Becoming Empty | 3/29/20

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] what is going on a heart wait Church family we are so excited you decided to join up here for a heart way at home experience before we get started we've got a few announcements we want to share with you coming up today we are hosting our very first Lamas it's gonna be at 3 p.m. and if you haven't registered yet you can register online at hardway Church comm or via social media cliff you want to give them a few details about that yes listen this llama is gonna be incredible this is going to be one of the largest la Mesa's that we've ever had and we don't want your little rinky-dink Mills okay because we want to see the mills that you're preparing we want you guys to go all out prepare something incredible we want to see the pictures of it we want to see the video of it this is going to be live so you got to be prepared because you're gonna have to show everybody now Emily I heard you good with eggs or whatever but that's not cutting it for this la Meza what do you mean by eggs and waffles aren't you no we're not doing that we want to see an incredible meal on the table that you're going to be sharing with those loved ones that you have that's gonna join in in the experience LMSs yes so if you haven't registered yet please make sure you register so coming up this Thursday April 2nd we are also gonna be hosting our very first centering prayer workshop we're so excited to dig deep into what centering prayer is so if you haven't registered yet registered it also at Hardwick Church calm or staid stay in touch via our social media handles hey if you tuned in today we're so thankful for you we just want to let you know how much gratitude we have for each and every one of you and speaking of gratitude this is that moment in our experience where we get to share one thing that we're grateful for for me it is breath and it's a bit of irony right now because on one hand our breath is what is causing so much uproar with kovat 19 but on the other hand it is what gives us life and for me I'm grateful to be able to share this breath with you with my family our friends through technology we may not be in the same space but we're able to share this breath and most importantly I'm grateful for this breath because it is what ties us to our Creator and to his love so I challenge you right now to take 20 seconds to write down something that you are grateful for and you can share it or comment on the video and then share it on our social media and hash tag will be my my friend God loved me I know she won't give up on me you won't give up so [Music] says I'm not good in the tiger me yeah I've decided she won't give up on me now I can go let's go really like it go in so ah so so my mind says I'm not good god you're enough from me come on say I decided beside it she won't give up on me you won't give up from there Oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] waking up back in echo echo in my soul so my soul so you are good God come on [Music] [Music] so many of us right now are going through hardship we're in a position we never thought it would be in people are fearing for their life their fear for their families are fear for their jobs there's so much uncertainty out there button my god carries all my burdens and pay everything at his feet and I wait for he says be still and know that I have God to be still there's purpose in this and we will come out stronger than ever faith [Music] as we wait we will worship his name before sing along with us [Music] as we were seek your face come and make your throne upon our praise in this place have you way [Music] we see you sure super Laurie sure super Laurie in Wonder and surrender we fall down choose your glory sure super Laurie everybody [Music] [Applause] holy [Music] [Music] not but only by the cross we come we're under before sure you know Oh [Music] sure everything sure sure sure sure sure sure [Music] we declare Janesville [Music] you Jesus you change everything [Music] [Music] Jesus you change everything [Applause] Jesus you change every [Music] Jesus you change everything [Music] [Music] everything [Music] now Jesus you change everything he'll here and now Jesus you change everything show us your glory sha tsui glove [Music] surrender we fall down shows you glory sure everybody grow we lay our burdens at your feet father rules are life on your promise on your word your everlasting [Music] it is over [Music] my trust in you and please [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] one more time [Music] I will put my trust in you and I will [Music] [Music] hello heart way family I am so excited to be here this Sunday today I am going to leave you on a centering prayer focusing on patience in a world where we are asked to move fast and get a lot done with little time it causes a lot of impatience a lot of doubt and a lot of fear I ask you now to think of patience as being present in this moment just being here right now with yourself with your breath and with God let's get started we're gonna have a seated position comfortably nice tall spine allow the chin to slightly come down closing the eyes you can bring your hands to the knees palms facing up or down take a moment now to unclench the jaw release any tension from the shoulders and together let's take a deep inhale allowing the breath to rise up the chest shoulders back and then exhale release take another inhale slowly filling up the belly allowing the breath to rise up and then exhale vocally take a moment to notice where you are at right now noticing any emotions that are coming up any impatience that is stirring up within you any fear that might be rising anything that's coming up just allow it to come up and we observe slowly observing the emotions and the thoughts and then gently disassociating ourselves from them we take this moment to acknowledge that we are more than just our thoughts more than just all of our emotions we are the loving awareness behind it all focus in on your breath watching the inhale traveling up the chest shoulders back and then follow the exhale as you gently release allowing the breath to bring you back to your now bringing yourself back to this