OCD and Overestimating Threats

[Music] [Music] hello everyone welcome to this broadcast mark dejesus here looking forward to sharing some more insights and help and encouragement regarding the subject of ocd in its various forms and how it works and operates in your life we have a whole mailing list dedicated to that i'm going to get into some more distortions there are seven distortions that i've been talking about that i feel are important to recognize and today we're going to get into the fourth one which is the overestimation of threats and basically the summary of it being there is an intense sense of threat punishment major consequences if you do not intensely pay attention to all of these disturbing thoughts and try to do something about them so i'm going to get into that i have a mailing list dedicated just to this subject i have an overall mailing list where i um have various materials that i share on a lot of different subjects about healing freedom transformation overall but i felt because i'm going to be spending some dedicated time in this subject i want to narrow in on on a group of people that really want to work through these issues so you can go to mark asus dot com forward slash ocd help and there you will get some email sent to you i'll also ask you for your feedback helps me to kind of see what are people struggling with and then there will be some emails sent to you to make sure you are getting the updates on anything i do regarding this topic and so i will do my best to provide resources and support but the biggest thing i want you to um to receive in your life is encouragement that you don't have to remain stuck in these patterns you don't have to remain stuck in these battles these battles don't have to stay around forever but there is some learning and there is some changes and some adjustments that need to be made in approach and if you're willing if you humble yourself and are willing to say i'm willing to be taught and that has been a big help in my life when i humble myself and say god i don't know but teach me and i allow myself to learn about what's really going on because with ocd the problem is not the problem we think this is the problem but really there's some things in our heart that need some healing it has a lot to do with love with grace with mercy with nurture that's lacking and in many cases the ocd symptoms are crying out because there are places in our heart that are not settled in love and it creates a lot of torment and unsettledness so let's get into some of those distortions i'll kind of just hit the ground running if that's all right um we're gonna look at number four and if if you haven't please go back and go to some of my um older broadcasts so get some more into this i um talk about seven distortions these are seven common things that typically are in place when people struggle with ocd and i'm seeking to just break them down a bit encourage you in them share with you what i've learned in my journey and what i've been able to to gain and understand in this and so i i'm very well acquainted with how difficult this battle can be and how alone you can feel and how crazy you can feel inside and and so i'm not your doctor psychiatrist psychologist uh therapist i'm your brother and and i feel like i want to speak to you as as a brother from another mother but we have the same father i don't know it just kind of came out it just kind of came out that way but um i want to walk alongside of your journey as as a brother in christ and so um i pray that that's an encouragement to your journey so this is number four overestimating threats okay so what do i mean by this well these are all distortions these seven areas are distorted areas in your life if you've if you feel like you know what i relate to a lot of ocd struggles most likely you have a pattern where you overestimate the threat of what will happen if you don't immediately do something about a thought that you have it's a major distortion the threat of what cert the thought comes to you and it brings a threat with it so it starts with an interp an interpretation that's distorted so that's number three it starts with that the thought comes to you and you don't you distort the what it means and then it gets fed by an intense feeling of fear regarding the intensity of dangers involved if i don't do something about these thoughts if i don't remedy them fix them address them and you may feel that if you don't majorly pay attention to these thoughts there are severe dangers you will face maybe it involves if i don't pay attention to this cleanliness mindset i'm going to get a disease i'm going to get an illness i'm going to die prematurely maybe it's a spiritual thing i will lose my salvation i'm going to be cast away from god's presence maybe i'm not realizing i was never saved to begin with i'm dating the wrong person i'm going to be with the wrong person i'm in the wrong relationship i don't feel right oh no right those kind of intensities if i don't immediately do something about this and what happens is you can develop this nebulous feeling of punishment if i don't deal with this issue if i don't deal with these thoughts if i don't zoom in on them and so what happens is you're gonna you end up living in a world of twisted conspiracies regarding your thought life and what your reality is and let's be really honest what it can do is it can it can alter our state of reality what do i mean by that it's like how do you see your world and many ocd sufferers have an altered reality because the threat of these thoughts oh my goodness maybe i'm not saved maybe i'm not saved and then you feel like i've got to do something about this well you notice the more you try to do something about it the worse it gets over time you're more confused you're more so i find that like in the healing journey you have to look and see these patterns do not improve power love and a sound mind they're not improving my relationships they're not improving the fruit of the spirit these cleanliness things or relational reassurance or guilt confession they're not enhancing my confidence they're not enhancing single-mindedness they're not enhancing mind renewal in fruitful ways not making me better relationally and it will alter our sense of what we see i see many many christians tormented by this like checking checking checking checking their salvation checking checking checking to make sure they're pure checking checking checking to make sure that they are saved and you notice what it produces more torment more torment more torment because it's fueled by a threat that's altering reality altering your perspective so you're walking around in this hyper vigilance gotta fix and when you share with other believers they give you feedback no you that's no one's giving you feedback that you really need to pay attention to these now some may and they feed it and make it worse right you go to somebody because you question your salvation and they give you a bunch of scriptures and then you're spinning out more right and really is the basic premise is starting from a distorted interpretation where even subjects of salvation instead of learning and growing in them you're tormented instead of learning and growing what it means to have relationship and ocd suffers i want to challenge you where growth needs to happen is how to have relationship because relationship with god ourselves and others is where this ocd really gets revealed because ocd is black and white by its nature relationships aren't [Laughter] those of you that got married do you realize relationships are not always as simple as we make them right your control issues get confronted your your all these things your fixed kind of routines get confronted then if you have children it's even more like everything's not just an equation it's relationship it's patience you gotta work through things you gotta talk things out you gotta you know learn how to say i'm sorry right and those kind of things well ocd gets stuck in a fixated thing with these intense threats they're black and white they're perfectionistic and they disconnect you from reality reality being that we all need to grow in love we all need to grow in grace but the ocd says no that's not the issue that's not the issue ocd lies to you folks it lies to us it says no no that's love being loved isn't the issue it's your eternity is at stake oh no no no it's not you being loved it's you making sure you marry the right person no no it isn't about you being loved make sure you never get contaminated oh no no you make sure you clean up all these thoughts it's not about you being loved make sure all your thoughts are right and if you don't then it's like if you don't what so the the religious ocd