#theEncounter Discussion | Bethany Church

praise the lord y'all hello how are you welcome yeah so glad you could join us for our s conversation yes is this the connections the family the eye what is this which one is it we're on the bethany connections on facebook friday afternoon okay it's twelve o'clock twelve seven okay we're calling that something else now right we're gonna call it conversations yeah conversation conversations yes welcome to bethany conversations yeah uh friday afternoon yeah yeah and those you watching on sunday um be a part of our conversations group that's right so you can watch early on friday um not have to wait until sunday at 10 o'clock to watch you're watching from around the nation are you kind of geographic geographically dislocated from us join the connections church so we can get you further engaged and start to take you through our embrace curriculum get you exposed to all our lifestyle ministries those things are exclusive to those people that are in the connections church as members virtual members of our church worldwide yeah yeah it's gonna be cool so join us um today so uh yes the message yes you remember it yeah okay i got you yeah oh if i don't remember i hope you hope you remember yeah it's only been a few minutes right i still haven't should be in there yeah um it's funny we were mine and i were actually taping something yesterday okay um it's going to air monday and we got on the conversation of how most people have business goals yeah finance goals but we lack in the area of character goals absolutely you never really hear that well successful people talk about it but most average people don't have a written statement or vision statement of what what type of person they want to be so what conclusion did you all draw from that that my my belief okay is that we oftentimes use money success career to compensate for character flaws so that was your way of saying that many times we become comfortable with our character which is why we don't set goals for it yes we feel that we don't feel the need absolutely i think you can grow the area i think you're right so we make a whole lot of money nothing wrong with that get great jobs have all these things but we're still empty individuals or the same person we were well because part of that is we we are in danger of pursuing friendships that may challenge us to make more money may challenge us to play a better game of basketball challenge us to play better video games but how many people do we have in our lives to challenge our character and who we've given permission to speak to our character yes yes that's an issue for us absolutely you know so we're we're we're good uh telling each other where to go for the latest the best dinner in town but do we tell each other where to go to get the best us right right okay and because the sermons on transformation right when you're teaching on that's the that's the the bible talks a lot about transformation absolutely individual character change in the whole piece but i you know people write vision boards nothing wrong with all that stuff but we very rarely put up there the men's thing you put up who you are today that's right who you want to be later yeah and we're never really taught how to overall pursue us how to pursue that yeah i i think that um what i've seen i think i think you if you don't intentionally surround yourself with people that love you you love them and you trust them that they're going to speak into your life not based on insecurities not based on jealousies or envies but actually want to see you better yep understanding that strength of character will carry us long after the strength of resources yes yes you know so you know you need people that have permission basically to tell you when you're wrong and you not be offended by the reality but we tend to surround ourselves with confirming friends yeah and affirming friends rather than character challenges absolutely okay absolutely and some some people um are scared we were in another panel talking about this they're scared to deal with them because it's so um sensitive and they're afraid to actually deal with them so they kind of hide and you know dress it up and yeah i think that some of us create relationship atmospheres where we present eight things that are good about us but if you want to be friends with me you have to avoid talking about yeah these one or two things i know national pastors who staffs whose associates know not to bring up something negative unless they bring it up okay if they bring it up you can bruise the subject but even then yeah you can't take the conversation past the a subject that they presented okay okay so so what they're doing is surrounding themselves with people that support their dysfunction and never challenge them to grow absolutely and when you do that enough you become uncomfortable with people who will challenge you yeah you know i think in relationships a lot of times male female whatever significant other there is in your life character development is not part of that relationship that's true yeah you're right because you can't talk to me about certain things yeah that are going to disturb me foundationally right right you suppose you're supposed to just love me as i am and deal with it i need you to lie to me when i ask you when i'm challenged in another area of my life i need me to come to you and ask you the same question yeah and you tell me i'm okay right knowing i'm wrong knowing that you know eventually because we eventually we wait for the negative characteristic to explode somewhere else other than where we are okay and then can say well i have been meaning to talk to you about that for a long time yeah but at that point for me you could have helped me avoid the situation yeah but i wasn't sure that your love