Trust - Dr. Henry Cloud

[Applause] hey guys hey um so Gary's not here it's Super Bowl Sunday [Laughter] Pasadena yeah right just watching just watching pregame shows you know he is right anyway so um and by the way how many are here for the first time welcome this is a cool place um Tori and I have been here uh for I don't know how many years now and but I just want to tell the people here for the first time um don't judge the preaching by today okay I promise it's better than this Gary will be back is he back next week yeah that'll be good so give us another chance all right but to honor here have you all noticed he's kind of got this thing he does every now and then where he starts out with his these this cheesy little list of like bad jokes have you all noticed that so Gary this is in your honor I brought the psychologist jokes um how many narcissists does it take to change a light bulb just one how's it in the world revolves around him a Freudian slip is when you say one thing and mean your mother the best 40 in slip when I ever heard was the guy said yeah I went to the first Thanksgiving um dinner with my in-laws and I turned to my mother-in-law and I meant to say pass the butter and I said you stupid witch you've ruined my life kind of slipped out um receptionists to the psychologists uh doctor there's a patient who here who thinks he's invisible uh tell him I can't see him right now that's all my psychologist jokes I do I do have a thank you thank you um so I do have a little appeal for empathy I think I think the last time um I I talked to y'all I was in the midst of my uh had almost three years where I couldn't walk and I've had three surgeries and now I'm up and walking again um but it is a great it's a great weight gain program to not walk for three years because they got really fat and um anyway I'm down 22 of it now I'm on my way but I have a couple of uh things I discovered I wrote them down here um after a month of dieting I lost 30 days [Laughter] that's about it let's let's get into why we came today um so how many of you have ever been betrayed or let down in a relationship okay the rest of your in denial it just happens right we do get betrayed bad people happen to good people sometimes there were no signs that we could have gotten betrayed like that sometimes there were signs and we missed him there's reasons for that but sometimes we experiences and it is a part of life in fact it was God who said or the Bible says this the Lord he's looking at humans and it says in Genesis 6 he says so and he was looking at how they were hurting each other basically and it said that the Lord was sorry that he had ever made them and put him on the Earth it broke his heart you know I read that as I was thinking about today and I was thinking you know what that pretty pretty much can express what any of us had probably felt at some time in life about someone or some scenario I regret that I got involved with that person or that I met them or that I trusted them and what does get us in a relationship where we can be betrayed or let down because in some ways those are different but we end up getting hurt is when we make ourselves vulnerable to someone in some way that we can actually get hurt so why would we do that here's why because if we don't if we can't trust and we don't trust we'll have no life because trust is the fuel of life it drives everything in fact your system is wired psychologically neuro near the neurobiology the neurology the you know spiritual wiring everything about you all the way down your spinal column it is wired to 24 7 ask one question before any other question and it happens all the time that you're awake and alive and asleep am I safe for example the last 30 seconds I think you've been breathing you know why because your system is ascertained it can trust the air but what if you got a little whiff of a gas fume or the air felt like it changed in some way some kind of signal what would you do you would pull back you would hit pause and you'd try to figure it out now here's the problem we're wired to do that but we also have another wiring in life and that is our experience in life that gives us patterns that sometimes we're wired to trust people we shouldn't Trust and we don't see it unfortunately sometimes we do but how many of you have trusted somebody and you looked back and said you know what when I look back should notice that A B C or D you see we get wired into into patterns I remember a woman in a group one time who said I get it I've been married nine times to nine abusive this is a true story to nine abusive men and and now I'm not going to do that again and this lady says maybe we'll shut up you you haven't been married to nine abusive men you've been married to one abusive man with nine different names because she could always find the same one somehow so this thing you know that we're in this dilemma in that we were where you're literally wired to trust biochemically that's the way life starts a mother and an infant when they look and you're wired with these things called mirror neurons that you've all read about that some of you experienced on a date last night right you called your friend oh my gosh we had such a connection well that's a drug trip [Laughter] it's called oxytocin and you were getting married in some way and that's good just you know wait till the ether wears off before you sell the farm but we're wired to move towards people that God put it in us because we need to connect and if