Episode 033 || What God Calls You

Well, what's up, Pando family? We are so honored that you are here with us today on our Pando exclusive podcast. We do this type of thing every week as part of our online ministry here at Southeast, and just so grateful to be able to talk about the sermon from the previous weekend, and we'll be talking about that here today. But my name is Derek. I'm part of our online team, and I am joined by a couple of fellas here from our staff at Southeast. We have Nathan Thompson, who's on our Care Ministry team, Brandon Bronze on our online team. So y'all, how's it going? Heading towards Father's Day this next weekend, but hey, what does the rest of summer look like for you guys? Is there anything coming up that you're looking forward to? Maybe summer, fall, football coming? We are getting close to football season. We don't have anything this summer. We just normally go, Kentucky Kingdom is an amusement park around here, so we normally do that on Fridays, go swimming. That's about all we got. So it's a very boring summer around our house. So is it water park and theme park, and the amusement park? Yeah, but I'm over 30, and so amusement park rides are the worst. They're the worst. You get on the... You reach a certain age where you get on one and you're like, never again. So dizziness and nausea for the whole day. Oh, yeah, for sure. Appeal to you. I remember we were...

I'm trying to think. I mean, it had been about a decade ago now. We were at Holiday World up in Santa Claus, Indiana, and I got on that pirate ship thing that swings. Oh, yeah. And about the third time up, I was like, this was a mistake. Like I just got to power through and hope that this doesn't go south. Oh, goodness. So... Yeah. Well, Nathan, what about you guys? Yeah. So my daughter's home from college, and so my two boys are playing baseball. So we are... You know, I've got a 16, 18, and 20-year-old. So me and my wife are just loving having everybody under the same roof right now, and probably do some fishing down at the lake. Okay. My in-laws have a place down at Nolan, so we love going down there. That's awesome. No big vacations, but just probably lots of little trips down there. Yeah. Has the lake risen enough now to where you're able to go and do that type of stuff? Yes. Because wasn't it super low at one point in the past? Super low. Yeah. But it's pretty low now. Okay. From what I hear.

Very nice. Well, love it. Well, we are not only venturing through summer, but we're coming to the end of this three-week Dysfunction Junction sermon series that we've been going through as a church, talking about this idea that, man, there's no perfect family in Scripture, and definitely outside of Scripture we've probably all experienced a lot of dysfunction in our own family, whether it's because of things that have happened to us or maybe mistakes we've made, right, that we're having to kind of walk through and deal with. But where we get this is in Genesis 32, as we continue to jump in here. And so, Brandon, would you want to open us up, just kind of setting the context of the story we're looking at with Jacob, and then we'll hop in and talk about how this all applies? Yeah. So Genesis 32 is in many ways the culmination of Jacob's story. Like he'll be in the story for a little bit longer, but this is kind of where everything hinges for him, because he reaches a point where, like, things are not going great anymore, he can't run, he can't deceive his way out of a situation, that he's kind of stuck in a trap of his own making. He's gotten to the point where he has deceived his uncle Laban enough, I should say, they've deceived each other enough to where their working relationship isn't going well. And so he's having to flee from Laban, but the problem is, I mean, he's already fled away from Esau and from his family of origin. So fleeing from Laban is taking him back on a collision course with Esau, and he's just at a point where it's like, I can't run from both of these things at the same time. And it becomes clear to him that his path is about to cross with Esau. And I think, I was talking about this with my small group last night, I think it would be the first time that they've seen each other since before he stole the blessing. Because after he steals the blessing, Rebekah gets him out of there real quick. So I think it's a little unclear whether or not he ever saw Esau after that. So I think this may be the first encounter they've ever had. And the last Jacob heard was a couple of decades before, right, where it's, your brother wants