trusted me enough to talk to you about it that's the thing so it's more of a love and trust oh yeah that's true yeah oh yeah yeah yo yeah you're gonna love someone part of the reason that we hide our histories from people and i'm not saying you gotta you know disclose everything that ever happened to you right but you can't hide things that are asked right yes or hide things that you know have have created issues in your life right that are going to create issues in the relationship yeah and and issues in the relationship occur and you have no explanation for it not because you don't know yeah but because you don't want to talk about it right so you do that kind of thing would you not sure that the other individual loves you enough yeah to accept all of who you were yes yes to me love is i can hear how you were i need to hear how you were yeah because adults need the privilege of evaluating whether they want to deal with their history or not yes i need to know that your love for me is strong enough to accept who i was before i was transformed yes yes but don't ask me to accept something that's going to cause a daily problem in our lives right right okay so true okay and for most of us uh i don't know about you a lot of sessions i have with people you know they act like they didn't know some of that information no i didn't know and they went in with that information that damage and stuff you just talked about they know and then wonder why they saw the person do it to everybody else and never thought they would do it to them exactly but you know people on their best behavior before you marry them yeah that's true they are they are yeah in the impressive stage if they're acting crazy something's wrong with that right yep if they stupid before before yeah there's a problem with that absolutely absolutely because one of the things that um it it kind of i wouldn't say it surprised me some okay is that the more i meet highly successful people and the more i get to know them the more shocked i am because i thought in my naivete that if you've reached this level of status that some we all got flaws i'm not saying the person has been perfect yeah but you would think that a person that reached this status wouldn't be so insecure so angry so damaged so that would be nice wouldn't it yeah because it looks like they got it going on because of this great success and you're like wow because the environment in which they have excelled if it's a corporate environment they've learned how to suppress those career damaging emotions and responses if it's their own business the employees have to adjust to them okay and they don't allow this negativity that they have this dysfunction to interact with their customers okay so the customer doesn't know the real individual the employees do but the employees want to keep the jobs right right that is so true yes sir and it's like you look at a celebrity when um something happens in a relationship with them like how could you do that to that person my thought is we get the person that the media shows us we're not going home to live with that individual and got to deal with them on a daily basis we have a relationship with the filter not the individual right right and that outer man that we've created is our filter for the world yeah so people deal with that and rarely do they find out who we are yeah so there's this issue of do you really know me yes yeah because you may have a relationship or a transaction going on with my filter that i've created right and which makes me acceptable yes but again i'm going back to fact some people think i've got to hide this stuff because if you really knew me you wouldn't love me right promise is a time bomb yes it is because it comes out yeah the pr the pressure of a relationship relationships are designed to uncover you yes relationships are built to reveal the inner you yes yes and your relationship with god same way all day long what's that song the closer i get to you the more you make yourself and the closer you get to him the more he starts to show you because the biblical principle you talked about this i think with moses and somebody else our gift progresses faster than our character oh yeah you know our get we can flow on our gift i hate to use the word perfected because you never really perfected it but you're almost there but our character seems to be dragging behind and that's i think that's why we see so many biblical characters moses putting his hands up she goes away strikes the rock water comes out calls down this does all this stuff and then you said that pressure situation yeah man instead of speaking to the rock your character gets in the way here comes the moses underneath the egyptian yes yes david fighting goliath yep ruling the kingdom phenomenal does all this stuff phenomenal a little thing a situation of bathsheba and then him doing a census one day and god says bruh you're a great king but your character is getting in the way and that's all of us one of the things i didn't get to that i'm hoping not to forget is that you know saul gets anointed chosen saul then hides behind the stuff in his life god sends someone to fetch him out yeah saul starts to achieve victories and then saul gets drunk on victory yeah and starts to decide which part of god's will he likes the will that gives him what he desires which is victory yeah he doesn't like the sacrificial part wow of winning with god and there is a sacrificial part in winning with god yeah that's going to be cool doctor i can see that all of mine i can't wait to see so you go into that scripture right oh yeah that's gonna be nice oh yeah but you're right yeah we get we get drunk off our accomplishments drunk of all this stuff and will smith said it uh earlier this year late last year he's like you can't out achieve your childhood