Soul Integration

From the beautiful sunshine coast of Australia, this is the Awake Nations Ministries podcast equipping the church for revival, reformation and kingdom impact. Learn more about us by visiting awakeaus.com 1thessalonians 5:23. It's a very familiar passage of scripture, especially recently for us as we've been reading from this passage, Paul's writing to the church in Thessalonica. And it's just. I'll just read it to you.

This is the English Standard Version, which, by the way, is one of the most accurate literal translations there is. That's why we use says in First Thessalonians 5, 23. Oh, that's what happens when you use an electronic. Okay, Here we go. First Thessalonians 1 Thessalonians 5:23.

This is a benediction. Listen to Paul's prayer for the believers at that time and also for us today. Amen. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. So he is speaking of the fact that we have a spirit, soul and body.

And just to recapitulate, last week we were clear that we are a spirit, a spirit that has a soul, and we live in a body. So we have to recognize the importance of that. And I want to show you something in just a moment, but before, before we do, because I'm going to. This is going to shock some of you guys, okay? You're going to see this in context with what the church has been doing in recent times.

That is so off base. But we want to re. Center around Jesus and what he's called us to do. Why are we seeing so many fall, so many fail, people stumble, implode, self sabotage, go off the rails. Whatever metaphor you want to use today.

Well, a lot of it is because we have not focused on formation, discipleship. We get people in church buildings, we fill up buildings. That's been our focus. We have a platform, we have a production of performance in many places. But what are we doing to really see people become like Jesus, conform to his image and likeness, Right?

So you can, you can go to church, a building, right, and not become like Jesus. And, and it's very critical that we understand this. So want to just, just share two quotes. First of all, and the first quote is from Pastor Chuck Swindoll or Pastor Charles Swindoll. He said this.

When you first come to Christ, it seems exciting. Then you discover it's difficult. Eventually you realize it's impossible. Apart From Christ. All right, so why is that?

Okay, we're going to talk about this Watchman knee. How many know who watchman knee was? Yeah. Love watchman knee. I'm a watchman knee junkie.

Read all his books, happen to pretty much read his stuff every week. I love it so much. And what he has to share, it's very, very deep, very, very profound. And obviously he lived what he preaches. Right.

He was in prison for so many years. But Watchman Nee said this. He said, God will bring us to the place where we see that the Christian life is not difficult, but impossible. God is waiting until we realize that we cannot do it all. Then Christ will live through us.

Then will Christ live through us. So our core thesis in this teaching has to do with. We're really focusing on our spirit and soul at this point. And we recognize that our spirit was perfected. Now that word perfected.

Again, God's not put us in these nice, neat little compartments like, here's your spirit, here's your soul. They completely are separate. No, our spirit and soul, there's this overlap. We don't necessarily understand it all, but sometimes in the Bible, the Old Testament, and the New Testament, soul is also used for your spirit. So isn't it interesting?

Right, so. So it's not just like, hey, when we got saved spirit. Yep. But nothing happened to our soul. That's not true.

When we really turn to Jesus, something happened to us. Right. In our spirit and in our soul. And we've tried to unpack that. But I just want to be very clear.

We're not saying that all of a sudden, like, you're this immortal person, that just your spirit is just completely sinless, blameless in the sense that you don't have the capacity to sin anymore. All right, I want to be very clear about that. Okay? Because a lot of teaching today, even in the church, is focused on our psyche. In other words, the reason why we misbehave and we do the bad things that we do as human beings, even as Christians, is because something happened to us in the past.

And then we point. That's psychology, guys. That's not true. There's a lot of amazing people who've been raised in. In homes where they've been loved, healthy homes.

And they've done, you know, raised in. In these environments, and yet they choose to just go rogue. So it has nothing to do with, like, maybe there's nothing that triggered that. And. But we still have a choice.

We still have an innate, sinful nature, and we still have to make a decision whether we're going to follow God or not, and we're going to submit ourselves to the process of sanctification. Are we going to offer ourselves as these living sacrifices that the Bible talks about? So when we talk about your spirit was perfected at salvation, and we'll look at a specific scripture, we understand that positionally there was something that took place. Okay? And the word we use in theology is ontology.

