The Healing of Our Hearts
There's often a snake in the garden—a difficulty in your life to battle. And in those times, you can wrestle with temptation. Usually, these struggles are tied to a core wound or trauma you haven't found healing from. Gary Wilkerson dives beneath the surface to help you uncover your core wound and how you can find healing through Jesus, community and self-love.
Let me pray for us. I want to speak to you about healing of the heart tonight, healing of our hearts. Jesus, we thank you that we have heard from Pastor Nick that you want to do breakthroughs. You want to break through the difficulties, and the pain, and the crisis, and the problems, and bringing us to a new place. I ask for a favor tonight. Allow this word to speak to our heart in a way that just ministers. Just fill this room right now with a sense of possibility.
The things we think maybe would never be resolved, the problems that we have that we think we may never overcome, the crisis that we find our self in that seems like it's just gone on too long no matter how much we've prayed, believed, heard words of promise, and yet our heart is still breaking. Our wounds are still hurting and the relief doesn't seem to be in sight. We're asking tonight for a word from heaven. We're asking tonight for the healing.
As you said in The Old Testament, you called it a balm, a healing oil, a balm of Gilead, an oil to sab, to put on a heart that would heal that heart. We thank you for the healing. Father, this may not be a shouting word or a hip hip hooray and hallelujah word, but it's going to be a deep word. It's going to touch our hearts, and it's going to heal many people in this room. We now give you thanks in advance for that.
I don't want to preach this just kind of wondering what outcome it will be. I preach this with a confidence in the Lord that you have called this word because you're accompanying it with your power to do exactly what you want to do. We give thanks for that, in Jesus' name. Amen.
In Genesis 3:1, it says, "Now there was a serpent more crafty than any other wild animals the Lord God had made, and he said to the woman, did God really say, 'You must not eat from the tree in the garden?' The woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat at the tree of the garden, but God did say you must not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden. You must not touch it or you will die.'"
Verse 4, "You will not certainly die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows when you eat it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God knowing good and evil." In Genesis 1, 2 and 3, we see the formation of the garden. In the garden, he puts the man, and then soon after he puts his wife there, but it's the same place where the snake is. The snake, the serpent is in the garden as well.
One of my worship pastors back home was telling me a story of his little boy who's probably five years old at the time. He was up on top of the stairs. As he turned the corner to walk down the stairs, there was a towel that somebody had left, a bath towel. Somebody had left it at the top of the stairs, and he tripped over the stairs and he fell down the stairs, rolling over and over.
His father saw this and he was at the bottom of the stairs and he caught him just before he hit his head on the bottom of the floor. He grabbed him and picked him up and he said to his son, "Aren't you glad the Lord had me here to catch you?" The boy said to his dad, "Wouldn't have been better if the Lord would had just moved the towel?"
If you think about that for a moment, there's a lot in that about our own life. We're happy the Lord catches us. We're happy He lifts us up out of our trials and tribulations, but wouldn't it be better if we just didn't have to go through them? What's the deal with that? We see in Genesis chapter 1, there was a snake in the garden. Why did God put the snake in the garden?
It answers that, and I don't want to get into too much theology here in this, but the answer that we see much later on. When they were brought into the Promised Land and Joshua brought them in, and the Lord says to him, "I'm going to keep five enemies in the land." I was thinking why was that? He says to teach them how to war. Why was there a snake in the garden? To teach them how to war.
Why were there five enemies left in the land? To teach them in the war. I suggest to you tonight that it wasn't just Genesis chapter 3 that there was a snake in the garden. Can I say to you tonight, there's-- Here's my life experience, there's always a snake in the garden. Just about the time you start to enjoy the garden, the snake approaches, and starts lying to you, and starts trying to deceive you, and starts trying to empty your faith and hope and confidence in the Lord no matter what you're going through.
40 years of dealing with hurting people, 40 years and even beyond that when I was a little boy being around Teen Challenge, that my father started, and seeing broken lives, and seeing people come from all kinds of difficult backgrounds of abuse. Then not only being abused upon, but now beginning to abuse their own bodies, and some even abusing others, and violent streaks and all these things.
For 40 years of hurting people and broken hearts, and collapsing marriages, and addictions that seem too difficult, and then in my 40 years of pastoral counseling, I'm at a new place in life and I just want to be honest with you tonight, can I do that? I don't really want to preach to you, I've preached probably 4,000 sermons in my life, I'm not only tired of hearing sermons, I'm tired of preaching sermons.
