Getting Your Purpose Back | Gospel Conversations S2 E04

Welcome to Gospel Conversations: Psalm 25 and Attachment The gospel heals at the deepest level possible so that you can literally break all addictions with one addiction, and this is fascinating. The origin of the word addiction The first time the word addiction is ever used in the English language is in a poem written by a Christian. May I be addicted to thy love. God's love is the one addiction that breaks all addictions. Speaker 2 Everyone, welcome back to Gospel Conversations, a Light Bearers podcast. I'm Angelo Grasso, and I have to say that I think this conversation that you're about to listen to was probably one of my favorites of all of our conversations. We went through Psalm 25 with an attachment lens and what we discovered there were jewels of God's love, joy, healing, and recovery. That blew my mind. I had so much fun with this conversation. Ty and David had so much fun. I think you're really going to love it. All right, guys. So we had such a rich conversation in our previous conversation on healing that we decided that we just have to keep it going. So we're basically doing a Part 2 right now. And where we ended in our last conversation was David with you reading Psalm 25. And it was so good. There's so much rich language. Yeah. That I want you, if you don't mind, going through it again. And let's finish the whole chapter because we only got through, like, the first half of the chapter. Sure. And what I want us to do is, as we listen to the words here, let's read this chapter with an attachment lens, OK? In other words, so we talked about in the beginning how an attachment figure provides a secure base and a safe haven and how attachment seekers are always kind of seeking proximity and expressing separation distress. So now that we kind of have a little sense of attachment as like an identity incubator, as like laying the foundation of who we are and how we operate in the world, let's read the Psalm again and let's just see where the conversation goes as we look at the OK. Unpacking Psalm 25: Trust, Hope, and Overcoming Shame Cool, that'll be. Speaker 1 That'll be back in Psalm 20. Speaker 3 5 Psalm 25 And you know what I love, Ty, is that in the last conversation when I said da, da, da, da da, I did my preamble and talked about how I've been memorizing Scripture and then I said Psalm 25 and you immediately. Speaker 2 Were like, Oh yeah. Speaker 3 So this is obviously Psalm 25. It's minister do you like it's minister to me for sure. I have been in this Psalm so many times over the course of my Christian experience, but especially over the last year that I was like, I'm going to memorize it. And so This is why I was thinking about it because driving here this morning, I'm going over it. And then Ty said things that was like, that's Psalm 25. OK, all right, let's go through it. So it's OK, we already got to verse 7, but I'll just start at verse one. OK, OK. I love this again, this announcement, this proclamation in you, Lord my God, I put my trust, I trust in you. Do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me. No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame, but shame will come on those who are treacherous without cause. Show me your ways, Lord. Teach me your paths, guide me in your truth and teach me for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you. How long? All day, all day long. Remember Lord, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways according to your love and this was your point time. Remember Me for you, Lord are good. Are we going to resist this? We're not going to say anything. Speaker 2 So bad like. Speaker 3 OK, let me just finish reading it. Don't. Speaker 1 Remember my iniquities, but Remember Me. Remember Me? Speaker 2 Identity. Speaker 3 I just love the three. Remember. OK, I'm going to read through and then we can go back as we as we want to. Verse 8 good and upright is the Lord. Therefore he instructs sinners in his ways. He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way. All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful toward those who keep the demands of his covenant. For the sake of your name, Lord, forgive my iniquity, though it is great. Who then are those who fear the Lord? He will instruct them in the ways they should choose. They will spend their days in prosperity, and their descendants will inherit the land. The Lord confides in those who fear him. He makes His covenant known to them. My eyes are ever on the Lord, for only He will release my feet from the snare. Come on now, turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. Relieve the troubles of my heart and free me from my anguish. Look on my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins. See how numerous are my enemies, how fiercely they hate me. Guard my life and rescue me. Yeah. Do not let me be put to shame, for I take refuge in you. May integrity and the brightness protect me, because my hope Lord is in you. Yeah, Deliver Israel, O God, from all her troubles. God as Our Secure Attachment Figure in Emotional Overwhelm How? Speaker 1 Does your version read in verse 17? Speaker 3 17 Relieve the troubles of my heart, and free me from my anguish. Speaker 1 OK, mine says the troubles of my heart have enlarged, so Get Me Out of this, Get Me Out of here. So he's got things in his heart, in his mind, and his troubles are overwhelming. He feels overwhelmed. Speaker 3 Clearly, Yeah, all that language there of lonely and afflicted troubles of my heart, anguish, affliction and distress, sins, enemies, hate, all of that is the language of emotional overwhelm. Yeah, Yeah, he is. And then obviously, because the very next verse is fleeing to the refuge. Speaker 2 Yeah. So I think what there's so much here. First of all, what you just said is that he's normalizing emotional distress as part of the common experience of everybody. We all get to places in our day, in our life where we become overwhelmed, where we have reached our capacity. And then we get, we actually experience like we are outside of our window of tolerance, you know, for our own emotional well-being. And then the question then is where do you go? And what I love about what he's saying here in verse one right away in you, O Lord my God, I put my trust. I trust in you. Do not let me be put to shame nor let my enemies triumph over me. No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame. The language there that I really like is trust, hope and shame. And so basically what he's saying is I am overwhelmed as we're about to read all the ways in which is overwhelmed. But because you are my attachment figure, I am putting my trust in you and I'm hoping in you. Now the word there hope, it doesn't mean like I really hope God comes through for me. It's not like you know where where we say I hope it doesn't rain tomorrow. It's not as if his hope is based in something that is unknown. Hope here really means expectation and that expectation. Speaker 3 I like that. Speaker 2 Is based on a memory of God's faithfulness, so because. Speaker 1 I'm expecting. Speaker 2 Because yes, this is what it means to hope is I'm expecting this. And here's the thing about how this operates in attachment relationships is our brains are literally prediction machines because we at any point in time do not have the mental capacity to know everything that's going on. We're missing so much at all times. Our perception is extremely limited. So what the brain does is it goes about the work of making predictions about what's going to happen next and then acting