June 21, 2024 • 25 mins
Have you ever wondered how living in alignment with God's will can bring true peace and fulfillment? In our latest episode of the In Rest Podcast, we explore how prioritizing our spiritual and physical well-being can lead to a life of wholeness. Through personal reflections and the inspiring story of Elijah, we highlight how God encourages self-care as an essential part of our journey towards harmony and serenity. Join me as I share my struggles with health and stress, emphasizing the importance of living a balanced life that aligns with God's purposes for us.
This episode gets real. If you're a parent, you'll totally get it! I am very open about how God is leading me to overcome resentment in exchange for His peace. Please note -- I love my kids, all of them! But life as a parent can be straining. God's peace is available to you, just like it is to me, no matter where you're coming from, or who may be weighing on you today.
Join us as we get into peace and experiencing more of God in this episode!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the In Rest Podcast with Noah James
Wiebe.
I'm your host, noah, and todaywe are going to be talking about
peace.
So peace is basically just thecondition of being whole and of
having an experience of serenityand of a sense of completeness
and fulfillment as a result ofthat.
Wholeness doesn't come as aresult of just our performance
(00:24):
or our productivity.
It comes as a result of usliving in alignment with the
purpose for which God has madeus.
So today we're going to betalking about how to take a
little step, a next step moreinto the intentions that God has
for you.
Let's go, let's go.
(00:45):
I hope that you enjoy joiningme for the In Rest podcast as we
hear how to live the Christianlife well and how to live the
life God intended you to live.
Thank you so much for joiningme today on the In Rest podcast
as you hear how to live yourbest in rest in Christ.
So today, one of the thingsthat has come to mind for me
(01:08):
when thinking about peace, whenthinking about the condition of
peace, is that some of thethings that are in my life and
it may be yours as well are notactually in alignment with what
God has for us.
And so you know, for me one ofthe things is my health.
So you know I'm experiencinghigh levels of stress.
I might not be sleeping verywell.
One of the things I'mexperiencing is a change in my
weight.
(01:28):
You know I'm not exactly, youknow, a large person.
I come across, as you know,small.
I got, you know, narrowshoulders, whatever.
I'm not exactly the champion ofmasculine physique, but I do
have this thing where theconstant intake of sugar and
stress and extra food to sort ofbe a comfort ends up going to,
(01:48):
you know, different parts of mymidsection or my thighs or
whatever.
And so I start to feel insecureabout that.
But I was thinking about thatthe other day, how I've got a
dad bod developing, which Idon't, you know, I don't despise
necessarily, but I don'tnecessarily like for myself,
because it's an indicator thatI'm not really living in that
way.
That's healthy.
And I was thinking back to atime over Three years ago or
(02:12):
almost three years ago, when Ireally got the sense that the
Lord was calling me to sleep andTo exercise, to take care of
myself better, all those things.
And at first, you know, youmight be thinking well, does God
really do that?
Does God really speak into aperson's life and tell them to
be more healthy?
Well, the reality is yes, hedoes.
He's gonna challenge you to dothat.
There's a moment in the Biblewhere Elijah, the prophet who's
(02:34):
like one of the most famousprophets in the Bible is really
depressed.
He's laying down, he's thinkingthat you know, all of the other
prophets of the Lord have beenslain and and now on the last
one left, an angel comes to himand instead of saying to him,
get up lazy bones, he says getyourself something to eat.
The bottom line is like it'snot out of God's you know, it's
(02:56):
not outside of the realm ofpossibility for the Lord to
speak into you and tell youdefinitively take care of
yourself more.
The way that he presented it tome one time, after having heard
that he said you're still nottaking care of yourself.
Now, that's not to say that,like, everything is about
self-care and this journey ofyou know, constant
(03:18):
self-improvement.
That's not necessarily the vibethat God is trying to
communicate in that, but it isimportant to God that we live in
a way that's consistent withhis will for us, and the Bible
tells us that you know to.
The Bible tells us that we areto rejoice, always, pray,
continually, give thanks in allcircumstances, for this is God's
will for you in Christ Jesus.
Those things happen irrespectiveof our circumstances, our
(03:40):
health condition, whatever, butno matter what it might be to
you, or something small like yousay, your health okay, which is
actually not a small thing whenyou think about it.
You know um nf did this song Ithink it's the search where he
says, yeah, the sales can rise.
Doesn't mean much, though whenyour health declines, things
that we think are small actuallymatters quite a bit to god, and
that all kind of comes back tookay, are we living in alignment
(04:04):
with the purpose that God hasfor us with, and are we living
in fulfillment of his intentionsfor us?
And so this is like miniatureconfession time, like I'm not
living fully the way that Ithink God wants me to live.
One of the ways I'm doing thatalso is with anger.
Okay, first of all, it's health.
Okay, that's my physical health, my emotional health, handling
of anger, criticism, rage,whatever, particularly anger,
(04:27):
just in the general way.
And so when we're looking atour physical health, you know
being in alignment with whatGod's intentions are for us in
terms of self-control in termsof managing our bodily health,
all those things we do find that, yeah, god does care about that
, but then he also looks at thewhole picture.
Anger has with control, debt orindebtedness and entitlement and
(04:52):
so like.
When we feel angry, we'restruggling with a control
problem, where you don't havecontrol over a situation, and so
anger is our natural bodily umresponse to losing control in a
situation, and it's meant tocall us to action and then
dissipate so that we can, youknow, get back to health, get
back to order and get back topeace and then move away from
(05:15):
the angry feeling in exchangefor that sense of wholeness.
Unfortunately, when we gothrough seasons of intense
stress particularly men this isparticularly common with men
we're going to experience a lotof anger, and so we're going to
be angry a lot because our bodyis reading that we're not in
control, because our emotionalhealth is out of whack.
We're stressed, we've gotcortisol, which is a hormone
(05:37):
that's involved with our stressresponse in our body, that's
pumping through our brain.