person is saying oh i spend an eternity in hell if the person i'll be in a marriage that they'll be terrible well i'm going to get a disease so and the threats get amplified and amplified and amplified and god's not in that god's not in that god's not standing over you threatening you each day if he is then why did jesus die on the cross what's the point let's just go back to the law live under the law and if you do good you'll you'll you'll you'll experience good if you do bad you'll experience all this stuff you'll get the hammer of judgment okay so let's just live under that then and that's a whole other subject ocd suffers what we need is we need to get free from the legalism the law the punishment basis and i've not met one yet when you dig down to the root system their upbringing in the faith does not have grace love relationship as a foundation and paul says if we have not love it makes all these things that we strive after and so of course we follow this fearful punishment-based pathway because the threat of it and i feel it's it's worth emphasizing this sense of threat where you're worried about something now as a believer we should never live our life feeding a fearful perspective and that's very challenging because many people with end times emphasis you know they're really like they want to study the end times many of them can oh things are getting worse oh things are getting worse maybe maybe they are maybe they aren't but that's not the problem remember the problem is not the problem the problem is are you fed by fear is it feeding fear because we can look and go there's some troubling times ahead and what it needs to do is get us sober awake and empowered but what you notice in ocd the overestimation of threats inflames fear and so it the danger gets over emphasized your ability to be okay live free overcome is minimized so you're left in this panic place you're left in this state of conflict so i got to deal with this okay so somebody had said you know i've battled these thoughts about my salvation it's hard to overcome yep so what one of the comments what do i do when the thoughts get so loud and scary it start as soon as i wake up what the first thing i'm going to recommend is understanding that thoughts like that are rooted in a fear-based thought so we got to stop trying to fix the thoughts and we need to let god re rebuild our whole entire structure the very nature of ocds it wants you to nitpick on a thought to try to fix the thought and there are times where you can talk yourself into landing better but what you need is to recognize that that fearful thought of course it's loud fear is very loud and we live in a world that feeds fear right now more than ever and so they're loud and they're scary because it's a bully yelling at you and what you need is is it as a sign your heart needs the love of god so it takes mentoring it takes learning it takes relearning how you see god because i followed fear as though i needed to pay attention to it all the time folks you you have to understand i had a recognition 90 of my day was fed in fear and when i saw it what happened is it awakened me now many people go oh my goodness for me it awakened me this is not of god god now now i find a lot of christians do not know how to discern so when they feel anxiety they think god's using that you feel guilt you think god's talking to you you feel this loud voice you think it's god screaming at you well it reveals your god image that you see a god who screams and yells at you or or or even if you can clarify that it's so loud you feel you have to pay attention to it perfect love casts out the fear it drowns out the voice and the power of fear and i'll get to that in first john 4 hopefully by the end of this talk and so um there's some there's some questions on intrusive thoughts um i've talked about that in some previous videos you can you can check those i'm gonna do some more special videos just on intrusive thoughts but basically um when you get an intrusive thought that's unwanted and and and what happens is follows right into these distortion think of an intrusive thought and go back to the distortions you have a perfectionistic thing that says i gotta get all my thoughts clear and clean there's no gray there's no grey room so already um we're underneath the battle because number one is perfectionism you have to recognize your perfectionistic tendencies big time and and most people when i bring this up they go i'm not perfectionistic it's most people are massive denial they even have it they're like i'm not perfectionistic i just want to have pure thoughts yeah there's a lot of pressure it's not empowering you're under pressure and you're always going to find yourself failing so you struggle with uncertainty because the intrusive thought brings an uncertainty what if what if this thought means something ah and then at least number three the distorted meaning now the thought has meaning so the steamrolls one through seven steamrolls and that's why i'm spending time working on these underlying root systems so that you can begin to experience healing because all seven of these areas need the love of god the nurture of god the grace of god needs love that accepts you right where you're at so really the the process of dealing with intrusive thoughts is you see the thought you notice it but you don't feed it you let the thought pass on by like an airplane flying through the sky and you gently redirect yourself back to i'm safe now sometimes people take the thought and they try to replace it and that can become a compulsive argument you know you're gonna hurt someone no i'm not gonna hurt someone right that can make it worse because now you're arguing with the thought so it's more about getting to the heart of safety this thought is trying to get you off on a tangent so i what i found helpful for me is that crazy thought to let it fly on by i've got to be gentle with myself it's okay mark now right there most most of the time is where we're taken out why am i having this thought what is wrong with me right um i believe 100 of ocd sufferers are some of the most hardest on themselves in their thoughts a hundred percent this is no exception there is contempt self-condemnation self-hate you're an enemy to yourself and that's why it's so important to let god work and heal on that and so a turning point for my life and even from my ministry was letting god teach me how to love myself the way that he loves me and that was the birth of that message of that book god loves me and i love myself because i realize not only am i become my own worst enemy i see this in the body of christ and we echo it i'm my own worst enemy like really like where's the biblical freedom in that where's the truth that sets you free that you're always going to be battling yourself and i decided one day i'm not an enemy to myself anymore no more i'm going to learn to be kind to my thoughts so there's the craziest thought in the world coming by oh my it's okay mark i thought doesn't mean have to mean anything about your character who you are and so i learned to be loved while the anxiety is ramped up and how do you do that well a not feeding the thought the not feeding the compulsion i don't need to ramp that thought up any more than it is because it's already disturbing i'm loved right now i'm safe and i'm okay and the journey of freedom from ocd actually helped me to learn to be loving towards myself to be gracious to let myself learn in the journey to have flaws oh there's a crazy thought i've got lots of those crazy thoughts it's okay oh i made a mistake it's okay i've got flaws i'm gonna learn in the journey right i'm telling you i had zero zero understanding of that but i let myself learn and what i had to learn is that my view of god created this problem that i'm talking about today this intensity of the threat because god is not pleased with this behavior right because we don't know the love of god i'm doing a lot of work with my kids right now because this is a really really important subject of learning how to look at their behavior and go yeah that's that's not a way that we want to act as a family and bring correction while going does dad still love you yes you still love me does my love change when you act bad and i can see their brain kind of go i'm learning and i am and we continually continually confront and that's why we can't read some of these difficult scriptures in the bible because love is not being rooted in us so out of the root system of a lack of love of course these scriptures are scary if we're not connected to the love of god yes these scriptures will feel scary and you'll go down judgment you'll go down punishment why because your basis your foundation is punishment