Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 10, 2020 | Expresso - Kelly Crandall

Transcript

November 10, 2020 | Expresso - Kelly Crandall · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to start with a question.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you have seen the Disney movie Frozen?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so maybe about maybe about 50%.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't, I'm going to tell you all the reasons why I think you should go home and watch it.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: It happens to be my favorite Disney movie.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: So if you if you haven't seen it, just a short uh summary.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's the story of two sisters.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: The older one is Elsa and the younger one is Anna.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And Elsa has magical powers.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: She can manipulate snow and ice so she can uh like shoot, shoot ice and make snowballs and things like that.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so one day when they're little, Anna and Elsa are playing together, and Elsa accidentally shoots a uh shoots an ice dagger and it hits Anna and it hurts her.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And after that, and Anna was okay, but after that, Elsa was very terrified of her powers.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: She actually spent most of her growing-up years isolated.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: She was in her room.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if she ever went out, she would wear these special gloves that would help her keep her powers under control.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: So that lasted most of her childhood until there was a point when she was older when she had to, she appeared in public and she kind of lost control, she lost her temper, and she uh started freezing things around her.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And she decided that the best course of action would be to run away, and she built herself an ice castle and decided that the safest thing for everyone was for her to live in isolation away from everyone.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to stop there.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'll come back to that story and tell you how it ends.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and well, briefly, hopefully not giving too much away, but I'll return to that later.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I this is my favorite movie, favorite Disney movie, because I feel like I can relate a lot with Elsa.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Not that I have magical powers that I can shoot ice, but for other reasons.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I realized that I was going to show some pictures, so I will show you.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: So this is my family.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like Connie said, I grew up, I have six brothers and sisters.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is us last Thanksgiving.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: So there's now a lot of grandchildren, and that's one thing that I really enjoy.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, here's me and my parents, Randy and Linda, and this was at my graduation from KU.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I really enjoy getting to spend time with some of my littles, I call them, my nieces and nephews.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: We had a a cousin camp this summer and had a number of them over for a whole week.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so for me, for me growing up, I uh I would yeah, I have this memory of being pretty little, I don't know, maybe eight or nine, and I was like loading the dishwasher or unloading the dishwasher, and I'm sure I was corrected for something, and I remember feeling like, well, I guess I just shouldn't load the dishwasher.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: I can't do it right.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I just shouldn't try anymore.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Mom, you just have to do it.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that didn't go over well, but that's how I felt, and that's how I felt about a lot of things that I would just I was I would go through life and I would try these various things, and but I would kind of hit a speed bump and I would not always respond to that very well.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: I remember being in our in a Wednesday night kids program at church and I was in sixth grade, I remember it very clearly, and I was I was just sitting with one of my friends, and at one point I think I said, Oh darn.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And she looked at me and she was like, You say that word?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Yeah.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm I made a mental note at that moment.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, like I can't, I can't say that, that's bad.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to get criticism or I'm going to get uh judgment from that.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that would be that was one thing that I was like, all right, I can't can't say, can't even say words that I thought were okay.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I didn't have good judgment about that, and someone was correcting me for that.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I and sometimes it wasn't even things that I tried for myself, but it was just kind of stories or or influences that I heard from other places.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, like alcohol, be careful about alcohol, like you can really get into trouble with that, don't get drunk, things like that.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, all right, well, that's easy to stay away from.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: I won't get in trouble.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: I can check that box, stay away from alcohol.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Same kind of thing with boys.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, boys will get you into trouble, or that's relationships are dangerous.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, all right, well, check that box.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: I can just stay away.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to talk to them.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: If I can't, if I don't talk to them, they can't get me into trouble, right?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh or yeah, even really normal things like I remember there was one summer at camp and I I must have said something.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember what I said, but I said something to one of my friends, and it was hurtful or insensitive.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I decided that I can't talk anymore.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: I just need to, I can't, it's not safe.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to hurt people.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so I didn't talk I didn't talk for at least a whole hour, and people would try to interact with me, and they like, what's wrong?