A lot of the parts of our brainthat are involved with stress
are in the back of the neckrather than the front of your
head, so the front of your headthat's like executive
functioning, your cerebralcortex.
You know we're thinking about,like you know, time concept and
you know how am I going tomanage my money?
(05:58):
Well, and you know gooddecision making, good judgment,
good reasoning, whereas at theback of your neck it's really
all about survival.
It's about doing what's bestfor the moment in order to get
something, usually sort ofgratification or a sense of
satisfaction so that we can calmdown, which is where a lot of
people fall into addiction orother habitual situations to
(06:20):
self-medicate instead ofexperience shalom and peace.
Because you know, when we'reactually experiencing peace,
we're experiencing more thanjust a shot of dopamine to kind
of get us through those feelingsof stress.
And so you know God is not justlooking at your physical health
, he's also looking about howyour physical health is affected
(06:41):
by your emotional health.
So my emotional health issuffered significantly by my
mismanagement of that controlproblem of anger.
And now it's totallyunderstandable to have anger and
the Bible actually says in youranger, do not sin.
So it's not that he's sayingnever be angry, because it's not
feasible, but what he is sayingis that when you are angry,
(07:03):
learn to control it, learn tochannel it, learn to bring it to
the right avenue rather thanexpress it at the wrong people.
And so this is that'sconfession time for me.
My control problem with angerusually spills out into loving
relationships that are, or loverelationships that are meant to
be, loving, but then turn intocontrolling.
So with my kids I have fourkids, I have wonderful boys.
(07:23):
There are kids that I have whoare adopted, some of who are
more challenging than others,and that anger response that I
have, you know, a response tostress, comes out as anger.
Maybe more yelling happens orwhatever.
Maybe my form of disciplinebecomes a bit more harsh than it
would have been had I had, youknow, kind of tended to that
(07:44):
anger and channel it in theright direction.
And so then, that's not to saythat anger doesn't have a place
at the parenting table withregards to, you know, just, our
natural response, maybe ourknee-jerk reaction to something,
is anger, but we still it's ourresponsibility to channel that
right, and so there's control.
Next is indebtedness, and sosomething that God really
(08:04):
challenged me with with regardsto parenting specifically that's
a nice segue is that he broughtup Matthew chapter 18 to me.
So Matthew chapter 18 is aboutthis master of a household, or
maybe master of a kingdom, whohas a lot of servants.
One of the servants hasapproached him and he is, you
(08:25):
know, kind of, you know,bringing up his accounts and so
on and so forth.
I guess this master is a bigmoney lender, anyway.
So the servant is there and heowes a lot of money, so much
money that he could neverpossibly pay it back.
And the master responds bysaying well, because you can't
pay back the debt, you're goingto have to, you know, pay back
(08:47):
in another way, specifically byyou being sold into another
household and your entire familyare going to be sold and all of
your stuff is going to be soldto try and pay back this debt.
And the guy's, like, no way, uh, like, just give me more time,
have mercy on me and I will payit back.
And the master pays back all ofhis debt.
(09:09):
The servant then goes out andfinds his friend, who is another
servant, who owes himsignificantly less than he owed
the master.
Nonetheless, he chokes him and,I'm assuming, yells at him and,
you know, sends him off to jail, basically in order to pay back
this very, very small sum.
And the master hears of thisthrough some of the other
(09:32):
servants who are appalled atthis, and he brings him back in
to the room and he's like bro, Igave you, like I absorbed the
loss of your debt, and you treatanother fellow servant like
that.
That's totally not cool.
And eventually this servantthen endures all the things that
(09:55):
he didn't want to have happen,in addition to torture, I'm
pretty sure.
So that's a pretty brutal story, but Jesus sums up that story
by saying this is how the Fatheris going to treat you if you do
not forgive your brothers whosin against you.
So that's pretty intense, youknow.
It's a pretty intense thing forJesus to say.
But when you think about anger,right, here's a servant who is
(10:18):
angry at his fellow servant andthen treats him with cruelty,
and that is one of the ways thatwe see anger expressed.
And so here I am, standing inmy kitchen and the Lord is
bringing this up to me, and Ithink part of the reason why he
was is because I've beenstruggling with a particular
resentment against my son for somany of the challenges that
he's brought into my home.
The reason why I was sofrustrated with my son is
(10:40):
because he came to us.
He's adopted, came to us with asignificant number of
challenges, for himself but alsofor other family members, which
brought a lot of grief and lossour way.
That grief and loss came aboutin complex and simple forms, but
specifically just sort of withthe loss of what we considered
normal and what we consideredfun for the rest of the family
(11:00):
and also what we consideredhealthy.
And so that struggle landed withme as eventually building up
this debt, that I felt that hewas doing something to our
family or something and I washolding on to that.
You know, I was holding on tothat resentment against him.
Now, that wasn't to mean to saythat I was, you know,
neglecting to feed him or, youknow, doing anything like that,
(11:22):
but there was this level of justextra harshness that when I,
you know, deal with somemisbehavior, I'm actually in my
mind, mentally, in my heart, I'mactually treating him as if
he's done seven or 15misdemeanors rather than one
misbehavior, and so everydiscipline is out of proportion.
So God is challenging me.
(11:42):
He's facing up to me like dudethat's not cool and communicates
to me this story this is howthe father's going to treat you
if you don't forgive, and thereason why he's saying that is
because he's forgiven me of sucha significant debt, so much
more than I could ever possiblyforgive my son.
And so, and by the way, I meanit's just not cool in general to
(12:05):
hold on to resentment againstyour kid.
And so here I was, in thekitchen, full of conviction, and
thinking, wow, I am so sorry, Irepent of my sin and I release
this debt to you.
And so, you know, here's angerin a second facet.
So we've got anger as controland anger as indebtedness, and
then finally we've got anger, asyou know, anger as entitlement,
(12:29):
and so, similar to the story ofindebtedness that is kind of
coming up and the forgiveness ofthat debt.