your foundation of relationship is performance-based and so people around you can say hey don't be so hard on yourself don't take yourself so seriously that sounds a little too intense because i know many of you you've gotten that feedback but it doesn't help but you're going to have to realize the pressure they come under of the perfectionistic struggle with uncertainty distorted meaning and that distorted interpretation has a heavy punishment if you don't solve this eternity's at stake and then as i'll talk about later puts all the pressure on you so ocd for a christian it negates the cross it negates what jesus did it makes it all on you to trust enough to get it enough to feel it and i want to encourage you believers that struggle with ocd the basis of what really torments you is this nebulous feeling that you keep trying to chase and i talk about that in the perfectionistic thing it's the feeling of not just right i'm not saved i don't know maybe i have my salvation okay you read a bunch of scriptures but you still have this like and you pay attention to that and in that is a lie it's a lie but it feels so strong and then when you serve it for 20 years or 10 years or 30 years it just becomes ingrained now any thought you have can be renewed it takes time takes patience takes learning experiencing some thoughts can change in 30 days scientifically proven right it takes it takes that thought pathway not being stimulated stimulated stimulated with that fear fear fear for your fear it's proven you scientifically proven that no matter how long you've had a thought it can change people say i'm 60 years old it's too long well you're believing a lie and it's not even scientifically true you can change thought patterns but you're not going to change thought patterns by force you're going to change thought patterns in love because what love does is it changes the atmosphere so those threats don't come and torment us and distract us i'm going to prove scripturally where you need to be rooted in this and so um [Music] so somebody wrote thank you i'm glad i'm glad it helps i see the perfectionistic feedback somebody wrote as crazy as it sounds i asked the holy spirit to please not leave me now um i i discourage that because that's not going to empower your heart and love so for example take everything that you process with god and try to apply it in a relationship with another person if every day i was saying to my wife please don't leave me please don't leave me please don't leave me is our relationship gonna grow no in fact it will frustrate her because i'm i'm i'm asking a request based on the assumption that at any moment she will leave me and so in the covenant relationship with jesus christ he said he'll never leave you or forsake you even in your worst days he's there he's his a his covenant is stronger than our ability to get it right so i would encourage you to move in a new pattern of really recognizing the love that accepts you and receives you not based on how well you're doing because i want to release you even the person who asked that question i want to release you of the pressure to have to pray a certain way to do a certain thing to like fix this because even if you feel relief in that moment you're going to stay under a yoke of pressure all the time and what we need to learn as ocd strugglers and overcomers is how to be unconditionally loved that's the core battle at the root system of your heart you don't feel that love so let's kind of look at this like what keeps the threats going oh my goodness i'm gonna spend eternity in hell i'm gonna spend it's these two factors that i want you to become more aware of the fear is always projecting what what you the worst case scenario the perfectionism is what puts the pressure on you to go if you don't fix this there are severe consequences i had to actually play out my perfectionistic struggle and actually go to the end of it if i don't do this and i don't do this then while then i'll be and a lot of it ended with i won't be loved i won't be connected to god i won't be long i won't have people people won't love me that's what the fear was all really pointing to that place we contribute to god we contribute to others that that that perfectionistic pressure it's got to be just right everything's got to be just right these thoughts got to be just right now you can kind of look at other areas and you can be relaxed in those areas and you don't have but when it gets to that your your trigger subject just right kicks in every time every time got to get this just right then interpretation comes up because this could be you this thought may have come from you maybe you are this right like i go into like even like sexual unwanted thoughts it means you're a sexual deviant this is who you are it came from you this is from your desire and that uncertainty comes and goes maybe it is right and then it shakes us then anxiety builds and so we develop now a perspective of god and a perspective in our walk uh at fear-based so brothers and sisters you have to recognize that you spend the majority of your day feeding the voice of fear and i think it's very important to realize through the work writing of paul the holy spirit ordained the message god has not given you the spirit of fear now why was paul telling that to timothy because timothy struggled with a lot of fear a lot of anxiety i could give you a ton of reasons why number one he was a young guy he was leading and being an overseer to people that were older than him he had a lot of people arguing and convincing over stuff giving him a hard time and paul to tell him don't get into the he's just going to produce strife don't get into those nonsense arguments which the church could learn a lot of that today because we get into a lot of like really unnecessary arguments that produce strife and he had to say timothy you got a lot going on had a little stomach issues because paul had to tell him hey every once in a while a little bit of wine is going to help settle your stomach so he's got a nervous stomach going on here right i could talk to you about timothy's history paul says i know of the faith of your mother and your grandmother no mention of timothy's father and see in scripture always the genealogies were always mentioned through the seed through what the father has done so we can know timothy struggled and did not have a healthy father role in his life so he struggled with this anxiety struggled with fear-based thinking paul became his spiritual father to fill in the gap so that he could experience the fathering that he needed and so paul was very gracious but very clear when chronic fear is coming your way it's not of god and i find this one statement shakes the church i have people debate with me no this is real fear oh oh okay my bad i didn't know there was fake fear and real fear no mark this is this is this is this is like rational fear okay now i'm not putting a pressure on you that you have to just be fearless 24 hours a day seven days a week we all have layers of fear that we're struggling with and paul's saying god has not given you the spirit of fear now i believe him saying the spirit of fear was giving him giving timothy a spiritual perspective there is something called fear that is a spirit and it roams about in the lives of people spiritually keeping them under the clutches of fear individually familially corporately regionally nationally worldwide amp up fear so you pay attention to it it screams it yells it creates pulsations through your body so that that's where you go all day long in either fight or flight and sometimes the fight or the or sometimes the fight gets you so amped up and you're just all day long striving then the flight causes you to avoid avoid or sometimes be paralyzed where you're frozen and don't know what to do right and paul says something that was profoundly helpful to me it's not god god's not in any of this you say well what if god needs to bring some like corrective word or something he knows how to do it in the context of relationship he is so amazing that he even knows how to bring in a corrective word in a way that is built on faith hope and love in a powerful way he does he knows how to do it you ever had those moments where you recognize something and you're like yeah i need to make that adjustment and when you did it produced fruit and it was powerful that's what i'm talking about here but because of our punishment-based relationship with god we're always waiting for the hammer to fall so we're afraid of god and then we're afraid in our future so if we don't experience the love of god no wonder we look to the future with threats of doom and gloom and the fear just keeps feeding it and the perfectionism puts the pressure