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I can't.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: You don't understand if I say things and people are going to get hurt.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so just all of these um things kind of built, and so it yeah, it really formed into a lot of social anxiety.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: I believed that I couldn't function in social situations.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was always fearful of other people's criticism, of their judgment, and that I this this fear and expectation almost that I was always falling short of other people's expectations.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, through through high school, how that manifested itself was I actually developed a lot of stomach issues, and I went to various doctors and no one knew what was wrong because well, come to find out later, it's really wasn't physical.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was all a product of this stress and anxiety and all yeah, all of this internal, this internal strife that was manifesting itself in physical ways.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it really wasn't that apparent to the on the outside.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you were to ask people that I interacted with on a regular basis, they probably wouldn't have seen it.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but those those who were closest to me might might have seen it.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh for example, it it caused me great, great distress to dress up for events, either in costume or if for for formal events, because it felt like so much pressure.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to get it wrong, it wasn't gonna be right, and I just I it was very, very stressful, and uh I didn't it was yeah, I did not want to do those things.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it also it also looked like me not expressing myself.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was pretty reserved.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: I I wouldn't say that I was shy, I had a lot of friends, I talked to a lot of people, but no, I didn't really let people get to know me.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if people would ask me questions, I was really good at deflecting or making the conversation about them.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was a good listener, I could ask good questions, and so I just it was safer if they were talking and I wasn't talking.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I when I first went to the mission field, and I'll talk more about that later, but I had the opportunity to begin uh for free counseling, and I was like, hey, I mean, I I actually ended up in counseling for a different reason, but it didn't take too long for us to realize there is something going on here, there is something uh under the surface that we need to address.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we talked and as we worked through some of the issues that I was experiencing, we traced a lot of my anxiety back to perfectionism.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it was this need to be right and to not make mistakes, and it was in certain settings and not in others, and so I was actually in denial about my perfectionism.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think if you'd asked anyone in high school, they would have told you that I was a perfectionist, but I didn't I didn't see it until then.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a turning point for me one day in counseling when we were he he had my counselor had me make a list of pros and cons of perfectionism.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so on the pro list, I I found made a lot of there's a lot of pros actually.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I um I I think it motivates me for success and it makes me look good and it makes um a number of a number of things went on the pro side and it got to the con side and I was like, I don't really okay, it causes me anxiety, that's bad.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: But other than that, I don't really know what is so bad about perfectionism.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And he stopped and he's like, Well, when you're perfectionistic, who who gets the glory?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Oh, I I get the glory, and God doesn't get the glory, and that was that was a turning point for me because I um I had a strong relationship with the Lord.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: I had I was saved when I was three and grew up in the church and read my Bible regularly.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: So this was something that was really important to me.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And to hear that um to to put sin on the con side of perfectionism was what I needed in order to start changing things.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that was really the catalyst.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I I can't, I can't continue in this lifestyle because it is sinning against God, and I I need to change that.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: So even though that wasn't, it wasn't like all of my problems were fixed at that point, that was the motivation, that was what set me on uh a path where I was committed to kind of renouncing this this sin of perfectionism.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so through counseling, I gained a lot of tools to restructure my thoughts, to believe truth, to rebuke lies.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: So things that I believed about myself, like um, I'm not good for anyone, became I have been created for good works.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And lies like I don't do enough or I'll never be good enough became God's grace is sufficient for me.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: His power is made perfect in my weakness.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually better that I can't do it because then he gets more glory, and it is about him getting glory and not me.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, because in a way, controlling behavior is easy.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: I could have stayed away from guys completely if I didn't want to cross any physical boundaries.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: I could avoid alcohol to get altogether if I didn't want to risk it influencing me.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: I could even examine and re-examine all my words before I say them so as to try not to say anything harmful or embarrassing.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: But when when we, like the Pharisees, build fences around fences, around fences to protect ourselves, not only does it produce self-righteousness and pride, we also miss out on so much life.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And a while back, God gave me an image or an illustration for this that I'm going to share with you.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine with me something like this.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a dog, which I'm not even a dog person, I guess God has a sense of humor that he used this dog analogy for me, but a dog in a huge backyard, and it has and yeah, it has lots of toys and things for him to play with and run on and run and just enjoy the yard and all of the things that the owner has has set out for him.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: So the dog is wearing where uh the there's an electric fence out quite a ways to keep the dog safe, and he's wearing uh a shock collar that will give him a little shock when he goes out too far.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the dog knows this.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And since he doesn't want to go too far every day, he sits down or lays down in the shade of the house and doesn't go, doesn't go out.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: So he he's safe, he's not he's not risking getting shocked, he's not risking breaking the owner's rules, but he's also what what kind of life is that?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh so that's that's what I was doing.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: I instead of instead of trusting God to give me a little shock if I went too far, I was I decided to impose stricter rules on myself than he did and play it safe, and in the meantime miss out on a lot of life that God wanted to offer me.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: But different from the dog, I didn't I didn't know what I was missing out on.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that I was preventing myself from having deep and meaningful relationships because expressing yourself is the only way that people get to know you.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that I was missing out on learning new things, developing new hobbies because I was afraid of making mistakes or looking stupid.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, in in the years since I've actually gotten to participate in things like sports or learning language that both require making a lot of mistakes and maybe looking stupid.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know how I how I was limiting God to use me in ministry because I uh had because of how much I feared man's judgment and criticism.