we can't trust people our lives will be small but sometimes we're wired to trust the wrong ones and today we're going to be talking about basically five things you can look for the Bible talks about it and all of science talks about them about how to know when I'm getting to a false yes or winning when I may be saying no and I could trust someone because here's another thing our trust muscles can be broken if you've been wounded there may be people right in front of me Tori's sitting down here we had an experience yesterday where we were we were talking to this guy on the golf course and we said sir you're married he said no you know I got a girlfriend or are you going to marry her I don't know we're still trying to to you know kind of figure it out and so how long have you known her he said 40 years true story true story he said yeah I went to her wedding [Applause] anyway they got divorced and now you know they reconnected and and it turned out everybody loves her he just can't pull the trigger no I just saw five women look at their boyfriend by the way speaking of boyfriends have y'all noticed like this church is like where all the young beautiful people come if y'all notice that how many of you are single in here okay I want you to stand up no seriously just stand up stand up if you're single yeah all right okay now everybody look around and and pick out the one that you want to go share the peace with the Lord with right there you go but sometimes there's this you know afraid right and our trust muscle can be broken so we're going to hop into the science of trust and kind of how it works and what I've learned over the years and studying this is here's a lot of science to this but like all of science that I've I I always get born again again because I am a clinical psychologist and you know in the hang out in the leadership performance world and you read this research and it's like oh my gosh look what they discovered and I go wait a minute Solomon said that in Proverbs like so we're going to talk about the science and also you know the things that God says about trust so one of the most powerful ones that starts this is he he does say in Proverbs 3. let love and faithfulness never leave you bind them around your neck and write them on the tablet of your heart love we know is key to a very good life but faithfulness this ability to be trusted and to look for faithfulness in the ones we trust you put those two together and you've got love and you've got high performance and they go together and we need to write them on our hearts so we're going to dive into this a little bit you know it's impossible to not trust as I said and have a big life I was sitting on a plane I just wrote a book on this um actually you can I I'm really not trying to push folks but if you go on Amazon you can't pre-order it's coming out next month but I'm sitting on a plane you know when I was working on it and the guy goes what are you working on and I said well I'm doing some research on trust and he goes huh well I don't trust anybody I said really he said no he said I learned a long time ago you can't trust people he said I only trust myself I said well I'm a psychologist and you're crazy so what do you tell me I said you know you're psychotic and he's looking at me like somewhere between that wasn't nice and I'm going to throw you out the window I said psychotic means out of touch with reality if you tell me you don't trust anybody you're out of touch with reality he said what are you talking about I said look outside we're at 40 000 feet did you get yourself up here don't tell me you don't trust anybody you're trusting a couple people up in that cockpit that you've never even met you trusted a guy how do you know he didn't put chocolate milk in the gas tank you just ate the food don't tell me you don't trust and your life would be really small if you didn't but my hunch is when I hear something like that from somebody they have been burned in some significant personal way and we got four hours to tell me your story he did and it was true as it always is trusting is huge so what do we need to do it well well I think we need some markers so let's jump at the first one the most important or not the most important but the most foundational one is one that underlies everything is we trust someone when we feel and experience that they understand me We Trust when we feel understood and what do we mean by that well basically this gets back to the early mirroring we talked about it's the first thing that humans are wired with is when you have an emotion and even the pre-verbal child senses that Mom did oh you're not feeling you know and you hear it in the tone or they they laugh together this that and the other she gets me and so what am I going to do it's going to propel me towards the one that gets me and understands me and I'm going to connect and that bonding is going to even make my brain size bigger physically it's going to change my immune system it's going to change my body weight I'm not going to have failure to thrive syndrome because of the connection that's basically built on first being understood a lot of relationships go south he comes home one day after 10 years of marriage and there's a note says I'm gone and he's like what well he shouldn't be surprised because she's been trying to tell him for a long time but he's gaslighting it well that's not true it's not that bad I'm not like that no you and negating somebody's reality instead of understanding