So ontologically means being. You became a new creation, you became a new person. Is that true? Yeah, it is. You did.

You still look the same. But in your spirit, man, internally, you became a new person. The Bible talks about that like in so many different places. So what we're talking about here is, is this work where actually God has done an incredible thing in our life. We're going to look at Hebrews chapter 10 for a moment, verse 14.

He's done this amazing work. We've become a new creation in Christ Jesus. But there's an ongoing work as well. So Hebrews 10:14. For by a single offering, He, Yeshua, Jesus Christ has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

So notice that for one single offering, okay, he has perfected for all time. He has. Past tense. It's aorist in Greek, meaning it's done. But what does it say, those who are being sanctified?

Process, present tense. Your on a journey. So your spirit and in terms of your position in Christ, you were brought into the family of God, you're justified, you're reconciled to the Father, you're made complete in him, and you are part of the family. You're secure, you're established. All right?

So you're in the family, your new creation, your child of God. Technon. Right, we've been speaking about that. That's the word that is used when you become a child of God. But there's also a responsibility to go on a journey and allow him to do this work of sanctification.

Now, may the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly. Now, it doesn't mean that we can sanctify ourselves. Sanctification is a process that is collaborative in nature, requires that God does the work, but that we submit to him. So our role in the sanctification journey is to consecrate ourselves. It's to say, lord, here I am, like we were singing about, ready to do your will, Lord, you do the work.

You purify my heart. You do that work in you. You make me more and more like Jesus, and I present myself to you as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable. And Lord, I give myself to you. Have your way, have your will.

No resistance, no striving, no hesitancy. Lord, you're my healer. You're my deliverer, you're my sanctifier. And there's clearly two extremes, isn't there? There's those who are like, yep, I'm good, I'm saved.

Everything's good. They never change. They never grow up. They're broken, they're immature, they're in. They have patterns, behavioral patterns, identity issues, things in which they never.

They never change. And can I be very clear with you? God wants to heal you. He wants to make you whole. It's not his will that we.

We just kind of like, oh, I'm saved, but I'm a mess. I'm saved. No, he wants to. He wants to restore you. The Bible says in Psalm 23, he restores my what?

Soul. He restores my soul. So when David said that it restores my soul, he was speaking of the journey that we have to go on to allow God. And the word in Hebrew for restore literally means to bring back to the original intention or purpose of design. So God takes us back to what we were created to be.

So that's what restoration is all about, right? Its intended purpose, its original design, that type of thing. So God is doing this work in us, and he wants us to submit to that work. So the way it works is. And we, we went up, we started speaking about this last Sunday was.

There are actually six movements. Now I want you to see this on the screen, please. These six movements, the journey of discipleship. Now, please, why are we so focused and fixated, can I say obsessed with discipleship here? Because it's the one thing Jesus commanded.

Do you know that? The primary. We call it the Great Commission. The Great Commission is not preaching the gospel. The Great Commission is to make disciples of the nations.

It includes preaching the gospel, but that's not it. So Matthew 28, 1920. Right? That's what we refer to, the Great Commission, which it says, after all authority had been restored to Jesus in heaven, on earth. Go, therefore, make disciples of the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, the name of the Holy Spirit.

Teach them to observe or to obey all that I've commanded you. Right Lo. I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. So that particular passage, in the original language, there's one commandment, the verbal imperative. The command is make disciples.

It looks like there's four Go, disciple, baptize, teach. One verbal imperative command. The other three, Go, baptize and teach are participles. The command is what we're called to do. Participles are how we do what we're called to do.

What does that mean? The commandment is very simple. We're called to disciple nations. And when we speak of nations, we're talking about people, Right? In the Bible days, at that time, there were Jews and there were Gentiles.

So it was referring to all of the different people groups around the earth at that time, and it still refers to that today. So we're called to disciple. What is a disciple? It's a follower. It's someone without getting into this in too much depth.