We're also kind of looking atthe servant and the way that he
took it upon himself to throwhis other fellow servant in jail
, even after having beenforgiven such a great debt, like
what, like who does he think heis to take this other servant,
(12:51):
who owed him so much less, andthrow him in jail for this?
There's clearly some level ofentitlement.
He felt entitled to do that,and so he acted on that sense of
entitlement and moved in thatdirection.
And so lots of us go throughthis kind of stuff all the time
and we don't realize it.
There's stuff with my spouse orwith friends of mine or
(13:12):
whatever, where I've seen ithappen and come up in my own
heart, this sense of entitlement, where I feel entitled to say
that sarcastic remark or usethat really kind of that prickly
joke in order to communicatesomething in the subtext that
says I'm displeased, I'm upset,I am angry, I do not like you,
I'm criticizing you.
And that mindset of entitlementcomes up with anger a lot.
(13:35):
I mean, when we look at roadrage and we look at how people
get so over the top angry atother people, even to the point
of violence, we look at that andwe think, well, that person is
crazy.
But we're actually all of usholding on to some level of
entitlement all the time andit's keeping us from peace.
And so this condition of beingout of order, being in chaos, is
(13:58):
something that prompts us toanger.
And yet God has an intent forus to actually experience his
shalom and peace in the midst ofand in the middle of chaos, so
that entitlement, indebtednessand control no longer have to
have the say on how we actuallyrespond to life as it hits us.
And the thing with entitlementas opposed to indebtedness or
(14:21):
control, is that entitlement hasto do with the level of status
or a condition of being higherthan another person.
Entitlement also comes up withcriticism, right.
So like you're angry aboutsomething or someone and you
criticize them, you criticizethem.
Criticize them that might evencome up with something where
maybe it's at church or with afamily member, might be with a
friendship group, and you lookat and evaluate their life,
(14:42):
their situation.
You feel angry, even thoughthat situation has nothing to do
with you.
And secondly, who are you tosay anything about them, knowing
that you have so much going onin your own life?
So, outside of Matthew 18, jesusspeaks about that again in
Matthew chapter five.
I say again as if it'ssubsequent, but it happens
(15:04):
before, earlier in the book ofMatthew, where Jesus is speaking
in the Sermon on the Mount.
So Matthew chapter five says ifyou are angry in your heart
towards a brother, that is thesame as having murderous
thoughts against a person and itmay as well be the same as
being put before the judgmentseat because you are putting
yourself in the place of judge.
He follows that up with Matthewchapter 7 a few chapters later,
(15:27):
where he talks about judgment.
But so there's criticism,there's entitlement, there's
there's anger, but, like jesusis basically saying, you're
putting yourself in the positionof the person to set a verdict
on someone and, as a result,you're actually putting yourself
in a position to get a negativeverdict from the true judge.
So he talks about anger inmatthew, chapter 5, way of, you
(15:49):
know, really being a wake-upcall to the people who are
listening and saying whoa, youknow, I might not be killing
somebody or acting on thatviolent thought, but I'm having
the violent thought nonetheless,which shows that in my heart I
have a level of entitlement.
So in Matthew, chapter 7, whenhe's talking about do not judge,
he's not actually speakingabout don't ever evaluate
(16:10):
anything or never be a criticalthinker.
It's not that he's telling usnever to use critical thought.
What he's saying is they werenot allowed, or not not to put
ourselves into a position wherewe think of ourselves as better
than someone else and thereforejudge them by treating them
differently, based on our ownnegative verdict on them.
He says just don't do that atall, because you're not the
(16:30):
judge of their life.
But he follows that up with ifyou are going to correct someone
or evaluate something and saythis guy, I mean this is
something ain't right here, wegot to deal with this.
He says who are you to say toyour brother, take the speck out
of your eye if you have a plankin your own.
The word choice is literallylike a beam, like a you know, a
(16:52):
joist, you know, like a massivebeam that you'd use for house
building in that day.
And so what Jesus is saying islike dude, you have a seriously
glaring problem in your own life, which means you are not in a
position to help them deal withtheir own problem.
Position to help them deal withtheir own problem.
And, frankly, you're notsupposed to be in a position of
(17:13):
judge over them, to project averdict on them, but neither are
you to evaluate or rebuke themif you yourself have the same
problem and you're doing theexact same thing.
And so Jesus is very, veryclear, very sharp on that, on
those details.
And so when we look at angercoming up in ourselves, we have
to deal with it on those levels.
And so what does that have todo with physical health,
(17:35):
emotional health, peace, shalom,the whole thing?
Well, we can't have anexperience of peace and shalom
if somewhere in us we're out ofplace.
In our heart Now, that mightcome up as lust, that might come
up as a desire for food thatthen leads us into addiction.
Maybe that there is actualaddiction or substance abuse in
us where we're going to otherthings for comfort to medicate
(17:56):
us.
Maybe those things in our heartreally come up with how we deal
with our spouse and ourmarriage, how we make decisions.
In any case, it's not just amatter of the physical health or
, like this, the outwardappearance of things, because
lots of things can seem and lookpeaceful but very much not be.
So we really got to get and getat and look at the heart of
(18:19):
what's going on in a person andin yourself, in yourself, what's
going on in your heart and yoursoul and your spirit and your
heart and your mind and yourwill.
And so that's what god has beenlooking at in in me and what
he's looking at in you.
He's not just looking at, youknow, peace from the perspective
of your inner serenity, butalso looking at the peace in
terms of, okay, something'swrong in your heart and your
(18:41):
emotional health is sufferingand I care about that.
You know, god cares about yourphysical health, god cares about
your emotional health.
He certainly number one caresabout your spiritual health.
Now there's stuff in yourrelationship with God that's
gonna be affected by youremotional and your physical
health the way that you handleyour mental health, the way that
you handle your health in yourrelationships like God cares
about all of that, and some ofthose things can cause a
(19:02):
ruptures in our relationshipwith God and our fellowship with
him.
And for those of us who neverput our faith in Jesus, we have
a serious problem with the factthat we are not in right
relationship with him at all.