somebody's reality because it's the basic connection and understanding where somebody is that makes the bridge for us to even bring them over to a different opinion if that were to be the right thing I got called into a situation one time where the CEO and the chairman of the board of this big Global entity were fighting and about to blow it up and half the board was siding with a chair and half with the CEO and if it blew up it would be a big deal you would know the name of it you'd read it in all the newspapers hundreds of thousands of lives would be affected and it was about to blow up so I get called in to try to facilitate this breach and Trust and so we go in we lock ourselves up in a hotel for a weekend and I started the meeting kind of getting everybody to tell a little bit about you know where they were and start on the same page of facts and it was really tense but it was cordial and then after the CEO and the you know the chairman said a few things the CEO said a few things that kind of back and forth for a moment and then the chairman stops and he takes his booklet and he closes it he looks at the board and he says I'm done here you guys can have it good luck and we said that everybody knew what that meant and the board is like oh Enterprise kind of Frozen I didn't know what to do and I still don't know why I did this but he's walking out the door and everybody's going oh no the sky is going to fall in and I got up and I ran in front of him and I sat down on the floor in front of the door and I think he stopped because when you see a crazy person you don't quite know what to do and I said look you can walk out of here but if you do you will have set into motions and things that can't be undone so will you sit down for a minute and he looks at me I mean this and this is like a big I don't mean physically big but a real powerful I achieve a higher highly achieved guy um kind of one of those stalwarts that you would read about and he looks at me and he goes so he sits down and I looked at him and I said someone I ask you a question when he and I'm pointing at the CEO I said when he does what he just did to you three times what's that like for you he looked at me he's about to answer and then his chin started to quiver this big strong powerful guy he's starting to get the words out and he can barely talk as he unloads kind of what it's been like to work with this CEO over the last however long and he's talking about it and I'm asking him you know to keep talking well after a couple minutes I look up and I see this somebody's walking it's the CEO he's gotten up and he walks over and he sits down right there the campfire and he reached out and he put his hand on the man's shoulder and he said I am so so I never knew that I make you feel that way it's not what I want to do and I looked at him and I turned the board and I said give me the room he'll call you back in so for the next hour and a half we talked and then the two of them stood up went out to the four-year with the rest of the board said we can do this come on in and they put it back together now I wish obviously there was a lot more work to be done but the point is that is how powerful somebody just being heard and understood can do to regain trust or even to build trust and so many times we're trying to get somebody to trust us by persuading them well I didn't mean that or that's not what you know or no you didn't see that writer and we're trying to persuade him into trusting and trusting is a primarily a biological thing that happens with a human connection and empathy and as the scripture says to answer before listening is a folly it's not going to work and it's a shame a friend of mine psychologist we're at the hospital one day and I said you know whatever you say that you don't mean like how's it going and I mean we were at work and we're busy hey and he goes you know I had an interesting experience this morning I said what and he said my wife's out of town and my four-year-old daughter I was trying to get her ready for for kindergarten I'll go you know get ready so we got to leave and then I go do something I come back she wasn't getting ready and I kept going back there get ready get ready he said finally I'm getting frustrated after three or four times she said lollygagging and I'm getting mad and I'm you know I mean I caught myself and I said what would I do if this were one of our patients he thought for a second and then he went oh my gosh and he said I got down and I looked at her and I said you miss your mommy don't you and she goes and she breaks apart and she falls in my arms and he said we cried that's Mommy too and she's he's holding his daughter and he said after about a minute of her sobbing all of a sudden she goes Dad we gotta go so your brain starts working again shouldn't had to happen I love the book of Hebrews where it talks about God and it says we do not have a high priest meaning Jesus who's unable to empathize with our weaknesses but we have one who's been tempted in every way we are just as we are yet without sin he knows we don't have a God every other faith and if you're not a follower of Jesus and you're kind of checking this out there is a lot to learn that she hadn't maybe seen or heard I mean I I when I started following Jesus I couldn't believe how much was in there there was the opposite of what I thought like I thought Christians were all judgmental it's only three quarters of them and then I go to the book and Jesus the founder he said I