It's someone that mimics and learns the behavior, the lifestyle, the desires, the wishes of the rabbi.

Even what a rabbi wanted, even to understand their. The things they like. The disciple had to be that close and that invested that they actually understood that. So Jesus is the rabbi, the teacher. Rabboni.

Right. So what did he say in Luke 6:40? He said, no pupil, no disciple, no student is above the teacher. But when they've been perfectly trained, which is the same Greek word that's used in Ephesians 4:12 for equipping the saints, when he's fully equipped, when he's perfectly trained, he will be like his teacher. So the goal of discipleship is that we would become like Jesus.

And the focus has been on drawing a crowd, filling a building up with people. But we've not necessarily been good in filling people with God.

We attract a crowd, but we're not seeing conformation to the image and likeness of Jesus. So on this particular graphic on the screen, you see the journey of discipleship includes six phases, or what we call six movements. The first one is immersion, second one is intimacy. We talked about those last week. We'll quickly recap.

Today we're going to go into integration. Then we're going to continue and finish this up. Identity, inheritance and incarnation. Now let me explain something. Many of us in many churches that you may have.

If you've been, you know, in church for a while, you probably the focus of discipleship might have been kind of one, like number. Number. Sorry, number five, number six, maybe even number four a bit. And maybe number two, depending on. On if you're in a more spiritual church.

Okay. But in a lot of places, when we talk about equipping, we want to equip you. What immediately comes to mind? It's this we want to teach you how to work with kids. We want to teach you how to serve as an usher or whatever else.

And we have very little focus on bringing people through these phases, very little emphasis, if any, to bring them to the place ultimately of incarnation where mission is embodied. What does that mean? It means that you're actually living out what God has called you to live out. You're called to live like him, fulfill his purpose, his destiny, his commission for your life. But before you can do that effectively, you've got to go on the journey and go through these other five.

So many have been raised up quickly, given a platform, and then just take a look. Saints, what's happening all over the world, Boom. Another one bites at us. Boom. And another one, you know.

And so bang, it just keeps happening. Failure, implosion. People who've not been on the journey and have not been developed and Christ has not been formed in them. They function in the gifts. They're very charismatic.

They can even be anointing and prophesy and flow in the various gifts of the Holy Spirit. But they're not godly in many ways. There's areas like they don't know how to interact with people. They don't treat people well. They're driven by their own agendas.

And you know what the root of all evil is?

It's not the love of money. You know, when the Bible says the love of money, you know what it says in the original language is a root of all evil, not the root of all. So it means a root. So what does it mean if it's a root? There's more than one.

Correct. So there's more than one. So it's not the root of all evil. James 3:16 tells us what the true root of all evil is. Do you know what it is?

Envy, jealousy, Selfish ambition. Selfish ambition. When you study, not that I advocate you study this. If you do a little bit of research, you'll find out in Wicca that they, they have something called the Wiccan reed. R E D E. And the Wiccan reed is what they use to measure if they're good Wicca.

And their slogan, they're saying is this. Whatsoever thou wilt, do it. Whatsoever thou wilt, do it. Now, if you go back into history, you'll see that was used repeatedly and then it was even integrated into the Satanic Bible written by Anton Zander lavey. So the idea is this.

Whatever you want to do, do it. That's the Wiccan read. It's the antithesis of what Jesus taught, which Is what? I did not come from heaven to earth to. To do my will, but to do the will of him who sent me.

John 6:38. So the idea guys, is this. In true Christianity, we give up our rights, we lay ourselves down, and we live for the will and the purpose of God in all things. That's what it means.

And often the greatest challenge that we have is to get to that place. God, whatever. I have, my gifts, my time, my dreams, my aspirations, my resources actually belongs to you. Tell me how you want me to use it. Rich, young, really give everything you have to the poor.

Come, follow me. Oh, really? Pretty full on. It's not.

And hey, you've got your plans. Why do you think God, why do you think your plans seemingly, maybe you've had this happen to you several times where you have your plan, you've got a course you've charted, and yet you move ahead and boom, you hit a wall. And sometimes you, oh, this is the devil. I'll just push through it. And the harder you push, the more resistance and the more you're unable to break through.