accordingly, onboarding the right chemicals in order to help us to survive what it anticipates coming next. So here where I what I think is happening is because he sees God as his attachment figure, he's saying even though things are going badly, I expect God to come through for me. Yes. And that's what secure attachment looks like is we live a subconscious life of expectation that things are going to be OK. The message that a secure attachment figures figure sends you is that when you get overwhelmed, just know that I have you. And that's what he's saying here. Because I know that God has me, I'm going to trust in Him. And what does it mean by trust? It basically means I'm going to disclose myself to God. Someone who you trust is someone who you can be your full self. Speaker 3 Yeah. Speaker 2 That's true. Someone who you trust is someone who always lets you in. So when you when you come to someone with self disclosure, I only disclose my true self to people who I trust. And This is why he says when I trust in you, I will not be put to shame. Because what is shame? Shame is the experience of being in the presence of someone who's not happy to be with you. It's literally the opposite of joy. And So what he's saying is because God is my secure attachment figure, I can come to him with full self disclosure and I will not be put to shame because even with all my junk and all my. Speaker 3 Failure. The sins of my youth, my rebellious ways. Speaker 2 He sees me and he's like, oh, I'm just happy that you're here. I'm delighting in your presence. This is how the gospel heals us. Yeah, it heals us in the context of recognizing that God has offered himself to us as a secure attachment. Speaker 3 Figure love it. Speaker 2 We can come to him as we are as children, full self disclosure, and David is prime example of that experience. Understanding God's Hesed: His Constancy and Guidance That was just what I got from Verse. Speaker 1 9 May I call our attention to something else in? Speaker 3 Self, I love that. Thank you so much. Speaker 1 Everything that you've just said is presupposing that there's something about God that arouses A legitimate trust or expectation or hope. Four times in Psalm 25, he uses the keyword in the Hebrew perception of the character of God, and that word in the Hebrew is His, said HESED. The first time the word occurs is in verse 6. Remember oh Lord, your tender mercies and your loving kindness, your has said now watch this. And then again in verse 7, according to your has said, Remember Me. And then again in verse 10, all the paths of the Lord are has said. And then again in verse 16 he says, turn yourself to me and have his said on me. Now, the reason I bring our attention to this word over and over again is because in this passage, in this in in Psalm 25, verse 14, the secret of the Lord is with those who fear him and he will show or reveal to them his covenant. So I'm just I'm I'm calling our attention to the fact that David trusts in the Lord and has expectation from the Lord because God is a covenantally faithful kind of God. This is the whole Old Testament narrative. The whole narrative centers if you were to summarize the the whole narrative, the whole story of the Old Testament. It is what he's unpacking in in Psalm 25. God is a particular kind of God. He is predictable. He is predictable. He is has said God can be depended on. He can be trusted to keep being exactly who he is and who is he? God is his, said God is covenantily faithful and you can rely on Him. This is the premise. Speaker 3 I love it and a couple things there that jumped out to me. Several things. First is in you're reading new King James. I'm reading NIV here. The the word has said there is translated with various English words like faithful and love, precisely because there is no one to one relationship between the the incredible portfolio, the multifaceted portfolio of meaning in the Hebrew word has said and the English. So you have to like have has said toward me and you are you are good, you are faithful, you are loving. All of these words capture this idea of gods and I love your word predictability. Now we have to hold this just in the larger sort of Old Testament narrative that you were describing, over and against the other gods of the ancient Near East who were almost by definition capricious. You weren't quite sure. Have I sacrificed enough? Have I offered enough? Have I done enough? Have I been enough? Have I upset the gods? And you were almost on a continual state of pins and needles, low grade anxiety, trying to appease or assuage the various and sundry gods of the ancient Near East and all gods of human invention, frankly. But God is not that way. He is holy. He is different. He is completely dissimilar to these other gods. He is has said yeah, Yeah. So. Speaker 2 I love that. That's beautiful. Speaker 3 Can I say one more thing? You, you you riff off of that. Speaker 1 One of the translations of the word has said said that a scholar years ago called my attention to is the word constancy. God just keeps being who God is. He keeps being the same. So when you come to the New Testament. Speaker 3 Which has echoes of the IM. Yeah, yeah, there's echoes there in the new. Speaker 1 Testament Paul will say things like like Israel may be unfaithful, but God will not right. I'm not going to respond to your unfaithfulness by being unfaithful back to you. He will say things like the Lord God who cannot deny himself. He can't be other than who he is. Beautiful. Isn't that incredible? Speaker 3 And that that constancy and faithfulness and reliability and trustworthiness and predictability is it's healing. Because back to the and you know, I'm, I'm just learning everything I know about attachment theory, at least in terms of the description of it is come from you, Angela. So I love learning these things, but it has to be the case that what makes an attachment figure, a mother, a father or others reliable and can create that environment where exploration can take place and self discovery can take place is that there's a constancy there. If you go back, you know that it's OK here I can explore the living room, I can explore the house, I can explore the front yard. I can go explore the world around me because I know there's a safe place and the language here. After he goes through all of this lonely, afflicted troubles in my heart, anguish, wish, affliction, distress. Since all of that, he returns to. I take refuge in you. What was the language you used? He's a safe haven. A safe haven. Yeah. Yeah. One more thing I want to say, and then I want to hear what you have to say is what I love. And one of the reasons that I chose to memorize Psalm 25 is all of the emphasis on God's educational enterprise. Write, show me, teach me, guide me, teach me, instructs, guides, teaches, instructs, makes His covenant known. And then you have all this language of ways, paths, ways, ways, ways, ways, ways, ways, ways. Deepen Your Understanding with the Companion Guide Hey everybody, if these gospel conversations are helping you see Jesus more clearly, I'd love to invite you to subscribe. It's a simple click, but it helps us to share these messages with more people who are hungry for the good news. Also, we've created a free Gospel conversations guide to help you slow down and really sit with what you're hearing. You can find the download link in the description below. Use it for your own personal time with God or to walk through it with a friend. Thanks for being here. Now let's get back to the conversation. Surviving Trauma: God's Healing and