But those of us who areChristians, who might have right
relationship with him as beingmembers of his household, who
are sons and daughters, we alsohave a problem with wrong
relationship with God.
Like we don't have full rightrelationship with God if we're
(19:25):
entertaining thoughts in us thathe does not approve of, and the
reason he doesn't approve of itis because it's not in
congruency with love, and so ifwe're entertaining thoughts that
are not of love, then we've gota problem.
We don't have rightrelationship with God.
So we deal with that, and thatspiritual health is actually
indicated sometimes by ouremotional and our physical
(19:45):
health.
Now, again, it's not that peacelives out in the open only you
know it does.
But really the outwardexpression of peace in the
Christian life should really bemore of an expression of what's
going on in the inside.
And even if things might bemessy on the outside, that
doesn't mean your heart is inthe wrong place.
Just because your house is amess and your kids might not
(20:07):
always behave well doesn't meanthat you are not in right
relationship with God or thatyou have, you know, bad
emotional health or you have badphysical health.
Like God does care about youroutside appearance in a sense,
but he really doesn't as much aspeople do.
People care way more about thatstuff.
The Bible tells us in 1 Samuel,chapter 16, man or human beings
(20:28):
look at the outward appearance,but God sees the heart.
That's what he really caresabout.
So what's going on in your heartright now?
Where in your heart are youexperiencing a lack of peace?
Do you need to have confession,like I have had to do, where
I've had to just fess up and bereal?
Like you know what, lord, I'mnot living in full submission to
(20:49):
you right now, god, I'm angry.
I'm holding on to resentment,I'm feeling convicted because
I'm not treating my wife with,with kindness or whatever.
You know, I had to have thatmoment with my wife yesterday
and I said, hey, listen, like Ijust want to say sorry.
I was feeling, you know, I feltlike that word that I said
earlier in the day kind of cameacross as critical and I just
apologize.
This is not how I want to roll,and you know it might just be
(21:09):
as simple as that.
But you know, evaluate.
You know what's going on that'sdisrupting me from a condition
of Shalom, a condition ofwholeness, the way that God
wants it to be experienced in mylife, the way that he wants it
in me.
And so, you know, evaluate that, take a look and evaluate your
life, see, because and also, ifyou're having a hard time seeing
it, the fact is is that we'renot always perfectly self-aware,
self-aware that they'd be ableto identify every single problem
(21:36):
in their life.
David said in the Psalms who canknow their sin?
He's like you know, forgive me,lord, of my hidden faults
because who can know, you know,who could possibly know it all.
And so, you know, ask God ifthere's.
You know, search me and know me.
Psalm 139, search me and knowme, test my anxious thoughts,
see if there is any offensiveway in me and lead me in the
(21:58):
everlasting way.
And that prayer is not that Godhas to like learn what's going
on in you.
He knows full well, but hewants to bring it like.
He wants you to ask him tobring it out, like test me, you
know, see, like bring it out andlook at it, lord, and tell me
about it.
You know that's really hard,it's not easy, it's difficult,
(22:21):
it's probably one of the mostdifficult parts of the christian
life.
Um, but there was I don't knowif the saint benedict or saint
ignatius or whatever, butsomebody, some monk or some
christian guy, way back in theday.
He was asked you know, if therewas one spiritual practice that
you would do, and if you haddone no other spiritual practice
that day, what would be thenumber one you would never drop?
And he said it probably thispractice of examine.
(22:43):
The practice of examine.
No, don't get me wrong.
Examine is not about an exam.
Okay, it's, it is where we getthe word exam.
But exam is really an evaluation, and it's a prayerful
evaluation.
It's really a dialogue betweenyou and the lord, asking god,
god, what was good, what was bad, what was ugly about this day
and how do you want to meet mein it?
It's really that, simple Lord.
(23:04):
What was the good, what was thebad, what was the ugly?
What do you want to address inme?
How do you want me to changeand what are you trying to
communicate to me today?
So you know, take thisafternoon, take this morning,
take the end of your day atnight before you go to sleep and
practice, examine God, see ifthere's any offensive way in me.
(23:24):
What do I need to drop right now?
What am I holding on to thatyou really want me to release to
you and to receive, you know,freedom from this burden.
You know, what do you want tospeak into me today and what was
really good about today?
What made you happy?
What made you happy?
What was something that I didor said that made you, just just
made you delight in me in aspecial way or a unique way?
(23:45):
And what was something todaythat you really want to correct,
convict, change, remove from me.
And is there a burden in mylife, a pain that you want to
address?
Is there some level of healingthat I need?
Life, a pain that you want toaddress?
Is there some level of healingthat I need.
And besides, examine, I wouldalso encourage you to practice
confession.
You know, practice confessingto your sins to others.
You know, like I had aminiature confession time in
(24:06):
this thing Confess your sins toGod, absolutely.
Paul the psalmist said, hey,heal there.
Yeah, the psalmist said, healme, for I've sinned against you.
But he also said, also said,you know, I confess my sins to
god and he, he helped me, let mystrength was sapped, as in the
heat of summer, you know.
And then I confessed my sins tothe lord and he healed me and
restored me right.
But like also, chapter five ofjames says confess your sins to
(24:30):
one another and pray for eachother.
Don't forget that part, um, soyou may be healed.
So find someone that you cantrust.
And if you can't find someoneyou can trust, pray and ask God
to give you someone you can talkto, and you might be surprised
at who he brings your way todeal with that.
So how do you want toexperience peace?
Well, figure it out and figureout what's getting in the way
today.
Define reality even if it's oneof the hardest things you're
(24:52):
going to do today and experiencemore of God's shalom as he
introduces you to more of hishealing, love, hope and
wholeness.
All right, hey, listen.
If you want to keep connectingwith InRest Podcast, keep doing
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(25:14):
If there's a way that you wantprayer, know, reach out on the
facebook page or on theinstagram, dms, in the comment
section.
I want to pray for you, but inany case, I want to say thank
you so much for listening.
Thank you so much for watching.