Why is that? Because God doesn't rebuke very easily.

It's God. It's not the devil. And what is he saying? He's saying, how about asking me what I will for your life? How about seeking me for what is my predetermined pathway for your life?

See, we're called on this journey, and it starts not from a place of ascetic. You know, asceticism is. Is the whole idea of we just need to give away everything we have. You know, become a monk or a nun. And how many want to do that?

And go, no, that's asceticism, right? And. And it. There's extreme asceticism. People literally beat themselves.

You know, they do that and it's kind of like, yeah, just crucify the flesh, literally. And they live that way. And they think that's what God wants, that's not what he's after. Because you can do all of that and your heart still be far from him. So God is actually looking to bring people into a place where they recognize that it's about his will being accomplished.

Because otherwise it's legalism. It's your own offering. You're approaching God. Well, if I do this, if I give him that, if I do this, then surely he'll be pleased with me.

And that's not how we approach God. He clearly told us how we approach Him. So let's go back and look at the first two Phases of the journey, immersion, and then intimacy. Now, by immersion, what we're referring to is the fact that we are in Christ Jesus. When you're born again, when you come to Christ, you are actually in Christ.

So it's not just like your sins are forgiven, you're given a fresh start. No, there's a change of residency. You actually are in Christ. In the New Testament, more than 160 times that phrase is used in Christ. If any man is in Christ, you're a new creation, but you have to be in Christ first of all.

You become a new person when you're in Christ. So immersion is you're baptized into Christ. You become one with the Godhead. You literally take up residence in him, and he in you. We're in Christ.

Christ is in us. The Bible speaks about that. So we're not just forgiven, we're located inside his life. So we don't work our way into acceptance. We work from acceptance.

We're already accepted. Read the first three chapters of Ephesians. Paul is saying in his brilliant theological treatise there. He's saying this is all about, first of all, what Jesus did. What he did, the suffering, the sacrifice, the pain.

All that he did had a purpose. And that is to restore us to oneness with the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. And again, that's part of the Great Commission. The Great Commission is very clearly this, baptizing them into the name of the Father, into the name of the Son, and into the name of the Spirit. It's the preposition in Greek.

Eis, e, I, s, and es doesn't just mean in, it means into it. It speaks of movement. So what it's saying is that teach people how to move into the fullness of who the Father is. To be one with the Father, be one with the Son, be one with the Holy Spirit. And there is a movement that takes place where we are immersed, where baptizo is the Greek word which means immersed into him.

And because we're in Christ Jesus, we live from a place of perfection. Our Spirit has been made perfect. We are loved, we are redeemed. We are embraced. There's nothing we can do to change that.

Yes, we can resist. Yes, we can continue to live out of the will and purposes of God. But in terms of who we are, we. We are children of God. We are part of his family, and we belong.

So religion is all about this. Behave, become, belong. The builder generation, some boomers. That was what church used to be all about, guys. Yeah, come on.

It was all about that. It was like, go to church, be a good person. Yeah, right. Behave. Become a good person, and we'll receive you, we'll embrace you.

And it was performance orientation. It was based on your faithfulness, whether you gave, whether you showed up on Sunday regularly, and all of these things. And it created a generation that was striving for acceptance, not realizing what Jesus did. In many instances, not everyone drank the Kool Aid, praise God. But true Christianity is what belong, become, behave, belong, become, behave.

You belong. You're in the family, you belong to Him. Get guess what? Now you become. He changes you.

He transforms you. And it affects your attitude, it affects your behavior, changes you, but you're not doing it like, oh, I need to earn God's love. I need to earn his acceptance. I. I need to know, you've already been accepted. So it's like, why would I want to grieve the one who paid the ultimate price for me to be brought into his family and slap his face in disregard for the great sacrifice and price that he paid with his precious blood, not redeemed by anything in this world, but by his blood that cleanses us, that restores us, that translates us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His Son, so that we become one in Christ, one in the Father, one in the Son, one in the Holy Spirit.