to kill you. So Jacob is, he's a little upset about this, he's a little concerned and anxious. So he kind of splits his family up, he splits his stuff up, he gets them away from him, sends them to the other side of the Jabbok River while he's kind of waiting to see, like the next day we're going to encounter Esau. And while Jacob is there kind of minding his business on the banks of the Jabbok River, struggling through what is going on, he's prayed to God, like, God, I'm afraid, help me, God shows up. fights with him. So we get this account in Genesis chapter 32, one of the most intriguing stories in the Old Testament. One of my favorite stories, really, in the whole Bible, though, is where Jacob is sitting there and we're told, Hosea tells us later, and even Jacob tells us towards the end of the story, this is the angel of the Lord. We've seen a couple times in Genesis, like an Old Testament appearance of Jesus, that Jesus shows up and they wrestle all through the night on the banks of the Jabbok River. And there's this struggle that Jacob is having with God. And really, I mean, I say this as that it is the turning point of his life. This is really the summary of his life, in a sense, that he has spent his life wrestling with God. And now he gets a very physical manifestation of what's been true of him the whole time. It's like, no, you are actually going to fight it out with the Lord on this night. So he struggles and he struggles,

but Jacob recognizes who this is he's fighting, because he says, I'm not gonna let you go unless you bless me. Fascinating. Yeah, he comes to this realization of what's going on. And this man, Jesus, we'll just say, he realizes, the text says, well, Jacob's not gonna let go. And so what he does is he ends up touching Jacob's hip and wrenching it out of its socket just to end the fight, which is, I mean, when you think about this being Jesus, it's a little bit dirty, right? Like, I'm just gonna touch your hip and I win, you know? But it stops the fight. And it's at that point that Jacob asks for the blessing. And he's asked by the man this question, well, what is your name? Which is interesting, right? I mean, it's God, it's the Lord, he would know his name. But Jacob tells him, well, my name is Jacob. And I think there's an admission there, right? Because Jacob, if you remember, it means deceiver, it means heel grabber, that he is this one who's been trying to grab at the heel to get Esau's blessing, to get God's blessing, to get all of this stuff his entire life. He's the deceiver, and that's what he's been operating with. And it's in that moment of admission that he gets a new name. He says, no, your name's not Jacob anymore.

You're not the deceiver. Your name is Israel, which means the one who wrestles with God. And again, just a vivid picture of that event, a vivid picture of his life, that Jacob is this person who's been wrestling with God. And for the rest of his life, we're told he walks with a limp from that fight, because he's left changed by meeting Jesus there on the banks of the Jabbok. And it's interestingly, when you go through the rest of the Old Testament history, the nation that is founded under his name, they're not the Jacobites, they're the Israelites. They take this name, and it's really significant when you think about it, that they are the people who wrestle with God, and we see that borne out over the course of the rest of the Old Testament. That is a wild story, wild, wild, wild story. And Nathan, so as you process through that story, what are some of the things that come to mind in personal application, whether it's your life or our lives, that just kind of jump to the front of your mind? Yeah, well, I think the thing that stands out, I've always been fascinated with this story, too. And I read a book years ago by Frederick Buechner called The Magnificent Defeat, which kind of, it wasn't only about this story, but it definitely highlighted the fact that if you're a Christian long enough, even past the honeymoon stage

of walking with the Lord, you're gonna come across the stage of your development and your spiritual growth where you're going to encounter some wrestling with the Lord in prayer or something's gonna happen in your life that's gonna lead to some conflict. And I love what Kyle was saying in his sermon is that when men, when we feel like that there's something that we can't fix or some solution that we can't arrive at, we tend to run from it or avoid it. And I think that that's been my experience for sure. Or we hide it or suppress it and just don't let people in on it or let people know. But what God honors here is really remarkable. It's somebody who engages with Him. It's somebody who stops running scared and takes it up with Him and has that kind of courageous faith that no matter what's on the other side of this, we're gonna get through it. I'm either gonna die trying here or it's that all my chips are in, I have nothing. And that's where the transformation seems to take place in his story, right? Is that he finally fully invests and gets to the end of himself, and gets to the end of his resources, and it seems like that's the place where his ego, you know, or his sense of self is transformed. And obviously God gives him a new name, gives him a new identity, and I think, gosh, that has to be revolutionary in Old Testament times especially, because I think in Gospel era, we're used to that transformative language, but for that to be present way back in the 30th something chapter of Genesis is pretty remarkable, that that's kind of the way of the Lord all along. Oh yeah. Well, and it's... I think, like you said, the point Kyle made is that for so many of us, when we have those things come up, we wanna run, we wanna just dismiss them, we wanna ignore those.

