Dr. John Townsend - Pt 2 - Where is God When I Hurt?

I had this God in my head that sort of a patchwork quilt of crazy people and evil people in my life he's not like that we begin to make a distinction in their head in psychology we say there's a God image and there's a people image and sometimes they're together and we need to separate them these kooky evil people over here are not him we have a separate God image from people image and then what I found is that as you find out God can hear this and as you see who the real God is you begin to want to move toward him a God that is so powerful that he can change the universe and yet so safe he can hear me say I'm bugged with you he's a God that I want to follow in the book I talk about but why would he allow abuse why would he allow me to be with that mom or dad or cousin or evil person why we allowed this to happen and I give lots of reasons but it's never one just one reason sometimes we don't know and and I think we need to be honest that on this side of the grave on this side of the veil we may not know why it happened and I hate on people say well it happened for a good purpose you'll see the good purpose I think that's just crazy because if you read Ecclesiastes we just because sometimes we don't know and I think I don't know is okay sometimes we do see a purpose like Joseph said you know you I was allowed to be in prison and dumped in a hole because I could save a nation of Israel from famine sometimes we do get the reason but I think the most powerful truth when I'm mad at God and I think he's letting me down and sled me down this path to being broken sexually the most powerful truth is that God suffers with me and that he was with me in the abuse and he was with me in the trauma and he was with me when I had no choices when I was helpless when I was under controlled by someone else he was crying with me and suffering with me because we see that in Jesus and if you go to the book of Hebrews it says he's felt everything we felt except without sin and I think we understand that we have a suffering God who not only loves us but has felt it and was with us there's a sense of comfort there's a sense of identification and a sense of you get it in your safe then moves us past the anger and past the mistrust and past the pushing away he moves his back toward a God who feels that it's important to kind of drill down on the whole idea of if I'm sexually broken and I've experienced hell basically on earth and how do I be mad at God and that'd be okay I understand that there's a term called containing and it comes from the pediatric literature and research about mother-child interactions or mother-infant interactions it really helps us understand God because they found out one of the best things that a mother can do to maybe a three-month-old or a six-month-old I mean a little bitty kid is when they're really really mad because they're wet or because you didn't pick him up because they're colicky or whatever baby's more mad at that the mother just picks up that child and she just kind of lets the child be mad and she just soothes them and she says I know you're really upset but it's okay you really hate me right now but it's okay it's okay I'm here I'm here and literally what she's doing is she's taking the rage of the infant and putting the intimus rage into her breast she's accepting it she's containing it she's saying you can be mad at me and it won't kill me you can be mad at me and I won't say gosh I bore you for nine months don't you appreciate me no no guilt messages from this mom she just says I'm a I'm an adult I'm strong I can take your rage and I will hold you even when you're mad and what happens is and they've there's all these great studies about this is the infant starts to calm down and the respiration rate gets regular and the blood pressure stops spiking and they stop moving around and then just kind of like rest and go to sleep and feel comforted because the mother was strong enough as the grown-up because there's got to be a grown-up in the room she's a grownup she's I I can take you around here I'm your mom I know your kid and and the child feels like you found that mad you're gonna die are you gonna kill me and they live in this kind of paranoid world I can't be mad because I can't destroy the world their feelings are so strongly they don't understand feelings because their babies and mother says you know there's just a feeling I can take it well think about what God does and I've had this experience personally as well as with my clients is that he's so big and so strong when I'm shaking my fist like Jobe did and saying I don't get it Jesus on the cross why have you done this to me live you gonna let this cup pass he says in the passion and God says I'm here I can take this I can take this rage you're just a kid and you're understand and I'm the grown-up here and once our rage is dissipated then we feel calm and he's safe and I got I had my day in court and I was mad and you were still with me and this flow of love I had a friend tell me recently the flow of love came into them that's not a God who says you're not grateful that's a God who says my love is so much greater than your anger and that calms us down and also that's an important step in our healing because when a sexually broken person realizes I can be mad and still be loved I can be angry and still be connected I can be enraged and still experience grace all of a sudden their righteousness and peace come together again they go gosh I can be an honest angry person and you won't leave me say bad things about me condemn me yeah and we call that maturity so it's an important step in getting well [Music] a lot of people who kind of get it they come out of denial they realize I'm struggling in fact if you're watching the show right now you may be doing for to help somebody else and that's great or you may be suspecting that you've got an issue and we're really glad you're here because we want this to be a place of safety and grace for YouTube because we believe in you and we believe in God we believe a process works so people that coming out of the it's not that bad or I can just I can will power out of this if you're ready to say I hate it it's bad it's hurting