didn't come to judge the world or condemn the world I came to seek and to save and to heal that was just here is the founder did you know started one way and the company's doing something else but it's not him you know it'd be like Elon selling gas covers guns versus it's just backwards but here's what it says about him that he came see every other faith is about us trying to somehow get to God except this Jesus faith and the Jesus faith was the one where he came down to us and he knows our inability and he knows betrayal and he knows rejection and he knows pain and that's one of the reasons we can trust him we have a record of he knows how we live now what we ought to be establishing in our lives with each other to be trustworthy is a record of people feeling understood by us and then for the ones we're going to trust for making sure they get us as well before you trust I just had two total knee Replacements and spine surgery and when I was looking for a surgeon I go to this acclaimed surgeon and he looks at my MRI and my x-ray goes yeah he said he said your knees are gone you need two total knee Replacements you know this is what I do and I've looked at them and you're done that's what you need he said and I remember he said anybody tells you anything else they're wrong and he said I gotta run this is a true story he did this he said so if you want to schedule it you know when you decide I'll be glad to do it and he walks out and I'm going this is like a drive-by's shooting yeah I heard a Messianic which is a Christian Jewish comedian I wish I could remember his name he said yeah when I grew up I grew up in a Jewish Library we had drive-by shamings but he didn't I didn't say that he said and it was just it was just and I said to him wait a minute you can diagnose that I need both of my knees replaced by just looking he goes yeah that's all I need well he walked out now it turns out that's pretty true in my in the scenario that I have we got any arthropods in there you know there's some you can look at and go dude you need new ones but it wasn't enough for me to trust him so I got referred to another surgeon he actually called me because he came to her friend he said yeah I looked at your ex face how are you walking around he said that must be awful tell me about the pain when did you start to feel it how does it grow when does what relieves it and tell me about how you use your knees tell me about your life and all of this and I'm gradually thinking huh this is a lot better so I'm moving towards saying yes because I feel like he got me see we need to know that somebody knows what hurts me what I'm afraid of what makes me happy all of that and then we start to move towards our system opens up so now I'm ready with Dr empathy to go get go get my legs amputated right well not so fast there's a second Factor who's this for what's his motive I went to a third doctor well I'm checking all these out and I go in there he examines me this and the other but all the while and I'm trying to kind of talk to him he's he's bringing in residents that he's training and he's talking about their schedule and you know if we do this guy he's got to fit into and all of a sudden I'm feeling like he's really not there for me he's there for his agenda and his world now he might be a great surgeon but I'm just kind of like incidental and you could feel this is his big world and this is and he's a big well-known guy but there's a patient there and shouldn't part of it be about me it's my knee but I felt like it was all about him and everything he was doing and all of all of the blah blah blah blah blah we don't trust somebody until we know that their agenda is to be for my well-being are they for me said another way do they have my back when I'm not there are they thinking about then when they're putting a deal together a business partner I I remember in my early years of business and I was doing a deal and I had some partners and we were doing a hospital deal and the way it was falling out we found out a way it could be structured that would would be really good for us and and I took it to the partners and I'll never forget this and he was a mentor to me and weren't doing anything bad or illegal but the the other the partners weren't you know in the conversation not our partners but people we were at a contract with and all of a sudden he goes that would be good but I don't think it would be I just think it's that good for them and there was nothing wrong with it at all but he's sitting here thinking about the people we were doing business with and how could it be restructured in a way where it would even be better for them another CEO I remember that the benefits package came in and the bids were way lower than they thought and it budgeted and the executive team was going oh this is great we're going to save a lot of money he said no we're not we're not going to save anything they said yeah it's going to be cheaper he said no we had already budgeted that for our employees we're going to give it to them in a different way they had no union representative at the table but he had they had him and a good relationship comes when both sides are looking out for the other one that the intent and the motive is for the other one as well as yourselves and there's nothing wrong with having your own interests look what Philippians says do nothing out of selfish ambition or empty Pride but in humility consider others more important than yourselves and I like this translation