issues he said he said i made all these movies had all this money i did all this stuff but i was still that scared little kid and people would have thought will smith missed the fourth of july no and he said i was still that scared little boy and eventually i had to deal with it what's that that i saw the actor has to behave during the movie as if he does not know the conclusion yep now we know the conclusion yep and we conduct ourselves like we don't know and right god gives us all this word to show us these different outcomes i win i win i win but i don't conduct myself as though i win so so god challenges us to continue to grow personally we were talking to somebody one of these panels they're all blended in together yeah psychologists i didn't know this but it hit me a couple years ago and psychologists proved this that at the age of 30 around age of 30 your childhood issues start coming out okay the stuff you forgot about it's like this window from 30 to about 50 something yeah where something in you just starts coming out to deal with your childhood stuff you know what it is you ask oh it's real simple okay the pressures of commitment and responsibility start to reveal what we've been able okay to hide for the first 30 some years of our lives yeah that's true which is why a lot of this stuff if it's not delivered or healed you take it into the next major relationship yes yes and then if it's not delivered you pass it to the children yep mm-hmm yeah become one of them senior people that's always mad angry bitter they missed that window and um somebody was a member here was saying well you know i'm in their 20s well i'm feeling that now i said the difference is you're in a place where every sunday wednesday and lesson your character is being challenged all the time so the process is sped up where you're not like you know some of us well actually all of us in our 30s 40s 50s still managing some time to find out yeah like if you can get it in your early 20s get it then i think i think our parents you know i i came from a family where they challenged your thinking very early in life and asked you why yeah did you do a certain thing so they taught us how to think yeah now that is no guarantee sure because when i got away to college the security of my upbringing caused me to be curious about other thought processes yeah and i started thinking in ways that would get me to the results that i saw my fellow alumnus achieving and they weren't all positive so i spent a freshman year trying to achieve what i saw them achieving what i saw as popularity yeah um which and this is insane what i'm about to say trying to be unique but like everybody else at the same time yeah yeah that is that is magnet no one knew was so confused right i want to be special i want to stand out but i want to look just like everybody else yep i want to do everything everybody else is doing yeah because there's an insecurity and actually being unique absolutely absolutely so we end up conforming mm-hmm rather than trying to honestly transform it there you go i adjust to outsize allow it to shape me yep so i build a better filter and never discover who i am yeah so i get to the career goal and miserable as i can be yep because you know internally the only thing that's developed is my title escalation absolutely and my income absolutely i have a friend that is has done really well in his life and when i tell you he has not developed in character from the time i met him as a freshman uh absolutely okay thing that has saved him he's been working with technology okay so he hasn't had to interact with people with people yeah wealthy i talked to him 10 minutes and i've got to correct him many times yeah remember who you talking to kid it's the same guy yeah with achievement attached right yep and and god shows us so much about um heaven success is great all those things are good but the bible does say all of us are going to go through the fire yep and the thing is what's going to outlast that fire not our wealth not our fame not our not our success or our popularity all that stuff's going to be burned up with the hopes that all of us will go through that we will make it in that's in corinthians somewhere yeah job's test was not about his possessions his test was about his character his relationship with god yeah and job passed that test yep yeah it was a character thing and god will consistently test your character well we understand isn't that what a trial is all about yep yep to test your character are you that same super safe person when things are going well when you go through this hardship i had a conversation with a person yesterday going through right now and they thought they were being mature until i started talking to them okay then all of a sudden it was oh i hear you yeah you know because i don't know yeah but i your your spiritual maturity to me your spiritual destroyer you speak in tongues you pray he's do all this stuff well that's cool but the bible shows us spiritual maturity is more in character and how we act absolutely than how all the gesticular stuff that we do in church because the gift is perfect now god does give you the leeway and how it is expressed but sometimes we can express that thing in a way that detracts from the gift that we have yeah because a lot of times we make a gift personal in this sense we want the gift to build reputation yeah not try to build our character to match the weight of the gift right right do you have questions she's looking at these guys and just running their mouths quick sorry how can you break those generational chains of self-doubt more importantly how do we not pass them on to our children i think it's difficult to get started but once you start and the difficulty is getting to recognizing the emotional thought process patterns in our lives