When they get sermonic and they have the rhymes and things that, and I'm just going like, “I just want to hear it, I want life,” I'm tired of just hearing sermons, I'm tired of going to church services, and singing songs. Here's why I'm tired of it because I just know firsthand that so many people are singing the songs, and hearing the sermons and they're leaving, and they're going back home and their marriages are falling apart, and their teenage son is on drugs.
They've just been diagnosed with cancer, the job is on the chopping block, you may lose it at any moment, there’s some that leave church singing a happy song, they have a clinical depression in their heart, and in their mind they don't know how to get out of it. All the Christians are telling them like, "I rebuke that in the name of Jesus," and they're saying like, "You rebuking it is making me more depressed rather than helping."
I don't know this sounds gloom and doom here tonight, but there's an answer to this, the snake is always in the garden, the enemies are always in the land, there's always going to be a need and it's going to take more than songs and sermons. It's going to take more than a singular prayer of deliverance, putting my hand on your head and saying, "In the name of Jesus come out." Is going to take you and I being honest and saying, "There's a snake in the garden, there's a problem in the land, there's an enemy to be fought, there's a battle to be won, there's a victory on the other side for us," but we're going through something tough.
It's time to take off the mask, and it's time to quit playing church, and it's time to get honest with one another, it's time that the church become more honest than AA, rather than AA being more honest than the church. It's time to have small group meetings that aren't just talking about who was Zerubbabel's cousin's ring that he had on his fourth finger, and start talking about my heart is breaking, my marriage is falling apart, my finances are crumbling. I cry myself to sleep, I'm worried about my kids, I'm anxious and it's time to get honest about these things, it's time to deal with these things.
How do we go about this? That's what my talk is about tonight. How do we go about this? Number one I would say it's through relationship, it's through relationship. You don't know that from the time you're in your mother's womb, the Bible says that God created you, He formed and fashioned you in your mother's womb, did you know that? Scientists are just catching up to the word of God, now, and they have proven now that while you are being formed in your mother's womb, the very thing that your mother feels, you will feel.
They are being able to put these sensors on those mother's womb, and if the mother is anxious and worried, the blood pressure of the child rises. If the mother is depressed, they sense the movements of the child echoed the depression, and the movements, the lack of energy, vitality, and the baby in the womb. The baby in the womb is very connected to the mother.
My wife was so wonderful she prayed over our children certain things, and the Lord gave her a song for each of the four children. What amazing joy now to see my son 30-something years old, singing his song that my wife wrote for him to his babies. They're speaking to their children even in the womb because there's a God-given, even before you can hear, and see, and understand, there's a God-given connection between an infant and the mother.
There's a link there because God has built us to be attached to people, the need for attachment, some people might call it belonging, or connection, community, the Bible calls it love, we were built for love. So we had in our mother's womb this need to be loved and connected. The scientists have gone on to say if the mother hates the child, and is considering abortion, and maybe just hates the fact that she's pregnant, that that child will have problems at a young age oftentimes. Unless there's a resolve to that because they feel this un-attachment, a lack of attachment, a pulling apart, even in our childhood we see that.
Now, skip ahead to longer in time, have you ever noticed an older couple, let's say they're in their 80s or 90s or nearing 100, and they're healthy, and they're vibrant, and they're loving the Lord, and one of the spouses dies. Does anybody know what happens pretty rapidly? The other one seems to follow rather quickly. When my father died my mother was in good health, but nine months later, she passed away as well.
She fought cancer for 60 years victoriously and then succumbed to it in eight months because of just-- It's the need for attachment. From the cradle to the grave we were built to love one another, we were built to have community, we were built to be attached to one another. Something happens and then again, I'm just talking to you like your 40 years of pastoral counseling, like if you were sitting next to me on my couch, and I was just talking to you about heart issues.
One of the things you see about this in childhood is this need for attachment, something strange happens because I don't know how you were as a father, you don't see fathers here, but my attachment to my children had-- I'm trying to think of the right word here, had certain type of strings attached to it. I'm going to be real proud of you, and real happy, and hug you, and put you in my lap when you're performing well.