on you you got to fix this you got to do better and i believe that you're going to have to realize how much fear is involved in your life and you serve the what-if language of fear if you notice noticing your thoughts what if what if what if what if i don't do this then i'm going to go to hell what if i don't do this so let me follow the train of thought what if i don't pay attention to this and i and i and i go to hell how in any way is that the goodness of the good news of the gospel of the goodness of god that leads us to repentance where is that do you know what that is that fear of punishment it's manipulative you know you can get a reaction out of people you better do this or i'm gonna hit you right whoa that threat right but that's punishment based and it's manipulative i mean some of you need to think about that these thoughts manipulate you in thinking oh this is god so it's it's causing it's it's a part of the godless that needs healing that needs adjustment so listen to your what ifs what are your what ifs what if this what if god what if right notice they're all fear-based so i had to spend a long season detoxing my life of fear learning to be loved and learning daily to grow in facing the things of my life that i keep avoiding and learning to be loved in the midst of all my imperfections i'm absolutely loved unconditionally right where i'm at now you have to realize fear is loud and it's always going to magnify the substance of things not hoped for the substance of things not hoped for it will magnify it and get you to focus in on that and what we focus in on grows so it could be just one thought we focus on it grows but it's a liar because it's fear that fear is a bully and when we when we actually face fear you know there's an interesting scripture and forgive me for this tangent but i i'm a guy who likes tangents and i was teaching my kids we've been in genesis and we're looking at the devil and and and what happened in the garden the serpent and all that and i was reminded of something in isaiah when they talk about oh lucifer how you have fallen and and there's this this scripture there i can't find where it is you can find it on your own where it's it says all the people will look upon him and and don't ask me where this fits and where like what day what what i don't know perfect timeline i don't claim to know perfect timeline i don't even think we should claim to be no perfect timeline but somewhere in the future the nations will look upon him and go wait a second you're the one that deceived the nations there's an implication of like looking at lucifer and going wait you're the one that was threatening it's like illumination will be open of how small he really is and the bully doesn't want you to know how small he is because isn't the louder a bully is the more insecure he is right it's like the wizard of oz all these things so threatening you pull the curtain back and you go oh wow it's like you know i watched this tv show years ago where a guy showed how magicians do some of their magic tricks you know magic tricks it's really just illusion and when you see how they do it it takes away everything and that's why they hide their techniques because it keeps the allure of something that's powerful and you need to know that's what fear does the more it amplifies the more it's wanting you not to see that fears a bunch of smoke and mirrors so it exaggerates these negative outcomes my salvation is at stake here well religious ocd people the way it's presented it's all fear no faith hope and love and it's all on you to fix it and only you can come to terms with realizing that that you have a works based relationship with god no i don't i know it's by grace um all right you may not be ready then for the for the process because you got you got to recognize that when that love and grace opens up it begins to start driving out fear step by step layer by layer you know sometimes we say my obedience is at stake that was a tough one for me because i felt like i always felt like i was disobeying god always and so when people preach on obedience i'm like oh i don't yeah i think i need to i think i need to do something and they would say this statement partial obedience is disobedience first of all i was like what is partial obedience and that kills ocd sufferers because they always have i need things just right and they feel like oh is my obedience just right no it doesn't feel just right and so then you're spinning so i felt like anything i wanted god didn't want that's how twisted it got for me so if i liked a certain activity i felt like god didn't like it and i'd just surrender it and if i got excited about something i felt like god wasn't in it and i had to i had to not do it do you know how much that damages the journey of joy and enjoyment because i saw god as outside any place of enjoyment because i had this pressure-based obedience kind of thing that twisted my thinking so much so if i was dating a girl and really liked her i got to give that up because god doesn't want it because of the twisted way so you don't just fix it by going to counseling over making sure you date the right people that's this gets healed by what's going on down here is my god relationship who's the god that i serve that's why when people say well god this god that who what kind of god are you talking to who who are you talking to because it's it's your god lens that then affects everything is he a god that loves you 100 right now and receives you or if he is a god who's just hitting you with consequences all day long and a lot of times it just it mirrors your upbringing it mirrors your earthly father it mirrors what your mom was like it mirrors a lot of things that's why i always encourage people be aware of how you were how you were brought up what was your foundation on relationship what was it like when you misbehaved was there healthy correction but done in love did you feel loved and empowered do you feel that connection to the love of your parents growing up yeah most people say no it's it's it honestly was not there but it takes time to to recognize some of those patterns so that severity if i don't deal with this i'm going to get a disease if i don't deal with this and many times what we need to do in this the take home is we have to actually face that what has been tormenting us is a lie and i tell the story i repeat it all the time there was this torment i had about that if i didn't listen to the thoughts that kept spinning about things i needed to fix i could end up in eternity in hell and so of course that's one of the biggest threats that can attack ocd sufferers in a tormenting way and i remember that i needed to face it because arguing arguing arguing can make it worse you don't debate with the accuser he'll keep throwing the book at you of accusation he's a terrible prosecutor and so one day i said you know what i'm not going to argue with this anymore fine if i end up in hell then i end up in hell and i will worship god for eternity in hell burning right this would be a mark how could you make light of i'm not making light of it i faced this thing right in the face i said fine it's interesting what happens when you just go fine if that's what's going on that's what's going on but here's the thing the decision i made i said fine if i spend an eternity and help but jesus christ did not die on the cross so that i could be fussing all day long about my eternity he didn't die on the cross that i would be spinning all day so something here in how i'm approaching god needs adjustment so if i'm going to hell then i'm going to hell but i'm going to live a life of freedom from this and i'll worship god in hell and you know what it did it broke the power of the intimidation that thought had it disempowered the threat and many times we need to do is face the threat and go you're just a bunch of lies and i didn't wait for my feelings to come into alignment that is an error we fall into we want the feeling to be fixed so then we go into freedom if you wait for that my friends you will wait your whole life your feelings lie to you because they're under the influence of a wrong reality of how god is dealing with you your feelings are lying to you because they're under the influence of a lie and it's going to take time for those feelings to come under the new direction you set yourself to and let me speak the truth very clearly coming out of ocd is an equivalent to a drug addict coming off of cocaine and you'll need to understand that so when you step out of fussing because many of you religious ocd sufferers you need to take a break from all the preachers you listen to you take a break from even reading the bible and take a break from praying oh my goodness mark