because it unpacks the original language which says each of you should look not out not only to your own interests but also the interests of others if in any relationship it's only for the interests of others you're getting crucified because that's the only time that worked or you're codependent I mean every relationship all the stakehold excuse me stakeholders have needs and everybody's got to make their needs work but the bad ones are the ones where only one person's needs matter when the marriage is supposed to bend its knee to only his agenda or her agenda that's not a relationship so the second one is are we being someone that the people who have invested and trusted in me know that I'm going to be looking out for them in everything that we're doing does a husband and wife feel that way like if he says yes to this or schedules this or she does that or whatever to they have it in mind I wonder how he's going to feel about that what's going to do to his or her schedule or how's this going to see it's about carrying somebody else's needs around with us and being the steward in the protector of those for them that's the second factor I called the second surgeon the one I talked to in the conversation about that he actually seemed like he heard and understood me he also said and you know I've heard about you like some friends he said I know you've been a competitive golfer your whole life we got to get you back out on the golf course how long has it been since you've played I said I can't I can't even walk he says yeah he said dude you got a lot of tournaments in front of you we got to do this and he said he said hadn't you got two daughters or I said yeah they're 20 and 22. and he said you know you want to be able to like go on trips and walk with them and and they're going to be having kids I go slow down dude but one day yeah he said you're going to want to play with your grandkid he said we got to fix this thing all of a sudden it's feeling like he's looking out for my life it wasn't all about him so now I got a doctor understanding and Doctor looking out for me on my team let's go amputate my legs well not so fast trusting breath what if doctor understanding Dr empathy and doctor I'm all for you says okay let's get up and go schedule this he said I'm so excited about doing your knee replacement because I'm an OB gen and I've never done one I've always since Medical School I've wanted to do a knee replacement see it doesn't just end with somebody being a good person I'd want Specialties in a different area than he specializes in the third one is does this person have the ability and the competency the capacity to pull off what I'm entrusting to them and that changes in contexts right I had a friend that called me and said I need some advice and I said what he said well my daughter's boyfriend call me and he said I know what this means they've been dating for you know a year or so you would think that you're speaking to have the competency to turn off their stupid phone before or that Apple would have the ability for that hi I'm back sorry about that he said the boyfriend I know what he's gonna happen he's going to ask for my daughter's hand in marriage he said how do you do that dinner he said what do you know what would you say I said well I'm gonna say he said what and I said I'm going to talk to him and and listen I'll say yeah let's meet again and I want this time I want you to bring your last two years tax returns and your credit report and he starts laughing because yeah right and I said I'm not joking he said that's so intrusive how I said look I don't I'm not trying to be interested I don't care about the numbers he can white them out that's not what I care about what I care about can he find them [Laughter] do they exist secondly his credit report I know people have things happen and credit you but there's always a story to that but there better be a story if it is because I want to know how is he performed for other people that gave him treasure that he promised to perform for before I give him my treasure a yes to my daughter are you kidding me I want to know see this is probably a fantastic young man who's very empathic understanding probably has great motives but does he have the ability to do what the context of being a husband and a father is going to require doesn't mean he's bad if he doesn't he may be Mr Right but he may be Mr not right now maybe there's some competencies see when we trust somebody in different contexts I have people that are really good friends but they're total idiots and I mean they're I I have great parties with them but if I got to entrust some area of life I call a different friend that doesn't mean that I don't trust the other ones but there are specific contexts when we're going to invest in somebody and hope not to be disappointed do they have the ability to pull off the context that I'm asking them to pull off I remember I got called into a company one time and they said I want you to do some CEO coaching I said what's the problem said we have a new CEO about a year and morale is down and they're kind of you know they're drifting a little bit and he just needs some coaching because he's only been on the role for a year and it's just not as good as we want it I said well how did he become the CEO and they said well he was our CEO and we promoted him and they said I said how do you do as a CEO they said he was fantastic he was there for 10 years everybody loves him he's the greatest guy ever he