Why do you think that is? Why do you think that that is the thing that we turn to when things don't go the way that we thought they would? Oh, that's a good question. I mean, I think from a faith perspective, one of the reasons we run from it is because we feel like it's an unsafe thing to give over to God, right? Like, we get to that place where we feel like we've lost control, or maybe we're upset with God or angry with God, and we feel like, man, I can't really admit that, or I can't really take that to Him, almost as though God would be offended with our wrestling. And I think we see throughout the Bible that there's no shame in that, there's no fear in that, in wrestling with God, that God... I mean, in Genesis 32, He kind of picks the fight, right? Jacob's just kind of sitting there like, all right, and God comes and has this fight with him. And I think we see that through Scripture, that God can handle those things, right? That when we're struggling with those difficulties, when we're struggling with situations beyond our control, that it's not unreasonable or it's not wrong for us to take those to God and talk honestly about those. I mean, you think about the Psalms and some of the things David says in the Psalms, like just... Very honest. Yeah, very honest about what's going on, what he wants to see God do to his enemies, things like that. You think about Lamentations, where I think Jeremiah's writing, and he says to the extent of, God, you have ground my teeth into dust. He's accusing God of all these things that are going wrong. I feel like you're doing these things to me. And I think there's an element where we just lack that in our prayer life or in our life with God, that we just don't feel like we can be that honest. And I think Scripture again and again and again reminds us, like, hey, you can actually talk that out with Him. You can actually wrestle that out with Him, because He's big enough to handle it. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. I think as a therapist, I was instructed years ago and kind of taught this, is that avoidance is the behavioral language of fear. So anytime I find myself avoiding something in my own life, I just assume that there's some sort of... I'm scared about something, right? And so it's just trying to figure out what it is that I'm afraid of. And I think for most men, failure and inadequacy, the fear of failure, fear of being incompetent, or not measuring up to some standard, whatever that is. I think here, physically, Esau was gonna whoop it. So it was like...

Right, yeah. You know, there's an easy... You can easily identify in this. But I mean, there's other things, like if your wife is telling you, like, let's go to church, it's like, oh man, I'm spiritually a failure. Let's pray together. Oh no, that thing, right? And guys tend to, when we feel bad about ourselves, we tend to just withdraw. But that works in a lot of different ways, hiding your finances from your spouse or your family, because you feel like you're not living up to what you need to do as a provider, or just the... So anyways, you get where I'm going with that. But I mean, it's just like all of those avoidant tactics. But it seems like anecdotally, when you can get over yourself in that way and realize that you cannot establish your own worth and your own identity on any of those efforts, by any of those efforts or on any of those playgrounds, then it's like God can then work with something. Yeah. Can you expand on that a little bit? So you're talking about... can't establish our identity on any of those playgrounds. What do you mean by that? Yeah. It's a great, great question. So, like, by your performance, by your achievements, by your efforts, and by what others say. So there's—and there's probably more, but the way that I've distilled it in my head anyways is, like, there's really three basic ways that people get their identity. What others say about them, about what their attributes are, how strong, how smart, how funny, how good looking, you know, all those things. And then your performance, your achievements. Like, how's my portfolio doing? What initials do I have behind my name? What grade did I get? What's my GPA? You know, I mean, it starts early. So, but that kingdom of man stuff is the thing that the pride of man, as scriptures refer to it, the vanities of that are, I think, are in those now. Are any of those things in and of themselves bad? Well, when they become how we do life and how we establish our worth and identity, they're horrible gods. But once we get... Die to ourselves in that regard and die to the whole kingdom of man's system, and then start to relate to the Lord one-on-one in that way and realize that, yeah, this is where the creator of the painting gets to tell you what the painting's worth. So when I get involved in what the creator says in that relationship, and that's where it's flowing from, then when my wife comes to me and asks me to pray, or then whenever my portfolio takes a dip, or whenever cut and paste whatever takes a little bit of a hit, I'm not so sunk by it. It doesn't deflate me to the point where I wanna run from it, because I know that that doesn't really define me.