When your room is clean, man you're a great kid, when you score the touchdown or you kick the goal in the football game you're, "Well, I'm so proud of you," just the sense of attachment connected to achievement. When you lose that attachment, when there's the lack of the type of achievement that the father or the mother want, then the child begins to get confused.
There's actually a video, it's called Still Face, it’s amazing video done by a Harvard professor, and he took hundreds of children, little children two years old, and had their mothers sit right in front of them face to face. At first, the mother is smiling and touching the baby's face, and the baby is just smiling, and joyful, and laughing, and stretching their arms out.
Then the doctor says to the mother, "Now, just cover your face like this, and don't move, don't have any emotion, no smile, no anger, nothing just a totally still face." You see within seconds that baby at first gets this confused look, and then a few seconds later it reaches out to this mother with alarm, and then starts making almost violent sounds like, "U-u-uh," and crying, and then before long the baby's screaming.
The mother is not yelling at her, the mother is not abusing her, the mother's just still, but the baby gets confused because it's not that sense of attachment, of love, of connection. Then all of a sudden, the mother then just because of the smile on her face, and you'd see literally the baby's shoulders just goes down, "Aaah, Mama's back." So many of us have grown up in homes where the sense of belonging, or love, or affection, or attachment is related to our behavior and our performance.
When the performance is good there's, "Aaah, come to papa, come to mama," but when the performance is bad, there's a rejection, there's an accusation. This is not a sermon on tips to parenting, but let me just tell you one that has changed in my mind. When my kids used to misbehave, I would give them a timeout, anybody ever do that, do you do that here in Ireland, anybody? Wave at me if you give-- Have many of you been on a timeout?
Pastor Nick spent years in timeout-- No, I'm joking. [chuckles] I would give my kids this thing called timeout, and if you don't know what it is, say you're around the dinner table, and they're getting loud and like, "Oh-oh," you know something, "Be quiet, I'm trying to talk to mom." Then, "Oh-oh," they talk louder, and they're talking over one another, and I say, "Be quiet," and they don't listen, "Okay, that's a timeout, go to your room," and they go to their room.
I realized something there and I'm not saying it's not-- There's times that has to be done and there's a good thing about that, but what I realized is what was happening is when my children, listen to this carefully, when my children were being themselves I was punishing them for it. How many of you know children are loud, and children like to move, and children like to sing songs, and they to throw spaghetti. I mean, it's just that's what kids do.
Whenever they did something that they weren't supposed to do, I would separate myself from them. I no longer with my grandkids, now, I've got a new practice, I don't give them timeouts, I give them time ins. So I say,
"Let's go over here because there's something wrong. What is it about some of the rules we have as a household that are hard for you to understand because I want my grandkids to understand that the sense of belonging and attachment is not related to them behaving up to my standards all the time.
I'm not saying there's no need for discipline. I believe in spanking. I believe in timeouts, but doing it in a way to where they're not getting their sense of I belong when I'm doing good, I don't belong when I'm doing bad. The problem with that is when we learn that at a young age, we project that onto God. God loves me when I'm doing good, but He pushes me away when I'm not doing good.
That's why we call it coming back to the Lord. Well, He never left you. You don't come back to somebody who's never put you away in timeout. He's always been with you. He says "He'll never leave you or forsake you." He's there with you and He's helping you through that snake in the garden. He's helping you through that giant and the enemies in the land. He is not just-- Why? Because He belongs to you and you belong to Him.
There's that sense of attachment to the Lord. There's a connection with Him that will never be put off on His part, maybe on ours but not on His part. If we grow up in an environment where attachment is linked to certain behaviors, what we begin to realize is to be authentically myself is dangerous. If you are-- so my father was a rather serious kind of man, and some of you may have picked that up, listen to a few of the sermons he's quite serious.
My brother and I we love comedy, we love fun. I remember one time I was telling him a story, I said, "Did you see that comedy thing on last night on television?" The guy said this and that. We both laughed and my father got- he raised his voice, said, " That's not funny. The Lord is not pleased with that." Then I went, "Oh, all right. I don't know why he went like it was pretty funny. I thought it was like-- I think I don't know. So okay, being funny is not safe. You lose attachment if you're funny.
What you got do is get serious and get-- but I am not built that way. I'm not built like sort of the bony finger prophet. I'm built like I have a sense of humor and I love to laugh and I love to play games and I love sports, but I didn't feel like I was supposed to because if you're a good Christian and want attachment to the Lord and want attachment to your family, then what you've got to do is got to be serious.
