no one thinks could be done, ready to provide a situation, hope where it feels so hopeless and We don't even I don't even have the eyes to see it, or I'm too afraid to even hope for it, or be brave and do my part and step out just a little bit. But it says here that Jesus says, stand up, pick up your mat and be made well. And the man stands up, picks up his mat, and is made well. And this whole big monstrous miracle is simplified into six phrases that he was told and then he did. Stand up, pick up his mat and be made well. And and the Lord does all of these beautiful grand works in our life, but because the grandeur of them is so overwhelming that he simplifies them so that they are just able to be a gift to us when we're able to be courageous and we're able to be brave and we'll be able to be bold and we'll be able to do our part and like stick our toe in the water and the Lord does the rest. And I think specifically for me, I don't know exactly what this looks like in your life, but as I'm sure you can tell in mine, putting myself on the internet that's weird and hard and I I don't like it. It makes me feel kind of uncomfortable. I feel like I'm a much better in-person person, a much better seen in real life human being, but I'm doing this because this is the what the Lord has called me to and I'm scared but I'm trying to boldly proclaim the gospel on the internet and see what the Lord has for me in that. And so if you're anything like me, whatever the Lord's calling to you to might be kind of scary and it might be so crazy it just might work and it might be something that if it did work it would feel crazy to hope for that or you might feel like shame like that could be too good to be true if I were to hope for that. Or it might be daunting. It might be all these different emotions and all these different things. But what I'm saying to you is if we can learn one big thing from this man at the pool It's that the Lord is meeting him right where he's at. The Lord sees him. The Lord is offering generously to restore the brokenness in his life. Even despite the excuses, despite the clouds, despite the autopilot, if we can be conscious of the Lord's presence and put an actionable step into becoming well, into becoming more like Christ, into becoming the person we were created to be. That is just the spark that ignites the fire of growth. And so, as we transition our time towards the end, I don't want to ever give you guys homework or make you feel like you have to do more. But I just want to give you a few different ways and opportunities to see Jesus this week as Jesus is definitely seeing you. so call it whatever you want, call it an experiment in becoming, call it growth work. Send me a name idea, I don't know, whatever we're gonna call this time at the end of the episodes where I give you some options of ways to interact with the Lord this week. I'm gonna give you four. And it's a build your own adventure. So you can do one, you can do two, you can three, four, you can do you know, just just do what you want, do what you're feeling called to. absolutely no pressure to do all of them. Number one, if you don't have a current Bible pran a current Bible plan, read John five. read John five. I know you might be saying it's like forty verses, Ellie. Well I say to you, it's only forty very, very good verses. So I would recommend reading that. read the same chapter, yes, John 5, every single day for at least five days and pray, ask the Lord, like, what do you want me to get out of it this week? Option number B or two would be write down five ways you feel seen by God every day in the moment. Now you might get to the end of the first few days and be like, I didn't write down that many things. Like you could make a hand note, you can make an iPhone note, you can make however you like to note things. make a note in the moment while it's happening. because usually at the end of the day you'll be like, I don't I don't know. But the Lord is with you in every moment. Good, bad, or otherwise, everything that you're seeing and experiencing all day, the Lord is right there with you and He is trying so hard to see you. but we just have to allow ourselves to acknowledge being seen in order for that to really sink into its fullest. And then I feel like I've done that a few times, then it's sunk in and it's almost like horrifying, like, my gosh, Lord, you're with me. It's like the most fantastic nervous energy I've ever felt. I'm like, I'm in the presence of God all the time. It's fantastic. I was like, wow, crazy. Okay. that's one of them. Another one is an extended quiet time. Usually I take quiet time, it's like 15 to 30 minutes in the morning on my weekdays. And then on my weekends, I try to double whatever my weekly average was with the Lord and spend the time that I'm doubling it. in silence listening because if you are like me you probably spend most of your time with the Lord talking and it's very rare that I have a moment where I'm quiet and I'm like listening to the Lord and I feel kind of convicted that I should be better about that. So this one's probably definitely for me. but sit and listen and ask the Lord to open your eyes and see what he's offering you. Like is there an opportunity that he's offering you? If so, what are you feeling hesitant about? What are you excited about? What's holding you back? What's drawing you forward? What are you gonna need to be brave in? What are you need to gonna need to be courageous about to accept this offer? and then the last one isn't like an activity or task that you can do, but it's being open to being seen by the Lord, being offered things by the Lord, and being in relationship with the Lord this week, because I think the easiest way we can go on autopilot is to be unaware of what God is doing when he is very actively at work to assume that he's slacking off, that he's not here, he's somewhere else, but to be very intentional about seeing God as he sees you, I think is a great way to change and turn off autopilot in your heart, turn off autopilot in your mind and be very conscious about your relationship with the Lord. So all of those things you can do them, none of those things you can do them. If you have anything specific you want to talk about on here together Please let me know in person if you're one of my friends who sees me. or you can send me a text. Or please feel free to chat in my DMs. I'm on Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest and Spotify and YouTube and Apple Music. I Don't know why that took all of my literally every single brain cell I had went into thinking about what those were called. and please feel free to leave a comment below. Let me know what you think. I would love to hear your feedback, and I would love to get to know you or see you if you're one of my in-person friends. see you so, so soon. And in the next week, until we talk again, may the Lord bless you and keep you, may his face shine upon you and be gracious to you as you become the person that he has created you to be. Jesus' name, amen. Bye guys.