Right. Yeah, it reminds me of that house built on sand versus built on rock type of conversation. And you're right, because even as you're talking about that, it's like if there's a checklist of things going off in my head of like, yep, do that, yep, do that, yep, do that, yep, do that. And even to think about those things of like, man, how many of either words from somebody else, or things I think I've accomplished, or whatever it may be, add to this, whatever this identity is. And I love that phrase, kingdom of man, and how oftentimes... I do this, but maybe we oftentimes live for that more than for the kingdom of God, and believing what God has to say about us, and we see how that radically changes Jacob here, literally going from Jacob to Israel. But I can't help but think that there are people watching this right now, who probably in all three of those categories have probably had people that have said things to them about them that aren't true. They may not have had somebody in their life that has said, I love you, I'm proud of you, I'm here for you. They may not have had those things. In terms of accomplishments, there may be a few, but even as I read through some of our letters from our pando family, a lot of times it's, man, I messed this up, I messed this up, I messed this up, and now I'm just kind of... I'm kind of known by this now. This is the title I wear. It's reinforced every day of my life by what I'm allowed to wear, by what I'm allowed to do and not to do. And so it's almost this both, right? Both sides of the coin of these things that, maybe the false identity, the even positive things, and then these negative things. And so what do we do with that? How do we navigate through those things? Because I think maybe the truth is that for all of us, maybe we have a little bit of both in there of like, man, there are some negative things that we're holding on to, and then we have some good things, but we oftentimes allow them to be the thing that kind of creates our identity, rather than letting what God says about us be the truest thing. How do we manage through that? Like, what do we do with that? Yeah, I think it takes time. I mean, there's just no shortcut around this stuff. I mean, we're born into this fallen system, this fallen world, and everybody, you know, you look at the opening act, Cain killing Abel. I mean, this has been going on for a very long time, this comparison game, and people one-upping each other in order to get... I mean, if you go to Starbucks today and overhear a conversation, you're going to hear people jockeying to make themselves appear better in their conversation and putting other people down, so they'll feel more esteemed in that way. But I think it just takes time to... One, if you don't recognize the truth,

the truth's extremely important. You know, so if you don't recognize the truth in this, you're never gonna get to where you need to go. So you'll be blinded by this, for lack of a better term, game that is going on, but once you identify it, and the Holy Spirit continues to remind you of this truth of who you are in Him, and who you are in the Lord, and that the kingdom of God is radically different, and the value system is completely different than the world system. It definitely starts with grace, and starts with dying to self, which is not what the world wants to tell you to do. They're gonna like, survival of the fittest, look out for yourself, fend for yourself. Be the strongest, be the smartest. Absolutely. That's how a lot of us got in the position that we got into, right? Where we ended up doing things that we shouldn't have done, and ended up, you know, with some consequential effects from that. But thank the Lord that we can get over ourselves by dying to ourselves, and surrendering to Him, and that requires a ton of humility to do, which is why God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. I think in this story, I think that Jacob wrestled part out of desperation, you know, which I've been told is a gift in and of itself. When you get desperate enough to get to the place where you're able to humble yourself to be emptied out is really cool. The gift of desperation. I never thought of it that way. I think that's a good way to frame that up, because you're right, like there are times where, you know, if everything were just going as easily as we would want it to, right? And a lot of times probably what that means is that everything is going the way that we hoped it would, right? And that we predicted that it would, and then everything's good, right? And I think what we can do is we can lose focus on the Lord in the midst of those things. But like you had mentioned earlier, like, man, the more that you follow Christ, like there are just gonna be some seasons where that gift of desperation comes up. Brandon, we were talking about this earlier, and I'm trying to remember exactly the way that you had phrased it, and we were talking about this idea of, you know, God renaming Jacob to Israel, and like the importance of that. And even