Everything you have to say has to be a quote from the Bible and you have to wake up in the morning and say, "I was praying for six hours last night before I went to sleep, father and I just want you to know the Holy spirit gave me a revelation of the new covenant." I was like, no I was dreaming about girls and so it's hard to be yourself if authenticity is connected to attachment and when your authentic self, you don't get that seat. Then what happens is you grow up with a wound in your soul.
If I could sit down by one with each of you, I could probably in an hour’s time talk to you and we could probably discover together what is that core wound in your heart, what is that thing that-- what is that trauma? What is that event of a sense of no longer being attached, no longer being connected, no longer feel like you fit in. Does some of you in this room ever-- You're in a crowd, you're in a crowd here right now, but you don't feel like you really belong?
You go into a room and there's four or five people and you just feel like you're the outcast. That's a sense of detachment, of not belonging. That comes from trauma. That comes from some trauma. As a pastor, I see this all the time. Even recently, I was with a pastor, he's no longer pastor now, but he's still in ministry. He ministers to pastors who are addicted to sexual immorality and pornography and he tells his own story of being sexually abused as a child multiple times by multiple people.
He kind of stuffed that in and gave his life to Christ and he sort of stuffed it and didn't deal with it. Later in life, some issues with pornography came up and then later in life, even after pornography-- He said it was the strangest thing in the world as a Christian pastor he started visiting prostitutes and he told me. He said, "I can't believe it." He said, "I remember on Easter Sunday morning on my way to church to preach my Easter Sunday sermon stopping and picking up a prostitute and being with her before I went to church that morning."
Obviously he quit the ministry and he got help, but he talked about the trauma in his life and how that trauma caused a wound in him that he was confused as to who he was as a man. He was by no means excusing his sin and I'm not excusing his sin either. We have to deal with that but there's sometimes these wounds in our heart are the birthplace of some of the sin that we might still be responsible for but might find ourselves caught in because of those wounds of trauma.
There are some people in this room here, like that pastor who had to deal with certain issues in our youth. A close friend of mine, we were talking just a couple of weeks ago, my wife and I with our friends, she was telling us when she was a little girl, her mother would lock her in the closet if she misbehaved and she'd be there for some times, 15, 16, 17, 18 hours, no food, no water, no bathroom.
Her mother would then take her out of the closet and tell her, "You're worthless. You're no good. You're nothing." That's a trauma. That's a traumatic event that builds a core wound. People begin to say, "I'm not enough, I'm no good, I'm worthless, I'm hopeless, I'm not loved, I'm not accepted. I'm not worthy of love. I'm not worthy of belonging. I'm not worthy of attachment."
You see, most children, they don't blame their parents for the trauma that takes place in their life. What they do is they blame themselves. They say, "It must be me. It must be my fault that I did this because I don't want my parents to be bad. I want them to be good. For them to treat me this way, they must be good parents and I must be bad." You start saying to yourself, "I'm defective."
I think to some degree, everybody in this room, even the most healthy and whole people in this room could honestly say I'm defective because I am-- and you could fill in the blank. I'm not enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not strong enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not. I'm not prayerful enough. I'm not holy enough. I'm not righteous enough. I'm not-- Whatever enough, we fill in the blank of that thing saying there's this defect, there's this wound in my heart.
Are you following me so far? This is a tough one to speak. It almost feels like taking the air out of the room. That's the first type of trauma is, the first type of trauma are things that should not have happened to you that have happened to you.
A child should never be hit, struck, abused, physically, emotionally, verbally, or sexually but there are many people that have faced that type of trauma in their childhood or being locked in a closet or were like Nicky Cruz, my friend Nikki, who grew up where his father was a warlock and his mother was a witch and she would punch his face when he was five, six, seven years old, punch his face till his eyes were closed and blood almost sealed his lips.
It got so bad that when he was nine years old, he climbed up to a tree and put a rope around the tree and put the rope around his neck. If his older brother did not come and rescue him, Nikki Cruz would have taken his own life because of the things that should not have happened to him, did happen to him. There was a snake in the garden trying to destroy his life.