Empowerment Makes this covenant known and then you have all this language of ways, paths, ways, ways, ways, ways, ways, ways, ways. In other words, learning to live in this as we use the term. Last time you used really great language. Ty about how the whole world is a like a trauma center, trauma ward, a trauma ward. It is a very complex, difficult, impossibly difficult place to navigate on our own. Do you ever just have this thought to yourself? Like how are people surviving like like. Speaker 2 People that don't. Speaker 3 Know Psalm 25 who don't know Yahweh's has said how are people surviving? And I guess the short answer is a lot of people just aren't right. Like people just aren't surviving, they're medicating, they're escaping suicide takes place all kinds of escapes and I just love that we have to learn this that he will instruct he will teach he will guide. I'm learning it now almost 30 years deep as a follower of Jesus and and I I wanted to commit Psalm 25 to memory as a reminder that God does not remember and I love this point tie I'm asking God don't remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways. Remember Me according to your has said Remember Me, God sees the best version of us. I mean, I could just go on. Speaker 1 There's a song. Speaker 3 I'm just going to sit back and bask. Speaker 1 There's a song lyric, David, that says, and you know, this is not a great comparison, but it makes the point you just made in this particular song that says you got to have either drugs or love to survive. Now. Now we're choosing love. Speaker 3 We're choosing not divine love. Thank. Speaker 1 You but but you just we, we self medicate the only way that we can survive the horrors of this world. Speaker 3 That's exactly the right word, yeah. Speaker 1 Is by self medicating because we have to somehow. We have to somehow buffer what we can't bear. And the gospel comes along and says you don't need to self medicate with anything but the gospel. The gospel heals at the deepest level possible so that you can literally break all addictions with one addiction. And this is fascinating. The origin of the word addiction. The first time the word addiction is ever used in the English language is in a poem written by a Christian May I be addicted to thy love? Interesting. That's the origin of the. There's a whole book written on this by a scholar who trace. How far back does the word or the concept of addiction go? It goes all the way back to a Christian hymn writer, poet. Who said I'm addicted to your love? God's love is listen. God's love is the one addiction that breaks all addictions. Speaker 2 You just sprained my ankle. Speaker 1 Sorry about that. Speaker 3 That's how strong he is. Speaker 2 So, and This is why Gabor mate, he has a book called In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. He talks about addiction as a problem of the disconnected, right. And so when we, when we are disconnected from our primary attachment, a secure attachment, we're then seeking, we're in a state of seeking. Speaker 3 Is that the hungry ghosts thing? The. Speaker 2 Realm of Hungry ghosts, but is that that a? Speaker 3 Reference to. Speaker 2 The reference to I don't know what it's a reference. Speaker 1 To well, there's a there's a new, there's a new definition of addiction from Johan Hari, who's kind of an addiction expert who wrote a book about addiction, who who just completely in a Ted talk just reframed addiction. He said the opposite. Oh. Speaker 3 I've seen this. Speaker 1 The opposite of addiction. Speaker 3 It's not. It's not a. Speaker 1 Variety. It's connection, yeah. Speaker 2 Exactly. Speaker 1 Connection is the opposite of. Speaker 2 Where that's attachment, that's bonding. And I want to come back to what you saw, your point you made about instruction and teaching. I think this is so essential to healing and recovery is because the challenge for the person who has in trauma. Is that their maturity literally gets stunted in the areas in which we're traumatized, it's called. Speaker 1 Arrested Development. Speaker 2 Arrested Development in the areas in which we're traumatized. It literally this is the effect of sin, the effect of trauma. It stunts our maturity. Speaker 1 The child is present in the man. Speaker 2 And what is maturity? Maturity is literally developing the skills necessary to endure hardship well, to recover from difficulty. And this is what David is longing for. He's saying I don't have the skills. I need you to teach me the skills to show me the ones, your paths, your ways, your ways. And this is the way that we develop the kind of emotional, relational, spiritual skills for recovery and healing and supporting others is in the context of relationships with those who can demonstrate those skills for us. And so This is why he's saying, show it to me. Don't just tell me intellectually what we're doing here is what we're saying is the gospel is more than just an intellectual conceptual exercise. It's actually the how we develop the kinds of skills to attach ourselves to Jesus. And then he does the work of the healing and the recovery and the security and, and he's the one who's remembering who we are. In other words, what God then does is he's implanting our new identity inside of us as we disclose ourselves to him and ask him to show us your ways. And then he literally says in verse 12, who then are those who fear the Lord? He will instruct them in the ways they should choose. So then it goes on to say that what the attachment to God does is it literally changes our characters, our personalities, the the impulses, the things that we choose even. Speaker 1 Our brain chemistry. Speaker 2 Our brain chemistry are modified into the will of God as we make ourselves available to Him to show us who we are in context of. Speaker 3 What I love about the instruction type, just real quick, what I love about the instruction thing, it's so empowering. Speaker 1 All it is. Speaker 3 It's so empowering. David is crying up teach me, show me, guide me agency is all over this. He believes that God can get him psychologically out of this. Obviously he needs deliverance from his enemies. God brings this incredible divine deliverance, salvation, but but he then says show me your ways. Teach me your paths. I want to be one of your covenant people. And what I love about this, while so many of the narratives of the world are so profoundly disempowering, the gospel is empowering. It's saying you matter. This is who you are. I see a better version of you. I'm going to teach you. I'm going to. It's like with my children, My, my, my, my son. And like both of my sons, to see them grow and mature and and matriculate in the various stages of life and become the wonderful people that they are. It's in God sees this potential in US. It's like he said to the woman there that was caught, you know, in adultery, go and sin no more. He saw a future for her that she couldn't see for herself. He he restored her agency. Go learn. I just think it's, I think it's so empowering. David's Story: The Bible as Trauma Healing Case Study You guys think of the Bible this way? I don't know if you ever thought about it this way, but the Bible is a series of case studies in trauma healing. Speaker 3 I've definitely never thought of the Bible this way, but I'm, I'm, I'm here. I want to hear him. Speaker 1 OK, so, so think of the story of Abraham. OK, Abraham commits a certain kind of sin that shows up in our previous session. Or second, third, 4th generation. Yeah, Abraham, Sarah's my sister, not my wife. In order to save himself, he offers her up