me it's hurting my god it's hurting my relationships it's hurting my life it's hurting my career you know welcome but then the question comes once I realize this well I've got brokenness inside I you know I'm realizing that not only do I have out-of-control sexual behavior but the insides feel empty or worse than empty I feel bad like I'm just a condemned bad horrible person where do I start well on a psychological and a spiritual level you always have to first start in the first place before you can change you must be loved nothing can happen you know there's things called attachment disorders in psychology there's things called trust disorders there's problems in in connection it'd be like saying we're gonna help you to transform your life or we're gonna build this house of your life but we're not going to put a bottom on it there's no foundation there's gonna be no footprint we're just gonna start building wood and you know and then put a roof on it it's gonna fall apart the foundation the way God has constructed the universe is love you've got to learn how to experience and accept love so in first John it says that God is love in Chapter four so at his essence at his core God's love so before you begin to understand here's how I can say no and here's how I can change my habits all those things are important you've got to be in the foundation of love and a book I wrote called loving people addresses that because kind of all of us would like to be a loving person we'd like to love our spouse if we're married or love our date if we're not married or loved our family or our friends and you know to be a caring person I mean who's not gonna sign up for that but the problem is you can't give it if you don't have it how can I give love when I've never experienced it and I mean I really hate it when people say well if you want to love you got to go give it I'm thinking well how do you drive your car you drive your car and you say well you're out of gas car well go feel like you've got gas right now well my car I know it would it would pull over the side and say I'm out you know buy because you can't give what you don't have in fact in first Corinthians chapter 4 it says what do you have what do you possess that you've not already received it's always get it first and then give it so there's a section of the book where I talk about and this is kind of the risky part is you've got to start asking the right people for it and people with sexual brokenness I think I kind of alluded to this earlier asking is really like they're allergic to it you're asking me to ask one you know that never worked before and I have four or five things that I tell people to do and basically it's you've got to learn how to identify what your needs are your relational needs and be in a safe environment and then ask people and and the basic relational needs are things like empathy you know I need and and I train people I tell them you got to say these words and look in somebody's eyes well I hate this well yeah we all hate it but do it you've got to look at somebody's eyes and say I need to know that what I'm getting really tell you that you have empathy for or our needs for understanding I need to know that you understand me that you get me you see how I'm wired when I tell you or validation I need to know that you feel like my feelings are real and I'm not making this up and that my feelings have value or a need for for affirmation I need to know you're on my team no matter what I tell you and you're on my side no matter how how many times I've messed up and I've broken and I train people sometimes they have to go three by five card because they're so scared in their hands are just shaking they go I need to know that you have empathy for me oh no I feel so bad and I say stick with it stick with it and the miracle happens when the other person goes yeah like in a small group setting or a mentor setting or a pastor or whatever a counselor and personally goes yeah I get it and I understand how bad things are and that's how we began to feel loved and when we feel loved because it comes from the outside then we started to think there's hope for me you know if I had that foundation that footprint of love I can probably tolerate the rest of the process of facing pain looking at my past forgiving things grieving things healing but I can't do any of that until them loved a lot of people say okay I'm sold I meant to the love thing what's it look like and there's a lot of crazy thinking out in our culture about that you see it on billboards you see it in on Cosmo on the checkout stand when it says nine ways to love and next month it says nine meet new ways and the next month nine new ways so they're now 27 there's a lot of religious strains teaching about love but I go back to the Bible and I believe that the best definition of love is one that's in the book it says it says it's seeking and doing what's best for another person seeking and doing what's best for another person so sometimes love is knowing somebody's so well that I know what they need then maybe I need to confront them sometimes and say you know you're hanging around the wrong computer sites I love you or you're hanging around the wrong people here and you're too vulnerable right now or you're not being honest about how you're doing or you're withdrawing and I know when you withdraw so sometimes love is a little bit tough because that's the best for somebody that's the medicine sometimes love is just a plain old connection when I am with somebody in my head in my heart and I'm totally connect to that person what I have found is that the person who was sexually broken really needs that second type first they need to know that when I'm with someone that any part of me that comes out a mad part a sexually distorted part a fantasy a giving up part a selfish part any part that comes out there's gonna be a home for it in that other person that's how they know their love is I can just show you the brokenness of the broken and you'll say I get it none with you in Romans 15 Paul tells us accept one another as God and Christ has accepted you and I love that because in the Greek the word except means have taken to your chest I will take into my chest every part of