moment creating space to allow God's love to enter to allow God's peace to enter connecting now with this peace and this love and knowing that you are not separate from any of it knowing now that you are connected to all of this slowly take another deep inhale filling up the belly allowing the breath to rise of the chest now with the lips sealed exhale through the nose bringing your attention back to your breath you honor yourself in this moment honoring this piece that is settling on you honoring the patients that we ask God to give us now in times that are uncertain we come back to God we trust in him always knowing that he has our back [Music] knowing now that you can control how you experience this time this moment this now you always have a choice to see life through the lens of love [Music] through a patient lens a loving lens of peaceful lens you always have the choice together let's take another deep inhale filling up the belly allowing the breath to rise up the chest shoulders go back and then exhale release anything that is not serving to you let go of anything that is standing in your way anything that is in the way of your piece of your moments right now connecting back to your source connecting back to your truth [Music] when the thoughts keep going in and out allow yourself to come back to the breath focusing and on the inhale following your exhale [Music] as we trust in God we must also trust in ourselves [Music] trust that anything that is happening in life is happening for our good and there is nothing that we cannot overcome for we are strong we are whole we are infinite with so much purpose as you take another moment to connect back take this moment to truly let go to release anything that is uncertainty [Music] as you observe the emotions the thoughts decide now to only keep those that serve you best and that will serve for the highest good know that you are loved know that you are worthy [Music] take a moment and slowly deepen the breath allowing the breath to rise up going up the chest shoulders back hold the breath and now vocally exhale really slowly coming back bringing your awareness back to the vessel wiggling your fingers maybe the toes gently take one more moment to honor yourself to honor your relationship with God to honoring this moment right now gently open up the eyes whenever you are ready thank you all so much many blessings and love to you amen hey everybody thank you for joining us again this morning for our second week of the heart way at home experience we miss being with you guys in person loving on you hugging you giving you high-fives but we know hopefully soon that'll be able to happen again until then we're gathering like this and before I even get started with the message that I have to share with you today I just want to make it very clear to everybody that's listening there is no right or wrong way to feel in this moment right now with everything that's going on how you feel is okay and I think some of us are waiting for that permission to be able to feel our feelings completely without having to layer guilt on ourselves because we're responding in a way that we don't think is good or right for whatever reason that is now with that being said one of my favorite definitions of a Christian is someone who is able to see Christ in everything and in everyone and at the heart of this Christ's mystery is the truth that out of death God always brings new life out of suffering God always creates Beauty so what if we could allow ourselves to feel our feelings while at the same time looking beyond our feelings transcending our feelings and emotions so that we can see the beauty of God in this moment one of Jesus's most famous teachings is found in matthew chapter 5 it's the Sermon on the Mount and it begins by saying that Jesus when he saw the crowds withdrew from them and he went up to the mountain to pray and his disciples followed him up and then he gave them a teaching and the first words of the Sermon on the Mount are these blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven now before I explain that statement to you I want to bring your attention to the fact that Jesus withdrew from the crowds because this is something that Jesus did consistently all throughout his ministry he always would take the time to withdraw from the world and enter within himself this is a moment where he was able to recenter recalibrate if you will growing up I always would play video games and oftentimes when you buy a new game at the beginning you have to set everything up with your TV you have to recalibrate the settings on your television screen so that you can see all of the images as clearly and as well as they can truly be seen if we don't take the time to nourish our souls if we don't ever take the time to withdraw into ourselves to center ourselves in the love of God we'll never be able to see reality as the beautiful gift that it is even in moments and seasons like the one that we are in right now I love when Jesus said we are in the world but we are not of the world you see the dominant consciousness the collective consciousness of humanity has always been rooted in fear in selfishness and greed in a lust for power in tribal thinking where it's win-lose and usually we're the ones who say we're in and then we point the finger at others and say that they're out Jesus calls us to a higher level of consciousness a different way of seeing and perceiving reality it's what he called the kingdom of heaven the kingdom of heaven is the transcendent dimension of life in the Gospel of John Jesus spoke of it as eternal life to have eternal life according to Jesus in the Gospel of John is to know God not just intellectually not just mentally but experientially in our everyday life to know God through our experience of him as we interact with everyone and with everything said this kind of life the god kind of life is available to us some theologians speak of this as having God consciousness most of us operate from an egoic level of consciousness where we are the center of our own world God consciousness accessing the kingdom of heaven within is about releasing our own ideas of who we think we are to embrace our true identity and