telling me to stop reading the bible he's crazy i better turn this off he is a false teacher the problem is not the bible the problem is not prayer the problem is how you approach the bible you read the bible with a punishment-based lens danger danger danger danger take a break take a break because most ocd sufferers they've read the bible through so many times anyways and it's all ingested not in relationship not in covenant it's ingested in an isolated chamber of punishment and your prayers are your prayers god please tell me please tell me i'm saved or please give me reassurance or please do something to follow this lie that i'm following right and we're asking god to debate our lies he does not lie nor is he capable of it so i have to go i've got to reset my questions into engaging the truth and heading in a new direction right this is intense stuff right it's like a drug addict coming off the drug and we'll have to realize that this fear partners with perfectionism you got to make sure you get this stuff just right just right just right just right and perfectionism is a manifestation that we are rooted in the law not in grace because you got to get things just right and the pressure's all on you the burden is all on your shoulders now in the next one the next distortion i'll get into false responsibility because ocd suffers carry this weight on their shoulders that they need to fix things and they take decision and choice and responsibility off the rails where everything comes back to them but it comes out of these areas here that i'm talking about and the threats being magnified so there's some things i want to encourage you that okay let's sit down for a second you i'm going to give you some free coaching and some free feedback right now okay some helpful self-awareness that you need to be aware of okay just sitting here just sharing this with you first thing you need to be aware of is you take your thoughts way too seriously you take yourself way too seriously you have an issue of taking your thoughts and your whole internal world way too seriously and you need to learn to take a deep breath and chill out now i'm gonna i'm gonna make this observation do you notice a lot of times people with ocd they don't really they can lack a sense of humor you can't laugh at yourself can't laugh at stuff that you've made mistakes in can't laugh at your journey and learning can't laugh at you know what i did this you know thank god that thank god that he you know uses my weaknesses and thank god that he's bigger than my mistakes no it's super serious no joy and then they interpret the joy see it really means i'm not saved and and and it's all super serious no enjoyment no delight and i say that to say the answer is not fixing the answer is learning to get relational and part of being relational is like hey it's all right i'm taking a journey i'm learning i'm growing in this is this making sense thank you for those of you that are getting stuff out of this i'm just taking a second just look at the the comments on point yeah i i see that um you know you talk about it being a heart issue yeah yep trust issues insecurities rejections a wrong view of god amen mark you're on point thank you for this video sending you good vibes this ocd actually makes me feel like i'm a bad person right there's that shame stuff there's that like oh these thoughts they they they mean something about you and your identity yeah wow this helps me i can see how this keeps me busy yup me too thank you really you're the only one talking about this i feel like it and and pray for me because sometimes i'm like man why aren't more people talking about this kind of grace in an empowering way um yeah it's helpful glad hello watching all this series from japan fantastic that's wonderful let it empower you i'm afraid and i've been afraid i've backslid so many times oh that's another religious ocd thing a backslid and it's it's a it's a like a concept that then gets fueled by man-made kind of theologies and things like that it makes it like we can just jump out of our salvation like like you jump out of a hula hoop or or slip on some mud um it doesn't really show how much this covenant and what what christ has done for us that is amazing um and i argue with some people like i backslid i'm like i don't know that i buy that i think you were told that you were um a lot of times i see just a broken season of frustration and you assume because your performance wasn't up there you backslid because you were struggling or depressed or maybe you kind of numbed out and so you weren't connected to god and there's there's no allowance for process um so i appreciate the you can always come back to jesus you know and i i think that somebody said that you know i i get concerned of how we talk about like i'm away from god i'm i'm near god i'm away we use this like measurement i'm close to god i feel so close to god and a lot of times it's based on like you're doing good i'm doing good and and i don't i don't use those metrics anymore of like i'm close i'm not close um it's it's it's it's a journey it's not this like i'm close to god now not because then we came up with this term backslidden kind of thing um where people go into sin i i don't you know i don't know that i buy the mindset around that you know and i understand there's scriptures you can use about turning your back and being hardened towards god but ocd sufferers they'll they'll make mistakes and they'll go oh my goodness i've hearted my heart and it's like do you know what hardening of the heart actually is because i can show you that because i've been around it hard-hearted people don't ask for help they hard-hearted people don't even bother dealing with their hard-heartedness so if you go oh my i'm scared i have a hard heart you don't you don't have one you know what i mean when you're hard-hearted you don't think about it you don't even you don't even want to talk about it it's not even up for grabs and resistance and stubbornness and all this thing i mean ocd people think they're like pharaoh you're not like pharaoh pharaoh pharaoh didn't ask for help pharaoh didn't go hey maybe you know some things i got to work on here no absolute resistance absolute resistance you believe i die i think i blaspheme the holy spirit that's a common one right i committed the unpardonable sin you know the sin that's not forgivable which is really absolute 100 hard-hearted rejection of the salvation work of christ and many will see these sufferings that's me that's me no it's not because that concept bothers you right like any believer the thought of running away from god because i would never want that so the fact that it even enters your mind as something that you don't want shows it's not what you want but because of our salvation teaching and a lot of manipulation and i'm sorry to say this a lot of really really bad uh preaching and a lot of stuff that was said to manipulate people and raise them in in legalism and stripped of the grace and power of love because we wanted to control people we utilize tactics to get people questioning you know and then then we see these end times movies and it just scares us right and all the stuff that they they add on to it it's no the foundation was not based on the absolute love of the father the grace of our lord jesus christ the comfort and power and nurture of the holy spirit because that the healing process is aligning with the godhead in the in what's available the love of the father paul and the apostles all mentioned the grace of our lord jesus christ and the love of the father all the times when they were writing and that the holy spirit who does what bears witness to truth empowers you comforts you ocd people don't they don't know how to receive comfort they don't know how to comfort themselves nurture themselves their the grace of god is is not active in their life meaning it doesn't mean you're not saved it means that it's it's been bewitched where now you're trying to do it on your own right and even just saying that spins spends many out oh it means i'm not saved no it means that you were taught a twisted amount of of theology that really just needed to get back to the basics get back to what it means to be loved and the love of the father jesus says if you've seen me you've seen the father i'm the way the truth in life no one goes to the father except through me when i got an illumination of the father i saw it all through the new testament everything goes back to the father it's amazing and that's really what our hearts long for is the love of the father manifested through jesus christ so i got acquainted with the godhead in a new way that helped me to break free from fear power love sound mind power from the holy spirit