in the midst of this conversation, like talking about things that are true, and things that... Because for Jacob, like he was a deceiver, right? Like his life's kind of based off of that, right? But yet God had something different. So what do we do with that part of it? Like, how do we understand that and apply it to our lives? Because there are some things with... Yeah, because I mean, like it's... Like even for us, like there are things where it's like, man, like I know the mistakes I have made, and it would be absolutely fair for someone to say, you are this, you are this, and you are that. But yet God, right, sees that a little bit different. Yeah, you know, I think that there's an element of which those things in our past are always gonna come back up to haunt us. And I'm sure... I mean, Jacob is probably acutely aware of his mistakes, right? Like Esau is catching up with him. His mistakes are catching up with him. And I think like when we get to those moments as Christians, I think we have to... We're either gonna let those thoughts push us more towards shame, or we're gonna let them push us more towards grace, right? We're gonna... We're gonna either gonna let them... We're gonna allow ourselves to sit in them and just think how terrible we are, or we're going to allow them... We're gonna sit in them, and we're gonna allow them to make us think how great Jesus is. And I think that's kind of the difference there. I think about Paul, right? Like Paul writes multiple times in his letters, like, I am the chief of all sinners. Like, what a wretched man I am. And you think about it, like, I mean, he's absolutely right. Because, you know, he was there on the front lines of persecuting the church. He was one of the men who, you know, killed the first Christian martyr in Stephen in Acts chapter 9. So... Or Acts chapter 8. So it's one of those, like, you know, Paul had a lot to be ashamed of. He had a lot to sit there and think, man, I really messed up. Like, I was really hurting the church. I... Paul killed a guy. And yet he's looking at, well, you know, I'm such a wretched sinner, but Christ has died for me. And I think... I think that's ultimately how we understand that, or how we look at that as Christians, is to sit back and think, this is either gonna push me towards thinking about how wretched I am, or it's gonna push me to think how glorious Jesus is that he saved

someone like me. And, you know, Paul, I think it's the Corinthian church, right? Where he's writing that letter, and he says, you know, he's talking about how, you know, the idolaters and the sexual immorals, like, they're not gonna inherit the kingdom of God. But so were some of you. Like, this is who you were. But you've been washed, you've been cleaned, you've been sanctified by the blood of Jesus Christ. Like, there is that division where we can look back and be like, no, like, this is who I was. This is what I've done. But Jesus has changed who I am. 2 Corinthians 5, with the old is gone, the new has come. If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. I think it's a hard truth for us to hold on to, because we get so caught up in those shames of cycles. But it's the absolute spiritual truth, is to think that Jesus has made a difference, He's changed that, and He's redeemed that. Yeah, that's so good. Yeah, because I think that shame piece, man, that can weigh us down. So how could we define shame, like as it pertains to our life, as our walk with Christ, like how would we define shame when people are watching Yeah, I've heard a good working definition of shame being the feeling of being uniquely flawed, that there's something wrong with you that's not wrong with other people. So that's why I think 12-step programs sometimes are so powerful, because you get a bunch of people who have that gift of desperation in the same room, and then everybody kind of knows they're morally bankrupt, and it kind of eliminates at least that issue of shame, or it brings it down, drops the meter down to where we can deal with whatever it is that we need to deal with. But shame is probably the most fundamental barrier to getting there, but feeling like there's... And then once you feel like something is unique... Fear is so embedded in shame too, like that hiding thing, where it's like, I cannot be known, I cannot be revealed, I can't be found out with this. John 3.17 talks about fear of condemnation being the main... We already know that we're not good enough. We have to live with ourselves. But that fear piece I think is why addressing that in the midst of the shame, knowing that God's grace is sufficient, and that's the thing that melts it away. So getting into a grace-based social system where honesty and authenticity are possible without judgment, gracious fellowship, in that way that models it, I think at that point the church is operating how the church is supposed to operate, and His love's made full in us in that way.

Yeah, and I wonder how many times when we listen to the voice of shame, how that often leads us to worse and worse and worse decisions along the way, just because we try to kind of fix either the... Sometimes it's not even the situation. I think maybe oftentimes when I look at my life and I'm dealing with shame, I'm more just trying to make that feeling go away. 100%. Right? And it's like I try to do these different things, and it may not always be the same thing, and yet it doesn't take care of the thing that I'm dealing with. And I don't know if we can know this for sure about Jacob looking at his story, but gosh, you just kind of see this over and over again throughout Jacob's story, where it's like, you know, Brandon, like you were talking about earlier, like, man, like he just... It's almost like he's continually finding the wrong thing to do, right? Because what were you saying earlier, but like the difference though for him, and especially in this wrestling with God, what were you saying earlier was the fundamental difference between he and his brother Esau? Yeah, so it's interesting. I think we talked about this a couple weeks ago, that in this story, there's no one who's a likable character, right? Like Jacob and Esau are both inherently flawed people, but the difference between them is that Esau is a person who is only really concerned with what he wants, right? Like he's very much ruled by, you know, when he wants the stew, when he... He wants the things that he wants. He wants it now. Yeah, and he wants it now. Whereas Jacob, for all of his faults, Jacob is dead set on what God is going to do. He listens to the promises that have been handed down by his grandfather, Abraham, and now his father, Isaac. He hears those promises and he thinks, I want that. I want what God has promised to do because I think he's going to do it. And we even see that while he's wrestling on the banks of the Jabbok, is I'm not gonna let you go until you bless me. And I think when we think about what the Christian life is, I think that's such a great picture of it, is like there are gonna be seasons of difficulty, there's gonna be seasons of shame, but it's like, are we wrestling and holding on for dear life to Jesus? And like, I'm not gonna let you go until I get the blessing you promised. Is that why this is one of your favorite stories? Oh, for sure. And it's also one of my favorite stories, because I think it's just a picture