changed I mean he he he opened up like new distribution channels and and fixed the supply chain all these stuff he did that was incredible so we promoted him I said from Co to CEO and they said yes I said where did he get the e they said what I said where do you get the e I said were you dumbass he was the CEO operations and you made him the CEO executive chief executive where did he get the E he had a no where'd he get the e obviously the O worked well where'd he get the e they said we promoted him I said I know that but where did he get the e-chip because what I hear is a guy in the CEO chair who's operating as an operator and not a CEO he's not doing the things that CEOs do well and we can probably coach to those but I mean that's your problem so when you're thinking about trusting someone you know where people do this a lot a couple of places family businesses just because somebody's got you know the right lucky sperm club or something you're in the family then they're going to be whatever but they really don't have the competency for that position then the family gets all you know upside down and in conflicts and these abilities to trust them I've got to be developed tell you another place that happens when friends who are awesome friends and you trust them with your life you say we should start a business together they're a great friend but you find out a year later they suck as a business partner how many of you have had that experience in another life or okay so I'm not making this out it's so common because we want to trust good people and we can't trust good people for the right things so the third point is when people are trusting us first of all we need to know our lanes what we are able to do will and should say yes when somebody wants to trust us and the things we should say Noah like my wife sitting right down here she won't allow me to go to the grocery store right I suck I don't have the ability to come home with the right thing even after face time somehow I get it wrong and I have the ability to come home with mass quantities of crap that she does not allow in our house so she doesn't trust me in that way she trusts me in other ways but we need to learn how to save a bit and I say this all the time people ask me to do something like you know what I'm really not very good at that if you need this I could probably pull that off so let's let's know you know Ephesians 2 says you're God's workmanship created in him for good works that have been laid down beforehand so that you should walk in them in other words God's made you for specific things and those are your strengths and let's not let people down let's be competent they need us to show up and be confident as Proverbs says where is um my proverb about being ah do you see someone skilled in their work they'll serve before Kings they'll not serve before officials of low rank in other words they will get entrusted with really good things and big things because they've developed abilities that can be trusted and God calls us to do that you know what's really cool we look at Jesus what have we got we've got somebody that came down to our level and he understands us we've got somebody whose motive was for us read Romans 8. which says in the same way he helps us in our weaknesses he's so for us it says we don't even know how we ought to pray but he's praying for us with groans too deep for words and then the next part of it says and he who searches our hearts he knows the mind of the spirit because he intercedes for the Saints according to God's will you're in struggles and God Is So for you he's already ordering the right things are going to be needed to help us get to the next place and at the end of the passage it says that he works all things together for the good of those who love him and who are called according to purposes and you know you can depend on this God is for you he's for you again how many marriage your prom date anybody in here married their prom date okay one couple is this him [Applause] hey in my line of work you gotta always ask okay can you guys stand up look at this they're smiling look at the grabbing each other's hand get a room guys come on thank you see they stand up we're celebrating it right it worked which proves you can go to Vegas and put it all on red and sometimes you win but that's the exception people because they turned out to be the real thing and they knew it early on but the point I want to make here is a lot of you went to the prom and how many of you are instead of we're congratulating you you're saying thank you Jesus raise that hand and you're not married to your prom date how many of you are so glad and yet we may broke up with you it was the worst thing that ever happened to you but God knew trust me I you dodged a bullet here I got your back I got another one down the road or when you win a job or a career or there's something see Things Fall Apart all the time but we know that there is a God who is thinking about us even when things are going so badly that we think there is no way he can be thinking about me or my dream would have come true and we don't know he knows better than we do and we can trust him so Dr competent he cared about me he's for me he's not an OB gen he does a thousand of these a year in fact he even invented the implants holds the patents on him he flies out here he's from another part of the country he trains surgeons at SC and UCLA and he's very competent so I'm ready right let's go okay doc let's go he said