There's another kind of trauma that maybe more Christians have in reality, but it's often undealt with as well. These are not things that should have not happened that did happen, but these are things that should happen but didn't happen. Are you following me? The first one is things that should not happen that did happen to you. The abuse, the trauma. The other type of trauma is the things that should have happened to you that didn't happen to you.
Doctors and counselors tell us that this kind of trauma is often more difficult to deal with because the more physical, the more the things that clearly I should have not been struck. I should have not been abandoned. I should have not had that happen to me. I should not have that said to me. That's easy to start. Not easy, but you know it's there and you begin to deal with it maybe at an early age.
Whereas this second type of this withholding of things that should have happened that didn't happen, it's kind of hard for us to deal with because we feel like, "Well, I had good parents. They were nice. They were kind, they were happy," but there were certain things that should have happened and oftentimes those things didn't happen to you that should have happened to you because they didn't happen to your parents that should've happened to them.
They should have been connected. They should have had affection. They should have had belonging. They should have had attachment. They should have been loved. They should have parents notice them and care for them and hug them and touch them and be affectionate towards them. They never had that, so they can't pass that on to you. Therefore, you know they're good parents and they're kind to you and they provided for you but there's this sense of something should have happened.
There's a belonging that didn't happen and that causes this thing to feel like-- That just doubles down on this core wound of I'm not enough and so you start giving a language to the not enough-ness. You start giving it language. I'm not enough because I am lazy. I'm not enough because I'm fat. I'm not enough because I'm short. I'm not enough because I'm not a good athlete. I'm not enough because my parents were like this and I'm like that.
I'm not enough because I'm a preacher's kid and they're so holy and I'm not. You have all these things that you began to see. Now I'm going to close in just a few minutes, but here's what happens. When you get to that place in your life where you have this core wound inside and let's just say it's like I'm not enough, maybe that's your core wound. Well, what you're going to do with that to try to compensate for that, to try to correct that, what you do is try to build your own life. I call it a false construct.
You begin to construct a life that says, this is what I believe about myself, but I have to prove that wrong. If I believe I am stupid, then I'm going to try to read every book and sound intelligent and I'm going to spend my whole life trying to compensate for this sense, or if I feel like I'm a failure, I might be driven to make a lot of money to feel myself successful, or if I feel like I'm not accepted by God, I might try to work really hard at religion and fast and give money away, and make sure everybody knows it because I want to compensate for not feeling this way. I want that core wound to not be a reality in my life.
The way it cannot be a reality is to try to prove it wrong. For me, I grew up never feeling like I was enough. No matter what I did, it just didn't feel good enough. It's not something that comes from an abusive family. I have a good family but there's just that sense of something lacking. Inside of my heart, I just feel like I'm never enough. Do you know how I'll be enough? When I preach good enough.
You know when I'll be enough? Is when I lead enough people to the Lord, or when I go to enough conferences, or when I start the admissions department. When I do these things then I-- One of the worst ways you can live your life is what I call the when I, then I. When I make enough money, then I'll be happy. When I meet the right woman, then I'll be happy. When I get divorced from the wrong woman, then I'll be happy.
When I become a pastor, then I'll be happy. When I get to retire from being a pastor, then I'll really be happy. This always this when I. There's something more. It's called-- If the desire is to construct a life, I'm going to build a life on, when I get this, then I'll be happy, then I'll be joyful, then I'll be spiritual, then I'll be alive, then I'll be enough, then I'll be sufficient, then I'll be smart, then I'll be- whatever it is that we're looking to become but it's a false construct. We're building this life.
I'm building a life on ministerial success. It's like, I want my church to grow then I'll feel successful. I want my book to sell a lot of books, then I'll be successful. I want to look on YouTube and find out how many people have watched my sermon then I'll feel successful. How many of you know-- If you don't know now, you're certainly going to learn it. Those are things called external validation.
It's things from outside. You go like, "When I get enough money," that external validation, "then I'll be happy." You realize when you get that external validation it never makes you happy. There's nothing externally that can make you happy. It's the joy of the Lord that is our strength. It's something inside of us. It's not something that comes from outside of us.
It doesn't come from more money. It doesn't come from fame. It doesn't come from success. It doesn't come from popularity. It doesn't come from followers. It doesn't come from ministerial success or business success. It doesn't come from having lots of children. It doesn't come from anything outside of you. It comes from what the Holy Spirit puts inside of you.