you now that I'll agree with every part now I don't say every parts great it's not we've all got darkness but I can hang with it and I can connect to you and people begin to feel loved when they feel like you know the bad stuff and you haven't walked out the door you're not throwing up you're like with me you're even talk about yourself that's when we know we're loved you can't you can't feel loved if you don't move into confession because then you're just bringing out the the strong parts and the healthy parts and the together parts well I know people do that all day and they feel deeply unconnected they feel deeply in love because nobody knows the other stuff but when my needs come out and I always help people it's either your needs or your darkness if your needs come out like loneliness lack of connection isolation detachment or bad stings come out like my selfishness and my resistances in my you know it's all about me and kind of like you know protesting God if my needs and my badness and my darkness come out and you are with me I will feel sometimes people say for the first time in 30 or 40 years now I've know what love feels like because you took it all you don't agree with it all but you took it all and you haven't left me you move towards me that's the experience you're looking for because that begins the process God talks a lot about love you know jesus jesus answered someone's question when they said so how do I love this God and he said well heart soul mind the strength and the way that breaks down is when when a person struggling with sexual issues first enters the world of love it's a new world for them they're ready for betrayal or they're ready to be objectified or their bed ready for somebody to who you know is gonna use them in some way it's a new world in the end and they're very unfamiliar with it so what I tell them is you've got to get into a sea of health you've got to get around a healthy church where you can be broken by they still love you and they preach the Bible and they're solid by the Bible it's not an ounce of condemnation condemnation but there really are into God's Word but they're also really into the Holy Spirit and how much he does for us and they're also really in the Bible I'm sorry into the small groups and they're really until I really get to know each other and really opening up to each other not polite playing the game and also you probably need a person in your life who's a whose has expertise and hours with sexual issues because that's a complicated issue just take somebody's never dealt with that so you've got this sea of health around you and so you've got all these antibiotics sometimes you might need antidepressants which can really help and anti-anxiety which can really help and so you've got the medical part and you've got the spiritual part and the social part and you got the recovery piece over here there's a 12-step here with a bunch of really cool sa people and you've got you know the the deeper character issue part and you've got the mentoring this sea of health where you just jump in and go I'm going to quit everything I can quit until I get transformed that's heart soul mind and strength is saying I want God to love me and heal me in all the ways there are and when that happens I begin to feel whole I feel like I'm my life is going in one direction and I feel loved and when I begin to feel loved I begin to move on and the drive started to go away because the the sexual drives generally speaking have to do with some unloved part of me that I'm trying to access in a sexual way that's why in psychology we say people's sexual lies it's not a sexual issue it's a sexualized issue in other words I took a lonely part and put sex on top I took a powerless part that felt helpless and put sex on top I put ashamed guilty itself attacked condemned part that I hate about myself and sexualized it put sex on top so once you're in this sea of health you go into all these parts of yourself and they start coming up and you go I don't need this anymore because I'm around all these healthy antibiotics medically spiritually emotionally I don't have the drives anymore one of the saddest things I see this as a psychologist it's when somebody goes will always be this way life for me is holding on coping managing desires and always feeling kind of like I've got to keep myself under wraps and that's that's so sad because it's not true biblically and it's not true psychologically this is not about coping and this is not about trying harder it's about transformation from the inside so I become a person who is free and I can have sexual desires and they don't overwhelming and I can have appropriate love and an appropriate happy times an appropriate sad times and I don't have to like worry every second I'm going to fall off the cliff into sin because I'm living the life so the more we surround ourselves with these things you always see the desires become to what we call normal level desires that's the goal is to go to the way God designed not to be wrapped so tight that you can't have any feelings at all you know if you've been watching this program for any amount of time you probably heard a million people talk about groups and if you've been in the church for any amount of time you know we're into small groups now and small groups are the thing and you know what is that about and I do a lot of training in small groups because I really believe in them and I'm in them and I bring in trained people to lead them but there is kind of the idea of a small group that's I wouldn't want to go to it and that's the oh yeah small group oh yeah brownies and coffee and then we'll tell you leviticus and then we'll pray for aunt sally's you know arthritis and that's the typical kind of like come in and have the brownies in a cook and coffee and then you study the passage for 45 minutes and then your last three minutes you pray in you know I really believe we need lots of Bible study but there's other places you can do that in a small good setting sometimes the amount of Bible is kind of shortened because you can get at other places because what you can't get in other places is the process and the process is where the power comes based on the word and based on people's prayer