If you're on spotify, please dous a favor and um rate this
podcast five stars, okay, evenif it wasn't.
You know, be honest, but alsobe favorable.
(25:36):
You know what I'm saying.
Be kind.
Jesus loves you and neverforget his love for you that he
has hope, healing and wholenesswaiting for you on the other
side of some really helpfulpractices.
God bless, bye.
Welcome to the In Rest Podcast with Noah James
Wiebe.
I'm your host, noah, and todaywe are going to be talking about
peace.
So peace is basically just thecondition of being whole and of
having an experience of serenityand of a sense of completeness
and fulfillment as a result ofthat.
Wholeness doesn't come as aresult of just our performance
(00:24):
or our productivity.
It comes as a result of usliving in alignment with the
purpose for which God has madeus.
So today we're going to betalking about how to take a
little step, a next step moreinto the intentions that God has
for you.
Let's go, let's go.
(00:45):
I hope that you enjoy joiningme for the In Rest podcast as we
hear how to live the Christianlife well and how to live the
life God intended you to live.
Thank you so much for joiningme today on the In Rest podcast
as you hear how to live yourbest in rest in Christ.
So today, one of the thingsthat has come to mind for me
(01:08):
when thinking about peace, whenthinking about the condition of
peace, is that some of thethings that are in my life and
it may be yours as well are notactually in alignment with what
God has for us.
And so you know, for me one ofthe things is my health.
So you know I'm experiencinghigh levels of stress.
I might not be sleeping verywell.
One of the things I'mexperiencing is a change in my
weight.
(01:28):
You know I'm not exactly, youknow, a large person.
I come across, as you know,small.
I got, you know, narrowshoulders, whatever.
I'm not exactly the champion ofmasculine physique, but I do
have this thing where theconstant intake of sugar and
stress and extra food to sort ofbe a comfort ends up going to,
(01:48):
you know, different parts of mymidsection or my thighs or
whatever.
And so I start to feel insecureabout that.
But I was thinking about thatthe other day, how I've got a
dad bod developing, which Idon't, you know, I don't despise
necessarily, but I don'tnecessarily like for myself,
because it's an indicator thatI'm not really living in that
way.
That's healthy.
And I was thinking back to atime over Three years ago or
(02:12):
almost three years ago, when Ireally got the sense that the
Lord was calling me to sleep andTo exercise, to take care of
myself better, all those things.
And at first, you know, youmight be thinking well, does God
really do that?
Does God really speak into aperson's life and tell them to
be more healthy?
Well, the reality is yes, hedoes.
He's gonna challenge you to dothat.
There's a moment in the Biblewhere Elijah, the prophet who's
(02:34):
like one of the most famousprophets in the Bible is really
depressed.
He's laying down, he's thinkingthat you know, all of the other
prophets of the Lord have beenslain and and now on the last
one left, an angel comes to himand instead of saying to him,
get up lazy bones, he says getyourself something to eat.
The bottom line is like it'snot out of God's you know, it's
(02:56):
not outside of the realm ofpossibility for the Lord to
speak into you and tell youdefinitively take care of
yourself more.
The way that he presented it tome one time, after having heard
that he said you're still nottaking care of yourself.
Now, that's not to say that,like, everything is about
self-care and this journey ofyou know, constant
(03:18):
self-improvement.
That's not necessarily the vibethat God is trying to
communicate in that, but it isimportant to God that we live in
a way that's consistent withhis will for us, and the Bible
tells us that you know to.
The Bible tells us that we areto rejoice, always, pray,
continually, give thanks in allcircumstances, for this is God's
will for you in Christ Jesus.
Those things happen irrespectiveof our circumstances, our
(03:40):
health condition, whatever, butno matter what it might be to
you, or something small like yousay, your health okay, which is
actually not a small thing whenyou think about it.
You know um nf did this song Ithink it's the search where he
says, yeah, the sales can rise.
Doesn't mean much, though whenyour health declines, things
that we think are small actuallymatters quite a bit to god, and
that all kind of comes back tookay, are we living in alignment
(04:04):
with the purpose that God hasfor us with, and are we living
in fulfillment of his intentionsfor us?
And so this is like miniatureconfession time, like I'm not
living fully the way that Ithink God wants me to live.
One of the ways I'm doing thatalso is with anger.
Okay, first of all, it's health.
Okay, that's my physical health, my emotional health, handling
of anger, criticism, rage,whatever, particularly anger,
(04:27):
just in the general way.
And so when we're looking atour physical health, you know
being in alignment with whatGod's intentions are for us in
terms of self-control in termsof managing our bodily health,
all those things we do find that, yeah, god does care about that
, but then he also looks at thewhole picture.
Anger has with control, debt orindebtedness and entitlement and
(04:52):
so like.
When we feel angry, we'restruggling with a control
problem, where you don't havecontrol over a situation, and so
anger is our natural bodily umresponse to losing control in a
situation, and it's meant tocall us to action and then
dissipate so that we can, youknow, get back to health, get
back to order and get back topeace and then move away from
(05:15):
the angry feeling in exchangefor that sense of wholeness.
Unfortunately, when we gothrough seasons of intense
stress particularly men this isparticularly common with men
we're going to experience a lotof anger, and so we're going to
be angry a lot because our bodyis reading that we're not in
control, because our emotionalhealth is out of whack.
We're stressed, we've gotcortisol, which is a hormone
(05:37):
that's involved with our stressresponse in our body, that's
pumping through our brain.
A lot of the parts of our brainthat are involved with stress
are in the back of the neckrather than the front of your
head, so the front of your headthat's like executive
functioning, your cerebralcortex.
You know we're thinking about,like you know, time concept and
you know how am I going tomanage my money?
(05:58):
Well, and you know gooddecision making, good judgment,
good reasoning, whereas at theback of your neck it's really
all about survival.
It's about doing what's bestfor the moment in order to get
something, usually sort ofgratification or a sense of
satisfaction so that we can calmdown, which is where a lot of
people fall into addiction orother habitual situations to
(06:20):
self-medicate instead ofexperience shalom and peace.