to, you know, the, the, the Pharaoh. Speaker 3 Abuse of the Pharaoh, right? Potential abuse? OK. Speaker 1 What happens with his son? Speaker 3 Isaac does the same thing. Speaker 1 Isaac. Isaac does what happens with Jacob. This is a series of repeat cycles of a particular kind of sin, right? The Bible is full of case studies of trauma healing. And the one, since we're in Psalm 25, that I think is really instructive in our context is David. David is a case study in trauma healing, right? So, so David in Psalm 51 here. Here's the context. We know the story, but ever so briefly, let's remind ourselves of David's story. David commits his double crime of homicide by putting Uriah the Hittite, one of his faithful soldiers, in harm's way in order to be taken out in war. So we can have Bathsheba. So he he takes the guy out to get the girl that he wants. This is this is horrible. Speaker 3 Behavior. Lord, have mercy. Speaker 1 I mean, this is in in our world today, this would you you'd go to prison for the kind of stuff that David did. He's a man after God's own heart. And this is the kind of stuff he's doing. And then here's the thing, David commits this double crime, but his conscience can't process it. So he buries it in his subconscious and continues on being the king of Israel, judging all the cases. And one of the functions of of a king in this particular culture was that for a period of time each day or a couple times a week, who knows how often, the king would sit on his throne with the crown on his head, with his shoulders up and back. And there's confidence I'm the king, after all, judging the cases of the people. So the people line up and they come before the king and they say, here's the situation to the king. And the king resolves the issue and passes this judgment. And this is what needs to happen in order to resolve this issue, this land dispute or your husband or your something. OK, so then he's judging Israel as if he's qualified to judge. And the only way he can even have any confidence on this throne to utter anything is because he is evading his shame and his guilt. And then here comes the prophet into the throne room and says, David, something's going on in your realm. Something's going on in your Kingdom. I need to tell you what's going on. There's this really rich guy who has many sheeps and camels and platypuses. He's got everything. This guy is wealthy and then you've got this poor guy. He has this one little sheep. It's like a pet for him. He even sleeps with it to keep warm. This is like this is like a pet to 1 poor. And when the rich man needed to throw a party for his buddies, he took the poor man's one sheep and slaughtered it for the party rather than taking one of his many. And David's, like, enraged. His conscience is not yet clicking in because he's judging the dastardly dude who's done this thing, and now he's in touch with his moral sensibilities finally, but he doesn't know it's him. And the prophet says, by the way, David, I left the King James Version here thou art the. Speaker 3 Man. Speaker 1 And then he leaves the king alone and this is how we got Psalm 51, Psalm 51, Psalm 51 have mercy on me. Dave is like, Oh no, what have I done? Now the subconscious has come into the conscious realm, right? Have mercy on me. Oh God, according to your has said your constancy, you've always been faithful. Will you be faithful in the face of this crime that I've committed? According to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgression transgressions, plural. Watch me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgression and my sin. Check out this language is always. Speaker 3 Before me, it wasn't. Speaker 1 Before him, he had tucked it away in his subconscious. He was bobbing and weaving around his shame. But now the story has been told by the prophet and it's before him. He's conscious now of the thing that he's done. Now check this out, verse 6. Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts, in the hidden part you will make me to know wisdom. Another version. I think it's the NIV, says my inmost being or something like that. Do you have the the the NIV? Speaker 3 Verse 6 here, yeah. Verse 6. You desired faithfulness even in the womb, is what this says. Yet you taught me wisdom in that secret place. Speaker 1 OK, OK, so you King James says you desire truth in the inward part and then these famous words that anybody who's really been around scripture much created me a clean heart of God and renew our right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore it in me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with your generous Spirit. David is now experiencing, check this out you guys. He's now facing his shame in the context of God's faithful life. And that's the only way anybody can do it, really. I mean, think about it. You cannot, I cannot face the true reality of my sin and sinfulness and my shame unless it is in direct adjacency to, but God loves me. God Forgives me. God is faithful even though I've done what I've done. That's that's our refuge. That's how we survive. Speaker 3 Psalm 51 couples so perfectly well with Psalm 25. I mean, that's surprising. That's the same author and and he's reflecting on his experience, but it's so Psalm 51 is incredible. Of course, it's probably top five Psalms of all time for me. But I I love the walkthrough there. How in the language you use this dodging and weaving. But then in Psalm 51, my sin is ever before me. Because once he once he's seen it, he can't Unsee it. I'm the guy that I'm the one that took EU Yeah. And and yet the invitation that God makes to us is to not be covered in shame like we just read in Psalm 25. Speaker 1 Listen to how Job says. Speaker 3 Who hopes in you will not be put to shame? Speaker 1 Listen to how Job says this, David, What do you think of this language? Job says. In Job 31, I covered my transgression, my transgressions, like Adam did, by hiding my iniquity in my bosom. Yeah, inside of me. Inside of me, in my subconscious. I repressed and I, I pushed it down. Inside of me, I hid my own transgression from my own. Speaker 3 Consciousness. I looked that up, Psalm 51, six, and a bunch of other translations, and you get things like deep within, right deep. Speaker 1 Desire. Truth. Deep. Speaker 3 Within. Deep within. Speaker 2 So I think this. Speaker 1 Modesty is the precursor to intimacy with God. Yeah, it really is. Speaker 2 And this highlights, this highlights one of the areas in which we really get stuck, especially as it pertains to the effects of trauma. Because the effects of trauma, whether they are things that grapes that we chose to eat or grapes that we're eating before us, we're still living with those effects. And often times what we think the solution is is to either a avoid the triggers. So I just need to, OK, I go through situations that trigger me and that overwhelm me. I don't know how to handle that. So I'm literally going to go through life protecting myself from the triggers. The problem with that is that causes us to live in extremely isolated, limited, non risk taking life. To just imagine going through life saying I'm going to avoid all the triggers, all the triggers, all the triggers. The second thing that we do is when we experience the shame, when we experience the effects of the trauma, is that we think the solution is I just need to suppress it. I just need to put it away somewhere, lock it up, throw away the key because that's my enemy. The feeling of shame is my enemy not realizing that the enemy is neither of those things. The trigger is not the enemy and the