He puts his love and his sense of attachment towards you, and a sense of belonging and connection. He's telling you that you may not have that from your father. You may not have had that from your mother. You may be seeking it from the world, but you'll never get it out there. You get it in here. It's when Christ lives in us. One day I had this vision, I guess you call it a picture. Just in my mind, I thought of constructing this life. The core of it is is a sandy foundation, not a rock.
The core of it is this foundation that says, "I'm not enough." I'm building a life that I am going to prove I am enough. I'm going to be the most spiritual, the most holy, the greatest preacher, the greatest minister and leader. I'm building this big construct of a life that thinks that I begin to believe the lie of Satan, that then you'll be enough when you get there. I'm up on top of this building and there's scaffolding.
Do you call it scaffolding here? The things on the side of the building that helps supporting the scaffoldings built all around it. I'm on top of this and it's beginning to sway a little bit. I'm thinking, "This thing's not on a good foundation. My whole life is not built on a good foundation and I call out to Jesus, "Jesus come help me. This building's rocking." Jesus grabs, hold of the scaffold in the bottom. I'm going, "[sighs] I'm glad you're here Jesus. Help hold this life up of mine."
All of a sudden he starts rocking it back and forth. "Oh, oh, Jesus, wait a minute. What are you doing? It was better when you weren't here. It's worse now. You're not helping. You're rocking the boat. You're shaking the scaffolding. This building might crash." The Lord says, "Good. Let that destroy this temple and in three days, I'll rebuild it."
Let that old life be destroyed. Let that old construct of constantly earning and striving and pressing and driving and feeling like you're not enough, and you're not sufficient, and you're not loved, you're not accepted and you don't belong. When you believe that kind of lie, it's almost impossible to not build your life, constructing a life that is on the sand.
When there's a shift, here's one of the things you have to do is, let there be a shift to realize, "Wait a minute, this is a hard shift." You might be 40 years old and for the last 20 years, tonight maybe you're realizing, "I have this core wound, and I have been trying to compensate that for my whole life. I've built this business. I've built this marriage and I've built this family on a false construct on sandy ground."
It's hard to admit that when you're 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 years old, because you don't want to admit it. You don't want to go like, "These last 20 years of my life I've been living in a way that's not healthy, not whole, W-H-O-L-E. There has come this sense of letting it crumble, of realizing that, that which is built on the sand is not worth keeping up. It's good to let it go.
When you let it go, you're going to have to do something. Jay and I were around Teen Challenge a lot. They were detox. When you're on drugs for a while, the first few days, you're going through detox and then your body's hurting and you're sweating, and your stomach is sick. When I help people get through moving this false construct over, they go through a detox because they're so used to getting the external validation, more money, more success more fame, more popularity, more acceptance, more approval of man, more applause.
They're so used to getting that. When they realize that's the wrong way to live their life of false construct and they let that be torn down. They just feel like, "What do I have left?" Can I suggest to you tonight? That's a perfect place to be. That's a great starting place. Allow yourself, you have to go through detox. Let your body detox from fame and success and notoriety and popularity and acceptance of man, because once you detox from that, then you can put your life on the rock, and something solid can be built.
For me, there's this glorious shift because I used to spend all my time and energy planning and plotting and driving. Not a godly ambition. My own ambition to become great and successful. All my decisions were-- What decisions are going to be born out of that kind of heart? They're never going to be spiritual. They're never going to be holy. They're always going to be corrupted by the flesh.
My decisions were very carnal so many times. Even in building ministries, it would be like I'm building my own kingdom. The Holy Spirit does us a favor. He lets that be destroyed. For me, there was this great transformation. I see the shift in my heart constantly where there was once a building that said success and fame and notoriety and popularity and accomplishment, then I'll be enough.
That was broken down when I went through detox, and now on this other side, there's something really different. "It's so fun. It's so just like, "[sighs] I can breathe finally. I have a life. There's my wife. I actually enjoy her. There is my kids. I just want to cuddle them and my grandkids. I don't have to go spend six hours in prayer. I can be holy wrestling on the floor with my grandkids." Because once that building of power and authority and success and fame and notoriety. Once that was torn down, the Holy Spirit started building his construct.
Do you know what that's built on? Whole different language. Love, and peace and joy, and patience and kindness and goodness and contentment and delightfulness and freedom and just these good things that feel good in the heart. If some of us tonight would see that false construct torn down and allow the Holy Spirit to build something, you're going to finally and fully enjoy being a Christian.