our responsive patterns our thought patterns our feeling panels once you can recognize those patterns you can connect the dots back to the cause until a lot of people want to break that influence that curse but are unwilling to be historic about their own lives you can't break it unless you're willing to recognize source yeah and speak if you will to the source and when i say speak to it not just you know be gone but address the source right and then look at the pattern from that point in your history that produce your present reaction yeah if you're not willing to do that you won't break the you won't break the pattern the continuity of generational behavior okay that makes sense okay how do we balance pushing someone to become better in justice or just accepting them for how they are i mean the person has to be first willing to be open to change the other thing too is i think some people make the mistake of trying to correct without proper relationship to me where there's right relationship i may not like what you're saying but i trust you enough to accept what you're saying even though it's hurting me you know for me to hear it and it's weird i don't know about you but i've noticed the children will adopt the suggestion of someone else and you'll find out about the suggestion when they say something like i can't do it or i'm not good at this am i i'd do a garden thing who told you you couldn't do it right yeah you told you weren't good at and then they have to you have to rely on the love relationship and the trust yeah that if others say you can't yeah i can show you how yep yep and then methodically begin to break down that barrier of doubt that doubt creates yeah you know what's that thing proverbs says like a an offended person is like a castle yeah you know yeah and like bars on a window you know that that that that offense cannot be really addressed until you show me that you love me yeah and i trust you enough to allow you into that place yeah of doubt and fear absolutely yeah yeah and i think the other part the question was what do you do to lead the person alone so i a person that's unwilling to change you can't force them into challenge you'll waste your time and and i think you're right i think i've had to um not abandon but take my hand off people yep because i realized that sometimes you're trying to change a person and you want you facilitate the change and you want more for them and they want for themselves at the time right and unfortunately human beings have to go through pig pen situations yeah for a length of time that would seem like an eternity to someone else yeah they have to go through these pigment situations before they come to themselves yeah when they come to themselves and realize you know what i can still hear pastor nick's head and my voice voice in my head i can still hear bishop's voice in my head let me go back to that yeah and what used to bother me i used to resent people calling me for help that i hadn't heard from in years yeah because my first thing is why aren't you talking to your present pastor well i don't have one why i couldn't find one like you then what took you so long to come yeah what is that pride pride yeah yep they can't come back admit that you're wrong yeah pride has to take a hit before you get help yeah and leadership question for you on this one because i've heard you say on a couple occasions um you'll wait until the person's ready to have a conversation like you you want to talk about it but you know it's not there and you said good leaders see everything but correct a little yeah overlook a lot overlook a lot yeah so can you go on the explanation of knowing when to put your hand on when to take your hand off and kind of let the person go through yeah um some experiences if i'm if if i'm offering advice and i know i have the answer because it comes from here and the person is giving me 12 reasons for why they think they need to do something else i'll simply say okay yeah okay and some people don't want you to say okay because okay says to them you don't care right but if you're showing me you don't want my help then it's fruitless for me to continue to force myself upon you right so i just say okay and what they want eventually what i've found in my sessions over the years they actually want you to come around to their way of thinking yeah but i think but i think but i think but i think but i think but i think but i think yeah and i just wait now and say okay what do you mean by that you've come up with your own answers you know evidently you don't need one from me yeah i'm glad you came to see me yeah yeah i believe because you're sowing seed in background absolutely okay shouldn't we try to strike a balance between being brutally honest versus being a sycophant i think that concept of brutal honesty is an incorrect application of help the whole point of counseling is not an execution it may require some wounding but not fatally yeah you know people don't get that you know that keeping it 100 thing yeah is an excuse to be insensitive absolutely okay and i know that's going to get me some letters and stuff but that keeping it 100 is is an excuse absolutely not to think about what you're going to say a and how it's going to land b yep okay they say grace grace and truth go together you can tell the truth with grace but you know what's crazy the people that love to keep 100 don't like it when people can't know and i think if you're sensitive to a thing it ought to give you sensitivity for the thing yes yes okay i know we are made in the image of god but sometimes i feel like i am just not living up to his standards how do i get over the guilt of feeling like i am failing god stop doing the stuff that makes you feel guilty you know deep answer you know just i think sometimes we're surprised when