Video Transcript: How We Integrate

Welcome back to week seven, part three, how we integrate now I want to put a  disclaimer at the beginning of this week. The disclaimer is this, this is work that  takes a really long time, and there is no way I can possibly help you reintegrate  in however long this segment is going to be, as great as that would be, it's just  

not how this works. You might get some head knowledge, but transferring that  into firm belief that you will take with you for the rest of your life takes time. It  takes pouring in. It takes experience. It takes breaking down what you already  know. It takes building up what you are learning. And it takes absorbing those  things and trials that like hammer it into you. For me, this process was basically  my 20s and early 30s. For you, I don't expect it to be one part of one piece of  one. Course, just don't expect it to be that. So we're going to jump in. We're  going to talk about how integration actually happens. We're going to talk about  how that building up happens, how we start to own ourselves, how we start to  own this space, how our disintegration really starts pushing and what needs to  happen because of that. A quick other note, you do not need to go through a  mental health issue to have this integration happen. Disintegration is what  moves you from a point of current belief to questioning current belief that can be anything that could be. I heard this thing and it made me doubt something that  could be. I went through this trial and it didn't sync up with what I thought I knew  that could be. I went through a hard time and what came out of me, what I  believed wasn't what I thought it was. It could be anything. The important thing is to know that disorientation is not a bad thing. When we break down something  that wasn't quite right because it didn't fit, that gives us the opportunity to build a backup in what is right, and that is the product, the process of integration. So  with that, knowing that we are not going to reintegrate you in the next 25  minutes, let's jump into this. Shall we? So? Who am I? That was our first  question that we've been asking through this process, and we have the gift of  disorientation. Now, the gift of disorientation breaks you off of who you were. So  what is it that makes you question yourself? There's a lot of ways that you can  define yourself. It doesn't necessarily have to be your capacity. And one of the  best ways to disorient yourself or to start thinking about this is to ask the  question, Who am I? And I have nothing else. Another way to put this is, what  about me never changes. So I want you to take a minute, grab your pencil, your  paper, write it down. What about you never changes. I'm sure you've got it now.  Okay. Now, when we used to lead groups with my quiet cave, we'd go through  this and people would say, Oh, I'm an athlete, or I'm this other thing. And we'd  have to ask, what happens if you're in an accident and you lose your leg? I  wouldn't be an athlete anymore. I define myself as a dad. What happens if  there's an accident with your kids? That's awful. But could it happen? The  answer is, yeah, that would be awful, but it could happen. So we have to start  defining ourselves by who we are that's eternal. Now I want to break some other news to you in this disorientation, Adam and Eve were who they were in 

Genesis 3, and they hadn't actually changed in many ways from Genesis 1-2.  Adam and Eve were created in Genesis 1-2. We have the image bearer. We  have the image likeness. We have both of them as the image and likeness. We  have them together, and then we have shame come in. We have them eat from  the tree of life, and that fractures everything. But what it doesn't fracture is their  original making, because Adam and Eve though their ideas of themselves are.  Fractured. Though their relationships are fractured, everything is fractured  between them, creation, God, selves, you name it, they remain image bearers.  They continue to have authority over the world. Who they're made didn't  change, but the way they are in relationship with one another and to everything  around them has changed. This process of disorientation and reorientation, in  many ways, is about breaking the fractures. It's about breaking them apart so  we can see what's underneath. It's seeing just like we just talked about the  bones that are broken rejoice, because we have the opportunity to break  something apart and put it back together like it's supposed to be. So here,  there's a question, what is our gift of reorientation? What do we actually get to  build up inside now that we've broken it all down. Well, I'd like to start with a  quote from one of my favorite authors, Brennan Manning, who was a Catholic  priest with an deep, deep knowing and abiding relationship with God and a deep knowledge of his own belovedness. Accepting the reality of our sinfulness  means accepting our authentic self. Judas could not face his shadow. Peter  could. The latter befriended the impostor with him. The former raged against him if you have the opportunity to read Abba's child, it's one of the books that  changed my life more than any so I would highly recommend that that said I love this quote. One of the reasons I love it is because there is this peace that we  have to wrestle with that is so beautifully true. I'm just going to put this quote up  and put myself right behind it right here. Accepting the reality of our sinfulness  means accepting our authentic self. Judas and Peter are in a very interesting  place after the death of Jesus, Judas is in a place where he has betrayed Jesus. He has turned Jesus over to the mob, the mob killing Jesus. And in his grief,  Jesus or Judas cannot wrestle with the fact that he has done something bad. He is wrestling with this thing, am I bad? Did I do something bad? There are two  sides of this, and he's wrestling with them very actively. This is his shadow. He  did something bad, but does that make him something bad? Peter also betrays  Jesus. He doesn't kill him, but he denies him three times before the rooster  crows the night of Jesus' death, Peter also was wrestling with I did a bad thing  that I said I would never do. Am I a bad person? And they're both wrestling with  the fact that their authentic self who they are as these beloved sons, as Jesus'  disciples, these people who have been poured into the life of God, their actions  do not mesh with their personhood, and because of that, they have to wrestle  with this and figure out, who am I and Jesus or Judas? Rather. Judas, Jesus  does not kill himself. Judas does? Judas can't wrestle with that, and he dies by 