of life in general. It's like, I can't tell you how many seasons Jesus has led me through. It's like, well, we're gonna wrestle this out, buddy. And I mean, he's always right, right? But it's one of those like, well, we gotta... Yeah. That's the conclusion. Yeah, my joke with my small group yesterday was... was like... Arguing with Jesus is like... It's arguing with someone who's always right, which now I know what my wife feels like all the time. Yeah, that's a good... It's not true, it's not true. But there is that element of... I feel very often, like so many of the seasons that... So many of the big decisions even that Jesus has led me through, it's been like, well, we're gonna wrestle this out until you see what it is. And it's always transformative, and it's always beneficial, and again, He's always right in it, but it's... I think that's the struggle for us, is like, I'm gonna hold on to this, I'm gonna hold on to this hope, I'm gonna hold on to this Word, I'm gonna hold on, sometimes for dear life, to the promises of God, because I know He's gonna do what He's promised to do. That's a good word. Absolutely. Any follow-up to that? Oh, no. Well, I was just thinking as you were talking, Brandon, I was thinking, that's how faith works. I mean, this is a great story of faith. I don't know if I recognized that until I was hearing you talk. Like, faith is very much a wrestling with the Lord. The authentic Israel, those who are truly Israel, will inevitably have not just issues that they need to wrestle out with the Lord, but they will have to be wrestled out by God. And I think that... And Him alone, yeah. And Him alone, yeah, yeah, yeah, until He takes up full residency in your life, which is just not a normal thing, which is why it takes wrestling out, right? It's just not... It's not natural, and it's not easy, but it is worth it. It's worth the battle, for sure. And so for both of you guys, Brandon, I know you've been in ministry pastoring people for two decades. Nathan, it's pretty much the same thing for you. And I know that there are a lot of people right now that may be listening to this, and they're like, hey, I love the concept of that. I wish I could just literally snap my fingers, and I could just stop believing

all of this stuff that shame is trying to press me on, and I would be able to walk in this new name, this new purpose, this new whatever, but I'm in this spot where I am dealing with the consequences for some bad decisions that I made. I'm in this season, and there are people in my life that may or may not talk to me anymore. We may or may not have a relationship, but not only that, even, gosh, it may be a guard at the prison they're at or someone else on staff that is calling them by the thing that they did wrong, right? And in a certain degree, that no one wants to go through that, but that's kind of what the world will do to us, that they'll, golly, it will continue to remind us. It'll grind you down. It'll grind you down. And so if you guys were sitting down with someone in our Pando family right across the table like you are now, what would be your encouragement for like, hey, you may not be able to just snap your fingers and delete all of that identity, hurt, and pain, and all of those past things, but to start to walk in this way of the Kingdom of God rather than the Kingdom of Man? How would you encourage somebody just to take the first couple steps? What does that look like practically reading through this story? I think some of it we see in Jacob's story, right? And I kind of hinted at this earlier, is when Jesus asks him his name, like, what's your name? And he has to own that, right? He has to... Well, I'm Jacob, I'm the deceiver. And I think some of that moving forward is, as counterintuitive as it sounds, is owning that, is owning the past and being like, hey, this is where I've been, and this is what I've done, and this is what's got me here. Yeah. But then also recognizing like, I can't make a better past. I can't make a better past, but I can make a better future, right? And I can move forward. I can't change what's happened, but I can change what's going to happen. And I think what shame wants us to do is just sit in that spot of being like, well, this is what's done, and there's no way you can do anything about that. Well, you can't, in a sense. You can't change that, but you can change the trajectory of where that would take you, right? You can move beyond that and think like, okay, well, now it's gonna be different. Jesus is moving me in a new direction. So I think there's a sense in which naming some of that stuff helps to be like, okay, no, this is not who I am. This is what I've done. This is what has been true. But I know that Jesus has something