you know what if you um you got a few minutes or you got an hour I go yeah he says well I'm going to do one right now like yours and we got a theater in the operating room if you want to watch now maybe now after I've been through it but I don't I don't think I would want to watch it before I went through it but if you did that and you go watch and you're watching this knee replacement what if you got there and you're watching and you know they preppy dude and his knees sticking up there and he's obviously out and all of a sudden the surgeon starts cutting and he's about 10 minutes into it you're going man isn't he good and all of a sudden oh crap he's bleeding oh no and the surgeon gets freaked out because he's bleeding well doctor understanding good motive competent is lacking the fourth thing that I need to trust him and that's the character to be able to pull it off for what I'm asking to pull off because surgery requires some somebody with a certain kind of makeup they can think under stress and react and respond now I don't mean character just moral character more you can't trust people that lie cheat or steal that's all we're talking about that's character that's for five-year-olds but you don't trust I mean our daughters knew how to not lie cheat and steal when they were five years old they weren't ready to do knee replacements the makeup of this character has got to be very different and it's always different for what we're entrusting somebody with we had a brother-in-law who's a Navy SEAL and Mark was the brother I never had um incredible guy we lost him in Iraq in 08 and Mark was incredible he come home from from being deployed not to say Mark tell me a Mark's story well we jumped out of a plane at 40 000 feet above the oxygen level and took our tanks down and hit the water and went down to the bottom and changed clothes and took a nap because we've been up for a couple days and then we six of us boarded one of Saddam Hussein ships and you know we took it down we turned it around we took it to the holding station and then we had breakfast just another day the courage and the makeup of these guys what they pull off it's incredible here's what's interesting when Mark and Sarah got married I did the ceremony but I had somebody else do the premarital counseling and they gave them each of these assessments these tests and then yeah I guess gave him the test sat him down he said y'all both flunked the sympathy scale who's going to be nice in this marriage and they all laughed and we all left because they're both you know really thick skin pretty tough they did great but it was kind of funny but I'm sitting there also thinking you know that's why in my Dark Night of the Soul if I'm you know needing to cry to somebody I'm not calling Mark because he'd come in and say suck it up let's go get some beers you know he'd like but if the bad guys are coming after me I'm calling Mark now I got other friends who are very caring and empathic and I probably would call them because they would understand the pain I'm going through but if the bad guys are coming at me I'm not calling that wuss and see God has given us a body where everybody's got different gifts and makeup you're looking at a Netflix movie you freeze the frames and you see somebody operating in one scene well there's a character or Arc to that and each of us have our own makeup and we want to be as integrated and whole and complete as we can but I'll never be a mark but I don't know if Mark would be the guy that would go sit down in front of this global chairman of a board get him to cry you know we all have different abilities and gifts so when you're trusting somebody for a specific context you got to look at their makeup and does it fit what we're trusting and if somebody's trusting us or if they're trusting us to do something that we know I could do that for a day but I can't pull that off for a year that's not me and we get really clear about how we're going to trust and who we're going to trust because when it goes the other way it looks like this like a broken tooth or a lame foot is reliance on an Unfaithful person in a time of trouble I don't I don't want to I don't want to be a broken tooth or a lame foot to somebody so in our relationships we got to be asking the question am I understanding them and do they know I'm for them do I have the ability to do this and am I bringing the courage or The Compassion or the love or the kindness or whatever character trait is needed for that relationship and we flip it around I mean we're trusting somebody is that make up there particularly in significant relationships so now we got the doctor I care about you I'm for you I'm competent I'm not afraid of blood okay let's go do this so we'll go schedule the surgery and walk into the front desk Saskatchewan or stop there's this body line in the floor that's kind of gray blue that means they're dead it's a color of dead people yeah okay and I'd go like this I go what's that and the doctor goes yeah I did his knee last week it didn't turn out so well the fifth one is what's the track record the best predictor of the future is always the past unless something has changed and then if something's changed and they've really changed and there's a track record of seeing the changed the best particular future is still to pass they've just gotten a new past because now we've seen a year of different performance so I want you to trust people sometimes that screw up who say I'm sorry but you don't trust