suicide after trying to return money. Peter, however, completely takes a different  path. He makes peace with the fact that he did something bad, but that does not make him someone bad. He sees Jesus after Jesus's death, and Jesus tells  him, Peter, do you love me? Says, Yes, Feed my sheep. Peter, do you love me?  Yes, Feed my sheep. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know I do feed my  sheep, and Jesus Redeems Peter and. Brings him back into alignment. He is a  good person. He is a beloved Son of God. And then we see at Pentecost Peter  stand up and preach after Jesus' ascension, filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking  of who Jesus was and who Jesus now is. He could face his shadow, both of  them their authentic self. Their authentic self is not someone bad. Our authentic  self is not the sin that we've committed. It's not the bad parts of ourselves. It's  not the broken parts of ourselves. It is the part of our self that was created by  God in the beginning. We have Genesis 1-2, good, great, Genesis 3. It's  cracked. It's fractured. Our authentic self is a Genesis 1-2 self. It's not a Genesis 3 self. So coming to terms with our authentic self means embracing the Genesis 1-2 parts of ourselves, instead of the fractured and broken Genesis 3 parts of  ourselves. The Shadow often comes from the Genesis 3 side. It's casting  darkness on this peace, but that's not who we are, and because of that, Peter  steps into this role as one of the founders of the church. The Rock on whom the  church is built is one of the first apostles. And Judas, his story ends with suicide. I want to push a little bit harder on this. Here we have Ephesians 1:3-10. Praise  be to the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the  heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ, for he chose us in him,  before the creation of the world, to be holy and blameless in his sight, in love.  He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance  with His pleasure and will, to the praise of His glorious grace, which he has  freely given us and the one he loves in Him, we have redemption through his  blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that  He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the  mystery of his will according to His good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ  to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment, to bring unity to all  things in heaven and on earth. Under Christ, your true identity is as a son or  daughter. In the text in the Greek, sons were the ones who got the inheritance.  So you see sonship noted all the time, but we also see in Genesis 1-2, they  were made male and female in the image of God. So this is not just everyone's  a beloved son, it's you are a beloved child, and a child who receives an  inheritance, there has to be sonship in order to receive inheritance. It's not  saying being female is bad. It's saying this is about inheritance. You are the one  who is valued. That changes how we see ourselves. So I have to ask the  question that we asked a few minutes ago, does that ever change? Does your  position as a son ever change? The answer is no. Does your belovedness, does your image bearing, ever change? No. You might need to take a lot of things off 

in order to find that. You might need to break down a lot of identities you've built  up, whether that is as a pastor, whether that is as a parent or a friend or an  entrepreneur or a worker, or as dedicated or as capable, whatever it is, you  might have to break those down, and in that disintegration, you will be able to  fully embrace what's there, but you have to make space for that new identity,  and that space requires breaking what's not true. So then, who is God? Let's go  back to our gift of disorientation. Who is God. Now, I have believed all sorts of  things about God. A lot of the people I've talked to have believed things about  God that aren't quite right when we asked those three questions over and over  and over again, we heard it, God must not love me. He must, in fact, have mal  intent towards me, because there's no way he could let me go through this.  Otherwise, there was an expectation that God will not let me go through  suffering. If he does, he's not God. Well, he did. Let you go through suffering. So who is he? Right? Our expectations of God break in that space, I can say that  that's not the struggle I had with God. My struggle with God is that I struggled  that I needed to be a martyr, that God expected me to do everything right, to lay  down my own desires, my own wills, my own capacities, my own everything,  even when he didn't call me to because me giving those things up somehow  made it better, because God wanted that from me. Okay, God is a really good  daddy. He does not want his kids throwing out their toys because they think it  would make their daddy happy when he hasn't asked them to that's not who he  is. That's not how the Kingdom works. Instead, God asks us to follow and be  with Him, to abide with him, to be connected with him, to do what he is doing,  whatever your perceptions of God are. Those are your perceptions and right,  wrong, whatever you get to break them down and figure out what is actually  there. It doesn't have to be that you expect God to come through on something.  It could be that you expect God to make you do something that is not true. You  have a hard time accepting God's blessing, whatever that is, when you do it, it  makes space for the Gift of reorientation that you can move back towards who  God actually is. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is  love. This is how God showed His love among us. He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love, not that we loved  God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins,  dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. This  was my problem. It's not that I saw God as not meeting my needs. It's that I  couldn't believe how good of a daddy he was, and I still struggle with that. It's  still there. There's still parts that I believe that I am still breaking in this and  finding and disorienting so I can reorient those, so find those in yourself. You  don't need a mental illness to go through and be able to lead people through  finding themselves genuinely. All you need to do is find something that disorients you, whatever that is, so let it disorient you so you can step into the work and  allow other people to experience the freedom of Christ, because they're 