Because you know, when we'reactually experiencing peace,
we're experiencing more thanjust a shot of dopamine to kind
of get us through those feelingsof stress.
And so you know God is not justlooking at your physical health
, he's also looking about howyour physical health is affected
(06:41):
by your emotional health.
So my emotional health issuffered significantly by my
mismanagement of that controlproblem of anger.
And now it's totallyunderstandable to have anger and
the Bible actually says in youranger, do not sin.
So it's not that he's sayingnever be angry, because it's not
feasible, but what he is sayingis that when you are angry,
(07:03):
learn to control it, learn tochannel it, learn to bring it to
the right avenue rather thanexpress it at the wrong people.
And so this is that'sconfession time for me.
My control problem with angerusually spills out into loving
relationships that are, or loverelationships that are meant to
be, loving, but then turn intocontrolling.
So with my kids I have fourkids, I have wonderful boys.
(07:23):
There are kids that I have whoare adopted, some of who are
more challenging than others,and that anger response that I
have, you know, a response tostress, comes out as anger.
Maybe more yelling happens orwhatever.
Maybe my form of disciplinebecomes a bit more harsh than it
would have been had I had, youknow, kind of tended to that
(07:44):
anger and channel it in theright direction.
And so then, that's not to saythat anger doesn't have a place
at the parenting table withregards to, you know, just, our
natural response, maybe ourknee-jerk reaction to something,
is anger, but we still it's ourresponsibility to channel that
right, and so there's control.
Next is indebtedness, and sosomething that God really
(08:04):
challenged me with with regardsto parenting specifically that's
a nice segue is that he broughtup Matthew chapter 18 to me.
So Matthew chapter 18 is aboutthis master of a household, or
maybe master of a kingdom, whohas a lot of servants.
One of the servants hasapproached him and he is, you
(08:25):
know, kind of, you know,bringing up his accounts and so
on and so forth.
I guess this master is a bigmoney lender, anyway.
So the servant is there and heowes a lot of money, so much
money that he could neverpossibly pay it back.
And the master responds bysaying well, because you can't
pay back the debt, you're goingto have to, you know, pay back
(08:47):
in another way, specifically byyou being sold into another
household and your entire familyare going to be sold and all of
your stuff is going to be soldto try and pay back this debt.
And the guy's, like, no way, uh, like, just give me more time,
have mercy on me and I will payit back.
And the master pays back all ofhis debt.
(09:09):
The servant then goes out andfinds his friend, who is another
servant, who owes himsignificantly less than he owed
the master.
Nonetheless, he chokes him and,I'm assuming, yells at him and,
you know, sends him off to jail, basically in order to pay back
this very, very small sum.
And the master hears of thisthrough some of the other
(09:32):
servants who are appalled atthis, and he brings him back in
to the room and he's like bro, Igave you, like I absorbed the
loss of your debt, and you treatanother fellow servant like
that.
That's totally not cool.
And eventually this servantthen endures all the things that
(09:55):
he didn't want to have happen,in addition to torture, I'm
pretty sure.
So that's a pretty brutal story, but Jesus sums up that story
by saying this is how the Fatheris going to treat you if you do
not forgive your brothers whosin against you.
So that's pretty intense, youknow.
It's a pretty intense thing forJesus to say.
But when you think about anger,right, here's a servant who is
(10:18):
angry at his fellow servant andthen treats him with cruelty,
and that is one of the ways thatwe see anger expressed.
And so here I am, standing inmy kitchen and the Lord is
bringing this up to me, and Ithink part of the reason why he
was is because I've beenstruggling with a particular
resentment against my son for somany of the challenges that
he's brought into my home.
The reason why I was sofrustrated with my son is
(10:40):
because he came to us.
He's adopted, came to us with asignificant number of
challenges, for himself but alsofor other family members, which
brought a lot of grief and lossour way.
That grief and loss came aboutin complex and simple forms, but
specifically just sort of withthe loss of what we considered
normal and what we consideredfun for the rest of the family
(11:00):
and also what we consideredhealthy.
And so that struggle landed withme as eventually building up
this debt, that I felt that hewas doing something to our
family or something and I washolding on to that.
You know, I was holding on tothat resentment against him.
Now, that wasn't to mean to saythat I was, you know,
neglecting to feed him or, youknow, doing anything like that,
(11:22):
but there was this level of justextra harshness that when I,
you know, deal with somemisbehavior, I'm actually in my
mind, mentally, in my heart, I'mactually treating him as if
he's done seven or 15misdemeanors rather than one
misbehavior, and so everydiscipline is out of proportion.
So God is challenging me.
(11:42):
He's facing up to me like dudethat's not cool and communicates
to me this story this is howthe father's going to treat you
if you don't forgive, and thereason why he's saying that is
because he's forgiven me of sucha significant debt, so much
more than I could ever possiblyforgive my son.
And so, and by the way, I meanit's just not cool in general to
(12:05):
hold on to resentment againstyour kid.
And so here I was, in thekitchen, full of conviction, and
thinking, wow, I am so sorry, Irepent of my sin and I release
this debt to you.
And so, you know, here's angerin a second facet.
So we've got anger as controland anger as indebtedness, and
then finally we've got anger, asyou know, anger as entitlement,
(12:29):
and so, similar to the story ofindebtedness that is kind of
coming up and the forgiveness ofthat debt.
We're also kind of looking atthe servant and the way that he
took it upon himself to throwhis other fellow servant in jail
, even after having beenforgiven such a great debt, like
what, like who does he think heis to take this other servant,
(12:51):
who owed him so much less, andthrow him in jail for this?
There's clearly some level ofentitlement.
He felt entitled to do that,and so he acted on that sense of
entitlement and moved in thatdirection.
And so lots of us go throughthis kind of stuff all the time
and we don't realize it.