we're um convicted god reminds us what's right i think we feel condemned when he's just trying to encourage us yeah yeah i love you so i'm gonna help you yeah you don't have to work for his love he already got it it's just he corrects you so you can be better and and he says the way you show me you love me is to do what i say yep then the way you show me that i'm your father is to allow me to lead you they are the sons of god yeah okay yeah can you talk a little bit about how to find the right people to support us someone who won't take advantage of our insecurities i think people are a little too premature revealing all of themselves too early in relationship now i don't know if you've ever run into this but i've talked to people who've told me they do relationship things because they want the person to know they're interested and then find out that the person had another agenda but they but they find out sometimes months sometimes years later that the sheer fact of revealing all of yourself immediately before any relationship or trust was developed made the person cautious yeah i saw this thing where getty when he was going to hire someone would take them out to dinner and this falls into every conversation being an interview and his number one indicator whether he would hire was whether the person salted their food before they tasted it he said if you'll do that without tasting it what kind of decisions are you gonna make in my company not more careful about what you put in your body and he would go through the dinner glad we had this time together yeah but i don't need somebody to make decisions like that wow and they would never know why he didn't call him back wow you know it's it's um you can share your ministry with millions but you have to be very wise about who you share your life with yeah we tend in this culture to share our lives with anybody that'll listen yeah i watch i watch these social media platforms and i am astounded what people share with folk that will never meet them yes yes i'm astounded it's their life that's the crazy it's their world and it's got to be doing something to their psyche because some of them that are popular they do it to get more followers more attention more money but that has to be damaging to you long term to be that vulnerable to that degree and to build basically pimp yourself out a little bit like yeah that's what i think yeah you know but i think the issue for us is is that for every one or two people that you think follow you there's three to five that are saying that's wacky i don't want to be associated with that yeah yep so all you want are the people that will never criticize your dysfunction and you call them friends okay is there a difference between self-confidence and self-esteem is it possible to have one without the other i don't think so i think they're together yeah i think the two sides are the same coin if i don't feel good about myself it's hard to have confidence and if i don't have confidence it's low confidence is usually not tied to high self-esteem right yup yup literally yeah how can you help a person build their self-esteem through ministry do ministry through or do doing ministry through ministry is that the right way to build your self-esteem through ministry in the sense of they may be talking about okay how does ministry help self-esteem okay i think it definitely can yes a telling you giving you the diagram for who god created you to be yeah and be becoming productive within that diagram right so the outcomes in your life change okay because failure continued year after year does not help your confidence or your self-esteem no no you know so start to add up some victories okay that god would appreciate god would be pleased with i think ministry can help you overcome okay yeah oh my my mind with the first people using the title to yeah well you know that's the negative that's the thing you know yeah you know call me reverend yeah i don't have anything else unless you call mcgregor yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and yeah okay i have been hurt by spiritual leaders who just say i told you so when i make mistakes is this god's judgment or should or just a person's opinion of me how can i tell the difference i think fathers that correct me for only okay i think fathers will lovingly restore you correct you help you get you on your way they're going to include that i told you so in there somewhere but there's going to there's a certain care to it okay that a father has versus a mentor and a regular pastor that's from my experience okay you know what i'm saying but let's talk about the responsibility in that transaction okay because what i told you so implies yeah is that that person was given advice and decided to do their own thing yeah so if there is no responsiveness to the voices that have been applied assigned to your life to help you and you have to keep coming back and they're saying why did you do that i told you not to do it there's a responsibility in the in the relationship right to do as you are instructed agreed agree but if you don't do it then and then you're going to feel upset because the person says now watch what happens if you've done that a dozen times you'll find the grace for the conversation diminished and you get well you don't get well why did you do it because you've given that excuse ten times yes uh what were you thinking you've given that excuse mm-hmm so now they said well i told you so yeah yeah because you're not responding to anything else so both of those but there's a responsibility in a mentoring or fathering situation yeah yeah yeah change is often voluntary but can also be involuntary how do we adjust our response to involuntary change without losing who we are well yeah okay here's the thing all change does not change me so i've