love from the father sound mind through the word the living word jesus christ who dwells within me that's so cool and i can actually live and move and have my being and make mistakes and be flawed and mess up and so that's the freedom the freedom is actually leaning into the mistakes of our life and the flaws and going i need to learn what it means to be loved versus what it means to run from a fear of punishment because that's what the threats are bringing and you need a sense of humor in your life you need a sense of humor in your life sometimes people will write to me and they'll say um maybe you have an ocd thought and they're like i was listening to a certain kind of music or something and i'll reply back what kind of music do you listen to like wait what are they they're like obsessing over maybe they're listening to the wrong music and i'm like maybe just go play some more and just have some fun turn the radio up and just let yourself celebrate and laugh at yourself because the rigidity has is getting tighter and tighter that law-based perspective will only get more and more rigid because paul says when you follow the law you can't follow some of it you have to follow all of it so jesus said it this way a little leaven leavens the whole lump right you let a little bit of that law and make sure i can do the rules make sure i get all these things right and it just gets worse and worse and worse and ocd is driven by the law and so then we try to solve it by the law i better stop this thought better stop the stop better stop this thought and what happens to the thought gets worse gets worse gets worse and our reality gets altered yeah i i seen some of your comments here i see tears i hope it's good because i wanna speak to your heart cause i'm fighting for your hearts yeah i i you know there's some backsliding kind of thoughts and i again i challenge that i love you and your wife seriously your videos help me get out of my head that's really good somebody heard that partial obedience you heard that one didn't you partial obedience is disobedience we were like yeah it sounded good but it was like wait what like there's something i'm missing i did what i thought god wanted me to do but maybe i didn't do it completely it's like when you break it down it's like a lot of this stuff we we we have good intentions but we like create these mindsets that we go is this really building faith hope and love in my life because i cannot produce righteousness in my effort of following rules i will always fail every sentence and and and i realized because the perfectionism thing in me god's just doing a continual work it got down to like even my sentences i was self-editing sentences i shouldn't have said that because maybe they took this do you know how like tormenting that is but i i recognized it this is not producing power love in a sound mind i've got to kick out the translator the interpreter that goes off the basis off the last one and many of you wrote to me saying i fired my interpreter because we're getting a new one you're going to be loved and god's love is bigger than your ability to get any of this down right i thought my heart was hard once i looked up the definition and didn't believe the definition because my ocd said my heart was hard right right um i said because we're easily controlled and manipulated by others especially when it comes to spiritual matters yes yes and um you know sadly a lot of church cultures work off this because it gets a response if i if i love you and empower you and believe that in your struggles you're going to figure this out and god's going to work with you and you're going to grow that takes harder work because you got to release and trust it's easier to go here's the rules are you following it and punish and get guilt people to respond it creates more avenues of control versus really empowering the body of christ someone told me i'm not listening god speaks and i'm getting irritated because how can i listen if i can't hear anything um person said she told god to tell me myself because i'm i'm not listening man it's in it amazing how people like i told god to tell like like hey god let me tell you what you need to do would you tell her you know or him she's not getting it like what you see what we what we do is like these controlling prayers you know if we can even call him prayers so you know you wrote about the speaking you know somebody's telling you i i'm sorry i'm sorry be released of that i release you of that and i pray that you just you be at peace you know none of us hear from god perfectly and and when when it's time to get something we'll get it and it's not my job to bark down anyone's throat and tell them you're not hearing and you need to you know let god do what he needs to do mark you truly know how to love his christ yeah i'm a learning i'm learning so i'm just sharing what i'm learning but i can't go back i can't go back to to once once you once you see something you just can't go back love covers a multitude of sins it does it does this is helping many of us i have a ways to go but thank you and so do i i never want you to get the impression that i'm off somewhere i'm i'm in you i'm in in this with you and i'm learning because i'm currently in new layers of this but like i said the love when it began and it took time and patience i was like i'm never going back it actually helped me understand the book of galatians where paul's like after coming into grace how do you go back to the law stuff and he's just like really hammering like no this is something he paid for this is your faith and trust in something that was not done by you so spend your life just in gratitude of everything that's been done for you and living that out you know i know i'm getting on a bunch of tangents but i like you your comments is fruitful one thing that's helped me is to remind myself in prayer you're not too far gone you're not too difficult you are a mess but god isn't scratching his head worried about me yeah i think um just keep keep developing a compassionate narrative you know you're you're not too far gone you're not gone at all you're not gone one second everyone on my webstream my son needs me for a second give me just a second i'll be right back don't go anywhere what's it's on the up table but i already checked there i don't know okay you can use the bedroom okay my son needed something so i just needed to help him out with that for a second so i'm back in the back in the comment world here just kind of checking out what you're what you're saying one thing where where were we oh yeah yeah so you said that not too far gone i would even say you're not gone you're gone he's here if you want to be near god he's here jesus is the way the truth and the life he's here you've accepted him now maybe you did it and it was half-hearted you know or maybe it was like you just knew the best you could or maybe you accept him because you're afraid of going to hell or maybe you whatever you want him he's here now what is a struggle is you struggle to feel connected to that now i'm i'm not gonna be like a lot of believers that i hear we'll just ignore your feelings don't i'm not telling you to go the other direction and just numb out your feelings because we teach people to numb out your feelings what i'm saying is your feelings are lying to you and you're gonna need some time to relearn so you need to set your compass while the feelings will beat you up for a little bit anxiety and guilt are the two emotions you will have to overcome you don't overcome them by just like you know trying to punch him you overcome with love and grace grace is what beats guilt out because that guilt conscience always feeling guilty always feeling guilty always being pulled by guilt your conscience has been programmed to listen to guilt all the time and so it creates this punishment-based relationship with god love is what's going to cast out the fear you should do a talk on backsliding yeah i think that i think that i'll give you a summary there's a lot of theological arguments that never made the church better and one of them is can you lose your salvation can you not lose your salvation so that's like me sitting down with my wife and going can i leave this marriage or can i not leave this marriage now you tell me will that discussion do any good for my marriage now what good does it do for us to figure this out now there are scriptures that talk about falling away there's scriptures that talk about deception get that but the way we argued about it made people more afraid of god abandoning them and leaving them and so i don't really buy into the backsliding mindset that we do because what we do is uh we look at somebody and we go oh see uh for example um