And then from that place, healing happens inside God's acceptance, not as a prerequisite to it. So when we were born again, something happened to our soul as well. Do you know what happened? God all of a sudden started to give us new desires. When you're in the world, guess what you do?

The desires of your Father, the devil. That's what Jesus said. You live out his purposes. He was pretty straight up, wasn't he? Straight shooter, right?

So then he said, but when you are born again, guess what happens? You become a partaker of his divine nature. His nature lives in you. His seed is in you. 2 Peter 1:4, 1 John 3:839.

And then what happens is from that place, because his seed is in us, because his nature is in us, we begin to desire the things that he desires.

And now all of a sudden, when you sin, when. When you drift into lukewarmness, you actually feel bad about it. Like before, it was natural for us to live in sin, natural to do these things. But now his desires in us, and we start hating the things that we used to love and we're no longer comfortable. There's nothing worse than a Christian who's been born again.

But it's kind of like they came out of Egypt, but they're stuck in the wilderness. They're not able to cross over into the fullness of what freedom and covenant blessing looks like.

So we live from a place of, oh, this is who I am, his child. I'm his son. I'm his daughter. He's done all this. I'm accepted.

Come on, guys, just say it. I'm accepted, right? Oh, no. God's not happy with you. Shut up, devil.

Am I perfect? No. But guess what? He loves me. And he's saying, come to me.

Come to me when you stuff up. Come to me when you fall short. Don't run from me. Run to me. Papa.

I failed, Father. I did what was wrong. Lord, I know you love me. Please forgive me, Lord Jesus. See, the grace of God draws us to him.

Conviction of the spirit draws us to him. Condemnation of the world and Satan pushes us away from him.

There is what the Bible calls in 2 Corinthians 7, 10, a godly sorrow that leads to repentance, and it has. And to salvation, to deliverance. In other words, it has no regrets. But there's a worldly sorrow, and that worldly sorrow results in shame. It results in a sense of just not being accepted by God.

And we want to distance ourselves and we want to hide behind the fig leaves.

But God actually says, no, you've got to get this right, church. You've got to get this right, church. You've got to get this right. One day when I'm fully, you know, consecrated, I'm a better Christian, I'm more all in with Jesus, then I'll do this, I'll serve, I'll go here, I'll do this. No, no, no, no, no.

That is backwards. I've had people say to me, you use people who aren't perfect.

And I said, yes, I'm one of the first to admit, right, God uses people that aren't perfect. But look at Jesus. Team. Hello. That was not the A team.

Do you know that Jesus actually picked a bunch of losers? He did. Can I tell you, the process in rabbi days was this? The very best students, the very best who were trained and equipped and, and were the cream of the crop, they would approach a rabbi and based and they would say, hey, I want to be your follower. I want to be your disciple.

And the rabbi would look at their credentials and they say, they're from this tribe, they're from this family. You know, their GPA was this. They did this amazing. You know, in their studies, they excelled. They've Got all of these things.

I tick all of the boxes. And. And then the rabbi would say, because you are the best of the best, yes, you can come and follow me. But the. The.

The student, the disciple, had to approach the rabbi. What did Jesus do? He went after the disciples and called them.

He inverted the process. And he said, come and follow me, you bunch of losers, and I'll make you. Fishers of men could see Jesus doing that, right? Like, what? It's true, guys.

He did the opposite. So Paul's like, that's why there's not many of you are wise, not many of you are noble. Not many of you are intelligent. He was saying, why you're all a bunch of losers. The church is comprised of losers, derelicts, dysfunctional people.

Like, they didn't make the varsity. Oh, that's the North American thing. So. So you guys, do you know what varsity is? No.

Oh, sorry. You do? Okay, good. So. So the idea is very different, right?

Very different. So what does this mean? He chose you. He chose you. Come on.

Not because of who you are. Like, you should say, he chose me in spite of me, right? He chose me in spite of me. So none of us can say, well, you know, I understand why he chose Pastor Lynn. Like, she's amazing, you know, Or Cain or somebody else.