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: So now I'm choosing to live in freedom, choosing to enjoy the good things that God has put on this earth without fearing the bad.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: That means that means I can pick out my own clothes, which sounds silly, but it was a it was so hard because I always believed that I would do it wrong, that I would be criticized for it, that I just couldn't do it.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I can pick out my own clothes, even if sometimes they're less than stylish, because I don't fear this arbitrary and unimportant standard.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it means that I have fantastic friendships, even if I sometimes say insensitive or hurtful things, because yeah, expressing myself is the only way that people can get to know me.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I can live my life in freedom because I know mistakes making mistakes is human.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And since God does not expect perfection, neither do I.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: So after yeah, I have this, I have this memory.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's a specific time after being in counseling for a little bit and talking about these things.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: I had gone out with a group of people, and after I had come back, I had I had the realization I had a personality today.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I've had a personality in a long time because I wasn't stressed about um what what I was going to say or sharing my thoughts or opinions about things, and that was that was huge.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think God just gave me a taste of yes, this is the life that I have in front of you.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like this is the way walking it.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I I uh I mentioned being on the mission field, and Connie mentioned that I was leaving shortly, so I do want to fill you in about that before I tie up the frozen story.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you're all eagerly waiting that.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I have wanted to be a teacher since I was five.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: I would, I was so excited to start school.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: I would go to school, I would come home and play school, I'd wrote my little brother and my neighbors into like being my students.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so I yeah, I had that desire through childhood.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: And at the age of 11, I felt called to be a missionary.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was just one day I had the impression, you know, I think I'm going to be a missionary.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think that's what's going to happen.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so after that, I started pursuing opportunities to travel and to experience missions.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: I went overseas for the first time at 13 and then traveled throughout high school every summer that I possibly could, experiencing different parts of the world, experiencing different kinds of ministries, learning from missionaries, and refining my calling.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I knew I loved kids, I loved education, and I just got different experiences to kind of figure out exactly where God might have me.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so that led to college, and I decided to go to Moody Bible Institute.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: I figured if they'd been training missionaries for 150 years, they'd probably be a good place for me to go.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so I got to study Bible and ministry and education.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And after I graduated from there, I left for my first term overseas and went to the Philippines to serve at Faith Academy, which is a school for missionary kids.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to show you some.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: Their parents are in full-time ministry.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And one way that I got to partner with all of these missionaries is by teaching and educating their children so that both parents could be working.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, these are some of my some of my middle schoolers and some some friends and I riding on top of a a Jeepney, a Philippine jeepney going on a trip.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Another uh yeah, another group of middle schoolers.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Just this is a place that I I loved and kids that I loved dearly.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was a really, really sweet time.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so these are some of the girls that I had in a small group for two years, and I still keep in contact with actually.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: So they were eighth grade in this picture, and they've just recently graduated from high school.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're now in college, which is really fun.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I, yeah, my my ministry at faith was partnering with missionaries, supporting them so that they could do work like Bible translation or work with orphans or sex trafficking or or um teaching at a seminary, things like that for Asian seminary students.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and then the Lord said go back to the US.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, uh, well, that was not in my plan, but okay, I guess if you're leading me there, then I will go.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I have been back in the States this is for three and a half years now.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was getting pursuing um my a further education, so I will it was an investment in in my future ministry, and I always had the intention or the hope of going back overseas, and I'm actually going to be returning to the Philippines to the same school.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: I have a plane ticket for December 30th, so I yeah, very, very soon I will be headed back to work with kids like this and to serve in a little bit of a different role as a working with student support.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: So kids who are struggling in a variety of ways, I get to come up with plans to help them.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I also just noting I put some prayer cards on the back table if you'd like to pick one up.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it gives you it'll a link to a little bit more information about what I'll be doing.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to, I should put out a sign-up sheet.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to join my my newsletter, if you'd like to get my newsletters, you can sign up for that.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I could talk about I could talk about the Philippines, I could talk about my school forever, but I'll just leave it there for now.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to end with a verse from 1 John, which is really appropriate, that that's where we've been camping out in big church for the last month or so.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: But 1 John 4 18 says, There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and to finish, to finish our frozen story where we left her, Elsa was in her ice castle far away, and it through a series of events, she discovers that control and trying to hold it in and trying to not hurt people, that is not that it was not effective.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually pretty uh is not yeah, not productive.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: And she she finally discovers that actually the antidote, the way to unfreeze everything was love.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: And when when she realizes it, it's just this moment of freedom.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I love this verse because it it's yeah, it reminds us that we don't have to uh yeah, we don't have to fear because fear has to do with punishment, and Jesus already took care of our punishment on the cross, and he took that punishment in our place.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I will close in prayer and pray for all of us.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we are so grateful for for the work that you did on the cross that we that you took our punishment.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that we would not try to take that back, that we would not fear that punishment, that we would not, that we would live in freedom, live in truth.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: I pray for each of these women here that you would reveal lies that she's believing, that you would replace them with truth, that you would set her free.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that you would go out with us uh tonight as we return uh to to our homes.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: That we would remember who you are and uh just have a fuller, fuller picture of you.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: In your name we pray.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.