oh somebody's now an alcohol like they were a church leader now they're an alcoholic they're backsliding really is is is is that it so now they're out because they have a sin issue well you have pride that's sin so are you out see this doesn't make sense oh so now we have like certain things now yes certainly you know leaders there's there's qualifications of leaders and you need to have maturity and all that kind of stuff that's not what i'm talking about because sometimes people need a break from leadership because certain issues in their life of character need work okay and that that that's that's a whole subject in itself i'm talking about in christianity how we think about things like these things are like you're out or you're in well if that's the case we're all out right and this kind of living in sin concept you know it elevates the religious people to these levels of like i'm i'm sinless and john says if you say you have no sin you're a liar so we all have sin issues all of us you you you you me all of us you know people go well you know i had this conversation with somebody once i won't say who it is it wasn't my wife it was somebody else they said i don't have sin in my life and i said well just one minute ago you were telling me about all the anxieties you have and that's fear and the bible says whatever is not of faith is sin so fear is not of faith so you're in sin with your fear thinking now i wasn't trying to be mean but i had to confront this religious mindset and they literally sat at me and didn't know what to say i go right see these arguments that we make so when we say someone backslides then we're all backsliding because we all have days where we we go on our own we follow we we struggle or whatever and and even the ones who say i'm good that's pride it's religious pride and pride is sin right so could someone walk away and harden their heart yes and they don't ask for help and they never will and they never think about it because they're hardened so all of you in the comment section be released from this backsliding mindset you're here in the comment section because you want help and that's a sign of a believer is you want what is good and you want to be well and you want righteousness so there's my talk on backsliding now now so if you think you're backslidden then just go you know what i step back in if that's what you think now i just feel like it it's a very black and white way of looking at things i've seen many believers going on long trails of struggle because really the alcoholic situation i mentioned right and we go he's back soon he's broken-hearted and when we look with the eyes of jesus we go i wonder what he's what he's battling that he looked to alcohol in a way to numb his pain and his heart then you start to see differently the son when he left his father's house in the prodigal son did he stop being his son when he left some could argue yeah some car you know the father was what waiting for him to be awakened and come back and when he came back it's really about coming back to the father's heart connecting to that coming home in that kind of way right so i just want to release you from the pressure and i'm not going to answer these questions perfectly and give polished tayabo on it i'm going to speak to the heart of the matter i'm always going to speak to the heart of the matter um if you leave church to live a life on your own that's backsliding i don't know that's true i don't i can't i know i can't say that in the equation i've seen people leave a church and they needed to leave the church because it was toxic and abusive um the church will say they're backsliding and their abusive culture reinforces that so no i don't i don't know that that's true um because that doesn't that doesn't fit into the big picture of what god is doing because many of you are going through seasons and then the the the church leadership puts these shackles on things instead of recognizing what's going on in the heart that this person's battling that we need to be aware of it's like the mindset jesus said he was without sin cast the first stone and he tells the lady where are your accusers where are your accusers now go and sin no more now you're actually empowered to stop sinning because grace showed up because love showed up right it's easier to control people though that same person oh wait i think i'm missing something that same person told my mom oh oh oh yeah you're right from before that same person told my mom god was mad at me there you go that's a great way to like and my mom told me and i said why and she said and she was like i don't know and i went spiraling right i messed up my faith so much so no matter what god does like even if he has to bring something to correct and that takes time to learn the correction of god if and if you struggle with ocd that's not going to be the first lesson the first lesson is the love of god because you won't you'll think everything's correction you'll think everything god's just because you're scared of him you think he's always mad at you and um but even in that he always gives us a pathway of freedom and people say well i feel like god was speaking the truth to me what does the truth do what does the truth do if you know it sets you free there's freedom from the chains freedom from the pressure freedom from the yoke of bondage right but if you notice our mentalities bind us bind us bind us more and more sometimes i get afraid that god doesn't love me that's the fear fear-based relationship yeah yeah yeah so i hope that i hope that helps i think i think i covered a bunch of the um i think i covered a bunch of the the comments there so where was i and i like to just be able to vamp in this and you know we i'll leave these up so you can go back and review them and see them again watch through them and listen to them again you take your thoughts way too seriously and you have a punishment-based relationship with god now i'm gonna bring this up here give me just a second where are we at so i'm gonna give john a big hug in heaven and yes i'm going to heaven i'm going to give him a big hug because this scripture here is the recipe for mental health this is the beginning of rebuilding mental health right here love has been perfected among us because you know we go back here and we have known and believe the love that god has for us god is love and he who abides in love and abides in god and god in him the foundations on love love has been perfected among us in this now listen to this listen to this those of you under dire consequences of judgment love has been perfected amongst us in this that you may obey everything and get everything right and get your all your thoughts in order i'm being silly it's not what it says that we may have boldness in the day of judgment boldness in the day of judgment so think about this because ocd sufferers are afraid of judgment they're terrified of the judgment that's on them now it's going to happen on them terrified and john says there's no fear in love and love is going to make you bold in the day of judgment when you know you are loved by your father any certain correction or judgment or things he needs to address you are not shaken by fear of it you actually are bold because you realize he's not casting you away into hell he's not you know you are loved by him and it's the love of god that secures you not you getting all your stuff together and fixing it and then he says this he raises the confidence level as he is so are you in the world [Music] that's now a faith message to build you up do you know as i am that's you you're a me in this world we're so busy fussing if he's here they're not there meanwhile god's not even talking about that he's going as you are you're you're me in the world that's how much this stuff is for you and not against you now can you see why the enemy wants to steal your confidence steal your confidence you don't connect to the stuff and so then he gets deeper to the root system there is no fear and love now fear covers an umbrella of all kinds of battles anxiety worry panic attacks obsessiveness that doesn't exist in the presence of what love what you need is love how do we begin to engage love by accepting that you are unconditionally loved right now right where you're at right where you're at not going to be fixed first and then be loved if you keep trying to fix yourself to have peace you will do that the rest of your life you're loved right now and that's the journey you want to summarize every teaching i have on ocd and the tons more videos i'm going to put out you need love you need to learn to be loved and what you need is freedom from a punishment-based relationship with god and a love-based relationship with god he said that