feeling of shame is not the enemy. Those things are just messengers. And what they're trying to tell us is you're disconnected from the source of life, who is Jesus. And This is why he's saying I've I can't sleep at night like the like he's he. He uses so much language about the feeling, the weight of pushing everything down. And now he says this. The only way to restore myself. I mean, the only way for me to be restored is Jesus, if you will restore to me. And what does he ask God to restore? The joy. The joy? Yeah. Joy is a relational experience, and the only thing that metabolizes shame is joy. Wow. This is my cool thought. What you said in our last conversation was. Speaker 1 No, Say that again and then go on. I have to know. Speaker 2 This. The only thing that metabolizes shame is joy, right? Shame has to be metabolized. It has to be processed in the context of joy. It cannot be pushed away. It cannot be ignored and avoided. We have to experience it the way David did, sit with the weight of it, and then recognize what it is and what it is. It's a message and it's a messenger. It's a teacher and what it's saying to us is you have lost your attachment with your creator, with your maker, with the source of your joy. Speaker 1 And. Speaker 2 And so This is why yet in our last conversation you said where sin abounds, grace much more of. Speaker 3 Super abounds. Speaker 2 Super abounds. The way that we get over this stuff is not by avoidance. It's it's not through misdirection is we go through it and then we recognize, oh, God is here with me in the valley. Yeah, though I walk through the valley, not walking around the valley. I'm not jumping over the valley where I'm walking through it. But I'm not alone in the valley. And joy is the feeling I get when I'm in the presence of someone who's happy to be with me. I've just self disclosed, not by choice. I've been exposed. You see me as I am. I will not survive the experience of self disclosure unless I know God that you're still for me. Speaker 1 This is the key. Speaker 2 And when I, when that, when that become, when that reality God is for me no matter what, when that gets inside of me in the inner man, it's the only way I experience restoration. So then the question is. Jacob's Story: Restoring Identity Under God's Loving Gaze How do I? Speaker 2 Get there, right? The only way to get there where we are wounded in relationships and we're restored in relationships is we have to recognize that what what we are suffering from in church and as a society is we don't have the relational skills to attach ourselves to God. We don't have the emotional skills to attach ourselves to God in this kind of way, in the kind of way where we experience the joy of his salvation that leads to our restoration. And so when you were talking about David, like this whole meta narrative of Scripture in the children of Israel, I was just thinking like, man, I've heard this meta narrative my whole life, but we never made the connection to like this is this is a holistic approach to how we experience restoration. It's not just a story about some people in some land some time ago. It's the story of us. It's the story of how we've wandered, how we've been unfaithful, how we've been broken and we've been traumatized. And the story of how God restores David, how God restores Abraham, how God restores Israel, is the story of how he's restoring us. Speaker 3 When I said earlier, and I said it ill advisedly and reflexively, I said I've never thought of the Bible that way. When you said it's a case study of trauma healing, I was like, I never thought but I I have thought of it but just not in that language. And I'll give a good example. A couple years ago, maybe 2 1/2 years ago now, I preached a series on an 8 part series on the life of Jacob and that series was called Jacob the Faking, Breaking and Making. Speaker 1 That's it. Speaker 3 That's it. And and here's the punchline I love. I actually just shared this with a good friend of mine who's a Baptist pastor and he was just like so psyched about he's a good friend of mine, a climbing buddy. And he was talking about we were just we always talk theology. And I shared with him how God brings us back over the ground where we have failed. And one of the punch lines in that series is is that Jacob sets his life on the wrong course by answering the question, who are you with a lie? Who are you, who are you, Who are you? Are you really my son, Are you Esau Are you my first one, Are you Esau? I am Esau, I am Esau. I am Esau. You can go read it in Genesis over and over again. He insists that he's Esau. So then he go through the whole long tragic history of his life. And I said in the series, and I think it's largely true that the story of Jacob's one of the most sad stories in the whole Bible. It's up there with the story of Job. I mean, it's just a story filled with all kinds of sadness. So then you Fast forward 20 plus years and he's coming back to his homeland. His mother's passed away. He's going to be meeting his brother and all of it's coming back because wherever you go, there you are you. Speaker 1 Have noticed this? Have you noticed this? Speaker 3 Wherever you go, there you are. You can go to live with Laban. You can marry his two daughters, Rachel and Leia. But wherever you go, there you are. And here's what happens. He's sending all these gifts ahead to Esau. Esau's not responding to any of the gifts. He receives this in the most foreboding and terrible way. So he divides his his family into two camps, thinking that if he saw tax, one, maybe the other can escape. And so then that night he goes over this river called Jabek. He feels a heavy hand on his shoulder. He assumes mistakenly, that the heavy hand is the hand of Esau or one of Esau's friends. And so he or, you know, soldiers or something. So he fights back and God, you know, I believe my read on the story is that God's there to encourage him, to counsel him, to be with him, but he perceives the hand of hostility, the hand of an adversary. So he starts to wrestle and Jesus is like, OK, we can do this. So wrestle, wrestle, wrestle, wrestle, wrestle, wrestle. And then finally the break of the dawn. And then it all comes down to this. What is? Speaker 1 Your name? The most uncomfortable question? Speaker 3 Exactly right. The the question that derailed his entire life. And this time, rather than saying lying I am Esau, he gets to say I am Jacob. Speaker 1 And then? Speaker 3 And then he says, not anymore, not anymore. That's not who you are now. You're Israel. Speaker 1 God changes his name. Speaker 3 And, and just, there's so much going on there, not just in terms of the narrative, not just in terms of this beautiful redemptive story, but psychologically. And then he gets this limp right for the rest of his life as a reminder, a perpetual reminder, very similar, I think, to the reminder that Paul got after having encountered the risen, glorified Christ on the road to Damascus, where he had this kind of problem with his eyes, right? Because he was healed in some limited sense. But he complaints about his eyes in the Scripture as a reminder that you have encountered Yahweh himself. And no one encounters Yahweh and walks away unchanged. Speaker 1 You guys, I, I have to. That's good. This is so good. David, I have to bring this up in connection with what you said. Let's hear it. OK. So I was introduced to this concept by an old Scottish preacher from back in the the 1800s by the name of George MacDonald and one of my favorite authors of all time. Speaker 3 Ty is old. Ty is old. He was studied under George MacDonald. Speaker 1 All his writings, yeah, I know. OK, so check this out though. The name. Yeah. Do you know one of the first thing that's going to happen to us, according to the Book of Revelation when we get to the other side? Speaker 3 Thank you when we. Speaker 1 Get into the Kingdom. Yes. OK. We're all going to enter the Kingdom with a name. I'm Ty. You're David. You're Angelo. Come into the eternal Kingdom. Yeah. And the question, what's your name? Yeah, Lord. I'm Ty. No, you're not. And the scripture says he's going to give each one a polished Whitestone with a new name. Nobody knows. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the. Speaker 1 One who gives and receives the name. Now, this isn't to say, this isn't to say this is what George MacDonald pointed out to me. This isn't to say that nobody knows the name. Like the word, the phonetics, you know, the new Nick. Nobody knows the story, the narrative embedded in the new name. That's right. Jesus is going to give each of us a new name that holds the trauma healing story that we've gone through with him. You know, he's the only one who knows the name because he's the only one who knows everything about us, our whole history, everything we've experienced at what he has saved us. So I get a new name, so that for all eternity you'll know my new name, and you'll know my new name, and you'll just call me whatever my new name is. But when Jesus speaks my new name, it'll be a point of intimacy between him and I alone. He calls me an eternity future by the new name that He's bestowed upon me, and forever I'm reminded of what he saved me from. Speaker 3 Thank you. Speaker 1 Jesus, that's incredible. Isn't this a myth? Speaker 3 I love it, George. Speaker 1 McDonald, you guys, George McDonald, just just an amazing. I love that. Speaker 3 Of course, this comes from Revelation 2 and three, the letters to the seven churches. As we talked about, one of the really cool things that's taking place in those letters to the seven churches there is that. Speaker 1 Chapter 2. Verse 17. Speaker 3 217 is that you see this, this image of the glorified Christ in Revelation 1 and he has all these, we talked about this, the British bronze and the eyes of fire and the sword and all of this and the eyes of fire in particular. I want to hone in on that. These eyes of fire is you get this eyes thing. In fact, we're going to, I think I want to talk about this because we're going to talk about the Holy Spirit going forward. But one of the kind of interesting things that happens in the Book of Revelation is you get this several times, the seven spirits of the seven spirits of God, and people are mystified by this, the seven spirits of God. We'll talk about that in more detail in the future, but I want to make this one point. God sees it all that's the eyes of fire as it says there in you know one of the great passages Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12 for the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than 82 inches sword. We know that one right piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit. But but verse 13 and everything is open and and I love this translation naked before the. Speaker 1 Eyes of. Speaker 3 Whom and and what happens is all the way back to Genesis 3. We talked about Genesis 225. They were naked and not ashamed. I love this idea that there's no subconscious. There's just conscious awareness of God and awareness of others. OK, so then what happens is, is that after the fall, after the sin, after the rebellion against God's very reasonable command to not eat of this particular tree, they become cognizant of their nakedness. And then what happens is, is that cognizance of nakedness becomes a symbol or a a stand in for the rest of the Bible. For shame. And the illustration that I use in my preaching occasionally is I'll say, look, we all wear clothes. You've got those clothes on. You look great. You've got those clothes on. You look great. I've got these clothes on. OK, If thank you. If all of a sudden, just like right now, in a moment in this room with the people that are here, if your clothes just disappeared or your clothes just disappear to Michaels or anybody, you would not just sit there casually like you are right now, especially with all these cameras on you. You would you would this is reflex up. You would just you would cover up and you would quickly exit the room and you would try to go get clothes on. Because here's the point, Nakedness is who you are. No veneer, no clothing, no heirs. It's who you are. And this is what it's meant in Hebrews chapter 4, verse 13, that that God sees us all as if we're naked. No veneers, no heirs, no pretense. And this is the key. He sees us as we actually are and loves us. Speaker 1 The way I've said that for my own sake over the years and in preaching is I have this one slide that's one of my favorite slides that that I've ever made and I try to get it in every place I can. It just says to be fully known and fully loved simultaneously is the essence of our healing. To be fully known and fully loved simultaneously is the essence of our healing. And only Jesus, only Jesus really knows us fully as we are, even beyond what we know. So part of the experience is Jesus bringing me up to speed on what he knows about me that I've tucked away in my bosom like Job and like Jacob and David, like David bringing me up to. I mean, so here's like the prayers of scripture are so amazing. Search me, O God, in my heart, try me and know my thoughts and see if there is any wicked way in me, and then lead me in the way everlasting. There is the sense in which Scripture is a journey of increased consciousness. Yeah, consciousness. Not just of my sin that would crush me. Consciousness of my sin in the light of his love. Just like you said, David. He knows me, but he still loves me. Speaker 3 Thank you Jesus, show me. Show me your ways, Lord. Speaker 1 We can do that with each other. Isn't that part of what it means to be in community? Is to see one another with increased clarity, but still be there for one another even though we know things? Speaker 3 Well, Angela said that earlier, didn't he said I can be myself, my real self, my authentic self. Self disclosure. Self disclosure, voluntary self disclosure to others that you know, love you. You said something last session that I just want you to riff on a little bit because you said it too quickly. You guys are, you're always saying these things that are just too great, right? Like like joy metabolizes shame, right? Like it was like, can we just talk about that for the next half hour? But you said something that that is really in harmony with this idea that we're talking about here. And you said that we, when we sit in the gaze of God, when we rest, when we, when we marinate in the gaze of God, we then become, you catch me if I get this wrong. We then become, as we enter into this experience, that for others, we can look at others the way that God looks at us. We can treat others the way that God has treated us. The Church then becomes the body of Christ, the extension of the healing enterprise of the Kingdom. Speaker 1 And the body metabolizes shame. Speaker 3 Thank you. That's right. The. Speaker 1 Body of Christ metabolizes shame the way that the the the the body metabolizes tacos and other things. The body metabolizes and turns shame into energy, transforms it. Wow. Speaker 3 But the Church often doesn't function like this. Go ahead. Speaker 2 And I, we're going to have a whole conversation on the church. OK, I think this is a great way to talk