better and different on the other side of that now. Love that. That's a great answer. Yeah. I think stay in the Word is a great way, and I'm not talking about just memorizing Bible verses or Bible sentences, is read these... stories of the heroes of our faith. Yeah. Jacob, we don't just pick up on his story as Israel. We hear his whole story. We hear Paul's whole story. You know, like you had mentioned, Brandon. So, I mean, you know, your story is still being written. Yeah. Your story that God is redeeming is still being written by the one who has called you, the one who has chosen you, and the one who has elected you. And those things are irrevocable. And so, yeah, focus is fertilizer. If you focus only on the story of Jacob and where it ends up until the wrestling match, and you replay that story over and over and over again, and then that's what shame wants you to do, though. It wants you to isolate to the mistakes of the past and like just, you know, focus on that. But if you, by faith, allow God to expand the context of your understanding, even of yourself, and who you are in Him, then your story changes. Automatically, it changes. And, you know, then I can breathe. And there's opportunity for change at that point. Yeah, I love the way that you just put that, you know,

by faith believing what God says about you. So let's dive into that a little bit more. What do you mean by that? Like, what does that practically look like as we deal with all of our thoughts on a day-to-day basis? What does that look like? Yeah, well, I think, for me, it looks like the way I deal with myself, since I have to live with me, is whenever I get into that headspace where I go to town on myself with either criticism, shame, bringing up something of the past, I don't know if it's the devil or me, right? I don't think the devil needs a whole lot of help sometimes from my inner critic. That's what we joke about a lot. But it is like getting to the point where, I assume I'm wrong about that now. Like, I've been so wrong about who I am for so long that that old script is just kind of played out. And so it runs its course a little easy. It goes a little quicker now than it used to because my voice, I would have to be extremely arrogant to think that I created myself and I get to identify myself and I get to put the stamp of who I am on me. That would be extremely prideful. Yeah, okay, I'm tracking. So even in my mistakes and even in my errors, in my sin even, whenever I start to identify myself as that, then I'm ultimately condemning myself. And that's self-condemnation and self-proclamation

over myself, again, goes back to pride. And it's a very self-oriented, egocentric way of looking at it. And whenever I am able to get out of myself and say, okay, God, your voice matters more. Your opinion of me, your thoughts about me are truer, more accurate than mine. That's not only humility, that's sanity. At that point, things can get clear again. And then I can see my story a little bit better and where I'm going and who I am. I think that's so good because you're right. I think there's a lot of times because, I'll just speak for myself, because I can be so self-obsessed especially when shame is present. I think sometimes we're tempted to believe that pride, that shame isn't a part. When we think about shame, that part of that pride isn't being intermingled in there where I'm being so self-focused and self-obsessed of like, well, I am being arrogant where it's like, man, well, I'm believing this about myself. Maybe I am this, or maybe I am that, or maybe I am, I did do that wrong or whatever it may be. And it can be confusing. It can be so confusing for all of us. But I love what you both said in tandem that on one hand, we need to stop running from the stuff that we have done and own up to the things that we've done,