stepping into the work of experiencing who God is and who they are,  authentically and beautifully and connecting with the spirit to continue that work.  Continue. For this reason, I kneel before the Father in Ephesians 3:14-21 for  whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of  his glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your  inner being, so that Christ might dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray  that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to the grasp how wide, how long and high and deep the  love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be  filled to the measure of all fullness of God, that Him who is able to do  immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine according to his power that  is at work within us to him be glory in the church and in Christ, Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, amen. Maybe, the truth that we're struggling  with is that God is actually more personal, more involved than we think he is.  Maybe we think he is out there and he's saying, No, I'm right here. I care that it  hurts. I care that you are falling apart. I care that everything feels like it's going  to pieces, and I'm in it with you right here, as Paul says, here, in our inmost  being, you may be rooted and established In Love. The truth is, as we find these things, we'll grab onto them, and we'll discover them in new ways. And as we  walk through our trial, our trials and our hard times with God, with these new  truths, they become more solid in our own lives. It's like they almost build  themselves and grow until they become something solid and something that we  believe, and before we know it, and we're sitting in bed and everything is falling  apart around us, and we don't know if our wife is going to be alive tomorrow, we  hear God, I think I am God's beloved son. I don't know how, but it's going to be  okay, because the work that we've done set in again, God says in Hebrews,  therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven,  Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not  have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we  have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may  receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. One of the great  things that we saw was people starting to realize that Jesus was not out there  waiting for them to get through their struggles. Jesus was actually with them in  their struggles. Over and over again, we saw people realize that Jesus knows  how bad it hurts and he's here. He is not unable to empathize with my  weakness. He's not unable to empathize with everything that's going on inside  of me. He knows and there we discover this beautiful relationship that we have  with God, because nothing's holding us back, and we can just take him at his  word that he knows us, he believes us. He's not out there, he's right here, and  he knows what it's like. So what am I capable of? Again, we have the gift of  disorientation, right? I was capable of something. Now I'm not as capable of that

thing we talked about, the shrinking of our capacity, because we have to deal  with all this new stuff. For me, this actually happened a number of times in my  life. I have the ability to go through and recycle these questions over and over  

with myself, which is not not healthy. Sometimes, I think the reason this has  happened with me so many times is because there's questions about, what am I capable of anytime I've started a new endeavor, because instead of building on  something new, I just took a 90 degree turn and did something else. What you're capable of can be an interesting question, though, because a lot of us build, and I am guilty of this as anybody on our capacity that we've built in our careers or in parts of our lives, I am capable because I have done X right. My first job out of  college, I was one of the top sales guys in our region for outside sales. I was  miserable at most of the rest of my job, but I did that part really, really well, and  that was a sales culture, so it was rewarded. However, I also gave a five week  notice at the end of that job, and was fired after three, and I lost all confidence  and all belief that I was capable of anything, because I just didn't know anymore. All of this felt like a house of cards that I built up and it just shook down. And so  when I started seminary, I did not believe that I was anybody or capable of  anything. And then I sat down and the person next to me in Greek had an IQ of  170 that's way smarter than I will ever be. I just couldn't keep up, and it just  reinforced this thing of, Am I somebody? I don't know. You will have your own  questions about capacity, but one of the key things that I've learned is that most  of us build our capacity on what we believe we can do. I can present. Maybe  you think otherwise, but I think I can present. Okay, you know, I can teach, I can  disciple, I can do all of these things, whatever it is for you that you think you can  do, that's great. But as we talked about in John 15, there's this connection to the vine. Jesus is the vine. We are the branches. There is the fruit. And the  relationship goes Jesus, Vine, branches. And if the branches are not connected  to the vine, they are not producing fruit. I can work really hard and do a lot of  cool stuff that is not actually fruit. It's something, but it's not fruit. Being able to  say, actually, when I slow down and embrace Jesus and try to draw close to  Him, I fully become and fully produce what I can that puts me in a different  space to become fully alive and. Fully make what I can have happen happen.  That is so important, because that is the foundation of what I am capable of. I  am capable of connecting with Jesus and seeing what he wants to have happen happen, and anything else besides that actually isn't fruit. We talked about Job a lot, part of the gift of reorientation is rediscovering what that looks like in the  case of Job. In 42 he says after Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as twice as much as he had before. All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate  with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the  Lord had brought on him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold  ring. The LORD blessed the latter part of Job's life, more than the former part. 