Right now you're supposed to enjoy it, right? If you don't, you're going to go to hell and it's fear-based. Like I‘ll get a timeout, an internal timeout and to be no attachment and so this is a fear-based thing and you can't build on that foundation. The transfer over to this is a love base. It's like I'm accepted. I'm loved. I will close with this. In this transformation, I realized just how much God loved me. What a great delight it is?
He loved me. This was so hard for me to say. A matter of fact, this was so hard for me to say. I'm still struggling saying it to you even tonight, even though I believe it with all my heart that Jesus accepts me just as I am. I always have such caveats on it. Not if there is sin in me. Not if I'm not performing well. Not if I haven't been in my devotional life the last three days. There's a lot of caveats to that.
With Jesus, there's no caveats. There's no restrictions on that. He loves you just the way you are. He will never love you any less, he will never love you anymore. He loves you just the way you are. Many of us know that intellectually, but we don't feel it in our heart.
We don't feel it because just the way we feel about ourselves, we project that onto God. "I'm never enough and I'll never be enough for you. I'm not good enough. I won't be good enough for you. I'm not smart enough for you. I'm not good enough preacher. I'm not a good enough preacher for you." We project that into our spiritual life, and when we do, we just live in pain. We live in sorrow. We live in brokenness and we just never get healed.
We never get healed, we get encouraged, we get revivaled. It's not even a word. We get built up in faith. We get admonished, we get encouraged. We have up times, but we're never healed in the heart because as long as we're living out of that lie, that core lie, then you're going to always build a false life. Let that be destroyed and come over to this side and finally realize how much God loves you.
Secondly, and closing, realize that God wants you to love yourself as well. That's hard for me to say, because I said that a few weeks ago, and I've got all kinds of emails from people saying like, "You're listening to the devil now. I thought you used to be a good preacher. I thought you were David Wilkerson’s son, how could you say such things?" I'm going to say it again, God wants you to love yourself.
I'm getting these emails, and I'm thinking, "What's the alternative?" No, God wants you to hate yourself. God wants you to feel like a perpetual worm who's nothing but ready to be cast into hell at any single moment, but He doesn't really love you. He saw Jesus do something. The Father saw Jesus do something nice for you. Therefore, He has to kind of cover you and He's covering you. God says, "Well, I don't want to look at that one but since you're covering him, Jesus, I'll let him into heaven because- but don't don't let me see him because I don't like him."
No, Jesus likes you and He wants you to like yourself. He wants you to be comfortable in your own skin. He wants you to breathe and He wants you to wake up in the morning and feel like, "This feels pretty good to be me. Feels pretty good to be alive." Jesus said this three times in the New Testament, "Love your neighbor as yourself." The word there- there are several Greek words and one is brotherly love. One is more of a passionate love, affectionate love.
This one is the supernatural powerful love of God. The unmerited favor of God that's called agape. Have you heard that word? The Greek word of agape. Here's what Jesus is saying. He doesn't say flatter yourself like brotherly. You would think he would say brotherly love others as you brotherly love yourself, but He doesn't use that word. He uses the word agape. Agape others. The way you agape others, I want you to agape yourself.
That's what Jesus said. Agape yourself. The word there means unconditional love. So many of us have conditions, "I'll love myself when I, then I'll love myself." When I do this, then I'll be loved by God. Then I'll be accepted, then I'll accept myself. Two things tonight. One is be healed by realizing that God loves you so much. Number two, be healed by realizing that God wants you to love, accept and have compassion and kindness for yourself.
Don't be hard on yourself. Don't beat yourself. So many Christians just beat themselves up. It's just like if they're not black and blue from their own beating, they're just not happy. They love to come to church to have somebody yell at them how bad they are because that makes them feel like maybe they're in good company at least. That's not the way God wants you to be. He wants you to have compassion on yourself.
To wake up in the morning and say, "I'm happy to be alive. I'm grateful to be alive." I'm grateful even when the snake is in the garden. Even when there's hard times around me. Even when maybe I don't feel these things, but I can know it and I can receive that. Stand with me if you would, please. I want to pray for many of you in the room here tonight. I pray that we could be honest enough to deal with some of the things in our life that you're hearing the Holy Spirit maybe speak to you tonight.