that people finally sit down and go into what some of the old philosophers called eyes out and I thou means I'm gonna tell you who I am you're going to tell me who you are and what that really means is now the transformation begins because we're going to be known and when you know somebody things start to happen what generally happens in a small group and and it's kind of explained to people is that the function of it is to become the second family the second family of God you know in Psalm 68 it says that God is a home for the provides a home for the homeless and provides a father to the fatherless home for the lonely father the follows and what that what that refers to is that we all came from a family from either a little bit dysfunctional to moderately dysfunctional to psychotic dysfunctional I mean there's like different levels of dysfunction Adam and Eve were just all right and so all of us came from a family where there wasn't a hundred percent perfect love wasn't a hundred percent perfect grace it wasn't it the structure wasn't there all the time and maybe mom or dad were at odds all the way to abuse and divorce and alcoholism and sex addiction and drugs and chaos and horrible stuff well nobody came from a perfect environment so God allowed us to have a thing called the church and the church is God's second transforming healing reparative family that's supposed to do two things it it heals the wounds of the first family caused detachment trust issues lack of definition boundary issues fear of conflict dependency being afraid to make your way shame guilt it it it undoes the things the first family did but it also provides the thing that first family didn't provide love constancy healthy structure freedom guidance shepherding training disciple so in that second context of that small group you get the goodies in the nutrients that you didn't get the first time around because I believe that biblically speaking the first family isn't as important as the second family and I'm a real family person I mean I love family but jesus said to somebody when they came up to and said your mother and brothers are out here when to speak t he said who are they who are my mother and brothers and sisters but those who follow the will of God what he was saying was second family Trump's first family second families the eternal family the one that Shepherds us and gets us ready to grow and be a cool person and finding our passion and find our job and find our ministry and find our calling and find our gifts and heal so when we say well what I'll do with a small group what's it about the small groups supposed to fill in all the cracks for you that you didn't get the first time around and that's why I go back to the I though and the knowing the more you open up and you're vulnerable in your small group and you stop playing the game and you say you know life's not always perfect for me I struggle in some areas if it's the right small group because sometimes people with sexual brokenness shouldn't be in a smuggler that has no experience because something you know sometimes I hate it but I think in our Christian culture sometimes there's this kind of a pejorative like sexual issues are worse than other issues I'm sorry give me a person with sexual brokenness over a prideful Pharisee any day I'd rather hang with that person than that person and I think the Scriptures teach the same thing about Jesus attitude but it's just not the case sometimes so get with people who understand that you're you and you've got sexual issues and find maybe a place where there's healthy openness and healthy grace or people who have experience or people just don't have any condemnation and open up and when you open up what happens is all that stuff you didn't get the first time around starts to come in that's what transformation is I believe it's returning us to the original state that God intended this at to be a you know in the garden and given us the things we didn't get the first time around I found two kind of wrong or not healthy or not helpful ways that people look at this and it's two extremes really one of those is kind of the classic 12-step and I love 12-step and I refer people to 12-step all the time but there's some there are some things I don't agree with where they basically say you're always going to be a sex addict or you're always gonna be an alcoholic or you're always going to be a you know a food addict or whatever that's one problem because I think what that does is then it limits the power of God to transform us I believe a sex addict can become a former sex addict and the Bible teaches that I'm a new creature in Christ you know they always are passed new things have come I just wouldn't be interested in a coping model it just seems so hopeless I I'm in the transformation where person says gosh I woke up with normal sexual desires so that's the weakness I think of the 12-step model then there's a second model which is kind of the theological position model like you you see your position in Christ and so since God looks at me he's not mad anymore because he sees me through Christ so claim your position so stop feeling that way stop calling yourself a sex addict because you're not the Bible Allah teaches two realities there's our standing in Christ but then there's experience here there's a process of being real about Who I am who I'm not and we're going toward the goal here but I think that especially theologians need to understand that that's just not full biblical teachings to deny the process of where I am right now so I tell people you just say I'm a sex addict right now or I'm a sexually broken person now but I am jumping into the process and I'm going at three or four meetings a week and I'm seeing a counselor I'm reading books and I'm opening up and I'm spilling my guts and my hope is one day I won't be one because God honors that process [Music] you

Channel: Pure Passion Media

Views: 60,592

Rating: 4.9321151 out of 5

Keywords: John-Townsend-Pt-2, pure-passion, interview, teaching, television-show, shame, self-hatred, anger-at-God, anger, sin, sexual-brokenness, abuse, wounding, love, God

Id: 1l5BtYy2axY

Length: 24min 8sec (1448 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 08 2011