There's stuff with my spouse orwith friends of mine or
(13:12):
whatever, where I've seen ithappen and come up in my own
heart, this sense of entitlement, where I feel entitled to say
that sarcastic remark or usethat really kind of that prickly
joke in order to communicatesomething in the subtext that
says I'm displeased, I'm upset,I am angry, I do not like you,
I'm criticizing you.
And that mindset of entitlementcomes up with anger a lot.
(13:35):
I mean, when we look at roadrage and we look at how people
get so over the top angry atother people, even to the point
of violence, we look at that andwe think, well, that person is
crazy.
But we're actually all of usholding on to some level of
entitlement all the time andit's keeping us from peace.
And so this condition of beingout of order, being in chaos, is
(13:58):
something that prompts us toanger.
And yet God has an intent forus to actually experience his
shalom and peace in the midst ofand in the middle of chaos, so
that entitlement, indebtednessand control no longer have to
have the say on how we actuallyrespond to life as it hits us.
And the thing with entitlementas opposed to indebtedness or
(14:21):
control, is that entitlement hasto do with the level of status
or a condition of being higherthan another person.
Entitlement also comes up withcriticism, right.
So like you're angry aboutsomething or someone and you
criticize them, you criticizethem.
Criticize them that might evencome up with something where
maybe it's at church or with afamily member, might be with a
friendship group, and you lookat and evaluate their life,
(14:42):
their situation.
You feel angry, even thoughthat situation has nothing to do
with you.
And secondly, who are you tosay anything about them, knowing
that you have so much going onin your own life?
So, outside of Matthew 18, jesusspeaks about that again in
Matthew chapter five.
I say again as if it'ssubsequent, but it happens
(15:04):
before, earlier in the book ofMatthew, where Jesus is speaking
in the Sermon on the Mount.
So Matthew chapter five says ifyou are angry in your heart
towards a brother, that is thesame as having murderous
thoughts against a person and itmay as well be the same as
being put before the judgmentseat because you are putting
yourself in the place of judge.
He follows that up with Matthewchapter 7 a few chapters later,
(15:27):
where he talks about judgment.
But so there's criticism,there's entitlement, there's
there's anger, but, like jesusis basically saying, you're
putting yourself in the positionof the person to set a verdict
on someone and, as a result,you're actually putting yourself
in a position to get a negativeverdict from the true judge.
So he talks about anger inmatthew, chapter 5, way of, you
(15:49):
know, really being a wake-upcall to the people who are
listening and saying whoa, youknow, I might not be killing
somebody or acting on thatviolent thought, but I'm having
the violent thought nonetheless,which shows that in my heart I
have a level of entitlement.
So in Matthew, chapter 7, whenhe's talking about do not judge,
he's not actually speakingabout don't ever evaluate
(16:10):
anything or never be a criticalthinker.
It's not that he's telling usnever to use critical thought.
What he's saying is they werenot allowed, or not not to put
ourselves into a position wherewe think of ourselves as better
than someone else and thereforejudge them by treating them
differently, based on our ownnegative verdict on them.
He says just don't do that atall, because you're not the
(16:30):
judge of their life.
But he follows that up with ifyou are going to correct someone
or evaluate something and saythis guy, I mean this is
something ain't right here, wegot to deal with this.
He says who are you to say toyour brother, take the speck out
of your eye if you have a plankin your own.
The word choice is literallylike a beam, like a you know, a
(16:52):
joist, you know, like a massivebeam that you'd use for house
building in that day.
And so what Jesus is saying islike dude, you have a seriously
glaring problem in your own life, which means you are not in a
position to help them deal withtheir own problem.
Position to help them deal withtheir own problem.
And, frankly, you're notsupposed to be in a position of
(17:13):
judge over them, to project averdict on them, but neither are
you to evaluate or rebuke themif you yourself have the same
problem and you're doing theexact same thing.
And so Jesus is very, veryclear, very sharp on that, on
those details.
And so when we look at angercoming up in ourselves, we have
to deal with it on those levels.
And so what does that have todo with physical health,
(17:35):
emotional health, peace, shalom,the whole thing?
Well, we can't have anexperience of peace and shalom
if somewhere in us we're out ofplace.
In our heart Now, that mightcome up as lust, that might come
up as a desire for food thatthen leads us into addiction.
Maybe that there is actualaddiction or substance abuse in
us where we're going to otherthings for comfort to medicate
(17:56):
us.
Maybe those things in our heartreally come up with how we deal
with our spouse and ourmarriage, how we make decisions.
In any case, it's not just amatter of the physical health or
, like this, the outwardappearance of things, because
lots of things can seem and lookpeaceful but very much not be.
So we really got to get and getat and look at the heart of
(18:19):
what's going on in a person andin yourself, in yourself, what's
going on in your heart and yoursoul and your spirit and your
heart and your mind and yourwill.
And so that's what god has beenlooking at in in me and what
he's looking at in you.
He's not just looking at, youknow, peace from the perspective
of your inner serenity, butalso looking at the peace in
terms of, okay, something'swrong in your heart and your
(18:41):
emotional health is sufferingand I care about that.
You know, god cares about yourphysical health, god cares about
your emotional health.
He certainly number one caresabout your spiritual health.
Now there's stuff in yourrelationship with God that's
gonna be affected by youremotional and your physical
health the way that you handleyour mental health, the way that
you handle your health in yourrelationships like God cares
about all of that, and some ofthose things can cause a
(19:02):
ruptures in our relationshipwith God and our fellowship with
him.
And for those of us who neverput our faith in Jesus, we have
a serious problem with the factthat we are not in right
relationship with him at all.
But those of us who areChristians, who might have right
relationship with him as beingmembers of his household, who
are sons and daughters, we alsohave a problem with wrong
relationship with God.
Like we don't have full rightrelationship with God if we're
(19:25):
entertaining thoughts in us thathe does not approve of, and the
reason he doesn't approve of itis because it's not in
congruency with love, and so ifwe're entertaining thoughts that
are not of love, then we've gota problem.
We don't have rightrelationship with God.
So we deal with that, and thatspiritual health is actually
indicated sometimes by ouremotional and our physical
(19:45):
health.