them because they say I'm sorry I'll never do it again that opens the door to when they can start building the trust that would then cause the investment a lot of people make that mistake so we had to see a track record Tori and I were down in south Louisiana before GPS on your phones pissed in a friend and they live in the swamps down there and and we we you know got this address and there's no GPS and we stop it the gas station and they said um can you tell me how to get to this address and then he goes oh yeah it's not too far you go down go down a little ways a few miles I don't know how maybe a few miles down this road and you you'll see a German shepherd lying in the grass and when you see that German Shepherd just turn right it'll be right there I said a German Shepherd lying on the grass that's my sign she goes yeah he'll be there I said what if he's she goes he'll be there I knew I wasn't talking her out of it but I'm like wanting a sign that doesn't chase cats or something so we get in the car and we start driving and we drive we drive and all of a sudden there's a German Shepherd lying in the grass and we turn right and we found it how did she know how did she know that that dog would be there because the dogs got a track record he's been there every day for probably 10 years and see he can be trusted some of you start meetings at eight o'clock and if if Mary's not there you go hold on we'll wait for Mary why do you wait for Mary because Mary's always on time and you know something's wrong she'll be there and if she's not there by eight after 10 after everybody's going I wonder what happened to Mary you're calling her why because she's got a track record but in a different meeting if Joey's not there at five after you go let's start why because you know Joey's always late you can't depend on him for being on time at all see everybody is making a mental map of you in every interaction and that's telling them whether or not they can trust you the next time because that's how our brains are designed so that's why look at somebody's track record and it's okay if it's not good in fact God made some stellar high performance Superstars out of people with horrible track records that's the business he's in and thank God he does because at least I had a chance and many of you know that what's your lives look like before Jesus entered them he uses and trusts broken people but he enters in he starts to develop them and as they're faithful in little they get more and that's how we've got to be that when somebody has a track record we start to give more don't give the farm the first night and then there's our God I'll give thanks to the Lord with all of my heart and I'll recount your wonders and then it says right after that that he's known by the Justice he brings and the wicked are ensnared by the work of their own hands and throughout the Bible you will see one thing said about God over and over and over and over and over look at his track record you were slaves in Egypt and I brought you out you thought I was dead and I came back from the dead you thought it was all over but I told you I would come and start a movement that would go around the world and on and on and on and hopefully hopefully some of you have that kind of track record with God where you've seen the lights go out there's a power failure but then they came back on because he showed up in a way that you didn't expect and you can learn to trust him some of you might just be ready to give him the chance to start a track record and that's that first step and some of you may just be exploring and if you are one of the things we do whenever we're going to enter into a relationship we ask people that know that person and one of the best things that helped me when I was exploring Faith was to talk to people who had known Jesus for a long time and I got some good referrals and I think a lot of us how many of you have known him for a long time and found him to be trustworthy let me see your hands because some of you want to know that and that's a good question for you to be asking so in some couple of things be careful who you trust I hope I've scared the hell out of you today but I hope I'm given hope that there's some more trusting and some ways in which you can identify it and by the way some of you been burned in churches they go you can't believe Christianity because you know I went to church and I got burned I go did you read the book the book says if you go the Bible says if you go to church there will be some bad people there and they will hurt you and stay away from them that's what the book says God's not a good marketer he tells you their side effects but there's some good ones so we have a God we can trust but let's also be people who are trustworthy and let's be careful about the ones we trust God bless you guys [Applause]

Channel: Vintage Church LA

Views: 82,447

Keywords: Vintage Church LA, Vintage Church, Vintage, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Church in LA, Church in Santa Monica, Church on the westside, Sunday service, livestream church service, livestream church, church live now, christian church, htb church, htb church network, vintage church network, ger jones, worship music, sunday sermon, church service, church service live, church in los angeles, southern california church, sunday service, love your neighbor, drhenrycloud, henrycloud

Id: MyOZVNFHoxA

Length: 58min 2sec (3482 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 12 2023