God which is love so that now we don't see ourselves as being separate from anyone or anything but instead we see all of life and all of reality as one collective whole of which we are a part jesus said in order to access this dimension of life we must become poor in spirit well what does it mean to be poor in spirit many of you know that over the last five years as I was starting heart way with my wife I was also serving as a chaplain at a local homeless shelter here in the South Florida area and every night we would have people that we called the overnighters these were people who weren't necessarily a part of our program they were homeless here in the area but they needed a place to stay at night and so they would come and they would bring their belongings which obviously were not many these people carried around with them very little baggage it was enough to either fit under their bed or in a tiny little locker that we had a sign for them in the same way those of us who want to be poor in spirit need to learn how to let go of and release a lot of the internal mental baggage that we carry around so much to be poor in spirit is to be open is to be receptive it's to be open to help from beyond yourself it's what they say in a a and na when they tell us to recognize our powerlessness so that we can depend on a power that is higher than ourselves that power is love that power is Christ and that power is accessible to you the word poor in the Greek which Jesus use in this text literally means the very empty ones to be poor is to empty yourself of you it's no longer having an agenda for life it's refusing to oppose life and instead beginning to flow with life because you know that your life is not in your hands you don't have an argument that you're trying to win you're not trying to prove yourself to be right you don't want to achieve anything or gain anything you don't even want anything because everything that you could ever want you already have and the reality is there's only truly one desire the desire that all of us have is the desire for God by emptying ourselves by becoming poor in spirit by having that open and receptive mind what many call the beginner's mind we can access this for ourselves there's this wonderful story about a student who walked up to his meditation teacher and he said sir my meditation is horrible every time I meditate my thoughts are distracting me my legs are falling asleep I get tired I doze off my body aches and the teacher looks at him and says this will pass and then the next week the student comes up to the teacher and this time he comes with a different story he says teacher guess what my meditation is amazing it's going great I feel so aware I feel so alive I feel so in tune with myself and the teacher looked at him and said this too will pass you see our mind always likes to categorize things either it's good or it's bad it's positive or it's negative this is how it should be or this is how it shouldn't be well beneath all of those judgments that we tend to overlay on top of reality there is this constant never-ending stream of peace that is flowing from the heart of God straight to our soul and when we learn how to access that peace which is beyond the ups and downs of life that's when we can really find that anchor for our soul that can maintain us when everything around us is chaotic regardless of what our mind may say about a situation whether we think it's good or bad or positive or negative beyond all of that we can recognize that this too will pass what remains is our awareness of what is our acceptance of what is and the peace that comes from doing just that Jesus once said to his disciples it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven the eye of a needle is a short little metaphor that speaks of a small gate that was in the city of Jerusalem this small gate which was called the eye of the needle was only opened late at night when the larger gate into Jerusalem was closed and in order for camels to go through that eye of the needle and go through that small gate it was important for the camels to stoop low remove their baggage so that they can fit through in the same way this teaching of Jesus is not just about our material possessions this is also just as much about the attachments that we hold on to in our minds see the only way for us to come to God is empty handed when we come to God empty he fills our cup and even though it's scary and it sounds paradoxical nevertheless it's still true when you become nothing God then gives to you absolutely everything there's another short story from another tradition about a young man who was training to become a rabbi and he was sitting with his spiritual mentor around the table and he was telling him about how much he's been reading and all of the philosophies that he's come across and all of the skills he has acquired over time and all of the books that he's been able to write and as soon as he finished saying all of these things that the teacher who was a very wise teacher decided to pour this young man a cup of tea and as he poured out this cup of tea eventually the cup began to overflow but he still kept on pouring eventually the young students had teacher don't you see what's happening stop filling the cup it's already full and the teacher says exactly and so are you how could I ever teach you anything how can you expect God to fill you with love when you continue to fill your mind with fear how could you expect God to fill your soul with peace when you continue to fill your mind with worries and cares and stresses of this world I love the proverb that has been repeated to me countless numbers of times throughout my life it's in proverbs chapter 3 and verse 5 many of you may know this it says trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding in all of your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths when I think about trusting in God what that looks like for me is relaxing into God I don't know if any of you have ever sat on or laid down on one of those beds that just like mold to your body and they sink in so deep and it feels so good and comfortable I mean when you're laying in a bed like that you know in that moment everything