Now, again, it's not that peacelives out in the open only you
know it does.
But really the outwardexpression of peace in the
Christian life should really bemore of an expression of what's
going on in the inside.
And even if things might bemessy on the outside, that
doesn't mean your heart is inthe wrong place.
Just because your house is amess and your kids might not
(20:07):
always behave well doesn't meanthat you are not in right
relationship with God or thatyou have, you know, bad
emotional health or you have badphysical health.
Like God does care about youroutside appearance in a sense,
but he really doesn't as much aspeople do.
People care way more about thatstuff.
The Bible tells us in 1 Samuel,chapter 16, man or human beings
(20:28):
look at the outward appearance,but God sees the heart.
That's what he really caresabout.
So what's going on in your heartright now?
Where in your heart are youexperiencing a lack of peace?
Do you need to have confession,like I have had to do, where
I've had to just fess up and bereal?
Like you know what, lord, I'mnot living in full submission to
(20:49):
you right now, god, I'm angry.
I'm holding on to resentment,I'm feeling convicted because
I'm not treating my wife with,with kindness or whatever.
You know, I had to have thatmoment with my wife yesterday
and I said, hey, listen, like Ijust want to say sorry.
I was feeling, you know, I feltlike that word that I said
earlier in the day kind of cameacross as critical and I just
apologize.
This is not how I want to roll,and you know it might just be
(21:09):
as simple as that.
But you know, evaluate.
You know what's going on that'sdisrupting me from a condition
of Shalom, a condition ofwholeness, the way that God
wants it to be experienced in mylife, the way that he wants it
in me.
And so, you know, evaluate that, take a look and evaluate your
life, see, because and also, ifyou're having a hard time seeing
it, the fact is is that we'renot always perfectly self-aware,
self-aware that they'd be ableto identify every single problem
(21:36):
in their life.
David said in the Psalms who canknow their sin?
He's like you know, forgive me,lord, of my hidden faults
because who can know, you know,who could possibly know it all.
And so, you know, ask God ifthere's.
You know, search me and know me.
Psalm 139, search me and knowme, test my anxious thoughts,
see if there is any offensiveway in me and lead me in the
(21:58):
everlasting way.
And that prayer is not that Godhas to like learn what's going
on in you.
He knows full well, but hewants to bring it like.
He wants you to ask him tobring it out, like test me, you
know, see, like bring it out andlook at it, lord, and tell me
about it.
You know that's really hard,it's not easy, it's difficult,
(22:21):
it's probably one of the mostdifficult parts of the christian
life.
Um, but there was I don't knowif the saint benedict or saint
ignatius or whatever, butsomebody, some monk or some
christian guy, way back in theday.
He was asked you know, if therewas one spiritual practice that
you would do, and if you haddone no other spiritual practice
that day, what would be thenumber one you would never drop?
And he said it probably thispractice of examine.
(22:43):
The practice of examine.
No, don't get me wrong.
Examine is not about an exam.
Okay, it's, it is where we getthe word exam.
But exam is really an evaluation, and it's a prayerful
evaluation.
It's really a dialogue betweenyou and the lord, asking god,
god, what was good, what was bad, what was ugly about this day
and how do you want to meet mein it?
It's really that, simple Lord.
(23:04):
What was the good, what was thebad, what was the ugly?
What do you want to address inme?
How do you want me to changeand what are you trying to
communicate to me today?
So you know, take thisafternoon, take this morning,
take the end of your day atnight before you go to sleep and
practice, examine God, see ifthere's any offensive way in me.
(23:24):
What do I need to drop right now?
What am I holding on to thatyou really want me to release to
you and to receive, you know,freedom from this burden.
You know, what do you want tospeak into me today and what was
really good about today?
What made you happy?
What made you happy?
What was something that I didor said that made you, just just
made you delight in me in aspecial way or a unique way?
(23:45):
And what was something todaythat you really want to correct,
convict, change, remove from me.
And is there a burden in mylife, a pain that you want to
address?
Is there some level of healingthat I need?
Life, a pain that you want toaddress?
Is there some level of healingthat I need.
And besides, examine, I wouldalso encourage you to practice
confession.
You know, practice confessingto your sins to others.
You know, like I had aminiature confession time in
(24:06):
this thing Confess your sins toGod, absolutely.
Paul the psalmist said, hey,heal there.
Yeah, the psalmist said, healme, for I've sinned against you.
But he also said, also said,you know, I confess my sins to
god and he, he helped me, let mystrength was sapped, as in the
heat of summer, you know.
And then I confessed my sins tothe lord and he healed me and
restored me right.
But like also, chapter five ofjames says confess your sins to
(24:30):
one another and pray for eachother.
Don't forget that part, um, soyou may be healed.
So find someone that you cantrust.
And if you can't find someoneyou can trust, pray and ask God
to give you someone you can talkto, and you might be surprised
at who he brings your way todeal with that.
So how do you want toexperience peace?
Well, figure it out and figureout what's getting in the way
today.
Define reality even if it's oneof the hardest things you're
(24:52):
going to do today and experiencemore of God's shalom as he
introduces you to more of hishealing, love, hope and
wholeness.
All right, hey, listen.
If you want to keep connectingwith InRest Podcast, keep doing
that.
Follow, like, subscribe.
Check us out on Instagraminrestinsta.
Check us out on Facebookfacebookcom slash
inrestinstitute.
(25:14):
If there's a way that you wantprayer, know, reach out on the
facebook page or on theinstagram, dms, in the comment
section.
I want to pray for you, but inany case, I want to say thank
you so much for listening.
Thank you so much for watching.
If you're on spotify, please dous a favor and um rate this
podcast five stars, okay, evenif it wasn't.
You know, be honest, but alsobe favorable.
(25:36):
You know what I'm saying.
Be kind.
Jesus loves you and neverforget his love for you that he
has hope, healing and wholenesswaiting for you on the other
side of some really helpfulpractices.
God bless, bye.
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