Like, you know, they're amazing. Like, I get it. Like, no, God has nothing to do with us now. He knows our hearts, and he knows everything about us, and he knows how we're going to respond. It's a call.

The chosen, the faithful. But we have to allow him to do that work in us. So we. We start off with immersion. Then we move to number two, which is intimacy.

So what is intimacy? Intimacy, very simply stated, is in immersion. It's about a positional union. But intimacy is the experiential enjoyment of that reality. Okay?

Now, why is that important? Why is intimacy, communion, knowing God intimately so important? Because you won't trust a person and divulge and disclose what you need to do unless you really get to know them and trust them. Not saying it the best, but you get the point. So the whole point is this.

Safety comes in presence. You know, how people. This is the truth. Why do people change?

Why presence? What does that mean? You get into God's presence and you go, peace. Oh, love. Oh, he's so good.

He's so good. Oh, Lord, I trust you. Oh, Lord, I submit. Oh, Lord, here's all my dirty laundry. Like, he didn't know, right?

But he's saying, I want you to Present it to me. Release it. Say, lord, change me. Deal with this in my life. Lord, you confess.

You ask him to bring healing. So safety is essential for healing. You won't open your deepest wounds to someone you don't trust. The other thing about intimacy is coming into God's presence, knowing him intimately is that encounter dissolves false beliefs. One moment, one nanosecond in the presence of God can dissolve all the lies just like that.

Wow. I was told God is like this, or I believe this about myself. But I spend time and I encounter him. And the soul cannot maintain God as distance while repeatedly experiencing his presence. So intimacy creates the environment.

Without it, integration becomes clinical and identity becomes merely intellectual. Guys, we're not here to bring people through some type of clinical system. We have the unfair advantage. We have the power and the presence of Jesus. We have the blood of Jesus.

Heals us. Heals us. Don't believe the lie. I'm broken beyond repair. I'm always going to be this way.

My mother was like that. I'm going to be like that. No, don't believe that. Get into his presence. Let him speak to you.

Let him change you. Let him rewrite the narrative according to the truth. That's why Jesus said, and you will know the truth if you continue in My Word. You're my disciples. Indeed.

And you will know the truth. Ginosko. In Greek, ginosko, it means experientially. You will know it, not just intellectually. You will experience the One who is truth and every.

He's the plumb line. And everything else is reset based on how true it is to the plumb line. Let God be true. Paul said, and every man a liar. Let God be true.

Let His Word be true. But I believe this or I don't know. No, no, no, no, no, no. Change your theology. Change your belief system and, and bring it into alignment with the truth.

Let the truth change you, set you free. Get in his presence, get in his word. Let it renew your mind.

So integration, the third part of the journey is really whole person alignment. What we're talking about now, guys, is the process of bringing your whole person, your spirit, soul and body into alignment with the new reality of who you are in Christ. Now, we said this, like, what are we talking about? So we have people that have gone through things. They've been hurt and they've been wounded.

They have certain beliefs. And see, the problem with when you go through something traumatic in life, it's not so much the trauma itself that's the issue, but it's what you believe about that after you go through it. There's a lot of people have gone through trauma, bounce back, and they're fine. Amazing. I think I shared this story before, but I want you to hear it again, please.

Maybe I didn't, but there was a study that was done by Nat Geo, and they were following a lion in Africa, and the lion had been wounded, had been attacked, and it was wounded. And they didn't know whether or not this lion would actually recover. But they began to protect the lion and keep it away from predators, and they began to take the lion on a healing journey and feed it and restore it and nurse it and do all these things. And against all odds, this lion recovered, this lion bounced back, and they found something phenomenal. They said that before the lion had been injured and then subsequently healed.

When it would roar, its enemies would stay away about 100 meters. They would come up to 100 meters to the lion, but then that was it. They wouldn't go any further. But they said after this lion that had been wounded and had been healed was restored, when it roared, the enemies, their. Their enemies actually wouldn't come any closer than 300 meters.