about that. But we're talking about the connection here with the path. Show me your ways. Show me your path. Psalm 1611 says He will show me his paths. In Your presence is fullness of joy. You will show me the path of life. What is the path of life? In Your presence is fullness of joy. The word there translated as presence in the Hebrew is translated for face. Speaker 3 That's right. So. Speaker 2 In the gaze of God, in your face is fullness of joy. In other words, it's this concept because, and this goes back to being a child. When we are children, we don't have the capacity for development of language until 24 months. So we're constantly looking for faces and we're looking for the story in the face that tells us this person's happy to be with me. In your gaze is fullness of joy. And like you said, David, sometimes the only face of God that we'll see is in the face of other people. And so we are called to be conduits of the face of God in the lives of the people. Help Us Share the Gospel: Support Light Bearers Around us Hey everyone, David here from Light Bears one quick thought before we continue. Every episode you're watching isn't just content, it's possibly someone's turning point, someone's first encounter with the. Speaker 1 Beauty of Jesus. Speaker 3 Now, I don't know if you know this or not, but Light Bears is a donor funded organization. So if you'd like to help us create more of these kinds of gospel centered resources, please visit lightbears.org/give and consider becoming a financial partner. Your support really does make a difference. So thank you so much. All right, let's get back into. God as an Attachment Seeker: The Reciprocal Love It and so we are called to be conduits of the face of God in the lives of the people around us. OK and I want to just share 11 more thing based on this and I have a lot of thoughts I have. Speaker 3 Many things. Speaker 1 Actually, you do have a lot of thoughts I've noticed. Speaker 2 This this concept of self disclosure, right? OK, self disclosure is actually an attachment behavior in children. You know when you're a little when you have a little child, they have no problem running into the living room naked, even if they have even if you have a room full of guests, right. Self disclosure is just the natural state of being for a little child. And so because they feel safe in your presence and the. Speaker 1 Good thing we grow out of that. Speaker 2 Now here's the thing, if self disclosure is an attachment behavior, we're called to attach ourselves to God. Therefore, it should be assumed that self disclosure is part of our attachment seeking behavior towards God, showing him who we are, exposing ourselves to him, letting him in. Now I read this, someone who's part of our community who actually emailed us on she her name is Christina Fried. She's an adjunct professor at Andrews University in the Theological Seminary. Speaker 3 Christina. Speaker 2 Christina Fried wrote a This is her doctoral dissertation. It's called Divine Attachment, a canonical model for discipleship. Speaker 1 I've actually read this. Speaker 2 It's a good. Speaker 1 Yeah. Speaker 2 So one of the things there that really I really, really loved was she said she made the case for why God is our attachment figure. So she gives an entire kind of framework in Scripture of how God presents himself to us as a secure attachment figure. But then what she did that surprised me was she said, not only is God an attachment figure in Scripture, what we see is that God is an attachment seeker and he's seeking attachment with us. The same activities that that that we as that we as God's children are partaking in to get close to him, to experience proximity with him, to express separation distress. God does the same thing in Scripture because he doesn't just present himself as a figure of attachment. He's seeking attachment. And when I read in Psalms 25, something that reminded me of this in verse 14 of Psalm 25, and I'm so glad we started with Psalm 25. Listen to what it says. It says the Lord confides in those who fear him. In other words, God wants to disclose Himself to us. And then it says He makes His covenant known to them. And there's so many other places in Scripture where it says that God tells his secrets to his friends. You, I know, call, I no longer call you servants, but I call you friends because everything that the Father has made known to me, I have shared with you. Jesus is seeking proximity to us, and he's expressing separation, distress when we're no longer experiencing his presence. The idea that God wants to tell me his secrets, that God wants to come close to me and tell me this isn't just about who you are, it's about who I am. And when you allow me to get close to you, it makes me happy. It brings me pleasure. Speaker 1 Blowing my mind. Speaker 2 It satisfies me to be in your presence and to, like, tell you secrets about who I am. So are you? Speaker 1 Saying that that not only does God want connection and attachment with us for our benefit, but that God actually is benefited. That God is delighted in and benefited by, that He finds joy in us. It's not just that we find joy in Him. Speaker 2 I think that's what worship is, yeah. It's this mutuality of opening. So. Speaker 1 God can be benefited. Speaker 3 OK. Yeah. OK. So I can't be quite any longer. There's an incredible book written by a friend of mine, a friend of yours, 2 tie John Peckham. It was kind of the first book that he wrote that was a bit of a breakthrough. He wrote it, I don't know, probably 7 or 8 years ago now, maybe 10 years ago. And the book is called The Love of God, a canonical model. And it what caught my ear was not just what you were saying, but also the, what was that the? Speaker 2 Divine attachment, a canonical model for discipleship. Speaker 3 She certainly has been under the influence. Speaker 2 And she recognizes Peckham's model as something that she is. Speaker 3 OK, so what's so interesting about Peckham's model? Speaker 1 And he's an. Speaker 3 Incredible, brilliant mind. I, I love him. He's a dear friend. He's a beautiful soul. So what Doctor Peckham does in this book, and this book won a number of awards. I mean, it's, it's, it's not an easy book to read. In fact, it's not even the kind of book that I can easily recommend. I could recommend it to you. I could recommend it to you, but it would it's not an easy book to read. In fact, I even called John. I was like, John, this book is incredible. You need to write a popular version of this book that will be accessible to the other 99% of the population that would benefit from this. But anyway, and he agreed, he totally agreed. And he's written a number of subsequent books that are similarly amazing. But this is what he does. He walks through. You can just listen to the title the love of God, a canonical model. Taking a look at the love of God. What does Scripture, the canonical model is what's meant by this? What does Scripture holistically reveal about the nature of God's love right for God so loved the world, the whole of the text. What do we learn about the love of God And he identifies 5 things. Now I'm not going to talk about all of them, but I am going to talk about the last one. Here's his five elements that he arrives at from a careful, thorough, incredible study of Scripture. And here it is. The volitional aspect of divine love, the evaluative aspect of divine love, number two, number three, the emotional aspect of Divine love #4 the four conditional aspect of divine love. And then #5 the reciprocal, the reciprocal aspect of divine love. And the punchline