that we've gone through. But at the same time, we're not what we've done. That's right. Especially in Christ, we're definitely not. And that's where it comes in of like, man, who am I? Like if scripture is gonna tell us that there's no condemnation in Christ, that while we were still sinners, God died for us, that He loves us, then who am I to disagree with that and say, well, Derek, that doesn't apply to you. Like you were talking about earlier, like with shame of, I'll probably butcher the definition, to be uniquely flawed, and there's often times where I feel like that, where it's like, man, like, yeah, like you're probably the only one dealing with that. Like you shouldn't share that. You shouldn't take that to the person you trust or whatever. it may be. And what it does is that slowly over the course of time, you get more isolated and isolated and isolated, and then you kind of look back at your decisions and you're like, yeah, my decisions actually got more poor the more isolated I got. And when I look up, it's that I wasn't believing in faith what God was saying is true. Instead, I was listening to... Whether it's the enemy or myself, I'm listening to shame, I'm listening to fear, or the kingdom of man, and it pushes me down a direction that I don't wanna go, that we don't wanna go. But I think that God is gracious to meet us in those moments where we do have that gift of desperation, where we're wrestling with Him, we're trying to figure out what He's wanting to do in our life. Absolutely. So Derek, that is awesome. And as you were talking, I was thinking about how the family dysfunction piece fits into all of this, and I think as... I have three kids between the ages of 16 and 20, and I know a lot of people that are listening to this and watching this probably grew up in homes where a lot of this wasn't flushed out. No doubt. No doubt. And that's just the ugly reality. And so we're

still hurt by that, maybe resentful about that, still looking for that in different ways. And I would say... I say the same thing to my kids, is like, you will never get this from me. This stuff will never come from me, your earthly father here. And I just try to grunt them poetically to the one who can do it and try to... I'm not laissez-faire, I'm not hands-off as a dad, but I'm trying to redirect them and direct them as best I can. And that's affirmation. I affirm it in them. I don't create it in them. I don't transform my kids. I can't take credit for that. So it's, you know, if you are on the track of being transformed by the Lord, or you have been, that is where you continue to go. And in your community that you're around, you're never going to get it from them either, and hopefully they're doing the same thing, is pointing back to the one who gives us our value and our worth and our identity, who's created it, who's redeemed it, and who is going to one day completely restore. Everything that we don't like about ourselves will be gone. Yes. Yes. Well, to that end, let me offer a final thought here. I was thinking about Jacob getting his new name, and it took me to a promise that we have in Revelation. In Revelation chapter two, Jesus is talking at this point in time to the church in Pergamum, and he's kind of going through this formula he does where he talks about what's going on in the church, and then he gives a final promise. It's, to him who overcomes, there's this theme in Revelation of overcoming the world, of standing firm, of wrestling it out well. To him who overcomes, I will give some of the manna that has been hidden away in heaven, and I will give to each one a white stone, and on the stone will be engraved a new name that no one understands except the one who receives it. So there's this promise from Jesus that, hey, when all is said and done, when we've overcome, when the wrestling is finished, you get this stone with a new name on it that only you and I know. This is how I know you. This is what I call you. And I think that's... We can look at the promise of what Israel gets here, what Jacob gets here, and be like, oh, that's nice for him. But it's the promise that Jesus holds out to us. There's this name that I have for you that's not what you've done. It's not the name you were given or the name maybe you earned, or the identity you've accumulated for yourself. This is who you are in my eyes. And that's what we're gonna see one day when we see him face to face. I love that. And that is such a good final word. And again, for those of you that are watching this right now, to double down on what we just talked about,

is that your value is not determined by the world. It's not. And what's really frustrating about that is that maybe the reality that a lot of us live in is that the world's voice is going to be the loudest. But I would challenge you to believe in faith, that God has something better for you. He has a name that is just for you, that he has created you for, just as Brandon talked about. And that no matter what your family situation has been throughout the course of your life, what I do know is that God wants to redeem that. He does, and we have a promise of a future where not only now can we be a part of a church family, that though we're not perfect, that we believe that you are a part of our church family here at Southeast as you're watching this, that you can come and watch and be a part of this knowing that if you've placed your faith in Christ, that you are welcome, you're a child of God, and you are loved, right? And that for all of us, either on this side of the camera, this side of the video, or you're on a tablet right now, to know that when we have placed our faith in Christ, and when we have decided to allow him to be the Lord of our life, to redeem us, to love us, and heal us, that we are a new creation, right? And what was old is gone, and what is new is here. And so y'all, we love you. We're grateful that you would join us each and every week. If you're new with us, thank you for being here. We hope you enjoyed the conversation, but for now, fellas, that's all. That's all we have for our conversation. Nathan, thanks so much for being with us. Thank you guys. It's a great conversation, y'all. We pray that this blesses you and helps you in your walk with Christ. We'll see you next time.