Your woundedness is a weapon. If you let God heal you and you go on the journey, your dysfunction, your brokenness, it will restore you, and you'll be a greater threat to the enemy than you ever were.

But integration is your soul catching up to your spirit. Right? So think of it this way. Conversion. You receive, you know, a new operating system, iOS 26, but all those old apps, they're still installed.

You haven't deleted them. So all those apps are still there. And, and it's just like they just don't function right. They. They slow things down, like they prevent you from it.

And so, so this is what it's like. It's kind of like a person that has become a citizen of a country. They're from another country, they move and they become a citizen in that country. And they're given the papers, they go through it. You know, there's no changing that.

They are a citizen now. But in terms of their culture, their beliefs, their language, they never adapt, they never change. And they will always struggle to function in that new society and culture, in the body of Christ. It's like that positionally. Yeah, we're citizens of the kingdom, but what about our beliefs?

What about our desires? Have we changed? Are we still struggling to live out our identity and who we are? See, integration is powerful. Why is it necessary?

Because God is committed to healing Us as persons, not overriding us as programs do. I mean, by that. So think about it. This. It's not like God's going to bypass your history, delete your story, fix you from a distance, overwrite your pain.

That's not the way it works. What does God do? He redeems your history. We spoke about this before. It's called recapitulation.

Jesus actually rewrote our history. Not by just coming and dying on the cross as an adult, but living as a son. He rewrote our history. It's known as recapitulation. In theology, Irenaeus and others transform what your story means.

He'll do that. Isn't that amazing? What the enemy intended for evil, what God will, right? He'll make your history his story. Glory to God.

He'll enter your story to heal you. Wow. He's like, hey, let me step in. He'll meet you in the memory. All right, so why do people stay stuck?

Why do people stay stuck? Okay, the problem is usually not willpower. The problem is usually belief. And there could be an underlying belief that we don't even recognize. It could be suppressed, unidentified and unwittingly.

We're believing this, okay? For example, if we're a people pleaser. Come on, guys. What. What do we believe?

If I don't make this person happy, I'll lose them. All right? I can't receive love. They have a hard time receiving love, compliments, etc. Love always comes with a cost.

By the way, in some cultures, it's true. When someone says, I love you in that culture, it means you need to do what I expect of you. And in some cultures, I won't say any names. There is a built in shame culture. If you don't measure up, or even if you do, you're never good enough.

Right? I have a friend, he's from Asia originally, and he's one of the top cancer doctors in the world. In the world. He lives in America. When he was growing up, he performance, performance, performance.

And he ended up becoming like the top. He. Every year he gets awarded as one of the top doctors in America. And every year, what happens is people recognize him for who he is, what he's done and what he's accomplished. But he told me one day when we were having coffee, he said, glenn, he said, I have to be so careful.

That can be a trap to me, he said, because when I was growing up, my mom would say, david, that's amazing what you've done. But you know what you could have done? Even better. Why did you have to be like number three? You could have been number one.

So she constantly. So you're not good enough. You could have done better. So he lived under that. And when he finally came to Christ, he saw how that had so impacted his life.

Constant striving. Only valuable when I perform. All right, so let's talk about how wounds form and why they persist. Painful events, something happens, especially in childhood, might be repeated. It involves someone supposed to be safe.

A lot of times, meaningful meaning is a sign. So the soul draws a conclusion encoded in the mind, body and emotional reflexes, even your nervous system. So what happens is you just draw this conclusion. Yep. And then what happens after that?

The conclusion is hardened framework operates as though this is simply the way things are. And then every experience is filtered. Each new relationship is tested against the old conclusion, even years later. And you'll see as we go through the anatomy of a soul wound here, there's the event, there's a conclusion. And then there's what?

A vowel? I'll never trust again. I'll never do this. A silent, maybe internal commitment built on the conclusion. Then there's a pattern.

The vow produces behavior. And over time, it becomes so embedded, people actually think it's their personality. That's how deluded we can become, that people actually think it's their personality. And they're like, hey, this is who I am. And you're like, hang on a minute.