got to know who i am and establish an identity in christ jesus so that the seasons don't alter my character or my identity yeah a lot of times when we're not sure who we are we'll respond to cultural suggestions okay and if you're not careful that means your cult the culture suggests a new identity every 45 or 60 days and if you're not settled in who you are you'll chase those suggested identities all year long yeah you know you'll watch certain programs and they'll tell you you ought to be thinking this and they'll start then next month you know it's like fashion right you ought to be wearing this you gotta be wearing that and we try to pursue those identities and you broke yeah and you've got a bunch of stuff that's out of season that you can't wear again because the suggestions were not eternal they were temporary yes sir yep okay does self-confidence always lead to success no no no no you can have a low self-esteem and be successful yep it's your work ethic and you can have high self-esteem and still fail absolutely can you talk a little bit more about forgiveness of others but more importantly how forgiveness of ourselves when we keep making the same bad choices okay you want to take it first sure um to me the hardest person to forgive is yourself because you see all everything about you um forgiveness of self to me is when you forgiveness versus a perception change right i'm changing the way i see this person or this thing which allows me to change my reaction towards that right i the way i've learned to forgive myself i think a lot of people they struggle to forgive themselves because when they think about that flaw or the mistake they make the first thing is they say is i can't believe i did that okay and then one day i was driving in the car i still remember the street i was thinking about some a mistake i made i said i can't believe i did that and something in me said believe it and when i finally believed it and thought about who i was at the time my mindset my reactions i said i can see why it was wrong too it was still wrong so i can see why i did that this weight came off of me absolutely because i for the first time i was realistic about who i was at that time you weren't in denial in him yeah and denial would lead to a struggle to forgive yourself yeah i i think not connecting the dots as to why something is happening continually now if it's a once-in-a-lifetime incident it may be harder to discover the cause right but if it's something repetitive yeah here's what happens there's some compensation in the mistake that you are receiving which causes you to pursue the same thing yeah whether it's acceptance whether it's momentary feeling like you're loved but something in the transaction is compensating okay you know you've counseled abused people i've counseled abuse people yeah one of the questions i ask is why do you stay and once i get to what the compensation is and usually when they see it yeah you know one lady i remember distinctly she said it was a promise i made to myself okay that i wouldn't come from a broken family so she took the abuse because of that promise yeah and the compensation for her when the whole world said you should leave yeah was that she was able to say to herself and say to her friend she had a nuclear family wow wow that was the compensation that's deep but it makes sense though oh yeah yeah and all relationships produce compensation yeah we call it we call it reciprocation but all relationships produce compensation yeah and sometimes in a bad one the compensation is addressing something yeah that doesn't even make sense to the individuals yeah yes illogical yeah yeah that's why it's emotional yep yeah it's our continuous sins or something that's you know so so someone will leave a good relationship for a bad person and stay in a bad relationship because the conversation yep that's true want to know we are out of time are we oh yes well real quick just just yeah she's got another question too you want to do one real quick we'll do one more okay how do you position yourself for change got to think first there is no change without a change in thought process yep none how to get to a new thought process check out the patterns that have produced results they were not advantageous yep the patterns will reveal the thought process change the pattern change the outcome yep okay yep all right cool so real quick announcements real quick we had some people drop off some more backpacks if you need them call the church extension 113 kathleen medley will make sure you get them um if you know a needy family that needs them uh we have a bunch to give out still okay uh this coming sunday we're not doing ten times better uh but not pastor luke said okay that service bishop did a message for pastor lucette one of our harvest pastors it's going to be streamed on both of the church and his yes oh it's going to be someone across probably the cross country yeah cross it and we're going to stream it on hers and on ours okay so you can watch that service at six o'clock that's cool we'll watch it share it yeah and do all that good and then we'll be in ac they see it for an outdoor service at four four o'clock yes at um what's the name of the church um pastor john howard senior yes at four o'clock we'll put it up hope hope church in atlantic city is on sunday at four o'clock uh outdoors outdoor service in your car in your car yes in your cars and if you can't um if you can't make it we'll we'll share it on our your streaming service and we'll share it on our platforms sure sure all right see y'all take it easy

Channel: Bethany Baptist Church

Views: 293

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Bethany, baptist, church, David Evans

Id: Wls6d7LhsLI

Length: 42min 36sec (2556 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020