He had 14,000 sheep, 6000 camels, 1000 yoke of oxen and 1000 donkeys. He  had seven sons and three daughters. The first daughter he named Jemima, the  second, Keziah, the third, Keren-Happuch. Nowhere in the land were there,  found women as beautiful as Job's Daughters and their father granted them an  inheritance, along with their brothers. After this, Job lived 300 140 years, he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. And so Job died an old  man full of years. Job had been somebody. Then he has everything fall apart, to  lose his capacity. He asks who he is. He fights with God and with his friends for  35 chapters. And then God changes everything. He reorients Job and Job.  Doesn't just discover that God is not who he thought he was. He discovers God  is bigger and better. He also discovers he is not who he thought he was. He is  stronger and he is with God. He prays for his friends and then with his  connection with God, God actually blesses him in even new and better ways. I  pray the same for you, that you would experience who God is in better and  deeper ways and experience yourself as truly who you are. And by doing this  work, you would be able to lead other people into this work. And when things fall apart, you wouldn't be able to say, oh, woe is me. It's terrible. You know, my life  is ending, but you would be able to say it's all coming apart, but maybe I'm going to find out something about what's actually happening, and maybe it's an  opportunity for me to discover something new with that. It's time to do a  reflection on that. In these reflections, just be honest. That's the continual  theme. I don't care what your answers are. It's not important. In fact, you're not  going to share them with me. What's important is you're honest for you, because if you have big spots like this, you can work on them if you know what they are.  So who are you? Why does that matter? Does anything change that take some  time, write it down, lean into it. Who is God? Why does that matter? Does that  change? Lean into it, see what's there, whatever preconceived notions you have that you can identify and say, Wow, this, this may not be right. Continue to track  those and continue to break those apart. What are you capable of? What have  you been capable of? What will you be capable of? I will be the first to tell you  that I have no idea what I'm capable of, and that's because this journey of being  with God is about attaching to God, about being a branch next to a vine and  having the vine do silly things that you never thought could happen, and you just hanging on for the ride. I have no idea what my capacity is, because my  capacity is directly tied to what God wants to do, and I just don't know what that  is. That's not a cop out that is genuinely, I really don't know anymore, and  anything that's holding you back from that it's hard to let those things go, but you slowly can. That does not mean that your gifts and the way that you're. Wired  doesn't count. Okay? I do not have an administrative gift in my body. It's just not  there. I don't think I'm ever going to grow one. I am really good at listening to  people and being present with them and hearing their stories. I don't think that's  ever going to change either. Those are skills that I built up over a long time. This

is not to say the skills and the talents and abilities that you've built are wrong.  They are to say your capacity is based on what God can do, not just what you  can do, and that might be a lot more than you know. God might call you to less  than you know, he might call you to a life doing dishes. But last we checked,  Brother Lawrence was called to that kind of life and kind of turned out okay.  Being close to God all the time turned out pretty good. Whatever God has for  you is the best thing be able to lean into that, to push into that, and know that  what you're capable of that's going to be okay. Finally, what experiences have  you had that opened you up to a radical change in how you experience your  own Self, God or an aspect of your life in a manner that was more true, and why did those experiences change? Take inventory of what changes you. It's not  simple. Something has to disorient you. It can be anything. It could be a song,  you name it. I'm not going to list all the things that it could be when it could be  anything, but take time to notice those things and lean into them. Those are the  moments that help you engage more fully in who God is and engage more fully  who you are. And as you discover more fully who you are, you're able more fully  to discover who God is and vice versa. It's a cycle. It spins around, and you're  always refining, discovering more fully who both of you are and how you're  intertwined. Enjoy this journey, and I will see you next time.