is okay you're being sustained you're being held and it's all good in the same way when we can learn how to relax into God that's the shift that begins to happen with is within us internally the scripture says trust in God with all of your heart and don't lean on your own on standing you're not gonna be able to figure out stuff up here so many of our issues so much of our frustration our fear of the future is rooted in our necessity to control things what would happen if we could let go of our expectations of life what if we could stop having an agenda about how our life should be and what things should be looking like right now and what that other person should or should not be doing don't lean on your own understanding in this moment because your understanding is very limited and your understanding is very bias and you with your understanding cannot possibly get a hold of the much bigger picture at least not in the same way that God does not with the mind scriptures say don't lean on your own understanding but instead acknowledge God in all of your ways and he will direct your path how can we acknowledge God in this moment take some time to reflect on that question for yourself how can I acknowledge God's love and God's hand at work right now in my life if we were to focus on that instead of everything else that we give our attention to knowing that God is the one who is opening doors and closing doors knowing that God is the one who is leading us and guiding us knowing that our life is not in our hands that's when we will come to experience the peace that the scriptures say surpasses all understanding and I hope you are hearing that common theme we must go beyond our understanding we must go beyond the mind to access the stillness of the heart in the New Testament the Apostle Paul says three things remain forever faith hope and love those three qualities have been embedded within your soul by God it's a part of your divine DNA it's your true nature every human spirit has the capacity for faith for hope and for love in fact you won't find satisfaction in your life until you begin to learn how to access and operate from that sense of faith where you can know that you are not the one that is in control you will never find satisfaction until you can begin to cultivate that sense of hope knowing that God always brings good out of everything you will never be satisfied in your soul until you can access that expansive love that God has poured into your heart through the spirit and so every day what I want to do for myself and I invite you to do the same I want to speak faith I want to see hope and I want to give and receive love when other people are speaking negativity I want to speak God's promises and God's truth when other people only see darkness I want to see light when other people want to withhold love and hoard things to themselves I want to give myself away in love towards other people without fear knowing that God has called us for moments just like this to be his hands and feet and to be an extension of his goodness and his love in the lives of other people you know years ago there was a very wealthy man who lived in the Chicago area and in the year 1871 there was a huge fire the Chicago Fire that lasted for several weeks destroyed a whole bunch in the city and this very wealthy man who was also a follower of Jesus happened to lose a majority of his fortune because of this incident during this time he had also lost his four-year-old son because of a fever and so as all of this was happening this man decided to send his wife and his other four kids off on a boat to England and as they were on their way there the the boat got into a collision and it sank his four kids lost their lives his wife remained alive and as he was planning to meet with her in England he also decided to get on a boat for himself and as they were headed over to the final destination as they were passing through the area where the incident had occurred the captain of the ship had told this man that this is where his kids had lost their lives and after he was told that this this man decided to take out a journal and begin writing down some words that he felt the spirit was speaking to his soul and these words ended up becoming one of the most popular hymns within the Christian tradition that has been sung by all different kinds of Christians from all different backgrounds and denominations you may know this song I want to sing it for you goes a little something like this when peace like a [Music] attendeth my way when sorrows like sea billows rise what my lot thou has taught me to say is well [Music] my soul it is where with my son as well it is where with my son whatever our circumstances maybe we can always say it is well with my soul because that's what the reality is if God is with us it is always well with our soul God we thank you that you are ever present help in time of need we are so grateful that you are our refuge in moments of crisis in all the inconsistencies of life you are the one thing that remains constant your love never fails your peace always freely given to us in this moment God so many people are facing uncertainty and we're scared we don't know where our finances are gonna come from we don't know what our next step will be god I pray that your peace would enter into the heart of every person underneath the sound of my voice god grant to us the love the hope the faith the courage the patience and the strength we need to get through our prayer isn't that you would spare us from suffering but that you would sustain us every moment that we're in it you are enough for us we pray all of these things in Jesus name Amen amen thank you for joining us have a great rest of the week hey we want to thank you so much for joining us for a heart way at-home experience if you are tuned in we want to let you know that this community cannot exist without you we love you so much and if you want to know how you can do your part we want you to share this message of hope and love with everyone we love you [Music] you

Channel: Heartway

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Length: 57min 1sec (3421 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 29 2020