here. And it's over. And against the kind of prevailing views, not to get too nerdy here, but the prevailing views of classical theism, which paint God in a quasi or not even quasi pathway as possessing impassability, being perfectly impassable. Speaker 1 Meaning without the capacity for feeling emotions. Speaker 3 Exactly right, because the whole notion of like sometimes when people hear the word impassable or they think you can't get around, like a car is impassable, but the word is passion. It's like passion that that God is not moved. You think about the word emotion. Speaker 1 It's all it's all unilateral. Speaker 3 It's all unilateral and and Peckham makes a persuasive and beautiful case. No doubt this dear sister is building on that God not only loves, he can be loved. And the language that you use there of this kind of mutual benefit. Now people push back and they say, well, wait a minute, if God can receive anything, then he's not perfect in his essential ontology. And Peckham deals with that objection, the idea that God is not learning something as such, that God's not growing morally, He's not matriculating and maturing as we do. And yet nevertheless, in his divine nature, God receives. He not only gives, he receives. And this is incredible. It goes back to the point you made about the new name. The new name is a, is a, is a wink, a whisper between the two. There's a mutuality there because God has been with you in all of it and you have been with God in all of it. Speaker 1 David, can I recommend a popular treatment of the subject, please? Because everybody might not know what you mean when you say he wrote a scholarly book that not everybody would enjoy. Speaker 3 Reading. Not easy to say. Speaker 1 Disagree, but when you recommended that he write a popular version, you mean a version that can be popularly read by the average reader? Gotcha. I want to recommend a a popular version treatment of the subject. OK, here we go. And the it's a chapter in a book that is called Reciprocal, and the book is called a God named Desire. Speaker 3 I was. It's so funny. It's so funny. As you were setting this up. I'm like the only book I can really think of here would be a book by tie. I wonder if it's a God named. Speaker 2 Desire and the whole time you're. Speaker 3 Saying it, I'm like I know where this. Speaker 1 Is point of my chapter on the subject of God's love. Speaker 3 Which is an excellent book, by the way. Speaker 1 That chapter is just called reciprocal because the whole point of the chapter is that the relationship between God and humans is not unilateral. It it's reciprocal. God is giving. But, and this is what I was just so blown away by with by what you were saying, God actually experiences enjoyment of us. Speaker 2 Yeah. Speaker 3 The joy of the Lord is our strength. Speaker 1 Actually bring pleasure to God's heart. Speaker 3 Thank you. Yeah. Speaker 1 Isn't it? I mean, I can. I can actually bring a smile to God's face. Speaker 2 Thank you. Speaker 1 I can actually do things that makes God feel good. That's amazing to me. It's. Speaker 2 Beautiful. Finding Purpose and Joy in Bringing God Pleasure And what it does to me kind of psychologically is it takes me outside of myself because when we have this conversation on like trauma and healing and attachment, so often we can like be making so many personal applications that we can kind of get lost in. Like, am I doing OK? Like, am I recovering the way I should be recovering in my development skills that I should be developing? But then when I think about it as like God has given me a vocation, a calling, a purpose, and nothing kind of energizes me or enlivens me more than the concept that my purpose in life is to bring pleasure to God. And the way I get bring pleasure to God is by being a conduit of his love to other people. That takes me outside of myself. And it brings me joy to know that by surrendering to God, by healing, by experiencing His presence and healing, it makes Him happy and it brings him joy. That gives me joy, and the joy is my strength. Speaker 3 The Joy of the. Speaker 2 Lord, the joy of the Lord, not my own joy. Speaker 3 His pleasure. Speaker 2 His joy, his happiness enables me and strengthens me. To overcome and to. Speaker 1 Experience so the. Speaker 2 Now I have a purpose and my purpose is to allow God to heal me in the in a way that makes him happy. And now I don't have to always be so insulated and so self focused when I say I live for God. I live to bring him joy, to bring him pleasure and in that is my purpose and my calling and that's where the healing is found. So guys where I will send an hour unless anyone else has any well that. Speaker 3 Does get us quite back. I have a couple of things that does get us right back to where we began or very close to where we began. The last conversation, which is where Ty went on this amazing sort of unpacking of the subconscious, this kind of subterranean, and you made this really, in my view, new and provocative point that I've never thought of before, that prior to sin, there was no subconscious. There was not, there was no insecurity. There's nothing that had to be sort of tucked away or hidden away in a Freudian sense that that they were who they were and what you were just describing there. The language was very similar that when we live under the gaze of God, the smile of God, the goodness of God revealed to us in the gospel, we then become conduits. We become a conduit for the blessing of God to the world around us, to our children, to our spouse, of course, chiefly to to the church, to the wider world. And what what does this do? It restores this identic ideal, this identic innocence, even where we are now kind of outside of ourselves and our anxieties and our hurts and our frustrations and our, and we are there to bless, to bless others, to be, to be the the continuation of the loving gaze of God on a world that doesn't know that game and it doesn't receive that gaze. It it feels like it's come full circle. Speaker 2 Yeah, guys, this is a really great conversation. I'm so glad. Speaker 1 We had. I actually enjoyed it. I enjoyed it too. Now I'm under the impression that that the God of the universe would enjoy us having this conversation and give a wink and a nod. Oh, that was that. Yeah, the almighty. That was fun. That was fun. I enjoyed. I love it. He's a fourth party in the conversation. Speaker 3 Thank you Jesus. Speaker 1 By his spirit. By his spirit. That's right. Speaker 3 Which I think is what we're going to talk about in a future conversation, which I can't wait. Is that the next one? Speaker 2 That's the next one. Speaker 4 Thanks for joining us for Gospel Conversations. This podcast was created by Light Bearers, a non profit on a mission to vindicate the beauty of God's character. We create gospel centered resources including a growing library of audio and video messages, books, Bible studies, and thought provoking articles that inform your mind and inspire your heart. We also offer Arise, our discipleship training program, designed to help people understand the story of Scripture, live on mission, and make disciples. And each year we host the Light Bearers Convocation, a gathering where we come together as a community to refocus our faith and deepen our connection with God. This podcast is made possible through the generosity of people like you. We're incredibly grateful for our global community of financial and prayer partners who make everything we do possible. To explore our resources, join one of our Arise programs or partner with us, visit lightbears.org.