Not quite sure where to go with this. Part of me wants to give an altar call because I'm kind of used to that. Have people come to front pray for me, but part of it wants to make it a little more private, just kind of like you doing business with God without you having to maybe step out of your seats. Let's go that direction, just allow it. Miracles can take place right there and I love the altar call. I love the time together. There's something about the Holy Spirit moving that way.
Without any music, without doing the altar call, can we ask the Holy Spirit to do a supernatural work of healing in this building tonight? Can we ask him to mend broken hearts? Father, I pray right now in the name of Jesus for those who have had things happen to them that should have never happened to them. Out of that, they've built this life that is like, "I'm going to compensate for that."
I pray over them right now. I pray that you would heal that hurt. That they would not just repress it and push it down and say, "I'm not going to pay attention to that." They would allow you to bring it to the surface and that's painful. It's dealing with some things we don't need to deal with.
I pray that it would go beyond just me praying for them tonight, but I pray that they would find like my pastor friend, who was dealing with pornography and addictions. 15 years ago, he started a meeting with a group of friends and they brought healing to his life and he's been free from that for 15 years now and helping minister around the world.
Father, help us be like that, that we'd find a group of people, a good Christian friend that we could call that we could be honest with it. That we go beyond just a prayer meeting here tonight and go into a whole new lifestyle. Whole lifestyle of openness and connectedness and community because we were built that way from our womb to our death. We were built to share life with others.
Help us not to try to fight our battles alone, to try to heal our wounds alone. That's where those lies begin to penetrate. That's where those lies over your life, my friends. That come in and when you're alone, the enemy can say to you, "You're not enough and you're not good and not worthy and not acceptable." When you're with the body of Christ, you begin to learn the truth. I want to encourage you and I pray over you now that you would find community, true community.
If you don't have it, I pray that you'd be the forerunner to make it a reality. You'd be the first and invite others into it. I pray secondly for those who there were things that should have happened to you that didn't happen, neglect. You are meant to be loved and honored and given attention to and affection and you didn't receive that and you never heard anybody say, "I love you."
You grew up in a performance-based home. I just pray over you right now in the name of Jesus, that the Holy Spirit would reveal to you what that's done for you. How that has made a sense of false construct and that we would just tonight be willing to let you rock that thing to let tip topples over. That we would say no more, no more in our life, God. Thank you, God. You take away the flesh and you bring in the spirit. You take away ungodly ambition and you put in there peace and joy and contentment, freedom and life.
Just overwhelming sense of the presence of the Lord. We thank you for that. We're asking now, in the name of Jesus for miracles in this place tonight. I just feel words are so inadequate to deal with the business you're trying to deal with tonight, Holy Spirit. How you want to mend broken hearts? How you want to put salve on the hurting places? Holy Spirit, we just take a moment just to allow you to begin to speak to our hearts.
Maybe even help us identify some things that we have not really thought of before. Again, we don't expect to have it all accomplished in one night but we can believe something might be birthed here. Then maybe I'll throw this whole week as Pastor Nick has already said, "This is going to be a week of breakthrough." Maybe tonight, it was just launching this by saying-- Helping us identify, "Hey, yes, there are some snakes in our garden. There are some things we need to breakthrough."
Maybe tonight we just start with that just accepting the fact that there are some things that we need to do business with God as I've heard it put before. We just pray in the name of Jesus again, that any area of this life that we would not leave here tonight, discouraged or despondent. We would leave here very hopeful that we have a really good Father, Holy Spirit. Many of us we sing the song about our Father. We say He's a good, good Father.
Deep down, some of us are not really believing it. Even on top of that, He might be singing over us and you're good, good children and we certainly wouldn't believe that. We thank you that, that's what you call us your children and you love us and you cover us and you wash us and you cleanse us and you make us new. I'm asking that powerful miracle to take place.
I'm going to ask the worship team to come now if they would and we'll sing a song and then pastor Nick come back, but I just pray in the name of Jesus, that there would be a transition tonight. That the shift will begin to take place. Even if it takes a little detox, how many of you will be willing to detox if it gives you a better life? Anybody at all? Couple of you here, yes.
I'm willing to go through a little bit of pain, to get to the outcome, to get to the victory, to get to the clean mind and get to the clear heart, and get to the vision that He has for my life. Father, we just thank you that you're going to do this work. You're going to do a work of grace.