That's actually not very healthy. Like, that's. That's not healthy. Like, but it's just who I am. And they.

Honestly, many people believe that. They believe that. So let's talk about the role of Jesus in integration. So integration is not primarily, obviously, a therapeutic technique. It's an encounter with Jesus.

This is the awesome thing. It's like, Jesus, come and heal me, Jesus, restore me. Jesus, manifest yourself. Show me who you really are. Right.

I mean, come on. So Jesus is actually present, and he's not just a concept, but he enters and he does a deep work. I think I shared the story previously. I was driving down the road one time. Wow, six o'.

Clock. My watch is not working. So there we go. So I'm driving down the road, and we had just been through a church. We had a revival in the church.

Okay. This revival broke out, and people were driving from all over the place. I was being interviewed on television, and they were saying, hey, what's going on at this church? And we told the story, and people were rocking up, and it was amazing. And it happened, and it just Continued.

And we just were there. And the presence of God was so real. And then I noticed one day after several months that it was just like, what happened? Somebody put a wet blanket on the fire. And we just began to pray and say, lord, what's going on?

Something's off. And the Lord spoke and he said, you've got to deal with some stuff that's going on behind the scenes. There's some people that are lying. They're gossiping. They're creating division.

You've got to deal with this. If you don't, they'll quench the spirit. It's already quenching the spirit. So we began to deal with this, and we began to address this thing. And one of our elders in the church was attacked so viciously.

It was one of the most evil, heinous things we've ever seen. But I also was attacked. And there were things they said about me. I was demon possessed. Nice church people, right?

People in the world won't tell you that. But church and. And they said all these crazy things. And these were as religious as the Pharisees. These people gotta love America for that.

And I can tell you that God just started to speak to me, and he said, son, you need healing. And I'm driving up the road one day, and I just feel this pain. And I'd already said, lord, forgive them. And, Lord, you know, I went through that whole process of forgiveness, but there was this pain. I could feel it.

It was just attached to me. And I just said, lord, you're the healer.

Heal me. Heal my soul. I began to read some of David's psalms. Heal my soul. Restore my soul.

And I can tell you, from that moment on, the pain was gone. God just came and he healed me. It wasn't like a repentance, a renunciation. It wasn't a forgiveness. It was just, lord, come and deal with this pain.

Deal with the trauma. Deal with. With the wound that has developed as a result of this. And so we asked Jesus to come.

He's the one who's caused to bind the brokenhearted, Proclaim liberty to the captives. All right, so here's what we're going to do.

We'll look at this later. But, you know, when integration is happening, there's. There's five things. First of all, old memories lose their charge. The wounds closing.

It's not just being suppressed. Triggers begin to lose their power. Truth begins to feel true, not just correct. Hello. Truth begins to feel true, not just correct.

I know that's correct. Begins to feel true in your life, relationships become less complicated. Hello. How many people can't stay in a relationship, can't stay in a job, can't stay in a church because of brokenness. Brokenness.

Relational brokenness. Okay? All patterns of control. People pleasing. Lose the grip.

And then you extend grace that you could not extend before. All right, now let's go to this four challenges for the journey. Are you guys ready? This is a practical part, right? If you are a person right now, where you're just going through some of this, here's four challenges.

First of all, name the pattern. Ask what's beneath it. Identify one recurring pattern. Ask what belief is driving this? Write it down.

A lie loses power when it's named. Lie loses power when it's named. Number two, spend time in the presence, not just in prayer. And what do I mean by that? Hey, Lord, thank you for today.

Bless this day, Lord, I need you to do this. I need you to do this. That's prayer. Presence is get in his presence. Worship him, love him.

Maybe just be still at times. Just get in the presence. Get in the presence. Even if it's 10 minutes a day initially, just begin to do that. Number three, find the lie and renounce it.

What's the lie? Right. Jesus, is this truth? What do you want to say? Verbally renounce your agreement.

Break it, break it, say it aloud. Boom, I reject it. Right? And then what do you do? Respond differently.

Choose one situation this week. Respond from truth. Not the old pattern. Repetition reshapes reaction.