perfect love you got that anxiety and that thought and you've been fussing over it for decades and god goes just let love in and the love will kick the fear out for you oh man just knock it out you say oh i see that fear i noticed that thought god i'm loved but i don't feel loved it's okay i'm learning do you see the narrative i'm cultivating it's a narrative of kindness compassion grace but do you know what it really is i'm gonna give you the secret sauce the inner narrative is built on faith hope and love building love building my hope on love building my faith on hope did you hear me building love and the love that god has for me right now not because i'm better right now the love of the father which builds my hope now i'm seeing the future through love not through fear and now my faith is ignited because my vision is learning to be set on what god can do god you see this is what fear has done so badly to christians is it gets us so darkness obsessed and so overwhelmed by negativity god has god said this in isaiah he said though darkness covers the earth whoa all the fearful people go whoa right understandably he goes the darkness covers the earth the glory of the lord will rise it shows where god's saying my glory will work where you think there is darkness now fear will only let you see the darkness faith hope and love will let you see where the glory of god is at work but you have to recognize your basis of how you relate to god as punishment base because fear involves torment see that word torment there and look at what it means a penalty penal infliction the penalty punishment i'm not making this stuff up this is what the original word in the greek means so you have a torment-based relationship punishment-based relationship a penalty infliction based relationship correction punishment penalty right focused on you getting the rules right and john goes somebody who manifests that they don't know what it's like to be loved and so that's why i go what does love mean to you an ocd person if they're honest they don't even know what it means can't feel it don't know it struggle and that's the rebuilding process because that perfect love is going to cast out fear not perfect performance a perfect rule abiding perfect love that only comes from god he's the only one that's got it all we're still learning our love is conditional our love you know we withhold it we we struggle he says are you fierce this is your problem so many of you mentioned these thoughts are so loud right your problem is not anything but this you need to be made perfect not in performance perfect in love you say well how do i do that the next verse tells you you love him because he first loved you so you got to learn to receive stop trying to keep doing something for love and learn to be loved you know learn to be loved right where you are right now okay so there's some other aspects to this that some self-awareness you you anticipate the negative on on the majority of issues you're gonna have to learn to not let worry be your boss anymore you're gonna have to learn daily to start building optimism of hope even when you don't feel like it major you have to learn to step into new ways of thinking while not believing it and it's okay because your belief interpretation is off your belief meter is off i'm going to say that again your belief meter do i believe do i not believe the belief it's off it's broken the meter is broken why is it broken not because you don't believe enough because you don't know what love means so it doesn't let you grow so everything's either you're in or you're out there's no growth journey so of course the belief meter when you measure your belief which i don't think you should sit there and like introspectively measure your belief that's compulsive checking do i believe do i believe do i not believe do i really believe that's the compulsion checking right to try to find reassurance it's love because love lets you go i believe the best of my ability right now where i'm at because i believe in a much more enhanced way now than i did when i was 10 years old way more right i believe way more now than i did 10 years ago but if i was stuck in ocd patterns i would have never let myself grow because perfection doesn't make any room for progress make any room for celebrating step-by-step journey and growth and just taking it one day at a time so you're going to have to learn to detox negativity negative about yourself you're hard on yourself you're going to some self-awareness you're you live a life that's performance based pressure's on you you live under law you live under self-effort everything falls on you to fix another place of self-awareness is your self-cen your self-standard it makes no room for mistakes flaws and pay attention to that last word there learning you're going to need to learn in the ups and downs and ocd prevents you from learning and even seeing what you need to learn period and i want to encourage you because you spend more time responding to fear and cultivating faith hope and love it starts with love because hope is built on the love that god has for us it's scriptural the hope is an anchor to the soul and hope does not disappoint because the love of god has been shed abroad in our heart and faith ties into hope faith is the substance of things hoped for so you start with love and you build your way up and strengthen your hope and strengthen your faith taking steps forward and putting the old thought patterns behind you knowing that it's going to take time for those things to kick in and so we begin with learning unconditional love unconditional love says i'm loved and accepted right where i'm at right now nurture is the love of comfort which says i'm struggling and it's okay i'm having a hard time and it's okay and so practically speaking you're going to have to you're going to have to recognize that you got to see the fruit of the patterns you fall into what are they producing they produce more fruit of the spirit love joy peace etc is it enhancing faith hope and love um i wanted i want to help you to see too that how you hear from god you need to recognize that it'll need some adjustment and practically speaking these threats you'll have to face them in some way to reveal the lies that they are but it's not going to be like your feelings all of a sudden being fixed but i encourage you look at your story look at what you're listening to what's the narrative is this rooted in faith hope and love is this rooted in a father who loves me and has my back and is working with me and is empowering me through the death and resurrection of his son is faith hope and love increasing power love and a sound mind increasing if not i need to be willing to let go of my compulsive ways and the the narrative that i obsess about because the threat is really talking about the story you live by and and for ocd sufferers the story you live by tells you that you must follow this pathway or else doom and destruction follows you and i want to encourage you to challenge the story because no matter where you are what you're going through god is here to walk with you to empower you to and strengthen you and but it'll take some re-learning who he is as a father who who we are as sons and daughters if this has been a help in your life would you consider supporting the ministry work of what we're doing here and go to markdays.com go to the donate if you feel like man i need to really relearn who my father is in heaven i've got a real simple book you can even get it free today download god loves me i mean i'm sorry experiencing god's love as your father i got i got ahead of myself you need to learn how to love yourself in a better way and learning to lovingly accept yourself god loves me and i love myself is a great place i encourage my fellow brothers and sisters who battle ocd you need to get a clearer perspective on how much fear works in your thinking so you can begin to separate it out encourage a book i will not fear i'm always encouraging resources always encouraging materials because i want to see you overcome i want to see you heal and live free so it's an honor to be able to speak to you thanks for letting me take a bunch of different tangents and take time to address your questions thank you so much for everybody who has participated in this share this subscribe even get the alert so that when i go live you can even get alerted that it's happening so you can be a part of it so thank you so much everybody it's an honor to be a voice in your life and in your journey i'll see you next time

Channel: Mark DeJesus

Views: 14,630

Keywords: OCD, OCD Overestimating Threats

Id: GFLXbjpH2Yk

Length: 87min 50sec (5270 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 16 2021